Some nights I really don’t feel like cooking but I crave a real dinner. Before we left for vacation I was also overrun with cucumbers from the farm share, and while I was talking to my mom one evening she suggested using them in a sort of salsa to put with fish. I am nothing if not obedient (HA), so I put a package of frozen tuna (Trader Joe’s) in the fridge to thaw overnight, and the next night I made just what my mom told me to make.

The salad for the fish used up a couple cucumbers as well as a spring onion from the farm box. I supplemented it with a local hothouse tomato and some feta cheese.

I cut the onion into very fine pieces–spring onions are sweet and mild but I still don’t like a big crunchy chunk of raw onion!

I mixed the vegetables with a bit of oil and salt (I can’t remember now, but I think I also added a splash of cider vinegar) and let them sit while I prepped the rest of dinner.

I made a cheater’s knockoff of german potato salad as another side: Boiled red potatoes in salted until they were tender, and while the boiled I added in a couple peeled cloves of garlic. When the potatoes were done I drained them and returned them to the pot, covered, to “pull themselves together,” as my mom says. I mashed up the garlic cloves and mixed them with oil and cider vinegar and salt and pepper to make a tangy dressing. (Mom says 1 to 1; I’m not sure quite what this was because I didn’t make enough, so I kept adding splashes of one or the other as I added the potatoes). Instead of being organized and cutting up the potatoes, then pouring over the dressing, I cut up one smoking hot potato at a time and added it into the bowl with the dressing, trying to get some dressing on each piece. My fingers were unamused. Like I said, I also kept having to add more oil and vinegar towards the end because I’d made too little dressing. It looked like a total mess at the end but it was delicious.

Meanwhile the vegetables had gotten nice and juicy (I cut feta into tiny pieces and added it in before serving):

When Ben got home he grilled the fish according to the instructions on the package, and we were ready to eat 10 minutes later:

This was seriously tasty. And actually, the leftovers were so good that I did an embarrassing happy dance in my seat in the work cafe the next day and everyone looked at me like I had three heads. Whatever, they were just jealous.

Ugh.

Ok, so I had pounds of zucchini to use up and I’d been planning on a very veg-heavy absorption pasta, but then I saw a variety of posts the web about boiled pasta with zucchini and I gave in to the always gorgeous photos at Smitten Kitten and went with a julienned zucchini spaghetti.

First of all, don’t be fooled by how nice all this julienned zucchini looks:

While the results are better than if I’d cut by hand, the mental anguish was far greater. I have the STUPIDEST OXO Mandoline, with a clunky finger guard that I ended up having to use because it was so hard to force the zucchini through the julienne blade that I was sure I’d slice off a finger if I didn’t use the guard. UGH, the whole thing is bulky and awkward and the only part I like is how the legs fold out. It’s easy to twiddle the dial to adjust the thickness, but nearly impossible to pull out the piece that lets you either thoroughly wash the flat blade or flip it around to get wavy cuts. Argh.

Look at what the finger guard does to the vegetables:

That is a much smaller leftover piece than usual, because I was tempting fate and not really using it as directed at that point. The one time I tried to use this for onions about half of each onion was unusable. Grr.

Anyway, I wish instead of looking at Smitten Kitchen’s photos, I had actually read her recipe. I was in a coma and cooking without paying attention and I ended up not using any garlic or….anything that would give this flavor. Bleck. It was so boring. Had I read her directions or used a lick of common sense I would have cooked garlic in olive oil and then tossed the pasta/zucchini in THAT. Instead I just tossed olive oil over the pasta and zucchini, gave it a stir, and ate it alone while nursing my mandoline-wounded feelings in front of the TV while Ben was at band rehearsal. Tragic.

It was the first time I used some of my basil, though. That was a bright spot.

Happier times ahead: Since I was home for the weekend there is lovely Oregon Food Porn to come.

When I picked up the CSA share last week I found myself facing a replay of the previous two weeks:

-1 head lettuce
-1 bunch beets
-1.5 pounds summer squash/zucchini
-1.5 pounds cucumbers
-1 bunch chard
-1 bunch sage

Sadly I had fallen a bit behind and still had beets from two weeks before languishing in the produce drawer, along with zucchini from one week before (we hadn’t eaten at home much). Eek! Time to do some processing.

I was on the phone with my mom and we looked up ways of cooking the beets without using the oven, because it was wickedly hot and humid out. She found instructions for microwaving them, and I decided to go against every instinct I possess and give it a shot. All I did was scrub the beets and cut off the greens about an inch up from the root, then put them in a pyrex baking pan (I have a smallish square one) and covered it tightly with saran wrap. I cooked them for ten minutes, then pulled out the little beets that felt tender and gave the big ones another ten. I then allowed them to cool far too much before I put on gloves and peeled them, which meant I was sweating profusely while clutching my cellphone to my ear with my shoulder and desperately trying to finagle the skins off (note: peel beets as soon as you can handle them without burning yourself; don’t let them cool). To top off this vision of grace and loveliness, I was wearing my ratty around-the-house clothes with a pair of 3.5 inch silver wedges that I’m breaking in for a wedding this weekend. Thank god I was home alone… Anyway, the beets looked like hell but tasted just fine.

I’d have to do a side-by-side test to see if the flavor is more concentrated in the oven, but honestly these tasted great dressed in a vinaigrette as a side dish.

After I had recovered from the traumatic beet peeling endeavor, I hauled out my mandoline (slicer, not instrument), and cut up about half of the zucchini and summer squash into 1/4 inch ribbons, which I tossed with olive oil, salt and pepper:

Ben grilled steak and the zucchini and we ate outside, desperate for a breeze:

Still to come: Dull zucchini spaghetti and my mandoline rage

The third week (two weeks ago, ahem) injected a trace of color in with the greens:

-1 head romaine lettuce
-1 bunch collard greens
-4 small cucumbers
-2 zucchini
-2 summer squash
-1 kohlrabi
-1 bunch thyme
-1 bunch scallions

Have you guys cooked collard greens? I’m a Northern girl; I’d never encountered them before. They are HUGE–check out the bunch filling the entire drainer:

I didn’t feel like boiling them in a classic “mess o’ greens,” nd I didn’t have a ham hock or anything on hand for flavoring, so I looked up how to sauté them instead. I washed and cut up the greens:

And then boiled them in salted water for 15 minutes or so.

I drained them and pressed the water out:

And then sautéed them with garlic and olive oil until they tasted good. (How specific!)

With a good amount of salt and pepper, they made a nice side dish with sausage and funny O-shaped pasta from Trader Joe’s:

I must say I prefer kale or chard, though.