To everything (turn, turn, turn) there is a season...

Something about the sudden appearance if warm weather makes me want the impossible out of my food. There's certainly a ton of lovely, seasonal foods available to me that scream early spring, but somehow on those first couple days where the mercury jumps up above 60, something in me wants nothing but unseasonably summery food. Maybe it's just impatience, but this past week I made a lovely batch of homemade basil pesto with whole grain penne, a dish that has always made me think of eating on the porch as a kid in mid July, with my Mom's herb garden (and yes, the remainder of the home-grown basil we used in the dish) literally within smelling distance. I tend to dress up the recipe my dad passed down to me by tossing my pasta with some sun-dried tomatoes for good measure, and it makes the recipe all mine.

I thought maybe I had gotten my Summer food fixation out of my system with last week's pesto, at least until Summer really hits in earnest, but then last night I had a sudden urge for homemade bruschetta, and I was off to the store again. I know I ought to wait until the ingredients come into season, like a good little gastro-junkie, but lucky for me my local organic-produce-mega-chain had just a handful of ripe gorgeous heirloom tomatoes tucked in with all of their terrifyingly red, scary- uniform "tomato" cousins, so I scooped them up and made the most gorgeous batch of bruschetta on toasted crostini for dinner. Where did these out of season oddities come from? I'm not sure, and to be perfectly honest, I don't necessarily think I want to know. Seasonal? Definitely not. Natural? Not likely. But I'm a gastro-junkie, not the food police, and sometimes, a girl's just got to have what a girl's got to have. And last night, this girl had to have some delicious, unseasonably summery food.