Kitchen Playtime: Summer Holidays

Happy belated July Fourth and Canada Day! This post covers the food we made for both.

Since Canada Day was July first, I'll start with that one. I got caught in a hellacious rainstorm that afternoon while on a marketing visit, and so I was really happy that Hubby volunteered to cook that night while I went into introvert recovery mode, i.e., pet the cat and stared at my phone for a couple of hours. He'd found strawberries at the Union County Farmers' Market (in Blairsville), so he made Grilled Lamb Chops with Wheat Berry, Strawberry, and Lacinato Kale Salad.

Looks kind of like the picture in the magazine

We've just been to Canada - check back Wednesday for that post, already written and scheduled, so it will be here - and brought back some Canadian wine. I'd say this bottle was our first casualty from the trip, but one actually didn't make it out of Vancouver. Oh, well. We enjoyed the lamb chops with a lovely gamay from Desert Hills Winery. You've probably just wrinkled your nose as memories of Beaujolais Nouveau flooded your brain. This wine wasn't like those at all. Think medium-bodied and nice fruit but with enough acid to be perfect with food.

Oh, Canada! I love your wines.

Since we were both off from work on Friday morning, I decided to make a real breakfast. I drew on memories from my childhood, when my Belgian mother would make Croque Monsieurs. One of my Belgian cousins corrected me on Facebook saying that if it has an egg, it's a Croque Madame. Oh, well. Alas, no cheesy sauce, either, which I've seen in restaurants. To make this version, toast some bread and top with ham (I used turkey - it's what I had), tomatoes, and an egg sunny-side up.

Croque Something

Saturday morning we ran the Peachtree Road Race in the pouring rain. At least it wasn't horribly hot. Dinner was burgers made with the special blend of pork, beef, and ground bacon from Pine Street Market, which I didn't get a picture of because I was really hungry, and cucumber and tomato salad. It's a super easy summer salad made from cucumbers and tomatoes - in case you were wondering - onion, and a vinaigrette that allows for a lot of freedom. I used the same one I made for the Greek Tomato and Cucumber Salad with Farro I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, but I think next time I'll switch out the proportions of lemon juice and vinegar.

On Sunday morning, we slept in, and I made blueberry muffins from the recipe in the Joy of Cooking cookbook.

I also had my kitchen oops of the week. We had one bag of peach pie filling in the freezer from last year, so since it's had a birthday, I decided to make it. I assembled it but forgot to turn the temperature down for the last cooking period, so the crust ended up a little overdone:

It still tasted good, though.

And finally, here are the ribs Hubby made Sunday evening:

They ended up with a few extra minutes on the grill because of the women's world cup championship game - go USA! I didn't take a picture of them plated because, well, the sides were grocery store slaw and beans from a can. The recipe came from Selby Winery, which sends food pairing suggestions for with their wine. We ate them with a lovely Selby Merlot.

Random Thoughts: What I cooked this weekend and what I'm drinking tonight

I poured at the Sherlock's wine tasting in Decatur yesterday. It was wines from Burgundy. I accidentally left my list there, so I can't blog on the wines, but they weren't that interesting.

Yes, this would definitely be a case of: too much going on, too little mental space for it. I have ten working days left in my current employment situation. Not that I'm counting down, of course. This weekend I sublimated the range of emotions I'm feeling about the transition into cooking. There's nothing like a little stress to bring out creativity in the kitchen.

Last night, I pan-sauteed the flounder we got in Destin (thank you, Sexton's!) and put it with a nice lemon caper sauce. We went to the Morningside Farmer's Market yesterday and got veggies to turn into side dishes with it: sweet turnips, summer spinach, and Japanese eggplant. I braised the turnips in some vegetable broth and butter, sauteed the spinach with garlic and olive oil, and grilled the eggplant. The only glitch in the meal is that the flounder was "cleaned," not filleted. So, last night, I got to fillet flounder and figured out it's time to get my knives sharpened again. One web site (yes, Hubby looked up the "right way" to do it) said that a sharp knife should cut through the fish like butter. I wasn't so lucky, although I did not hurt myself, which is better than I can say for the Pork Loin Incident of Autumn 2007 (I won't go into details, but let's just say it's a good thing that neither Hubby nor I faint at the sight of blood).

We had the 2004 J. Saunders Meursault (Burgundy), which is 100% Chardonnay, with it, and it paired really well with the sweet, flaky fish and sauce. It's fruity and buttery with a hint of honey, and not oaky, although it's wood-aged.

Tomatoes are in season, and yesterday, we came away with 5 pounds and then some for sauce from the Woodland Gardens booth at Morningside. The lady who rung us up asked what we planned to do with them. Tomato sauce, of course! We've been having fun with the tomato press we got 4 years ago when we got married and hadn't played with until this year. The 5 pounds of tomatoes gave us 7 cups of sauce, which doesn't seem like a lot, but it will be enough, with turkey breast meatballs or on its own, for the next few weeks, anyway. I also made a summer vegetable soup with onion, carrots, celery, okra, corn, zucchini, and tomatoes. That will go into lunches this week. Soup during the summer may sound odd, but I usually end up freezing at work because the air-conditioning controls are in the hands of some hot-blooded people.

What do you have with spaghetti and meatballs? A Cab, if you don't have anything Italian handy, and we didn't. We got into the 2005 Wall Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon (Napa), which Hubby had poured at a wine tasting a few weeks ago. Although it's not the most complex Cab, it's smooth and fruity with currant and black cherry and didn't overpower the sauce. In fact, it balanced out the acidity of the sauce quite nicely. That bottle didn't make it through the evening.