I'm officially in holycowit'smid-Julywhereisthesummergoing? mode. The last couple of weeks went by in a whirlwind of celebration, relaxation, and travel.
Our house guests were in Richmond through the 4th of July, which meant that the annual party benefited from Lyndsey's extreme chopping talent. She used some of her salvaged cabbage and carrots, and our CSA red onion, to compile a simple, pretty coleslaw. If you don't believe me, the proof is in the photo below; it looks like bagged slaw mix sliced by machine, but it was all done by a skilled hand.
In the meantime, I put together a haphazard pasta salad with roasted summer squash, mozzarella, and several basil leaves (pictured). The rest of the basil was made into pesto the following week.
I believe my contribution was eaten, but it wasn't very noteworthy compared to the slaw and several of the other dishes gracing Tex's air-conditioned kitchen.
We recovered from the holiday in Seabrook, SC, and our first dinner there was a group effort that incorporated components of our share from Week 9. Davy and I steamed the yellow and green beans, and made flank steak with chimichurri sauce, which was decent. Keith and Carrie's dish, however, outshone ours, and the cucumber and cherry tomatoes we brought added a lot to the roasted shrimp and orzo salad. At the end of the meal, we added the remaining steak and beans to the salad to keep it going for lunch the following day.
In an attempt to clean out our fridge a little before the next round of CSA produce, I repeated a Splendid Table recipe from the spring (Spring Vegetables and White Beans Scented with Fresh Bay). Instead of spinach, I used dandelion greens - courtesy of Lyndsey and Travis, chicken stock instead of vegetable broth, and added some freshly made pesto. The "stew," as Lyne Rosetto Kasper and Sally Swift call it, was light and garlicky, and had an earthy flavor from the greens and carrots.
By some miracle, I managed to make caramel for turtle brownies the same night. The bubbling corn syrup and sugar were mesmerizing, and made a delicious sweet topping for the fudgy brownies.
Davy and I whittled away at our cherry tomato and mesclun salad mix supply with a few green salads throughout the week, adding different ingredients depending on what we had and what was appealing at the time.
I was visiting family in Harrisburg over the weekend, and we brought a big cucumber and tomato salad over to my grandma's for dinner on Sunday night. There were sungolds, slicing tomatoes, sweet peppers, and cucumbers from my share, and different types of herbs, tomatoes and cucumbers from my parents' CSA and garden. My mom and I worked on the salad together, and dressed it with a little olive oil, red wine vinegar, and sugar.
Despite the fact that it feels like summer is already slipping away, I know that there are many more meals and memories to be made over the next couple of months.
Have you ever made something you're not all that fond of, but eaten it anyway, and then been turned off to the idea of it for good? Unfortunately that happened to me during the second week of our share, and I never want to think about french onion for a very long time.
I was really excited about the recipe from Joy the Baker, but I must have messed up the onions in the process, because they were too wet and not overly "french" tasting. The beautifully browned bread was soggy enough to require a spoon and fork, which was disappointing, and after we finished Davy realized that he'd eaten a whole onion. For some reason that was enough to make both of us slightly queasy.
The failed sandwiches were the only significant cooking effort I made during Week 2. We also consumed a pizza from whole foods, salads, roasted summer squash and zucchini.
I did manage to medium-boil some eggs, and they added a lot to a lunch salad that also included quinoa and feta cheese.
I suppose not every week can be exceptional, and the following one turned out to be a vast improvement, primarily because we didn't eat anything resembling a popular soup flavor.
Tomorrow we leave for ten blissful days at the beach, and as a result, the posts for last week and this week are combined and brief. I made two batches of pesto with the large bag of basil we received, and still had enough to add several leaves to the meal we made on Tuesday.
I've produced a few different versions of vegetarian pasta dishes as the heat persists. Last Wednesday I combined penne with grated zucchini, tomatoes, onion, garlic and pesto. The zucchini was only available in grated form because I was making zucchini bread, and had a lot leftover. It was a nice change from eating it sliced or chopped, and it almost melted into the rest of the sauce.
This week's variety included the two-toned squash, tomato, feta, and basil, mixed with the three Bombolini pastas I purchased at the market (black pepper, spinach, and plain linguine). All of the linguine was tender, fresh, and had a lot of flavor. I'm looking forward to trying more of the Bombolini offerings the next time I get to the market.
Since it's too warm to make soup, I threw a bunch of ingredients together into a dish that could be called a salad. Purslane, tomato, parsley, and chickpeas went in the first night, with a lime juice, cumin, onion, and garlic dressing. We ate it with corn on the cob and grilled rockfish. I added feta and leftover corn kernels to some of it for lunch on Saturday, and on Monday Davy used the remainder for dinner in a few tortillas. The purslane worked very well with the chickpeas, lime, and cumin. It's has thick green leaves, and it gets a little slimy when you chew it (from its omega-3s), but I liked it's substantial texture and savory flavor.
I'll try to post a few pictures of dinners at the beach, and then I'll be back with CSA entries for Week 14. Have a great week!
