I'm Never Eating Out Again

Okay, that's a blatant lie. But we recently discovered the joy of re-creating dishes at home. This round: Noodle & Company's Pasta Fresca. We had a little help with this one--much gratitude to the person who asked answers.com how to make this dish. Their answer here, my retelling of it here. The sauce is a white wine and balsamic reduction, a perfect glaze companion to the red onions and tomatoes.

Served with a spinach and strawberry salad complete with almond slivers and crumbly cheese and a very california avocado bruschetta. Topped with a view of the ocean!

Seaweed!

Dulse, to be exact. I've been meaning to up my sea vegetable intake ever since I got the chance to harvest some straight off the rocks in Maine last summer. A stirfry seemed (and proved) an easy route.

Dulse is a great source of iron, trace minerals, protein, vitamins B6 and B2, as well as fiber. I'm mostly attracted to the color, the healthy bit is just a bonus. You do have to like that fishy/sea taste, though.

The gist of the recipe is from the Maine Coast Sea Vegetable Company (you can also order sea veggies from their site, and rest easy that they are sustainably harvested). Maybe someday I'll work up to the "DLT" or "Dummus"...

This meal was also a last chance to eat "local" in Boulder, CO before heading to the Northwest.

Camera has a (tepid) love affair with seaweed here.

Fun with Garlic Scapes

If you don't think that garlic scapes are the most amazingly beautiful thing you've seen all day, raise your hand. And then leave.

I'm smitten with them, both visually and, er, victually (sorry, Webster). The women behind the stand at the farmer's market told me I was the first person to recognize (and therefore prize) the scapes, which surprised me, but I guess I was never aware of their existence before I spent some time on a farm.

My laziness and lack of a blender compel me to fry these up, with a sprinkle of cayenne and a splash of tamari--such a quick and spicy snack!--but I found a pesto recipe and a blog entry on said recipe that were both great. If you're feeling inspired, check them out:

What's a Garlic Scape? and pesto recipe
Garlic Scape Pesto...with pictures!

P.S. Some sites tell you to cut the scapes into 2 inch pieces before adding them to a stirfry, and I guess I see some logic there. But if you're making them solo, leave 'em whole, they're much more fun to eat that way (with your fingers, of course).

An Overdue Homage

Neeta's gone, y'all. Not that I just noticed (it's been two weeks), but I got some baby bok choy at the farmer's market today and it only served to highlight her absence. She's off to unleash pastries and slow-food galore on the unsuspecting and probably poorly-developed palates of her fellow med students. Good thing I stocked up on photos to drool over.

A Yellow Day

Corn Muffins, recipe courtesy of __?__. I found it scribbled into my recipe book. To put it nicely, these were boring. Before baking the second half, I added probably a tablespoon of vanilla and a heaping spoonful of honey. That helped (vanilla is my panacea), but I'd still consider these a blank canvas, in need of gorgeous fruit sauces--i'm envisioning criss-crossed blueberry and raspberry, although that's a little 4th of July for me--or, in the very least, maple syrup.

Yellow Split Pea Soup, recipe from the Tassajera Cookbook. I was intrigued by the use of lemon juice in this recipe (other than that, it features the regulars: bay leaf, cumin, paprika, black pepper...), but the lemon turned out to be too much for me. Maybe if had added it earlier it would have mellowed out, but whew, I didn't like it at all. I'm not going to bother to post the recipe, and the photoshoot was likewise uninspired. Sigh.

Tomato Time (Or, The Limits of My Camera's Focus)

Helped put some tomatoes in the ground at the garden (Growing Gardens, Boulder, CO) the other day, and picked up this trick: pluck off the early flowers and branches bearing baby tomatoes, as well as the first three branches up from the bottom (three is a guess). Then plant almost to the bottom remaining branch (deep!). This way the plant can focus on setting strong roots, which will grow out of where those lower branches used to be.

The itsy tomatoes were precious--too bad the cam couldn't handle the extreme close-up that I wanted. Oh well, these will have to do.