Summer Noms

I think it could be pretty hard to starve around here, as your neighbors feed you up from their gardens. Special thanks to V+DP and C+GF for recent bounties!

Trout, Veggies, and Zinnias

Rainbow trout from Wilson Mill Farms, vegetables mostly and zinnias from generous neighbor VP. I love how each zinnia flower wears a little crown of tiny gold flowers.

Check out my whole Local Produce photo set.

Okra

Cooking my first okra ever, from the garden of my my generous neighbor VP.

Local Produce, Updated

I've been getting a lot of locally grown food through the Monroe Farm Market. Plus my lovely and generous, avid gardener neighbor, JC, has started feeding me from her garden.

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Baked Butternut Squash

A dwindling pantry is the mother of culinary invention.

Ingredients

Fresh locally right now

• 1 butternut squash, halved lengthwise, seeds removed
• 1 Bartlett pear, halved lengthwise, cored

Sweet(er) Option

• 2 tsp. brown sugar
• 2 pinches nutmeg

Savory Option

• 4 pats butter
• 2 pinches salt

Lay pear halves in hollows of butternut squash halves. Bake at 400 deg. until squash is soft (about 1h 15m). Season with brown sugar or butter, either of which will melt, and nutmeg or salt. Share with a friend.

By mightypossibility, champion of "Four or Fewer Ingredients"

Chestnuts

I've been introduced to chestnuts this fall and am making up for lost time, by eating them with a vengeful frequency. They're so simple to prepare. Just score both sides of the nuts with Xs. The scores should cut through the shells and the skins, to the meats. Pop the nuts in the oven at 400° for one hour. Cool a little, shell, and eat. Tip: to break up and remove the shells more easily, pinch the nuts from the sides.

Birthday Sachertorte

Ate the last two pieces of my birthday Sachertorte today. With fresh whipped cream of course, pure, no sugar.

Sigh. A whole year now to wait for another piece.

Real Lemonade

Made real lemonade today: with lemons, water, and sugar. I like to think of it as fresh, but who knows where these supermarket lemons came from and how long ago.

Ashbox

Brunch at Ashbox, in Greenpoint, New York City (Brooklyn), again today. Sidewalk seating, quiet, warm and breezy, couldn't have been more idyllic.

Zucchini Fairy

The zucchini fairy left some big, beat-up squash on my doorstep. I made them into big zucchini casseroles.

Hot Dog Johnny's

Happened upon Hot Dog Johnny's, in Buttzville (Warren County, New Jersey) and stopped for lunch. My rating, 4.1/10.

Deviled Eggs Burnt to Hell

My stint of summer foods preparation continues. Today, deviled eggs.

Ever wonder what would happen if, instead of hard-boiling three eggs for nine minutes, you forgot about them, and boiled them for an hour and nine minutes? I can satisfy your curiosity: the eggs explode. (See pursuant image at right.)

Unfortunately, wandering through the house only after wondering what noxious-smelling activity the neighbors were up to (ahem), I missed the fireworks. But dismembered egg chunks were scattered far and wide across the kitchen, as many as eight or nine feet away. Impressive. The downside: no deviled eggs for lunch.

Summer Salads

One of my father's favorite pastimes during his retirement was working in his vegetable garden. I remember him well that way, in his straw hat, pot belly a-bloom, kneeling over a patch of weeds, "secretly" smoking, red-faced and overheated.

He grew all sorts of things that weren't easy to find in stores, then at least: slasify, leek, Swiss chard, and cassis. Perhaps he remembered some of these from back home in Switzerland. The making of the cassis into jam was always a big production and required a joint effort with our expert Polish housekeeper. I believe I sometimes provided labels.

My father also grew plenty of conventional things: tomatoes, cucumbers, and raspberries, lots of raspberries. In summertime, this meant tomato and cucumber salads every night.

Elsewhere on the farm, we had blackberries, blueberries, elderberries, and lots of wineberries in the woods. One year, the strawberry plants in the horse pasture even bore tiny little fruit. We also had chestnuts and wild asparagus and pears we never got to eat before the birds - or, if not the birds, then the raccoons. Various squash, which failed elsewhere, thrived on the manure pile.

I am reminded of all this because one of my clients gave me a wonderful, big, brown bag of home-grown vegetables this week: tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplant. Today I made dilled cucumber salad, crunchy and refreshing.

My Dilled Cucumber Salad

Ingredients

2 large cucumbers
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 cup yogurt, plain
1 small white onion, finely sliced
1/3 cup dill, chopped
3 Tbsp. white vinegar
2 Tbsp. salt
1 tsp. pepper

Instructions

1. Finely slice the cucumbers. (Leave the cucumber skin on and seeds in!) Let them drain in a colander for half an hour.


2. In a large bowl, prepare dressing by combining all other ingredients.


3. Carefully slide the cucumbers into the dressing. Mix and coat thoroughly.
4. Chill.

I've also eaten just about as much fresh tomato, basil, and mozzarella, which I love, as I dare. For the rest of the tomatoes, I'm thinking gazpacho, which I also love but have never made. Or perhaps, with the eggplant, a batch of ratatouille, to freeze and eat hot in fall.

Outstanding Ice Cream at Mike's

Mike's Café and Ice Cream Parlor, in Bedminster (Somerset County, New Jersey). I ate two scoops of ice cream, one chocolate and one black raspberry, topped with wet walnuts, and it was one of the smoothest, nicest things I've eaten in a long while. One caveat: there is more to wet walnuts than mixing chopped walnuts with maple syrup. Whole halves or quarters would be better, and toasting first would bring out just the right flavor and crunch. But, oh, that chocolate with black raspberry!

Three-Bean Salad

My Food Group Tally this week is running low on legumes, so I made my old three-bean salad stand-by. Only eight ingredients, as fresh and raw as possible. (I don't make anything with more than nine ingredients!) Takes ten or twenty minutes to make, depending on how fast a parsley chopper and lemon squeezer you are!

Ingredients

3 cans beans (e. g., chickpeas, kidney beans, black beans)
1 cup parsley, chopped
1 cup lemon juice
1 cup olive oil
1/2 cup red onion, chopped
3 tablespoons mint, chopped
1/2 teaspoon garlic, crushed
salt and pepper, to taste

Instructions

Combine all ingredients, and refrigerate. Best next day, after flavors have blended.

Trout for Dinner

Dusk along the Delaware in Frenchtown, NJ. A little bit magical. I must find a bicycle (shocking that I don't own one) and return to explore.

Finally located gracious host at his home, a converted chicken operation surrounded by preserved land. Exceptionally delicious dinner: trout (!) with anise and vegies, no processed carbs. Followed by guitar and song. Suh-weet.

Rummage Sale

Attended the VNA Rummage Sale in Far Hills. I bought a smoke blue gauze turtleneck, and my companion bought a whole bunch of historical picture books to use as drawing references. We ate lunch on the porch of Mike's in Bedminster - love that Asian chicken salad - and strolled along Bedminster's Hike and Bike Way. I felt like I was in Central Park, New York City - and, no, that's not a good thing. Then I got a Harley ride through Peapack - fun!

I had dinner in the evening with my family in belated honor of my brother's birthday at the Melting Pot in Somerville. Started with cheese fondue, progressed to meat and seafood, and were too full and tired for the previously anticipated chocolate. The flavors were rather sweet, mild, and uniform for my taste; but the format of the meal is a lot of fun.