Monday, August 22, 2011

And we're back!


It's been a while since I've posted, but I got busy, and then I forgot, and then I felt it had been so long.

However, I have been thinking about it, and making really good food, so I thought I should share. Yesterday, after several days of ripping our patio to shreds, digging it up and moving all the cement and dirt away from our house, my parents in law and we had a delightful dinner. I had thought about this before hand and realized that I might be tired. I made a simple repast of sesame green beans, a garden salad with homemade cilantro dressing and burgers.

Two things about this meal 1: the peas I've grown this year are amazing. They are so crispy sweet and good I can't imagine growing a different variety. I've been growing Super Sugar Snap peas, I get mine from Territorial Seeds. 2: I made up the recipe for the beans out of my own little brain and I cannot think of a better thing to do with them. It's so mind blowingly good that I have been eating them for lunch with rice and calling it a meal. I can snack on them and I know they're super healthy for me. When you hear of people serving beans, or you go out to eat and order beans, it seems like everyone forgets that green beans already taste good. They're all trying to drown them in butter or canned soup (mmm ... gross) and mask the taste of beans, and I'm not really sure why! The big secret is to get a refillable mister. I got one and I love it. I've got some really good olive oil in mine, and I 'enhanced' it with a little sesame oil, because I love the taste of sesame. So, it's too much .... art... and no actual measurements to actually give you a recipe. Here's what you do: blanch a bunch of beans (a minute or two, depending on how thick your beans are) the main thing is they should be bright green. When they are done and still nice and crisp and plunge into an ice water bath. Spray a large pan with your sesame oil concoction, just like a tsp is plenty of oil, I use 1/4 tsp. throw in some salt, pepper, sesame seeds and fresh garlic into the pan. Turn the heat off and toss the beans in this until you can see the pepper coating the beans. I use lots of pepper, fresh cracked of course. I think this dish is perfect, especially for cook outs because it's really good cold or room temperature, I don't have to worry about those beans being hot or cold, they're just good.

When you make beans like this, you'll need a lot of beans per person as I think you'll find people will eat more of them like this. It's because they're like crack.

Other events: I recently purchased a quarter of a beef. Fans of the blog will remember that I started out trying to purchase a lamb, and there was much woe. I am now super pleased, and we have tons of beef. When you buy around 175 pounds of beef at once, the total bill seems quite high. However I've never had such good beef, and we like to go out to nice restaurants that 'hang their own beef' and all sorts of other things. My cow, lived on a field with access to a barn, ate grass and lived a happy life until it was humanly killed on the farm (no stress from being transported) and then butched by a master butcher.

Is that a verb? Butch, to butch a cow. Well if it's a verb, it can be passed tense. Never mind! The result: THE BEST BEEF EVER! And I know where my meat came from, however I'm not telling you, you might buy up all the home grown beef.

Find your own farmer!

Pictures in this blog are of random foods I won't tell you about!