Forget Dried Beans for a Minute

Do you find that you get stuck on certain recipes in your cookbooks? Of course you do. I have a bunch of books I've been determined to use, but I haven't made a single dish from their pages. And I have books that I know are wonderful, because I've made wonderful meals from their pages -- and yet, I can't seem to tear myself away from the standbys and try other recipes on other pages.
Case in point: Today we're doing, again, Deborah Madison's summer vegetable stew with fresh shell beans. We found amazing, plump Italian butter beans, grown on Iacopi's fields in Half Moon Bay. Look!
So they're mingling, as we speak, with baby carrots, new potatoes, green beans, red onions, zucchini and yellow crook-neck squash, tomatoes, garlic and herbs. All local.
I had thought the end of August would mean reverting to nonlocal food, but it's proven too important to me.
The house smells so good now, I can't wait for dinner.
Bye.