two of a kind

cutest dogs ever.
someone stopped me on the street (and nearly caused an accident) today in order to tell me so.
Gus on the left, Ollie on the right.

event planning

Steven and I are bad at planning ahead when it comes to figuring out what's for dinner. It's always bugged me because too often we let perfectly good things spoil because we never figured out how to use them- all sorts of things from the rest of the buttermilk I used for a cake, to summer squash that we were just never in the mood to eat- and because we go to the grocery store or fish monger almost every day.

Because of the garden we've been a lot better this summer (I'll be damned if I'm going to let things I worked so hard to grow go to waste) but it's also put us in a pretty bad rut in terms of what we've been cooking. We've been on a steady diet of roasted vegetables and potatoes with fish, frittata, or spaghetti with tomato sauce (all meals include tomato salad-we've still got lots of tomatoes!)

About 2 weeks ago I decided to put us on a schedule, figure out what veggies we had, and would be getting throughout the week and plan what we could cook with them. Steven was initially skeptical because he worried we'd end up eating something gross, but after the other night's corn chowder, he was convinced.

I'm really happy with this new plan because, while we still go to the store a few times a week, we know what we're shopping for and don't wander around in a hunger induced haze and, better yet, we're eating more complex, interesting food because we don't waste time figuring out what to eat.

On tonight's menu: Succotash salad and broiled salmon. (everything in the salad was from the garden, except the watercress.)

Succotash salad:
dressing:
1 small yellow onion
the juice of one lemon
2 ish tablespoons of olive oil

cooked veggies
1 large red onion
1 tsp dried thyme
1 large summer squash
2 cups fresh corn
1 cup Lima beans

raw veggies and herbs
20 or so cherry tomato sized tomatoes
a handful of watercress
a handful of baby arugula
1/2 cup basil
1 tablespoon chives
2 tablespoons parsley
1 tablespoon flat leaf parsley

Chop the yellow onion and put it in a bowl with the lemon juice and olive oil and set aside.
boil the Lima beans until tender (I totally lost track of how long that took.) Meanwhile saute the red onion thyme and summer squash in olive oil until the squash is just done (underdone is better than over done when it comes to summer squash.) When that's done dump it in a bowl and saute the corn in olive oil with a little salt for a few minutes in the same pan and then dump it in the same bowl and allow to cool a bit. Chop and add the tomatoes, basil, parsley, and chives and mix together with half the dressing. Chop and add the watercress and arugula and the rest of the dressing add salt and pepper and serve. Salad should be a little warmer than room temperature and delicious.

recipe taken (with a few small changes) from Sunday Supers at Lucques by Suzanne Goin- one of my most favorite cookbooks.

this little piggy

Steven leaves piles of coins all over the house. I don't know why he does it, maybe his pockets feel heavy all of a sudden when he's walking through the dining room, or maybe he thinks 2 quarters and a dime will come in handy one day if they are on the coffee table, who knows? But it drives me crazy!
So, I bought him this Pig Bank designed by Harry Allen. (important note: no pig was harmed in the making of this bank.) It's creepy and weird, but for some reason I love it. Plus it's huge, so it'll hold a lot of coins.


Oddly, my favorite part about it is the packaging it came in. Is it totally weird that I desperately want to keep it?

best dinner ever

last night I threw a bunch of our crops in a pot and made some corn chowder. It was soooo delicious.
I didn't follow a recipe, but I think this is what I put in (btw, we've got tons left over so this "recipe" would probably serve 12):

2 ancho peppers
2 serrano peppers
1 yellow onion, chopped
4 celery stalks, chopped
6 small potatoes, chopped
12 or so cherry sized heirloom tomatoes
4 cups of corn (that's a total guess)
1 tablespoon "Better Than Bullion" mushroom base
water
1 cup of milk
butter
salt
pepper

10 shrimp
fresh cilantro for garnish

I roasted the peppers in the oven, removed the skin and chopped them up. Sauteed onion, celery, potatoes in butter, until the onions and celery were soft. Added the peppers and tomatoes sauteed until the tomatoes were juicy. Added the corn, mushroom base, and enough water to cover everything by about a half inch, brought it all to a boil and simmered until the potatoes were done. I pureed half of the soup in the cuisinart, dumped it back in to the pot, added the milk, heated the soup through, and added a little salt and pepper.

Meanwhile I sauteed the shrimp in butter and placed them on the bottom of a pasta plate.

I ladled the soup on top of the shrimp, topped it with cilantro and served. Delicious!

(sorry about the terrible photo)

where you going?

This is what Gus does whenever someone walks out our front door.


I think it's so cute that I have vowed to never move anywhere with window sills that are more than 26" high.

jam on it

This weekend I made dozens of jars of blueberry, peach and apricot jam (with the blueberries we picked, and peaches and apricots from the farmers market).

Weirdest part? I don't even like jam, but for some reason I just wanted to make it.

Luckily, Steven loves it and it'll make good gifts.

And if a person could survive on canned tomatoes and jam, i guess we are ready for the apocalypse!

salsa!

this is the first time we've grown tomatillos, and I have to say they are beautiful plants! Sturdy stems, pretty yellow and black flowers, lovely green lanterns, that fill with fruit until they bust open and you know they are ready to pick!


This weekend I made the first crop of ripe ones into fresh green salsa:

1 pound tomatillos
2 serrano peppers
1 small yellow onion
2 cloves of garlic (only thing not homegrown)
1/4 cup cilantro

Put the tomatillos in a pot and cover with water. bring it to a boil and cook for about 8 minutes until they are soft but not soggy.
Chop up the other ingredients, throw them in the pureed tomatillos, stir and eat!

There are a lot more tomatillos coming so I am going to try and make some more salsa to can in coming weeks, the recipe is a little different if you want to can it (gotta up the acid to avoid botulism!)

5 cups chopped tomatillos
1 1/2 cups seeded, chopped ancho chilies
1/2 cup seeded finely chopped serrano
3 cups chopped onions
1 cup lemon juice
6 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 Tbsp salt

Toss everything into a saucepan and stir, bring it to a boil. Then simmer for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Ladle hot salsa into jars, leaving 1/2-inch headspace. Process in a canner for 15 minutes.

trash to treasures

I really liked Yuken Teruya paper roll sculptures when I saw them a few months ago on a few different places .


But looking at his website the other day I fell completely in love with his dioramas (for lack of a better word) of trees inside paper bags.


He cuts the trees out of old fast food bags, assembles them and then places them back inside the bag they were cut from, creating these lovely scenes with the dappled light of the forest.

check out more of his work here.

sauced

I promise this will be my last homegrown heirloom tomato porn post, at least for a little while, but aren't they beautiful?


Steven's going to make the world's biggest tomato sauce batch tonight and we're going to eat some and freeze a ton.

picked off

I am in a mad panic cleaning and putting together the house because Steven's family is coming to visit. (we're finally fixing the hole in the plaster on the wall in the guest room, for example. They aren't coming for another 6 weeks, but I panic early.)



But Sunday, after we spent the morning weeding, watering, garage cleaning, and paint color picking (Farrow and Ball "setting plaster" for the guest room) our good friends and neighbors convinced us to go blueberry picking with them and their kids at the Pick Your Own farm nearby.

We got pounds and pounds of gorgeous blueberries. Steven was the champion and picked the most. He was very proud.

Since we had blueberries, it only made sense to bake them into a pie!
Since we had pie, it only made sense to make dinner to go with it. We grilled some burgers (veggie burger for me) and some potatoes, made some succotash, and an heirloom tomato salad for dinner. (all veggies were from the garden! fresh soy beans substituted for lima beans in the succotash because our limas arent' ready yet.)

no photos of pie or dinner. Everything got gobbled up before I could take them. :)

It was just about the summeriest evening of the summer!

always want what you can't have

This is going to be the silliest, most random thing I have ever posted, but here it is anyway.
Sometimes when I think about something, or make a vow to do something I end up doing the opposite. If I decide to give up sugar for a month on Monday, by Thursday I'll be baking a cake. If I decide to take the dogs for a long walk every Saturday, I'll end up ignoring them and spending the whole day watching movies 2 Saturdays in a row. And if one Monday morning, like say this one, I decide to be more conscientious about avoiding processed foods? Well then, by lunchtime, I'll go out and buy myself an Orange Crush.

I didn't even know they still made it and I can't tell you the last time I had one (or the last time I had a soda of any sort) but I can tell you that is was delicious. Really delicious. (Are they always that good? Did it taste that good just because it's really hot today?)

(Did you know that Norman Rockwell did a whole bunch of ads for Orange Crush? images here.)

use only what you need

our friend Zoe posted this article about avoiding processed foods for a week on facebook the other day.

We try and avoid processed food, and this summer we're doing ok. (thank you garden!) but it's hard, and will be especially so when school starts again and things get hectic. Sometimes a girl just wants a milano cookie or an English muffin (without having to make it). I'd like to make more of an effort, though, and think more about where things come from and how they were made. Trying to avoid processed foods for a week might be a good way to learn to be more mindful. Maybe we'll give it a go!

I was really struck by this 1914 FDA poster trying to get Americans to aide in the war effort that was included in the article. It could have been printed last week!

abundance

um, anybody need any tomatoes?


Because my husband is an architect and a total geek for scale, I feel I should tell you, that is an 18" bowl. And because I've turned into a gardening nerd, I feel I should tell you that's two days crop and 12 different kinds of tomatoes.

play ball!

Have you heard this story? I love this story and I'm not even all that into sports.
A few weeks ago McClatchy newspaper published an article about the Iraqi National Baseball team. They reported that the team had had just one bat, balls with chunks of leather missing and too few mitts for everyone playing to wear one.

That story and subsequent reporting on the Rachel Maddow Show inspired action. All sorts of companies and individuals from uniform manufacturers, to international shipping companies jumped in to help. And yesterday boxes full of cleats, mitts, baseballs, batting helmets, bases, uniforms, etc arrived in Baghdad! The Iraqi National Baseball team is fully equipped!

McClatchy article and images here.
Rachel Maddow story with fun clips of the players talking about how happy they are here.

keep it real

The September issue of Bazaar has photos of supermodels in their late 30's and 40's without makeup or retouching.


they are still gorgeous, actually, even more so.


you can see more of the photos here.

fall crop

I've planted some fall crops (spinach, potatoes, arugula, lettuces, etc) and I am really looking forward to a second crop of fresh peas.
I found this recipe on thekitchn and I started drooling just thinking about it. I don't know how I am going to wait the month or so it'll take for my peas to be ready.

exhausted

I'm sorry about the slow posting. I've had a depressing past couple of days, but I have a few things to look forward to in the next couple of days that will cheer me up.
Drinks with a friend tomorrow night, breakfast with friends Friday morning, a friend's band's (Scarlett Oaks) EP release party on Saturday, and tons and tons of tomatoes from the garden!
image here.

Julie & Julia

this afternoon we took a break from the sudden heat and went to see Julie and Julia, and I loved it!
To be honest, I thought that Julie Powell was a little whiny and annoying and kinda wished she'd go away half the time she was on screen, but that might just be because Meryl Streep is so great and Julia Child so fascinating that I wanted to see more of her.

One thing that interested me in particular was when Julia made braised cucumbers. Cooked cucumbers?!??!?
Interesting.
I'm going to give it a go next time we have a ripe cucumber in the garden.


I found a recipe here. It's not Julia Child's recipe, but it sounds good and I'm going to have to wait to try Julia's until the book I just ordered arrives.
( Yes, I came home from the movie and ordered Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and I imagine so did every other person who saw the movie and didn't already own it.)

Tip: Don't go to this movie hungry.

pom pom

Steven's parents are coming to visit next month (they live in France and don't visit very often) and I am using it as an excuse to put the house together, especially the guest room!
I'm thinking about curtains, and am a little bit in love with pom pom fringe. But yesterday when I went to a fabric store with a friend she looked at me like I was completely nuts for even thinking about it.
What do you think?
(I wish I remember where I found this image.)

RIP John Hughes

So many of John Hughes movies were filmed in the suburbs north of Chicago where I grew up. Girls I knew high school had been extras in "She's Having A Baby", parts of "The Breakfast Club" and the final scenes of "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" were filmed in and around my junior high, the "Home Alone" house was just down the street from where I had my first job, etc, etc.

Sometimes watching those films feels like watching home movies. (Just the background shots! My parents never forgot my birthday or left me behind, and I never went to detention on Saturday.)

Life goes by pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in awhile, you could miss it.
-Ferris Bueller

packed up

I'm not sure how I stumbled on them this weekend, but I am a little bit in love with Mark Jenkins packing tape installations.


check out more of them here.

heads or tails

today is the 100th anniversary of the Lincoln penny, the longest running US coin. (it replaced the Indian head penny in 1909.)

Teddy Roosevelt commisioned it to celebrate Lincoln's 100th birthday, but some of the former confederate soldiers still around at the time didn't much like carrying Lincoln around in their pockets.

to celebrate Time has a list of the "Top 10 Things You Didn't Know About the Penny".