20 and 21 September 2008

I always keep cups of frozen vegetable stock in jars in the freezer. But often it's fun to make quick soups from scratch. At the bottom of a large pot, sauté a mirepoix of leeks and celery. Add summer vegetables: squash, young potatoes, fresh beans. Salt and pepper to taste.


Here's the following night, when we had leftover soup paired with an oat-berry risotto:

19 September 2008: Shakespeare in the Park

One night in September, my boyfriend and I went to Orinda to watch Twelfth Night at CalShakes. If you get a chance, go out there for a night: the theater is outdoors, set in a natural amphitheater, and surrounded by eucalyptus-grove parkland. The play wasn't great — I'm not a huge fan of Twelfth Night anyway, although Stanford Shakespeare Society did a nice production a few years back, and this version was overwhelmingly campy — but the picnic was wonderful. The corkscrew on the pocket-knife broke the cork on the bottle of Zinfandel, and we ended up getting into the wine only by pushing the cork into a bottle with a knife and exploding wine all ourselves (the folks at the nearby table were amused). In the middle of dinner, it started to rain, and we had only a fleece blanket for cover; the play was delayed half an hour so they could mop up, on account of Olivia's stilettos. Oh, and they sell hot cocoa during intermission. All in all, the evening was fantastic.

The picnic included: a potato salad (pictured) with kalamata olives, blanched green beans, cucumbers, and vinaigrette; fresh bread; smoked cod; chevre; and a white bean spread.

18 September 2008

17 September 2008: corn fritters with broccoli

These fritters consist of separated, beaten, and folded-together egg, corn cut from the cob, and diced sweet peppers, with herbs. Then fry on the stove-top. Some of the corn pops from the heat: it's exciting.

16 September 2008: Rainbows

13 and 14 September 2008

Fish and rice are excellent together.

A broccoli and cheese soufflé.

12 September 2008

Corn on the cob should be eaten not more than hours after it was picked — my parents tell stories of bringing the boiling water out to the rows of corn by my uncle's Ithaca, NY, house to maximize the sweetness of the corn. Of course, supermarket corn is bred for sweetness above corn flavor.

The purple mash is not taro root but potatoes, with loads of butter. The green beans are lightly sautéed and tossed with basil.

These meal was interupted numerous times by friends of my roommate, who had come over to take her out to a bar. My boyfriend and I got to show off the purple mash.

11 September 2008: Pasta with smoked fish

Farfalle, basil, smoked fish, and sweet red peppers blackened on the stove-top.

8 September 2008: Pasta Primavera

Penne, mushrooms, basil, pine nuts, all toasted in olive oil.

6 September 2008: Minestrone and Paninis

Flickr, it seems, limits uploads to 100 MB/month, which comes out to about one photo per day at the resolution my camera has been taking. So I've put about one and a half months of photos up — most of September and October — over there, but have run our of space, and it's just as hard to link from there as it is to simply upload directly to Blogger/Picasa Web. But I'll also post individual meals here.



The minestrone was from fresh tomatoes and fresh shell beans, with campanelle pasta. The paninis were on bread from that morning's farmers' market.