An open love letter to green beans. 28 August 2007 12:03 pm
Posted by Tracy in : seasonality, garden, local food, summer, vegan, recipes, eating, CSA, vegetarian, cooking , add a commentOkay, so this is a cut-and-paste from my Open Letters project, but that doesn’t make it any less true. Besides, it’s my birthday, so I get to do whatever I want, including slack off a little. I wrote this letter in 2006, before that year’s pole beans kicked in and I learned that they are the secret to finally growing enough green beans to bring some inside, but all the parts about the love are still 110% true. And the recipe sneakily concealed in this epistle is so darn tasty that I may even write it up as its own entry someday. (more…)
Monkey Monday: my birthday came early edition 27 August 2007 11:02 pm
Posted by Tracy in : vegan, garden, summer, vegetarian, eugene, friends, eating, restaurants , 4 commentsMy birthday isn’t for a little under an hour in this time zone, but it feels like I’ve been celebrating for days. As previously mentioned, my parents are visiting, and today I got home from work just in time to watch Peter put the final brushes of blue paint on the trim of our newly yellow house. Yay! (Every time my parents visit, they do a project. This one is extra awesome.) Also, yesterday was Kitchen Garden Day and we had a fabulous dinner, and we also ate a super-delicious family-style dinner at Iraila the night before that (Saturday). The festivities will really kick into gear with a total lunar eclipse that’s just a few hours away (more astronomy nerdery here), but that’s not exactly edible (except in the Cookie Monster song “If Moon Were Cookie”) so the rest of this post will be about more delicious celebrations and my plans for making this Green Bean Appreciation Week. (more…)
Recipe: Roasted Summer Vegetables 24 August 2007 9:55 pm
Posted by Tracy in : seasonality, local food, summer, vegan, recipes, eating, CSA, vegetarian, cooking , add a commentThis is an approximation of the roasted vegetables I made for dinner on Wednesday night, based on a recipe I wrote up on Everything2 way back in the day when dinosaurs roamed the earth. My favorite cookbook reference for roasted vegetables (and many other things, of course) is Moosewood Restaurant New Classics, specifically the Roasted Vegetables for Pasta and Roasted Winter Vegetables recipes, although my version of their Moroccan Roasted Vegetables was a big hit at Sundance (but the story of that particular stalker will have to wait for another time). Anyway. Those recipes are particularly useful when I’m not sure how thick to cut up various vegetables, but mostly this cooking method is super-forgiving, and I make a lot up myself as I go along, without really measuring anything. So take my amounts with a grain of salt. (more…)
How to cook a giant mystery squash (only very arguably a recipe) 23 August 2007 11:29 pm
Posted by Tracy in : garden, local food, summer, pictures, kitchen gear, eating, eugene, recipes, cooking , add a commentStep one is to make a silly blog post about a ridiculous stray squash that followed your partner home from a pile marked “FREE” by the side of the road somewhere, no joke. (And now I will stop saying “you” when I mean “me” because it’s confusing as heck to write and I’m up past my bedtime after a long day that involved bringing my mom to work, also no joke, but I may write about it eventually.) (more…)
Chocolate sorbet: recipe and rememberings 9 August 2007 10:28 pm
Posted by Tracy in : seasonality, vegan, kitchen gear, summer, chocolate, sorbet, dessert, friends, eating, vegetarian, recipes, cooking , 4 commentsMmm, chocolate. Is there anything it can’t do? Well, for a time, I thought it couldn’t be refreshing, because a big part of what makes chocolate so awesome is the fat. Not that there’s anything wrong with that! It’s just a little heavy, say on a hot summer day. But then I learned about chocolate sorbet, and life got just that much more beautiful. Sorbet is awesome year-round, of course, but it’s perhaps the perfect dessert for the hottest days of summer, when it’s too hot for even ice cream (even the vegan kinds). So chocolate sorbet? A big winner all around, I tell you what. And now for a little flashback to my first experience with this fabulous dessert. (more…)
