Saturday lunch with pumpkin pretzels

This week's Saturday lunch was quite a feast. Our local farmer's market has more fresh local produce every week it seems and we are taking full advantage of the goodness!

In addition to our local farmer's market, we are fortunate to have a local mill with quite a variety of organic grains. Paul was kind enough to stop by the mill and pick up a 25 lb bag of organic spelt for me on his way home from a slightly out-of-town business trip so we are now well-stocked in spelt again.

With all that spelt on hand, I thought I'd make some pretzels to go with our Saturday lunch. I realize that pumpkin isn't exactly the seasonal taste of spring, but I still have about 10 pints of frozen pumpkin from last fall so pumpkin spelt pretzels it is!

I used the basic pretzel recipe of Catherine Newman's, and added 1 cup of pumpkin, an extra 2 cups of flour, 1 tsp cinnamon and 1/2 tsp nutmeg. I also sprinkled coarse turbinado sugar on the pretzels after boiling, instead of the salt recommended in the recipe. I was a little nervous that the pretzels might turn out too dense since I used more flour and all whole grain, but they were perfect. Well, perfect once we added a side of honey-butter, that is.

In addition to our pumpkin spelt pretzels, we had cucumber salad (with tomatoes on the side for our not-tomato-lover children), the last of this season's asparagus, and the-beginning-of-blueberry-season's delicately sweet blueberries.

I'd be hard pressed to pick my favorite part of today's lunch. It was all so fresh and delicious!

The pumpkin spelt pretzels were a huge hit with the kids. We've already frozen the extras for lunchboxes this week.

I think Finn was partial to the asparagus. He kept licking his lips and exclaiming, "dewishious!"

Oh, how I love to see the kids enjoying fresh, local produce! I hope they never forget our weekly spring and summer trips to the farmer's market and the lunches we shared afterward.

My favorite lunch moment: Finn finished his plate then ran to the corner of the deck with the bowl of remaining blueberries, scarfing them down as quickly as possible before he had to share.