Good times on the deck

Oh deck. How I adore you.

The realities of leaving home smacked me in the heart all of my last week at home. I tried to soak it all in- cuddling the crap out of my cat, staring off my deck, enjoying the witty rappeur I share with my mother. None of it felt real and yet I was either up at night, all jittery, unable to sleep (like when I began drafting this blog post) or catatonic (like in the Biochemistry class I was finishing). Anyway, I finally got the news that I’d gotten my paws on a JOB!!! (update soon) and I received the reassuring news that I was going to be able to move my bed to the INCREDIBLE KINDNESS OF FAMILY THANKS KATHY AND TOM WHO ARE READING THIS AND LENT STEPHEN YOUR BIG SUV TO MOVE MY BED THANKS THANKS.

So I dealt with my anxiety as best I could, like reminiscing about my beloved deck. The deck is a really great place to relax and lie in the shade.

I also love the deck for cooking burgers.

From a source without reproach- Lebanese Butcher, a place I was sad to leave behind, which supplies halal, organic, local, and delicious meat.

In this case, herb-packed Lamburger!

With lettuce ‘n tomato ‘n dijon.

 

With burgers with a twist, one must have fries with a twist. Steamed sliced sweet potatoes, tossed ‘em with oil and cajun seasoning, plopped them on the grill. Fab.

Plus grilled asparagus. Clearly this meal occurred when asparagus was still in season.

The next meal we enjoyed on the deck showcased our wonderful oregano! It always winters over, and it always produces in comedically large quantities in the summer.

Used to season some chickennnnnn. Along with olive oil, lemon, s+p. Very Greek, very simple.

Gorgeous, no? Sadly, slightly overcooked. My fault. It is what it is. Steve still inhaled it.

Rounding out the meal, a fun little salad I semi got from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian: quick steamed cauliflower, capers, parsley, olive oil, vinegar, and bread crumbs toasted in olive oil atop. Mm.

  

It’s very funny for me looking at the teeny plants in this earlier phase in garden development since they’re so ALARMINGLY huge now.

 

Basically, if you’re dealing with a project that involves putting in a lot of work with questionable future payoff (childrearing comes to mind…) you should plant a garden. Everything just skyrockets.

Exhibit A: Mint.

 

Also in the produce department, we have beautiful basil (left) and sage (right). The basil is a heirloom variety and both my aunt (who gave me the seeds) and I have observed that it simply doesn’t grow as large as conventional varieties. Though its leaves are no less delicious.

The dill sprouted up valiantly but never seemed extraordinarily happy, truthfully. Too much sun?

Big pepper! I have two pepper plants and this one produced a pepper very early on in its growth and it just kept growing and growing and growing, then reddening and reddening.

   

It wasn’t 100% red when I picked it just because it had a teeny little soft spot developing, and I didn’t want it to spread!

    

I used this to make DEE-LICIOUS homemade salmon cakes. I added:
- Peppers and sweet onion, chopped very fine and briefly sauteed in olive oil
- 1 can of salmon
- whole wheat breadcrumbs
- homemade mayonnaise (yesssss)
- chives and basil from the deck (also yesssss)

Pan fried ‘em in a bit of oil and they were MONEY! Albeit unphotogenic, so you’ll just have to use your imagination.

As for the other pepper plant, it produced WEIRD PEPPERS! Not bad, but like I’d inadvertently created a hybrid: in size, they were neither tiny (like hot peppers) nor large (like bell peppers). Instead, they were medium smallish, and as they mimiced a halfway point between the two types of peppers in size, they also did in taste. Half spicy. Very exciting!

On the tomato front, most of my tomatoes were green when I skipped town. My mom sent an email that a less charitable person might describe as snarky telling me all the delicious things she’s been making with the tomatoes that I GREW. (No I jest, I just begged my family to water them as I pulled out of the driveway for the last time. I didn’t want all my work to be for naught!)

I think roma tomatoes are super bizarre looking on the vine!

   

They also grow like weeds! Though I did have a couple of the regular kind too.

Now, let’s talk squash. I had two squash plants: one was an heirloom zucchini variety that my aunt gave me the seed to grow. The other was a yellow squash plant that my thoughtful boyfriend got me when I was concerned that since I only had one squash plant it couldn’t have the squash plant sex necessary to make zucchini (yes, my knowledge of plant reproduction is extraordinary). Anyway, the yellow squash plant dutifully blossomed and produced two small yellow squash:

And promptly never did anything again.

Meanwhile, the zucchini blossom regularly produced beauuuuuuuuuutiful flowers.

 

Then off they’d plop, leaving a bare stem. Agh! My working hypothesis, supported by my buddy at the farmer’s market whom I’d brief with weekly updates, is that it’s a boy plant, and only produces boy blossoms (i.e. not the kind that produce squash. The USELESS kind!)

So, basically the only homegrown squash I ate this summer consisted of two small yellow squashies. I made a really good scramble though!

Farmer’s market eggs and spinach, regular old carrots, lotsa garlic and herbs, and the squashies.

Served atop a wrap, in brilliant sunlight.

 

woke up wanting…

… a tuna melt! So I had one at, oh, 9:30 in the morning. (Note that I didn’t wake up at 9:30… at least on that particular day. I tend to spend the morning pleasantly loitering, perhaps doing crossword puzzles in bed, until my appetite wakes up. This is an absolute luxury of funemployment- my temporary state til classes start up in January- and I am thoroughly taking advantage of it).

Anyway, the tuna melt was everything I dreamed of and more.

 

Joining the tuna melt on the plate (along with Sriracha-spiked ketchup) were a few leftover green tomatoes and sweet potatoes I’d made earlier.

At long last, my summer tomato adventure had ended (*sob*), finding me picking tomatoes in my boxers at 11 at night before the first frost came. They came in green, and I figured I’d take advantage of the assertive texture and mild flavor and make the all-so-famous fried green tomatoes.

While not actually wanting to deal with frying (or grease making me sleepy) at lunchtime.

I threw together a batter-ish of egg, paprika, cornmeal, etc. and dunked the sliced tomaters in it.

 

Then “fried” them in a skillet with cooking spray.

The day I actually cooked them, in the general bar-food spirit I was in, I was also jonesing for sweet potato fries, so I sliced sweet potatoes and tossed ‘em with olive oil and cajun seasoning (yes!) and baked ‘em til tender.

 

Served with another craveworthy item: yogurt with fresh pomegranate. HMart had a ridiculously good sale- a pomegranate for like a buck? And perfectly ripe and fresh and awesome.

 

Woke up another morning craving pizza. This time I managed to wait until lunchtime, and made a healthy yet shockingly good version.

Flatbread (I get it from Costco), whole wheat, revived from my freezer (I find they go bad fast so I keep them there) in the toaster oven. Baked til crispy on one side, then flipped and smeared with marinara. Sprinkled with GOAT CHEESE and red pepper flakes. Baked til the other side is crispy.

Half the fun of making homemade pizza is using a pizza cutter. Tip: Target sells them for like $2. Can we say stocking stuffer?!

Served with roasted broccoli and mushrooms.

Such a virtuous yet amazingly awesome meal.

And finally, as you may be able to tell, I crave cheese almost continuously. There was a (skinny) period of my life where I didn’t eat any cheese and I am SO glad that period of my life is over, because cheese brings a lot of enjoyment to my life and life is just too short not to eat something you love, even if it makes you skinny.

In addition, for my birthday, Steve gave me a Groupon to Red, White and Bleu, a cheese shop I’ve literally passed every Saturday on my way to the farmer’s market for years and years and never gone into! Shame shame shame.

I made up for it.

Beware: the following series of photos were taken on my iPod. They are not very good.

Let’s review the cheeses I opted for. Steve didn’t go to the cheese store with me and didn’t answer his phone when I called for a cheese consult so he just had to SUCK IT UP if he didn’t like it. Fortunately, the person at the store was not only very friendly and nice, she also gave great cheese tips.

On the left is Hook’s black truffle cheddar (so deep! So decadent!). At the top is the Beemster, an intensely scented and crumbly textured very aged gouda. To the right is smokey bleu (this bleu cheese was smoked over hazelnut shells. Sounds amazing, right? Really, it just tasted like bleu cheese. I like bleu cheese, so this was not a bad thing). A recommendation from the person at the counter was the St. Marcellin, which was EXCELLENT! Like a brie on steroids. It came in its own dear tiny tureen and we put it in the oven and it got all melty… mm mm mm. SO GREAT! All of them were strong-flavored cheeses, but that’s how I like ‘em.

 

Meanwhile, Steve made pasta, I made- and burned- kale chips, and the microwave made edamame.

Steve opened up a nice Malbec- his and my fave- and I got out my other fun purchase, which was these cookies specifically designed for wine tasting. There was a sort of savory cheddar herb cookie, a chocolate-peanut butter-espresso cookie (which I never would’ve thought of with wine but was great!)- and a traditional shortbread. I was excited to buy them and support a local business. Truthfully they were a bit dry.

  

Cheese cheese cheese cheese cheese!

Feast.

giant sweet potato!

My mother’s coworker grew a VERY LARGE SWEET POTATO. Here is Steve interacting with it. 

Annnnd one with the sweet potato actually in focus, so you can marvel at its girth. I know it’s difficult to spot in the photograph, but also worthy of marvel is Steve’s blue eyes when he wears this blue shirt. Just know- know they are there.

So a sweet potato that GIANT can make many amazing things.

I made mostly lazy things. LOTS of oven sweet potato fries, with my current favorite roasted veggie spice combo: paprika, cumin, and garlic powder.

Another lazy thing I did was chopped up some sweet potato (I used the outer pieces with skin on ‘em for the fries and used the inner pieces, already skinless and not in need of peeling for this), and chucked it in a pan with some red lentils and water. Threw on some garam masala and cooked it all til tender.

Had it the first night with yogurt. Excellent.

Had leftovers the next day with a FRIED EGG ON TOP! YES! Continuing with the Indian(ish) motif, also had some roasted cauliflower, that I’d tossed with a bit of curry powder pre-oven.

This was deeeeeeeeeeelicious and very filling.

I am not sure why my fried egg looks so creepy and wrinkly. It tasted good. Farmer’s market egg, heck yeah!

   

And of course, the oozy yolk made the most creamy, decadent sauce. Love it love it love it.

Now for a more formal sweet potato meal.

We begin with the standard onion/carrot/celery trifecta, sauteeing in a bit of olive oil:

Then throw in some ‘shrooms.

Then get out a packet of tempeh! I’m so into tempeh. It’s such hippie food. It just tastes so… earthy and grungy and unglamorous and tasty.

I cut it into little chunks, the midpoint of which can be seen here. BUT, you could definitely do them in smaller dice, like to approximate the consistency of ground beef. I’d probably do that next time.

The veggies, meanwhile, got a sprinkling of seasoning. I could’ve put thought into herbs, but instead I chucked some Italian seasoning on.

Then sprinkled on some flour…

And in went the tempeh, some wine, and some water, to make some sauciness (I’d add more liquid next time. I would’ve added vegetable stock, but for the simple reason that I’m out and left my Better than Buillion at Steve’s like A MONTH AGO AND KEEP FORGETTING TO TAKE IT BACK).

 

Into a baking dish it went…

  

All set to be TOPPED. Because friends, here’s where the sweet potato goodness comes in. Okay so apparently giant sweet potato actually had been all used up at that point, so I roasted two new ones.

And then as a wonnnnnnnnnnnnderful treat, we had some cream in the house leftover from Thanksgiving baking, so I added just a bit (like, seriously, probably a tablespoon- it’s so FLAVORFUL, let alone rich, that that’s all I needed).

 

And shmeared it over the top. Untraditional shepherd’s pie!

Given a bakesie for 20 minutes or so at 350, til golden brown and gorgeous. Delightful.

On a final note, CHRISTMAS ALERT. If there’s someone who likes eating or reading in your life, I highly recommend getting them Blood, Bones & Butter. It’s written by a well-known chef who happens to be ( a woman, but more than even about food it’s just an incredibly beautifully written memoir about a somewhat insane childhood, a few lost years (decades?) and a really fascinating/bizarre look into a crazy relationship (including some intoxicating chapters spent in Italy). I got it from the library and inhaled it. A great read!