Tastes Like Food

Today was a big food day. This last week, my SO had family in town, so we didn’t do a whole lot of cooking. And I’d been out of town the previous 2 weekends, so the cooking I had done was quick and easy. Today, I had a lot of food enjoying to catch up on.

The first thing I did was stop by some cherry trees I’d noticed earlier in the week on a bike ride. I’d talked to the residents and they’d said I could grab as many cherries as I wanted. These were not as sweet or as big as cherries you’d get from the store, but still very edible.

After that, I got a cherry pitter and some scissors. I took the scissors to my garden and cut most of my normal basil (I have some cinnamon basil with which I’m still trying to figure out something to do). I made pesto:

• basil (stems are fine as long as you can chew them)
• olive oil
• parmesan cheese
• pine nuts

Stick it all in the food processor, chop it up and pesto you have! I forgot to put in some garlic, but it was still pretty good. You can see I only got about a 1/2 pint, but now it is in the freezer for some winter day when I want to spread it on toast.

After that, I made breakfast from some things I’d gotten from the CSA. This is stir fried zuchinni and onions, with some chard remnants tossed in at the end.

For lunch, I made pizza-dillas.

• tomato sauce
• shredded cheese
• dried salami
• tortillas

Place all ingredients on tortilla, heat in toaster oven until cheese is melted. Mmmmm.

I also tried a recipe from the CSA handout–baked kale:

• kale
• olive oil

Preheat oven to 400 degrees wash the kale. Remove the stems. Mix enough olive oil with kale in bowl to coat kale lightly.  Spread kale on a ungreased baking dish. Make sure that the kale is only one level thick–I burned my kale because I put too much in it (some pieces were not crispy, so I left it in too long). Stick it in the oven, checking every 3-5 minutes for crispiness. At the end, it tastes a bit like a healthy potato chip. My SO suggested mixing the kale with bacon, which would of course make it taste better.

And finally, I pitted all the cherries. Originally, I was planning to dry them, but laziness got the better of me and I stuck them in jars in the freezer, to be enjoyed in a pie or on ice cream in the future.

What a day!