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I had some cucumber salsa for lunch on Wednesday. The cucumber flavor is stronger than I would have expected. It is ok. I am not sure if part of my disappointment is that my taste buds really want corn chips with it. I will need to see if I can engineer a cornmeal flatbread.
I made yogurt in the morning. For dinner, I made, for the first time this season, the Green Bean, Cherry Tomato, and Feta salad we like so much. We have been waiting patiently for the green beans, and at last we had the necessary pound. I used our ripe, multicolored cherry tomatoes, along with some from the farmers market. We had the salad with open-faced chicken salad sandwiches and pumpkin bread from the freezer for dessert.
In my quest to use the rest of the cucumber left on our doorstep, I searched for recipes on Tuesday. If our tomatoes were coming in, it would be easy: a salad of sliced tomatoes, cucumbers, and onions like my grandmother used to make. Most cucumber recipes require onion, so unless it is green onion, Scott cannot eat it, and he is not particularly a fan of cucumber unless it is in refrigerator pickles. I found a recipe at Taste of Home for Crisp Cucumber Salsa and decided that it would make a nice snacky lunch for me for the next few days, using my flatbread. The original recipe used a half cup of seeded, finely chopped tomatoes. I replaced that with a 14 oz. can of Del Monte Petite Diced Tomatoes with mild Hatch Chilies, which is my go-to for making salsa. I doubled the onion and increased the garlic. I deleted the sour cream. I added some squirts of bottled lemon juice and replaced the ground cumin with 2 1/2 tsp of Penzey's Salsa and Pico. I also added some chopped red bell pepper, as one recipe reviewer suggested. I peeled and seeded the cucumber. I will let it rest overnight and start eating it at lunch tomorrow.
For dinner on Tuesday, I made chicken salad from the leftover roast chicken breast meat. We had open-faced sandwiches on our current bread and the rest of the potato salad. I pulled out the sweet pickles I made yesterday. They are "interesting." I will need to ask my sister how she uses hers and how much of the Penzey's pickling spice she uses. I think mine needed less spice and more sugar. I am unsure if Scott is going to eat many of them.
We had a dinner of the last two pork chops and more of the potato salad, with microwaved frozen peas. It is so nice not to have to turn the oven on when the heat and humidity are so high.
That's a good idea, Mike. My husband often forgets which plant is which. Our Early Girl and Best Boy have green tomatoes. The Dester Indiana only has one. As it is an heirloom, it does not set fruit when the temperatures are as hot as they have been. We hold out hope for it if we stop having such long stretches of heat. I'm pleased that our cherry tomatoes are beginning to ripen, including one yellow and some purple. We will soon have enough beans for our favorite salad. My husband picked some pickling cucumbers today, so more dill pickles will be coming. I need more wide-mouthed pint jars.
Our pumpkin plant has vines, lots of leaves, and many male flowers, but so far nary a female flower.
We also went blackberry picking in the meadow area of our woods early this morning to escape the heat. Some of the blackberry plants were really hit by the drought, but other areas are looking much better, especially as we have had some significant rain in the past week. I also picked a pint of blackberries from our terrace. Jam making will commence this week.
I seem to have avoided ticks and mites this time. Better clothing, and the bug spray from the article to which CWCdesign posted a link seem to be doing the trick so far.
Thank you and Diane again, Mike, for your service to all of us!
That dinner sounds delicious, Navlys!
While we were out picking blackberries early Sunday morning, someone left a bag of two large and two smaller cucumbers on our doorstep. I have heard about zucchini being left at people's houses, in their cars, and other such spots, but cucumbers are a new one for us. I used the two smaller ones and a smallish one a vendor at the farmers market threw in because it was skimpy and made two 1-pint jars of sliced refrigerator sweet pickles. I used my dill refrigerator pickle recipe, but I replaced the white vinegar with cider vinegar and in place of the spices, I used for each jar 1 ½ tsp of Penzey's Pickling Spice, which one of my sisters recommended last year.
Now I have to figure out what to do with the two large cucumbers, which need to be eaten soon. If I had tomatoes, it would be a no-brainer, but the tomatoes are slow this year. I may need to go to the Tuesday farmers market to see if I can get some.
For Sunday dinner, I roasted two bone-in chicken breasts. While that did mean the oven at a high temperature, today is probably the coolest it will be for the rest of the week unless we get more rain. I also made potato salad, using red potatoes from the farmers market. We finished up the little bit of the pasta salad as well.
The wings look delicious, Joan! Of course, you ate those first!
We warmed up two more of the pecan-crusted pork chops and had them with more of the pasta-vegetable salad.
On Saturday afternoon, as we got rain and thunderstorms on and off, I baked Blueberry Sweet Rolls. We each had a couple for dessert. The recipe makes twenty medium-sized rolls. I only bake this recipe with fresh blueberries, so I used two cups from the first time we picked this season, which I had saved for this purpose. These are so good warm from the oven. I will post a picture later.
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You must be logged in to view attached files.We have been looking for a small upright freezer that we could fit into the garage. However, I want it to be frost free, and small ones generally are not. The garage also has space issues. I've looked online at Lowe's and at Best Buy. In the meantime, after cramming seventeen four-cup bags of blueberries into the Annex freezer section, with the frozen applesauce and frozen pumpkin, and all of the other stuff in there, and looking at the packed freezer section in the house refrigerator, I think that I may need to start canning applesauce rather than freezing so much of it.
We had the leftover chicken with artichokes and mushrooms, or rather, I had the artichoke part, and my husband had the mushroom part. He really liked how I did the chicken thighs, which are coated in flour with some Penzey's Smoky Paprika and onion powder. I will probably use a little more paprika next time since he liked it. We had it with more of the brown and wild rice mix and some microwaved mixed vegetables from the freezer.
Those look great, Mike! I may have to give that recipe a try. It is so selfless of you and Diane to experiment and to report the results to us.
We had thunderstorms and about an inch of rain overnight, which made for a cooler Friday morning. We were nearly out of bread, so I pulled out a recipe that I have been developing for a while. I use Harvest Grains and malted wheat flakes, and I use a lot of whole wheat flour in addition to some bread flour. I also had about half a cup of flour and barley from a previous recipe that was taking up refrigerator space, so I threw it in as well. I held back ¼ cup of bread flour but ended up adding it and about a tablespoon more. I also increased the amount of canola oil from 3 ½ Tbs. to 1/3 cup. (Other ingredients were flax meal, special dry milk, honey, buttermilk, and eggs.) The dough rose very quickly, probably due to the warm day and higher humidity. It doubled in less than 50 minutes, and the second rise took only about 40 minutes. I baked it in two 9 x 5-inch loaf pans for 35 minutes to 190 F. They are beautiful loaves with wonderful aroma. I will freeze one but am looking forward to slicing the other one at lunch tomorrow. I will add a picture later. (I have to do that from the upstairs computer.)
Note: promised picture posted. We sampled the bread at lunch and love the wholegrain flavor.
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You must be logged in to view attached files.That is a lovely cake, Joan! Your poker group are lucky people.
Skeptic--I find that pizza can warm up nicely in a toaster oven or countertop oven if you have one. However, I agree with you that cold pizza is excellent!
I made pasta salad on Thursday afternoon, using a Greek cucumber and basket of colored tomatoes from the farmers market, along with green onion and assorted colors of mini-bell peppers from the grocery. I also used a multi-colored pasta, so it was a bright salad. I included Greek olives, and Scott actually ate some of them. We went to an environmental coalition talk at 6:45, so when we got home at 7:45, the pasta salad was waiting to be eaten with warmed leftover pecan crusted pork chops.
Enjoy your time in Maine, Chocomouse!
I sampled my flatbread crackers at lunch today, and they are closer to crisp than when I use the regular whole wheat flour, so I will make the whole wheat pastry flour substitution permanent in my recipe.
For dinner on Wednesday, I made White Wine-Braised Chicken with Artichokes, a recipe from the "Eat Voraciously" column in The Washington Post. I used the other can of artichoke hearts from the pantry and will not buy more, as Scott resolutely refuses even to try them. I also left out the olives, as I do not think they added much to the recipe. I had 8 oz. of mushrooms that needed to be used, so I sauteed them in olive oil, then set them aside while I browned the chicken, skinned and coated in a flour mixture with paprika and onion powder (omitting the oregano, which bothers Scott's digestive system). I added the mushroom with the artichoke hearts and made sure to dish those onto my husband's plate. The recipe made very little sauce, so I might increase the white wine from five to six ounces next time. I used my Staub 11-inch skillet this time and was pleased at how well the coated chicken browned and the whole recipe cooked.
We had the chicken with mixed brown and wild rice cooked in my new Green Pan 4-qt. rice cooker. It is the second time I used it, and it really does a nice job and cleaning is easy. (Note: I bought the simple one not the complex electronic one.) We had microwaved frozen peas for an added vegetable.
We also picked another 10 lbs. of blueberries at our favorite place in the early morning before the heat and humidity settled in. I washed them this evening and spread them on baking sheets lined with paper towels to dry overnight. I will freeze them tomorrow.
As we are headed into a heat wave tomorrow, which will put a pause on running the oven, I baked flatbread on Tuesday evening. I have been experimenting with various flours in my adaptation of a Ken Haedrich recipe. I use a cup of King Arthur's Italian-style flour, a half cup of barley flour, 2 Tbs. semolina flour, and a half cup of whole wheat flour. However, I have more whole wheat pastry flour than I realized, so I decided to use it instead of the whole wheat flour. The dough was more delicate but not unreasonably so; I was able to roll it out easily. It also did not "fight" the way the dough with whole wheat flour does. The crackers (I cut them into 40 rectangular pieces before baking) are now cooling on the pan. I want to see if the lower gluten content will create a crisper flatbread. That taste test will wait for tomorrow.
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