Banana melon, some 15 inches long. It tasted like a really sweet cantaloupe. I am SO tired of melons that taste like cantaloupe. What ever happened to old-fashioned watermelons that were sweet, juicy and red inside?
Posts Tagged ‘food’
As Pictured Below: Bowlful of Melon
Posted in CSA, Eats, Photographs, tagged cantaloupe, CSA, farm, food, melons, photograph, watermelons on August 28, 2010| 3 Comments »
Tomato Envy
Posted in CSA, Eats, tagged CSA, food, grandparents, tomatoes on July 24, 2010| 1 Comment »
I’m finally getting tomatoes in my CSA box–they seem exceptionally late this year. Another farmer occasionally sets up shop out of the back of his pickup truck in the same parking lot where I pick up my goods every week, and I’m more likely than not to add some extras to my produce selection from his offerings. This week, he had a truck bed filled with $3 baskets of ripe, juicy tomatoes.
It’s been positively extravagant having so many homegrown, delicious tomatoes at the ready. I’ve had a sandwich. I’ve made a tomato-filled salad. I’ve served sliced tomatoes with dinner, garnished only with a sprinkling of salt and pepper.
Tomatoes aren’t a rarity, but good ones definitely are. I rarely buy grocery-store tomatoes any time of the year–they have no taste compared to the homegrown delicacies I grew up with at my grandparents’ farm.
I figure I only have three or four weeks of tomato season left, if that much. It’s fleeting, but it’s worth waiting for.
More eggplant excitement
Posted in CSA, Eats, Photographs, tagged cooking, CSA, eggplant, eggplant Parmesan, food, garlic, Italian, pasta, sun-dried tomatoes, tomato on July 14, 2010| 2 Comments »
I can’t believe I ignored eggplant until this summer.
This weekend’s creation was much simpler than Eggplant Parmesan, taking probably a third of the time to make and leaving me with no baked-on cheese to scrub away. I was worried that my half-Italian, tomato-living husband wasn’t going to touch the weird-looking Eggplant Pasta Sauce that I put on the table, but he gave it high accolades.
A word of warning: Mashed eggplant is a gray, oil-looking mess, but the sun-dried tomatoes and garlic give it a complex flavor that will overcome your initial impressions.
The Enigmatic Eggplant
Posted in CSA, Eats, Photographs, tagged cooking, CSA, eggplant, eggplant Parmesan, farm, food, grandfather, Martha Stewart, recipes, summer, tomatoes on June 28, 2010| 6 Comments »
The first CSA haul of the summer and I’m already faced with the unknown: eggplant. I guess because my grandfather never grew eggplants, I hardly ever ate them and certainly never had to figure out how to cook them.
Indulging my tendency to try things that are probably a bit too complicated, I settled on making Eggplant Parmesan, using a recipe from Martha Stewart.
That’s right. Martha Stewart.
It turned out delicious, even if it took the better part of two hours to make. I was unable to capture its deliciousness in a photograph, however; it’s one of those dishes that just looks like a big watery blob on the screen.
Next week I’m hoping for tomatoes, because juicy homegrown tomatoes have to be nature’s gift to us for putting up with heat like this.
Seriously, buy a salad spinner
Posted in CSA, Photographs, tagged Brady Bunch, CSA, food, greens, OXO, salad, salad spinner, Swiss chard on June 9, 2010| 3 Comments »
Listed among Things I Never Thought I Would Buy: a salad spinner. They always seemed very Carol Brady, although I guess they were really more Alice Nelson since Mrs. Brady didn’t do much of the cooking on that show.
I digress.
I spent last summer washing, drying and trying to properly store a weekly mess of Swiss chard and other greens that came in my CSA box. Never did it occur to me to look for a salad spinner.
This one caught my eye a couple of months ago because, frankly, everything OXO makes catches my eye. I researched, purchased and test drove it. Now I’m ready for this summer’s ridiculous amount of salad greens. Bring it on, CSA lady.
The grocery store display that makes me crazy
Posted in Eats, tagged food, Gatorade, grocery store, iced tea, money, plastic on May 26, 2010| Leave a Comment »
People who buy iced tea by the gallon in plastic cartons: You are paying a company to steep tea bags in hot water and burn gasoline to drive flavored water to the grocery store. You could make way better iced tea yourself for much less money.
This is ranking right up there with buying premixed Gatorade and presliced apples on the You Have Got to be Kidding Me scale.
And so the season begins
Posted in Eats, Photographs, tagged Dennison's Family Farm, food, Huntsville, iPhone, photograph, strawberries, summer on May 13, 2010| 1 Comment »
I used to think the best strawberries in the world came from southern Louisiana. That was before I found southern Tennessee.
Sorry, Louisiana. You have been dethroned. These strawberries are like candy, many so sweet that it seems like somebody has already dipped them in sugar.
I found them at the Dennison’s Family Farm strawberry stand on Hughes Road in Madison. There are a few more stands around the Huntsville area; check out Dennison’s Facebook page to find one near you.
Delayed gratification makes treats even tastier
Posted in Eats, tagged beverage, delayed gratification, diet, Dr Pepper, flavor, food, nutrition, soda on March 30, 2010| 4 Comments »
I had a Dr Pepper last week, probably the first in three or four years.
It was overwhelmingly delicious. I paid more attention to my soda than I did my meal; every sip was a burst of out-of-this-world flavor.
You’re shrugging. Nothing special about Dr Pepper, right? Just another soda.
The thing is that it WASN’T just another soda.
I gave up soda as an everyday beverage about five years ago. I might order one when we eat out, but overall I average about two sodas a month.
Which brings me back to the Dr Pepper. It was delectable simply because it was rare.
The whole episode made me wonder: How many foods do we consume every day that should be rarities? How much better would some things taste if we weren’t eating them day in, day out?
How much healthier would we be?
If a little delayed gratification makes tasty things even tastier, isn’t the initial denial worth it?
I’ll let you know next year, when I have another Dr Pepper.
Better eating by accident
Posted in Eats, Family, Home, tagged alabama, conversation, cupholders, diet, dining room, eating, flood, floodwaters, food, food guidelines, health, healthy, Huntsville, hurricane, Hurricane Katrina, manual transmission, Mobile, Pandora, remodeling, rewiring, table on March 16, 2010| 3 Comments »
Ever manage to inadvertently start following a healthy eating pattern?
This weekend, I realized that I’ve established two useful food guidelines over the past few years: I don’t eat in the car, and I don’t eat in front of the TV.
Both situations came about entirely by accident.
I purchased a car with a manual transmission six years ago, meaning that the “extra” hand required to eat while driving is only accessible when cruising speed has been reached on the interstate. City driving does not free up this hand. As a bonus, the car’s tiny cupholders are a marvel of engineering; the two up front are too small for anything but a 12-ounce soda can, and the larger one between the buckets seats requires the flexibility of a Cirque performer to reach.
The living room embargo is a bit more complicated. As we watched the floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina approach our home in Mobile in 2005, we grabbed our table from the dining room and flipped it onto the bed in hopes of keeping it dry. We ended up with only the back third of the house flooded, but the teardown, rewiring, rebuilding, re-everything meant that the table was taken apart and stored in the bedroom closet for the better part of two years.
What I discovered during this time was that no matter your intentions, eating dinner in the living room off of the coffee table pretty much ensures that you WILL turn the TV on. It’s just what happens. And once the TV is on, conversation is off.
The first thing I set up upon arrival in Huntsville, therefore, was the table. There have been no dinners in front of Smallville, no breakfasts in front of The Soup. Just talking, newspaper-reading, and, occasionally, a subtle Pandora soundtrack.
Not eating dinner in the living room leads to not eating much of anything in the living room except for the rare bowl of movie popcorn. Nobody heads to the kitchen and grabs a bag of chips to mindlessly munch on; nobody sits down with a sleeve of cookies to polish off.
Focused eating is more likely to be healthy eating, and dining without distraction makes for much better family time. And you don’t have to buy a manual transmission or wait for a flood: Declare the driver’s seat off limits for noshing, and insist that nothing crosses the dining room border but popcorn. In both cases, your seat cushions and your waistline will thank you.
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