Yummy Fresh Stuff

Another busy week, so I’ll catch up three nights at once.

Tuesday:

I harvested the rest of the red beets from the garden and boiled them up properly. I’ve become fond of the greens, too; they’re quite good with some onion and garlic and a little balsamic vinegar. This time I tried sautéeing them with a fresh fennel bulb as well, and that was an especially tasty mix, and matched the lamb burgers very well. The burgers themselves had minced Thai basil, mint, red onion and garlic mixed in, and I grilled them up on the GeoFo.

Wednesday:

I enjoyed the tamales I got from the farmers market last week so much that I bought more this week. This time I got the carnitas instead of pollo, and I also got some pico de gallo to serve over the top with the salsa, and some sour cream to cut the heat a little. So tasty, and all I had to do was steam them for 20 minutes in my vegetable steamer.

Tonight:

The weather has been getting cold over the past several days, and the fog never quite burned off today. I really was in the mood for something hearty and warming, despite the fact that it’s June. As Mark Twain famously said, “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.” I ended up taking a bunch of fresh veggies and potatoes and a couple chicken breasts and making a chicken stew? something akin to a chicken pot pie without the crust.

I started by sautéeing onions, garlic and oregano in butter, then adding milk and flour to make a white sauce. I pan-fried the chicken quickly just so it wasn’t raw, and then mixed it in with all the veggies: fresh zucchini from the garden, sweet cherry tomatoes, a yam, wax beans, fresh peas, a carrot, new red potatoes, and fresh basil. I put the whole mix in the oven for about 45 minutes to bake and almost finished the whole dish!