the first of the summer squash bounty: zucchini bread

Summers at home were ushered in not so memorably by the end of the school year, but instead by loaves of fresh zucchini bread. My sister and I would devour the green-flecked loaves, drenched with glossy powdered-sugar icing, almost as soon as our mother could get them out of the oven. 

Last year, I must have asked my mom on a busy day for her zucchini bread recipe because she told me to "Google it, something similar is sure to come up." Well, last weekend, I asked again, and she helped me find her cookbook with the recipe scrawled in it. 

I jotted it down and made a batch as soon as I got home--one loaf for my sister and a half-batch of muffins for me... And that disappeared just as quickly as the loaves we enjoyed as kids.

Mom's Zucchini Bread

3 eggs

2 cups sugar

1 cup oil (OR 3/4 cup applesauce plus 2 tbls oil for a low-fat version)

2 tsp vanilla

2 cups shredded zucchini

3 cups flour

2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

Preheat the oven to 350. Using parchment paper, create a sling in two loaf pans, or butter and flour a muffin tin. (This recipe will make two 8x4 loaves, 24 muffins, or one 9x5 loaf and six muffins.... your pick!)

In a large bowl, mix together the eggs, oil (or applesauce and oil for a lower-fat version), sugar, vanilla, and zucchini. I always double the amount of zucchini, so feel free to put as much as you want in there. 

In a smaller bowl, sift together the flour (you can substitute some whole wheat flour if you'd like--I always do) and other dry ingredients. Add the dry mixture to the wet, and mix until well incorporated. No need to use a mixer for this recipe--a simple hand whisk will do the trick. 

Pour the batter into the appropriate baking vessel, and pop into the oven. For muffins, bake about 35 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. For loaves, bake about 50-65 minutes, or or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

If you'd like to ice them, whip up a simple glaze icing:

1 cup powdered/confectioner's sugar

2 tbls lemon juice

Mix together, adding either more sugar or liquid until the desired texture/thickness is achieved. Pour over the hot bread and be sure to lick the bowl. 

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eating light: black bean and fresh corn salad

Here's a first: I have no photo of this. 

I know. I KNOW! It won't be the same! But here me out: I got back from my first triathlon training class, where they taught me that all these years I've been running incorrectly, and it was way past my dinner time. I was hot, my muscles were exhausted, and my adrenaline was pumping from a hard workout. And then I realized the hunger pangs.

My plan was to recreate a salad I'd had earlier in the week at Blue Dahlia Bistro. A beautiful bed of greens topped with black beans, corn, pico de gallo, avocado, and a delectable citrus vinaigrette; the perfect cool salad for a very hot summer night. And although there was no cheese in sight, it took care of my Tex-Mex craving.

As is the case in my kitchen, that plan was thwarted when I discovered my fresh lettuce was completely and irrevocably wilted. Lettuce leaves really don't last outside of the crisper, folks. 

Life goes on, though, and I continued with the rest of my plan in haste. With only a few ingredients, I pulled together a healthy, fresh dinner straight from the cupboard. High five!

Black Bean Garden Salad

1 can organic black beans, rinsed and drained (or 2 cups cooked black beans, drained and cooled)

1 ear fresh sweet corn, husk and silks removed

1 medium mild pepper (I used a banana pepper)

1 medium tomato

garlic salt and cumin to taste

juice of one lime

Lay the corn on a cutting board and, using a sharp knife, carefully shear off the kernels. Dice the tomato and pepper, and toss the veggies together with the beans. Add spices to taste. Squeeze the lime juice over the salad and toss. Serve room temp or chilled. 

~*~

I fried an egg and served it all together with a small handful of grated cheddar for a protein-packed meal that hit the spot. That said, here are things that would have made this dinner better:

• Fresh cilantro

• Diced red or yellow onion

• Sliced avocado 

• A bed of lettuce 

• Citrus vinaigrette

Wait, did I just describe the exact dish from Blue Dahlia? Yep, but it was that good. Know what I'll be having for dinner tonight? Same thing--with avocado.

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looking forward...

The heat is beating down on us already this summer, but I am truly looking forward to what's in store.

There is, of course, this movie coming out, all about eating more sustainable and local and organic foods (right up my alley, don't you think?):And I'm sure after I see it, I will become even more of a "locavore," except when my doing so would put someone in a bind. Hear me out; I'll mostly be vegetarian, and eat local, grass-fed, humanely raised meat when I have the chance. If that's not an option at a restaurant, I'll go veggie. And if we're out in the country with the fam, without access to an all-veggie or locally produced meal, I won't make no bones about it, because my momma raised me to be polite above all else!

Moving on! There are plenty of good things to come in the kitchen; I'm hoping to make another carrot bread/cake soon, based on this recipe from 101 Cookbooks (my first one started out delicious....but I didn't bake it all the way through and the middle was a heap of raw mush. Not appetizing).

My mom has been sharing her beautiful garden bounty with us, and that means I have plenty of carrots. And summer squash, and sweet corn... Here's a little sneak peak: Oh, I cannot begin to wrap my head around what's coming down the pike with the tomatoes and okra and cucumbers and such. If our Caprese salad yesterday is any indication, we've got the vegetative world at our fingertips and nothing standing in the way of creative kitchenry.

Soon to come, too, is canning season. My canning kit is in the mail, along with the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving.

And then there's a new side of me: the side that's determined to work toward a fitness-related goal. It all started with the MS 150, and my difficulty completing just half of the 180-mile ride (the first day was rained out, so we endured only 85 grueling, hilly miles). Coupled with my desire to get outside more and spend time on the trails (and in the water) with Fin, I decided to start training for a triathlon. As an early birthday gift, Ryan signed me up for a beginner training group, and from here on out I'll be incorporating fitness into my sustainable diet. Because what's more sustainable than eating responsibly for the Earth? Eating responsibly for Earth AND body.

Other goals for the summer include learning to make cheese (mozzarella is first on the list), eating more sprouts (enjoyed a bowl of sprouted wheat cereal this morning!), making more rustic breads (perfect for summer sandwiches), and going on at least one picnic a week (what started out last Thursday as a gorgeous night in the park turned into Escape the Tornado '09!).

Stay tuned for great things to come--and to hold me accountable for all the things I've put myself up to.

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beating the heat, caprese style

Yesterday I spent the morning with my mother, helping her harvest some of the most beautiful produce I've ever seen. For the second week in a row, I came home with pounds of vegetables: carrots (of course), lettuce, banana peppers, okra (green and burgundy), onions (secret!), zucchini, cucumbers, squash, and a few of the most gorgeous heirloom tomatoes.

It is an unbelievable sight to get home with an ice chest full of home-grown goodies and know that you'd better get to work soon. How inspiring to stare at vegetables you harvested yourself, that your mom grew from seed, and think... We get to eat this. What's better, is going to the grocery store only to buy things like flour, and Topo Chico, and maybe some cheese; there's no need to purchase veggies that have been flown in from around the world. Coupled with our Saturday morning trip to the farmers' market, where we scored some candy-sweet blueberries, the harvest from my mom's garden was more than enough to get us through more than one week of meals.

The first thing to be gobbled up? The gorgeous heirloom tomatoes, of course. I had one brandywine and two green stripe varieties set aside for Sunday's lunch.

On the menu? Caprese salad. This is perhaps one of the easiest salads to put together, and I'd venture to say one of the most elegant. After drizzling extra-virgin olive oil on the plate, I began layering slices of fresh, handmade mozzarella, then quarter-inch-thick slices of the heirloom tomatoes, then a single leaf of basil from our small container garden. I drizzled a little more EVOO over the striped plate, and topped it all off with a few twists of fresh-ground pepper.

Nothing could be simpler, and few meals are more refreshing than this strictly-summer salad--and of course, it's always better with fresh and local ingredients. Ryan and I agreed, this was the best Caprese salad we'd ever had. Serve with sparkling water or maybe, if you're feeling spritzy, some light and refreshing prosecco or vinho verde.
I'll just let the pictures speak for themselves.
I love this even more so with the heirloom tomatoes, and can't wait to bring home more from mom's. Of course, we're about ready to harvest our own heirloom tomatoes from the front garden, and I'd love to learn to make mozzarella at home... So maybe, just maybe, the next time we have this it will be 100% grown and made right here from our little apartment.

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carrot cupcakes with a twist

Before I tell you about cupcakes, let me just show you why my dog gets a bite of everything we do. Could YOU turn down that face? The answer is no. Especially when it's coupled with a sweet little nudge from that heart-shaped nose.

Moving on.

I made cupcakes. This was quite a determined, much talked-about, when's-it-gonna-actually-happen batch of cupcakes. We came home one weekend with five pounds of carrots from my mom's garden, and I wanted miniature-sized carrot cakes with cream cheese icing. But I didn't have a lot of brown sugar, and I didn't have cream cheese, and, in short, I just wanted something different.

Enter the Google search. I typed in "carrot cupcakes mascarpone icing" and picked a result that sounded delicious. After halfheartedly checking for the ingredients, I went for this one: Carrot Cupcakes With Mascarpone Icing from the Food Channel.

You've heard it before, though--me being me, I couldn't let the recipe just unfold the way it was written. I ran out of fresh OJ, so I used 5 tablespoons of fresh-squeezed juice plus two tablespoons of water. I ran out of granulated sugar and used some light brown sugar. And I scrapped their mascarpone icing all together and made up my own. Light and Creamy Mascarpone Icing

Whisk together....
8 oz mascarpone
juice from 1 lemon
1/2 cup confectioner's sugar
splash of vanilla extract, to taste

Add more of whichever ingredient seems to be missing. This makes for a VERY creamy icing and is not as heavy-handed as a buttercream. In short, it's light and delicious and not too sweet. The perfect compliment to tangy-sweet and moist cupcakes.

I iced all the cupcakes (I made a double batch so I could take some to work and leave some for Ryan), but topped some with Texas pecans for a nice nutty crunch. In the end, the dozen or so cupcakes that made their way to my office were all eaten up by the end of the day, and the ones at home are dwindling by the day.

But I've got a couple pounds of carrots left, so I'm thinking I'll try a more traditional, dense, orange-less, breakfast-y carrot cake later this week.

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hippie chow inspiration

I'm a glutton for food blogs. I could read them until my eyes fell out of my head, and have very nearly done that on more than one occasion. Today is one of those occasions.

One of the blogs I read regularly is called Bread & Honey. I can't help but admire their gorgeous photos with a vintage tinge. And then when I found out the gal is a hippie-minded folk like me, I just couldn't stop myself. She posted about many nights of "hippie chow"--whatever's in the house goes into the meal. So THAT'S what I should be calling my totally random one-dish meals.
Well, when Ryan was out one night at the movies, I was at a loss for what to cook. Enter a can of organic black beans, some local (grown in Texas) organic white rice, a can of diced tomatoes and hatch green chiles.... and for good measure, one baby zucchini and some carrots from my mom's garden, and it's a hippie chow kinda night. 

I follow the same basic guidelines: grain, protein, and lots of veggies. Sometimes I sprinkle cheese on top. It always comes out tasting pretty good--especially for the ease of preparation. So enjoy your own version of hippie chow!

 

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garden-inspired pizza: potatoes, onions, and rosemary

A trip to my mother's over the weekend yielded 13 pounds--POUNDS--of fresh produce. Five of those pounds were counted in carrots, but we also came home with chard, the last of the spring lettuce, squash, green beans, parsnips, onions, shallots, and potatoes.

You know that it brings me such joy to share in the harvest of my mom's garden, and I have a game plan for the 5 pounds of carrots that we wound up bringing home with us.

But first, let me tell you about this extraordinary pizza.

I had big plans for Sunday, and utilized the bread machine by making a loaf of artisan foccacia (managed not to take any pictures, oops!) and then prepping Monday morning for a double-batch of pizza dough.

Things fell into place better than expected. I'd seen a few recipes circulating the blogosphere last week for potato pizzas: simply crust topped with EVOO, thin-sliced potatoes, onions, and rosemary.

I hadn't gotten to that pizza last week, as we went for Homeslice instead, but that was perfect--I realized when my mom sent us home with a few garden potatoes that my potato pizza was going to be better than I'd anticipated.

Add one of her beautiful onions, some rosemary from our container garden, a little garlic, homemade whole-wheat pizza dough, some organic olive oil, sea salt, and pepper... And that's one winning combination.

Enter deadline day. While waiting for some files to come my way, I happened upon yet another potato pizza recipe, this one from the NYT. If ever there was a bright, shining light from heaven pointing me straight toward a dinner plan, this was it.

Potato pizza on the brain, I finished up a later-than-usual night at work and pushed the speed limit home, anxious to get my hands into that dough.

Oh, stop. Too sexy.

I digress! I took an important tip from the NYT (boiling the whole potatoes first), but mine went like this:

Pizza Night Tre
Garden Inspiration: Home-grown Potatoes, Onions, and Rosemary

1 pizza crust
3 small-medium fresh potatoes, preferably red
2 tbls olive oil
2 cloves garlic, sliced thin (I carefully used the mandoline)
1 small garden onion, sliced thin (mandoline again here)
salt and pepper to taste
1 tbsp fresh rosemary, minced
1 ounce/2 tbsp finely shredded aged white cheddar (any very sharp cheese will work here, like parmesan)
a little extra EVOO

In a pot, cover the whole potatoes with water and bring to a boil. Cook for about 10-15 minutes or until a knife goes in easily. Remove from the water with a slotted spoon and let cool. In the meantime, place a baking stone in the oven and preheat to 450. Slice the onion and garlic on a mandoline, or as thinly as possible with a sharp knife.

Once the potatoes are cool enough to handle, slice into 1/8-inch wide discs. Remove baking stone from the oven and spread the crust onto it (no need to blind-bake this one). Brush the crust with olive oil, and put the potato slices on in a single layer.

Add the thin-sliced onions and garlic, distributing them evenly across the pie. Sprinkle on the rosemary and shredded cheese, and top with salt and pepper.

Bake for about 12 minutes, or until the crust is golden brown.

~*~

This pizza was incredible, and healthy to boot. The flavors of the fresh potatoes and onions shone through, and the garlic was so thinly sliced that it merely added a nice kick instead of overpowering the pie. The white cheddar melted beautifully and, contrary to my own cheese-friendly leanings, even just the small amount I used made a nice addition to the pizza. And you can't go wrong with a sea salt/rosemary/olive oil combo--the perfect way to round out an otherwise plain-jane dish.

You must, must, must try this!

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early summer baked potato soup

You'll be seeing a theme here, running the course of at least three meals (and I'm saving the best for last). A five-pound bag of organic potatoes, followed by a half-pound of garden potatoes from my mother (even better) made for a slew of frugal tuber dinners. 

It must be because I keep them on top of the fridge, where conditions fall in the warm, not cool, temperature range...but our potatoes grow eyes faster than you can imagine. No matter; I snapped off the eyes of the store-bought potatoes and got to chopping. 

(Can I point out the dough scraper here? Ryan thought it was a useless tool until I had him in the kitchen chopping onions. He was at a loss for how to get them quickly into the ready pan. I handed him the scraper, and at that moment, he realized just how important that one extra tool was. A small battle, yes, but I won him over to my side. Cue evil laughter.)

Last week when we needed a dinner before we both succumbed to hunger pangs, and I had baked potatoes on the brain but those would've taken way too long, I came up with a quick version of baked potato soup laced with heavy cream. 

Ryan and I told one of our friends about this soup, and when we got to the heavy cream part, she exclaimed, "You just keep heavy cream lying around the house!?!" Of course! Doesn't everyone? 

No?

Uhoh. 

Well, we do. And of course, Ryan has said at least five times since I made this soup that every soup I make doesn't have to involve bacon... But I sorely disagree. For now, anyway. The bacon in the fridge needs using, and therefore we will have as much bacon as we can handle. And anyway, for a gal who spends most of her days living as a vegetarian, the bacon is a blessed onslaught of fatty gloriousness that cannot be denied. 

So there. 

Needless to say, this recipe starts with bacon--and finishes with bacon. 

Baked Potato Soup a la Amber

Soup:

1/4 pound bacon (3-4 slices), cut into small pieces

1/2 medium red onion, diced

4 small-medium potatoes, cut into 1/2-inch cubes

3 stalks of celery plus leafage

1 quart chicken or veggie stock

salt and pepper to taste

1/4 cup heavy cream (optional)

For garnish:

shredded cheese

crisped bacon

In a Dutch oven or other heavy soup pot, brown the bacon until almost crispy. Add in the onions and cook for about 1 minute; add potatoes and cook for another couple of minutes. Finally, add the celery and cook all the veggies just until they begin to change color. Maybe 5-8 minutes, I believe.

 

Add the stock and bring to a boil; cover and reduce the heat to low. Let simmer about 20 minutes, or until potatoes are just past fork-tender. 

Slowly stir in the heavy cream just before serving. Ladle hot soup into bowls and top with shredded cheese and crispy bacon. 

Believe me, you must use the bacon. The cream, and even the cheese, you can do without. But not the bacon. 

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