we promised you pictures

sarah elisabeth and I - and now gina marie as well - have a share in a CSA - community supported agriculture. this means that every week, from june through october, we get veggies fresh off a local farm in granby, ma. the food is incredible because it's very much alive and in its purest form, not like the things that we get at the grocery store that are frequently grown for longevity, not flavor. example: I fell in love with carrots this summer after remembering (discovering?) what they're supposed to taste like.

this week we got lots and lots of peppers. red ones, green ones, greeny-yellow ones, and amazingly bright orange ones. I took my half home and set about making dinner. after remembering sarah elisabeth's post about successful sauces, I opened my fridge to see what I had that could be turned into a sauce of dazzling proportion. huh, I thought to myself, I haven't used mustard for a really long time - and I have three different kinds. so mustard it was, and several big squirts of stoneground mustard went into the pan with my onions, peppers, and spinach. it smelled amazing. the sautéing vegetables sizzled in the mustard and I had to keep reminding myself that the smell of a dish while it cooks frequently means nothing about what it's going to taste like. still, I was excited.

except, when I poured the vegetables over brown rice and served a bowl for myself and for gina marie, the mustard flavor had mysteriously vanished. I had warned gina prior to her first bite that I had no idea how it would taste, but that it was likely to be very mustard-y. this was, apparently, a big fat lie. where did the mustard go? did I cook it off? did the water from the spinach dilute it? the dish didn't even smell like mustard anymore. I'm stumped.