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We really enjoy simple, flavorful cooking. When DH came home with four, fat artichokes – there was nothing else to do but grab a lemon, call our friends J & J and enjoy the feast!
DH added crispy cinnamon & garlic potatoes. Our friends added thinly sliced cucumber with feta, rounding out this vegetarian meal.
Here is the Artichoke & Lemon recipe and the Cinnamon Roasted Potatoes recipe.
You may also like Brussels Anyone? and Leek Soup & Persimmons.
Now our prairie is golden, white and the deep purple of native asters. Berries and crab apples are now brilliant red too.
And our 3 foot-square garden is on its third crop of Swiss chard (first crop the deer ate) and purple peppers.
In a garden plot, on a patio or in a pot – it’s fun to grow some of the food we eat. Plus, it reminds us to be cognizant of where out food comes from, who grows it and how much effort, water and work it takes to bring food to our table. For those of us in the U.S., much of our fruits & vegetables are harvested by undocumented workers, essentially slave labor.
Wow – just made fresh basil pesto with chopped, Minnesota walnuts (a gift from my friend J) and basil just cut from the Farmers’ Market.
Chop the basil (about 2 cups) and stuff in the blender. Add a handful of walnuts, shredded Parmesan and a sprinkle of salt & pepper. Drizzle with olive oil and blend. Smooth, delicious, basil pesto.
Use as a dip with chips or pittas. Spread on toasted, French baguette slices. Mix with pastas. Dollup in soups – especially Italian Minestrone. Mmmm.
But you can make many other kinds of pesto with many ingredients. These are great – use with crackers, bread, pasta, fish, roasted vegies. Here are some examples from Saveur.
Most use in-season greens, peppers, tomatoes, even . . . . (drum roll for DH) SARDINES!
You may also like Tomato Time for a twist on the ultimate grilled cheese sandwich.
With wheat prices spiralling out of control and food costs going up – we decided to get more creative about eating, and eating well.
I thought that Tyler Cowen’s new book An Economist Gets Lunch: new Rules for Everyday Foodies (Dutton: 2012) might help with that. For example, he suggests using Asian groceries for a more inexpensive, wider selection of greens (Hmmm, there’s a Vietnamese grocery just around the corner . . .).
However, many of his suggestions were tired; when traveling we already know to ask the locals where they eat, for example. Likewise we know to check ethnic restaurants in neighborhood strip malls away from pricey downtown areas.
Nevertheless, his idea to turn any Chinese restaurant in this country into an excellent Chinese restaurant was a good one; ask to speak to the chef and requesting what he would make for himself with tofu.
But on other fronts, I wondered how much was he paid by big agribusiness and the genetically modified food industry to wax on about how wonderful these industries are? The reality that economists are funded in academia by big agribusiness seems especially obvious here. Plus he ends up refuting his own glossy account of agribusiness by explaining at length, later in the book, how much better Mexican beef is because it’s grass fed, or how much better the tortillas are, handmade using local corn, etc. So Tyler which is it? Is big agribusiness creating better food or not?
Toward the end of the book he lost me when his section on France failed to highlight the fabulous street food (can you say golden mushroom crepes anyone?) and fresh fruits/vegies available at any Parisienne neighborhood, morning market – not to mention the delicious and inexpensive table wines at even the local Monoprix. Made me wonder, was he actually in France?
This led me to question overall what he writes about hunger, food distribution and the food industry. He may be an economist, but he’s a privileged, American, white male who doesn’t know much about the complex problem of hunger, countries made poor (by rich ones) or multi-national corporate interests when it comes to food.
Farmers’ Market vegies means a summer of vegie smoothies. They are a great breakfast, lunch or snack to go. In our kitchen we use whatever happens to be in the fridge.
In the picture above I used broccoli, carrots, banana and melon. Add a bit of honey and almond butter if you like. Fresh mint or a bit of lemon juice could have been added as well. Puree, chill, and enjoy a great tasting light green, vegie smoothie.
Today I tried fresh red beets, carrots, cantaloupe with an orange. Add a bit of coconut milk and puree. Chill and keep the entire pitcher in the fridge. Enjoy. The color here is beet red. You could substitute strawberries, an apple or a pear for the orange.
Any way you slice it – it’s refreshing, it’s easy, no cooking, uses local produce, it’s cool, it’s delicious and it’s healthy.
You may also like One Artichoke, One Lemon.