Dinner, Again - Monday 6/1/2009

Cooked up the last of the garbanzo beans. Steamed them and added a little very good olive oil. Wonderful farmer's market tomatoes and fresh basil. Fresh baby artichokes sauteed with onions and garlic and topped with a little Parmesan cheese.

I found the recipe for the baby artichokes at Simply Recipes. I'd never used fresh baby artichokes before. It does take a while to clean these, but they don't have well-developed chokes, so you can just eat the whole trimmed artichokes.

I love artichokes, really I do.

Innocents Lost - Thursday 5/14/2009

Yes, in a few minutes, these innocent vegetables will be chopped and blended into an inedible batch of gazpacho.

First off, there was too much onion, so I added some canned tomatoes in an attempt to fix it. But I think the cucumbers might have been bitter.

Lesson : taste the ingredients.

Sigh.

Fava Beans and a Nice Chianti - Thursday 4/30/2009

I bought 3 pounds of fava beans for $4.00 at the farmer's market last weekend. I have no idea if that's a good price, but it sounded okay to me.

I've been hearing about the much-revered fava on Evan Kleiman's Good Food on KCRW. It's one of the culinary harbingers of spring.

The woman who grew these beauties opened one and let me have a taste. They have a unique pungency that I like.


Isn't that one of the most gorgeous things you've ever seen? I mean, look at the blend of colors! The pod is lined with nature's version of foam and velvet. These things must be special.


They are described as labor-intensive. The chefs I've heard extolling their virtues also admit to letting a kitchen assistant prep them. First you take them out of the pods.


Then you blanch them to make taking the soft inner shell off easier. I guess that's a redundant sentence, since the definition of blanching is the process of immersing food in boiling water and then cold water for the express purpose of removing the skin.

Ew! So then why do we say things like, "The very thought of it made her blanch"?

Or, maybe it's "The very thought of it made her Blanche." As in Blanche DuBois. Now, that I'd like to see.

Wait a minute. Where were we?

Pay attention, will you?


Apologies for the blurry photograph. It's not all that easy to peel fava beans with one hand and man the camera with the other.



It took me a while to find the way to do this. Getting that skin off is easier if you detach the skin by rolling it back and forth between thumb and finger while pinching. See how the skin is kind of loose there?

Then use your thumbnail to pierce the skin, and it will slip right out. I don't know how to make this easier if you don't have a thumbnail handy. As you may have noticed, I tried using a knife in the previous photo. But that didn't work terribly well and felt a little dangerous.

Not that "whee it's a roller coaster" type of danger. More the "I don't want to spend tonight in the emergency room with a bloody dishrag around my thumb" type of danger.



There are probably tons of recipes out there, but I wanted something simple after all that toiling away, so I made pasta with fava beans.

Sauteed garlic in olive oil, added tomatoes and cooked lightly. Added in fresh basil and the fava beans, just enough to heat them up. Tossed them on the pasta with Parmesan cheese and freshly ground pepper.

Ooh, good! Hydra made himself a hamburger, so there are leftovers for tomorrow.

I'll bet if you had a creative cook in the house, you'd eat what she prepared, wouldn't you?

Newhall Farmer's Market - Thursday 4/2/2009

The last time I stopped by toward the end of last summer, this was a bedraggled little market being held in a parking lot. Now they close off Market Street (aha!) and there were already several vendors this early in the year.



I can't remember what these gorgeous little tomatoes were called--not tomato, not plumb--but they are delicious. They must be lovely in the field.


I've been reading Animal Vegetable Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver, which is an account of her family's efforts to eat only locally grown foods for a full year. This should be easier for me here in California. She keeps bemoaning the produce she can't have because it's shipped in from here!

I can tell, though, that I've pushed beet season to it's limits. The beets were smaller than those I've had in the past couple of months, and the greens were not as tender.


Dodger poses with some "unsprayed" (no pesticides, but they probably aren't certified organic) tomatoes. Specialty fruit for only $1.oo a pound!


What I did on my mini spring break: made a steamed beet green salad with roasted beets, cauliflower and carrots, fresh tomatoes, crumbled bleu cheese and pine nuts.

Mmm mmm mm-mm-mm!


And for dessert: Trader Joe's French Village Creamline Yogurt and fresh Oxnard-grown strawberries.

Life's good in the SoCal.

Roasted Veggies - Tuesday 3/3/2009

This one's for Kitty!

The very loose recipe for the roasted veggie mix I've been raving about. It's an adaptation of one from The South Beach Diet. It called for more asparagus and no mushrooms or oregano. The way I made it, it smelled like pizza!

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

Cut up the following, or something like it:

1 pound of asparagus, cut to bite size
2-3 yellow crook-neck or zucchini squash, cut to bite size
10-12 ounces sliced or quartered crimini mushrooms (buttons are also fine)
2-3 onions, cut to bite size
2 bell peppers, cut to bite size

Toss the veggies in olive oil, garlic powder, and oregano in a big roasting pan. Salt and pepper if you like.

Roast for about 30 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes or so. You want the onions to be translucent.

In this case, I topped them with chunks of grilled chicken left over from last night's carry out salad. Mmmm!

Sanchez Produce - Friday 8/22/2008

I'm so glad I stopped by the produce stand again today! Not only to take a shot of the cute new sign, but also to pick more heirloom tomatoes. This time I nabbed a few pounds of green ones. I'll figure out how to cook 'em on Sunday.

It was great to see JS there. He was glad to see me too. He's the son of the woman who owns the stand. Great kid. He's the drum major of his high school band now, and still plays the saxophone. He was chosen as part of the Bands of America Honor Band to march in the next Rose Parade. Only 300 kids from the whole U.S. get to do that.

He's a senior and so busy with school, college applications, etc. I told him about my niece who was in drumline. She's working for a TV station in Kentucky now and her husband is a band director.

JS said he's debating whether to major in business or music. "Why not both?" I asked. He said he's considering that. I just hope he keeps music in his life in some way.

If you'd like to visit Sanchez Produce, you can get directions by clicking here.

Prep Time - Friday 8/15/2008

Some of Hydra's family is coming for lunch tomorrow. There are not enough tomatoes on my plant to share, so I stopped at Sanchez's produce stand on the way home. I've been eying this sign for about a week. Ooh!

When I talked to the woman behind the counter, she said, "Every day, I'm waiting for you!" She knew I'd want to do this, since I was so thrilled to pick my own artichoke here last spring.

They didn't seem terribly ripe and some had spots, but when I got them home, they were terrific. The heirloom tomatoes were the same price, $1.2o a pound.



A view through the tomato plants.


Other signs at the Sanchez.


Back at home, it was time to make salsa and a cucumber/onion/tomato/fresh basil salad. Waited to make the guacamole the next day, to serve with chicken quesadilla's.

Oh, yeah, and a cake for Cuz-V's birthday. I spread brandy-soaked Morello cherries in the center. It actually wasn't very satisfying. Needed more sweet and more goo.

Alma 'Mater - Thursday 8/14/2008

I stayed home with the tomatoes today.

Worked from home. Work has been way way too much this week. I've been telecommuting one day a week anyway, but I really needed the extra couple of hours of sleep I had today.

My homegrown tomatoes are so sweet. They're almost too sweet to use in pasta, but great for eating like a peach.

Early Girl - Wednesday 6/11/2008

There she is! Ain't she a hot tomato?


Here come her sisters!


They seem to be enjoying their spot in pots on the patio.


Cool Thing : Check out this Chris Ware animation that's on the This American Life website. Very cute story from a long-time married couple. I've had this happen with stories my siblings told about living in other houses before I was born.

I adore Ira Glass and the stories he and his crew bring to NPR every week. You can download podcasts or listen on your computer. I just donated to the podcast.

The story "Giant Pool of Money" explains the current mortgage crisis so well...

Saugus Swapmeet - Sunday 4/20/2008

This morning we went to The Saugus Speedway Swap Meet for the first time. I don't think anybody really swaps anything, but it's an interesting mix of old stuff and new stuff and there's even a live band over near the beer vendor.

I just liked the guy with the chain saw perusing the artwork.



Um.... Does anyone else find this stuff a little creepy?



A sweet looking little boy enjoying lunch with his mom and dad. We were having Jody Maroni sausage sandwiches at the next table and listening to the live music.



I've been appreciating the flowers outside so much this year, and wow, look what's going on at the Trader Joe's in Santa Clarita.


A detail. They almost don't look real!


Veggies we bought from the farm stands in the swap meet. Cleverly, they had bowls of Persian cucumbers, tomatoes and bell peppers set up for $2.oo a pop. Even the bundles of skinny asparagus were $2.00 each. The grapes were only $1.00 a pound.

This is $11.00 worth of vegetables. Way better than at the grocery!

It was very cool out this morning... only 48 degrees when we arrived. Hard to believe it was in the 90s around there on Friday!

Cool Thing: Our friend John Wainwright and his business were featured in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette today!