Summer is for salads

Getting back into the salad groove.

My recent creation: lettuce greens from the garden, spinach, kale, pan fried chicken, tomato, apricot, toasted pecans, basic oil & vinegar salad dressing, grated carrot & zucchini soaked in white balsamic vinegar, feta, Romano, Parmesan, Asiago, bacon, fresh ground coriander and allspice.

Real Food Art Vendors

While working at the Master Gardener's Incredible Edible Plant Sale, I met a couple of interesting vendors that I thought might be of interest to some of you, my gentle readers.

Victory Garden of Tomorrow 

They can be found at VictoryGardensOfTomorrow.com and have some very cool retro style posters, T-shirts, patches and other goods. The themes promote growing food, urban chickens, and farmer's markets, with a subtext of "let's all chip in and do our part".

a little sun

At ALITTLESUN.COM you will find cards and prints of fanciful slightly anthropomorphized fruits and vegetables, as well as the odd couple of cephalopods.

THRIVE PACIFIC N.W.

And with all of this images of food floating about it was nice to have some actual food vendors there. I had a lovely lunch of Thai bowl of fresh veggies with some grilled free range organic chicken added at the Thrive food cart. Evidently they can be found at some local Farmer's Markets and their tasty sauces are available at New Seasons. Menu, locations etc. at thrivepacificnw.com and they have a frequent diner card.

Salad roll up

Sometimes it is fun to mix things up and serve a salad in a form that makes it into finger food.
This follows my Master Salad System and then wraps it in a tortilla.

Spring scramble: sausage potato spinach

My lady asked for potatoes and sausage. This is what I came up with. 

This time I pulled out my cast iron. I like the way it turned out. I often make something similar in stainless steel. So, to your own liking I suppose.

Steam quartered potatoes until tender.
Fry up sausage, chopped green onion in butter and bacon drippings. Add chopped apple, prepared potatoes, roasted carrots (previously frozen).
Set the oven on low heat 150º-200º F and put tortillas on an oven safe plate with another upside down on top as a cover.

BBQed Butterflied chicken burrito

First, butterfly a chicken.

Then broilify the chicken on a bed of aromatic veggies.

Once the skin is nice, roastify it in a 350 degree oven until done (I ended up at an internal temp of 160).

Broil some pineapple chunks.

Then sautee them with some onions.

Add the chicken, shredded, and some BBQ sauce. 

Serve on a toasted tortilla with some sour cream rolled into a burrito. 

Another failed attempt at bacon jam. You may recall the first attempt at Bacon Butter FAIL which had almost the same outcome. I was much more diligent with the stirring, so I don't think it was inattention. I suspect I am applying much more heat in the early part. Also there isn't much mention of lids. I assumed that simmer implied lid off to allow reduction, but maybe it is simmer lid on?

I am going to have to schedule a time to make it with my friend who has made it successfully.

Anyway, the salami, pastrami, turkey quesadilla for dinner worked out.
And now I have some lumps of Bacon Coal to save for unsuspecting naughty girls and boys stockings this christmas.

Tasting as you go

I was just making chocolate pudding and hazelnut cookies. And I noticed something. 

Noticing things is an interesting aspect of cooking. I have heard that it is good to taste as you go: ingredients, mixes, etc. So you can adjust seasonings, and also so you can gather data about what things taste like at various stages. Then is something goes wrong you might be able to fix it before it is too late. 

Back to the pudding. So I was all done sieving the cooked pudding and folding in the butter and vanilla when I tasted the spatula. Wow, it was bitter. That was the moment when I realized how odd it was that the recipe didn't call for sugar. Out comes the cook book and low and behold I missed the 2/3 cup of sugar. 

This far in, all I could do was fold in the sugar and hope that there was enough residual heat that it could still mix in and not be gritty. Tasted again and this was more like I remembered. 

If I were to write a cookbook, I would demand of the publisher that ingredient lists do not span pages. This is one thing I appreciate about the GOOD EATS: The Early Years book I am working though. They have very nice page layout for the recipes. No Flipping back and forth from one page to the next.