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Holy!  I have so many things to blog about, seriously.  I could not eat for weeks and still have food stories spewing from my fingertips...and ChowDown MidTown start today!!!  This is going to be a busy week, I think.  So, good, let's get started.

I'm going to consolidate all my meals last week into one post.  It's going to be kinda crazy, but we'll just see how this works.  I will try to be short and sweet, but there is just so much good food going on out there right now, I don't want anyone to miss out on it.

I'm not going to talk about the weather too much, but it's been awesome.  Super Florida-like, and I love it.  Everyone else in Indiana hates it as far as I can tell, but it makes me want to do some grillin' and chillin'.  Some swimming would be nice too, but hey, you can't have everything, right?  So, grillin' and chillin' we've been doing a little bit of.  I am still LOVING my Green B.E.A.N. delivery, despite all of the Farmer's markets happening, they are still hookin' me up with things I can't get there.  I got these beautiful tiny sweet peppers and some delicious citrus to boot.  Being that for 29 years of my life, I was never a pepper lover, I have officially converted.  I can eat them raw, semi-cooked, cooked, kinda charred on the grill, whatevs.  I'll want to eat them all day long, so good.  I got some ribeyes from the Fresh Market, which is also a staple of mine these days.  Although I can't find one place to get all of my grocery items, I am very pleased to say, I have found everything I want at all of the places I want, and I am okay with going around to each of them for all my super yummy treats.

We grilled these 2 inch ribeye puppies up with salt and pepper on our castiron hibachi (aka the most adorable grill ever).  I oiled up the pepper and slapped them on there too.  So easy and soooooo satisfying.  It's not often we indulge in a really nice steak, so that was a treat in itself.  To me, it's more important that you cook the steak well, which in my opinion, is medium rare, than try to get all fancy with marinades and such.  When it was all cooked perfectly, we squeezed some of the citrus juice all over it and chowed down.



Last week was the first Wednesday of the Broad Ripple Farmer's Market, so Hubs and I hopped on our bikes and rode on over there to check it out.  He hadn't been before, so it was a fun little trip.  It's a quaint little market with quite a bit of eat-there food.  I haven't partaken in any of that yet, because I am usually there to get food to cook at home.  Which is what we did, I picked up some pasta from Nicole-Taylor's stand.  I am never eating dry pasta from the store again, by the way.  Theirs is to die for.  And, we also picked up some hummus from a cute little stand with all sorts of interesting chickpea and gazpacho delights.

This is what I ended up with.  I had some heirloom tomatoes that I really wanted to use in a light pasta dish and some fresh basil.  I sauteed up some garlic and oil and tossed it with these orange-pepper noodles, tomatoes and basil.  Voila, a great summer dish.  The heirloom tomatoes are from Fresh Market, but are seriously my favorite.  They are so sweet, I want to know why I never had these as a kid.  I would've been in love with tomatoes from birth, I think.  Then, on the side, my signature summer salad of spinach, strawberries, blueberries and walnuts...all from GB delivery.  The perfect hot weather food!

And lastly, I had some portobellos in the fridge and these beautifully colored fingerling potatoes arrived at my door, so we had a meal.

I grilled up the portobellos on my grill pan with salt, pepper and worcheshire (magic ingredient!!), baked the fingerlings with garlic, oil, s & p, steamed up some fresh broccoli.  We ate it all with a salad using up the last of my heirlooms and had another yummy, refreshing summer meal.  I know the portobellos may not look to appetizing, I usually serve them burger style, but they actually were pretty good.  They were very tasty and may look prettier served over a bed of spinach or lettuce.  Give 'em a try if you haven't already...they really are one of my favorites, and a nice idea for a vegetarian meal night.

So, as you can see, admittedly, I am not some crazy, awesome chef.  But, I think we did a pretty good job last week.  We ate some decently healthy and well balanced, EASY meals and enjoyed eating them too!  Hope you liked them, wipe the drool off your chin, and have nice lunch!

Happy ChowDown!  See you out there :)