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.