Summer

This week I took time off to visit friends in New Hampshire. Sometimes living in an area where you have to get in the car and drive in order to see the woods allows you to forget that an hour up 95 there is open space and trees and fields that aren't rationed off to those who can afford to live near them. I spent alot of time lying in the sun, staring at the cornfield, and drinking dandelion wine.

 It was a solid reminder that somewhere other than my life things move a bit slower. Nothing particularly amazing happened in the way of food, except for a tour of a fairly sizable vegetable garden, but when I came home I got my first zucchini off our plant, and the first cucumber too. The gifts just keep on coming.

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Faux Pho

Its been a hell of a month, and it doesn't look like our summer is headed in direction that we had hoped. I'm working on a side project, trying to get it up and running before all the summer produce slips away from my fingers, and running myself in two directions. The man, who broke his ankle a few weeks ago and is awaiting a second surgery does a surprisingly large amount of 'the dirty work' keeping the kitchen, and the rest of the house running...and now that he's laid up for at least another month....Well lets just say I'm desperately clinging to the idea that he'll be magically healed in a week...
When he came home from the hospital the first time I had promised him whatever made him feel better would be dinner...cut to Eggs Benedict with hollandaise that was almost clear, takeout Chinese, and a mess of other kitchen horrors that look appetizing... until you bite into them and realize I've been so tired that I forgot salt...on everything.

But tonight, I was on my game...probably has something to do with having yesterday off and doing very little. Tonight I took what remained of the leftover ground beef from burgers we (ahem, my father) grilled on July 4th and made little ginger and beef meatballs, I thinly sliced pea pods from Allandale Farm and cabbage from Two Fields Farm and sauteed it in the wok. I simmered vegetable broth with ginger and garlic and a chile, and after the meatballs got a quick browning, they went into the vegetable studded broth to simmer. Flat Chinese egg noodles sparingly dressed in toasted sesame oil made little nests that cradled the meatballs (more like little meat dumplings, without dough, really) and swam with the broth. I topped it off with some of our very own cilantro and a super finely chopped garlic scape. Rose was poured and we ate before it got dark. I was the winner. The dish reminded me a little of the Pho we used to eat years ago when we lived by the beach. It was pretty easy and more importantly satisfying,(when you aren't eating on a regular schedule, sometimes salad will not cut it for dinner, even if its eighty degrees...besides that's why we have air conditioning)

These are the kind of nights I look forward to, when lunches are packed and the vegetable garden is watered and I live in (feigned) ignorance about the fact that there is not a single clean towel in the house.

I may be tired and not very good company but I'm still cooking.... More...