thoughtful consumption

I’m ending the week a relatively happy camper (at least in terms of food and my CSA bag). And tomorrow should bring the season’s first lettuce. It doesn’t quite make up for the Dow, but it’s something to look forward to.

Here’s the dish…

The sweet potatoes were gone first. We just baked them in the microwave, and they were delicious!

French onion soup was good, and we made enough for leftovers this week. But I forgot to use the savory!

Lettuce leaf basil doesn’t last even as long as regular basil. I cooked it up with the tomatoes and some garlic Friday when I saw some of it already spoiling. Basil’s just one of those things you have to move fast on, I guess. Once the tomato stuff was cooked, I put it in the fridge for the weekend’s big tomato-zucchini pasta dish.

We were really pleased with tomato-zucchini-sausage pasta. I browned some Italian sausage and then scooped it out and cooked some sliced zucchini in the sausage fat. Then I added back the sausage, the tomato-basil concoction, a big can of crushed tomatoes and some Italian seasoning. This type of Italian cooking seems very forgiving. As long as everything gets cooked and ends up in a big, simmering pot and is served over pasta, it seems to be okay.

The apple butter adventure turned out pretty well, too. Next time I’m going to cut the sugar by at least a quarter. Using the food mill was not as tedious as I had feared.

The green beans are still in the produce drawer. Thankfully, they’re not as delicate as basil. I’m going to blanch and freeze them any minute now…. At some point this winter, I’ll be excited about green beans again.

Lemon verbena, savory, and the Mexican tarragon all dried very nicely. I like loose tea, so it’s easy for me to just add a lemon verbena leaf to my tea whenever I make a pot. It’s really nice in the afternoon. I tried adding  leaves to cold sparkling water, but they didn’t add much flavor. At some point I want to try making lemon verbena syrup which could then be added to tea or sparkling water or pretty much anything. Here’s a cool page with bunches of lemon verbena uses.