I love the smell of garlic in the morning

5:15am run 3 miles with a dog walk as cool down


6:00am aahh, the first cup of coffee


6:10am The house is quiet, so I might as well break out the cuisinart and make some garlic scape pesto.

Our CSA box includes garlic scapes in with the cool season veggies. These curly little stalks look cool and smell great, but I've always been a bit perplexed as to how to use them. This time, I ground them up with pine nuts, parmesan and olive oil. I've added dabs to sauteed Kale, pasta, and spread on a sandwich.


6:45am "Mom, can you make pancakes this morning?"

BB: Parmesan Chicken

Meal planning is easy when others tell me what to cook. I've got several of Ina Garten's cookbooks, so adding a few of her dishes to my repertoire is easy. I've made the Parmesan chicken before, always with good results, and this dish travels well. Rather than pounding out my rather large chicken breasts, I sliced them in half horizontally, creating thinner pieces. I also dredged them in panko bread crumbs, which create a super crispy crust. To the greens, I added some avocado slices .
Alongside, we had our favorite watermelon salad: watermelon, basil, goat cheese, salt, pepper, olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

TWD: Mixed Berry Cobbler

Yum! A. prefers crisp, but there is something about cobbler, with its less sweet crust that really appeals to me when we have loads of fresh berries.
I stuck to the recipe, combining blueberries, raspberries, strawberries and some frozen cherries from last year's 27 lb pick your own extravaganza.
One of my bites contained a distinct pepper taste, which I really liked and might increase next time.

The Best Day of the Year

I think my favorite day of the year is the day of the first CSA delivery. We joined Needle-Lane Farms three seasons ago from a desire to eat a greater variety of local produce. I now feel like it's my birthday every Tuesday, as I get to open the box and figure out how to use the bounty. My kids try a greater variety of veggies, and J. likes to help cook them. Three years later, I've also added to my list of people who enjoy the beets which I can't get my family to enjoy.

It's somewhat of a guilty admission, but one of the best parts of our CSA is the pickup spot. Heading into a wine and cheese store on a weekly basis can be a dangerous proposition for our budget. So much so, that on weeks where I'm feeling poor, I actually leave my wallet in the car to avoid temptation. The folks at Morgan & York are super friendly and knowledgeable, that the impulse purchase, or four is just too easy.

What's cooking this week:

From Morgan and York --- fresh ricotta cheese, K.'s requisite slice of the caliente salami, a small bottle of delicious Olive Oil, and a bag of Ann Arbor Tortilla Factory Tortilla Chips. On a sleepless evening, A. broke into the chips and made a deep dent, I'll have to go back for more this afternoon...

From Needle-Lane---lots of herbs: basil (yum!), dill, garlic scapes, chives. Sugar snap peas, bok choi, onions, chard, spinach, lettuce, kholrabi, kale and collards.

The huge bag of sugar snap peas started to disappear out of hand. Many of the herbs and the spinach went into this Bon Appetit pasta recipe. I did wilt the spinach by draining the pasta over top of it, and I skipped the radicchio.

Still on deck, a type of kale quiche, a few more salads... With all of these veggies to eat, it is easy to eat at home rather than out.

And since I was hanging out in the kitchen on Tuesday cleaning and putting away all of these good veggies, I also made two loaves of whole wheat English Muffin bread. (Maybe I need a real job?)

How do you respond when...

A. brought home a pile of old National Geographic Magazines from a colleague. This morning, they were stacked neatly in the corner. Just a moment ago, K. was laughing. I went in to see what was up. She's opened one of the NG magazines, and is squealing over a picture of a beheaded monkey (discerned from my quick glance at the caption). Her comment: "Oh look! It's a person pretending to be cut up like a chicken."

I replied: "Let's look for another picture."

It's been a while since I've read National Geographic. Seems to be more of a PG-13 publication.

TWD: A Pile of Profiteroles

Cream Puff Ring -- what fun! Prior to this week, I had never tried to make cream puff dough, asssuming that the stuff of Paris bakeries was a bit too tough for my skill level. Maybe I was right? The dough seemed easy enough, smooth and silky as it came together in the mixer. I piped it out onto the parchment circle no problem. With the remaining dough, I made a number of individual cream puff shells.

About halfway through the 425 degree baking time, everything started to look really brown. swapped the upper and lower trays and proceeded to lower the temp. In the end, my cream puff shells looked beautiful, all puffy and golden. My cream puff ring, well it looked like this:

A frisbee? A flying saucer? A fancy letter "o"? It didn't rise at all, in fact it may have been more flat after baking than before baking.

I parted ways with the ring and worked only with my puffs. I found them delightful when filled, although my 8-year old pronounced the filling as "kind of like chewing on a mint leaf." He ate them, so I'm not sure whether or not to call it a positive or a negative.

Not Yet Tuesday: Blueberry Sour Cream Ice Cream

It was hot. I was cranky. I've entertained thoughts of passing along the old Cuisinart Ice Cream Maker. I have the freezer space to keep it chilled, but the pantry space to store a one use item? The other night I was glad that I had it around. Blueberries were on sale at the grocery, and while I didn't have whole milk, or sour cream, I subbed with skim and plain low-fat yogurt. A refreshing dessert on a hot summer evening!

The lower fat content did result in a super-frozen ice cream a day later, but still delicious. Many of the ice cream recipes I find are too rich for my taste -- 5 to 7 egg yolks. I'm much more a Breyer's kind of gal, and this fit the bill.

TWD: Not quite Dorie's Strawberry Tart

This week, the Tuesdays with Dorie recipe was La Palette's Strawberry Tart. From the photo, it looked delicious. It's finally strawberry season here in Michigan and I hightailed it to the Ann Arbor Farmers Market in search of ripe, local berries. (I'm still seeking a spray-free spot to pick mu own, but that's another story.) Two quarts and $7 later, I've got strawberry bliss sitting on the countertop.

Our weekend plans included a little reception and I needed a finger food to take along. Since my small family alone can't take the weekly butter component of the TWD exercise, I'm often looking for opportunities to share the wealth. As written, this recipe was in no way finger food, so I started changing. My original plans called for Dorie's tart crust, rolled gently and then adorned with the fresh berries. I had also been thinking about one of my favorite dessert recipes -- the grapefruit tart from Inn at Little Washington, which takes a nut crust and then brushes it with melted chocolate before adding the filling. I had wanted to brush the crusts with melted chocolate, before adding the jam -- but alas, the chocolate cupboard was bare. I plan to try this sometime, as chocolate and strawberries are such a wonderful combination.

I settled instead for Dorie's chocolate shortbread crust. I rolled the crust, cut it into circles with a small juice glass (turned out larger than I had expected), froze it, and baked the resulting cookies for 10 minutes. Just before we headed out the door, I heated my jam in the microwave to make it more spreadable, topped each cookie with a few halved berries and a dusting of powered sugar.

They were delicious, and distinctively not too sweet -- just right for mid-afternoon.

TWD: French Chocolate Brownies

Note to self... life is too hectic to bake one week, travel and generally attend to life in the middle, and then post the next. I barely remember this recipe. The highlights: it had chocolate, and raisins, and fire! It had fire twice in fact, since the first time I added the rum I cooked off too much before A. came running in with the long-sticked matches.

The environmentalist in me is always a bit perturbed when a recipe instructs me to line the pan with two sheets of foil. Is is really necessary? I didn't bother me this time, as these brownies folded right into their foil lining, into a ziploc bag and hit the road to share with friends in Cincinnati.

First bite: fine brownies. Day 2: moist, from the raisins and seemingly fudgier, which I prefer. YUM!