The first day of the rest of

There are some things I’m still sorting through in my mind, but I want and need to get back in the habit of blogging, so here are the results of my major creative / productive impulse in July and August. Most of this was inspired by the summer produce, with the secondary factor that I don’t need to cook to please dad any longer. It’s about a month or so before there will be a hard freeze, so there’s a bit more of this activity on my calendar, but the burden of the summer harvest is over and the farmers are starting to put their beds to rest, with a few planting fall crops now (lettuce will come back after having been absent since July).

Four realizations:

1. I froze a few things, but I am not ever going to want to undertake the sort of volume food preservation that was par for the course for my grandmothers.

The day after we heard about Angie’s death, Obscura kindly invited me to hang out with her and debrief about my feelings while she was canning. I brought her some hot peppers, but mostly just washed cucumbers.

2. Neither do I have the creativity to write recipes. I enjoy perusing cookbooks and watching cooking shows, but I’m just not creative in that way. In these photos, if I started from a recipe, I have added the link, although I am rarely 100% faithful to any recipe. (If you want to make any of these and want to know the modifications I made, leave a comment.)

3. And I really don’t have a strong impulse to eat a lot of meat or carbs (that’s a confirmed response from the last time I moved toward kashrut, back in the 1990s), which means this kind of eating plays havoc with physical energy levels.

4. I don’t want to eat just to be eating any more (whenever possible).

So.

The moment I am living for every summer is the second that a tomato sandwich becomes possible. As I wrote on my RL FB, this is my “madeleine.” I’m currently making them on white toast with Japanese mayonnaise (Kewpie) and basil.

With yellow heirlooms

 

with red heirlooms

 

A step up from the ease of the tomato sandwich, a lot of summer produce consumption involves just slicing things. (This may be part of why I like it so much. But at the end of the summer I always have slicing fatigue!)

Cantaloupe. I have been eating 2-3 a week.

 

Cottage cheese and tomatoes — I love this and it’s a 3-4x a week breakfast.

 

Sliced Georgia peaches doused in cream. They’re done now and we’re eating Michigan peaches, which are (dare I say it?) much juicier — maybe because they don’t come so far.

 

Then there are the fantastic fresh soups, which is slicing plus stewing.

 

Carrot ginger soup, via the Food Network. The carrots were so good this summer. I did freeze two quarts of this soup.

 

Pea and carrot soup with rice, via Rachael Ray. I loved the pilaf in the soup. A bit of a messup as I picked this because I thought I had fresh peas and didn’t.

 

Summer corn chowder. This was spectacular, although I have never had this soup at Panera.

 

Mexican Street Corn Soup. This recipe was so promising, but I would not make this again without major adaptation; it didn’t taste much like elote. That said, now I know what happens when you put corn cobs in your broth.

 

Martha Stewart’s creamy celery soup. Never would have made this except for the CSA pushing all this fresh celery at me, and they are right: it tastes nothing like celery from the supermarket.

 

Such great salads are possible in the summer, too (and many of them are just a step up from slicing, i.e., slicing + dressing):

Fresh tabbouleh! I’m definitely in the “less parsley” camp.

 

Kisir (a sort of variant of tabbouleh from Turkey that I used to eat all the time in Germany).

 

This is a watermelon salad that was a real trip out on the limb for me. I would say the rosewater was fine but it would also be good without — and I ate the whole thing!

 

What to do with all those tomatoes? This is just fresh tomatoes with a basil buttermilk dressing.

 

Peach “caprese” — ricotta instead of mozzarella, dressed with “peach balsamic” instead of balsamico di Modena.

 

Panzanella with heirloom tomatoes. OMFG.

 

“Elote” – ish. For the kitchen cook without a grill. I made this a lot for mom the first summer she was sick and it was nice to come back to it.

 

Upping the ante to cooking, I had a “Greek night” after the Bucks won the NBA championship and in honor of the dill ripening:

Fasolakia (Greek stewed green beans). I still think my mom’s main method of preparing beans (blanching and serving with salt and butter) is the best, but this comes in a close second.

 

Who doesn’t love tzatziki?

Pasta dishes:

There’s a wild mushroom forager at our market, and he suggested black trumpets (a kind of chanterelle) with sweet corn. It was pretty good, but I don’t know if it will make the permanent rotation. Here, with spaghetti.

 

Sheet-pan gnocchi. I never would have guessed this method would have a chance of working, but indeed, the gnocchs plump up and then get a bit crispy and it is SO yummy. The main taste is the roasted summer vegetables, but the arugula / parmesan combo is a secondary pleasure.

 

“Blushing” angel hair. I watched Alex G make this on TV on morning and said “that’s for me.” Excellent and this could be made in winter, too. Hers looks a lot better than mine. I’m so clumsy at plating.

 

On to the fish. With no one in my family fishing anymore, I am now depending on the market, so I imagine fish will become a rarer pleasure in my life.

 

Poached salmon and leeks with dill sauce. Made because I crave dill while it’s in season. Sorry for the horrid plating again!

 

THIS. It’s called salmon chraimeh and it’s my new main dish for Rosh Hashanah, which is Monday already. Smoked paprika is my new best friend, too. Here with some leftover Rachael Ray pilaf (above).

 

And although I do not love baking I did make three fruit desserts:

My fave lazy raspberry “pie.” The everbearing raspberries had a great summer this year.

 

And a German Zwetschgenkuchen. I actually found a farmer who had Zwetschgen (a kind of plum) this summer. August joy!

 

While the plums were ripe I stumbled over some Quark at the grocery story so I made mascarpone Quark with plum sauce. A little goes a long way!

 

And then, in the category of “I don’t know what I was thinking”:

Watermelon curry. With apologies to Rajasthan, I thought this was very strange.

What are you cooking?

~ by Servetus on September 1, 2021.