Sea Beans

Another farmer's market find. It's amazing that our local wild foods are so forgotten that they seem like exotic foreign vegetables. But these are harvested from our local shores. I honestly could not figure out what to do with them. They can be eaten raw or cooked, but they are surprisingly salty.
 

The best thing I did with them was make a faux Greek salad, which is great with just tomato, cucumber, sea beans and oregano. But also good with a little cottage cheese or yogurt on top.

 

Pasta... sigh

I love pasta. Love it. And can easily overeat it. I have to really measure it out to be sure I don't over indulge. But it is worth measuring and still eating regularly!

Here's a hearty pantry pasta, to make when you either don't feel like chopping vegetables or don't have any fresh ones on hand. It's artichoke hearts, sun dried tomatoes, capers, roasted red peppers, chickpeas, and olives. The oil from the marinated vegetables is enough to be a sauce.
 

Here's a supremely decadent sauce for ravioli - brown butter, white wine, sage, parmesan and walnut.
 

Asparagus, morels and green garlic in a light madiera/half n half sauce.
 

Snacks!

Three delicious snacks we've enjoyed lately

Roasted tomato and havarti sandwich
 

Oven roasted chickpeas - kind of like popcorn
 

Swiss Chard Tacos. Seriously good.
 

Baby Junco

Our yard continues to be a a baby bird nursery. This baby junco was stashed for safe keeping in our rhody while its mom went to find food.
 

Stinging Nettles! Risotto!

I guess it was kind of crazy of me to buy these from the forager, rather than picking them myself at the park, or perhaps just crazy to eat them at all. But honestly, I'd worry about pesticides if I picked them at a park. I wanted to try them because it sounded exciting.
 

But when it got right down to it, I was afraid to touch them. Here's Charlie being my hero and blanching them for me. We went for 3 minutes, to ensure all the stingers were toast.
 

They boil down to what almost seems like puree. And the stems become just as soft as the leaves
 

After that they are easy to work with. To make a risotto, saute rice with onions and garlic, gradually adding broth until rice is full cooked. When the rice is getting close, stir in the greens. I used half and half instead of butter to give it a creamy texture. This is topped with pecorino ribbons.
 
This dish was quite good, but somehow we still had a hard time relaxing about eating nettles. Charlie was convinced it was making his mouth tingle. I agree, but really we did not actually get stung or anything and it was quite good, but maybe I will stick with spinach in the future unless I find nettles in my yard.

Oven Roasted Summer Vegetables

For those of you who enjoyed (survived?) my endless postings of oven roasted root vegetables, I present you with the summer version! This is eggplant, zucchini, peppers, tomato, onion, whole cloves of garlic, and mushroom. I am hoping this will be a staple of the warmer months.

 

This came out to six cups of cooked vegetables, using two tablespoons of olive oil. So about 75 calories per cup. Not bad! I think I could get away with less olive oil in the future. Be sure to slices the eggplant first, salt it, and set on paper towels for draining off "the bitterness" whatever that is. It does shed quite a bit of water though and I've tried it without doing this step - it is more bitter. Perhaps it's a nightshade vegetable thing?

These are great to have in the fridge in the same way the roasted root vegetables were this summer. There are so many different things you can do with them.

They are great with a fried egg (of course!)
 

Delicious as a pasta sauce topped with a bit of parm.
 

On a toasted sandwich with melted havarti.
 

This was a favorite from winter with root vegetables, revitalized for summer.
 

Pumpkin Soup

I love to make this soup for Jill and Morgan's visits. The funny thing is that it's so delicious, we all dive right in and I never remember to take a picture. You can see from the smudges on the bowl that I started eating before remembering to take the picture this time. The recipe is here.
 

Morgan always inspires me to be a better composter, which really needs to be my next project now that I have remembering to bring my own shopping bag under control. So here's me attempting to be a better composter, one big benefit of buying Dave's killer bread is that the bags biodegrade: