Grilled Vegetables From Finley Farms

Photo from "edible Santa Barbara."

Our favorite dinner to make each week is "Grilled Vegetables From Finley Farms." Both us work day jobs in addition to our afternoon/evening backyard farming gig. Simple, easy dinner prep is therefore a blessing. Grilling vegetables is tasty, healthy and simple to do. 

Grilled Vegetables For Dinner

Serves 3 with plenty of leftovers.

You can use any vegetable combination. For this particular dinner, we used:

• 4 leeks (from Finley Farms)(clean thoroughly and slice in half)
• 3 tomatoes (from a different farmer, most likely hot house, organic - we couldn't resist)
• 1 large onion (Finley Farms)(slice into three thick discs)
• 5 carrots (Finley Farms)(no need to peel, chop off stem end if desired)
• 3 fennel (Finley Farms)(chop off tops, leave end on, cut into three sections)
• 4 zuchinni (Los Olivos Roots)(cut in half)
• 11 small golden potatoes

Coat everything with olive oil, salt and pepper. 

Place on grill. Best to put fast-cooking leeks and tomatoes on the top rack. When the everything else is almost ready, bring the leeks and tomatoes down. Everything will finish at the same time. 

This zuchinni produces a nutty flavor when grilled.

As we reach the home stretch, we placed the tomatoes onto the bottom level for finishing.

Grill fennel until soft. It is sweet to the taste. It is finished when it can be effortlessly sliced.

Because no meat was prepped, you can use the same dish for serving. Easy clean up!

Serve with slices of bread drizzled with olive oil.
We also grated asiago and placed in a side dish for sprinkling upon the vegetables, giving the dish a salty, cheesy kick.

Don't have an outdoor grill? You can achieve the same dish by chopping everything up, coating in olive oil, salt and pepper, and placing into an oven-safe dish and baking.

Blue potatoes, leeks, zuchinni, fennel, onion, and brussel sprouts.

The deep blue color of these potatoes is reminiscent of blueberries.
In fact, both blue potatoes and blueberries contain the same antioxidants.

We fed the fennel and carrot tops to the chickens.
All other scraps were composted.
Next up? What to do with Leftovers.

New Neighbors

A darling new couple is moving in next door. And by next door, we mean above the den door. Our daughter, who is visiting from the East Coast, noticed a redheaded bird perched upon the fence. She wondered if he was making use of the birdhouse custom-made by my husband and hoped to catch him in the act. However, he spent most of the day shooing other birds.

She noticed that one brown bird was allowed to freely pass by, toting twine, twigs and moss. When we arrived home from work, she explained her observations and we quickly realized it must be a new bird couple moving in.

We google image searched "red headed California birds" and up came the Red Headed House Finch. Sure enough, that was him!

Phone snapshot of Mr. Red from the kitchen window.

Nest in progress. She even took some
twine left out for typing up vines.