Experimental Potato Salad

Where I come from there are two types of potato salad. There’s the kind that you find in most delis, the yellow kind with the celery and eggs, and German potato salad with the hot bacon and the tart vinegar dressing. I like them both for different reasons. The yellow kind is refreshing on hot day and I love the crunch of the celery and of course the hard boiled eggs. The German potato salad tastes a bit more complex, and depending when you get there, is served hot.

I have no strong leaning toward one or the other. If given the option of having both on a buffet, I’d gladly, and probably have, fill up two of my precious little Styrofoam compartments with a little of each. But as much I like them, I’ve never made either. During the summer when I crave it the most, it seems like such a hassle to boil, peel and slice the potatoes when the weather is hot.

Add to that the fact that it is easy to get everywhere else in the summer, and there hasn’t ever been any reason for me to make it myself. This summer though, I only remembered having it once while I was up north at my brother’s cottage, so I decided to give it a go myself.

Of course I didn’t make it easy on myself by choosing one or the other. Instead I made Potato, Corn and Cherry Tomato salad with basil dressing. It was about as different as I could get from the salads I had been brought up on. I picked it for the basil dressing, having received a large bunch in last week’s box and wanting to try something other than my usual pesto. I made it Tuesday when I got the vegetables and it kept well until tonight.

I had to supplement my CSA vegetables with Eugster's "famous sweet corn" and red potatoes. I had planned to buy potatoes at the farmer’s market, but didn’t get to the one on the square on Saturday or the one in Monona on Sunday, so I ended up buying them at Woodman’s. It felt a little strange after a summer of eating only local produce to buy a bag of potatoes in the grocery store.

Making potato salad wasn’t nearly as bad as I expected. After rinsing off the potatoes all I had to do was boil them. My recipe didn’t even ask me to skin them. Probably the most labor-intensive part was taking the cooked corn off the cob, but that was nothing too.

In the end the salad was good, interesting, I suppose. The basil dressing was the best part. I liked how it tasted so different with each very different component of the salad. The combination of corn, potatoes and cherry tomatoes, also was unexpected. I liked the salad well enough, but I’m not in a huge hurry to make it again. It wasn’t too difficult to make, but I think I prefer the other kinds of potato salad more. Maybe I’ll try one of those someday.

Letting the Vegetables Decide

There is something to be said for giving up a little control over the food you eat. In fact, one of the best parts of getting a CSA share for me has been the chance to keep revisiting the same vegetables over and over again. If I was choosing them in the store, I might think I should try something new, but instead when the tomatoes, cucumbers and zucchinis keep coming, I keep finding new ways to use them up.

In the past week, I’ve noticed a return to more simple tastes. With two weeks of tomatoes under my belt, I’m still not sick of them. Tonight I made fried tomatoes. This was another memory dish. As I made them I could almost see my dad frying them up on the griddle and they tasted pretty much the same. I love the way the crispy outside breading contrasts with the almost melted tomato inside. I sprinkled a little sugar on the ends that were too small to fry, and ate them for dessert, like my dad used to do too.

I’ve also been finding new ways to eat my cucumbers, getting away from the cucumber salads of early summer. My newest favorite is cherry tomatoes and cucumber salad. To make this I combine a pint of tomatoes, one chopped cucumber, some torn basil, feta, and a splash of balsamic vinegar and olive oil.

I still do enjoy trying out the new vegetables as they work their way into and out of the lineup, but for the most part week to week, the deliveries stay pretty consistent for months at a time. I like the predictability and the chance to try something new with a familiar vegetable.

My reaction may not be all that surprising according to a book I read earlier this summer, The Paradox of Choice, by Barry Schwartz. Basically, and contrary to what we might, research shows that people are happier the fewer choices they have to make. With too many choices, even for simple things like food in the supermarket, people begin to expect a lot from each item. With so much hope placed in a choice, the potential for disappointment is enhanced.

For example, in the average grocery store I’d probably have at least 50 different types of fruits and vegetables to choose from, not to mention a number of varieties in each category. Think about the number of tomatoes you could choose on a trip to the grocery store. You could choose Roma, cherry, grape, on-the-vine or probably another five kinds. And that doesn’t include whether you’ll pick an organic option. With all those choices, people are less happy with the one they pick because they feel like they missed out on what they could have chosen, and what they think would have made them happier.

Compare that to my small, biweekly CSA share, which all told has offered me possibly 10 different kinds of vegetables all summer. And I don’t even have to pick the individual vegetables (this slightly rounded tomato versus that tomato with the brown patch). Instead I get whatever vegetables happen to be in the box that has my name on it. There’s no choice at all. That, plus a little nostalgia from some of the recipes? It’s no wonder I’ve been such a happy cook this summer.

More than a Recipe, a Memory

Well two weeks has passed and I still haven’t had a BLT. Maybe with the next box, which will be delivered tomorrow and promises more tomatoes. I went grocery shopping Friday and didn’t buy any bacon, so I’m starting to think that a BLT isn’t really that high on my list of priorities.

Instead of a BLT I used my tomatoes this delivery for zucchini casserole, an old favorite of mine. This was part of my mom’s regular rotation of meals, and was always a bright spot.

The recipe is simple. You only need a few ingredients: ground beef, tomatoes, zucchini, onions and Parmesan cheese, the grated kind that comes from the plastic container. The recipe is simple: brown and drain the beef, layer it, along with sliced zucchini, tomatoes and onion and top with a thick layer of cheese.

Cook it in the oven, at around 350 degrees or so, until the zucchini is so tender it is translucent and stringy and the cheese has melted into a yummy, gooey consistency. By this time your kitchen will smell heavenly and you won’t be able to wait to eat it. At least that’s my experience.

This week when I made it, I didn't have the full time to wait for the vegetables to cook in the oven, so I cheated a bit. I sauteed the zucchini and onion before putting the casserole in the oven to cut down on cooking time. I've also made it in the microwave, but always finish it in the oven because the melted cheese is the best part.

I realize this recipe doesn't sound like much, but for me it's comfort food. When I eat it, my worries seem to fall to the floor bite by bite. It's just like when I was a kid and the only thing I had to worry about was getting to the table in time for dinner.

10 Pounds of Tomatoes

I’ve been having so much fun eating fresh, local produce this summer that I jumped at the chance to make it last a longer. A few weeks ago I saw an article in the Two Onion newsletter about paste tomatoes being available for purchase. These tomatoes freeze or can well and as such, the farm was selling them for those who wanted to preserve the summer a little longer.

At first I had visions of buying something like 30 pounds and canning them as my mom had when I was young. These jars, which were retrieved from the basement throughout the winter, were superior to the canned tomatoes bought in the store. Instead of 30 I chose 10 pounds, which turned out to be about a half box.

I remember the canning ritual of late summer by sound and smell. I can still hear the hiss coming from the stove as that little round dial on the pressure cooker twitched back and forth. The air would fill with the faint hint of whatever was being preserved, tomatoes, beans, elderberry jam, and even salmon – which didn’t smell so good – a hot bath of fragrant steam adding to the end of summer humidity.

Though I never saw a one of those glass jars explode into an abstract vegetable watercolor on the ceiling, it seemed as if even walking too close to the oven could cause something to go awry. It was as if at any moment you might have to take cover from flying glass and vegetables as hot as magma. With this in my mind, I decided to pursue other modes of preservation for my tomatoes.

While the flyer I received with my tomatoes insisted I could freeze them whole, that seemed too easy. I wasn’t up to the challenge of canning, but I still wanted to feel as if I had done some work, so I settled on oven drying.

Oven drying gave me the feeling that I had in fact done something, if you count opening the oven door at intervals during the day. I combined a number of recipes which weren’t really recipes at all, but instructions for sealing in the flavor and drawing out a bit of the water.

Basically, I cut the tomatoes in half, drizzled them with some olive oil and baked them in a 250-degree oven for about 9 hours. As they cooked they left a faint scent in the kitchen, different from the one I remembered during canning. I almost reminded me of bread baking.

After a day of cooking, the tomatoes looked redder and had a solid, and slightly wrinkled, composure. I let them cool as they came out of the oven before peeling off the skins and placing them back on the roasting pans to freeze individually before putting them into freezer bags.

I felt a little guilty leaving my oven on all day, but it was at such a low temperature it didn’t seem to make my air conditioner put in too much overtime. I did end up freezing about 10 of the tomatoes whole, so I can see if oven drying is worth the little effort it requires.

As for taste, I’m pretty sure oven drying wins already. I tasted a few of the roasted tomatoes while they were still hot and they were magnificent. Their texture reminded me a bit of canned tomatoes and if I closed my eyes I might imagine I had done a lot more work than I had.

Eat This

I have been seeing a lot of David Zinczenko lately on the talk show circuit. You may also know him as the Eat This, Not That® guy. If you’re not familiar with that, it’s a book series that shows that fast food has amazingly high amounts of sugar, fat and calories and offers a healthier alternative.

After seeing a number of segments where salads have been the focus, I decided to do my own Eat This, Not That challenge this week. He often shows how salads from restaurants can be loaded with calories and fat. Every time I see it, it reminds me of the gyro salad I have seen on more than one menu recently. Now, I don’t need David Zinczenko to tell me that a gyro salad is not a healthy one, but that does not keep me from wanting it all the same. I’m not a big meat eater, but something about salty gyro meat on a cool, crisp bed of vegetables sounds really appealing. All the same, I have not yet ordered it.

I decided to make my own healthier knock-off to see if I could really be satisfied as I imagined I would be with a gyro salad. Instead of “gyro” meat, I would substitute the next best thing in my mind, the Trempealeau walnut burger. This delicacy hails from the Trempealeau Hotel in, you guessed it, Trempealeau, Wisconsin.

I have never visited, but am lucky enough to have access to the walnut burgers in my local grocery store, Woodman’s. If I wanted, I could buy them onsite, or online, but down the street seems to work just fine. And although I may have raved about the beet burger a few weeks ago, it is nothing compared to the walnut burger.

Of course it tastes nothing like a burger, but has a nice spicy salty taste, which is balanced by walnuts and cheese. At 310 calories and 23 grams of fat, it’s not something I eat every night, but I figure the walnuts give it some redeeming value in the form of omega 3 fatty acids, and so I allow myself one every once in a while. And compared to the gyro, which after doing a quick online check for nutritional value has about twice as many calories and fat, it seemed like I was already coming out ahead.

As I fried the burger in non-stick spray I assembled my salad ingredients: romaine lettuce, a half of tomato, a half cucumber, reduced-fat feta cheese, and a little plain non-fat yogurt. When the patty was thoroughly browned, I broke it up into small pieces and mixed it in with the other ingredients.

Although, I can’t compare since I’ve never had one, I have to imagine this salad was as good as any gyro salad I could order anywhere else. The salty, slightly mushy walnut patty was a perfect contrast to the crunchy vegetables and creamy yogurt. And at what I guessed was less than 500 calories total, it seemed to be the clear winner in my own Eat This, Not That challenge.

The Joy of Tomatoes

Another two weeks have passed making yesterday CSA day. I’m always amazed at how happy this every other week ritual can make me. Even though the vegetables don’t change too much from delivery to delivery, two weeks seems to be just enough time to make me miss them and ready for more. The charge I get out of it is the opposite of a trip to the grocery store, which often leaves me cranky and hungry.

Yesterday’s box held much of the same as previous weeks. I once again saw cucumbers, zucchini, garlic, eggplant, cherry tomatoes, onion and lettuce and a few vegetables, such as radishes, made a return from earlier in the season. There was also new twist on an earlier vegetable, long flat Romano beans, which I recognized from season’s past.

But the most glorious discovery, and perhaps the source of all my happiness, was finding the first slicing tomatoes of the season inside. I actually picked them each up and smelled them, feeling their slight heft and noticing the variations in their color. There was even one orange one, which reminded me of a small DayGlo pumpkin.

As I lined the tomatoes up on the counter I noticed I was smiling. My supply was large enough to make everything I wanted, from the BLT I was still craving from two weeks ago, to the zucchini casserole of my childhood.

But the real moment of truth came when I found mold growing on the bacon I had been saving for the BLT. After a brief moment of considering cutting around it, and deciding that it was not meant to be, I made a salad instead. I didn’t feel disappointed at all, instead I was comforted by the knowledge that there would be more tomatoes this season. That’s the joy of an every other week delivery.

The Joy of Tomatoes

Another two weeks have passed making yesterday CSA day. I’m always amazed at how happy this every other week ritual can make me. Even though the vegetables don’t change too much from delivery to delivery, two weeks seems to be just enough time to make me miss them and ready for more. The charge I get out of it is the opposite of a trip to the grocery store, which often leaves me cranky and hungry.

Yesterday’s box held much of the same as previous weeks. I once again saw cucumbers, zucchini, garlic, eggplant, cherry tomatoes, onion and lettuce and a few vegetables, such as radishes, made a return from earlier in the season. There was also new twist on an earlier vegetable, long flat Romano beans, which I recognized from season’s past.

But the most glorious discovery, and perhaps the source of all my happiness, was finding the first slicing tomatoes of the season inside. I actually picked them each up and smelled them, feeling their slight heft and noticing the variations in their color. There was even one orange one, which reminded me of a small DayGlo pumpkin.

As I lined the tomatoes up on the counter I noticed I was smiling. My supply was large enough to make everything I wanted, from the BLT I was still craving from two weeks ago, to the zucchini casserole of my childhood.

But the real moment of truth came when I found mold growing on the bacon I had been saving for the BLT. After a brief moment of considering cutting around it, and deciding that it was not meant to be, I made a salad instead. I didn’t feel disappointed at all, instead I was comforted by the knowledge that there would be more tomatoes this season. That’s the joy of an every other week delivery.

What’s not to like about pancakes?

The vegetable pancake is a thing of beauty. With all the doughy-ness of it’s cousin the flapjack, plus a few a few vitamins and minerals hidden inside, what could be finer?

I am a fan of the potato pancake, but have never made one myself. For some reason, the thought of grating all those potatoes before I have had any fortification makes me turn to buttermilk every time.

The same thing nearly happened over the weekend, when I decided to make zucchini pancakes. I had a moment of excitement before apathy kicked in. Maybe I’ll just make regular pancakes, I thought. Or maybe I’ll just have some cereal.

But I had made zucchini pancakes before and the memory of how good they tasted spurred me on. I am writing this post to remember forever that they are worth the minimal effort they are to make. Compared to regular pancakes, there is only one additional step. Of course, this was the most grueling in my mind, the one where I shredded the zucchini.

But then I remembered I live in modern times. And thanks to modern conveniences shredding vegetables doesn’t have to be done by hand. My mini food processor, which I found at Goodwill probably 10 years ago, has been as helpful as my mandolin slicer this summer. In as long as it took to take it down from the shelf, I had shredded zucchini.

From there, it was pretty much the same process as pancakes. I even cheated and used the Fiber One pancake mix I had in the cupboard. In addition to a couple tablespoons of that, I added one egg, and an eighth of a cup of Parmesan cheese. In a few minutes I had wonderful golden brown, and green, pancakes.

Saving Summer for Winter

After the pizza last Friday I woke Saturday morning and noticed the date on the calendar. July 31. How could it be? Already August? Or almost so? Summer was really slipping away. My mind sprang forward only a few months to a frigid landscape and nothing fresh for miles.

After letting the tears fall for a few minutes, I dried my eyes. It wasn’t as bad as I was making it out to be. I am scheduled to receive vegetables until October 19, when it might not even be bone-chilling cold here yet.

It was just that I knew what came after that. And it wasn’t just the lack of fresh vegetables I was proactively grieving. It was the dead cold I was sure we would get after this beautiful hot summer we were having.

It was then that my Midwestern roots kicked in. I had been through this before. I would fill the freezer now in preparation for what was to come. When winter did arrive I would be able smile smugly and let it know I was ready with warm comfort food. Planning ahead was a birthright in this climate.

I began cooking up a storm to rival any blizzard winter could throw at me. When it was done I had a pan of zucchini, broccoli and pepper lasagna as well as a pan of moussaka. Add to that the beet burgers I had frozen a few weeks ago and the pesto from earlier in the week, and I was starting to feel better about the coming season.

I can just see myself now someday in the future after returning from clearing the driveway and sidewalks. The only reason anybody endures shoveling 20 inches of snow is what’s waiting inside. If you’re lucky, there’s a piping hot casserole with just a hint of summer baked inside.