My housemates and I had a fantastic local foods cookout this Wednesday. It’s been so hot that using the oven is absolute torture, not just on our bodies, but on our cooling bill as well. We keep the house at a reasonable temperature, but when it’s 104 outside every little thing helps. Therefore, we decided to grill some burgers and corn outside, eat a raw tomato salad, and recycle some leftover potatoes into potato salad for dinner. No indoor cooking necessary, unless you don’t have cooked potatoes around in which case you’ll have to boil some up.

Burgers are joyfully easy to put together if you have a good source of local ground beef. Here in Greensboro we have three, Peterson’s, Baldwin Family Farms, and Rocking F. Pick your favorite, mix in some salt, pepper, diced local cheese, onion (or onion powder if you’re lazy and don’t feel like crying) and a tablespoon of fat for every 2 pounds of lean meat (if you’re using a higher fat, 85% lean or less, ground beef you can omit the oil). I like to use olive oil, but as far as I know we have no olive trees in North Carolina. Melted butter works just fine in its stead though. I’ve switched from the Ohio butter to butter from Homeland Creamery, just as tasty, but far closer to home.

Tomato salad I’ve already written about on this blog. But this time I have a picture and it’s one of the best pitcures I’ve ever taken. It’s hard to take a bad picture of tomatoes, just look at those pretty colors! This was just a quick snap before people dug in, but it really is great. The tomatoes came from the Cornerstone Garlic Farm, the cucumber from Mindenhill Farm and the onion I don’t remember the farm of at the moment, but I’ll post it in a comment when it comes to me.

The potato salad reflects my need for a healthy dose of vinegar in every meal. It’s ridiculously full of mustard. I even add lemon juice or vinegar to it just to kick it up a few notches.

And finally we had the corn, which I almost forgot myself while we were cooking and consequently undercooked. That’s life though.