gourmet

I have learned that I can make really good food if I follow a really good recipe. And if I follow multiple really good recipes, then I can make a really good meal!

Last week before we went to WI for a quick vacation, I wanted to cook a dinner that would use up the potatoes we got from the farmer's market. So I found a Moosewood recipe for broiled potatoes and things, which sounded quite good. I even had a red pepper that I needed to use, so it worked out perfectly. I also appreciate that the cookbooks give recommended pairings. This one recommended fish. So I went to the grocery store intending to get kale (because I just can't stop making this recipe), some mushrooms (for the broiled vegetable thing), and fish (salmon in particular).

I didn't get to the grocery store until later in the evening, after the Coop had closed, so I had to go to a typical kind of grocery store. In this grocery store I had no idea where to find fish, and as I was wandering I came across a freezer that had duck in it. No longer was the plan to pair the veggies with fish, but we just upgraded to duck. Duck is one of my all-time favorite foods that I eat very infrequently. Add an ear of corn from the farm stand that had to get eaten before we left, and we ended up with a gourmet meal, if I might say so myself!

hass please

Last week when I was at the grocery store I came across this guy!

It is an avocado! And it is huge!

Apparently this is a Florida Avocado, which has a lower fat content than a typical hass avocado (by weight, not by volume). The little sign in the grocery store said to choose one that had a smooth green skin, which was essentially all of them. I'm not really sure how to know if it is ripe or not, so I just went ahead and tasted it right away.

I had been planning to have avocado on toast, because that is a thing I've heard of. And I really like avocado. And toast is not bad. Then I remembered that avocado and a poached egg on toast is a thing, so I made that instead.

 

I can see why this would be a delicious thing. I am going to stick with my hass avocados though. This one wasn't terrible, and it might not have been ripe, but to me, it just tasted like a watered-down avocado. Maybe it would be good for making guacamole?

Sidenote: That was the most perfect poached egg I've ever made.

More cooking!

This week I made some gazpacho! When we were in Barcelona we ate gazpacho several times (partly because it was a word we knew on the menu... those tricky catalan-speakers). I found a few recipes online that looked good. I almost went with the Alton Brown recipe, because you really can't go wrong with Alton Brown, but I decided to go with the recipe from the pioneer woman blog. Although I did garnish with a chiffonade of basil, as recommended by Alton (only after googling 'chiffonade' of course).

I really loved that there was a zucchini in the recipe I used. (sidenote: there is a red squiggle line under zucchini, but I am pretty sure that is the proper spelling?) I followed the recipe almost exactly, only I made sure to remove the seed goop from the tomatoes. But I left the seeds in the cucumber, because I'm not really offended by those.

Our craft night meal consisted of the gazpacho, bread, kale salad, and iced green tea with mint and honey. It was about the most amazing summer meal ever.

Cakepops

Even the name sounds totally ridiculous. Cakepops are one of those things that I just could not understand. They have a very large presence on pinterest. And they look very nice in all the pictures. But at the same time they just look kind of ridiculous. And why did they just have to become so popular. And who invented the name cakepop?

Well, the other day I went to a well-known coffee shop, and there was a cakepop just sitting on a plate. Greg ordered 'that thing on the stick' for me, and that was when my view totally changed.

Cakepops are delicious!

They are way more delicious than regular cake. Or cupcakes. Or any other variation on cake.

So I had to make them! I followed the instructions that came with that pinterest pin with the beautiful pictures. The first one just plopped right down the stick, like this.

Making cakepops was kind of a frustratingly particular task. And yet, the outcome was worth the pain. After making about 30 duds I managed to make some that were somewhat presentable.

I even made a special one with a star (see it in the photo!) for Julie! And I didn't take a photo, but after these I ran into the backyard and got four blueberries and stuck them on the top of cakepops.

Oh cakepops... what a strangely magnificent invention.

why I love my grocery store

Those, my friends, are morels. Last year Greg and I spent a lot of time wandering in the woods looking for these most amazing, but elusive, mushrooms. We still have never seen one in the wild. We acquired these from our grocery store (priced at $44/lb!! luckily they weigh next to nothing). I was instructed by an aunt who knows about wilderness things that the proper way to cook a morel is to fry it in butter. And all those folds basically act as numerous spaces to soak up the butter. Delicious.

$6 worth of mushrooms + pork + beer = a very adequate dinner

Me and a lumberjack

Here I am with a lumberjack. We found him near our house, so I had to stop to get a photo.

This might seem unrelated, but bear with me for a moment. I like to look at fashion blogs. To the uninitiated, this is a blog that a person has created, dedicated to posting daily outfit photos. One thing fashion bloggers like to talk about is pattern mixing. This is where a person might where a piece of clothing that has a floral print with a piece of clothing with a striped print, for example. I once talked to Greg about pattern mixing, and when it came up in a later conversation he referred to it as pattern matching. And I really think this is better terminology, because anyone can mix patterns, but if you are going to make the patterns match it requires some thought and care.

So there I am, pattern matching and standing next to a lumberjack.

In which I cook

The month of July is a vacation month for me. I still have work things that I need to do. And life things that I need to take care of. But I am doing these things with the mindset of being on vacation. One thing I've prioritized for vacation time is to cook delicious food. I've also been taking photos of my foods, so now I'm going to blog about it. Probably I'll have some more food blogging in the near future too. Because I wouldn't want to pack it all into one jumbo post.

The most delicious foods I've been making are from my Moosewood Restaurant cookbooks. The other day I made a stir fry that called for tofu, but I switched it out for pork. We have a lot of pork in our household these days. It was incredibly delicious. After that experience I needed to try another, so I went with the greek lentil burgers. I didn't alter this recipe to include pork though.

Here we are in the prep stage. On the left is before it was mixed. You can see there are some bread crumbs, fried veggies, lentils, and (on the very bottom) the glue: chickpeas blended with some eggs.

Done! And they were quite tasty! We ate them on buns with a slice of tomato, but the following day I skipped the bun. The burgers were kind of dry. I think I over-fried the veggies, and I blame it on our stove being hotter than I would expect.

The end!

Fin

Our Barcelona trip has ended. Perhaps in the future I'll share more of the photos I took. Perhaps, it is more likely that I won't be able to do that though.

 

This was the sad sad screen that showed up while we were at Park Güell. 

Luckily Greg had saved some of my earlier photos onto his computer, so I've got those. And I took a few photos with my small camera after the demise of my big camera, but I sort of lost my zeal for photography after this incident. But it is okay. It has been interesting to think about where I want to put myself in the spectrum of caring about my things such that I avoid a throw-away mentality versus not caring about my things to avoid becoming overly materialistic.