liamsaunt

Big salads for dinner last night. The dressing was a homemade basil bacon ranch.

Dinner last night. Grilled pizza for the kids Clams and mussels for the adults

Chicken parmesean and zoodles in a sauce made from a giant (1.3 lbs.) yellow tomato. That tomato was from the farmer's market, not my garden. I have some big guys out there but nothing on that scale!

Roasted portobello mushroom stuffed with tomatoes, mozzarella, and pesto and baked, served on a heap of arugula and spinach. More tomatoes from my garden.

I am back to cooking at home after an extended vacation in the Caribbean. I did do some cooking while on vacation but did not take pictures. It is hard/expensive to find good vegetables on the island (with the exception of salad greens), so I always feel vegetable-starved when I get home. Last night's dinner was a big chopped vegetable salad with chickpeas and feta cheese added. The tomatoes and herbs are from my garden.

shrimp boil

Caprese salad from yesterday's family dinner

chicken and green bean stir fry with lots of garlic and ginger, thai basil and chiles

Too hot to turn the oven on. "Grilled" tomato salad with fresh mozzarella, basil and mint. The tomatoes and herbs are from my garden. "Grilled" is in parentheses because it was hot and I did not want to go out and stand over the hot grill just to grill one green tomato so...I will admit that I "grilled" the green tomato in my belgian waffle iron.

Dcharch and BonVivant, I need your dinners! Seriously both look amazing. Some things from family dinner today. Kale caesar salad. Cliche, I know, but my niece and nephew always take seconds and my Dad loves it too, so... Pasta fresca. Just tomatoes ground up with garlic and basil in the food processor, then tossed with fresh mozzarella. This is my nephew's favorite pasta dish and a good thing since I have about 5,000 cherry tomatoes in my garden that are about to be ripe. Summer squash zoodles with pesto. For my pasta averse Mom and niece Not pictured, the grilled porterhouse steaks my sister made, and the pre-dinner porch swing cocktails (prosecco, mint, limoncello, St. Germaine)

pre dinner cocktail of basil infused vodka lemonade fish tacos

Here is what I bought at the farmer's market today: wine (I actually bought six bottles), cabbage, eggplant, black raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, six ears of corn, peppers, tomatoes, peaches, pretzel rolls, summer squash, gouda spread flavored with onion and chives, and mostly unseen in this photo green beans and guacamole.

striped bass and greek salad

Brown rice, oil-packed tuna, roasted pepper, olive, lemon, basil and scallion salad

I frequently grill clams and oysters in the summer. I have a special grilling grate (it's actually called a Great Grate), that has triangular openings that are perfect for nestling the shells in to and holding them. I don't have the patience to shuck before grilling, so I put them on the grill whole, and as soon as they start to open I carefully shuck them while wearing a heavy glove. Then I return them to the grill and pour over some garlic butter and cook just until the butter starts to bubble. I tried to find a picture of them on the grate so you could see the design, but the only ones I could find with the shellfish on the grate had me in them, so here is a photo of them on the platter for serving. I put rock salt on the platter to keep the shells from spilling their liquor.

Chopped salad

Grilled chicken salad with apples and gorgonzola. I picked my nephew up from a week-long service trip yesterday and he requested vegetables for dinner as he had not eaten any all week. This suited him just fine.

I visit two farmer's markets. I am in the Boston area. On Tuesday and Fridays, I go to the market in Copley Square on my way to the commuter train. This is a very nice market with a good variety, but it is definitely pricy. It is all food vendors this year. In previous years there were some crafters but not this year. This market has meat, fish, cheese, and produce. On Saturdays, I go to a farmer's market at a dairy farm near my home. It is a pretty large market and less expensive than Boston's. There are a good amount of crafters at this one, and more bakers of sweet treats than is probably necessary, but there are also a decent amount of vegetable vendors, sometimes a wood fired pizza maker, and a knife sharpener. Here is what I bought today: kale, cherry and slicing tomatoes, bell peppers, summer squash, walla walla onions, scapes, scallions, blueberries, beets, a loaf of multigrain bread, three soft pretzels, 2 types of cheese, maple syrup, and you cannot see it because it is under the cheese, but a container of pretty amazing guacamole. This cost $100, half of which was the maple syrup and cheese.

Corn and crab cakes with lime cream and iceberg-cilantro slaw. Recipe was from the current issue of Fine Cooking magazine. I enjoyed this and it was fast to put together on a work night

I also lived in Philadelphia for a time and have no memory of this sandwich from then. My Philadelphia memories are of hoagies, cheesesteaks, giant pickles, and soft pretzels. Of course I was a child then and probably would not have even considered eating broccoli rabe. But, this sandwich is a Philadelphia thing. Google brings up many recipes and shops where you can get it.

I made a riff on the famous Philadelphia pork and broccoli rabe sandwich with provolone and cherry peppers. I will admit that I used leftover pork blade chops instead of slow roasted pork shoulder.

Caprese sandwich on foccacia. Purchased from the food truck outside my office. It was actually pretty tasty.

I have tons of deer in my yard also. The winter this past year was incredibly bad for the Boston area and the deer were starving. They ate everything they could get access to. I had to replace all of my landscaping in the front and back of my house because of deer damage. They even ate my holly, which I understand they typically hate. My landscaper says that the replacements he put in are things that deer really hate. We shall see. I had one in my front yard the day after the front was re-landscaped and she came over to check out the new plantings but opted to eat the stuff growing in the woods that surround my home instead, which is fine with me. The local wildlife uses my very long driveway to come out of the woods and then down into the neighborhood and back again. It makes for interesting patterns in the winter snow and an occasional exciting sighting during dinner.

Fish in "crazy water." This was the last fish from my current fish share cycle, and a new to me fish, king whiting. I liked it very much. I am taking the next 8-week fish share cycle off because of some summer travel plans, so you might actually see some non-fish photos from me over the next few weeks :-)

Okay, here is my garden. For context I live just outside Boston. Don't laugh. This is my first ever in the ground vegetable garden. I lived in the city and then a small home for a long time and only had container gardens. We moved to my current home in December 2013 and a selling point for me was the established garden plots in the yard. The prior owners were a multi-generation Greek family and the grandfather was a big gardener. When we moved, I had cancer and so was not well enough to plant last year. Here is the main garden Yeah, I need to weed badly! It is hard to keep up because I work in the city during the week. The garden has squash, cucumbers, 21 tomato plants, green beans, eggplant (being eaten by something) there kinds of peppers, nastursiums, and sunflowers. The only thing I have actually growing fruit so far are the peppers The plum tomato vine has really taken off. All of the heirlooms are kind of lagging. I have a secondary garden with squash and watermelon but it is getting eaten because it is not securely fenced. My house is surrounded by woods and we have a lot of wildlife. I am looking out my window and see a hedgehog (eating poison ivy so good for him) and a bunny (eating grass so hmmm) I also have a separate in-ground herb garden which is doing well except for the dill which was eaten by someone. Here is what I am better at. Container gardening. Thai basil because it is impossible to find in the store regular basil and other herbs container tomatoes and the prior owner's mint patch. I can make mojitos for 100!