Refreshing Saturday

"I have a surprise for you," Westley told me before I drove up to his house this weekend. We were to have dinner with his parents on Friday, and the surprise was to take place on Saturday.

When I woke up, I was pretty excited about this surprise. I slept in later than I had intended (must have turned off the alarm in my sleep!), and I wondered if he was finally going to teach me how to play tennis. (To teach me any sport would be quite an undertaking; I'm the girl who failed the running portion of her gym final in high school because she decided she didn't feel like running.)

Instead, he announced that he was going to make me dinner ... and we were going to visit local farmers' markets to purchase the fresh produce we needed. (So much better than learning to play tennis!)

After I got ready (I'm just going to say here that Westley possesses great patience because I'm very meticulous about my getting-ready process, and it usually takes at least 45 minutes from start of shower to public-appearance-ready) ... we took off! Zooming around the countryside in search of the perfect veggies and other goodies ... we had a blast!

We drove past one local almost-store which Westley remarked he had never visited. Half a mile down the road, we did a U-turn and made the first stop of the day. Fifteen minutes later, we left with ~$3.50 in purchases (half a dozen baby potatoes, one pepper, a vidalia onion, and two yummy little creme-filled desserts: one chocolate-flavored and one pumpkin-flavored) ... Great first stop.

On later stops, we picked up cherry tomatoes, mushrooms, garlic, fresh peaches, and 1.5 lb of sirloin. Westley said that the meat had never been frozen ... and we joked on the ride home that we could still hear it mooing. *grin* We also stopped by his relatives' house to ask if we could have some rosemary from their garden. One more stop to purchase Shiraz (for dinner) and Riesling (to enjoy with the peaches) ... and we headed home.

We did most of the prep work soon after we arrived back ... creating the marinade for the meat, the glaze for the veggies, chopping up the veggies and the meat, and letting ingredients sit together for awhile. When it came time to make dinner, we skewered the veggies and meat, brushed the sauce over the vegetables, and put the skewers on the grill. (I so wish I had remembered to bring my camera this weekend; the fresh fruit and veggies and the shish-kebabs (no idea how to spell that term) were so beautifully photogenic and I would have loved to capture their yummy essence on film!) Delicious, mouth-watering food.

Westley loved that all of the ingredients had been grown locally ... and our conversation on that topic led to further discussion of the vegetables and herbs we'd like to grow in the garden at our dream house someday. *happy sigh*