Birthday Pasta

So, Allison, I just turned 23 last Thursday, and to celebrate I fixed myself and some family members a lavish birthday dinner! There was peach pie, of course (you know I'm not much of a cake person).

But the thing that really took the cake (haha) was this awesome roasted tomato pasta. I love olives and briny flavors, and this mixture of savory tomatoes, kalamata olives, and capers was absolutely delicious. I used this recipe, from a long-ago issue of Bon Appetit, and it was just really, really good.

I can't wait to hear about your birthday celebrations, fellow Virgo! Do you have major and elaborate cake plans--I hope so! I can't wait to see.

Good food in Arkansas

This weekend I explored north-west Arkansas with my friend Jessa, and discovered a surprising amount of good food. First up was a trip to War Eagle Mill, a water-powered grist mill that grinds and sells organic grains. We got to see the mill in action:

Of course, I couldn't resist making a few purchases. I picked up some whole wheat flour, some spelt flour, some cornbread mix, some apple butter and apricot butter, and a copy of the Mill's cookbook. Okay, okay, but I'm helpless when surrounded by grain, especially grain packaged in vintage-y looking cloth bags! It made me feel like Laura Ingalls Wilder!

We ate lunch at the perplexingly named Bean Palace Restaurant, where I had a just-okay taco salad and some pretty darn good blackberry cobbler.

On our way back to Oklahoma we stopped in Fayetteville and had lunch at the Greenhouse Grill. Or, more accurately, we had brunch. Who knew Arkansas would have organic blue-corn pancakes with raspberries and walnuts in the batter, topped with a yogurt-honey swirl and fruit chutney? Arkansas, you are too good to me.

If you give a mouse a cookie...

I'm not sure who the mouse is in this scenario--probably me. I don't usually bake that much because I know if I have cookies, or cake, or pie at my disposal, I'm more likely to eat it all at once than savor it slowly like a logical person.

But anyway, I made some ginger cookies anyway! They came from the Barefoot Contessa at Home cookbook, and the recipe is available online here.

The "secret ingredient" was chopped crystallized ginger. If you like ginger (a lot) like I do, you will love these cookies. If you don't, well, they might be a little overwhelming. Also, they're kind of tricky (Beat ingredients for exactly five minutes! Bake for exactly thirteen minutes!), but if you have faith and follow the recipe, they will come out all right in the end, I promise!

They're crisp on the outside and moist and chewy on the inside! Much bigger and more luscious than the lowly ginger snap.

Is it gross to take close-up photos of food you've just bitten out of? Oh well! Anyway, these cookies were awesome and I suggest you make some forthwith.

Cupcakes!

Hey, I ate some cupcakes! With my friend Ruth! They came from Kupcakz which, wacky spelling aside, really does make insanely good cupcakes. Ruth hand a mint-chocolate one which, as you can see, she was pretty excited about. I had a dark chocolate with peanut butter buttercream and man oh man it was good. They kind of hollow out the cupcakes so extra frosting goes down into the middle. Mmmmmmm. I wish I had more cupcakes RIGHT NOW.

Summer Chopped Salad

So far this summer, I've had enough trouble just getting off the couch, let alone summoning the energy to cook a real meal. This chopped salad is a great solution--all you have to do is cut everything up and throw it together! Plus it's got a little bit of everything in it, so you don't need any side dishes.

I topped everything with the simple vinaigrette I've been making to go on everything. We don't even have any bottled salad dressing in our fridge any more, because this is so quick to whip up. There's no recipe per se, but the basic procedure is simple:

Honey Mustard Vinaigrette

Ingredients:

1 shallot, chopped (or garlic if you prefer)

1 tsp dijon mustard

1 tsp honey

1 tbsp red wine vinegar (or whatever you have on hand)

2-3 tbsp olive oil

salt & pepper to taste

Directions:

In a small bow, mix together shallot, mustard, honey, vinegar, and salt & pepper. With a fork or a whisk, gradually mix in olive oil. That's it!

The chopped salad itself is also difficult to write a recipe for. Basically, just cut everything into similar-sized pieces and layer in a salad bowl. Then toss with dressing and serve! If you want to keep leftovers in the fridge, I suggest adding croutons and cheese to individual plates, since the salad will keep better separate from those ingredients.

Summer Chopped Salad

Ingredients:

Romaine lettuce

Red cabbage

Spinach

Cucumber

Carrots

Celery

Cherry tomatoes, halved
Toasted almond slivers

Dried cranberries

Homemade Croutons (or store-bought, if you prefer)

Cubed gouda

Crumbled Feta

Directions:

Start with the lettuce, cabbage, and spinach--cut each into bite-sized slivers and layer into serving bowl. Next chop cucumber, carrots, celery and cherry tomatoes into bite-sized pieces and add to serving bowl. Finally, top with remaining ingredients, drizzle dressing over, and toss!

This salad is addictive, probably because of all the cheese! I'm not sure how good for you it actually is, given all the toppings, but I do know that it's fresh and tasty. And if you make a ton you can eat it for like a week without having to cook again.

Nectarines in Cedar Falls

Well, Allison, while you've been off cooking for teenagers this summer at your camp job I've been... pretty much doing nothing. So much nothing, in fact, that I felt the need to get out of town and do nothing somewhere else. So I visited our friend Amanda in Cedar Falls! I won't get all mushy and say that visiting Iowa was like coming home again, but I will say that the cool temperatures and actual clouds were a welcome respite from what has so far been a searingly hot summer in Oklahoma.

While I was in Cedar Falls, Amanda's family was way too generous in treating me to a ton of delicious food. There was Chinese, burritos, waffles, and more. The morning of the day I left, though, Amanda and I got a chance to do a cooking project of our own... well, as long as you use the term "cooking" loosely.

It all started when we were leafing through the Williams-Sonoma Kid's Cookbook, which was laying on Amanda's kitchen table. The peril of this book is that the recipes are all super-easy, and the photography is gorgeous, so it's easy to get drawn in. That's not necessarily a bad thing, though! Anyway, we saw a recipe for Apricot-Ginger parfaits which looked too good not to make. Plus, we were lucky enough to have a bona fide kid (Amanda's little brother) there to help us by licking the bowl that the cream was whipped in.

In the end, these are a little different than the recipe. We used nectarines instead of apricots, because that was what we could find, and we didn't garnish the parfaits with fresh mint, much to Amanda's dismay. We did, though, eat them on the front porch on a vintage table runner. And after breakfast we hiked into the nature reserve behind Amanda's house and went swinging in a playground and relaxed on quilts and read books until the heat of the sun became overwhelming. So I'd say they were basically a success.

Nectarine-Ginger Parfaits

Ingredients:

A bag of store-bought gingersnaps

4 or 5 nectarines

heavy cream

sugar

Directions:

This is basically self-explanatory. Slice the nectarines, and put the gingersnaps in a plastic bag and use a rolling pin to crush them. Sweeten and whip the cream (or if, like us, you forget to sweeten the cream, whip it and then add some powdered sugar). Layer everything in parfait glasses and enjoy! You're supposed to let them sit in the refrigerator for a couple of hours so the cookie crumbles become moist, but we were too impatient, and, after all, I think the crunch added a certain something to our gustatory experience.

The Holy Grail

Dear Allison,

Well, my dear, it's finally happened: we've graduated and parted ways, supposedly to forge our separate paths in life. To find fame and fortune and fulfillment. Well, I've got the "fulfillment" part covered, anyway--as part of our Epic Trek Through the American South, my family had lunch in Savannah at none other than The Lady and Sons, Paula Deen's restaurant! Now, you know how I love all things southern, but southern food can sometimes be problematic from a vegetarianism standpoint. I was impressed to see that at The Lady and Sons, there were three whole vegetarian entrees on the lunch menu! That may not sound like much, but when you're used to making do with a salad and sides, it's exciting.

First things first: The Lady and Sons is in downtown Savannah, which is a quirky and awesome city full of antebellum architecture, indie boutiques, and hipsters who attend SCAD.

Now, in true Paula Deen fashion, our meal didn't begin with plain old bread. Rather, it started with a fried corn cake (there was maple syrup at the table to go with it), and a cheddar-garlic biscuit, both oozing with butter. Um, delicious is putting it lightly.

Here's what the interior or the restaurant looks like: there are three stories of dining rooms, and we were seated on the top story.
We started off with fried green tomatoes, which were garnished with a roasted red pepper sauce and a vidalia onion relish. These were so. good. Crispy and surprisingly delicate, and I loved the onion relish. I really want to try and re-create them when I get home
For my main course, I went with the asparagus sandwich which, according to the menu, is "a favorite of the New York Times." The sandwich was filled with asparagus, red onion, jack cheese, and thousand island dressing, grilled between two slices of rye bread. It was served with cole slaw (which was garnished with green tomato pickles), and in the background is my lemonade with mint. This sandwich was homey and comforting and, most of all, different, which to me is the most important theme in a world of token portobello burgers. The cole slaw wasn't that special, although it was spicy and a step up from normal restaurant cole slaw.

And then there was the macaroni and cheese: since I promised you would try it, I forced my father to bring some back from the buffet (which, as you can see, was mostly populated by vegetables-cooked-with-bacon). This macaroni and cheese was pretty awesome, and I'm about 95% certain the secret ingredient was mayonnaise. Actually I'm about 95% certain that Paula Deen's secret ingredient is always mayonnaise.

Then there was dessert: a pecan pie so flaky, creamy and caramely that it was like looking into the face of god. Okay, maybe not quite, but it did come with a scoop of honest-to-god-not-from-a-can whipped cream on the top, which was pretty freakin' awesome.

So I hope your summer is going well so far, Allison! I can't wait to hear about your fancy cooking job and anything else that happens in your life. Keep me posted!

Love,

Kathryn