Open-faced Summer Sandwich

Cheese Board Dinner

sourdough bread

gouda cheese

aged cheddar

gala apple

cherry tomatoes

spinach

spanish olives

mushroom

And the world's tiniest cheddar-apple sandwich!

House Dinner: Olive Bruschetta, French Toast & Eggs, and Various Grazings by Core ---

Beet Greens & Eggs

A Friday.

I took a sick-day and worked-worked-worked until exhaustion set in. Our house is beginning to look lived-in!

And so beauteous, and.....oh, I cannot even describe how joyous I am about the entire thing.

There is a small (and friendly!) farmstand on my drive home from work, and I often feel inclined to stop there and get something. So tonight: steamed beet greens with eggs (sourdough bread and gouda cheese and relaxing beverages not shown).

Scenes from a New House; Or, Our First Dinner.

Sourdough & Asparagus

Simes got up when I left for work to prepare a batch of delectable sourdough. This he split into two parts; one for a loaf of bread, and one for a mound of pizza dough. Do you know what this means?

Dinner and lunch!

A (presumably) delicious sandwich for work tomorrow:

Spinach

Asparagus

Assorted mushrooms

Provolone cheese

And a pizza for dinner with the same ingredients; substitute Parmesan for the provolone. There's something inexplicably delectable about a hint of Parmesan cheese; so strong but often a bystander to the main event.

Both sound simple, but the bread is so sour they will undoubtedly be scrumptious.

Happy (as a Freakin' Clam)

I still cannot believe I had not cooked seafood for myself until a week ago. I love it so, yet I always viewed it as an "out to eat" commodity. But now there are so many exciting possibilities!

So to begin, I simmered:

~1 c. pinot grigio

chopped parsley

sprinkle o' dill

1 garlic clove, chopped

The dill is surprisingly necessary and apparent in the final product. The only time I've consciously had it was when Dear Moth baked salmon fillets topped with sour cream & dill; a very comforting childhood memory).

When it was a'bubbling, I added (2 cups?) of chopped mushrooms; crimini and shiitake and oyster. Such a scrumptious bunch, they are.

I let them simmer until the sourdough bread that Bean had plans with (he made french toast and fried eggs -- a combination I will never understand) was done. Then I added the clams; precisely one dozen. How many does one person eat? I am at a loss; when I was a child we would race for the last one without having any inkling of what "one serving" was. So I played it by ear.

A study in clams:

Mushroom Crostini (?)

Here's just a couple o' lil' crostinis --

1. Freshly baked sourdough bread, thanks to Beansie...

2. Mushrooms simmered in red wine & parsley & olive oil

3. Tomato

4. Mozzarella cheese

Bread came out; workers assembled, re-toasted, and eaten.

Winter Soup

It snowed all day, and rained and froze all night. The drive home from work was slippery and slow, but Bean and I still ventured out afterward to purchase some soup ingredients. What's the use in being comforted by a hot broth if you don't get a little frosty first?

This loaf is one that Bean made while I was away dancing my heart out this weekend, so I cannot divulge the recipe; however, it was sourdough, and it turned out deliciously.

The ingredients were something like:

bouillon

two large tomatoes

some butternut squash

some beet

some carrot

some mushroom

some

some

some

...you get the idea. I also added fresh parsley, thai curry sauce (an interesting debut), and salt and pepper o' course. It simmered while we waited for the bread to bake, and everything became ready in a glorious moment of supper harmony.

Paired with some cheapish-but-good Cabernet Sauvignon that we got at Hannaford's, it made quite a tasty bit.

Just Another Freakin' Pizza

Sourdough Pizza

Two friends got married last night, and there was lots of much-needed happy dancing with friendly people. Lots of imbibing as well -- which prompted us to go out this morning for coffee and around-town musings. On a whim, we stopped at the bakery to wonder whether they'd sell us some of their sourdough starter. Bean expected quite a fight to be put up, but they easily parted with a coffee-cup full for $1.00. So we set to work!

The end result of much fighting with the dough was this: a glorious sourdough pizza. We were going to make it into bread and have it with fried eggs for dinner, but it didn't rise nearly enough. Stubborn little sonuva. But this came out wonderfully.

Red White Yellow

I was going to post pictures of all of my lunches from the past week, but was forced to conclude that they would likely look unappealing to the masses.

For some reason I was struck by the beauty of the colors and shapes in this one.

tomato

hardboiled egg

garlic-stuffed olives

spinach

rosemary sourdough

blue cheese!

Summer Grillinz

My ever-cheery coworker brought in summer squash to share from her garden. I don't normally like squash too much, but grilling it seemed like a grand idea when Simon suggested we make burgers. I mixed up some olive oil, lemon juice, oregano, thyme and basil, and soaked these in it for a while before plopping them on. The oil caused the flames to shoot up, producing this slightly charred look (and a gloriously smoky flavor). They were tasty, guys!

With them I had a burger on sourdough bread with provolone cheese, and some cape cod potato chips. Summer, I think, is here...

Buuuuuuuuuurgers

The day after brush-burning there was a Farmer's Market at the Williamsville Chapel (Hubbardston), so I went to say goodbye to Mother and Father. They were there selling beef and volunteering all over the place, since it was put on by the Hubbardston Historical Society and they are involved in everything, somehow. While I was there I bought some goat cheese from Westfield Farm, and Mother gave me a pound of ground beef from our precious cows. On the way out, Fath bought me a birthday quart of pistachio almond ice cream, much of which I had to eat on the drive back to New York because it was melting all over.

So! This was my birthday dinner! We mixed in some soy sauce and oregano with the ground beef, and fried it up; spread goat cheese and spinach on fresh sourdough bread, and.......

More like dreggs...

I attempted to deviate from my usual refreshing breakfast of cereal and cold cold cold milk by using up some of the farm-fresh eggs my Mother instructed me to take back to school with me. A good idea, I thought, would be to fry up one of those suckers, and while doing so toast an old, almost-stale piece of sourdough bread topped with sliced mushrooms and feta cheese.

However, the egg looked like roadkill; the bread was (as mentioned) old, and the mushrooms lent a strange flavor. There weren't even any good pictures to show for all my trouble.