Fresh Out of the Garden - Grilled Summer Vegetables

Our garden crop is plentiful this year. We've had a nice bit of rain and wow what a difference a little rain makes!!!

As you can see by the picture on the right -- it seems that we need to harvest almost every other day. Our primary crop this year consists of two types of eggplant, tomatoes, squash, cucumber, peppers, beets, artichoke (yep that's right I've got artichoke growing in my garden this year!!) and herbs. But it is it doesn't matter what your crop is -- vegetables cooked on the grill or under the broiler taste soooooo good.

Here's an easy way to prepare a "grilled" salad made from your own abundance:

Roasted Summer Vegetable Salad

1 -3 ears of yellow corn, or even better yellow and white corn- grilled, shucked, and cut off the cob

1 red pepper -- roasted, peeled, and cut into thin strips

1 tomato -- grilled, peeled, seeded, and cut into a 1/2-inch dice

2 zucchini, yellow or other summer squash -- cut into 1/2-inch slices, grilled, and cut into 1/2-inch dice.

1 tablespoon each of lime juice and lemon juice

2 tablespoons white wine vinegar

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

Salt and pepper

Combine all ingredients. Marinate for 30 minutes. Adjust seasonings to taste. If you have it, I like to throw in some fresh parsley and/or fresh cilantro into this. Cilantro makes everything taste fresh and delicious!

Sometimes in lieu of making a salad we just throw the grilled vegetables (eggplant, peppers, onions, squash, mushrooms) on a platter and serve them just as they are. In that case we typically slice all the vegetables, spray them lightly with Olive oil, sprinkle paprika, garlic, salt and pepper over them and just grill or broil.