by AshleyThis year my girls were with their Dad for Thanksgiving, so we celebrated the weekend before Thanksgiving. Come actual Thanksgiving day, we weren’t eating traditional Thanksgiving food. Instead, we had planned to grill some steaks for our dinner. The only problem was we were totally out of vegetables to pair with the steaks and grocery stores were closed!Digging through my pantry and freezers, I found a can of peas (which sounded super unappealing), a bag of frozen edamame (equally unappealing), and 2 rogue carrots in the bottom of the veggie crisper drawer.Veggie Side Dish ConundrumI was deciding whether to cut up the carrots and make (canned) peas and carrots or just to eat our steaks with leftover mashed potatoes and no veggies. Asking hubs what he preferred, he lit up and said “hang on!” before running outside. He returned with his hands brimming with okra!It seems like every Fall we have a different vegetable in our backyard garden beds that reigns supreme. Last year was acorn squash. Another year was spaghetti squash. This year, it’s the year of okra. In fact, so much okra has grown that we can’t even give it away for free. Or rather, we HAVE given it away, and still have tons more, and no one wants seconds. HahahaTraditional and Non-Traditional Thanksgiving FoodsI wasn’t super excited about the okra, but I decided that I preferred a fresh organic vegetable home-grown with love over canned peas. So I gave it a whirl! I used this super-simple recipe for oven baked okra and it turned out delicious!While steak with okra may not be what most enjoy as a traditional Thanksgiving meal, we still finished it up with mini-pies I’d bought from Crumbl cookie the day before Thanksgiving. So don’t worry! At least our desert was “traditional.” Another Win for At-Home GardeningI was pretty pleased to be able to pull together a meal including a fresh vegetable on a day that stores were closed and I thought we had no vegies in the house. I consider our backyard garden as more of a hobby than an actual money-saver. In fact, I think we probably spend more in terms of our time and paying for extra water than we “save” from having home-grown foods versus buying from the grocery store. Even so, there’s something incredibly satisfying about cooking up and eating food you grew in your own backyard. And it’s a great reminder to try to use what we have instead of rushing out to buy something fresh from the store.Do you garden? What are you growing this season – OR – what do you plan to grow in the Spring? In Arizona we haven’t yet dipped down into freezing temps, so we’ve still got some plants growing….especially okra! 😉Hi, I’m Ashley! Arizonan on paper, Texan at heart. Lover of running, blogging, and all things cheeeeese. Freshly 40, married mother of two, working in academia. Trying to finally (finally!) pay off that ridiculous 6-digit student loan debt!
