Cooler Weather Food

This photo is of grilled sausages, beans w/ onions and jalapenos, and corn fritters on my table very close to the lake. Oh, and a beer( perhaps a Heineken).

The corn fritter recipe was adapted from Craig Clairborne's Book of Southern Cooking. If you are getting more sweet corn than you can eat, slice it off the cob, bag, and freeze so you can be making these corn fritters throughout the fall hunting season. A perfect accompaniment to all the gamebirds you will shoot or acquire from lucky and generous friends.

In the meantime keep the weber fired( w/ real wood) and keep the sausages grilling.

Tomatoes and Real Eggs

A lot, I mean a lot of tomatoes from the garden and they are so fresh and delicious that you don't have to do much with them.

So I tried them w/ real eggs, the farm fresh from a neighbor kind, and I cracked two shells and each were twins( wow, I'm a twin), and it has been years since I've had a real farm fresh egg and holy cow they are orange and firm and taste like eggs are supposed to taste like.

Jalapeno peppers from the garden sauteed till soft in olive oil, and tomatoes likewise just sauteed hot with the eggs stirred in ( garlic, too, of course, and salt and black pepper to taste) and wow that is a meal. Just add toast.

Never had black truffles from France but would love to have them w/ eggs, too.

Homemade v-8 juice coming up.

More Tomatoes

First I'd like to correct my misspelling of the Russian literary giant to Solzhenitsyn with the syn at the end. I did read a remembrance of him in the NYT which indicated that he ate only roasted onions and potatoes even as a Vermonter. Not too bad if they are seasoned properly w/ salt pepper and garlic, and herbs like sage and parsley, or herbs de Provence, along w/ the addition of carrots. Peasant food at it's best if you include butter and rustic bread. Meat occasionally, too.

Ideas for fresh garden tomatoes:

Tomatoes simply sliced and salted and eaten with cottage cheese on the side are exquisite. Bruschetta is another w/ the tomatoes lightly salted w/ garlic and basil. Cut the fresh tomatoes gently with a very sharp knife.
A slice of tomato w/some good artisinal blue cheese on top.
Any variety of salsas.
Guacomole w/ extra tomatoes incorporated.
Tomato basil pizza.
Sliced tomatoes peppered and drizzled w/ olive oil.
Tomato and fresh fruit salsa.
Tomato and watermelon together w/ fresh mint.
The world's best BLT. Along w/ a rootbeer float.
Grilled.

Tomatoes

It is good to be eating ripe red tomatoes directly from the garden.

A Voice in the Wilderness

I read today that Alexander Solzhenitzen( sp) has died at 89 yrs of age. Yrs ago I read most of his books. I remember when he was exiled from Russia and lived in Vermont. He was pretty much dismissed as irrelevent from those yrs forward as he expressed his Christian faith and his disdain for the west and it's moral and spiritual decay. The West had looked upon him as a great writer( honored him w/ the Nobel) and as one of great personal courage, a hero throughout his yrs in the Soviet Union. But then he got here and he did not say what we wanted and expected him to say, you know, laud the west, criticise the east. He retained a great love for his native Russia, and did return and live there for his remaining 10 or 15 yrs.
When one becomes a voice in the wilderness, as he did, I think we should listen. His food writing was limited to the bread and soup that kept him alive in yrs of imprisonment in the Gulag. The struggle and triumph of the human spirit, individually and collectively, was his terrain.

Garden's Harvest Begins

This was the first year in a few that I have put in a garden. Three tomato plants, early variety and an heirloom German of some sort. About a hundred green ones now and three that are showing red. Hurrah. Eight bell and hot pepper( jalapeno and habenero)plants that I am harvesting already. I will freeze the hot peppers whole and dice the bells and freeze, and I will make some salsa either to can or freeze, and can whole tomatoes. I have never canned, so it will be interesting.

I don't like paying pepper prices thru fall/winter/spring and no longer want to risk being poisoned by mass produced and distributed fresh off season produce. Keeping it local. Planning also to take advantage of the late summer harvest of others' gardens to lay in alot for the winter. Potatoes, onions, carrots, squashes.

If all goes as planned I will have plenty of local healthgiving food for the winter. Fish too, and game this fall to harvest and store. I will be providing recipes and ideas as I proceed.

Anybody else doing more of this kind of stuff this yr?

Summer Grilling

A great marinade/basting sauce for almost everything grilled but beef is balsamic vinegar, orange marmalade( or orange juice concentrate), jalapeno peppers, and plenty of garlic. You could add cilantro and lime juice as well. Make it as sweet and hot as you wish. I used some very hot whole pickled jalapenos - La Morena brand from Mexico( spiced and pickled).

Imagine it on chicken or shrimp or pork cooked on a wood fired weber and have a beer like a Blue Moon Belgian Style Ale w/ it. A little bitter, a little sweet, along w/ the heat.