Week 14

Tomatoes
Basil
Peppers
Green beans

Does anyone have something in mind that they've always wanted to make with a whole pound of hot peppers?  I'll probably get even more this week, so maybe some green chili experiments are in order.  Or I could try out some recipes for sofrito, which i just learned about from the Man vs. Food Puerto Rico episode. 

In the meantime, I've been eating tomato pie at least twice a day.  I used the spelt and cornmeal crust recipe from the turnip green tart I linked to here.  The filling recipe is pretty standard, sliced tomatoes layered with a mixture of mayo, green onions, basil, and shredded cheddar.  I used some of the tips from America's Test Kitchens to keep it from getting soggy (recipe is behind a pay wall, but the tips are free):

1.  salt and drain the tomatoes
2.  put some cheese in the bottom of the pie shell to make a barrier from the tomato juice
3.  place the pie in the bottom of the oven on a preheated baking sheet to crisp the bottom

Tomato pie is a Southern kind of thing, but I first had it in Maine.   My lovely friend and former roommate Megan, who grew up there, said the long winters make them appreciate summer more in New England.  She would come back to school in the Fall with freezer containers of pesto made from the overgrown basil "trees" in her parents backyard, and if we made it up for the short tomato season, she'd ask her mom to make tomato pie.  It's one of those things that makes perfect sense once you've tried it, so I suggest you make one while tomatoes are ripe.


Since it's a short list this week, I'll leave you with this timely nugget.

The disadvantages involved in pulling lots of black sticky slime from out of the ground where it had been safely hidden out harm's way, turning it into tar to cover the land with, smoke to fill the air with and pouring the rest into the sea, all seemed to outweigh the advantages of being able to get more quickly from one place to another -- particularly when the place you arrived at had probably become, as a result of this, very similar to the place you had left, i.e., covered with tar, full of smoke, and short of fish.  - Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Week 13

Tomatoes
Grape tomatoes
Melon
Hot peppers
Green beans

The theme of this week is frugality.  No grocery store runs, no specialty ingredients, if it's not on hand, it's not an option.  Early this month, I went ahead and made some large, long-planned purchases, and then boom (literally) I had to buy four new tires.  So until payday, I'm cutting back where I can. OK, I already cheated and picked up a couple things.  More avocados for sandwiches, because there's no beating an avocado and tomato sandwich while the tomatoes are ripe, an impulse buy bag of BBQ chips to go with the sandwiches, and a bag of romaine for caesar salad (but I made the dressing >smug<). 

Cutting back on the groceries is perhaps a good idea anyway.  Why did I decide that I needed so many blueberries last week?  They are really good, and were probably on sale, but I bought way too many.  So this week it's blueberry cobbler for dessert and blueberries and melon with breakfast.  No fruit purchases required.  I roasted all the little tomatoes I had over the weekend to throw together with red onion, the jalapenos, the green beans, garlic, and parmesan with spaghetti.   That's a few days worth of meals right there, plus a good refrigerator clean-out.

One last thing to mention, over the weekend, I turned a bunch of the tomatoes into tomato jam.  I used a recipe from a cookbook, but this one from bigoven.com is similar (recipe).  I used some of the jalapenos and a habenero (since the zucchini relish turned out very un-spicy) so it's got a nice kick.  It turned out sweet and spicy and intensely red, and I'm excited about putting it on everything.

Link dump

Canning:
I mentioned a while back that the parts of the internet about canning can be slightly scary.  Christian housewives that proclaim canning as destiny.  Off the grid stockpilers.  Homeschoolers that refuse to feed their children anything processed.  Older folks with pages of a style you haven't seen since the heyday of geocities.  While the agricultural extension sites have tons of good information, the recpies are kind of uninspiring.  Here are a few spots with more exotic ideas.

Sweet onion marmalade, from OregonLive.  This is the same site I got the pickle recipe from, and there are lots of other tasty looking canning recipes there.  Like these more adventurous recipes.

Food in jars, a canning blog.  There are also lots of canning links here, including the best named put up or shut up.

Saving the season, a more pretentious canning blog.

Lindsey's luscious - Found!  This is where the zucchini chutney recipe came from. The canning recipes are mixed in with lots of other stuff, but she gives lots of explanation.

Oh, and I caught a segment on last week's The Splendid Table about making jam.  The recommendations for changing it up were whole vanilla beans and wine/liquors.  Apologies that I can't find the exact segment, my station is apparently not on the standard schedule.

Other stuff:
Garlic broth recipe, with links to other garlic soups, from the New York Times.

Clean out the fridge frittata, from Tea & Cookies.  This is more of a formula than a recipe, and how pretty are her photos?

Cook's Illustrated Summer Grilling 2010.   I picked this up in the grocery store line, even though I have no grill.  The Baja fish taco recipe sold me, can't wait to try it.

Weeks 10 - 12

Week 10:

Potatoes
Tomatoes
Basil
Summer squash
Cucumbers
Cabbages (the onslaught continues)

I ended up with a lot of now-or-never stuff in the fridge to deal with before I left for Canada. Here's the rundown:

Damn good garlic dills from OregonLive.
Squash chutney, but I've lost the recipe (that's what I get for being two weeks behind).  I don't know that I would make this recipe again though, because it turned out completely not spicy.
Three cabbages worth of freezer slaw.
More pesto ice cubes.

I did make an effort to follow the processing instructions for the pickles and chutney, but I'm keeping everything in the fridge since I was not so precise with the measurements.  Everything left over went into a  vegetable stew that I served over the potatoes. 

Week 11:
No veggies, I was at a conference in Montreal, where we were served some interesting box lunches. Like the first day I picked up my roast beef sandwich and hidden underneath was a tiny, artichoke sandwich. Everyday, along with your choice of sandwich, there were grapes and cheese and olive bread, pasta salad, vegetable salad, and dessert, plus a random assortment of quiche, sushi rolls, summer rolls, pizza, and who knows what else all in one box.

Week 12:
Grape tomatoes
Heirloom tomatoes
Basil
Wax beans
Cantaloupe

No picture this week, since I started eating things before I got the chance. What a slacker!  I just couldn't keep myself from butchering the melon and trying out a tomato right away.  There's no point in turning on the stove when there's ripe tomatoes.  Lunch this week is avocado, lettuce, and tomato sandwiches with Swiss cheese and mayo. Dinner is a Nicoise-ish salad with the wax beans, tomato, basil, tuna, olives, and egg.