Category Archives: Food

Cucumber soup

Until we have a garden in our backyard, growing our food is mostly Matthew’s domain, and these days, I rarely venture out to our commuter garden.  However, before we left for our trip a couple of weeks ago, I headed out for one final picking.

I harvested a boatload of cucumbers and hatched a half-baked plan to take the cukes to Iowa with us and make refrigerator dills for my family.  We nixed that plan, and the cukes sat in our dying fridge for a week.

We returned to a fridge full of still okay cukes.  After staring them down for a few days, I decided the best way to use a large number of cucumbers was some kind of chilled soup.

Some searching yielded a variety of recipes, many that only used one cucumber (that would never do!).  The most promising involved cucumbers and avocado, but, while I want to give that a try someday, I was determined to work with ingredients I had on hand, so avocado was out.

I needed something in place of the avocado to make the soup thick and rich, since cucumbers are mostly water.  The secret ingredients?  Rice and tahini.

Chilled cucumber soup

Recipe by Melissa
Serves 4-6

Ingredients
3-4 pounds cucumbers
1 cup cooked brown rice
1/3 cup good olive oil
1/2 t. salt
1/4 t. freshly ground black pepper
1-2 T. tahini
2 t. Greek spice mix (or blend of other fresh and/or dried herbs)
1-2 cloves garlic, crushed
1/3 c. chopped onion
1 c. corn (optional)

Directions
Trim and discard the ends of the cucumbers.  If using larger cukes with a lot of seeds, cut in half longways and scoop out and discard the seeds.  Dice the cucumbers.  Set aside 2 cups of diced cucumbers.

In batches, puree all ingredients, except for the reserved diced cukes and the corn, in a blender or food processor.

Try a sample, and add more salt, pepper, or herbs to taste.  Mix in the diced cucumbers and garnish with corn.  Serve chilled.

I feel like I’m taking crazy pills

Two weeks ago yesterday, we discovered, after I had a sip of relatively warm and slightly “off” milk, that the refrigerator in our new apartment was hovering between 46°F and 50°F (recommended safe temp for food is around 37°F).

The soonest a repair person could come was two days later, so we decided to buy dry ice in an attempt to keep our food good (though for all we knew it had been at unsafe temps since we’d moved in).  Given my previous dry ice escapades, Matthew went on the ice run.

Tuesday rolled around and the repairman finally showed up.  After asking me a few questions and poking around the fridge for five to ten minutes, he declared that nothing was wrong with it.

I felt like he thought I was either crazy or lying.  And I thought the same of him, given that our thermometer, which we’d tested for accuracy, had clearly showed unacceptable temps (though they seemed fine when he was there, due to the dry ice, which I pointed out to him).

Ten days, one more repair visit (in which they replaced the unit’s internal thermometer), multiple runs for both dry ice for the fridge and then regular ice for keeping food in coolers, much time wasted, lots of worry and debate over whether or not we should discard everything in the fridge to be on the safe side, and one tearful call to the landlord later, we received a new fridge.

Of course, the delivery truck arrived just as I had stepped out of the shower, in a rush to get ready to get Gabriel to the doctor and Gabriel waking from his nap with a diaperful of diarrhea, but that’s a different story for a different day.

Fortunately, our landlord was there to handle the delivery.  I returned home to my lovely shrink-wrapped fridge.

The stainless steel doors were completely covered in plastic that was a huge pain to remove, not to mention the waste.  I would prefer a slightly scuffed and imperfect fridge to all of that junk.

While this is not the fridge we would buy for ourselves (freezer on bottom models are most efficient and we really don’t care about ice/water in the door), having a fridge that we know is keeping our food at safe temps is a big relief.  Now we can get back to making and and fully enjoying delicious meals with our amazing garden bounty!

Happy birthday baby

We spent the Fourth of July holiday sweating it out in Iowa with my family.  Our time there included Sir’s first time in the swimming pool and an early birthday celebration.

Due to the extreme heat, we opted to avoid turning on the oven to make a cake.  Instead, we made delicious chocolate birthday waffles, served with a variety of delicious ice creams.  Sir thoroughly enjoyed the treat.

July garden tour

Here’s another slide show from the garden.  Given the fact that we’re baking here (and will be for the foreseeable future), we’re very thankful to have the new drip irrigation system in place (guest post on that coming soon).

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It’s come a long way since May:

  • We ate our first tomato, with lots more on the way.
  • We’ve been enjoying new potatoes.
  • Matthew and his mom harvested all the Yukon gold potatoes, but there are many potatoes that need to be harvested soon.
  • Despite the large quantity of onions planted, our harvest may be fairly small — it got too hot before they had time to get much size.
  • Summer squash and cukes are pouring in, with a couple jars of pickles in the fridge.
  • Matthew made a couple of small restaurant sales (fennel, artichokes, kale, and golden beets)!
  • We named the garden, and I’m working on a new page for all things garden-related.

Sungolds for my golden boy

A little less than a year ago, Gabriel arrived with a good bit of fairly dark brown hair.  I assumed he would have Matthew’s nice, deep brown hair color, but over the past year, G’s hair lightened quite a bit.  I now describe it as “golden,” especially when the sun hits it, and in this picture, it looks red.

Moving day photo in front of our first home

Anyhow, Sir has been vacationing in Iowa with Baba (Czech for “Grandma” — Matthew’s mom’s side of the family is Czech) for the past few days.  We’ll be apart for over 72 hours (previous longest separation was 27 hours), which made me a bit apprehensive.

Fortunately, Baba reports that things are going very well.  Sir’s only complaint is that she didn’t bring enough sungolds.

I headed to the garden this morning for a picking session, since Sir said he would refuse to see us if we did not come bearing gifts.

Sungold cherry tomatoes

Happy 4th of July!