Food – Page 14 – Her Green Life

Cool as a cucumber salad

If you’re growing cucumbers (or get them in a CSA box), this is about the point where you’re wondering, what do I do with all of these cukes?

One good option is homemade pickles (looks like I need a post on that subject), but if the pickling route is not your thing, there’s always cucumber salad.

The challenge with a cucumber salad is to make something that’s flavorful rather than watery, with a twist to add interest to what can be a boring dish.

Challenge accepted and met.

Asian Cucumber Salad

Recipe by Melissa
Serves 4

Ingredients
3-4 c. cucumber, cut in small chunks (or thin slices)
2 T. finely chopped onion (red would be lovely)
2 T. miso paste
2 T. sugar
2-3 T. seasoned rice vinegar
1/3 c. chopped peanuts and/or black sesame seeds
Cilantro for garnish (opt.)

Directions
Whisk miso paste, sugar, and rice vinegar to combine. Toss with cucumber and onion. Refrigerate for at least two hours (or up to twenty-four). Before serving, top with peanuts and/or sesame seeds.

Note: Feel free to play with amounts of miso, sugar, and vinegar to get the salty, sweet, tangy combination that’s right for you!

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We ate all of the finished product before I could snap a photo. This makes a fast and easy side, snack, or picnic dish.

Foods of summer

The garden kindly waited to hit its full summer stride until we returned from our trip. After a week of being creative with frozen veggies, I was ready!

The zucchini on the bottom right got away from us, but it was perfect for zucchini bread. I whipped up a big batch and made some with chocolate chips as “cupcakes” for Sir’s belated birthday celebration with his childcare friends.

After I made them, I had a bit of baker’s regret, wondering if three- and four-year-old kids would go for my healthy treat: no frosting, made with whole wheat pastry flour, and chock full of grated zucchini and chopped pecans.

The kids’ verdict? Yummy!

I made use of the hot oven to roast some veggies for dinner that night: red beets, golden beets, and broccoli romanesco, served with pasta with garden veggie sauce and a side of garlicky collard greens.

Garlic featured prominently in the roasting marathon. Matthew peeled hundreds of cloves of garlic for a taste test of the twenty-four varieties he grew. Unfortunately, my method of roasting the garlic in muffin tins, with individual varieties separated in the cups, and perhaps the fact that the cloves were already peeled, didn’t lead to the best roasting ever.

Edible, just not that really delicious carmelization that you can get with roasted garlic. Matthew also sauteed several of the varieties to try them that way.

After all that work, our general conclusion is that the different kinds all taste like, you guessed it, garlic!

Another meal, this one inspired by a magazine recipe for pasta with anchovies, walnuts, and raisins, served with tomato-topped kale and cannellini beans, plus some sauteed squash.

Finally, this dish was actually a pre-vacation meal: a simple pasta salad with [raw] kale, spinach, and last year’s sun-dried tomatoes, dressed in olive oil, white wine vinegar, parm, and salt and pepper. Some chopped olives would have made a welcome addition.

Unpictured eats: quinoa and summer squash salad, gazpacho, lentil chili, and garden veggie curry.

Stay tuned for some recipes, including more details on the polenta dish and a simple, refreshing cucumber salad.

Bike date at Five Bistro

This is one of those “it’s been so long ago, is it even worth writing about now” posts, but the answer is yes, because, long ago, on the last Friday in June, we had a really lovely dinner — one worth sharing and remembering, even if, or perhaps especially because, the events of the next few days were so crazy.

As I’ve mentioned before, Matthew’s been selling some produce, including winter squash and fennel, to Five Bistro, a very high caliber, local farm-t0-table restaurant. It always feels kind-of odd, because while we cook amazing food with that very same garden produce ourselves, Five is not a restaurant that’s in our regular budget.

Until that Friday night, we had been there exactly once, and that so long ago that they were at their old location in The Grove (they are now on The Hill, for you StL readers). To be completely honest, it may have been even longer until we returned if not for a generous birthday gift certificate from Matthew’s dad.

We realized as the dinner proceeded that a meal at Five is both dinner AND entertainment. Not in the sense that the wait staff is dancing on the bar, but, if you go in planning to spend two to three hours on a relaxed meal, they truly live up to their promise of a “dining experience that evokes all five of your senses.”

I must also say that they really do value their farmers — we definitely felt like VIPs while we were there — not in a flashy, overblown way, but I felt they were going to extra lengths to take good care of us, and that meant a lot.

Chef Devoti and his kitchen staff prepared delicious, beautifully presented dishes from start to finish of our four course prix-fixe meal (our fennel was on the menu!), making vegetarian adaptations as necessary.

We shared starters of taglietelle and gnocchi, followed by sweet potato soup and a dandelion green salad. Both the gnocchi and salad included ramps, a new and delicious food for us. Chef Devoti created a special vegetarian entree, featuring a variety of vegetables roasted to perfection, including our fennel and some produce from their own garden.

I opted to not photograph the food, instead fully focusing on enjoying the dining experience and the company.

To start and end the experience, we biked to and from dinner. The timing was a little crazy, with Matthew getting home from work, showered, changed, and heading right back out on the bikes, but it was worth it. I thoroughly enjoyed riding in a black strappy dress and heels (more comfortable to bike in heels than to actually walk in them when you reach your destination).

Much more to share about the week-and-a-half that followed the dinner, but I’m currently experiencing very limited internet access, so you may have to wait a bit. Until then!

Happy things: Blue tutus and chocolate peanut butter bites

A quick glance at the title may throw you, but this post is not completely random. Nope! In fact, it’s about bikes and food, with a few green notes for extra credit — completely on topic.

While I rode in the Tour de Fat bicycle parade sans costume (i.e., wearing regular clothing), many riders outfitted themselves in creative ways. One of my favorites was a woman wearing a blue tutu. I coveted that tutu and decided that somehow, a tutu would factor into my World Naked Bike Ride get-up.

Yep, that’s right, after talking about it for three years, we’re actually going to ride in the StL edition of the World Naked Bike Ride this year!

In 2010, it just didn’t happen for some reason.

In 2011, the event was either right before or after Gabriel was born, so I was either feeling very pregnant (and hot and lazy) or recovering from his delivery.

Last year (2012), I just didn’t have the energy to makes plans for the event itself, child care, etc.

So 2013 will be the year. And it will involve this fabulous bright blue tutu that I made yesterday (when I should have been prepping for a job interview that I have later this week — oh well, perhaps I can add “Tutu Maker” to my resumé).

Turns out making a tutu is rather simple. I made it even easier by re-purposing the elastic waistband from a pair of Matthew’s old, worn-out boxers. Now for the rest of my costume . . . .

On to the chocolate and peanut butter!

I’ve wanted to do some baking for over a week now, but the hot weather does not inspire one to crank up the oven. No-bake recipe to the rescue!

A couple of weeks ago, I flagged this recipe for Reeses peanut butter no-bake bars, and yesterday, I no-baked them in my kitchen. Actually, I went a step beyond no-bake and used solar heat to melt the butter and chocolate.

I put both in metal dishes (for optimal heat transfer) and set them on the blacktop pavement (hotter than lighter-colored sidewalk), both covered (and one weighted) to keep out any critters.

Butter halfway melted and a before picture of the chocolate. The butter melted very quickly. The chocolate melted almost completely (and would have melted fully if I gave it more time) — I stuck the pan in the toaster oven for just a minute or two to finish the job.

I made a half recipe (in an 8×8 pan), which was a good amount, as these are really more conducive to being eaten in tiny squares (like candy) rather than big pieces. I used semi-sweet chocolate instead of milk chocolate (of course!), and added a quarter cup of almond meal (for the half recipe) since the mixture seemed a bit runny (perhaps due to using natural peanut butter).

No final result pictures, but after setting up in the fridge, they popped right out of the pan, looking like those pictured in the recipe link. Delicious!

Blueberries by the bucket

It’s that time of year again — blueberry season. Hard to believe, but it’s been three years since we picked blueberries at Huckleberry Hollow!

Two years ago, I looked like this, and I was feeling grumpy, tired, and not at all like being out in the heat for hours picking blueberries. My MIL and a good family friend generously volunteered to pick for us that summer.

Last year, we didn’t have the option of figuring out the logistics of picking blueberries with an infant because H-Hollow lost their entire crop due to weather conditions. Yep, zero blueberries.

This year, the blueberries were back, and with Sir in childcare, I made a blueberry picking date with my MIL.

As I mentioned three years ago, this place has some huuuge blueberry bushes, which provide some partial shade for picking. The bits of shade helped, but by mid-morning it was still scorching! Why can’t blueberries ripen at a cooler time of year???

We arrived at nine in the morning and left at one, which meant just over three-and-a-half hours of picking, plus a much-needed twenty minute refuel and rehydrate break.

Between the two of us, we picked almost six-and-a-half gallons of blueberries in that time. We’ll be enjoying them fresh for the next few days, and the remainder (i.e., the bulk) are in the freezer.

While I didn’t brave blueberry picking with a toddler in tow (heck, I have yet to take him on a Whole Foods/Trader Joe’s run — I’m definitely not ready for blueberry picking!), I look forward to having him along in future years. The trick to that will be making sure he puts more blueberries in the bucket than in his mouth, lest he meet an end like that of Violet in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

Asian Cucumber Salad

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