A Blogging Vacation

I've been taking an unexpected blog vacation, due to a lot of things going on, I feel like I'm not cooking as much as I would like to be. I also just recently broke my camera, bad. I will be back to normal blogging activity soon, with some photos to illustrate but as of today I am taking a literal vacation for a couple of weeks and who knows how much I will be blogging. In the mean time cook a fun meal and share it with people you love, enjoy the warm summer days, and the fruits and vegetables that are a result of them.

These are from my friend Anna's yard, I think they are amazing and are a perfect gift of brightness. 

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Cucumber Mango Salsa

One of my favorite tomato less salsas is from The Moosewood Restaurant New Classics cookbook. With the abundance of cucumbers I decided to make a salsa adapted from  the Black Bean Mango Salsa recipe.

Cucumber Mango Salsa

2 cucumbers 

1 mango

1 can of black beans

about a 1/4 of cup of chopped cilantro

Juice of 1 lime

1 large jalapeno

salt and pepper

Dice the mango and cucumbers. Chop up the jalapeno including as many seeds as you want for as spicy as you want. Add a drained and rinsed can of black beans, along with the cilantro and lime juice. Season with salt and pepper.

Enjoy.

This is a great summer side We ate it with tortilla chips, and it's also quite delightful on top of fish. It's amazing how a little cucumber goes a long way. The cucumber gives a nice cooling fresh crunch that will relieve any warm day. I wish I had had more mango because the cucumber was more abundant but that didn't stop us from diving in with a tortilla chip in hand. 

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A Little Roasted Tomatoes And Zucchini For Breakfast

With the remaining cherry tomatoes, I woke up this morning thinking about roasting them. I love roasted tomatoes and cherry tomatoes are perfect because they don't take to long to roast and the roasting adds another depth of flavor to their perfect sweetness. I cut them in half and quarters and put them in a 400 degree oven, on a foil lined pan,  somewhere between 15-20 minutes until they get nice and soft and a little brown on top. While the tomatoes roasted I sauteed the two zucchini in a little olive oil and one slivered garlic clove until they had a nice tan color. Setting the veggies aside, I scrambled the eggs and then added the zucchini and tomatoes to the eggs when they were just about done. An easy filling breakfast.

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E.T. Phones Home For A Beach Potluck

Summer allows for lots of outside entertainment and a good part of the time it is free. In Long Beach we have Movies on the Beach, showing a free movie at a different part of the beach Monday through Thursday. It's a great way to get together and watch a cult classic like Pee Wee's Big Adventure with a bunch of people on a big screen. The last week of August they're playing Jaws all week, which is an appropriate way to end summer.

Last night we saw E.T which I probably have not seen in at least 15 years. It's such a great film to enjoy on a large screen and to be able to see it with a bunch of friends. All while enjoying a shared hodgepodge of food. In planning of what to bring I knew I wanted to make a dent in the cucumbers because I had so many, and use some of the  purple basil because it does not last long.

I found an caprese inspired salad that uses tomato, nectarine, and basil  but because it had to be something that traveled well I decided to just to throw everything together in a bowl. This could not be easier and the nectarines were so perfectly sweet that they complemented the tomatoes and basil.  The purple basil gave a dark contrast to the red, yellow, and white. This turned out really well and now I'm curious as to what other items I can add to a caprese salad.

I also made an elderflower cucumber drink that is really refreshing and not to sweet. I found elderflower syrup at Ikea yesterday, I had to return something, and thought it would be good mixed with the cucumber. Using 6 parts mineral water to one part syrup plus one cucumber.  I now might just start adding cucumbers to everything I drink. This is a great crisp drink that would cool any summer night especially in the company of friends and good movies.






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Summer Has Landed

I've been on a little blog break lately. I am now ready to cook and enjoy the fruits and vegetables of summer. This is the newest box, I don't know if you can see them but, there are a ton of cucumbers. I am looking through lots of recipes and getting ideas of things to make with them. Along with all the various greens, there are nectarines, squash, and the first of the tomatoes.  I love all the different colors that have arrived and I can't wait to show you what I did with them.

Pickled Chard

Chard with leaves. 

If you eat a lot of leafy greens a majority of the time the stem gets tossed into the trash. I found a recipe that uses the stem in a great innovative way and there is no cooking involved, just an exercise in patience. In the last issue of Bon Appetit  I found a little blurb about fridge pickles, using the stems of chard. I love just about anything pickled and I liked that this used an item that is not used very often. I doubled the recipe because I had about 3 cups of chard stems.
I did however add 1 less cup of sugar, mainly because I thought it was too much.
Here is the doubled recipe:

Swiss chard Stems

2 cups of white vinegar

3 cups of sugar

1 thinly sliced onion

6 Tablespoons of Sriracha

1 teaspoon of celery seed

Mix the vinegar, sugar, onion, Sriracha, and celery seed. Pour it over the chopped chard stems. Let hang out in fridge for a few days and then eat. 

Pickled chard

These are really good sweet and slightly spicy because of the Sriracha. We've just been snacking on them periodically but I think they would be really great in a sandwich. This is a great item to have on hand now that summer is in full swing, something that is easy to make, eat, and is great for the summer get together, beach party and lazy evenings ahead.

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A Birthday Beach Quiche

 We were going to celebrate my mom's birthday in an early evening beach picnic and I wanted to make something that would travel well, could sit at room temperature for a while, and would be easy to eat at the beach. I also wanted to use collard greens because nothing says birthday beach picnic like collard greens.

 Looking through collard green recipes, a common pairing is collards with bacon. I've been avoiding this combo just because I wanted something else to make that was a  little bit more exciting. Then  I found a recipe on Food52 for a Beloved Greens Quiche.
Quiche might just be the perfect food. It can be eaten for any meal, it is good warm or at room temperature, and just about anything can be put into a quiche. Quiche is actually pretty easy to make as well, the most time consuming process is letting the dough chill.

I followed the recipe pretty closely, making my dough early in the day and then assembling the rest later. This recipe calls for 2 cups of cooked collard greens but I added an extra cup just because I wanted to use all of the greens. In the ingredients it lists cheddar cheese but I didn't add it. When I pulled the quiche out of the oven it was big giant egg poof. It looked really cool. This tasted great, no wonder collards and bacon are paired together so much.

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