The Tyranny of the Produce

It's a strange feeling, being haunted by produce to preserve.  If I don't bow to its demands, it will go bad or split the refrigerator.  I like to plan things, but summer preserving does not lend itself to plans.  I make emergency shopping trips.  I find myself canning at midnight.  I guess at the ripeness of the fruit and try to make plans for babysitting and canning with a friend.  It's an open invitation for busted plans, I tell you.
One of our friends is a CSA host, so any produce left after people pick up their shares is his to deal with.  He gives it to me.  I have a reputation for being willing to take anybody's leftovers - food, clothes, fabric, whatever (tonight my dad dropped off a box of old-school printer paper that was junk at his business - now my kids have blank paper to work with, not recycling bin cast offs!).  I am very disturbed by waste, so I am usually game to try to use things up.

Recently, I dealt with cabbages and cucumbers from our friend's CSA.  I made one cabbage into German slaw and froze it; I still have two cabbages in the fridge (it's cracking).  Do you have other preservation ideas for cabbage?  I should want to make sauerkraut, but I have something like four quarts in the freezer already, thanks to an industrious friend.

After the slaw, I gathered up all the lemon cucumbers and pickled them, screeching to the end of the process at the time I usually serve supper.  It's the Tyranny of the Produce, I tell you.  Unlike the slaw, the cukes are very photogenic.

I'm bracing for an onslaught of CSA zucchinis.  Please share your ideas in the comments for managing the zucchini explosion.  You know this is why all the Mennonites lock their car doors at church in the summer, right?  No one wants a surprise sack of zucchini.

Adult Kool Aid

I recall my mother and aunts dumping cup after cup of white sugar in the pitcher as they made Kool Aid.  Jeepers.  I do put a little sugar in iced herbal tea - something colorful like Red Zinger or Spiced Peach, flavors I abhor as hot tea - and then I am silly and call it Adult Kool Aid.

I have a pot and some patches of mint in the back yard - the children pick it and eat it for some shockingly fresh breath, or I pick it and make tea. With little or no sugar, it's so refreshing.

I tried the cold brew method of making black iced tea, but it flat out did not work.  After 14 hours in the fridge, it looked the same as when I put it in.

After my mom got a tea latte from Starbucks while we were at the beach, I realized that's what I've been drinking for breakfast:  brewing half a mug of hot black tea, then filling it up the rest of the way with ice and milk.

Actually, I feel a little less desperate for cold drinks.  I talked my husband into putting in the window bangers two days ago (window air conditioners) and made a pact with myself to turn them off when the nights cool down again.  As the heat has been keeping me up, I can assure you it has stayed 82 degrees all night long for a while now. 

Sunday Dinner: Steak

If you have grass-fed beef steaks in your freezer, or if you buy the cheap tough cuts of steak, or if you are nervous about making steak, I can help you!  My friend Rebecca gave me a recipe for a marinade with every known tenderizing agent and tons of flavor to boot. 

Daddy's Margaret Dilling's Steak Marinade
1 1/2 c. oil
3/4 c. soy sauce
1/4 c. worcestershire sauce
1/3 c. lemon juice
2 Tbs. dry mustard
2 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 c. wine vinegar
2 tsp. salt
1 Tbs. pepper

This is almost a quart, so marinate steaks in at least a 9x13 pan.  Halve it for smaller amounts of meat. Marinate your steaks for at least 6 hours and even overnight. Grill until done over a hot fire, staying by the grill and keeping a close eye on things. We had a sirloin steak on Sunday and my husband did it 5 minutes on each side and it was just pink in the middle (a restaurant "medium well").

Friday: 

put a really big sirloin steak in fridge to thaw

Saturday:

left messages for 5 different households until I managed to borrow a 10" springform pan
baked Honeyed Apricot Almond Cake

simultaneously baked potatoes and then mashed them with butter/salt
made marinade and put the steak in it

Sunday morning:
made salad with tomatoes, cukes, sweet onion, vinaigrette, basil and parsley

Sunday noon:

splashed a little milk in the mashed potatoes and microwaved until hot, mashing and stirring

slapped steak on grill
set table

The textures and flavors were so wonderfully balanced.  No one actually wanted cake at the time, so later, when the house was quiet, I had a piece.  Alone.  With a deliciously iced green tea latte.  I know it's supposed to be gross to have milk in green tea, but I followed my instincts as I am wont to do on Sunday afternoons.  Then when everyone woke up wanting cake, I had some with them.  It's a superb cake.

P.S. I don't know why I forgot to post about Sunday dinner until now.

P.P. S. The leftover cold steak went into tortillas the next day with cheese and a version of this salad on top.  Super.

First Sweet Corn!

There's nothing like sweet corn for a summer supper!  When I was a child, my mom would make sweet corn and slice tomatoes and that was it:  supper.  Sometimes she would cook green beans or fry squash, but really, sweet corn was the meal.

I try to balance the meal a bit more.  I usually add a true vegetable, treating the corn mainly as carbohydrates, and then ideally some protein too. 

We ate our first corn with 10-Minute-All-in-One-Suppers (recipe from More with Less).  My mom also made these openfaced sandwiches and they are so delicious!  Although it's a rather basic sandwich and although I am prone to fiddling with recipes, I rarely do more to these than add basil leaves or salt sometimes.  Really, you must make them.  Please report back on any great new combinations.

10-Minute-All-in-One Supper
Layer on a slice of bread starting with the tomato:
sliced tomato
sliced cheese
thinly sliced onion

Broil until the cheese melts and the onion is starting to bubble and turn brown.  I use my toaster oven for 8-10 minutes.

My Life, in Tan Sandals

On the left is my pair of 10 year old Papillios by Birkenstock.  I got them to replace a pair of Birkenstocks that was stolen from my car the summer after I got married.  They cost $30 from a local shoe store and I thought they looked dorky, but I desperately needed cheap, comfortable sandals. 

Four years ago, I got the Dansko slides in the middle, and the Papillios went to the back door as mud shoes to wear outside and into our dirt-floor basement where I fetch canned and frozen goods.

The Dansko slides in the middle were bought on a shopping trip four years ago with my cousin's wife. I was waffling between the slides and the strappy sandals on my feet in the photo.  My cousin's wife, wanting to be helpful, told me the slides were cooler; I bought them for $55.  Then we took our screaming children to McDonald's.

But I never forgot those strappy sandals.  In fact, I even triumphantly bought a pair on ebay for $20, but it turned out that although the sandals were labeled size 42, they were, in fact, size 38!  A perfect fit for my friend Rebecca, but a sad day for me.

On the way back from the beach, I talked my husband into detouring 18 miles to go to a Dansko outlet again. And I finally bought my strappy tan sandals - for a mere $44, hugely on sale from the retail price of $110.  Hooray! 

Bonus:  the outlet itself was beautiful.  Double bonus:  free popcorn for the children, free coffee for the husband.

Food at the Beach

I just love waking up a house with fresh cinnamon rolls.  With few other household duties while I was on vacation, this was pure pleasure (when I finally figured out a stand-in for a rolling pin).  I used Cinnamon Raisin Twists from Recipes from the Old Mill. 

Cut, and ready to twist.  Due to my vacation lassitude, there's no photo of the finished rolls.

Each household cooked an evening meal.  I made Lemon Asparagus Pasta from Simply in Season, subbing in local broccoli.  My sis grilled zucchini and my husband fetched very nice baguettes.  

At his request, I also made Vegetarian Crab Cakes, a wonderful way to use zucchini (I only use one egg, and I add chopped onion and a smidge of sugar; then dredge them in flour before pan frying).

Matt, I told you I would put this on my blog!

My parents always take us out to a nice restaurant.  Last year, we went to Salt Air and we loved it so much, we went back again this year.  It pleases my desire for local food, and we are all pleased by the delicious food. Plus, the atmosphere is so divinely serene.

Back at the beach cottage, we worked off all the food by playing Rook. 

Beach Wear

I didn't tax myself very hard to take pictures For the Record while I was at the beach. 
But as I combed through the photos, I came across these:

 

Ben's hat and shirt:  they worked great!  Easy to use, great coverage.  No sunburn.

Genevieve is walking to the beach with Granny wearing a pair of beach pants I made her last summer.  I used the directions in Amanda Soule's book.  They are a wonderfully breezy pair of pants, easy on and off (important for sandy and potentially sunburned legs!).  And topstitched in red.

And here is a project I've been excited to show you: my own beach dress, to wear over my suit as I biked to the beach or went up to the boardwalk for some fries.

I started with this black tencel dress from the thrift store for $3.99.  I started very late one night and just in time remembered to take a "before" photo.  This pose cracks me up, but it's supposed to show the length and side slits.

I cut the dress off to my knees, slit it up the front, and made very large bias binding for the raw edges.  I found the striped shirting at JoAnn Fabrics - I really wanted 1970s bright prairie calico for some reason, but I didn't have time to hunt it down (but 1970s calico is still burning a hole in my brain, so I expect I'll be buying some soon!).

Then I sewed on ties using  red triangles of reproduction feed sack -- the closest I could come to calico with my stash.  I am very pleased with this beach dress!  I feel smart in it (my husband called it elegant).

~ ~ ~

. . . the beach. . . evening. . . my family.