WIAW – Summer is Here!

It’s July.

Weather doesn’t really help establish that – we’ve been swinging between low 60s and high 80s for 2 months, now, already – I’m a little nervous about heat in the next two months! But we’re getting summer thunderstorms, our friends are throwing themselves into vacation planning (no, we’re not going anywhere. now that we’re back from the parents’,) – and Greenmarket and the CSA pickup are filling out. We got our first zucchini, yesterday…  I’d bought minis at Greenmarket for salads, but now the CSA farm – which is to our North – has full sized squash.

Breakfast. I’m starting to experiment with preparation ahead – but I’m not used to it, so forget to do it…  So Monday I just had cheesy eggs in corn tortillas – the fastest, easiest meal I can make. It’s great if I’m going to be busy in the morning, too, as it’s quick to eat, but gives me plenty of staying power. Oh – and coffee with milk. I rarely get that in the picture, because I usually pour it first, and bring it to my desk – yes, I eat breakfast at my desk, while reading email and Facebook… (Sorry – I’m not sure why my picture was so underexposed…)

Lunch – salad, of course. This was Monday, and I hadn’t gotten to Greenmarket over the weekend for more salad vegetables, so just lettuce, carrots, and scallions, but several kinds of lettuce, so that helped. With chicken and feta, and my tomato dressing there was enough flavor. And I’d made Scape Hummus, which had enough punch (and it and the dressing do increase the vegetable content of the meal! In the CSA pickup I got some tender young kohlrabi, so that will be in salads this coming week.

Dinner was a classic demonstration of the Inhabited Kitchen Method. 😉 The afternoon was a bit hectic, and I ran a bit late, but I wasn’t worried, because I knew I had cooked food…  I’d fixed a big bunch of curly kale the evening before, with lots of leftover – which really needed some more cooking. Curly kale, a cool weather plant, is denser than the varieties that thrive in hot weather, and need to be simmered more like collards – and I wasn’t thinking, and gave it the Tender Greens Treatment. Edible, but… chewy… very chewy… So instead of freezing the leftovers in Green Muffins, we just kept it in a container in the fridge for more cooking. I had the last of a container of seasoned shredded pork, there was cooked rice, there was a pint of cooked beans in the freezer…

I went into the kitchen, chopped and sauteed an onion, and two garlic scapes, added the meat, added the beans, added the kale, added some oregano puree that hadn’t fit in the tray when I froze it, added some water… Simmered it all for about five minutes, put it over rice, and had dinner (and a sink full of containers.) I admit, it looks sort of.. blah… but with the scapes and oregano it tasted very good. And a hearty meal in under 15 minutes is worth a lot.

I never did find the party last week, but this week it’s back at Jenn’s! So hop over, grab a delicious meal, and eat your veggies!