Quickly now, I've got a paper to finish

Man, I'll never really get to stop saying that.

From epicurious:
Cucumber gazpacho with shrimp and melon.
mmmm...shrimp garnish. Gingerey, herbey, summery. Made muffins with some squash and basil to go with this.

Summer squash sloppy joes.
This is obviously designed to hide vegetables so kids will eat them, but putting squash in everything is the only way it's going to get eaten. I added extra vegetables and subbed cayenne for the paprika.

The rest of the basil got turned into pesto before it could be forgotten in the fridge. While I had everything out, I also made pesto out of the big bunch of cilantro I'd bought for last week's tacos. Froze it in ice trays, dumped em in a ziploc.

I started looking for ways to deal with the onslaught of cabbage, and found recipes for canned slaw and freezer slaw. Both these methods use vinegar, sugar, and spices with the veggies, and are supposed to stay crisp. Mayo can be added when you use the slaw, if you like it creamy. The canned version sounds more appealing, because I imagine it getting all pickled in the jar, but that recipe assumes a lot of knowledge. I browsed around for different versions of the recipe, and let me tell you, the corners of the internet where people make canned coleslaw are kinda scary. So then I looked the National Center for Home Food Preservation to learn about head space and how to seal the jars, but really just learned how easy it is to give yourself botulism. I think I'll save that project for a weekend when I have more time, so freezer slaw it is.

Headed up to Montreal on Tuesday to present the paper, so there will probably be no box next week. Will do my best to get today's box posted before I leave.

Week 9

Onions
Radicchio
Cabbage
A lot of summer squash
Cucumbers
Basil
Greens

Just when I thought I was getting caught up, here comes a bunch more squash, more cukes, and another cabbage. Plus I've still got last week's beets, not that I'm complaining. But here's the problem - last weekend I cooked up a storm preparing meals for the week. Really enjoyable meals. Then Wednesday I ran to Trader Joe's (hungry, big mistake) and came out with a packet of the plump, juicy, tasty hot dogs they were sampling. On the way home I realized, "when am I gonna eat hot dogs?" I had a fridge full of nice meals. So I put the wieners in the freezer for a future grocery emergency.

On the one hand, I had hoped that joining the CSA would force me to eat healthier. Barring the amount of butter it takes to make turnips enjoyable, I have been eating more good stuff and less take out. On the other hand, using the produce efficiently requires a lot of planning and doesn't leave a lot of opportunities for satisfying spontaneous Thai food cravings. I'm still working on finding a strategy that allows me to waste as little as possible, while being flexible during the week.

I do have some new reference material for this mission. In the car today, The Splendid Table was interviewing Tamasin Day-Lewis about her new cookbook. It's about making the most out of scraps like bread crusts, chicken bones, and leftovers. I was not impressed at first because a) yeah right she's eating leftovers and b) Daniel Day-Lewis doesn't eat food, so his sister can't be that great a cook. But she was convincing enough, and I was close enough to the bookstore to stop and check it out, since I'm trying to use more of what I have. Then there on the shelf next to her book, was the sequel to Twelve Months of Monastery Soups, Twelve Months of Monastery Salads! Just like the soup book, it's arranged by what's seasonal each month. I'm looking forward to trying June's Pesto Deviled Eggs and picking out some recipes for all that squash.

Week 8 - 6/10

Dill flower
Cucumbers
Beets
Baby leeks
Fennel
Cabbage
Celery
Squash

Remember how excited I was last time I posted (far too long ago) about getting caught up on lots of leftovers? And that I was going to make awesome zucchini tacos, and not has a cheezburger by Friday? Yeah, about that. I had the soup for lunches, and the tacos for dinners so I did eat a lot of veggies, but both dishes were just, meh. With the zucchini, I put beans, tomatillo salsa, and sour cream on the tacos, which sounds great, but was really just a mushy mess. The tacos were so uninspiring that I never got around to making the mystery cabbage accompaniment. Cheeseburger happened.

So I set out to learn from my mistakes. I now bring you veggie enchiladas, with not one, but two cabbage sides.



Mystery cabbage 1: cabbage salsa
1/2 small head of cabbage, shredded
1 tomato, diced
2 Tbsp cilantro, coarsely chopped
juice of 2 limes
chopped pickled jalapenos, black pepper to taste

These proportions are just estimates, I like a lot of jalapenos and cilantro. I used about *four* limes because the ones I had were so dry.

Mystery cabbage 2: the one with carrots
I found this recipe while looking for the cabbage salsa. I added black pepper, because I'm used to seeing it with the little flecks, and a pinch of sugar. Also, this recipe is written for a really big cabbage. Since mine was small, I ended up with too much liquid.

Veggie enchiladas:
I sauteed four small zucchini, sliced, with a small onion, diced, a couple minced garlic cloves and dried oregano. when the zucchini was lightly browned, I added a can of hatch chilies and a can of black beans, drained and rinsed. Once the filling was cool, I rolled it up in 6 flour tortillas, placed them in a baking dish, poured over a bottle of enchilada sauce and topped it all with shredded jack cheese.

Other projects from last week: I made vegetable stock with odds and ends I'd been saving in the freezer. I got the idea from this post at 30 bucks a week. I browned everything before adding the liquid, and froze the resulting broth in one cup increments.



Sorry turnips, you don't get your own post this time. I made a gratin with the sliced turnips, a white sauce made with a couple of the baby leeks, and a topping of gruyere and breadcrumbs. This was really good in a "gotta cover it up with a bunch of [cream and butter]" kind of way. When I cut into it, the pink turnips looked like ham, which made me think this would be even better with bacon. I ate it for dinner with strip steak (with Jeannette's amazing African rub) and this salad recipe from Epicurious that used the kohlrabi. At first I wasn't sure about the salad, but by the end of the plate I decided I could potentially live on it. It's got crunchy and salty and oniony and lemony, what more could you want in a salad?

Week 7

Cabbage
All orange carrots
Escarole
Red and white onions
Zucchini

It's a slow week for veggies, between the spring and summer seasons. The timing couldn't be better, since I'm a bit behind (looking at you, turnips) after being away for two weekends. And looking back at all the deep-fried, chili-smothered, and cheese-stuffed tasty I had on those trips, catching up on the healthy stuff is in order. So this week, I'll be making an effort to use up more of what I've got so I'll be less tempted to go out for cheeseburgers when Friday rolls around.

I've already made a big pot of vegetable soup with the escarole, some carrots, one of each color onion, and a couple little zucchinis, plus some odds and ends from the pantry. I searched for uses for carrot greens, but most of what I found described them as either excellent compost or inferior parsley. So I took my chances and chopped up a few of them with some basil and threw that into the soup at the end.

Being in a healthful mindset, I'm trying to forget that I ever read this:

44. Make a crisp grilled cheese sandwich, with good bread and not too much good cheese. Let it cool, then cut into croutons. Put them on anything, but especially tomato and basil salad. This you will do forever.

I firmly believe the author that I would do this forever. Doesn't this sound like the perfect thing for a bowl of soup? The tip comes from a list of 101 salad ideas from the New York Times last summer.

Now that I've acquired a cabbage, I think it's time to work on that mystery cabbage (slaw? salsa?) I mentioned a couple weeks back. Maybe with some veggie tacos?

Vacation, part 2

I had the pleasure of spending memorial day weekend at the Outer Banks. Here's the Bubba Gump litany of the marine life we ate: boiled shrimp, steamed shrimp, shrimp with garlic cream, fried shrimp, fried softshell crabs, crab dip, oysters, seared scallops, seared tuna, grilled mahi mahi, mahi mahi tacos, and fried gator. We learned that the Outer Banks really likes Jamaican jerk seasoning, which is fine except when the dish claims to be tacos. We also learned not to go hiking in the swamp, no matter how nice the nature preserve looks in the guidebooks. Several thousand insects are writing blog posts right now about the delicious tourists they enjoyed Sunday morning.

Somehow, between all of those meals, we managed to squeeze in a beach picnic. I made us some sandwiches with this week's zucchini and romaine, cut up the multi-colored carrots for dipping in hummus, baked some cookies from the freezer, and experimented with chili lemonade.

Zucchini sandwiches:
1/4 cup olive oil
1 Tbsp red wine vinegar
1 Tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 Tsp herbes de Provence
2 small zucchini
1 baguette
1 4 oz packet goat cheese
5 cloves roasted garlic*
lettuce and sliced tomato

Whisk together the first four ingredients with salt and pepper. Slice the zucchini on the diagonal and toss in the vinaigrette. Grill for a couple minutes per side. While the zucchini cools, mash the roasted garlic together with the goat cheese. *Discovery: while I was checking out the salad bar at the Whole Foods looking for interesting snacks, I noticed that they have whole roasted garlic cloves. I packed as many as I could into a salad dressing container and it came to a whopping 32 cents. Back to the recipe, I used about 3/4 of the baguette. Spread it with the goat cheese mixture, top with two layers of zucchini, tomato slices and lettuce. Drizzle the other side of the bread with a couple spoonfuls of the leftover vinaigrette. The one problem is that with all the slidey stuff, the sandwich lacks structural integrity. You might want to try scooping out one side of the baguette.

I thinly sliced the rest of the baguette and toasted it for serving with some jalapeno cilantro hummus I got from the prepared foods section of Whole Foods. It was respectably spicy, and we enjoyed it with both the colorful carrots and the toasts. The cookies were a last minute thing, I remembered that there was dough hiding in the back of the freezer made according to the New York Times recipe. I went a little overboard with the sea salt, but the general consensus was that it's impossible to go overboard with the sea salt. Three girls in three days ate the whole dozen giant cookies.



I decided on lemonade after seeing the "magic juice" cocktail recipe at design*sponge, via notmartha. By a happy coincidence, Chris emailed last week to tell me he was working on some chili lemonade, and the wheels started turning. While I won't reveal Chris's recipe (which was probably a lot spicier), I'll say that my version used Arbol chiles, involved a potato masher, and came out a sinister shade of orange. We enjoyed some of it on the beach with lunch, and the rest in the magic juice cocktail at sunset on the sand dunes. For the cocktail, I substituted white rum (since Brooke doesn't like gin), and made versions with and without strawberries. While both were really delicious, the no berries version tasted a lot like orange Crush. In a good way.