Memorial Day "picnic"

Tonight's Menu

• bbq pork spareribs
  
• grilled garlic toast
  
• potato-artichoke salad
• coleslaw
  

Okay, so it was too hot to eat outside. But I grilled a lot of stuff! Does that count?

The spareribs were my usual, finished on the grill (meat side down over medium heat for 4 minutes, meat side up and slathered in Carolina-style barbecue sauce for 4 minutes, rest before cutting into riblets).

I grill everything from meat to veggies to fruit, but I think this might have been my first time grilling bread! We had some leftover boule (yes, from the book -- I SWEAR I don't have any relationship with the authors/publisher) so I cut that into half-inch slices, brushed it on both sides with olive oil (LIGHTLY -- you don't want to soak it), and grilled it over high heat until it picked up some grill marks, which didn't take long at all. Then I rubbed a cut garlic clove over both sides of each slice of bread. So easy, yummy and fresh tasting! The girl particulary loved this bread. Of course, she lives on bread, so take that with a grain of salt, maybe.

The salad was my favorite summer salad. It's finally summery enough to serve this again, yay!

And the coleslaw was my usual, except I used savoy cabbage because that's what I had.

Here's the timeline:

• Three and a half hours before serving, rub the ribs with spices and put them in the oven at 325 degrees F, TIGHTLY covered with foil.
• Make potato salad and coleslaw after putting ribs in oven; put both salads in fridge.
• Thirty minutes before serving, light grill and pull ribs out of oven.
• Grill ribs as described above.
• Remove ribs from grill; cover with foil and let rest.
• Grill bread and remove.
• Cut ribs into riblets.
• Pull salads out of fridge.
• Serve it up!

I had a craving

Tonight's Menu

• lamb kofta kebabs w/minted yogurt
  
• za'atar bread
  
• marinated red onions and cherry tomatoes
  

We've been eating a lot of lamb lately, owing in part to the fact that the new farmers market that just opened in my neighborhood (yay!) has a vendor that sells local, pastured lamb in a variety of cuts. I like to load the ground lamb with spices and make little meatballs out of it, but tonight I had a craving for lamb on the grill. Kofta kebabs were just the ticket!

Bear with me, because as usual I don't have an actual recipe, but I can tell you what I did. First, I stuck a heel of stale bread into the food processor and whizzed it up until I had fresh bread crumbs. I was afraid dry crumbs would make the meat too crumbly. To the bread crumbs, I added some chopped fresh parsley, kosher salt, garam masala, chili powder, paprika and grated onion (fresh onion, not dried -- just peel it and run it over the large holes of a box grater). I also ran a good-sized garlic clove over my microplane zester (love this tip -- no need to peel the garlic!) and added that as well. I pulsed it for a bit to blend the ingredients, then added a pound of ground lamb and one large egg. Whiz it around until it's all combined, then form the meat into sort of oblong sausagey shapes and thread a metal skewer through each one (or a soaked bamboo skewer). Then grill them over high heat on well-oiled grates for about 4-5 minutes per side or until done through.

The yogurt sauce was easy -- just mix some greek-style yogurt with chopped fresh mint, a tiny bit of lemon juice, and a tiny bit of minced garlic. It makes a nice accompaniment to the meat.

I have made za'atar bread before. We all love this as an alternative to focaccia, and again, it went so nicely with the flavors of the meat.

For the little marinated salad I served alongside, all I did was cut a red onion in half lengthwise and then slice it VERY thinly crosswise, dumping the little onion slivers into a non-reactive bowl. I added halved cherry tomatoes (actually, I think these were grape tomatoes, but it doesn't matter) along with some chopped fresh parsley and oregano. Then I mixed some red wine vinegar with a TINY bit of sugar and a small amount of EVOO (use more vinegar than oil), poured that over the onions and tomatoes, seasoned with a bit of kosher salt, and tossed it all together. I just let this sit on the countertop at room temperature while I made the rest of the meal. It was very refreshing!

This whole meal was freaking fantastic, if I do say so myself! I had such a craving for something Middle Eastern or Mediterranean and this was perfect. The lamb kofta reminded me very much of a Romanian dish called mici, and I am half convinced that my occasional craving for spiced meat on the grill is an ancestral memory of some kind (I am one-eighth Romanian on my Dad's side). Every now and then, I need a little garlic and paprika in my life, you know?

Here's my suggested timeline for this meal. This is not exactly the one I followed, but it's the one I WOULD follow when I made this again.

• Earlier in the day, make the minted yogurt and stick it in the fridge.
• Also earlier in the day, make the meat mixture and put it in the fridge. It's easier to work with when it's cold.
• About an hour before serving time, make the marinated onions and tomatoes and let them sit on the countertop while you do the rest.
• About 40 minutes before serving time, prepare the za'atar bread (it has to rest for 20 minutes while the oven gets hot, then it cooks for 15 minutes or so).
• About 20 minutes before serving time, light the grill and put the meat on skewers while it heats.
• Put the za'atar bread in the oven.
• Put the meat on the grill. Turn after 4-5 minutes.
• Take the meat off the grill and the bread out of the oven.
• Slide the meat off the skewers so no one ends up in the emergency room (I speak from experience with metal skewers, here -- those suckers get HOT).
• Slice the bread into wedges, pull the yogurt out of the fridge, give the salad another toss and serve it all up!

Using up the CSA veggies

Tonight's Menu

• sausage and vegetable stew
  

This might better be called Kitchen Sink Stew, because I'm pretty sure I threw everything but that into the pot! I am determined not to let any of our CSA veggies go to waste and a stew seemed like the best solution, particularly since I knew the leftovers would freeze well.

So here's what I did. First I chopped up a pooload of veggies: onions, garlic, celery, sweet bell peppers, zucchini, pattypan squash, and a variety of mixed eggplants (ichiban, rosa bianca, some skinny white ones and some skinny green ones). Plus we had a tomato that didn't travel well in the CSA box, so I chopped that up as well, along with some unidentified greens (some variety of chard, maybe?).

Then I browned off a chub of bulk pork sausage (Pederson's breakfast sausage, in this case) in a big heavy pot, breaking it up as it cooked. I was all set to drain off some of the fat, but this particular sausage didn't render much out at all -- I actually had to add some olive oil to moisten everything up! With the sausage still in the pan, I added the onions and garlic and stirred everything around really well until the onions had gone just a tiny bit translucent. Then I added the peppers and celery and stirred those around a bit until I could smell them.

Once the sausage, onions and peppers were all happy in there, I dumped in my mixed squashes and eggplants, along with my chopped tomato and greens, about a tablespoon of tomato paste, one small can of crushed tomatoes (Muir Glen Fire Roasted, in my case), two cans of water, and maybe half a cup of dry white wine. Then I sprinkled on a good teaspoon or so of dried oregano, a healthy pinch of salt, and several grinds of fresh black pepper. Stir, bring to a boil, cover, reduce heat and simmer for about an hour or until the veggies are nice and tender. Taste it and adjust your seasonings before serving.

I thought this was absolutely delicious! So fresh-tasting from all the veggies, and the sausage and tomatoes made it nice and hearty. If I had it to do over again, I would have peeled the rosa bianca eggplant -- the skin is a little tough on that one, even though the flesh came out nice and tender.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should tell you that the kids wouldn't even touch the stuff, and DH didn't much care for it. But then, he doesn't like squash, peppers OR eggplant and this stew was chock-full of all of them. Oh well. I froze a bunch of it and will look forward to having fresh vegetable stew all winter when those yummy summer vegetables are gone!

Pizza night

Tonight's Menu

• homemade pepperoni pizza
  

The girl told me after tonight's dinner that I'm not allowed to buy frozen pizzas from the grocery store anymore. Um. Okay, then. Fortunately, with a little advance planning, the homemade version was just as fast and easy as the frozen version.

The crust: was made with the olive oil dough from the bread book. I mixed the dough up the day before so it could sit in the fridge overnight. This was my first time working with the olive oil dough (we usually make the master recipe or European peasant dough) and it was fabulous! It made for a soft, tender, and delicious crust.

The sauce: was made from roasted tomatoes, eggplant and and garlic, pureed with a stick blender. I made this earlier in the day -- chunks of tomato and eggplant, whole garlic cloves, a bit of fresh basil and oregano, salt and pepper, a glug or two of balsamic vinegar, and lots of olive oil roasted at 300 degrees F for about two hours, stirring occasionally (do this on the weekend and it'll keep in the fridge for use during the week). I let it cool and then pureed a small amount with my stick blender, adding a bit of tomato paste and water to get it to the right consistency. The puree was NOT pretty -- hello, red and green make BROWN -- but it was delicious! And no, I did NOT tell my family they were eating eggplant. That's just between you and me, a'ight?

The toppings: since I live with a bunch of pizza traditionalists over here, I went with fairly mundane toppings -- shredded mozzarella and sliced pepperoni. That's it.

It really wasn't any trouble to assemble. While the baking stone was heating up in the oven (at 500 degrees F), I covered the pizza peel (that's the wooden paddle thing) with cornmeal, rolled out the dough on the countertop, moved it to the peel, spooned on some sauce and sprinkled on the toppings. By that time the stone was hot, so I transferred the pizza to the stone (I get a little thrill out of successfully executing that jerk-and-tug motion it takes to get the pizza off the peel and onto the stone)(though I am NOT always successful at it, I hasten to add) and baked it for 8-10 minutes. While the first pizza was baking, I made another one (we can put away A LOT of pizza over here, y'all) and stuck it in the oven when the first one came out.

There is something about pizza made with FRESH dough, y'all. I don't know. I think I agree with the girl -- we can never go back to frozen now!

Skillet yummies

Tonight's Menu

• grilled Italian sausages
  
• okra & corn with bacon & onions
• sliced tomatoes

Gah. CSA pickup was on Wednesday, but since then we've been eating out more often than not (which is unusual for us) and I'm starting to FREAK OUT that all these delicious veggies will go bad before I can use them. I have CSA STRESS, y'all.

First let's talk about the sausages, which were pretty much the usual deal. Mild, fresh Italian sausages simmered in water for 10-15 minutes, then browned off on the grill. Super easy.

I've been drooling over the idea of okra with bacon ever since a recent post about it by my fabulous foodie pal Jaye. I had a couple of cobs of already-cooked corn left over from a recent dinner (Friday night fajitas) and corn usually plays nicely with okra so I decided to kill two birds, as it were. All I did was chop up a few slices of good bacon (Pederson's apple-smoked, in this case) along with about 1/4 of a sweet yellow onion. Then I sliced up a bunch of fresh okra from the CSA and sliced my already-cooked corn off the cob. I tossed the bacon into a skillet and once it had gone about half-crisp, I added the onions. Stir, stir, stir until the onions start to go translucent, then add the okra. Stir, stir, stir until the okra gets tender, then add in the corn and just toss around a bit to warm it through (and let it pick up a bit of color, if you like). Then just season with salt and pepper and Bob's your uncle!

EVERYONE loved this. The boy scarfed his down, and the girl actually TRIED it and thought it was pretty darn good. Holy crap, y'all, my kids ate okra!

Tomatoes were from the CSA. I have GOT to use these up; they are almost over-ripe after a few days on the windowsill.

Pasta!

Tonight's Menu

• farfalle with roasted tomatoes
  
• peasant bread
  
• green salad "bar"
  

We eat pasta at least once a week around here but I don't usually post about it because, well, it's boring. But tonight's pasta was anything but!

It was CSA pickup day again and we got loads of tomatoes. Up to now some of the tomatoes in the CSA boxes have been not quite ripe, which allowed us to put them on the windowsills and then forget about them for a few days while they ripened up. However, all of today's tomatoes were perfectly ripe, which means I need to use them FAST since I'm not into canning or preserving or any of that stuff (might have to GET into it though, if this keeps up).

Sooo, all I did was follow this recipe for roasting them with garlic, basil and balsamic vinegar, then I served the resulting delicious melange over farfalle (aka bow-tie pasta). It was SO yummy, y'all. This time I refrained from tarting it up with any eggplant or zucchini (though we got bunches of both in today's box).

The bread was from the book. I SWEAR I will post a review of this soon. A few people have emailed me with questions and I will try to get those answers out this week, I promise!

The salad was the exact same one we've been eating for the past week, but with fresh ingredients. I'm getting a little bored with salad, frankly, but the kids are always happy to eat it so it's a painless way to get veggies into them. Sigh.

Barbecue!

Tonight's Menu

• barbecued pork on buns
• marinated cucumber salad
• sliced tomatoes
  

Finally, the boy was feeling good enough to eat "normal" food tonight! So I went whole hog (hee! see what I did there?) and made some barbecued pork sandwiches for dinner.

I have to admit, this pork was sort of an experiment. What I did was take a shoulder roast, rub it with salt, pepper, garlic powder and paprika, and stick it on a rack in a roasting pan. Then I added some water to the bottom of the pan and dropped in two large-ish whole sprigs of rosemary. The idea was to get the rosemary to barely scent/flavor the meat. I covered the pan tightly with heavy-duty foil and stuck it in the oven at 200 degrees F for about 5 hours.

When I pulled it out of the oven I stuck an instant-read thermometer in the roast just to be sure it was fully cooked, which it was, so then I removed it from the pan and set up the grill for indirect heat (two burners on medium, one burner unlit). I put the roast on the unlit burner and started basting it with a Carolina-style barbecue sauce (I buy this already made; it's a mustard-based sauce that goes great with pork).

After maybe 15 minutes total, flipping it from one side to another halfway through, the sauce had kind of baked on to the meat. There still wasn't any browning, though, so I flipped the roast over to one of the lit burners for just a couple of minutes per side to get some nice grill mark action going. Much better, aesthetically speaking! After resting it for a few minutes, I shredded it and served it on buns with thinly sliced sweet onions and more barbecue sauce on the side. Delicious! And not as much trouble as it sounds, honest.

This cucumber salad is one of my favorite things. DH and I first discovered it at a Hungarian restaurant near here and we absolutely fell in love with the way this refreshing, cool salad contrasted with the rather rich main dishes (I admit it, I'm a chicken paprikas addict). A couple of years ago I was poking around in an antique store when I found a little pamphlet of Hungarian recipes. Lo and behold, there was our favorite cucumber salad!

Here's how you make it: take two good-sized cucumbers, wash and peel them, then cut cross-wise into thin slices. Put them in a bowl and sprinkle with 2 teaspoons of salt, then set aside for one hour. After an hour, start squeezing the cucumber slices in your hand, discarding the liquid. Put the squeezed cucumbers into a non-reactive bowl, then mix together the following:

3 Tbs white vinegar
3 Tbs water
1/2 tsp sugar
1/4 tsp paprika
1/4 tsp freshly ground pepper
1/4 tsp minced garlic (I grated it with my microplane)

Pour the vinegar mixture over the cucumbers, toss to coat, then sprinkle another 1/4 tsp or so of paprika over top. Cover and chill in the refrigerator for at least one hour. We like to serve it the way they do in the restaurant, with a tiny dollop of sour cream on top.

So yummy, and the crunchy, vinegary cucumbers were a nice foil to the rich barbecued pork!

Oh and P.S.: the cucumbers and tomatoes were from the CSA, natch.

My favorite summer salad

Tonight's Menu

• grilled sweet Italian sausages
  
• corn on the cob
• potato-tomato-artichoke salad
  

The sausages were grilled the same way as always, working around my sausage-grilling handicap: simmered in water for about 15 minutes, then crisped up on the grill over medium-high heat for 3-4 minutes per side or until nicely browned. Delicious!

I love grilled corn on the cob but NO ONE ELSE in this family will eat it. I know! So I cook it in the microwave. I remove the leaves and silk, give it a rinse, wrap each ear toffee-style in some wax paper with the edges twisted shut, then nuke them on high power for 10 minutes (for four ears). They come out just fine and all, but BORING.

It's finally time for my favorite summer salad! I've told you about this one before, but here it is again: just take some red-skinned potatoes, cut them into bite-sized chunks, simmer them in water until tender, then let them cool. Once they've cooled, whomp them into a bowl with some fresh mozzarella (you can buy the teeny balls, or get the larger ones and cut them up), some halved cherry tomatoes or larger tomatoes cut in wedges/chunks, and a chiffonade of fresh basil (that just means rolling up the leaves and slicing them into thin ribbons). Then take a small jar of marinated artichokes, drain and reserve the marinade, and mix the artichokes in with the potatoes and whatnot. Drizzle on enough of the reserved marinade to moisten everything up nicely, season with salt and freshly ground pepper, toss to coat, and chill it for about an hour.

This is SO GOOD! This time around, the potatoes and some of the tomatoes were from the CSA box, the other tomatoes were from my dad's garden, and the basil was from my own herb garden. And if I haven't yet tempted you to make this salad, here's a photo of tonight's version to tempt you further!

Yeah, you know you want it.

More cooking from the CSA box: slow-roasted veggies? Oven-poached veggies? Veggie confit?

Yeah, I am not sure what to call this one, y'all. Here's what I did; maybe YOU can figure it out!

I wanted to slow-roast some of the CSA tomatoes in a bunch of olive oil based on this recipe by my lovely pal Kim. So I cut a bunch of tomatoes into wedges and tossed them in a baking pan along with some unpeeled garlic cloves, and then I thought, "Hey! I bet those little ichiban eggplants from the CSA would work a treat in here, too!" So I tossed those in as well (some of them were whole because they were just finger-sized, and others were cut into chunks).

I could have left it there but you all know me; I can never leave well enough alone. So I chopped up a medium-sized zucchini and popped that in the pan as well. Then I tore in some fresh basil (from the CSA), drizzled over quite a lot of extra-virgin olive oil (REALLY a lot -- I didn't cover the veggies entirely or anything but I definitely covered the bottom of the pan), shook on a few glugs of balsamic vinegar, sprinkled the lot with kosher salt and freshly ground pepper and popped it into the oven, uncovered, at 300 degrees F. The total cooking time was about 90 minutes, and I gave it a stir every half-hour or so.

Oh DUDES. This is one of the most delicious things I've ever made, I'm not kidding. After it came out of the oven I took a spoon and squished the garlic cloves so the smooshy garlic goodness squooshed out of the paper (which I threw away). I let it cool a bit and then spooned some into a bowl, scooping up great gobs of it with thick slices of peasant bread (from that bread book I can't stop talking about). HEAVEN, people. Absolute heaven.

This is going to be my lunch every single day until I've eaten it all. And possibly my breakfast, as well. It's THAT good.

But I still don't know what to call it!

A peek inside the CSA box

Now that our CSA shares are featuring oodles of veggies and not so many greens, I'm starting to go a little nuts, but in a GOOD way. Opening the box every week (well, every two weeks in our case) is like opening a big surprise package, and I find myself oohing and aahing over each item and fantasizing about what I'll make with it!

Yes, it's true. I'm a food nerd.

Here's a little peek inside this week's box, and the fantasy recipes I've been concocting:

Early Girl Tomatoes - oodles of 'em! We usually just eat these sliced on sandwiches or wedged in salads, but I have a secret desire to roast them a la my fabulous foodie pal, Kim. Maybe I'll set a few aside for salads/sandwiches and roast the rest!

Sun Gold Cherry Tomatoes - I KNOW what I'm doing with these -- they are going in a big bowl with the red cherry, red pear, yellow pear, chocolate cherry and snow white cherry tomatoes that I've picked this week from my garden and my dad's. Then I'll shred in some basil (see below), maybe sprinkle on some very thinly sliced red onions (ditto) and dress them very simply with some good EVOO and balsamic vinegar. Voila, tomato salad!

Onions - several little bulbs of white, red and yellow onions. We've been loving the red ones on focaccia lately and they're great in salads and sandwiches as well. The yellow and white ones I'll use in everything. I go through a LOT of onions when I cook, y'all!

Sweet Basil - we got big hunks of this in our box and I am SO EXCITED, because my own basil is doing horribly this year. We'll eat this in EVERYTHING -- salads, casseroles, in sandwiches in place of lettuce, you name it!

Zucchini - two HUGE ones and two medium-sized ones. I'm using some to make these chocolate cupcakes (can't WAIT to try them!) and will probably grill the rest or fry them up in a skillet with bacon and onions.

Pattypan Squash - OMG, we got two of these and they are as big as pumpkins! I really like the pattypan squash casserole I made last night, but I'm wondering how these would be if I peeled them, chunked them up, then stuck them in the oven with some orange juice & zest, honey and cinnamon? I know that works with acorn and butternut squash, but what about pattypan? I don't know. It sounds good, but it could be gross.

Okra - quite a few pods of this! I love okra just breaded and fried, but I'll bet money DH wants me to make gumbo with it. And I just might! He's been really hungry for it lately and I haven't made it in forever. Ooo -- possible Father's Day dinner idea? Here's hoping he doesn't read this beforehand and ruin the surprise!

Cucumbers - two skinny ones and two big fat ones. The skinny ones will go into our almost-nightly salads, but I'm going to make a marinated cucumber salad with the big fat ones. It's a dish DH and I love from a local Hungarian/Romanian restaurant and I finally found a recipe for it in an old Hungarian cooking pamphlet at the antique store. I'll share the recipe when I make it!

Peppers - both sweet banana peppers, which I love sliced in salads, and green bell peppers, which I'll throw into side dishes or grill with fajitas.

Red Potatoes - we use a lot of these! I can make my chuffed potatoes with them, or my favorite summer salad (which also features tomatoes and basil), or potato-onion packets on the grill. Yum!

Ichiban Eggplant - we received several of these teensy, adorable eggplants and this is where I started getting a little weird. I want to roast some garlic and mix it, along with some shredded basil, into some ricotta cheese (obviously it would be seasoned with salt and pepper and whatnot as well). Then I want to grill the eggplant the way I do zucchini and wrap the grilled strips around spoonfuls of the ricotta mixture. And then just pork them down like chips. Is that nuts? Would it work? I'm going to have to try it!

We also got some lovely zinnias, but I have no plans to eat them. Hee!

Shrimps on sticks! Again!

Tonight's Menu

• grilled marinated shrimp
  
• multi-grain tortilla chips
  
• sliced beefsteak tomatoes
  

Yes! More grilling! Yay!

I think I have confessed in the past my inability to grill a decent steak. I can do it fine indoors, on my IKEA grill pan, but steaks + me + outdoor grills do not mix. Sadly, I have the same handicap when it comes to grilling shrimp. I DO it, but I have never done it WELL. The shrimp always end up dried out and kind of flavorless.

Until tonight.

I finally bought a clue and googled for recipes and settled on this one. I only made a couple of changes: I cut the hot pepper sauce in half (because I live with spice wimps) and substituted ketchup for the tomato paste. Also, I used sea salt and forgot to reduce the amount -- sea salt is a bit "saltier" than table salt, so you don't need as much. So, it was just a TAD too salty for my taste. But other than that, it was STUPENDOUS. Even the kids loved it, and the girl has demanded that I never use another recipe but this one when grilling shrimp. Okay by me!

The chips were our favorite Tostitos Multi-Grain Tortilla Chips. These taste SO much better than regular tortilla chips, even the blue corn ones! (They aren't paying me to say that, by the way -- we just really love these chips.)

The tomato was from the CSA, as was the garlic for the shrimp marinade (and the parsley was from my own herb garden, woo!).

This was a totally lazy dinner -- no effort involved at all, beyond mixing up the marinade and threading the shrimps on skewers. SO easy!

Beginner's luck

Tonight's Menu

• grilled boneless pork chops
  
• leftover sweet & sour red cabbage
  
• leftover green beans from the garden
• fried green tomatoes
  

Yeah, this dinner was a bit of a hodge-podge. The cabbage and beans were left over from the other night; I was trying to clean out the refrigerator a bit.

The pork chops were seasoned with Jane's Krazy Salt and garlic pepper, then grilled over high heat for 4 minutes per side. Easy.

Believe it or not, this is the first time I've ever made fried green tomatoes. When my tomato plants first started to bear fruit in the spring, I couldn't bear to pick the tomatoes at the green stage. I had visions of ripe, juicy red tomatoes all summer long. Well, I got them, and how! We ended up giving a bunch away because there were just SO MANY. The plants were getting really gross looking lately and the bugs have been horrible, so we're not getting much in the way of ripe fruit anymore. My dad (my personal gardening guru) says it's time to plant fall tomatoes anyway, so today I yanked out all my existing tomato plants and scavenged what I could in the way of produce. I ended up with a few green tomatoes and thought this would be a good way to use them up. (If I'd had more, I'd have made my first attempt at green tomato pickles, which are a thing of beauty.)

Anyhoodle, this is how I made them. I just kind of winged it instead of using a recipe. I decided to go with a four-tray approach: milk, seasoned (with salt and pepper) flour, beaten egg, and seasoned (with salt, pepper and cayenne) cornmeal. I sliced the green tomatoes fairly thin (like 1/8 inch) and dipped them in the above order -- milk first, then flour, then egg, then cornmeal -- before GENTLY laying them into a half-inch or so of heated canola oil in a high-sided skillet. I worked in batches so as not to crowd the pan. I honestly can't tell you how long they took to cook -- I just babysat them VERY closely, turned them when they were looking lightly brown, and took them out when they were a uniform color on both sides. I drained them on paper towels but didn't re-season since I had basically salted them twice already.

They came out very crispy with a thick crust that DID NOT FALL OFF. My husband, who declared himself a hater of fried green tomatoes before I started cooking them, actually had seconds. He compared the coating to that of fried okra. I prefer more of a tempura batter on my fried veggies but wasn't brave enough to attempt one. These came out really good, though, I have to say. I think the cayenne made all the difference in flavor, and the four-tray method really helped the coating stay on the tomatoes.

Indoor barbecue

Tonight's Menu

• slow-cooker barbecued pork
  
• potato salad
  
• steamed corn on the cob
  
• mixed tomato salad
  

Hey! Hello there! I have not been posting! Sorry about that. We've been eating really boring crap, like hamburgers and tacos and ... leftover hamburgers and tacos. And stuff. This weather has me ALL MESSED UP. I like to grill all summer long, you know that, but it's been really rainy. So I went and planned some meals that did not require grilling, and since then it's been sunny. WHATEVER, Ma Nature. I think you're just trying to piss me off now.

Ahem. ANYWAY.

It did rain a bit today, so the slow-cooker pork was a good call. All I did was slice a big sweet onion, separate it into rings, layer them in the bottom of the slow cooker, whomp a pork roast on top (I used sirloin but you could use loin or shoulder or whatever), then dump on a bottle of barbecue sauce (in this case Sweet Baby Ray's Honey Chipotle, which was FABULOUS) and cook on low for a good 8-10 hours. If you're using a long-grained cut of meat, like loin, you can shred this and serve it on buns, but I just chunked it up a bit and we ate it like that. Really yummy and summery, but I didn't have to light the grill!

I'm convinced my potato salad is the only reason we get invited to the neighborhood 4th of July potluck every year. I have been told not to bother showing up if I don't bring it. Okay, nobody actually SAID that, but I KNOW WHAT THEY'RE THINKING. Seriously, this stuff NEVER fails to draw compliments. I take no credit for it because I cribbed it from an old issue of Taste of Home magazine.

All you do is take a bag of those small red-skinned potatoes (about 2-3 pounds), cut them in quarters or eighths depending on how big they are, layer them on a foil-lined baking sheet, sprinkle with salt and pepper, bake for about 45 minutes at 425 degrees F and let them cool. Then dump them in a bowl with some chopped hard-boiled eggs, a bunch of crumbled cooked bacon, chopped sweet onion, and shredded cheddar cheese. Mix three parts sour cream to two parts mayonnaise, squirt in just a bit of yellow mustard, and toss that with the potato mixture. You can serve this right away or make it a day ahead of time. It's SO GOOD, I am not kidding. Bring it to a party and you might get invited back, is all I'm saying.

Oh, I almost forgot the mixed tomato salad! That was just chopped (well, cubed really) red tomatoes from my garden along with yellow tomatoes from my dad's garden tossed in just a wee bit of EVOO and apple cider vinegar (whisk those together first to emulsify), salt and pepper. I've done this with balsamic before too and it's really good, but I thought the cider vinegar would better compliment the barbecue.

Grilling again, hooray!

Tonight's Menu

• barbecued shrimp
  
• grilled apricots with mint
• a salad of new potatoes, cherry tomatoes (from the garden!), mozzarella, marinated artichoke hearts and basil
• sliced tomatoes (from the garden!)
  

It FINALLY quit raining down here so I was able to grill again. Yay!

Okay, for the shrimp I just cleaned and shelled (down to the tails) a bunch of biggish shrimp and stuck them on bamboo skewers (which I soaked in water, but they burned anyway). Then I combined some bottled barbecue sauce with some apricot fruit spread and a wee tot of bourbon and brushed that mixture on the shrimp while they were grilling (about 6 minutes total over high heat). Yum!

The apricots were dead easy -- I just halved some fresh apricots, removed the pits, and grilled them cut-side down for about five minutes. Then I gave them a rough chop and tossed them with a bit of superfine sugar and some chopped fresh mint. Yum, again!

The salad was my usual favorite summer salad. Way yummy.

We are DROWNING in tomatoes but I am not complaining! Is there anything better than a tomato right off the vine, sliced and salted and wolfed down with abandon? I think not.

In other news, the sidecar is the official cocktail of Make Your Own Damn Dinner, Summer 2007! Sunshine in a glass, people!

Rain rain go away

Tonight's Menu

• sauteed tilapia fillets
  
• grilled romaine salad
  

The neverending rain here in Central Texas (not West Texas! I don't live there, despite what the New York Times might think!) is putting a serious crimp in my summer grilling plans, y'all. So tonight's dinner was an indoor affair.

The tilapia was the usual deal, pan-sauteed in EVOO and then seasoned with salt and pepper. Dead easy.

For the salad, I took some romaine hearts (you can buy these already packaged up at the grocery store), cut them in half lengthwise, brushed them with EVOO and slapped them on the grill pan. When they were still crisp-tender with sexy little grill marks I removed them from the pan, gave them a rough chop, and tossed them in a bowl. Then I cut a bunch of cherry tomatoes (from the garden!) in half and put them cut-side down on the grill pan for about 30 seconds before chucking them in with the lettuce. Toss with a bit of EVOO and really good balsamic vinegar, season with salt and pepper, and hey presto, you've got a nice warm salad to go with the fish! I thought it was pretty damn tasty. I don't think DH was crazy about it, though. (More for me!)

An experiment

Tonight's Menu

• grilled pork tenderloin
  
• sauteed spinach with garlic
  
• sliced tomatoes from the garden
  
• green salad (from the garden!)
  

So yeah, tonight's dinner was a bit of an experiment. Well, the pork was, anyway. What I did was cut some garlic cloves into slivers, then poked holes in the tenderloin and pushed them in. It was kind of porcupine-y. Then I tossed together some freshly grated lemon zest (LOVE my Microplane, y'all), dried oregano (because I didn't have fresh -- use that if you have it), salt and freshly ground pepper and rubbed that over the meat, then grilled it over high heat for about 20 minutes on a well-oiled grate, turning every 5 minutes or so.

Do you know what dried oregano smells like when it meets an open flame? Do I have to spell it out for you? Yeah, I'm pretty sure our neighbors thought we were having an especially mellow barbecue. Heh.

Anyhoo, I let the meat rest while I sauteed the spinach (EVOO and one garlic clove sliced paper thin, dump in some fresh baby spinach when the garlic starts to go barely tan, stir to wilt, season with salt & pepper), then sliced it on the diagonal and it was very tasty. DH said it was not his favorite, but I liked it just fine.

I have more garden tomatoes than I know what to do with. We had to give some away to the neighbors today! Not that I'm complaining!

Ribs!

Tonight's Menu

• barbecued baby back ribs
  
• Ranch Beans from a can
  
• homemade coleslaw
• tomato salad
  

So hey, everyone! I'm back! Did you miss me? I sure as hell missed ... MY KITCHEN.

Okay, first the ribs. I did a dry rub with brown sugar, dry mustard, garlic powder, onion powder, chili powder, dry oregano, cayenne, salt and pepper. I put the ribs on a rack over some water, covered the pan tightly with foil, and put them in the oven at 250 degrees F. After two hours, I realized that the kids had taekwondo tonight so we wouldn't be eating until about 45 minutes later than usual, so I nudged the heat down to 200. They cooked for about 3.5 hours total.

I had planned to finish the ribs in the oven because it was supposed to rain, but then it didn't so I finished them on the grill instead. Which was kind of a pain because they were already falling off the bone. But I managed to get them on there, slap on some sauce (from a bottle), and grill them for about 10 minutes on medium (meat side up ONLY because they were too flimsy to turn). They were very very yummy.

Coleslaw was my usual, shredded cabbage tossed with a mixture of mayonnaise, vinegar, sugar and celery seed.

The tomato salad consisted of chopped plum and yellow tomatoes from my dad's garden along with halved cherry tomatoes from mine. I shook some really nice balsamic vinegar and GOOD extra-virgin olive oil in a lidded container, poured it over the tomatoes, sprinkled them with sea salt, freshly ground pepper and torn basil, then tossed them and let them sit at room temperature. They were a nice accompaniment to the rich meat.

I am SO GLAD to be home.

Surf & Turf! Kind of!

Tonight's Menu

• leftover citrus grilled shrimp from last night
• leftover garlicky grilled flank steak from the night before
• a warm salad of green beans and cherry tomatoes FROM THE GARDEN!
  
• leftover spinach salad with oranges and toasted almonds

Okay, so "embellished leftovers" would be a more appropriate title. Sue me.

I had a teeny number of green beans from the garden (I've been saving them up in a ziploc bag in the fridge for the past week) and wanted to do something with them. I also had about six cherry tomatoes, also from the garden, that were languishing on my kitchen windowsill. So hey! Warm salad!

I simmered the beans in water until they were just tender, then drained them and dumped them in a bowl with halved cherry tomatoes. Then I took a TEENY bit of garlic, like half a clove, and minced it. I tossed the garlic into a skillet and added a tablespoon or so of balsamic vinegar along with an equal amount of sugar (which was a bit too much sugar, unfortunately) and let it reduce down a bit. (NOTE: I actually had to do all the above steps twice, because the first time, the pan was too hot and the sugar burned. Yuck.) Then I removed it from the heat and whisked in a little bit of EVOO (really fast, so it would emulsify) and drizzled this concoction over the beans and tomatoes. Add a chiffonade of fresh basil (from the HERB garden!), season with salt and pepper, and toss to coat.

It was really good, but like I said, just a TAD too sweet. Next time, less sugar! I put some of the dressing/sauce on my spinach salad as well and that was AWESOME. Made me wonder what it would be like if I added just a bit of orange juice next time? And cut way back on the sugar? Hmm. I smell a kitchen experiment!

Yep, still grilling

Tonight's Menu

• grilled ham steak
  
• grilled stone fruits (nectarines, peaches and some weird apricot/plum hybrid that was NOT a pluot)
  
• sliced tomatoes (locally grown, but not from my garden)
  

Yeah. Um. I don't know what to say about this one. I grilled a nice thick ham steak for 4-5 minutes per side. I put the peaches and nectarines (halved, more or less) on, cut-side down, when I put the ham on, then added the apricotty things when I flipped the ham (they were a little more ripe and would take less time to grill). Then I, you know, sliced a tomato. And served some spiced (coriander and citrus zest) Mediterranean sea salt alongside.

That's about it. Easy-peasy, as my boyfriend Jamie Oliver would say.

Day 81

Adult Menu

• leftover grilled flank steak
  
• a quickie cherry tomato relish
  
• Pillsbury crescent rolls
  

Girl Child
Had rolls with some deli turkey slices, raw baby carrots, and a piece of whole-grain toast.

Boy Child
Had rolls and carrots with a peanut butter sandwich.

The tomato relish I made tonight was SO easy, y'all. I just halved a bunch of teeny homegrown cherry tomatoes, chopped up some sweet onion and a few springs of basil, and tossed it all with a little EVOO and red wine vinegar. It was really tasty with the leftover steak.