Katie Meadow

,Most unbalanced dinner ever! My daughter's HOA had their annual get together, which for the past few years has involved a wing contest. My SIL won it last year, but didn't enter this year. There were six entries, all spicy. Five were quite good. I passed on the various pasta salads and the pizzas. and just had wings and beer for dinner. Our family contribution to the potluck was brownies, made by me. That was my dessert. The weather was lovely, not hot. The crowd was diverse and interesting and there were hoards of children, most of whom looked to be under 7 yrs old. As you would expect there was abundant talk about the schools in the area. SOO glad I'm done with that!

Dinner last night was a casual affair since my daughter and SIL went out to celebrate their fifth anniversary at a tapas bar in Atlanta. So my husband and I had a quiet dinner after the girls were in bed: Gaelic Ale on home tap (so fun!), warm boiled peanuts we made from our Dekalb market splurge and Ronni Lundy's fried apples made using a selection of the current crop of mostly local apples. The selection of apples in the south at this time of year is astounding. Some leftover rotisserie chicken and leftover mac n cheese. The boiled peanuts were a huge hit with the twin who likes savory and salty snacks. The other one has a major sweet tooth. She would crash anybody's birthday party for a piece of cake. We call her Miss Congeniality because she will go up to any group of random people and insinuate herself.

I'm green with envy. I forgot to mention this market is exactly three minutes by car from my daughter's house. There are two downsides to cooking for her family. One, their kitchen has a lousy old range, and is missing a lot of what I consider necessary pots, pans, measuring cups and mixing bowls; there's no toaster and a very old toaster oven that defies human intervention. The second, and more delicate issue, is my son-in-law's chiild-like eating habits. There are a ton of things he won't eat, other things he will only eat if prepared on way and a meatless meal is, to his mind, worthless. So, a challenge. And I'm not the most placid or patient person. My husband's family are mostly vegetarians, and I'm very used that. At home my husband and I typically eat meatless meals at least half the time. I can't get my head around someone who is unwilling to eat a veg meal once in a blue moon.

Dinner in Decatur with all ingredients from (and a shoutout to) the amazing DeKalb Farmer's Market. This may have been a farmers' market once upon a time, but now it is a giant international grocery. It is unlike any other "super" market. For certain products they contract with only one supplier. For instance just about all pasta products are Delverde,. dozens and dozens of shapes and sizes. There was only one brand of milk, something organic, that is is phenomenally good, and I don't say that about milk very often. The variety of vegetables is remarkable. Four different sizes of collards alone. There was Culantro and Cubanelle peppers, along with just about any other fresh pepper you could name. There was a bin of fresh green peanuts in the shell: it's the season for boiled peanuts! A fabulous fish market. Lots of smoked turkey products that they make in house. Berkshire pork. Tropical fruits you never heard of. A zillion things for making Indian dishes, including curry leaves and kaffir lime leaves. And on and on, with a few very strange omissions. My daughter says they don't carry any kind of tortillas, which is pretty weird, considering. Of course she shops in similar fashion as her father: fast and furious. and like him, if she doesn't see it right away she assumes they don't carry it. At least she has an excuse, like a full time job and toddler twins. Me, I'm dawdling and gawking. The most diverse bunch of shoppers you could imagine. Some jaw dropping turbans and other headgear and swooping African print dresses and saris. . So, dinner was put together from our market trip. Cooking for four plus is not something I'm used to on a daily basis, but my husband and I managed pretty well. Mac n Cheese with Delverde small penne. You can't go wrong there with toddlers. Long cooked green beans cooked with heirloom tomatoes, fresh beans and house cut hickory smoked bacon. Thanks to the twins, lots of leftovers there! Rotisserie chicken, one of the best ones I've ever had: spicy hot rubbed, plump. At first we couldn't find the rotisserie chicken, partly because it was such a large space unto itself, and for some mysterious reason, roped off with traffic cones and yellow tape like a crime scene.

We cooked the bacon and put it on paper towels. In some of the bacon grease we sautéed half an onion and. some garlic. Then the greens went it, tossed and briefly cooked until totally wilted. Added salt and tossed a bit more. Added about a third of a cup of water, covered the pan and steamed for five or so minutes. Broke up the bacon, added it back in and cooked for another five minutes or so. Uncovered the pan and cooked off the liquid and served with a generous pat of butter. Really good despite how minimalist it was. A home I would have used ham broth instead of water, and finished the greens with a bit of vinegar and Steen's can syrup. I typically do this with chard, but now I think I will start to branch out and mix up the greens.' So, these were not long-cooked greens as collards are often done. And certainly spinach cooks quicker, but I'm not a fan of spinach, which would certainly cook quicker. When it comes to long-cooked collards I think that's an art, and when I order them along with BBQ I am always disappointed. But the rare times I find tender baby collards they can work really with this method.

Totally agree that substitutes mostly don't cut the mustard. But one thing I swear to is that after a while on a reduced salt diet your taste buds adjust and you literally don't need as much salt as you once did, or as you thought you did. Give it time. After a few months of using less salt almost all restaurant food tasted over salted. I still love salt, and over the years I've increased my intake, but I still use less than many recipes suggest. Also I find that instead of heavily salting while cooking that a little bit of good finishing salt goes a long way when it comes to flavor.

Our choices are limited here in the NC hills. I know the selection will be great at the huge international market in Decatur; there's a whole aisle with nothing but different greens. After the remarkable unusual chard we scored at the local farmers' market the best we could do at the big grocery store in town was a bag of pre-washed and cut greens called, simply, Southern Greens. It was a mix of turnip greens, collards and mustard greens, and ,surprisingly fresh and good cooked with a little bacon.

I've made Italian Wedding Soup with escarole, cavolo nero (Tuscan kale) or chard. All good, but I like escarole best.

Pumpkin Spice haters of the world unite!

I have to admit that I thought Jiffy was something from the past. I had a rude awakening the other day at a supermarket in NC. An incredible variety of Jiffy mixes take up a lot of shelf space in these parts. Just try and get artisan cornmeal or Bob's Red Mill cornmeal in the all-white moneyed town of Highlands.

Whatever Clara is eating it appears to have put her in a trance. Always a pleasure whether you are in one or watching one. Half the pix of my 2 yr old granddaughters are of them eating, since that's one of the only times they are sitting relatively still.

Pregnancy cravings are a special category. I like sour, but when I was pregnant nothing was too sour. I craved Japanese pickled vegetables above all, grapefruit as puckering as I could get it, and in the realm of the really hideous: those gummies with that weird sour powder on them.

All my cravings seem to come out of nowhere. Except for root beer floats which are always in the front of my brain.

Another no-name farmers' market melange in the NC cabin. From the market: purple cherokee tomatoes, big and juicy. Shelled purple hull peas, similar to black eyed peas but I like them better. Fresh okra, dark in color and very tender and tasty. Bacon, not local I don't think, but good. Everything sort of sautéed separately and then mixed with rice and seasoned with Cajun Blackening Spice that I brought with me from CA, believe it or not, because all the ones I've tasted so far in Atlanta are ninety percent salt. For dessert, scuppernongs and double dark chocolate Milano's. How southern can you get? Does this dish have a name? To drink we had Asheville Highlands Gaelic Ale, always available in these parts on tap or in cans. I'm not a big beer drinker, but I like this stuff. Believe it or not my daughter and her husband now have some kind of setup that keeps two kegs cold and you can have beer on tap whenever you desire.. What I love about it is that I don't need a giant glass, and can have a half glass at a time, nice foam and all. Highlands Gaelic Ale is a standard, and the other keg is on rotation, I think. The tap handle is only a few months away from being reachable by the taller of the two year-old twins. The two girls are like mountain goats; they'll figure out a way. Too bad I won't be there to see them get sozzled. Most astonishing, my husband baked bread this morning. As per usual for airbnbs the selection of pots and kitchen equipment is arbitrary as can be, but there is a bread pan! Four forks, a bizarre selection of bowls and some frighteningly ugly plates with a leapard-skin pattern that makes it just about impossible to see what you eating. There's one gigantic stainless steel skillet and two small pots. A dishwasher that's functional but obviously forks need to be washed by hand. The coffee cups are stupidly wide and unbalanced. There is no dish drain. There is no water kettle for my tea. Behold, there's a quarter sheet pan that's heavy duty and gorgeous. That means biscuits for breakfast using White Lily flour!

Susan Spungen has several books. The one I have is "Open Kitchen" and although some of the recipes don't seem easy, some are basic and very good and others can be tweaked to simplify. She also has another book called "Veg Forward" but I've never tried it. Since these are not new, they can be found on eBay for a decent price.

That sounds delicious. But the leaves of this plant were large, like regular chard. It was indeed spinach tender but didn't taste like spinach, and when cooked had a texture I prefer to spinach. If I were planning to be in Highlands on any other Saturday I would go back to see if the vendor was there again. I have a suspicion he would say it was just swiss chard.

Shame on the town of Highlands NC. Their Saturday farmers' market was mainly a collection of flowers and low rent jewelry. Except for one fellow who had a small selection of vegetables. We got a couple of large purple cherokee tomatoes (a favorite of mine), a bag of fresh shelled purple hull beans and the last bunch of super fresh swiss chard. The chard turned out to be extraordinary. It was unlike any chard I've seen. The leaves were thin and very tender, the stems were so thin they were practically non-existent. Nothing wasted. Having little to work with we sautéed some garlic in olive oil, tossed in chopped chard, and when wilted, poured in a minimal amount of water, a sprinkle of salt and covered the pan for a few minutes, then cooked uncovered until the liquid was gone. I have never tasted anything like it. Sweet, delicate and totally delicious. I use a lot of chard at home, but this was very different. I'm going to look carefully at other markets to see if the same type of chard is to be found. Does anyone have a clue as to what kind of chard this was?

In keeping with trying to find locally grown foods, and trying not to break the bank, today we scored some fresh, shelled purple hull peas and some chard. We're making do with limited supplies. Tonight we will make sautéed chard in olive oil with garlic and the previously acquired shelled black eye peas. The peas we will do simply as we did the butter beans, lacking anything hammy: just boiled and eaten with butter and salt. Apps, which we are eating right now, include goat cheese and Beemster on Panzanella crackers. Glad to find pansanella! Also some very good fresh lightly salted pistachios. A bottle Italian wine that's better than I would have expected. These kinds of makeshift meals are pretty much how justify going out on vacation. We had planned on being in Decatur with our daughter this weekend, but one of the girls is getting over a cold and the other came down with it today. So it goes. We'll go down midweek and do a lot of shopping and cooking, for which my daughter and SIL are always very grateful. At least the twins love to eat, Well, except for most green vegetables, like most two year olds I have known.

I think it's pretty common to throw fresh arugula on a pizza after it comes out of the oven. Ideally, at least from my perspective the pizza should be really hot so the arugula wilts a bit on top.

KMN. That sounds amazing. It's possible the collars could handle cooking on both sides. It's pretty hard to overcook black cod.

I never post in the Lunch topic, mainly because I don't really eat lunch. We typically eat a late breakfast and an early dinner and a late snack. But on vacation we must adjust. Yesterday was a rehab day of sorts, so we stuck close to home in Highlands NC. We had some hardware store shopping to do and maintenance tasks. The hardware store in Highlands is so huge it made me dizzy. We needed brighter lightbulbs and a flashlight; the shelf space devoted to both was amazing. Since by the time we managed to get ourselves into town it was already after 2:00 pm we decided to try lunch outside at the place that had the fabulous grouper, so I had fish and chips, which I rarely eat, partly because I don't really deep fry anything and, and mostly because places that make it in the Bay Area rely on Tilapia, which I hate. This fish was cod, thick and very fresh. The batter was light and crisp, really delicious. I can't say the same for the fries, which I believe were battered instead of double-fried. They were tasteless and boring. Why is it so hard to get good restaurant fries? Really, I may have to learn how to deep fry in my dotage. Yes, I always wear shoes in the kitchen. One thing I've learned about the mountains in September is that it's too chilly to eat dinner outside, especially for a wuss like me; these folks don't believe in outdoor heaters until winter. So lunch outside is a great luxury. It's so dark in the cabin that by the time we get out of bed it's practically lunch time anyway. Of course we are staying up late, because we have a big TV here and we are re-watching all of Breaking Bad for the first time. But now thYat we have better lightbulbs and have rearranged some of the furniture I now have a cozy spot I can read in. In Highlands we have nothing but time and have limited ourselves to one waterfall a day.

This or something like it will go into heavy rotation once we get back home. I've added a veg stock to my freezer arsenal recently and that's been really useful for a variety of things. I cooked RG beans in it and that was excellent. A change from my usual ham broth beans.

Well, yes, but this cabin in the woods is deep enough in that it doesn't see sunlight. So it's problematic sitting out on the deck as September is chillier than I expected. Next time I do a mountain vacation it will be in high summer. I'm more of a seaside or desert person, so this is novel for me. The darkness in the cabin isn't a problem for my husband, but I have a particular retinal condition that demands a lot of light. Every Friday thru Sunday will be spent at my daughter's place in Decatur, GA, where it is currently 80 degrees. The rest of the week will be spent looking at waterfalls and checking out small towns. This is Cherokee country. There must have been a lot of Scots settled here, because the Tartan Museum is in nearby Franklin. Besides the museum, for which they charge, there's more merch than you can shake a stick at, especially if you need to wear a tie showing your clan pattern. If you love plaid, this is your happy place.

Here I am in apple country in September. I'm in the mountains in North Carolina. One of my absolute all time favorite apples is the Arkansas Black, which we have always referred to as a Black Ark. And here they are! Part of a farmers' market haul. I haven't even tasted them yet, I'm just living in anticipation. They used to appear for a very brief time in our Bay Area market but we haven't seen them in years. Another favorite apple is the Black Twig from Tennessee, even more elusive. Maybe we will go into Asheville for the day soon and check out their huge farmers' market and see if they can be found. In mid October we will be in western MA and I'm hoping for a hot fresh apple cider doughnut. And speaking of doughnuts, which is clearly off-topic, I'm also looking forward to my favorite doughnuts in the world: Hole Doughnuts, in Asheville.

Being on vacation means eating out a lot, which we don't do often at home. We are in Highlands NC. Our first splurge dinner was a popular place called "Wild Thyme." They had a special of pan-fried grouper. I'm a grouper groupie, so that was a no-brainer choice. It was the best piece of fish I've eaten in ages. It came with a humble sauce that was a little lemony with capers that was really good. I ordered the sauce on the side because I like my fish fairly plain and usually find sauces too heavy handed. We are trying to eat half our meals in our airbnb, so two days later we ate at "Gracious Plates," a restaurant in nearby Franklin that bills itself as "farm to fork." The star of the meal was the fried green tomatoes. They had a light crispy tempura batter. The tomatoes were sweet-tart and the slices substantial. I was in heaven! Whenever I'm in the south in the early fall I order fried green tomatoes, but typically they are battered with a thick cornmeal crust that dwarfs the tomatoes and taste like cardboard. These were ethereal. The rest of the meal was just okay, although the wine was a major good deal: apparently every Wednesday is half-price wine night. A glass of delicious minerally rose was like five or six dollars. We did have an appetizer earlier in the afternoon. A roadside stand was advertising hot boiled peanuts, which I can never resist. These were cooked perfectly. It's the next morning and I'm already craving more. This is a "cabin in the woods" kind of vacation. We are at 4000 feet elevation and surrounded by dense trees. It's so dark as a result we are sleeping in late every day. The residents of these mountain towns are hearty folk. At "Wild Thyme" we opted to eat dinner indoors. They told us they don't drag out the patio heaters until November, when there's a chance of snow.