Our grill definitely gets a workout in the summer. Unfortunately, I realized in June that I’d developed a (bad) habit of soaking whatever meat was up that night in bottled marinade and calling it a day — not really copacetic with the conscious effort I’ve been making to avoid the prepared and processed.
Plus pork tenderloin and chops are our favorite, and marinating was really overkill. But a quick search revealed that a rub would be perfect, and not difficult to make from scratch. After experimenting with a couple I found online, we’ve become very attached to this rub recipe from the This Little Piggy Went to the Farmers Market blog. The rub doesn’t overpower the natural (and delicious) flavor of the pork, and the spices in it are ones I always have on hand.
Week 10 brought more tomatoes (3 pounds!) and our first ears of sweet corn.
What else was in the box:
peppers — some hot, some not
basil
little leaf cucumbers
Japanese cucumber
onions
cabbage
ice box melon
eggplant
cutting celery
First off, I totally thought the cutting celery was cilantro until I verified what was in this week’s share through Scotch Hill Farm’s weekly CSA newsletter. Oops.
Second, the corn is already gone. We ate three ears with grilled pork tenderloin on Friday night. And last night, I cut the kernels off the final three cobs for a summer vegetable pasta dish that also included zucchini, garlic, tomatoes and crumbled goat cheese. (I followed the cover recipe from the current issue of Real Simple magazine, which isn’t online, unfortunately.)
Does anything make a house smell more delicious than baking bread?
I say this as if a loaf is in the oven right now. Ah, no. Even though one of my New Year’s resolutions for 2012 (yes, ’12) was to bake bread each Sunday for the upcoming week ,and I got Mike, the king of multigrain, on board with eating said bread, it never happened. We’re now more than halfway through 2013, and I still can’t bring myself to do anything besides read whole wheat bread recipes.
Truth of the matter is, the thought of baking bread intimidates the hell out of me. I’m not sure if it’s the kneading of the dough, or the letting it rise, or the punching it down that keeps me from putting “plan bread” into action. It just seems so complicated.
I should mention that I’ve attempted these steps before, somewhat successfully, at an artisan bread-making class last year at the Chopping Block. In the span of a few hours, we knocked out a head-spinning number of recipes, like whole wheat pita, rosemary breadsticks, challah and English muffins — all amazing but not likely destined to become part of my repertoire. Plus, it was too much for my brain to absorb in such a short period of time. More helpful would’ve been if the teacher had been in my kitchen demonstrating the steps at my island, with my bowls, and then hovering nearby as I gave it a go.
Kind of like how my mom taught me to make pie crust. If only she baked bread.
Speaking of imagine, did you know John Lennon baked bread during his years as a “house husband,” when he stayed home and raised baby Sean? Perhaps this video, which briefly showcases his kneading skills, will inspire me to move beyond the perusing-cookbooks stage.
I love avocados, and I love eggs. So when I kept spotting photos of an egg baked in an avocado half on Pinterest, I had to try it. After all, how hard could it be?
I wouldn’t exactly call it a Pinterest fail — although you should search that term on the site next time you need a good laugh.
Preparation was easy. Slice an avocado in half, enlarge the hole left from the pit to accommodate an egg, and then crack an egg into said hole. I somehow own the perfect little ramekin to bake it in. Your guess is as good as mine as to where it came from.
I baked it in a 400 degree oven for a good 20 minutes — longer than what the pinned recipes called for, but the whites were runny when I check after 10 and 15. (Gag.) This is what I took out of the oven, after I added some chives and a spoonful of salsa:
Looks OK. The problem? Not easy to eat. At all. I finally scooped the mixture out of the avocado peel. I love mush, but this wasn’t all that appetizing:
Then, brainstorm! I threw a piece of whole wheat bread in the toaster, and spread the mixture on top. Finally, success. A delicious success.
I decided to tackle our okra first thing this week — I wasn’t sure how long it would keep and was dang curious about what it tasted like.
It seems like most recipes that call for okra are for soups and stews, which I didn’t feel would allow us to really experience its full flavor. Ditto with frying it. (Plus I don’t really fry stuff.) But this recipe for Roasted Okra seemed to fit the bill and was simple to boot — even simpler when I used my Trader Joe’s olive oil spray instead of drizzling olive oil over the okra pieces.
The roasted okra was a tad slimy, but not to distraction, and had an interesting flavor. We easily finished off the entire dish with grilled pork chops and patty pan squash sliced thin and fried in butter. (OK, so I do fry some things.)
An abundance of snow peas has us agreeing wholeheartedly with the old adage that you can have too much of a good thing.
(Mike would also say this is true of Swiss chard, although he doesn’t necessarily consider it to be a “good thing.”)
Since it’s not really stir fry weather, and there are only so many times you can make a snack of snow peas and hummus, I tried this Food Network recipe for Glazed Snow Peas. How the mixture looked before going in the skillet, and after:
I’d repeat this recipe, but I unloaded our last bag of snow peas on a neighbor before heading out of town for the weekend.
This past week was a farm share fail. We ate out three times, way more than we like — especially when our refrigerator is full of fresh vegetables. But one night we drove to Milwaukee for the Paul McCartney concert (amazing); one night Mike was starving and not excited about the salmon and Swiss chard I had planned for dinner, so we tried the new Thai Burrito restaurant around the corner (interesting); and last night we went out for a nice dinner at Mon Ami Gabi, also in our neighborhood, to celebrate our shared birthday (really delicious).
Needless to say, we have plenty leftover from last week’s CSA, and today added:
leaf lettuce mix
snow peas
green bush beans
garlic
little leaf cucumbers
Japanese cucumber
zucchini
basil
broccoli
onion
I got right to it tonight, making pesto with the basil and garlic to top the salmon that was already thawed. I served it on top of plain Israeli couscous and sided it with my now-favorite recipe for Swiss chard, which Mike not-so-lovingly refers to as the “new kale.” I followed this easy Basil Salmon recipe from the Taste of Home website, which I’d recommend for when you don’t have any pine nuts in the house. Because really, who has pine nuts just lying around?
It’s a gorgeous summer day in Chicago. So why not stay inside, fire up the oven and make zucchini bread?
With two zucchinis in this week’s CSA share, and surely more to come, I was itching to attempt my first ever loaves. I found this recipe for Mom’s Zucchini Bread on Allrecipes.com, which left me wondering why my mom never made zucchini bread when I was growing up. When I called to ask, she said, “Because I don’t like it.” I’ve found this is her standard explanation for why we never had myriad foods I discovered as an adult.
I grated the larger of the two zucchinis in the food processor in mere seconds. The recipe calls for two cups, but I ended up with about 2 1/2 cups and threw it all in. My only other modification was substituting a cup of whole wheat flour for a cup of the all-purpose flour. The batter was really thick until I added in the grated zucchini, and tasted delicious. (Yes, I still lick the beater.)
He eats what I make 