Cooks in the Kitchen
Hey there! Summer weather always brings out the best vegetable dishes and a bit of nostalgia as the evenings sing with wild locusts at twilight. I often forget exactly where I am as I listen to their hypnotic song. It always revealed we were nearing the end of summer and gearing up for school in the past. Now it really says little about anything happening because ... basically nothing IS happening really. Never one to crave too much variety, I am just fine with the flow of this season into that.
I made some good dishes using the vegetables from our trips to the Amish. Below is a quick version of Cowboy Caviar or Fresh Salsa. I love to chop vegetables, but this time I used the little chopper from QVC that looks like I am starting a lawn mower. Not quite a perfection pretty but so fast! The second time I made this I added pasta and Parmesan... There is a reason we don't have a picture of that salad!
Another new idea was to use couscous and a thick chili (no beans) in stuffed peppers. It was sooo good. The chili recipe is the one I have used several times from The Pioneer Woman, Perfect Chili. Always par-boil peppers to eliminate bitterness.
I have been relocating some little girls and even tried listing a few on E-bay and Swap shop. These little jewels amazingly still are selling from the company for about $50-60. However, they run about $5 on E-bay, along with any other so-called collectible from the past... Nope. Not selling mine for the cost of a Mocha at McDonald's.
I had company a few weekends ago, and I made this blanched zucchini, cheddar, and roasted onion quiche. I babied it quite a bit with blind baking (with dry beans) in the crust, etc. Years ago my mother got a recipe for the basic quiche from a dear doll club member. It is rather no-fail: 4 eggs, 1/2 c. cream. 1 1/2 c.milk.... As long as everything else is rather dry, you just add a favorite cheese and anything you please! Salt and pepper to taste.
I made some good dishes using the vegetables from our trips to the Amish. Below is a quick version of Cowboy Caviar or Fresh Salsa. I love to chop vegetables, but this time I used the little chopper from QVC that looks like I am starting a lawn mower. Not quite a perfection pretty but so fast! The second time I made this I added pasta and Parmesan... There is a reason we don't have a picture of that salad!
Another new idea was to use couscous and a thick chili (no beans) in stuffed peppers. It was sooo good. The chili recipe is the one I have used several times from The Pioneer Woman, Perfect Chili. Always par-boil peppers to eliminate bitterness.
I have been relocating some little girls and even tried listing a few on E-bay and Swap shop. These little jewels amazingly still are selling from the company for about $50-60. However, they run about $5 on E-bay, along with any other so-called collectible from the past... Nope. Not selling mine for the cost of a Mocha at McDonald's.
I had company a few weekends ago, and I made this blanched zucchini, cheddar, and roasted onion quiche. I babied it quite a bit with blind baking (with dry beans) in the crust, etc. Years ago my mother got a recipe for the basic quiche from a dear doll club member. It is rather no-fail: 4 eggs, 1/2 c. cream. 1 1/2 c.milk.... As long as everything else is rather dry, you just add a favorite cheese and anything you please! Salt and pepper to taste.
I think she has a good idea. It is time to settle down and watch some tv... Have a good weekend.
Comments
Your warm, welcoming house is a treat this 70 degree morning---quite a lovely surprise, though a friend's FB page yesterday did mention "good sleeping weather" for last night. I don't know how much that term means to the rest of the country, but Good Sleeping Weather in the South connotes windows-open, sheers gently moving in a gentle cool breeze, and even the trees' population of locusts and peep-frogs quieted a bit by the comfortable, unseasonal cool.
That's quiche weather, for sure, and your mentioning that the locusts' song portended the end of Summer---our wedding the second week of July so many years ago was enhanced by the most wonderful locust chorus through all the vows and party after. They sang their little wings off from the pecan orchard on my parents' back lawn for hours, accompanied by several passing trains, a little street traffic, and one memorable, wide-open motorcycle which changed gears about eleven times, echoing down that long black-top, and caused my Sis to ask, "Who was your SOUND MAN on this movie?"
And that was very early Summer.
I've just received THREE new Rick Bragg books, and hope for a very quiet weekend with the South He Knew---much more grim and close-to-the-bone than mine, but with so many things I remember in my own life moments that it uncannily mirrors my own childhood in places. I'm delighted to have found this absolutely mesmerizing writer---such a gift for the real and the true. and a way with the familiar old phrases that coins them anew, just for his own.
Stay KEWL.
r