That Time of Year

Cranky calls it "mayonnaise season."
Honestly, though, we haven't had too many goopy sandwiches this summer. We're still figuring out the bread situation, Chez Crumb. This one is a gluten-free pre-sliced loaf that's amazingly edible. Really good, in fact.
So here's your criterial BLT, made with tomatoes that are increasingly marauding us with their prolifitude. We're still ahead of them, but in a few days we might have to get out the food mill and freezer bags. The bacon is homemade; quite simple (no sissy extra flavors like Fluffernut Brine). The lettuce is from the farmers market. And the mayonnaise comes from a jar with a blue lid.
I'm going to keep eating these as long as the tomatoes keep coming in.
I am NOT having any ratatouille this summer. At all.

Petit Quoi?

I feel I ought to be ashamed of having fresh peas to buy at the farmers market, this late in the summer.
In truth, I haven't bought peas for over a month; it just doesn't seem right. Even though we have some great farmers who manage to bring us fresh peas something like seven or eight months out of the year.
So this photo is a little out of date, but good enough to share.
Fresh English peas, cooked in a little (strained) vegetable broth made from their pods, some cilantro stems, and whatever junky allium you have on hand to jazz it up. Salt, pepper. A — just shoot me now — couple of leaves of mint. (Because mint goes with peas, all the old cookbooks say, even though I have NEVER eaten peas with mint, just out of contrariness.)
This nice mess goes into the blender with some snowy, thick yogurt (but take the mint leaves out). Whirl, taste, adjust. You are going to serve it cool or at room temperature, so don't be afraid to jack up the flavors.
I admit I was overeager to photograph my concoction. If only I had waited until the foaminess subsided, you'd have seen what a striking pastel green this soup was.
I couldn't even wait for the foaminess to subside before I ate the soup.

I Say La-ZAH-gna

I've become so lazy in the kitchen.
This entire lasagna was concocted and baked in about an hour. That sounds like a long time, but 15 minutes of it was getting the damn rice-based noodles* to cook. The rest was unsupervised oven time. Oh, a little assembling; make it an hour and 10 minutes.
Really damn yummy. See the little shriveled pale green things on the top row? Those are slices of pattypan squash from the garden. The red things are tomahtoes, of course, from the garden as well. There was no tomahto sauce. None needed. We just sliced tomahtoes and distributed them over layers of pasta, sloshed here and there with fresh sheep ricotta and grated goat cheddar.
Seasoning was done by sauteeing spinach leaves with chopped garlic, which we layered here and there, and we sneaked some minced basil leaves into the grated cheese so it would distribute evenly. I forgot about oregano; that would have been nice.
The rice noodles never did get completely soft in the cooking water, so we covered the lasagna with foil for most of the time it was in the oven. That worked. Then we removed the foil to get a little browning on top. That worked, too.
It was just a mouthful of summer. So fresh and spontaneous.
It wasn't a huge dish, but one serving (pretty petite, about three by four inches) was filling enough. We portioned the leftovers into individual freezer containers, for... leftovers. I can't wait.

*Tinkyada brand brown-rice lasagna noodles, to be specific. I can't understand the cult-like following Tinkyada pasta has garnered among people who must avoid gluten. To be fair, it was the only alternative pasta brand we found in the shape of lasagna; that's why we bought it. It was OK. (The white rice spaghetti of this label is intolerably gummy and we won't eat it again.)

I Say To-MAH-To

Well, I do now. I do, now that I have this adorable English tomahto mug, brought back to the States for me by Sam because she is a swell friend and she knows I'm a tomato ranchin' bum (which means ass in British, but I mean "hobo"). And because Sam knew there would be a load of produce in exchange for her darling gift.
It so happens I'm in the midst of a tomato juice binge. For the past two years, I made small batches of homegrown tomato juice; I haven't harvested enough tomatoes yet this year to run through the food mill. But I will. And they will be pronounced tomahto.
So for this photo, I contrived to turn the mug around with the handle to the left (both drinking sides, left- or right-handed, are beautifully sculpted into the shape of a smile; makes me smile), so you could see the traces of (commercial) tomato juice inside.
The message on the side of the mug says "tasty tomatoes growing in the garden".
I'd say it's spelled wrong... but they know how to pronounce it over there in England.
It's tomahto.
Thanks, Sam.

Uh-Oh

This is a pattypan squash. We are growing them this year instead of zucchini, because they don't get all overgrown when you're not looking. They're nice to eat, and they can be harvested when they're about 2-1/2 to 3 inches across.
This bad boy is 5 inches across.
I'm SURE it was not on the bush when I checked yesterday.

But I could be wrong.

Feeling Happy

When I discovered I couldn't eat foods with gluten, I learned a new phrase: "feeling safe."
You could go to a friend's house who also has celiac disease, and know you'd be fed something that wouldn't literally gnaw at your guts for the next 24 hours. You'd be safe.
You might be able to go to a coffeehouse that serves gluten-free treats and enjoy a chocolate muffin, hopefully feeling safe. (Turns out I wasn't safe. Curse them and their maelstrom of airborne wheat flour.)
You could definitely cook for yourself and know you were safe.
But shopping for gluten-free ingredients had me a bit intimidated. Yes, Whole Foods has several products that are safe, but they're expensive and not all yummy.
Trader Joe's is supposed to have a substantial supply of gluten-free foods, but I didn't hit the jackpot there.
My local retro supermarket, which I love, carries plenty of gluten-free frozen dinners and some crackers and alternative flours, but you couldn't live off that stuff, day in and day out.
(I know that plenty of natural food is naturally gluten-free. Trust me. We are big on beans and rice and produce around here. Mm.)
I whimpered to Cranky: "Why isn't there a gluten-free store? This is Marin County, after all. Wouldn't there be one?"
He shrugged and said it probably wouldn't be a "safe" business model.
Sigh.
The other day I got a blood test at 7 a.m., and since we were up and about, we decided to look at a natural foods store a couple of towns over, toward West Marin. In all my years here, I'd never shopped at Good Earth. I was hoping they might have a healthy approach to dietary restrictions, the sweet hippies. (The store first opened in 1969!) But we were too early; we'd need to come back at 9 and I didn't feel like hunkering in the parking lot for 40 minutes.
We circled back toward home, and happened to spot another market we wanted to check out. It was OK, not worth a trip (except for the fish market). But we ended up frittering away the better part of half an hour, and sure enough, it was time to return to Good Earth.
My intention was to make a beeline for the baking department, because I wanted some hard-to-find quinoa flour. But I kept getting distracted by all the little blue labels affixed to shelves here and there throughout the store. The labels said "Gluten Free." There were many, many, many of the little blue labels. Everywhere, interspersed among the "regular" foods.
I felt safe! Somebody there cares enough about the difficulties of dietary restrictions to make shopping easy. Oh, not just easy. The store is literally bursting with gluten-free foods. I almost bought a bottle of gluten-free salad dressing. (I don't BUY salad dressing!)
Everywhere I looked I found safe options: snacks, soups, pastas. It was a little overwhelming, and I'm planning on going back just to see if I can take it all in sensibly. At that first moment, however, I was just reeling with joy. Whimpering, actually.
"Why," I asked Cranky, "must we rely on the loving sensibilities of hippies to make us feel safe? Celiac disease is an equal-opportunity scourge. Anybody can get it."
But this is Marin County, after all. We have a gluten-free store.
I feel fortunate. I feel safe. I feel happy.
I wish you had a store like this.

Chicken Goozle for the Soul

Cranky and I had this idea of roasting a chicken over a bed of partially cooked white beans. The drippings from the chicken would meld with the beans and create the most amazing dish.
Well, the drippings did drip. I think a little melding occurred.
But the best part was the goozle: the animal juice and collagen that spilled out of the bird, onto the beans, and down though the clay cooker onto the bottom of the pot.
When it came time to eat the chicken and beans... eh. Chicken was tough (and this was the storied Soul Food chicken! Damn.). Beans were fine.
But when it came time to refrigerate the leftovers, we separated the goozle from the beans. The chicken was separated from bones and went into the freezer; the bones yielded chicken stock. Not very good stock; all the goozle was in the beans, then separated and saved.
Goozle! We stored the goozle for a day or so, and then created a totally phony miso soup. I cracked a couple of spaghetti sticks in half, cooked them, and added them to hot goozle, with chopped scallions and cubes of excellent tofu.
It was not miso, no. But it was beany, chickeny, collageny, goozly, and very, very tasty.
Still got beans and chicken to deal with. Wish I could buy goozle.

A Well-Buttered Pan of Julie & Julia

OK. Yeah, I saw it. In a real theater with popcorn, whereas I usually wait for this kind of sleepy movie to come out on DVD.
But see, all the foodies and bloggers were spewing reviews of "Julie & Julia," mostly positive, so I figured I'd better get it while it was hot.
The hot buttered popcorn, that is. It was fantastic. Orville Redenbacher's, with real melted butter. Drool.
Oh. The movie. Well, I'm the type of foodie that would eat movie popcorn while watching a movie about Julia Child and her gimmicky stalker, Julie Powell.
No wonder Julia didn't want to talk to her! All Julie was doing was making a mockery of a book intended to deliver slow, deliberate lessons.
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
OK. The movie. I thought it was a bore. At exactly the moment in the movie when I realized I was bored, a couple behind me got up and walked out.
The audience! The audience at the matinee I attended was — forgive the sexist ageism — mainly little old ladies. Women of a certain generation, who had lived vicariously through Julia's television cooking shows. This being Marin County, where Julia went to school, some of the women might even have known her once.
But they were definitely aged. There was a walker parked at the top of one aisle, and many of those without walkers were dodderers. At the end of the movie, a manager with a flashlight was summoned into the theater, presumably to help someone out. I hope that's all it was. She had a grim look.
Right. The movie. Well, it was filmed in glorious creamy light, so that's a plus. The food shots were fan-damn-tastic. Everything looked not only real, but expertly concocted, even the disasters. I actually came home and dug out "Mastering the Art" and looked up a couple of recipes — from the movie — that I want to try.
The costumes were good... enough. The music was... dumb. Diddly. Lighthearted period stuff meant to evoke utter boredom (for the Julia scenes) and outright pop parodies (e.g., "Psycho Killer" for Julie's lobster-killing scene).
The plot was. Well, what do you want me to say? Two women obsessed with food get book deals. Whoo-hoo! Fade, cut, and that's a wrap! Cast party, people! Rock out!
And, hate me now, but. I couldn't stand Meryl Streep's Julia. Gawd. Surely the real Julia wasn't that throaty and warbly and chirpy All The Time. Paul would have throttled her!
I much preferred Dan Aykroyd's Julia.
Why are you all spinning?

Who Told Them All to Be the Same Size?

I thought we needed a break from the constant eye-bleeding red shots of tomatoes, though that is what is on our plates these days.
Pears are also thundering into ripeness, so those are in our hands, our bowls, and maybe if I have the gumption, our drinking glasses. I know there are thousands of uses for pears, but — gumption, people.
I've been quiet lately, but food has been happening. It's mostly not kitchen-intensive, though today we are firing up the oven for something I dreamed up (though I'm probably not alone in conceiving of it) involving a chicken and white beans.
In the no-heat-applied department, we've done some fermenting, a little ice-cream machining, and an oddly successful melange of emergency garden produce mixing fruits and vegetables in a salad.
I love gardening. I love growing my own food.
I just hate that the garden thinks it can crack its damn whip at me, and I'll cower.
I do cower.
Damn you, garden. Just remember, I own the water.

Garbanzogasmic

Just a nice, ordinary kind of lunch.
A little flatbread, some perfect oven-roasted tomatoes, a few tiny caramelized onions.
But, no! This was an Herbal Essences Shampoo/When Harry Met Sally kind of lunch.

"I'll have what she's having."

Like that.
Seriously, I just thought it would be nice, but it had me moaning and whooping. Possibly because I haven't eaten any "real" bread in over a month, but it wasn't only that.
It was so good.
And it's easy. Cranky made the bread, called socca, all by himself. The first bread he's ever made (though I have forced him to make crackers, and he does well). This was probably even easier than crackers.
And so delicious.
Visit Kalyn for her version, and our inspiration here today. Or click through there to David Lebovitz's original recipe.
(We only got one luscious cake apiece from the full recipe; Kalyn got three... It might depend on the size of griddle you're using.)
Could I have multiples next time?

Three Bean Salad

Cranky named this dish. He has become my court jester.
The green and yellow beans were extremely scrumptious. Yellow, maybe even more.
But we needed a third bean, and canned kidneys are so :meh:.
I wasn't even thinking bean when I came up with the idea to use pretty little cubes of fried tofu.
It was Cranky who figured out they're... beans! Soy beans.
Really tasty. Use your best vinaigrette.