Young vegetables

One of the most delightful things about growing your own vegetables is that you can harvest lots of young fruits. 'Baby' squash are so amazingly delicious compared to their mature siblings, it hardly seems to be the same vegetable.

A trip to a local farmer's market this afternoon had me eyeing giant yellow squash and zucchini, with overly mature green beans as well. I did buy a largish heirloom eggplant that was delicious, to be fair, but wondered why they were picking such large fruits and not the smaller more desirable ones?

To me, the beauty of fresh veggies is to harvest them at their peak, when they're still tender and succulent, and eat them right away. Big is not better in terms of vegetables!