Month: August 2009

August 31, 2009

We arrived carrying as much garden as we could (this picture doesn’t include any of the huge bags of salad and other greens): My Uncle gave me an old Canon DSLR body, so I messed around with it (using his lens) a little. I ordered a lens of my own, and it was waiting for me when I got home, so the pictures on this blog should now regularly rise above the “execrable” level. Note…

August 30, 2009

Organic heirloom red fingerling potatoes roasted with lardons of homemade miso-cured maple-smoked bacon, fat cloves of garlic, and branches of rosemary are very, very good. That is all.

August 20, 2009

I took delivery of our first seafood order, which had been swimming happily around the North Pacific the day before, and delighted in the very, very happy place that our food is going to. Up until now, the fish selection around here has been pretty bad, and I’ve had to console myself with the world-class local meat, cheese, and grain and our own produce. But fish is so wonderful, and gets me so inspired to…

August 18, 2009

I took a quick trip to the city last week, and was lucky enough to line the trip up with a little shindig at Kris‘ place (Ken is out of town for a big chunk of every summer.) Mary was there, of course, with her guy and another friend. Kris put me in charge of salad, so I brought down a bag of various things and tried to get there a little early so I…

August 17, 2009

This probably would have been better as part of the previous post, since it’s essentially another cucumber and tomato salad. The cucumber salad is by way of a meal I participated in last week in the city, but which post I haven’t finished yet. So it’ll have to do as an addendum of sorts to the tomato post. When I do post the NYC dinner, you’ll see that the message is the same (at least…

August 15, 2009

I’ve got some more posts on tap, but I’m tired right now after dealing with our garage sale all day. I hear more and more stories about people losing tomatoes to the blight- including, horrifyingly, our immediate neighbor- but so far ours are soldiering on. To celebrate what might be an all-too-brief luxury, we’re diving into our pink brandywines every night for dinner, dressing them with just a bit of crunchy salt, olive oil, basil,…

August 10, 2009

It seems kind of meat-centric around here, I know, but that’s partly because the camera was out of town and partly because some of the meatless things I’ve made lately haven’t been super photogenic. Despite what it may seem, our life is not all bacon all the time. Sorry to disappoint you. This post, for example, has no bacon in it at all, and will instead feature massive amounts of smoked and simmered non-belly pig…

August 7, 2009

Since the family is away for a few days, and this last week has been a trying one, I’ve been getting a lot of work done and not cleaning up after myself- just like I used to do every single day before I had a family. To celebrate, and also to treat myself to some hedonism as the wretched poison ivy abates under the onslaught of steroids, I constructed a burger that may well be…

August 5, 2009

If you live in my area, you know that our seafood options are limited to say the least. In response to this, our good buddy Gerard has stepped up and become a to-order fishmonger with weekly drop-offs on both sides of the river. Send him an email and start ordering the same quality fish that restaurants get. I am positively vibrating with excitement at being able to order all kinds of über-fresh goodies both common…

August 3, 2009

More torrential rain, and then more still- it’s beyond the bad joke stage, and into full-blown misery here in parts of the Northeast. Micro sent me this link to an article in the Globe about the CSA where he works every week for his share of the bounty; they lost their entire tomato crop to the early blight (same fungus that caused the potato famine). Chris just pulled up all their Roma tomatoes and burned…