Parsley chopping...bane of my existence

Made it. So good. And then I realized that citrus isn't really good for you when you have a cold, which I do (I think it tends to cause/contribute to congestion.) Ah well, this is tasty!

The only thing that might keep me from adding this recipe to any kind of Cauliflower Socks Best Hits list is the amount of fervor with which I hate chopping parsley. I don't mean to rant but, well, here goes...
1) it's gritty and so must be rinsed,
2) but then it is wet and sticks to everything.
3) I have found no effective way to dry rinsed parsley and so, attempt to chop it while it's still wet.
4) The little tiny pieces stick to my hand/finger/knife/implement. No matter how few of these things I get involved in picking up the chopped parsley, half of it seems to be attached to me or a kitchen tool.

But this salad is delicious!

Edit: All that ranting and did Bittman's recipe call for parsley? No, cilantro. D'oh! Also, I forgot the red pepper. This head cold is crowding out my brain cells.

An Autumn Potato Salad

Apparently I'm really into potato salad. I'm not sure exactly when that happened.
This sounds amazing to me...The Minimalist's Sweet Potato Salad, "presumably delicious."

Zee zaftig zucchini

I set out to make some zucchini recipes this weekend. The kind of recipes that you turn to when you have a garden full of submarine-sized squash. I, of course, do not have a garden, but, as is frequent when it comes to food, I was feeling nostalgic. In the good old days we used to pick zucchini at least twice a day, but they still grew to absurd sizes. Somewhere in one of my parents' photo albums, there's a shot of me hawking zucchini and cucumbers off a wooden bench in our front yard. Barefoot and squinting into the sun, with a zucchini in either hand, my 5-year-old back is arched to support the hefty zukes.

In one of my favorite parts of one of my favorite books, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, Barbara Kingsolver coins the term "zucchini wars" to describe the position in which the typical zucchini grower finds him or herself at the end of the summer. Here's an excerpt from an excerpt published in Yes! magazine:

Sometimes I just had to put down my knives and admire their extravagant success. Their hulking, elongated cleverness. Their heft. I tried balancing them on their heads, on their sides: right here in the kitchen we had the beginnings of our own vegetable Stonehenge. Okay, yes, I was losing it. I could not stay ahead of this race.

I made the Kingsolver family recipe for Chocolate Chip Zucchini Cookies. They took longer to cook than the recipe said; it probably didn't help that I kept opening the oven door impatiently while baking the second batch at 1:30 am last night. (There were kittens to be playing with upstairs!) I also forgot to flatten the dough with the first batch, but they seemed fine. Oh, I also didn't have any baking soda. Through my cursory research I think the baking soda would have improved the texture of the cookies, but considering they are cookies with vegetables in them, I think the texture is appropriate.

For my book club get-together tonight, I made a chocolate (and chocolate chip) zucchini cake. It's a recipe from my mom, probably from one of the millions of magazine clippings she's amassed over the years. It comes together in a jiffy and is deliciously moist and sweet. My book club friends each took home a big chunk. I might eat my piece for breakfast tomorrow!

*On shredding zucchini: We grated it by hand when I was a kid, but I'll take any excuse to use my Cuisinart food processor. I used the shredding blade and I'm convinced that it saved time and the skin on my knuckles.*

Chocolate Zucchini Cake

Cream:
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 1/4 cup sugar

Add:
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup sour milk (add 1 tsp lemon...I used lime juice, because it was on hand)

Mix together dry ingredients then add gradually to wet:
2 1/2 cups flour
4 tablespoons cocoa powder
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. ground cloves

Add to batter:
2 cups shredded zucchini
1/4 cup chocolate chips

Pour in a greased and floured 9 x 13 inch pan.
Bake at 325 degrees for 40-45 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean.

Gourds, gifts and Grandma

A collection of thoughts as the autumn rolls in (maybe).

...Think there might be a little bread baking on tap for this weekend.

...I've been looking for a ragu/bolognese recipe and missing my dear grandma. Wish I'd been old enough to really study her cooking.

...Also in search of a cheesecake recipe, but feeling slightly less desperate about this search because my mom makes a wonderful cheesecake and I need only replicate her recipe to find success. I'm just a researcher/shopper by nature; I like to see my options before I commit.

...Planning a celebration/gift meal has had me feeling a plethora of emotions: 1) confidence in the thoroughness of my research, 2) insecurity about my ability to actually choose the "best" recipe, 3) apprehension about choosing a dish that will end up being fussy, 4) excitement about eating the meal, and 5) a positive, yet to be fully understood feeling such as what a gift giver feels when s/he has considered so carefully what will make the recipient most happy.

...Feeling a bit more legit for actually having made the effort recently to read interesting/well-known/charming/witty food blogs. And so...

...Cauliflower Socks is due for some beautification.

...I might be on my way to accepting the whole ornamental squash thing--OK, they are attractive in an odd sort of way and oh, so fall-ish--but they remain lodged in the category Stuff-That-Doesn't-Serve-A-Reasonable-Purpose, which is to say the Stuff-I-Try-To-Keep-Out-Of-My-Life category. I've amassed a vaguely charming collection of gourds, etc. on the mantel in my dining room. Sorry, housemates!

Introducing this week's share...

CSA, what?

After all that hemming and hawing yesterday I made a meal utilizing one measly CSA share vegetable--a sweet, not hot as assumed, red pepper. Despite the non-local-ness of the food, it turned out looking quite nice (good colors) and not bad tasting either. It was my variation on and combination of Bittman's Stir-Fried Chicken with Broccoli and Stir-Fried Spicy Beef with Basil. I was mostly looking to the recipes for technique. The ones I picked up being, parboiling the broccoli for 2 minutes and quick marinating the beef with the basil and some oil. The basil was really over-powered here even though I used a hefty handful. Basil you can't taste= a darn shame. Speaking of basil, I have a hankering for some pesto. I'd love to find a creative way to use it (read: not on pasta).

Desperately seeking inspiration...

I want to cook! I want to make something delicious! Then I want to eat it!

But I can't find any recipes/ideas, even ingredients, that seem a worthy outlet for this enthusiasm.

In an attempt to seek inspiration, I've spent the last hour diving into the food blogosphere. Man, there are a lot of people writing (well) about food out there. I could spend a million more hours reading about food. Also, I should learn to take better photos. But that's a goal for another day.


I bought a big mango at Whole Foods last week. I can't remember what variety it was and I forgot to take a picture of it before I cut it up, so that detail will remain a mystery. It was bigger than most grocery store mangoes and all green. I don't buy mangoes often because they seem expensive, you have to cut them (versus other easier fruits), and they travel from far away to get to me, but I can see this becoming a habit. Eating this super ripe, super sweet mango was a delicious way to start my two weekend mornings.

How lovely are composed salads?!

One of the goals I had when I signed up for my CSA share and started this blog was to broaden my repertoire in the kitchen--to try new recipes and to be more successful with my improvisations. I can't say I've been doing a stellar job, but when I thought about making potato salad yesterday, I started to feel like a bit of a failure for repeating a dish. But I made it anyway because there were just too many potatoes! ...And guess what?

...I think it might be the best potato salad I've ever eaten. (Humility was never a goal of this blogging CSA endeavor.)

I consulted the Barefoot Contessa (I'd made her French potato salad before.), Bittman, Jacques Pépin, and Alice Waters. I really tried to seek inspiration from some new (and respectable sources) but Pépin and Waters had nothing to offer in this particular department. Here's my variation on Bittman's Double Mustard Potato Salad. I used a combination of Dijon and brown stone-ground mustards and a bit of port and apple cider vinegars. A big difference in the technique department between Bittman and BC was cutting the potatoes before boiling them (Bittman's), which I have to say worked out much better for me.
Maybe I was feeling inspired by the beautiful plating Mr. Bacon does (see below) when I decided to incorporate the salad into a Provençal-esque salad with green beans, grape tomatoes, tuna and a delicious hard-boiled egg. (P.S. this is one of the best hard-boiled eggs I've ever eaten). I think composed salads are so gorgeous. I should do this more often.
Speaking of gorgeous...my friend Mr. Bacon put my watermelon to good use in this jicama-watermelon salad. Oooo! Ahhhhh! It tasted good too.

Why does all my food look the same?

Another Thursday, another CSA share. As far as this week goes I've eaten (some of) the cantaloupe, the tomato (eh), the squash and some eggs. The eggs were absolutely gorgeous with really deep-yellow yokes that looked almost orange when beaten. I made a quick scramble with some tomatoes and curry powder. I have four more, with which I feel compelled to make prepare something more inventive that will really highlight the quality of the eggs. Egg'deas?

I've been lazy/busy this week and didn't do much cooking, but did do a lot of veggie eating by roasting eggplant, green and yellow squash and red pepper with olive oil early in the week. The eggplant went in the 400 degree oven first for about 20 minutes with the other veggies being thrown in for about 5 minutes at the end. I didn't peel or salt and press the eggplant, but I think it was delicious (some may say slimy, but weird food textures rarely bother me.) I also roasted big cloves of garlic and diced them up after everything cooled, mixed the garlic with olive oil and juice of a lemon and poured that on top of the cooled veggies. On top of greens with some feta, this cooked-itself meal wasn't half bad (the....3? times I ate it!). Tonight I cooked up some quinoa and broccoli and ate the last of it with feta and a giant tomato from last week's CSA.









I have some serious work to do with my potato stash since more spuds came in this week's share. A slow cook in foil under some hot campfire coals this weekend might be good, but that'll only knock off a few. I also now have two hot(?) red peppers and some cabbage (what the..?!). And this week's share included a HUGE chunk of watermelon. Since it's already been cut, I feel a serious race against the clock to eat the sucker. Come over and have a piece!
Speaking of racing against the clock to eat produce...Listen to this hilarious excerpt from my favorite NPR program "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me" featuring author, food'spert and James Beard Award winning Michael Pollan.


Oh, and here's this week's share:

Post-Traumatic Eating

I got trapped in a stairwell today. The whole ordeal only lasted a few minutes, and shortly after making my way out (actually phoning my out), I watched a woman and her two school-age children nearly struck in a crosswalk by an aggressively rude driver making a right turn on a red light. These two slightly traumatic experiences got me thinking about post-traumatic eating. What food might one crave after surviving such harrowing events? As in, "Man, that sure was close. Sure glad I'm still alive. Let's eat some lobster." Similarly, what kind of food would you hope to have on hand the next time you find yourself stuck in a concrete, windowless stairwell or a similarly dismal dungeon-like setting? I, myself, have been carrying around a bag of raw almonds for at least a week in my cavernous purse. I didn't get hungry in the stairwell today, but I'm convinced that I was prepared with the ideal sustenance.