Soy Garlic Cherry Tomatoes

Why would I take something as delicious on their own as cherry tomatoes and make a pickle out of them? The same reason anyone makes pickles. There's just too much great produce and not enough people to eat it.

Pan-Seared Peach Salad with Sweet Basil Dressing

Since starting this CSA I have eaten a lot of salads. I've really begun to appreciate the fruit, nut and cheese salad. There are so many great combinations out there. A lot of times we forget that fruit is an amazing addition to a salad. Add a piece of crusty bread, and that's lunch. 

Provencal Green Beans

It's amazing how changing one or two ingredients can change the flavor profile of a dish and even cuisine one would attribute that dish to. Switch out onions in favor of leeks, add some thyme and black olives and all of a sudden we've been transported from a trattoria in Firenze to a cafe in Provence.

Gratitude After the Storm: Arugula Omelet with Feta and Raw Tomato Sauce

We are fine. Our windows are fine. The basement is dry. The power is on. The stove works. I could make an omelet for lunch...

Week 12 -- Weathering the Storm

No picture today, folks. We're battening down the hatches, so to speak.

But in case you were wondering, yes, CSA pick-ups still happen under threat of hurricane.

Beets with Millet, Lentils and Tahini Sauce

So...I need to go out and stock up on bottled water and figure out what in God's name one does during a hurricane when there are no rooms with no windows. I'm going to be brief today.

Soba with Wakame and Cucumber

My brother-in-law is in China this week for work. The way he tells it they just sort of said: "Hey, Les, this company just bought one of our machines and we need someone to assemble it. How would you like to go? You have a passport, right?" And now he's someplace where it's tomorrow.

Golden Plum Crisp

One of my favorite parts of summer are fruit crisps. Of course, you all know that I try to avoid turning my oven on in the summer. This is problematic. Well, the temperature dropped below 80, so I turned the oven on and made one.

Eggplant "Pizza" with Potato Crust

I had so many ideas for the little tiny eggplant I got from my CSA this week. Roasting. Pan frying. Babaganoush. Tiny eggplant parm. Tiny vegetarian moussaka...

Pasta with Rapini, Cherry Tomatoes and Olives

Sometimes you just want salt. And you probably shouldn't give into that craving all the time. But sometimes there are days when you eat homemade pretzel bites for lunch. And decide to add olives to everything you cook. It happens. I'm sure as long as one drinks lots of water, it's probably fine. Maybe.

Enchiladas Rojas

I love fresh tomatoes and the ones I've gotten from the CSA this year have been delicious. Brightly colored (in whatever hue they may be), meaty, and had amazing texture. This batch, not so much. They were a little mealy. But while their texture may have been lacking, they were definitely flavorful. The thing to do with tomatoes like this is to make some sort of sauce. As the tomatoes cooked down, the smell that filled the apartment was incredible.

Week 11

Look at all those goodies. I couldn't actually fit all the peaches and plums into the frame!

What I did on my vacation...

So much fruit...

So, as I said in some previous posts, I was away this past week. Here are some of the highlights (some cooking & food related, some not).

Peach Coleslaw

Crunchy cabbage, a sweet and tangy dressing and...peaches?

Can-It-Forward Day Part 2: Bread and Butter Pickles

Update: I'm submitting this post/recipe to Can You Can It? on Garden of Eating

What do you do when you have a pound and a half of cucumbers and only two days in which to eat them? Make pickles. If it's Can-It-Forward Day, so much the better.

Can-It-Forward Day Part 1: Peach BBQ Sauce

Update: I'm submitting this recipe to Can You Can It

For a vegetarian/flexatarian household, we go through a lot of barbecue sauce. It goes on tofu and seitan, on pizzas, on bread. French fries get dunked in it. Neither of us is a ketchup person, but we're both barbecue sauce people. And lo and behold, one can can barbecue sauce.

CSA Week 10

Happy Can-It-Forward Day!

Blackberry Mint Cooler

Summer school is over. I have just under three weeks to recover and then it starts all over again. I've spent my first day off cleaning, packing, replacing lost buttons, and cooking up the last of this week's CSA haul. As I mentioned earlier, I'm going out of town next week, so the downstairs neighbors will be getting most of next week's veggies.

Zucchini Coconut Bread

I'm leaving town on Monday for a five days, so I'm trying to use as much of what I have in my fridge as possible. I open up my fridge and there's a cucumber, two zucchini, some tofu, a partial can of coconut milk and a couple other odds and ends. I need to make things that can either be eaten in the next few days, eaten on Amtrak or frozen. There is one thing that uses most of those foods and meets those criteria: zucchini bread.

"Sometimes all you can do is make a pasta salad..."

Grief is a strange thing. It can bring out the worst in us. It can bring bring out the best in us. It can also bring out every baked good, casserole and pasta/bean/grain salad known to human kind.

Green Beans with Seitan

I've mentioned that I've been just one high-strung, weepy ball of exhaustion and stress for the past week. I've really eaten far too many things just slathered in cheese this week. And lots of bread. And probably not enough protein. Last night, that changed.

Marinated Mozzarella with Heirloom Tomatoes

Tomatoes, basil, mozzarella and crusty bread. What more can one want from summer? (Well, besides for summer vacation to start already...)

California Benedict with Lemony Dill Hollandaise

I've had a rough week. Summer school is wearing me down. There's so much work (most of which is just prepping for next school year), but two days of my week are basically rendered useless by our visits to a local pool. Which is great for the kids, but exhausting for the adults. I've been overtired and crying at the drop of a hat all week. Why? I don't know. I just need a vacation.

Week 9

And....I couldn't be bothered to clean off the table again...

The final week of summer school is almost here (four more days and then two weeks before school starts). It kind of looks like I'll be making a peach pie to celebrate.


1 lb cucumbers
1 head celery
1 pint orange cherry tomatoes
0.5 lb salad mix
2 candy onions
1 bunch basil
0.5 lb green beans
1 lb Zucchini/Squash
2 Tigerella heirloom tomatoes
3 lbs donut peaches


I also found blackberries at the farmer's market and grabbed one more heirloom tomato (those are also in the picture).


I have some very leafy, skinny celery (no filling this stuff with peanut butter. I'm probably going to use the leaves to make this celery salt, then toss the rest in the stock bag. I picked up some local mozzarella at Whole Foods last night. I think marinated mozzarella with heirloom tomatoes is in my future...

Brie, Avocado and Dill Sandwiches

Creamy brie and avocado with dill on crusty whole wheat sourdough. Add a glass of wine and a side of braised beets and you've got yourself a classy, yet easy dinner. And most importantly, it uses up dill.

Braised and Glazed Beets

Hmm...this picture has a bit of a Dexter feel to it.
I promise, it's just beet juice on the cutting board.

Roasted beets are my favorite, but it's just too hot to roast things. But beets can be braised. Your stove is only on for about 30 minutes (rather than your oven being on for an hour). That's a definite temperature difference. And no one yells at you when he gets home for making the apartment hot with your cooking. Maybe for accidentally getting beet-juice fingerprints on the light switch, but not for heating up the apartment.

Vegan Chocolate Mint Zucchini Cookies

Sneaking some veggies into D's cookies. He mostly approved of these cookies (until he asked what the green bits were).

Salad with Broiled Sweet Plums

 This salad features broiled plums paired with Dill-Dijon Dressing (surprise! more dill!) over a bed of salad greens. And maybe I added a little extra dill even though I didn't include it in the recipe. I have a lot of dill.

Leek and Chard Fritters

I woke up with a killer headache on Sunday morning (actually went to bed with a killer headache on Saturday night). I did nothing all morning. Then I went to my knitting meet up and ate this for dinner. Not a bad day overall.