Easy Cucumber Salad

Ingredients:

• 4 cucumbers
• 1/2 or 1 whole white or sweet onion
• 1.5 cups white vinegar
• 1 cup sugar
• 3/4 cup water
• 1 tablespoon dried dill (or more, to taste)
• kosher salt

1. Prep the cucumbers and onion: Wash and peel the cucumbers (I like to be lazy and leave strips of cucumber skin, also because I think it’s prettier at the end). Slice thinly, using a mandolin if you want to be a perfectionist about it (just watch your fingers!). Ditto the onion. Set the cucumbers and onion in a colander, sprinkle liberally with salt, toss, add more salt, toss, etc. Put the colander in a bowl and set that in the fridge for about an hour to take some of the water out of the cucumbers and reduce the bite of the onion.

Wait one hour.

2. Prep the pickling. In a pot on the stove, combine the white vinegar, water, and sugar. Bring to a bowl and stir to ensure all the sugar has dissolved. Dump the cucumber and onions into a pyrex bowl (or similar — I like to discard the cucumber water run off and just use that same bowl for this next step) and pour the boiling pickling mixture on top of it. Add dill and stir to combine.

3. Let sit at least 3 (and up to 24 hours). Serve.

In summary: Easy, plus very refreshing and light — a nice thing to bring to a potluck or party where there will be a lot of heavy food. Theoretically you could even quarter the cucumber slices to make it even easier to eat, but that doesn’t bother me!

Thanksgiving Leftovers Salad

I couldn’t eat another plate of leftovers, but when I transformed the leftovers into a salad, I suddenly had my appetite back. Mixed one of my standard salad dressing bases of lemon juice, olive oil, and salt & pepper with a hefty dose of cranberry sauce. (If I hadn’t been lazy/anti-making more dishes, I would’ve added garlic, too.)

Then added several generous handfuls of arugula, topped with shredded turkey meat and some delicious stuffing (heated up first). Made for a fantastic salad! I served it to myself with a glass of apple cider mixed with seltzer.

Yum!

Farm share time!

Our delicious haul last week, which included lettuce and garlic scapes!

Early summer means one thing—farm share time! There seem to be lots of people in my life every year who have never heard of it, despite my continued evangelizing.

Here’s how it works:

In early spring, you pick a farm and pay them some money that entitles you to a share of their crops that season. In our case, we picked World PEAS, which is a farming cooperative of many immigrant farmers, and we paid them about $450 for a small share (2-3 people’s worth).

• The best place to find a farm near you is Local Harvest’s website.
• When picking a farm, think about exactly what you want — just veggies? Fruits and veggies? Coffee? Eggs? Dairy? Meat?
• But for the truly lazy at heart, the most important factor is pick up location (and time). Read on…

Once the season starts (usually about mid-June), you will get a weekly delivery* of fresh produce. Delivery with an asterisk. Farmers don’t live in cities. Something about needing dirt and land and whatnot. So they trek the shares into the city. Yay farmers! However, to make things more efficient, they pick a centralized drop point (sometimes a couple) for people to come get their shares. Our CSA has pickup points all over Boston on different weeknights. We picked one that was close to our home and also went fairly late into the evening—because there is nothing worse than running home from work in a panicked frenzy to make sure you get to the pickup site before it closes. Trust me. It is not fun.

The good and the bad. CSAs bring lots of good: Farmers get needed influxes of cash before the season starts, you get lots of delish fresh things. It’s pretty much the freshest and local-est stuff possible.We get kale, chard, strawberries, spinach, arugula, snap peas, carrots, parsnips, radishes, potatoes, watermelon, corn, tomatoes, etc. SO MUCH TASTINESS!

But… you also assume some of the farmer’s risk. If Hurricane Voldemort comes and ravages your farm’s crops, then… you don’t get crops. It it doesn’t rain enough and all the tomatoes get sad and die, then… no tomatoes for you.

Reasons to love it. I love the farm share. I love that it challenges me to cook food in season. (Currently we are drowning in a sea of greens—the share this week had kale AND chard AND spinach AND arugula AND lettuce. Salad, anyone?) I love that I am more connected to where my food comes from and how it’s grown. I love that our weekly grocery shopping dwindles down to the basics (cereal, soy milk, bananas, and various proteins). I love snacking on whatever’s fresh as I walk home with that week’s share (even if that sometimes means I’m a terrible partner because OMG STRAWBERRIES I EAT YOU ALL! Uh-oh… ).

 

Salad Dressing Secrets

A friend of mine asked me for my salad dressing recipe recently.  The truth is, there isn’t one. I’ve never once thought about tablespoons or teaspoons when making salad dressing—I just add the ingredients, taste, adjust, and eat.

If pasta sauce is the hand-me-down of Italian families, then salad dressing is the hand-me-down in mine. I watched my parents make salad dressing hundreds of times over the years, and then at some point, I started helping and learning.

It goes something like this:

• good (or at least decent) quality olive oil
• fresh lemon juice (must be fresh! bottled is decent but nowhere near as good.)
• freshly pressed garlic (DO NOT USE THE STUFF THAT COMES FROM A JAR)
• salt (we prefer kosher)
• freshly ground pepper

Those are the basics. The ratio of olive oil to lemon juice is about 2:1. We use a minimum of 2 garlic cloves in each batch.

Variations include:

• Balsamic vinegar instead of lemon juice. To this I’ll often add some Dijon mustard and honey. Then extra pepper. I love pepper! This variation is dark and savory. Yummy in the winter.
• Rice vinegar instead of lemon juice. Add in soy sauce, reduce salt, and add some sesame oil for an Asian vinaigrette. You could even add some peanut butter or peanut oil instead of some of the olive oil.

My parents tend to be purists and just go with the original recipe, except they also have a little herb pot, so we often throw in a few sprigs of fresh thyme. To me, this is the taste of a delicious spring salad, usually arugula with shaved Parmesan and some fresh blueberries. Bright and delicious.

(And to all you garlic-phobics out there: Stop it right now. Garlic is amazing. Stop trying to resist and just accept it.)

Farmer’s Market Bounty Hunter

This past weekend, I was driving East on the Mass Pike when I spotted one of those signs for a farmer’s market at the rest area.

“Damn,” I thought, “it’s after 5:30, they’ll be closed!” But I decided just driving through the rest area couldn’t hurt.

Thank goodness I did! Though they were packing up, the farmer’s market still had lots of produce. I bought a quart of blueberries, about a pound of green beans, an eggplant, an Asian eggplant, a bunch of beets, a bunch of carrots, and a cucumber. The total was $14.10. Such a bargin for so much organic produce! I was so overjoyed with the fact that I’d made it in time, I gave the farmer $15 and told her I didn’t need change. She looked surprised, then grateful. (And then she told me to take another cucumber!)

We devoured the blueberries en route. I thought we’d munch on the green beans, but I never want them quite as much as I think I do. I think I confuse them in my head with snap and snow peas. I’ll make those with garlic and lemon sometime this week. The beets and carrots will get shredded and make a nice salad.

Tonight, though, I tackled the eggplants and the cucumbers: I sliced the cucumbers, salted and peppered them, and tossed them in some vinegar and olive oil with some freeze dried dill.

And then, whoops, I ate them all. SO TASTY!

For the eggplant, I braved the summer heat and warmed up the oven. I sliced them up, laid them on a cookie sheet, coated them in olive oil, sprinkled on kosher salt, pepper, and dried rosemary.

(Now, in retrospect, I can see that I need a pastry brush, since I definitely used too much olive oil. But if there’s one thing I hate, it’s chewy eggplant, so I erred on the side of caution.)

I stuck the eggplant in the oven on the top rack uncovered at about 350ish (my oven is old and I don’t think that it gets up to its temperature sometimes), waited about 10 minutes until everything was crispy and delicious. Then I put them in a bowl, got a fork, and devoured them all. The regular eggplant got softer than the Asian eggplant, but really, they were all SO TASTY!

(Now, in retrospect, I really should have blotted them with a paper towel. But man, they were so perfectly charred and the greatest combination of crispy and velvety that I couldn’t resist. But really, could they have been any worse for me than fries? I doubt it. Somehow organic eggplant plus olive oil can’t be as bad as partially hydrogenated oil-coated potatoes.)

Plus, while the eggplant was cooking and while I prepped the cucumbers, I marinated and then roasted some chicken for lunch this week. With fresh basil from my little basil plant, hooray!

Simple Summertime Dinner

Lately in the evenings I just want something simple and fresh:

• Fage Greek Yogurt (drizzled with local honey)
• Fresh Herb Salad (with lemon/mustard dressing)
• Watermelon a la Rum (what? a girl can’t have a little rum drizzled over her fruit?)

It’s not a bad life, really.

Easy Summer Dinner

Made an easy summer dinner tonight:

Cucumber Salad: One cucumber, sliced thinly. Dressed with a light vinegar (I used rice and cider), salt & pepper, dill, a dash of olive oil, and about a tablespoon of sugar. Delish.

Broiled shrimp: One pound cooked shrimp at $4.99/pound. Tossed with Old Bay Seasoning, paprika, dill, olive oil, and salt & pepper. Let it sit for a few minutes while I let the oven get to broil. Put it all in a shallow baking dish, broiled for about 10 minutes (until starting to char at the edges). This actually wound up being too much for me with everything else, but if I’d had fewer other things, it would’ve been fine. As it was, I have some for lunch tomorrow.

I also cut a few pieces of quality bread and spread them with butter. Then I cut up a quarter of a watermelon. About half went for tomorrow’s lunch. But the other half was quickly gobbled up. Watermelon is so delicious!

Yay for summer!

ps. For the curious, tomorrow’s lunch will be: Watermelon, shrimp, bread, and maybe some boiled corn on the cob.

Guest Post: Bacon Dinner Club

Everyone enjoys a little stalking, right? So when I saw on Facebook that my NYC-based friend Kyra (of the dating blog Gotard City) had posted pictures of a Bacon Dinner Club, I immediately demanded the story. So here goes the first ever Stalking Sarah guest post! Thanks, Kyra!

A little over a year ago, my friends and I decided to start a Dinner Club based on our mutual love of the Food Network, cooking, and most importantly, eating. We choose a new theme or key ingredient (basil, citrus, the color white, tapas,  desserts, etc) and we get together once a month to cook and eat together. It’s usually an all-day affair.

Dinner Club’s important to me for a number of reasons: It’s an opportunity to make socially acceptable bad decisions in the form of food. I like to eat. I love to eat. Tasting delicious food is one of the best pleasures in life. It’s fun to see all my friends together. We get to play board games and catch up. I get to play hostess and show off all my materialistic crap that I’ve acquired from Crate & Barrel. And, I get to learn more about cooking and try new foods.

A few years ago, I started dating someone named Movies. After a while, he got to be a part of Dinner Club, too. None of my friends were particularly amazed by him, but none of them really disliked him either. And at the end of the day, though, I’m the Kim Jong Il of Dinner Club, so if I wanted my boyfriend there, he was gonna be included.

Unfortunately, Movies’ picky eating habits had never been squashed by his parents, so he often violated the “try new foods” mandate of dinner club. On numerous occasions, he’d make a passing comment about not wanting to try someone’s dish. Whenever we circulated the tentative menu before the actual Dinner Club date, Movies would send a note reminding us that he didn’t like certain foods.

The biggest point of contention among us Dinner Clubbers was bacon.

Winter Salad Fantasy

Now that I’m a working woman again (more on the end of grad school soon), I get to partake in the grand tradition of commuting. I don’t mind it, really. In the morning I can read the Metro and do the crossword, allowing me to both stay informed and mentally agile. In the evening I do the sudoku and fantasize about what I’m making for dinner.

Today, there was no question about it. I was craving what I’ll call my winter salad fantasy— it’s a salad of mixed greens, blue cheese, almonds, and dried cranberries. The tangy blue cheese, sweet cranberries, crunchy almonds and fresh greens become irresistible to me when tossed in a light garlic salad dressing. I paired it with a baked acorn squash and some chicken. Delish.

Winter Salad Fantasy (makes 2 big salads or 4 side salads)

Ingredients:

• store-bought “fresh herb and greens” salad mix (if you’re not into pre-washed salad mixes, I recommend arugula or baby spinach)
• dried cranberries, approximately 1/2 cup
• almonds (crushed, sliced, or whole), approximately 1/2 cup
• blue cheese (about 2 oz, or 1/3 cup crumbled)
• olive oil
• lemon juice
• one or two cloves garlic
• salt & pepper

Toss salad, cranberries, almonds, and blue cheese together. (Add more of any ingredients if you don’t like the distributive quantities I suggest! In a separate dish, mix about three or four tablespoons olive oil with about one tablespoon lemon juice. Mix in one (or two, if you want) crushed garlic cloves, add salt & pepper to taste. Adjust other ingredients as necessary until the dressing tastes good to you. Drizzle over salad and toss. YUM.

Quick & Easy Chickpea Salad

(Amounts are equal to three gallons (feeds about 40-50); adjust to your party’s size!)

6 cucumbers, peeled & chopped

4 cans black olives, sliced

4 large cans chickpeas, drained and rinsed

1 large container of crumbled feta (optional)

Mix all ingredients together, add salt and pepper, then drizzle olive oil & balsamic vinegar to taste. If preparing in advance, chop everything but keep it separate until just before the event.