I’ve written before about all the romaine lettuce we’ve been eating (and continue to eat). It’s delicious lettuce, with beautiful, unblemished leaves and a gorgeous spring green color. We’ve enjoyed salads almost every night, and last night I made a good grilled chicken Caesar with a spectacular homemade dressing. But what we were really excited about was the side dish.

Last evening when we came home from work, we harvested our first two zucchini! I can’t even begin to describe how exciting it was. We knew a day or so beforehand that Monday would be the day — one zucchini was certainly ready to be picked, and its cousin on the vine looked to be growing quickly. Several days of very warm weather and sunshine (a real change from what we’ve been experiencing so far) really accelerated everything in the garden this week, and sure enough, by the time we got home from work, we had two zucchini ready for picking.

We discussed how best to prepare them — I think we really wanted to experience them fairly simply just to see if they tasted different from store bought — so we settled on lightly steaming them and adding a bit of butter and a sprinkle of salt and freshly ground pepper. They were sublime. I steamed them for a scant three minutes so they still had a bit of crunch left to them, and wow — they were delicious.

I had no idea a vegetable garden could be this satisfying — as I looked at my very green dinner plate last night and realized we grew most of what was on the dish, I felt a little sense of pride and accomplishment.

In the meantime, more garden plans are afoot.