Veggie love.

Today, an ode to beautiful vegetables. (In contrast to the last post about molten lava liquid cheese. And yes, we went BACK to Moe's for lunch on Sunday.) I've been slacker queen this summer in terms of farmer's marketing, so I've been trying to get as much action in as I can before, sniff sniff, our lovely little market closes up shop for the year. Last Saturday, my sister-in-law and I took a lovely beach cruise through town, then popped in to see what was looking good.

Mini peppers from the market.

Yellow tomatoes and jalapenos pillaged from Hillary's garden.

Oodles of broccoli from the market.

I didn't get these guys at the market, but they are still gorgeous, so a little shout out to the purple potatoes -

I seriously am obsessed with pasta primavera this summer. And all these goodies just screamed "put me in pasta and mix me with cheese," so who was I to argue? Besides, our pasta had a very special guest this week....

Squash blossoms!

I was so excited to find these at the market. I swear, in previous years, these little buggers came and went long before this time of the year, but maybe I'm just misremembering. I am definitely not misremembering their blink-and-you'll-miss-them availability, though, so I was more than willing to pay $0.75 each (although, I must admit, I paid for six yet accidentally grabbed seven, oops).

To get ready for the pasta (seriously, are you sick of hearing about this yet??), I chopped everything up -

A rainbow of yum.

Then got to prepping the blossoms. First, the stuffing - light ricotta, lemon juice, lemon zest, basil, salt, and pepper.

 

Stuffed ladies.

Or rather, stuffed men. I just read an article about squash blossoms, and, apparently, its the men that don't turn into actual squashes (if these had been plucked from ladies, there would be no stem).

It seems like every year I try to fry squash blossoms, and every year I screw up the actual "fry" part. The first time I ever tried, I was hosting Birgit for dinner and am pretty sure they were just a big oily mess because I'd completely forgotten the batter. Years later, I'm still not quite there, but I'm getting closer. I basically just flipped these around in flour, so that turned into a globby mess when I dropped them in the oil. But hey, when I scraped the globby mess off, a few of them had a little bit of a crisp on them.

For final assembly, I dropped the veggies in with spaghetti noodles, then squeezed a half of lemon in as well as a little oil. Lots of basil, salt, and pepper, then I mixed in about a half cup of ricotta. Mix mix, top with parmesan, and then..... and then.... The squash blossoms!

So, even though the blossoms weren't really fried, I tasted them more than I ever have - they are perfectly sweet. Loved them. Brad cut his off the stems and mixed them in with his pasta. I couldn't wait and just chomped them right off the stems and ate them first. As for the pasta, I'm loving the ricotta in this (usually use mozzarella) - need to remember to just always keep it on hand. Which, reminds me, I'm out and went shopping tonight... and didn't pick any up. Grr. Better run and write it on the list before I forget....