For once, I'm just not sure where to start...
The elections are over and I'm in mourning. Our friend, John McGoff, was defeated in the Congressional primary. The gal who defeated him is someone I've known for many, many years. She'll do a fine job. But, we wanted John to win because we thought he was the best candidate. I took the 6am-9am shift at our polling place and Connie took the 3p-6pm shift. We handed out a boatload of literature. And, saw lots of our neighbors. And, met some new friends. Then, that evening after I taught a Social Security class, we went to what we'd hoped would be a victory party. It was not to be.
Garrison Keillor was here for one evening. Connie loves to listen to him so I bought tickets. Very good tickets as it turned out. We were smack dab in the middle seven rows back. Turns out our friends Don and Diane were sitting two rows behind us. It was fun to be able to pick their laughs out of the crowd. And, I will say two hours of laughter certainly helped lighten my mood.
My mood needed lightening. A friend's 21 year-old son was killed in a car accident last weekend. The calling was this week. Mom and his grandma were pledge sisters. I've known Trish since we were infants. She's a sorority sister. We see each other at Kappa events but don't tend to socialize otherwise. But, there's a bond there that you just don't have with someone you've known a year or two. Mom drove part way and I picked her up and we drove to the calling. It was a tough afternoon.
Now, one of the other things that lightened my mood was running into some folks who looked familiar. They were also at the Garrison Keillor show. I asked if they lived in our neighborhood and they said no, they live a couple of streets over but we probably recognized him from running past our home. Then, the light turned on and he realized we're the ones with the gardens and yes, he'd stopped to talk with us. At that point, she said she always slows down to take a good look and enjoy the flowers when she goes by. It felt great to know our hard work is enjoyed by others!
Speaking of hard work, we're getting some new veggies out of the garden. Radishes have become a regular fixture in our salads.
And, we've just started to get some teeny, tiny pea pods. I'm looking forward to more goodies as the summer goes along. For now, we're still ahving to buy zucchini and all of the later summer veggies. But for the most part the plants are out and a lot of the seeds are planted.
One of the salads we enjoyed very much this week was a BLT Salad with Avocado Cilantro Dressing. It was totally a desperation move. We had a huge head of lettuce in a garden walkway. Either it got picked or mowed. Bacon needed to be used up. Avocados were getting mushy. And some cilantro was going to seed. Let me say that we put in a little patch of cilantro several years ago. Last year, we put one packet of additional seeds in the herb garden. We now have roughly 15 cilantro plants in various and sundry places they're not supposed to be... Plants in places they're not supposed to be are called weeds, aren't they? I just can't bear to call any cilantro a weed so keep putting up with it's aggressive ways.
Since we had seven minutes to eat and dash out the door to head to Civic Theatre and see Guys and Dolls, a photo of the salads was not, umm, in the picture. Here's what the dressing looks like:
Let me just say this was a fabulous salad. It's open to interpretation. Pretty much whatever you've got on hand will work. We may use the leftovers as a dipping sauce for shrimp...
BLT Salad with Avocado Cilantro Dressing
Ingredients:
for the salad:
lettuce (I used butter lettuce)
avocado (I used 1/2 per person)
bacon (diced and browned)
cheese (I used cheddar)
nuts (I used cashews)
tomatoes (I used grape tomatoes)
for the dressing:
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/2 c lowfat sour cream
1 t red wine vinegar
3 sprigs cilantro
2 cloves garlic
1 avocado
The other thing we do that's pretty green is try to eat local. It doesn't always work out. Like the evening this week when I got home pretty late and just wanted to get dinner on the table. Burgers and potato puffs from the freezer and a grilled guacamole. The only local item in the entire menu was the tomatoes. I made a more complicated version of the guacamole from one of Cat Cora's cookbooks. This was super simple. And, we loved it. One of the splurges I've found to be very worthwhile is flavored vinegars and olive oils. It doesn't take a lot so a $15 bottle of Meyer Lemon Olive Oil will last me 6-8 months. And the flavor is incredible.
Side note: I'm typing this on a Friday evening while Connie's playing bridge. I have what we lovingly refer to as the large black mosquito whining at my elbow. It is 8:24. She gets a scooby snack at 8:30 every evening. I'm usually here at the computer hooked up to the office computer about that time. Since I'm the closest to the scooby snack storage, I'm the designated bugee. Whine, nudge, look pitiful. Poor Annie just doesn't get enough love and affection. Breakfast in the morning. Go to the office and have a chase around the file cabinets with all the gals - who by the way buy her dog toys. Then, a cracker at lunch. Pets and rubs and belly rubs from all the clients. And, snacks and rubs from Tommy our wonderful UPS guy. A walk after lunch. Home for a bite of dinner. A lamb treat at 7:00. A scooby snack at 8:30. A handful of the FOBs dry food when it comes in about 10:00. Then, off to sleep on the floor at the foot of our bed. Poor, pitiful Annie. Don't you feel sorry for her? Ah, that's all taken five minutes to type. Please excuse me while I go take care of a dog's needs.
Simple Grilled Guacamole
serves two
Ingredients:
1 avocado, peeled and halved
1 small red onion, peeled and cut into four slices
2 small tomatoes, halved
lemon olive oil
lemon balsamic vinegar
Directions:
You can use any kind of grill or grill pan for this. It takes about five minutes to grill. Make sure your grill is well oiled. You'll want to use direct heat on medium. Put the onion slices and avocado halves on when you've got five minutes to go on the rest of your meal. Flip them after about three minutes. Put the tomato halves on at that time. Two minutes later, remove the vegetables to plates. Start with the avocado halves then break the onions into rings. Put the tomato halves on the sides. Drizzle with the olive oil and vinegar. If you don't have lemon flavored, I'd imagine you can substitute regular evoo, white balsamic and a splash of lemon juice. Serve.
Poor Connie. I feed him a lot of fruit. He's not terribly fond of fruit but most of the time he gamely eats it. I'm not great at eating just a piece of fruit myself so I make sure to include it in salads on a regular basis. This salad has been on the menu for a couple of weeks. First the avocados weren't any good so I had to buy more and wait for them to soften. Then, this didn't go with any of the meals we were having. Finally, along came spinach lasagna and I thought we'd have a great match.
The salad was great. The spinach lasagna, not so much. I was testing the recipe for a magazine so I'm not allowed to say much. But, my comment would be that the texture was like baby food and it tasted just about the same. The rest is headed for the trash. Thank goodness the salad was wonderful!
I left the grapes in the fridge at the office so they didn't go in. I'm not sure I'll add them next time even if they do make their way to the home fridge.
What did we think? We would have loved more ginger flavor. I thought it added a bit of heat to the dressing but not much else. Connie would've mixed the cilantro into the dressing. I was ok with it on top of the salad but would've liked it in the dressing also. Otherwise this was great. Very refreshing and a unique blend of flavors.
Summer Fruit Salad
Ingredients:
1/2 c bottled poppy seed dressing
2 t freshly grated ginger
2 avocados, thinly sliced
4 c loosely packed arugula
2 c halved seedless green grapes
1 mango, julienned
1 c diced fresh strawberries
1/4 c thinly sliced green onions
1/4 c chopped fresh cilantro
Directions:
Mix the poppyseed dressing and the ginger.
Toss the rest of the ingredients with the dressing. Serve. As you can see in the photo, I used the avocado as a "bowl" for the dressing. Next time I'll try tossing the salad as the instructions said.
adapted from Southern Living
I'd have to cook 10 meals a day with everything new every meal in order to get through my backlog of recipes to try. As it is, we try 5-10 new recipes a week. Just recently, we tried one of my favorite blogger's steaks. Drick's Cowboy Sugar Rubbed Steaks. They were plate-licking good! But, we're trying to cut down on the amount of beef we eat - it's healthier for us and for the environment. That means cooking more fish - something I've never been good at getting on the menu. Salmon, yes, other fish, no. We tried a recipe from Cat Cora's Classics with a twist for oven fried fish. It was pretty good. I absolutely love whole, fried catfish. And, I kept reading recipes on Foodbuzz for oven fried catfish. So, I bought a bag of catfish and put it on the menu.
Drick recommended buttermilk slaw and potatoes (I think) to go with his catfish. We had corn on the cob from the CSA so that replaced the potatoes. Now, the question was what kind of slaw? Drick's buttermilk? Mrs. Huber's oil and vinegar? My barbecue? Regular creamy? On the way to the office on Sunday I read an article in Southern Living touting the health benefits of avocados. They have lutein to help you avoid macular degeneration and cataracts among a host of good things they do. We both love avocados. So, we decided then and there that we'd increase our intake of them. But, I want to do this creatively. None of this guacamole twice a week thing. In the middle of the afternoon while working on a particularly gnarly financial plan, I had an ah-ha moment. Why not guacamole slaw?
We got home about 6:00 and I started in on dinner. I'd bought a small cabbage at the farmer's market so that was good to go. We had a bag of avocados. The question was how exactly to make the slaw... I made a batch of guacamole that was pretty good. But, once it was mixed with the shredded cabbage, it seemed to lose all of it's character. So, I added more lime juice and a splash of Worcestershire and a few drops of Tabasco. That was better but still not great. So, I set the slaw aside and started working on Monday's dinner. Since I knew I'd be in my Columbus office all day Monday and would get home maybe by 7:00pm, I wanted that dinner ready. Along the way, I plopped the catfish filets in the buttermilk mixture and mixed up the coating. Then, it was time to try the slaw again and see what I could do to kick it up to where I wanted it to be. As luck would have it, time did the trick! The cabbage had softened a bit and the flavors had blended. I chopped up another avocado and stirred it in and it was exactly what I wanted. In fact, as I type this, I just finished the last of it for my lunch and it was just as good the second day! Since I was adding and tasting, measurements are VERY inexact. And, to add insult to injury, the flash on my camera was not cooperating...
Tonight was an all Cat Cora evening. We got home from the office well after 7:00 - another 12 hour day - so I wanted to fix something that sounded pretty easy. I'd put th Barbados sweet potatoes and jerk-rubbed pork chops on the menu list for the week and was hoping I could do the guacamole at the same time. Turns out I managed to cook everything on the grill. That way, we didn't heat up the house while we were cooking - nice bonus. I've been a fan of guacamole as long as I can remember. There's a little place on the west side of town where they barely speak English. The guacamole is fabulous. This is just as good if not better.
Grilled Guacamole
3 large avocados, halved, pitted and peeled
extra virgin olive oil for brushing
1 large red onion, peeled, halved and thickly (about 1/4") sliced
1 large jalapeno, cut in half and seeded
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 T fresh lime juice
1/4 c chopped fresh cilantro
1/2 c diced tomato
warm tortilla chips
1/2 lime
Preheat your grill. Mix the tomatoes, cilantro, garlic and lime juice in a bowl.
Brush the avocado halves with olive oil. Toss the onion slices and the jalapenos with olive oil then put them in a grill basket. Put the avocados and the grill basket on the grill - on direct heat.
Turn the avocados when they've got grill marks.
Toss the onions and jalapenos to keep them from getting too brown on one side. When the avocados have grill marks on both sides and the onions and jalapenos are nicely browned, remove them all from the heat.
Chop the avocados, onions and jalapenos and add them to the tomato mixture. Be careful to chop the jalapeno VERY finely.
Serve with tortilla chips that have been warmed then spritzed with lime juice.
adapted from Cat Cora's Classics with a Twist
