spring salad

Last week for dinner we made a lovely simple salad with romaine lettuce, strawberries, asparagus, sunflower seeds, homemade balsamic vinaigrette, brie cheese, and grilled steak. Served with fresh watermelon water (an entire watermelon, minus the rind, blended with the juice of a few limes or lemons, and served chilled), it made for a delicious meal. We devoured it in our sunny dining room, with the front  door open, the warmth of the May sun pouring in, and a lazy Lola dog at our feet. Ah, warm weather days!

By the way, asparagus tastes better - earthier, chunkier, asparagusier - in season than not in season. The skinny flavorless stalks of year-round, out-of-season asparagus don't seem worth the money now that I've realized how much better spring asparagus tastes. Barbara Kingsolver waxes poetic about April asparagus in her book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, in which she chronicles her family's experience of moving to a farm in rural Virginia to spend a year eating only what they can grow or buy locally (and therefore, most likely seasonally). If you haven't read this book, here is an excerpt in Orion magazine to pique your interest. If you're like me, you will read this book and immediately start daydreaming about your future hobby farm. Mine, if you're interested, is located somewhere in the Pacific Northwest and involves llamas. Or maybe alpacas. I can never remember which one I have hypothetically decided on, alpacas or llamas. Alpacas are smaller but produce more wool, so probably alpacas. Anyway, the point is, you should read this book and then call me so that we can talk about how cool our lives will be when we're out on the farm baking bread and spinning alpaca wool.

Now, go forth and enjoy the last of the spring asparagus!

P.S. I am shamelessly pinning my own image to my Eat, Drink board on Pinterest. Check it out for other summer-worthy meals, like the Tomato Panzanella with Ricotta (our favorite meal of summer 2011) and the Spaghetti al Limone that I plan to make very soon.

as it turns out, i am actually a genius...

LOOK what I found online today! Remember a few weeks ago when I posted a picture of myself wearing ski goggles as a nifty and rather innovative (if completely dorky) solution to onion chopping? Ha! Someone actually sells these Onion Action Goggles for $20 apiece.

I feel strangely vindicated.

ode to the food processor

What a marvelous invention! I don't own one myself, but it dawned on me today that, if I did own a food processor I would not have had to introduce ski googles (see this post on my recent foray into vegetarian cooking) into my line-up of essential cooking tools.

Then again, our ski goggles would likely have sat in oblivion in the farthest reaches of our big scary storage room and never seen light of day again until our next move, so there's that for a positive spin. Anyhow, I've decided to save up for a nifty food processor as part of my new vegetarian lifestyle.

Think of all the wonderful things I could make, like...homemade salsa! Hummus! Pesto! Baby food, for when we decide to add a mini-Shevlin to the household! The possibilites are endless.

it's not easy cooking green

Adventures in vegetarian (or semi-vegetarian, at least until I finish the last of the homemade lentil soup with ham that is currently in the freezer) cooking is what I am calling this next phase in my life. After flirting with the idea of going sans meat for years, and after reaping all the glorious health benefits of growing up in a household where Honey Nut Cheerios was considered a "sugary cereal," I have decided that I will indeed give this vegetarian thing a try. It's just one part of a multi-part effort on my behalf to make 2008 the year I truly start living a more healthy, sustainable, ecologically conscious, non-toxic, and fabulously green life.

Tonight, for my debut meal as a vegetarian, I cooked Polenta with Spicy Tomato Sauce - all homemade! The recipe is from my new vegetarian cookbook, "Vegetarian Planet" by Didi Emmons, which is full of delicious-sounding meals that place cool veggies, hearty grains, and awesome legumes at the heart of every meal. Already I can tell that, if nothing else, I will definitely gain some much-needed cooking skills from this whole endeavor. Even though the polenta came out a little bit runnier than I would have liked, I think it was a decent effort for my first shot at a truly vegetarian meal. All in all, it was a great first day for vegetarian Tammy - going to the co-op, chopping everything up, and then putting it all together into a meal was very satisfying.

My only complaint about the whole experience is that the recipe I chose called for an extraordinary amount of onions of multiple varieties, which is always a problem for me due to my overactive tear-ducts. Anyone walking into a kitchen when I have been chopping onions would think that my heart had just been broken and that I was sobbing disconsolately over a pile of mutilated vegetables. So, about a month ago, sick and tired of wielding a big knife while not being able to see anything through my copious tears, I had a brilliant idea for minimizing the effect of those juicy onions on my poor eyeballs. So far, this new arrangement has worked out great, and I can now chop onions with wild abandon - just the way it should be.