thoughtful consumption

Here’s this week’s haul en masse (except for a cantalope that I forgot in the fridge). It was one heavy box of goodness!

• green beans
• Asian eggplant
• tomatoes
• yellow squash
• gazpacho
• quail eggs
• chicken eggs
• sweet corn
• green cabbage
• sweet onions
• blueberries
• fingerling potatoes
• herbs: par-cel, winter savory, and lemon verbena

So far…

I stuck the par-cel and savory in a glass with a little water, covered them with a plastic bag, and put them in the fridge. They’ll last at least a week that way. I’m drying the lemon verbena for tea.

We had a couple of ears of corn for lunch along with leftovers from last week – sausage, sliced tomatoes, and green beans.

Last night I made a tomato concoction with the tomatoes, two (large) cloves of garlic, some winter savory, salt, olive oil, and red wine…

I cooked everything over medium low for a couple of hours until it became a kind of chunky marinara sauce.  (I used to peel the tomatoes before making this sauce. Now I don’t bother, call it “rustic,” and charge twice as much.)

Last night, we used it as a dipping sauce for fried eggplant.  I sliced one of the Asian eggplants, dipped the slices in an eggwash, and breaded them with cornmeal, panko, and salt. Fried eggplant is so creamy on the inside. Really yummy.

I also fried some okra from last week.

I breaded these with just cornmeal, flour, salt, and pepper. Usually, the okra slime is enough to hold the breading. This was true for the green okra I chopped, but not the reddish/purplish variety. The cornmeal just fell off those pieces when they hit the oil. The okra was still good, but next time I might add an egg wash before the cornmeal.

Both veggies were fried in pure olive oil over medium heat. I like using pure olive oil because it’s cheaper than extra virgin and it doesn’t leave me feeling icky the next day like non-olive oil does.

Plans for the week

• I’m making vinegary coleslaw with the green cabbage and sweet onions. The recipe’s in this post along with a couple of others.
• The rest of the eggplant will probably become baba ghanoush with chopped par-cel leaves on top. Here’s one recipe.
• I’ll cook the green beans Southern-style and stir-fry the yellow squash. I’ll braise the potatoes in some stock with some onion and par-cel stems. The winter savory will be great with squash and potatoes. I’m afraid it would get lost in the green beans and don’t want to waste it there. (Update: Ignore this last bit. I put winter savory in the beans, and they were wonderful.)
• Maybe there’ll be some muffin-baking this week. Squash muffins are good with green beans. Blueberry muffins are just plain good.
• I found the quail eggs tricky to crack and kind of a pain, but I’m happy enough to have them. This dozen will come to about two chicken eggs’ worth of egginess. I’ll use them in fried rice or just scramble them for a light supper.

I think that’s everything. Enjoy your food!