1st Day of School

Umbrella for shade...it's supposed to be 95 today!!


1st grade...I can't believe it! Shelagh jumped out of bed this AM.

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Farmers Market Booty: Heirloom Tomato Salad

I really should have taken a picture. But, I didn't. We were too hungry and rushing to sit down to eat after waiting until the kids went to bed at 8. I got a mix of red, yellow, and purplish-green heirloom tomatoes. I cut them thicky and arranged them on a plate. I put slices of fresh market purchased mozzarella made that day. I added some blobs of avocado and sea salt. Delicious.

Imagine beautiful picture inserted here...

Boston Farmers Market

How gorgeous are these tomatoes???






I tried to pick a variety of things from a variety of farms for comparison purposes:

- Heirloom tomatoes (for salad)
- Plum tomatoes (to try oven roasted)
- Fingerling potatoes (to braise?)
- Basil (for pesto)
- Leeks
- Fresh mozzarella & burrata (just to eat or w tomatoes & basil for caprese salad)
- Rainbow carrots (I've been meaning to try very fresh carrots and these seemed fun. Mine aren't ready from my garden yet)
- farm fresh pork - I got chops & bacon, of course
- Challah & a short baguette
- Peach pie for dessert tonight
- fresh cinnamon sugar donuts for the kids for ditching them today!

So excited to cook and eat all this! Off to pick up the kids and hit the pool!

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Kelly Raspberry Fingers

A study in silliness...

Fried Green Tomatoes

I've always wanted to try these. I just didn't love them. Nor did Shelagh, who worships all things tomato. I suppose if I did the bacon part, that might have helped! They were just sour to me. I got the recipe from Canal House Cooking, Volume No 1 (Summer). They were easy to do and fast. Here's the recipe anyway...

• 4 slices bacon, coarsely chopped
• 2 medium green tomatoes, sliced thickly
• 1/2 cup flour
• 1/2 cup cornmeal
• 2 eggs
• salt & pepper
• 1/2 cup olive oil

1. Fry the bacon in a large skillet over medium heat until crisp, about 5 minutes.
2. Lift the bacon out of the skillet with a slotted spoon, and drain it on paper towels. Set the skillet with rendered fat aside.
3. Mix together the flour and cornmeal in a wide dish and season with salt and pepper. Beat the eggs in another dish.
4. Dip the tomato slices one at a time into the egg, then dredge in the seasoned flour and cornmeal. Set the coated tomatoes aside.
5. Add the oil to the bacon fat in the skillet and heat over medium-high heat. When the oil is hot, fry the tomatoes (work in batches to prevent crowding) until golden brown, about 5 minutes per side.
6. Drain the tomatoes on paper towels and season them with a little salt while still hot. Serve the tomatoes with the crisp bacon scattered on top.

Serves 4-6

Preserving: Sweet Pickled Wax Beans

This recipe looked easy enough in Everyday Food. It's not online yet. Other than the pain of trimming tons of wax beans, the brine was easy and they stay for 2 months! I'll check the taste in a few days.

• 1 lb wax beans, trimmed
• 4 sprigs thyme
• 4 cups white wine vinegar
• 2 cups sugar
• 4 garlic cloves, peeled
• 1 tsp fennel seeds (I didn't have any)
• 1 tsp coriander seeds
• 1 tsp mustard seeds
• 1/2 tsp whole black peppercorns

1. In 2 Qt-sized glass jars, arrange beans upright and place 2 sprigs thyme in each. In a small saucepan, bring vinegar, sugar, garlic, fennel seeds, coriander seeds, mustard seeds, peppercorns, and 1 cup water to a boil over medium-high. Reduce heat and simmer 10 minutes. Let cool to room temperature.
2. Pour cooled brine over beans leaving a 1/2 space at top of each jar; seal and refrigerate at least 3 days before serving.

Roast Chicken with Tangerines

This was a wonderful recipe and came out perfectly! Shelagh and I both loved it and Kelly ate all her chicken (buried in Orzo, but she ate it!). I used Minneolas in place of the tangerines, but otherwise followed the recipe pretty closely. Funny, this recipe was posted in Food & Wine by Eugenia Bone, whose preserving book, "Well-Preserved", I've been reading. This is now my 2nd favorite Roast Chicken recipe after the Cumin-Maple Syrup one.

Preserving: Canned Plums

I did quite a bit of new food preparation today... Rainy day, playdate for the kids in the AM, then Kelly's nap and an afternoon of rushing to prevent food from going bad! I started with Canned Plums. I scored them, blanched them (with much better success than the peaches), cut them and packed them with simple syrup. I got 1 Qt jar and 1 1/2 Pint jar. A LOT of work even the skin peeled easily...they were baby plums so there were lots of them.

They look pretty though!!

I used the Time/Life Preserving book again and pretty much followed the rules for packing peaches other than the acid component (soaking them in lemon water first).

Shelaghs 1st Big Girl Haircut

Beauty treatment for the chlorine, BIG trim for the scraggly ends and blow-dry...






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How Many Days Until School?

I hate to wish the end of the summer, but I'm seriously ready for the kids to be back in school. Seriously. Did I mention there are 13 days left until school begins?

Fried Chicken

It's my first time making it and it wasn't so bad! Fear of splattering oil and clean up, I guess. I don't know why I waited. I just love fried chicken. It makes me think of my paternal grandmother and this old restaurant in NJ I used to go to as a kid called Don's, which is since gone. The chicken was fabulous and it came with honey to dip it in, which I just couldn't get enough of - plus, free all-u-can-eat pickles. yum. Anyhoo, it's hard to find pre-made other than at the grocery store. My mother in law makes a wonderful version. I tried this version from Everyday Food. I used peanut oil and brought the oil to 350 with a candy/deep-fry thermometer. The result? Use a lower temp and cook it slower next time so the outside is not so dark and the inside is cooked well. Oh, and add more salt.

By the way, my kids are weird and don't like the skin. Insane.

30 minutes, Whole Foods Heaven

After a baby shower in the city, O stopped by Whole Foods to grab some meat & fish. Glorious. Not much I enjoy more than food shopping. Holy bill, however. This is why I don't partake more often!

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Kelly Plays with Fun Things

Yes, that is Kelly with Rory's sunglasses on upside down playing with a tampon. She is a nut.

On Her Way

"Got my bag and baby...just have to get off this phone call. See ya!"

Canning Peaches

I had 20 peaches from my weekly CSA bag plus about 3 lbs of peaches left from my fruit share the week before. No way we'd get through them and my attempts at freezing raw peach pies and baking them in the winter had mediocre results (I could never reduce the liquid that was generated from the frozen peaches when it was baked resulting in a really soggy pie). I pulled out the Time Life Preserving book from the awesome Time Life Cookbook series that my Mom and Dad got me for my birthday last year. What great ideas it had in it...I love these books.

Anyway, the long and the short of it is that canning peaches is easy and I ended up with 3 Qt jars full. Here's what I did...

1. Sterilize the jars in the dishwasher
2. Blanch the peaches to get the skin off easily (or so I thought...it was still a total pain in the ass). The book said to score the bottom of each peach with an X, boil for 30 seconds, put into an ice bath to stop cooking, and then peel with the edge of a paring knife. I had 2 peaches of the 30 or so that peeled in 3-4 strips...the rest had bits flying here and there and I ended up using the paring knife to basically cut the skin off.
3. Halve the peaches and pull the pits out (also a pain in the ass).
4. Soak in lemon water while waiting for canning, if necessary (I was totally disorganized so it was necessary).
5. Prepare a simple syrup - I used 2 cups sugar to 4 cups water (soak in water first, then bring to a boil to dissolve sugar). It seemed like a lot of sugar to me but it ended up divided amongst 3 Qt jars. There was another option that had 2 cups of water to 1/2 cup honey and 1/2 cup sugar. I'll try that next time.
6. Pack peaches cut side down in jars, but not too tight. Pour syrup over peaches. Leave about 1/2 inch headroom at top of jar. Cover with top and lid and boil, covered, for 30 minutes.

Beach

Last minute alone day at the beach. I haven't done this since before Shelagh was born. AM at the beach reading and, hopefully, napping. PM at the mall and getting nails done. Glorious. Look at the sky in Gloucester today!!


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Shelagh Lounging

Doesn't she look so grown up? All she needs is one of those metallic sun visors for some serious old school tanning!

My Special Day with Rory

Shelagh and I had our special day about a month ago so this past Monday was Rory's turn. We decided to go to Wingaersheek Beach in Gloucestor and play Star Wars ALL DAY. I was no longer Mom and he no longer Rory, but instead we were Leia/Han and Luke/Mace Windu/Obi Wan/Anakin. We had a great time together, grabbed matching Chipwiches on the way out, got him a quick "Handsome Haircut" on the way home after his little cat nap.

Yes sir!

Let's hope this translates to behavior at home!



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Rory Tenenbaum & Kelly Kazoo

I walked down to the playroom to this and it made me think of the song playing on the bus to school scene from Sixteen Candles played by kazoo.

Fresh Veggies!

I love having fresh veggies in the summertime, but I have to admit that I'm barely keeping up! I have a ka-zillion cucumbers, tomatoes from the garden now plus the CSA bag and fruit share. They gave me 4 lbs of peaches last week! Here's what I managed with some of it from last week and I still have green beans and parsley left over.

From Saveur I got a recipe for Panzanella which was taken from Lidia's Italian Table. It was great, but I would wait until the last minute to mix in the bread if making ahead of time. Now that I'm looking at the recipe again I'm realizing that I neglected to toast the bread. I think that would have helped. I did eat it leftover for several days despite the bread soaking up a lot of liquid.

I had a recipe for a Cucumber-Cherry salad from Food & Wine and, for some reason, I read this as Cherry tomatoes. It was actually cherries! Anyway, I made it with cherry tomatoes and I've made it again since then. Great way to use 2 cucumbers at a time.



With some leftover salmon I made this Chopped Salmon Salad from Everyday Food. This was delicious. I skipped the capers and used Dijon instead of whole grain mustard. Great with the wheat Naan bread from Trader Joes.