Deb's Lunch … and dinner and breakfast too

On Saturday of Memorial Day Weekend, we grilled. John got ahold of my $250 fixed lens, and stuck it on his $3000 Canon digital camera body, and documented the process.

I made old favorites but with a few differences. Like the honey baked beans, that I usually make with bacon, were vegetarian, but I cooked the onions in a lot of butter, instead of the bacon fat – I read that in a vegetarian recipe for split pea soup – the author of the recipe said that her mom told her if you’re not going to use bacon, use butter. And the ramen salad, that I usually make with Napa cabbage, I made with a bag of “sauté greens” from Harmony Valley at the Farmers’ Market; it seemed to be mostly argula and mustard greens. Despite the hot spring, there’s no cabbage on sale at our markets, yet – that really would be a sign of climate change! I chiffonade-ed the greens – rolled them and cut them in thin strips. The potato salad had chives and flat leaf parsley in it, instead of onions.

I think all the twists produced tasty results – the ramen salad was drier and didn’t get drippy by the next day, and I liked the mild chives in the potato salad, and the butter-flavored baked beans were delicious. The only thing I wasn’t happy with was the strawberry-rhubarb crumble. The filling didn’t seem to get cooked enough. After the first servings were spooned out there was too much juice and that raw cornstarch look about things. I thought I had a great brainstorm, and put the whole dish on the stove Sunday morning, and got it all bubbling and thickened. Then I tried it with Greek yogurt for Sunday breakfast – and I think the rhubarb is still undercooked. It looks good in the pictures, though.

Mark asked how I felt about flexing my grill muscles for the first time of the year. I said I thought I had too much fire leftover, after the meat was all cooked – so I oiled up the last of the potatoes, about 16 of various sizes from marble to fist, tossed them with some coarse salt and pepper, and threw them on the grill. They smelled like heaven cooking. I left them cooling, thinking we might slice them and have them for Sunday breakfast, and went out to pick up John’s camera, and buy more beer. When I got back, the middle school girls – who had taken big plates of burgers & brats and salads, that 2 out of the 3 of them threw out, mostly unfinished – had eaten up all 16 spuds. Guess they must’ve been good.