Nadda frittata, but a tasty pile of kale and potatoes

Kelly * July 23 * Brunch

So, I have conquered the kale we have received to date. We're a couple of days behind on the blogging, but we were both actually productive workers yesterday (and if girls can't keep jobs then girls can't have a CSA share and then girls won't blog). Anyway, we'll try to catch up in the next couple days.

Today's brunch was lovely. The goal was to plow through our kale and use some of the German butter potatoes we purchased from Visser's at last weekend's trip to the Holland, MI farmers' market. This was a success. The recipe I used came from SELF magazine. Somewhere between the picture and the recipe was a serious lie. Don't get me wrong, it was delicious, but 2 eggs and 2 egg whites will not emerge as a major component when mixed in with a full pound of kale. Again, it was delicious. It just wasn't really a fritatta.

What do you need:
1 yellow onion (sliced)
1 pound of kale (trimmed of stems, rough chopped, and blanched in boiling water for 3min.)
1 pound of German butter potatoes (boiled and diced)
2 cloves of garlic (rough chopped)
Oil (a smidge)
2 eggs
2 egg whites
2T water
1/2t smoked paprika

Sautée onions in a small amount of oil for 5 minutes. Add garlic and blanched, chopped kale and sautée on medium heat for 5 minutes. Add Boiled and diced potatoes.

In separate bowl, whisk 2 eggs, whites, water, and paprika.

In separate bowl, add veg mixture to egg mixture.

Oil the bottom and sides of a cast iron skillet and transfer veg and egg mixture. Cook over medium heat for 1 minute. Bake at 400 for about 8 minutes (until the eggs appear set). Throw in the broiler for a couple minutes to crisp up kale a bit more.

So, once we came to terms with the fact that this was not an egg dish we were good to go. Per the recipe's suggestion, we had baked tomatoes. The tomatoes were halved, cored, and sprinkled with Tuscan seasoning, salt, pepper, fresh basil, and grated pecorino cheese. The tartness and juiciness of the tomato was a perfect complement to the crispy kale. We also took full advantage of some leftover Italian sausage.

So, this was in fact a fab brunch to be had in the sunroom on a day when the heat broke.

But I Don't Even Know What Patty Pan Squash Is. Oh Well, Put Butter in It

JULY 20 * DINNER * KELLY

So, we've started to get a mess of squash again. We're not even partial to squash. So, we go headlong into our search for recipes that don't make us sick of squash. Again, thanks epicurious.

I'm pretty sure tonight's dinner made Liz love me more. I generally shy away from butter except when baking. It makes her sad. Anyway, out of desperation with the freaky, squat patty pans I buckled to a recipe that featured butter. The overall dinner was buttered and herbed squashes (patty pan and zucchini), pan-cooked salmon (sautéed in olive oil, salt, and pepper), and hot pepper sour dough bread (for which I can take no responsibility). I must have enjoyed it, as I was finished when Liz was only half through (but that's nothing new. One would think my parents didn't feed me.)

So, on to the squash recipe. It's really easy. The only thing that made the process difficult was uninstalling an old AC (whose water we dumped all over the kitchen) and installing a new one while sautéing the squash.

So, buttered and herbed squash recipe (whose base came from here):

What you need:
Approx 2 cups sliced zucchini (one large)
Approx 2 cups patty pan squash (one and a half particularly large patty pan)
2T butter
About 20 basil leaves (chop small)

Cut zucchini in half lengthwise and cut into half inch slices. Cut patty pans in half (through the middle, not topmto bottom). Melt 2T butter in a heavy skillet. Sautée squashes until tender. Season with salt and pepper to taste. When finished mix basil with squash.

In the end, it was more delicious than I generally find squash. Maybe it was just the butter.

The salmon was a nice complement. Liz had just purchased a fillet from Whole Foods. To avoid running the oven, she cooked it on the stovetop. She's going to have to tell you for how long. All I know is that we covered both sides in olive oil and salt and pepper and it was tasty and delicious and tender.

I'm finding the pressure of being in charge of the cooking a little stressful, but Ms. Flauto is always there when I start to look panicky. I am not self-sufficient.

Big Ass Kale and Fettucini Dinner

JULY 21* DINNER * KELLY

So, we continue our quest to use the kale. This is made particularly challenging by the fact that one of our CSA partners holds kale in very low esteem and therefore passes their share on to us. So, go kale! Tonight we went for an incarnation of this recipe

We've historically been fans of pasta with greens. This seemed like a win-win situation. Things I learned:

A. There is no such thing as too much breadcrumb topping
B. Even if it seems that you have put a scary amount of dried chillis into the breadcrumbs, you may be okay.
C. When you add breadcrumbs to the pasta it will soak up all moisture. Some added oil can't hurt.
D. Even if you don't believe it's so, if you drain the pasta and put the uncooked kale and the pasta back in the pot immediately, the heat of the pasta will cook the kale.

What you need:
A bunch of kale (stems trimmed off and rough chopped small)
Olive oil
100g bread crumbs
200g or about half a pack of pasta (we used Fettucini because it was around)
3 chopped garlic cloves
1T dried chilli flakes (the recipe asked for 1t but I'm a bit heavy-handed when it comes to heat)
1 can of tuna (the recipe called for anchovies, we wished we had anchovies, we spent way too much time discussing whether one of us would go get anchovies, but tuna had to do)
lemon zest and juice from half a lemon


Easy schmeasy:

While you boil the water for the pasta, rough chop the kale. In a skillet, add some olive oil and sautée the garlic over medium to medium high heat. Add breadcrumbs and chillis and stir until golden brown. When pasta is ready, drain and return to pot immediately and add kale, tuna, lemon, and a bit of olive oil. (We used about two thirds of the tuna and gave the rest to the cats; they were pleased.) I don't recommend using all of the breadcrumbs. Start with half and go from there.

Sunburn and Blueberries = Gifts from Michigan - That's how the blueberries crumble

JULY 18 * DESSERT * KELLY

So, we spent a lovely weekend in Holland, MI. I got to see Liz's show -- Children of Eden -- at Hope Summer Rep. (That Stephen Schwartz really does seem to prefer religion more in Godspell than Children of Eden.) We had dinner with her dad, caught the new Harry Potter (yes please), and rented us a motorized catamaran. So, good time was had, despite Liz getting a freakish sunburn on her forearms and me having a shoulder burn that kids who can't apply sunscreen get. Anyway, why are we having this walk down Michigan memory lane? While we were there we bought some amazing raspberries, cherries, and a mess of blueberries at the farmers' market. We ate most of the fruit on the boat (perhaps why we didn't pay attention to the sunscreen), but we saved the blueberries for home.

Monday night we headed to our CSA partners' hood to pick up our veg. We pooled our resources and made an amazing cobb salad. Liz made a homemade ranch dressing. My contribution was this here blueberry crisp. The answer is that it was delicious. That seemed to be the general consensus, as we just kept eating it out of the pan. It was juicy with a little bit of crispy. Brian bought vanilla ice cream and lemon sorbet. It was perfect and delicious (and pretty much gone).

So, it was easier than pie. The recipe can be found here (thanks epicurious and Bon Apetite):


All you need

About 3 cups of fresh blueberries
2 tablespoons plus 1/4 cup (packed) golden brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon (I may have been heavy handed here, but it was tasty)

1/2 cup quick-cooking oats (I only had regular oats and it worked fine)
2 tablespoons all purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons (1/4 stick) chilled unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
1/4 cup sliced almonds (why these were in my freezer I don't know)

Preheat oven to 350°F. Rinse blueberries. Drain. Place berries in 9-inch glass pie dish. Sprinkle with 2 tablespoons brown sugar and cinnamon; stir to blend. Let stand until sugar dissolves and coats berries. Stir oats, flour, salt, and remaining 1/4 cup brown sugar to blend in medium bowl. Add butter and rub in with fingertips or fork until moist clumps form. Stir in almonds. Sprinkle oat mixture evenly over blueberries. Bake crisp until berries are bubbling and topping is golden, about 35 minutes.

Elizabeth * July 18 * DESSERT

The woman can bake. We did have a hard time leaving the one portion that Kelly had for breakfast. The spoons flew.

See this is what I mean. I would not have put cinnamon with blueberries to begin with. I would have read the recipe and thought, "that won't go" and left it out. Then I might have decided to add some other things. Lemon maybe, or butter, or black pepper, or garlic. (I can't lay off the garlic.) So I might have invented something new that no one ever had before, but I would never have known what a good idea cinnamon is. And I definitely wouldn't have had the discipline to do it twice. For consistency, vote Kessler every time. We had not one but two awesome blueberry cinnamon desserts in one week and now we know.

This crisp also had the added advantage of being actually good for us. Very little sugar and butter, lots of fresh fruit, good fiber topping, aand TONS of flavor. I love blueberries. I love Michigan. And despite this hellish heatwave, I love summer foods. I tell you what though, there will be no baking this week.

Arroz con paella or whatever tasty business this is sans clams

KELLY * DINNER * JULY 12

Okay, so I'm not totally sure how I feel about this, but I seem to be the one cooking these days. Given, Liz is slaving away at work and I seem to be stuck in neutral as I try to shift gears and start working on article revisions. Cooking = finite tasks. Writing = being smart. I currently can't seem to muster up the latter. Anyway, here I go. While perusing one of our issues of Cooking Light (see base recipe here), I came upon a clam paella recipe. As we did not get our act together in procuring the clams, this will be sans seafood and including some Trader Joe's chile-lime chicken. Liz is now making me call it arroz con pollo. Apparently I'm easily bullied.

What do you need:

3T olive oil
2 decent size yellow onions - diced
2 pablano peppers - diced
4 garlic cloves
1/2t black pepper
1 1/2t salt
1/2t saffron threads - crushed
1t dried pepper flakes (it asked for 1/8t, but live a little)
3/4c halved cherry tomatoes
2 ears of corn - de-kerneled
1/2c chunks of Trader Joe's chile-lime chicken strips

Per Cooking Light:

1. Preheat oven to 450°.
2. Heat oil in a 12-inch ovenproof skillet over medium-high heat. Add onion, garlic, poblanos, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 1/4 teaspoon black pepper; sauté 3 minutes. Add rice and saffron. Cook 2 minutes; stir constantly. Add 2 cups water, 3/4 teaspoon salt, 1/4 teaspoon black pepper, and red pepper; bring to a boil.
3. Bake at 450° for 50 minutes or until rice is done. Stir in corn and tomatoes. Nestle clams into rice mixture. (NOTE: i only needed to bake this for about 30 minutes. By then the rice was finished. The liquid was gone. Another 20 minutes would have been a disaster, at least in my oven.) Bake at 450° for 12 minutes or until shells open, and discard unopened shells. (NOTE: you don't have to wait for the chicken to open.)'

Ok, so as it turns out, the fact that I made this dinner did not lead to it sucking. It was delicious. The timing was perfect. The garlic baguette was just crisped the moment that Liz walked into the house from work. I was officially a perfect 1950s wife. My heels and pearls had been replaced with an Austin t-shirt and camouflage shorts, but nonetheless.
I firmly look forward to making this again with the clams. Really, we inhaled it. Look at Lizzie and the clean plate club. My only regret is that I don't have more leftovers. For those who fear spice, this had a nice heat, but was not inedible if you like heat. It was perfect for us.

ELIZABETH * JULY 12 * DINNER

I know how I feel about this. Great. I don't mind at all walking in the house from slaving over a hot Internet all day to a cold glass of wine, a hot meal, and a doting K, pearls or no pearls. Just the kind of meal to set me right up for an evening of fierce eBay competition. Look out hat block buying millinery dorks.

This recipe is definitely a keeper. I think you could make it with anything: clams as suggested, a nice piece of fish, chicken was great, some pork loin pieces... And you could throw whatever veg you wanted in there. It has a great flavor, the corn was crunchy and fresh tasting, the poblanos flavorful, and those Trader Joe's people are clever bastards.

Again I say, no complaints when the little lady puts on her ruffly apron and gets out her home ec recipe file.

Why I fear wieners and a potato disaster

KELLY * DINNER * JULY 11

So, after weeks of being out of town, rushing around, eating anything but natural food, we're floundering to work our way through our produce, meat, and the like that is piling up in our fridge. As Liz is working at The Wolf and I'm only somewhat getting my butt in gear, the responsibility of making sure we don't starve (unlikely) and our food does not rot has been left up to me. As everyone knows, I'm not our ringer. Pretty much all I can do is follow directions. This is why I prefer baking. This dinner was a prime example of:

A. My propensity for screwing up easy foods
B. The impossibility of screwing up cabbage
C. My overall fear of cooking sausages (I don't know why)

Anyway, the goal was to crack into a package of German wieners Ms. Flauto brought back from the Holland, MI farmers' market. I had planned to make a potato salad (therefore saving some red potatoes from certain demise), sautéed cabbage (from our CSA box), and said wieners. What occurred was some facsimile of that menu and much sturm und drang.

Step 1 cook wieners.
I know this should have been easy, but I never know when they're done. I don't know when to add water. It just makes me anxious. Nonetheless, tasty.

Step 2 make potatoes.
Okay, I admit it, I was boiling potatoes while trying to finish watching an episode of Boston Legal. I'm addicted. Denny and Alan fascinate me, Julie Bowen is hilarious, and, well I needn't even qualify Candice Bergen. Anyway, I over-boiled the potatoes, thought I could just switch to mashed, and discovered that I had created wallpaper paste. Fail.

Step 3 stomp around kitchen and come up with alternative plan.
Easy schmeasy back-up plan = boil a couple servings off egg noodles until they're done, drain, add 2T butter and a random amount of your new random dried herb. (Liz told me to use it but never figured out what it was)

Step 4 make cabbage.
My recipe was based on the this recipe (see link).

I cut the recipe in half and used what I had.

Ingredients

1/4 head of cabbage
2T butter
1 diced yellow onion
Salt and pepper to taste
1.5T apple cider vinegar

So, just melt the butter in a skillet. Cut the onion into slivers and sautée in butter until translucent. Rough chop the cabbage and sautée with onion, salt, pepper, and vinegar. Cook on medium to medium high for, well, as long as it takes. The recipe said 60-90 minutes. I think I did more like 45. It was lovely.

Step 5 wait for Liz to come home and cross fingers that food is not awful. (it is a disadvantage that I don't like to taste while cooking. Luckily I broke this rule with the potatoes.

ELIZABETH * JULY 11 * DINNER

Here's the thing: she's not really a bad cook. Adventurous? No. Improvisational? Nyet. Edible? Totally. The cabbage was astonishingly tasty. It came out so sweet and succulent and delicious I thought it had sugar in it. The wiener was fine. They are very good sausages from 20th Century Meat Market - you would have to really try to screw them up. They are smoked wieners for Pete's sake. I don't know what herb it was on the noodles - it came in the CSA box. Maybe marjoram? Anyway again, noodles + butter + fresh herb = yum. When Kelly is the wife, it is home cookin, but really, what's wrong with that?

Welcome CSA partners - how about a breakfast pizza

KELLY * JULY 9 * BRUNCH

So, this was really meant to be the first blog post of the season. We were out of town for the first three veg deliveries of the season. Yes, sometimes life gets in the way of veg. We'd like to thank our CSA partners for valiantly claiming the veg and surprising us with what had not wilted when we got back from our unexpected (well, my unexpected) trip to Cleveland. When folks will double as cat sitters and veg deliverers, you have to hold on to those folks. Anyway, hats off to the Hotzmasters and Baby A for watching the cats and the veg.

That said, I went and picked up the veg this week. As always I stood in the pick up spot with a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other. I wasn't putting anything in the swap box, but could I take something out? I admit it, I took an extra chard (but that's for a later meal). Anyway, picked up the veg while my lovely gf prepared a tasty, delicious, and anything but mundane breakfast for the Hotzmasters and us. All I know is when I said, "Let's get us one of them there Boboli pizza crusts," this was not what I had in mind, but this woman can do things with an egg!

When our guests arrived, they were greeted with our bounty of veg, iced coffee (from a Zabar's blend I brought back from NYC), fresh blueberries with sugar and fresh mint (provided by Liz's Steppenwolf colleague), and a breakfast pizza of tomato sauce (win), sautéed red onion and zucchini (win), mozzarella (win), fresh basil, bacon (need I say it), and 4 eggs oven baked on top of said pizza (ding, ding, ding). Totally unique, light (despite the bacon-palooza), and summer-licious. I think all were in unmitigated agreement. Yes, summer had arrived. We were finally back home. And to paraphrase the immortal words of Bonnie Raitt, "it gave us somethin' to blog about."

So, it was something like this:

1 Boboli pizza crust
Half a giant zucchini (from CSA) sliced
Few slices of a red onion
6 pieces of bacon
A handful of rough chopped basil (CSA)
6oz of a shredded 3 cheese blend (asiago, mozzarella, and parm)
4 eggs
1/2 cup of Newman's Own Sockarooni sauce

Easy as pie. Top the crust with the sauce. Arrange chopped up pieces of bacon evenly on pie. Sautée onion and zucchini (okay, we totally did it in bacon grease) and arrange on pie. Add basil. Spread out cheese. Crack 4 eggs on top of pizza, being sure to neither break the yolk nor let the egg slide off. Bake at 450 for 15 minutes.

Slice, eat, tasty and delicious. The yolks get hardish but are intact and perfect.

(Hopefully Ms. Flauto will return to the keyboard soon. Right now she's narrating from inside her mystery novel across the room.)

The First Post of Summer: Gimme That Pie

Yes, we've been away for too long.  Work and life have both stepped in the way of blogging and cooking (but never eating).  The rush of winter, spring, and early summer brought us a dearth of exciting foods and an excess of work. Don't get me wrong, there was tasty goodness to be had. Sometimes we even remembered to take pictures of it, but in those cases, life seriously stepped on the toes of the blogging.  That said and in the words of creepy (and taken too soon) girl from Poltergeist, "We're Back."

Okay, now that we got that out of the way, despite the photo, I'm going to try to avoid any of the obvious pie jokes. (Okay, we all know, that pie is sitting in my lap.  Sometimes a girl has to snap a photo while driving to the party.  What's a girl to do??  Risk the pun.)  At the end of the day, this was just a lovely and simple blueberry pie. Sometimes you send your girlfriend out to get bourbon and a baguette and she comes home with rye and a GIANT box of blueberries instead.  So, you have mint juleps, contemplate the unexpected fruit, and determine, "Hey, I could make a heck of a pie."  After a lovely light breakfast side of blueberries and fresh mint (more to come on that later), I crammed another 3 cups of berries into said pie.

There's not so much to say about this here pie.  As I've said a million times in the past I swear by The Joy of Cooking and its pie crust.  It's easy. It's tasty. It's flaky.  It's just a no-brainer.  (Okay, I was almost lured by a cornmeal crust and a sweet corn ice-cream recipe, but as this pie was for someone's BBQ, I thought I'd go with old faithful. I hope to bring you the results of those other recipes later this summer.)  What this pie also proves (aside from the superiority of The Joy of Cooking) is that just because you're running out of ingredients does not mean that you can't pull off the pie.  There was a serious level of scrimping here: running out of sugar, no lemon, running out of non-sketchy Crisco. Fiddlesticks.  No worries. Cinnamon in place of lemon (lovely).  Using a disposable pie pan so you can leave it, you only need a single pie crust recipe to pull off a bottom crust and a lattice.  Go Pie!

What do you need?

Lovely Crust:

• 1 cup flour
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 2T water (and maybe 2T more)
• 1T butter
• 1/3 cup Crisco

So, hypothetically you sift the salt and flour together.  I skipped it this time. The wold did not end.  In another bowl, mix the Crisco and butter together.  Mix half of of the Crisco mixture (stop judging the Crisco. Loretta Lynn hawked it. It can't be that bad.) into the flour mixture.  (I swear by the use of a pastry blender. I'm not sure if it's the pastry blender or the magic of my late grandmother from whom said pastry blender came).  Mix in the second half.  It will start to look cornmeal-y or coarse.  Add the 2T of water, lifting with a fork. In the end, just use your hands to make it into a ball. If you need to add a couple more tablespoons of water, have at it.  For rolling out pie crust, I swear by putting it between 2 pieces of waxed paper.  Just peel from each side before you try to transfer.  As you can see, my pies are never works of art.  I lack precision and grace.  Nonetheless, they're tasty.

The blueberries (also from The Joy of Cooking, just reduced a bit because of the small pan):

• 3 cups fresh berries (4 if you're using a full-size 9inch pan)
• 2/3 to 1 cup or more sugar (I used a little under 2/3 and it needed  no more!)
• 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2T  lemon juice or 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon (I enjoyed the cinnamon and had no lemon)

Okay, so you're supposed to combine ingredients 2-4 before  you mix them in with the berries. Sometimes a girl doesn't actually read the directions and forgets to do so and just mixes them in one by one. No one died and the pie was delicious.  Let the berries sit for 15 minutes and juice up (I gave them 10).  


Bake at 450 for 10 minutes and then at 350 for another 35-40 minutes.  (I ended up turning it back up to 450 for the last 5 or 10 minutes to get my brown on.)


In short, tasty and delicious and thanks to Keri and Jeff Kersten for sending the pie back home with us. I shall now go wake Liz up and we shall head to the kitchen and enjoy leftovers.


Go Pie! And God Bless Loretta and her Crisco.

Cinco de Mayo-My!

Cinco de Mayo and we are back ya'll! I hit the Green City Farmers Market season premier on Wednesday morning and picked up some of the first fruits of the season. I got some kale (the brightest green I've ever seen), swiss chard, purple scallions, mixed wild mushroom, asparagus, fresh basil, mustard garlic (which is apparently a delicious weed), and an amazing honeycrisp apple I ate immediately. This morning Kelly suggested that she would feel deprived of Mexican food if I didn't do something about it, so I made:

Wild Mushroom and Poblano Tosdadas with Ancho Cream Sauce, Braised Asparagus with Smoked Serrano Salt, Black Beans, and Guacamole.

The tostadas were built on Los Pericos tostada shells (which I bought at Morse and assumed were local, but guess what, they are from California. Also please see this site as it is random and hilarious: http://chicagotostada.com/.) I topped them with sliced wild mushrooms from River Valley Ranch sauteed with sliced roasted poblanos and garlic dressed with lime. The sauce on top was sort of based on an Epicurious recipe for enchiladas, but mostly made up. I soaked three dried anchos we bought in a giant bag from Maxwell Street Market, cleaned and pureed them, then combined them with four cloves of garlic, a dollop of heavy cream, a tablespoon or two of honey, some of the liquor from the pepper-soaking, sea salt, and a pinch of ground cloves, ground ginger, and ground allspice. I blobbed some of that on top of the mushrooms, then sprinkled on some shredded cheese and popped it into the oven to melt.

Meanwhile Kelly made guacamole and I roasted the asparagus in some olive oil and water and we heated up a can of goya black beans (cheating but delicious and salty.) After plating we sprinkled on some Central Market Austin smoked serrano salt, which is spicy and smoky and salty and very delicious.

We have both been so looking forward to the coming of spring (where is it?!?) and some fresh veggies and the cooking. This was a fine start to the season. Looking forward to pasta with fresh mozzarella and basil with sausage, beans, and greens for dinner tomorrow!

Bless me bloggers for I have sinned. It has been six weeks since my last post.

Elizabeth * October 31 * Dinner(s)



It is appropriate that I should do this today, as we are marking the end of the CSA season - yesterday we got our last box for the year (and thank God, our last butternut squash). It has been a lovely and deeply satisfying experience to eat the changing seasons. However, in blogging we have slacked off. Kelly went back to school, I got busy with multiple projects, we got a little blogged out. Nonetheless, we have been collecting photos, some of which I will post here and now, with some attempt at recollection of the recipes. Kelly will do the same later on with the baking, which as you know is her department.

The first dish represented is from around the first week of September. It is a combination of a couple of recipes I love. One is my mom's pork chops, among my favorite dishes from my childhood. She slow-bakes them in a mixture of celery and onions in butter, and then tops them with sharp white cheddar. They melt in your mouth. For a faster and slimmer version, I quick pan-fried a pork chop and then topped it with sauteed onions and celery. This is combined with another favorite, from the Sopranos Cookbook: Pan-fried pork chops topped with pickled banana peppers. We have made these peppers several times - they are best when made with hot peppers from Fournie Farms in Collinsville, IL. See post of July 31, 2010 for peppers recipe and Sopranos link. I served this with fresh CSA zucchini and onion saute and some mashed potatoes. We liked it.

Second you see before you a dish we liked so much and ate so fast that I can hardly remember what was in it. We bought some fresh pork sausage from Crafthouse and fresh wild mushrooms from River Valley at Glenwood Sunday Market. I sauteed these items together with some onions, garlic, crushed chilis, and put them on some linguini. A little pecorino rounds it out and IT WAS AWESOME.

Third is the result of a craving I had for a burger. Kelly made me a turkey burger with blue cheese crumbles and bacon, fresh summer tomatoes, and baby field greens, on nutty wheat bread. She served it with some CSA kale chips and roasted yellow potatoes. Kale chips are like salty roasted fairy wings.

When Kelly came back from Austin in September, she brought back not only a bag of breakfast tacos for me from Maudie's (eaten in the car on the way home from O'Hare), but a selection of exciting spices from Central Market, one of my favorite places on earth. Among these was a jerk rub that I rubbed all over some chicken legs from Whole Foods, which will do in the absence of Central Market. Image four shows said chicken leg, pan-blackened and then finished in the oven, accompanied by some steamed CSA broccoli, fresh mini-yellow tomatoes courtesy of Jaime Hotz, and some rough-smashed CSA potatoes with sour cream and black pepper. K is currently moaning at the remembrance of this chicken. It was very spicy and VERY delicious.

Following that is one of many butternut squash dishes of the fall. We have gotten ALOT of squashes. We are both a little ambivalent about squash - I like it, but can get over it fast, and K is suspicious of it in most forms (she says it's too big). We have enjoyed it in many forms, and this was among the best. We discovered we both like it best when it is completely squashed squash. Here is a risotto made with butternut and fresh sage, both from the CSA, that was delish. Our favorite, a similar dish to this, was a fusilli pasta with a sort of squash sauce also made with garlic, sage, hot pepper, and pecorino.

Next to last please observe a delicata squash stuffed with sauteed kale, white beans, and hot turkey italian sausage with pecorino. Kelly very adventurously made this for me last week as I was going into tech for three simultaneous shows. It was great for a late dinner last weekend and great for lunch in between. Thanks, baby!

Last but certainly not least is tonight's dinner. Due to a back-log of veg and two weeks of overindulgence in the dining department, I wanted to make a homey but not too heavy soup with lots of good stuff in it. After about two hours of messing around in the kitchen, I eventually produced the above. It is beef, wild mushroom, and barley soup with carrots, turnip, celery, potato, onion, white beans, fresh thyme and parsley, in a chicken/beef/chardonnay broth. Billie Jo, make this soup. It is rich and very flavorful and filling and tastes like fall. We ate it with Russian pumpernickel toast with laughing cow cheese. Most of the veg and all the herbs are from Angelic, the mushrooms from River Valley again but via Green City Market this time, and the chardonnay from Markko Vineyard, Conneaut, OH, one of my many homes.

So, that's a brief catching up with some highlights of the last 6 weeks! We joined the CSA again for next year already, and in the off-season I am looking forward to exploring some more local vendors now that we won't be landing a load of veg automatically every week! I feel inspired by a great article in Cooking Light this week about artisan food products, and feel so lucky to be in such a great food city surrounded by plentiful lands. We scored some great stuff at Green City this weekend with Dad, Jackie, and Gwenda, so look forward to some lamb stew soon!

Kelly - Later That Night - October 31

Can I just say a few things?

(1) I have really missed the blog. Flauto has been insanely busy and a little blog burned and I have been itching to get back. Honestly, however, it's only half as fun with out my partner in blogging. In short, so glad that she did the turbo blog.

(2) THIS FOOD WAS SOOOOOO GOOD. I'd shank someone for that jerk chicken leg right now. The pork chops with the hot peppers were amazing (and we in fact have more peppers in the fridge just waiting to be pickled), kale chips rock the house (and are so, so, so, so easy), squash does not suck if you disguise it, and tonight's soup was amazing. We eat beef so seldom that it's kind of a treat to do so. This soup had a twinge of the hamburger noodle soup that we used to make in the mid 1990s.

(3) I AM SO SICK OF SQUASH!!! I find foods that are out of scale kind of creepy (e.g. baby carrots, baby corn, fava beans, hominy--although I've learned to give it a pass, and squash). For those of you who don't know, until my mid to late 20s I really only ate white and brown foods. My nickname in college was Kelly the carnivore. Some old habits die hard. In short, I'll miss the CSA boxes, but not the squash. We just visited our CSA boxmates today to pick up our last shipment and their counter was filled with a backlog of squash. It was like a big butternut nightmare.

(4) This summer has taught me not to fear some foods (even if squash are still eerie) and that farmers' markets are not necessarily a money suck and a hippie conspiracy.

(5) In case it doesn't come through in the blog, I want to say that I sure did marry well. Flauto can cook the dickens out of pretty much everything and I count myself a VERY lucky woman.

(6) Keep your eyes open for an upcoming blog post that will chronicle the last few baked goods that I made from the box. Talk soon (eat sooner).

Acorn Squash with a Teeny Sombrero & Tasty Tacos

* September 14 * Dinner

As I noted in the last post, I generally find large squash suspect. This really traces back to one previous attempt to eat some kind of stuffed squash. I'm sure it wasn't the squash's fault. Despite the distance I have come since being dubbed "the carnivore" in college, I still have residual twitchiness regarding some veg. So, I fully admit that I feared the acorn squash. It was too big. In short, it was creepy. Well, wrong again Kessler. Although our dinner did not end up being what we had initially planned (pork chops with fennel orange marmalade), dude it was delicious and has forced me to give over-sized squash a fair shake.

So, as usual I was searching online to find some fool thing to do with CSA acorn squash (something Liz never buys because of my general disdain for said veg). I found this recipe for roasted acorn squash with chile vinaigrette. Because I had already defrosted the pork, but we wanted to fully capitalize on the veg, we ended up making a Southwestern extravaganza: the aforementioned acorn quash, glamorous pork, onion, jalapeño, pablano, red pepper, and green bean fajitas, and black beans and onions. It was truly amazing. I have to fully admit that I ate all of my squash. The vinaigrette was a lovely addition. We worked from the aforementioned recipe but made it lower in fat by using much less olive oil and increasing the citrus factore. We each ate half a squash, a mess of beans, and 2 tacos worth of pork and veg and we still have 2 dinners or 4 lunches of pork, veg, and beans left over. It was a mound of food that did not turn us into a mound of humanity. In my opinion, this is a win and a win. All it needed was a margarita (but I settled for an Old Style Light - don't you judge me!).

Anyway, it went a little something like this:

Roast one 1 sizable acorn squash (cut in half, emptied and brushed with olive oil and dressed with salt and pepper) at 450 for about 45 minutes.

Chili Citrus Vinaigrette:

Whisk together:

• 1 garlic clove (crushed)
• 1/4t salt
• 2t olive oil
• 1/4c juice from an orange and lemon (we didn't have lime so we just squeezed a bit of each)
• a splash of apple cider vinegar
• 1 small red hot pepper (diced)
• 1T chopped cilantro

Spoon onto the squash when it comes out of the oven.

Freaking Amazing Tacos

• 3/4lb of pork chops (trim fat and cut into strips)
• 1 red pepper (cut into strips)
• 1 poblano (cut into strips)
• 1 jalapeño (diced)
• 1 onion (slices)
• 1lb green beans

Sauté 3 types of peppers and onion. Place that in a bowl to the side.

Cook pork in skillet (after coating in chili mix - some mix from once we made chili) and then put in bowl to the side.

Cook green beans in skillet (with remnants of chili mix) and then warm all three parts of the pork and veg together.

We served them in the Tortilla Factory corn tortillas we've discussed in the past. In short, yum and yum.

Yes, it's true that I like almost anything with a Mexican or Southwestern flair. Yes, I have forgiven acorn squash for its previous offenses. Yes, Liz has a 99% success rate (and she made this on the fly while starving and managed not to eat everything in the kitchen while cooking).

On a final note, Liz has been working hard of an evening, so I have been blogging solo (with final Flauto approval). I think it lacks for the absence of her voice. I only fancy myself a baking direction-follower and a skilled eater. Flauto is culinary artist. So please forgive my lack of flair in describing the process.

Liz's Note: Kelly's lack of culinary flair is more due to lack of courage than skill, but she eats boldly and describes with panache. It is a pleasure to cook for and with her. While she does not wing it in cooking, she often comes up with fresh and excellent suggestions for things I should make (ie chili citrus vinaigrette) and is the most receptive of diners. I appreciate her. That is all.

Fall is Nipping At Our Heels - It's Sausage, Veg, and Potato Soup Time

* September 12 * Dinner

So, we're in week 13 of our 20 week CSA share. We're starting to get a little anxious about not having the boxes anymore. As it turns out, we're better at not letting produce go to waste when we have the pressure of next week's box.

So, this box was kind of glorious (and we had things from last week to take care of). We still have to figure out what do to with acorn squash (which honestly freak me out a little). So, for tonight we were trying to take advantage of (a) produce, (b) the cool weather, and (c) some amazing so-called "breakfast" sausage that we bought at the Glenwood Sunday Market a few weeks ago (the pork sausage with rosemary, sage, black pepper, garlic, and tarragon was not necessarily breakfasty, but we used some for a lovely red onion, egg, sausage, tiny hot pepper, spinach, basil, and tomato scramble this morning). Anyway, Liz created a bit of fall soupy tastiness.

The taste well complemented the creepy guy outside the sunroom who kept trying to get passersby to give him change and the guy yelling across the street. Ah, the peaceful sounds of fall on W. Fargo.

Anyway, it was truly lovely, despite my overall aversion to carrots (which I support pureed but do not approve of in chunks. I think this is a holdover from my first 20 years of veggie hatred. The crunch still gets to me.). That said, I thoroughly enjoyed every bit of this soup. It was warm, fresh, and not soggy. It also combined some of my favorite things: potatoes, sausage, and beans. (I fully believe that the majority of people do not take full advantage of beans.)

Anyway, it went a little something like this:

10oz white potatoes, cubed

5oz chopped of collards (CSA)

1/2 large red onion, diced

7 garlic cloves (crushed)

2 small leeks

4 small carrots cut into little discs (CSA)

2oz of seasoned pork sausage (Glenwood Sunday Market)

1 can of Bush's canellini beans

1 T olive oil

6c chicken broth (Costco Organic)

Herbes de Provence

Black Pepper

2T chopped parsley (fresh, CSA)

1t chopped sage (fresh, CSA)

1/4c Chardonnay

Okay, Flauto just rattled off to me how to do it. I'm going to take a shot. You know I'm just a mouthpiece and she's the brains behind this kitchen operation. So, it went as follows (those of you who make soups can likely just turn off right now).

1. Sauté the garlic, onions, and leeks in olive oil

2. Add sausage, potatoes, and carrots and sauté for a bit longer.

3. Add broth, Herbes de Provence, and pepper and bring soup to a boil

4. Add beans and collards and boil until the potatoes are ready

5. Right at the end add fresh herbs and wine

6. Enjoy tasty goodness while watching the tv show that goes on outside your window

Go, fight, win, soup!!!! I'm not sure what we're going to do when the boxes stop coming. Will we get lazy? We're just heading into prime soup time. Only time will tell.

Rosemary-Walnut-Oat-Dried Cherry Cookies - Um, Yes.

Okay, so sometimes Liz comes home from work like this, "So, I have a cookie I need you to bake. I had this cookie at work but yours would be better." It was her belief that the idea behind the cookie (a cherry-rosemary cookie) was brilliance, but that the execution was lacking. I forget the name of the schmancy bakery from which it came. I think maybe it was Flourish. Anyway, she thought it would be good if I could combine the idea of this cookie with a chocolate chip and oatmeal cookie I often make. This is all I have to say, SHE WAS NOT WRONG!!! I can't really impress upon you enough how amazingly good this cookie was. The thing that I like about baking is following directions. Improvising makes me a little nervous (as I'm never sure how well it's going to turn out). In this case, we added the same amount of dried rosemary as I had lavender in a past lavender cookie. So, here is what I did.

Preheat the oven to 350

1 c flour

1/2t baking soda

1/4t baking powder

pinch of salt

1T dried rosemary

1 stick butter

1/2c sugar

1/2c brown sugar

1 egg

1/2t vanilla

1c rolled oats

1c walnuts

1c dried cherries

Sift together the flour, salt, baking powder, and baking soda. Mix in dried rosemary (which I had crushed with a tiny mortar and pestle).

Beat butter and sugars together. Beat in egg and vanilla. Beat (on low) dried ingredients into the wet mixture. Add (with fork) oats, walnuts, and dried cherries.

I have a tendency to make teeny, tiny cookies. I like them that way. I use a small melon baller to scoop my cookies. I guess they are about rounded teaspoons. Place those on a waxed cookie sheet. (I prefer waxed paper to spray, but again, that's just how I roll.)

Bake each batch for about 12 minutes, until slightly brown around the edges.

The smell is amazing. My fear that the rosemary would be too weak was immediately assuaged. The smell during the baking is amazing and the cookies were seriously no let down. I think they're going to have to make their way into the cookie rotation. So, if you feel like trying a somewhat savory cookie (that is totally bad-ass), go for these!

Bake, Schmake, This Tomato Tart Don't Need No Bakin'

KELLY * August 22 * Dinner

So, as you can tell, we've been slacking off a bit. Our summers are catching up with us and the blog has been falling to the wayside. Well, we've been re-making some things (that are not worthy of report). We've been cooking late (and therefore too sleepy to blog). We've taken a few short trips (so not cooking). We've had guests (and therefore wiped out). The new seasons of Jersey Shore and Project Runway started (judge me if you must). In short, life is hard! Anyway, I couldn't let this one go. Last Sunday night we spent the evening with the lovely Hotzmasters (our CSA box partners) and jointly made an amazing dinner from the box. (If I have not mentioned this before, they are lovely dining partners and they often let me sit and drink beers, margaritas, fresh strawberry mojitos, etc. as Liz and Brian cook. Note: I am not slighting Jaime. She made bad-ass cupcakes that night. Liz and Brian, however, seem to enjoy being in charge. As for me, I like watching. I bake what I must and then I sit back and watch the magic happen.)

Anyway, as we have lately been showered with a mess of tomatoes per box, we focused on that angle. The evening was lovely and included the following (and then was topped off by homemade black-bottom cupcakes from Jaime and a little Don Draper):

* Lemon Balm Mojitos (lemon balm from the CSA)
* Cucumber and Garlic Chive Salad (CSA & Glenwood Sunday Market)
* Asian Pears baked in balsamic & butter and topped with goat cheese & honey (Glenwood Sunday Market [pears] & Whole Foods [cheese] & Brian and Jaime [honey])
* Hormone Free Boneless & Skinless Chicken breasts topped with peppers and onions (CSA)

All in all, it was lovely.

The tart was based off of this recipe. The crust is amazing and simple. (I reiterate: DON'T FEAR THE CRUST!!!). Liz didn't layer the tomatoes and she skipped the pesto. Instead she just arranged pieces from a GIANT heirloom tomato around the crust. She cut up pieces of fresh mozzerella and arranged them on top of the tomato, topped that with some sliced fresh basil, and then drizzled olive oil, salt, and pepper on top of that. You do really have to serve everything relatively soon (and it's not so good for leftovers), because the tomato moisture will make your crust creepy by morning. That said, it was amazing.

I'm not 100% sure what she did for the salad. I know she seeded and cut into squares a large fresh cucumber and diced the fresh garlic chive we bought that morning at the market.

The pears were based off of this recipe. Liz saw the pears at the market and had to have them. They're relatively small, so I made 1.5 per person. I just followed the recipe. You just melt a little butter in your dish, put the pears in, add the vinegar, and bake, bake, bake. I am a firm believer that goat cheese makes everything better, so... Goat cheese and honey seemed like a no-brainer.

Liz will have to explain the chicken and the lemon balm if I can drag her to the blog. She's a busy girl. She's been making a LOT of witch heads this summer. That takes it out of a girl. Honestly, I often have to decide if she has time to talk to you or talk to me (and I choose me).

Anyway, this tart is amazing. I swear by it. I think we're going to make it again this weekend (and perhaps one with bacon).

GO TOMATOES!!!

Who Needs Sauce When You Have a GIANT Heirloom Tomato

KELLY * August 25 *

So, tonight was a quickie dinner. I ran out to see Cairo Time in the early evening and the gf ran to the acupuncturist (to work on her chi, wind, or something). We thought a quick dinner that took advantage of our produce would be lovely. So, she stopped off at the Jewel and grabbed some mozzarella and a pizza it was.

All I know is that had perhaps the best fast to tasty ratio of all time. It was quick and easy and incredibly delicious.

We had a pre-made pizza crust from Meijer (bought this summer when in Holland, MI because we knew they were tasty and would want them later). Liz sauted onions, garlic, and mixed wild mushrooms (portabello, oyster, and shiitake from the Glenwood Sunday Market). She cut up half of a giant CSA heirloom tomato. (It was about the size of a softball.) On top of those she placed some half rounds of cherry-sized mozzarella balls, olive oil, and basil.

She baked it at 450 for about 12-15 minutes.

Result: AMAZING!!! It needed much salt, but aside from that, it was delicious. I'm generally a believer in more sauce is better, but I had no complaints here.

I Love You Peaches: Peach Cupcakes & Brown Sugar Icing. Yes, Please.

KELLY * August 12 * Dessert

Well, I'm on the fly. I'm heading out into the wilds of the Ozarks (okay, it's not so wild. It's really a little more like a redneck version of the resort in Dirty Dancing). Well, there will be about 30 members of my family and I'm doing what I do best: bringing baked goods. Last weekend Liz was lured by some beautiful peaches at the Glenwood Sunday Market. That set off my search. What to make with a peach that is both transportable and won't wither in the summer heat of Missouri? I found this recipe for peach cupcakes. Initial response is that they're lovely. As I've worked more with cupcakes, I've been trying (against my nature) to not panic when they don't look perfect. I just keep repeating "all things don't rise the same way. All things don't rise the same way." Well, these weren't the prettiest coming out of the oven, but I'm just assuming that's the norm (as the 2nd batch was left in longer because I lost track of them while watching Notting Hill and although they rose more uniformly, they then fell to look like the others). This recipe called for brown sugar icing. The answer is, yes, it's delicious. It also gives you a nice tan colored icing (which totally has its aesthetic purposes).

Anyway, they look great. I'm hoping that a slew of Kesslers, Briggses, and Littles enjoy them. For someone who has spent her entire life being Kelly who falls down and does "crazy" things, it's tough to convince folks I can do things well. I figure it's easier to convince my family I can bake than insightfully analyze the media.

Redneck Jamaica, here we come!

Don't Know What To Do With That Eggplant? Stuff it in a Tomato!

KELLY * August 10 * Dinner

So, at it turns out, I'm not actually very bright during the summer. I was actually somewhat productive today, but apparently my attempt to be so led to me becoming wholly oblivious of my own surroundings. Liz was pretty sure that the apartment (that I had been sitting in all day with no A/C or open windows) felt like a sauna. She said I was bright red and needed to hydrate. Well, this is not unusual for me. That said, despite my overall obliviousness, I did do some online research to figure out something to have for dinner. What to do with tomatoes and eggplants? Hmm. Well, I found this recipe for stuffed eggplant. Liz had to switch things up a bit (as our eggplants lacked a bit of bodily integrity/size and could not serve as a boat for stuffing). Anyway, I stand by tonight's dinner. I loves me a tomato, so if you want to stuff things into a tomato and give them to me, I will take them! (Have I mentioned that Liz is useful?) We differed on our opinions regarding the dish. She felt that the stuffing was not as good as the veg that she cooked outside of the tomato and I thought the stuffing was naught but tasty tomato-y goodness. I think she was just cranky because the apartment is BLAZING!!!

ELIZABETH * August 10 * Dinner

It's not so hot now that I opened all the windows and turned on a fan or two. The absent-minded professor really doesn't notice a thing when she is working. It was dang hot in the kitchen though, with the oven on and water boiling! Again, like last night, discoveries were made, with room for improvements next time. We served the stuffed tomatoes with spinach-ricotta tortellini from Galucci's Cleveland, with a light Aglio e Olio sauce of lemon infused olive oil, crushed chilis, chopped garlic, salt and pepper, and grated pecorino romano. As always, there was NOTHING wrong with this classic. The tomatoes themselves were made as follows:

Two sizeable tomatoes (Angelic CSA) - core and drain in a colander while you make:

Chopped garlic scapes (probably the last of the season) and a sliced leek, both from Angelic CSA, sauteed in olive oil with crushed chilis, salt and pepper.

Diced zucchini and 2 baby eggplants (Angelic CSA), the guts of the above tomatoes sans seeds, added to above.

When veg is tender add 1 tbsp each fresh thyme and fresh parsley, chopped, and some grated pecorino romano cheese.

Stuff tomatoes with mixture, place in baking dish. Surround with remaining veg, and sprinkle the whole with breadcrumbs. Bake 30 min at 350 and serve with more grated cheese, salt and pepper, with tortellini on the side.

I will agree with the good Doctor K that this was pretty good, but in fact the veg in the baking dish surrounding the tomatoes were better than the stuffing inside, even though they were the same stuff. I think the reasons for this were twofold - I enumerate the folds here:

1 - Because the veg in the pan were exposed to more heat and not stuffed in a tomato, they cooked more, became more succulent and tender, and tastier.

2 - Because the veg in the tomato were in the tomato, they not only cooked less, but they got a little wet due to tomato water. K thought they tasted tomato-ey. I just thought they were wet.

I think both folds could be addressed a) by not stuffing this veg in tomatoes at all but just roasting it and eating it yum or b) roasting the tomatoes longer and/or at a hotter temp. I think this would help evaporate some more tomato water and cook the veg more.

Also, although garlic scapes and leeks are lovely and delicate, in this dish I missed the punch of real live garlic (lots of it) and full-force onions. I took some of the Aglio e Olio and drizzled it on the tomato stuffing and it was seriously improved. I'm sure the addition of the extra oil didn't hurt, but the garlic really enhanced the tomato flavor. In short, we ate it and it was good and good for us, and we used up alot of veg, which was truly necessary. I would make again with some adjustments. It WAS very pretty though! A nice summer meal, especially if you have AC!

Chinatown Be Damned! We'll Make Our Own Cucumber & Chicken

KELLY * August 9 * Dinner

So, the evening was a little up in the air. Plans were unclear. I was lazy. Liz had a meeting. I'm incredibly impressed that we (okay, Liz) went ahead and made dinner. (I fully admit that I have made promises of laundry tomorrow so I did not have to help and so I could consequently watch Mad Men. I make no claims of being remotely helpful except once upon a time saying, "Do you think you could make that cucumber and chicken that we had at Joe's Shanghai?") Anyway, we still have a mess of cucumbers. They seem to come non-stop. That said, I could care less about a cucumber. I have no specific reason for not liking cucumbers. I just don't. The chicken and cucumber from Joe's Shanghai, however, has been a personal fave for years. So, Liz whipped up a bit of tasty loveliness. It was light. It was tasty. I braved the chopsticks while Liz totally copped out with a fork. (It's like I don't even know her anymore, honestly.) Anyway, it was a perfect light dinner for a warm summer night.

ELIZABETH * August 9 * Dinner

The thing that's so awesome about that Joe's Shanghai dish is that you can't really tell why it tastes so good, it just does. I did not make something as good as that, but I feel like it was an important step in the right direction! Discoveries:

This recipe is close. I made a few adjustments:

* I cut things in little cubes like at Joe's instead of the strips in the recipe. (Hence the fork. Those little cubes are impossible with stix - although Kelly still somehow managed to finish way ahead of me despite my fork. But then again, I chew.)

* I replaced the rice wine with cider vinegar, mostly because I read the recipe wrong and we were out of rice wine vinegar. Oops, but I don't regret it. I actually think the vinegar was the right choice, but I would use rice wine vinegar instead.

* I left out the soy sauce. The Joe's dish is totally white.

* I added 1 tsp hot chili oil in with the sauce at the end.

I would make a few more:

* There was a shortage of sauce. I added a little water, but I think next time I would add even more chicken broth as liquid. The sauce also could have used the richness of broth.

* Joe's might be so good due to MSG. I salted several times, and black peppered. Chicken broth might also help this issue.

* I put in garlic instead of ginger. Next time I'd do both.

This one is certainly a work in process, but I would for sure try it again, and it was all the way gone, so I guess it was good enough! Actually very tasty, and with a pleasant heat. Cooking cucumbers sounds wierd but it's actually not. As Julia says, "Don't crowd the pan" and use a good high heat, and they sear instead of getting squishy. Yum cucumbers!

oh ps - At the Glenwood Sunday Market, I bought a lemon cucumber. It looks like a lemon that's been zested. I said to the guy, "So this is a cucumber?" and he said "Totally". It was the totally that sold me. Well, I ate it for lunch today like an apple and it was awesome. More lemon cukes for me next week!!!

Fajita-rama and Sunday Gluttony!

KELLY (WITH HORNING IN BY LIZ) * August 8 * LUNCH

Ooh, the tasty deliciousness of an impromptu Mexican feast almost transcends words. Yesterday we received some beautiful green peppers and tomatoes from the CSA. Today we headed to the Glenwood Sunday Market in our hood and I suggested that perhaps we could knock out the peppers, some tomatoes (as we already had some okay tomatoes from Morse Market and Whole Foods prior to the CSA haul), some CSA sweet onions, and the like if we went hog wild in a Mexican sense. So, while at the Glenwood Market we picked up a couple tasty looking (and ultimately blazing) jalapeños. (Just a note, while we were there, we also had some amazing apple cider infused Zeppoli - fried dough balls with cinnamon and sugar. They were stupid good.) Anyway, we made it back from the market and Liz headed off to yoga and I, well, took a nap. When she came home, we headed into the lunch. On her stop to get cilantro and limes for the pico, she accidentally picked up an avocado. So, I cut up 2 peppers (CSA), one sweet onion (CSA) and one yellow onion (Trader Joe's), and Liz did her magic with the chicken (Lime Pepper from Central Market Austin). I followed Emeril's pico recipe, but as usual was heavy handed with the garlic and jalapeño. (NOTE: I find Emeril totally irritating. His presence generally leads to pleas of turning the channel. His mere utterance of "bam" drives me into a fit of ranting. However, the first blazing taste of pico could lead to nothing other than a shout of "BAM!!". The pepper was fresh and I went a little overboard. That said, it was amazing). Liz threw together a little guac (as she is wont to do, and I usually like it more than the overpriced $12 guac at many restaurants). Anyway, once all was finished, we had a lovely Summer afternoon lunch of fresh pico, fresh guac, tortilla chips (Edgewater Produce), Goya pink beans cooked with yellow onion (can't express how much better a can of pink or black beans is if you just put it in a pot with chopped onions when you warm them), and these AMAZING La Tortilla Factory hand made style corn tortillas. (After being spoiled by a never-ending stream of fresh Texas tortillas, these were an excellent surprise. They are really the best of both worlds--corn and flour--they have the chewiness of flour and the heartiness of corn. They're a little bit of a miracle.) Anyway, we eventually just had to stop eating, as we could have just kept digging through the food. Don't worry. It's safe and sound put away for lunches. But dude, it was fab.

TOO MUCH CORN!!! - Make a Chowder

KELLY * August 7 * DINNER

So, we've decided that perhaps we should maximize the number of vegetables that we put in a food. Despite the fact that we ate an insane amount of dim sum this morning (followed by a very long nap), we powered through to conquer the mound of produce that was forming. Today's box only added to the idiotic amount of corn we already had. Flauto decided "CORN CHOWDER." I'm honestly not so focused on the blog today. As we were eating what was an incredibly delicious dinner of corn chowder and quesadillas(yes, I married well), we received a phone call from our friend Sean (see bottom photo). It was Saturday. He needed company. He'd never heard of chowder but had a sneaking suspicious that it sounded, so we headed over to his hipster neighborhood with chowder, quesadilla fixings, and dough to make more carrot cookies.

So, in short, it's tasty. It was a lovely, creamy, delicious bowl of fabulousness. It was not savored, however, as here we are watching E! and preparing to play scene it. I will dream about leftovers.

Liz to add the tasty and delicious recipe soon...