Recently I have found myself in a vegetable rut, always serving the same thing – either steamed, baked or in salad form.  I love veggies so I thought I might mix things up and try out the Farmers Market.   Recent literature is promoting the purchase of locally grown foods and I have read that in some cases it may be less expensive.

Being a novice, I quickly found that it is still early in the year, so there were only a handful of vendors selling actual veggies. We spent a bit of time talking about the growth of microgreens, tiny sprouts from an assortment of vegetables with a friendly representative of Heritage Prairie Farms. The next stop was the pesto booth where we sampled and purchased pistachio pesto.  I love pesto on anything and thought it might enhance the veggies.

After looking around a bit, we decided to try yellow cauliflower, colorful fingerling potatoes and cremini mushrooms.  I also picked out some red leaf lettuce and tomatoes just to keep the salads going! From an economics standpoint, things were much more expensive and my treasures amounted to $29. I didn’t mind as it goes into the pocket of the farmer and the quality was great!

Not knowing anything about the yellow cauliflower, I researched it a bit on Wikipedia and found that it has 25 times the Vitamin A level of regular cauliflower and originated from a mutant cauliflower in Canada. That sounds like it came from a movie! 

Upon tasting raw, it did lack the bitterness that I typically might see in white cauliflower. I tossed the cauliflower with pesto, topped with chopped pistachios and baked at 400F for 30 minutes.  I wasn’t sure what to do with the potatoes, so I did the same thing. You can never have too much pesto!  Accompanied by steak kabobs with cremini mushrooms, it was a perfect summer meal.

I can’t wait to go back. I saw some beets and didn’t want to tackle too much too soon, so that will be my next adventure!