Parmesan-Crusted Goodness

I wasn’t planning on having a Parmesan-crusted theme dinner this evening, but sometimes that’s just what happens. For me it started with a recipe for Zucchini Oven Chips from Cooking Light. This is one of my favorite ways to use zucchini.

Oven Zucchini Chips

I made the recipe as noted, except I used buttermilk instead of milk, since I happened to have a leftover carton in the refrigerator from a weekend batch of buckwheat pancakes. When they were done, they taste tender on the inside and crispy on the outside and so good you would think they were deep fried.

But before I got there, I had about a half cup of leftover breadcrumb, Parmesan, salt and pepper breading left over. I didn’t want to throw it away and that’s what would likely happen to it even if I saved it for a few weeks in the refrigerator. Instead of dumping it, I decided to make baked tomatoes with it. I added a little dried basil to the mix and cut a tomato in half before pouring the leftover breading on top. To add a little moisture, I poured a bit of olive oil and balsamic vinegar on top. I slipped them in the oven to cook alongside the zucchini. When they were done, they were the perfect combination of the tart, cooked tomato and the crunchy topping.

Baked tomatoes, the black is balsamic vinegar

The zucchini and the tomato would need about a half hour to cook, so I turned my attention to the bag of beans in the crisper. Similar to green beans, I had received flat Romano beans in my box last week. I had received them in previous years and the Two Onion newsletter reminded me that I could use them similarly to other green beans, but that they may require a longer cooking time.

For these I decided to adapt a recipe I came upon this morning in the gym while reading my Oprah magazine. Ina Garten's Green Beans Gremolata recipe looked good as is, but I needed to adjust it a bit to adapt for what I had in my pantry. Instead of topping beans with pine nuts, garlic, Parmesan, parsley and lemon juice, my beans were tossed with pecans, garlic and Parmesan.

Romano beans with pecans, Parmesan and garlic

The final result was amazing. I still may make the Barefoot Contessa’s some other time, but my combination wasn’t too bad either. I forgot to weight the beans, but guess I had less than a full pound. I still used two cloves of garlic, so they were garlicky, but really good.

Surprisingly or not, all three dishes worked together. Though they had most of the same ingredients (especially the zucchini and the tomato) they tasted different enough. And since they did have a lot of the same ingredients they didn’t compete with each other.  

So the next time an ingredient speaks to you, go for it. You may just end up having a theme dinner you didn't plan on. 

Is it me or does this bean look like a bird?

Want Easier Stuffed Peppers? Don't Stuff Them

I like stuffed peppers mostly for the stuffing inside. It’s an easy way to use peppers, but sometimes the peppers can be a little overwhelming when you eat the final dish. Also, sometimes the peppers don’t get done all the way through. As a result, usually I’m pretending I like the dish more than I do as I try to ignore the fact that the outside is raw even while the inside is really good.

So tonight, instead of making real stuffed peppers I decided to make “inside out” stuffed peppers. It would still have all the ingredients, just be served up more like a casserole. It would also be an easier dish to make on a weeknight, since stuffed peppers can take a long time to make. With a plan in mind, I only had to decide just what kind of stuffed peppers to make.

That brings me to another great thing about stuffed peppers. They are easily adaptable to whatever you have on hand. I’ve made Middle Eastern varieties, with couscous, Indian varieties heavy on garam masala, and stuffed them with lentils, rice, bulgur, and everything in between. Last night when I surveyed what I had on hand, I decided these would be Mexican stuffed peppers. My stuffed pepper casserole would consist of chorizo, brown rice, enchilada sauce, salsa and cheese.

Unstuffed pepper casserole 

I had all the ingredients on hand, so to get a jump on tonight’s prep, I decided to make the rice. That way when I came home from work tonight I’d be able to brown the chorizo, mix everything together and pop it in the oven. Doing some of the prep work in advance and cutting out the long cooking time for stuffed peppers which can take more than an hour, made this a do-able dish for a weeknight.

All in all, prep took about 10 minutes, and the casserole was done in about 35 minutes. The peppers were tender and it was a whole lot easier to eat than stuffed peppers. It also had more portion control than whole stuffed peppers. When I make those, I tend to eat at least half or the whole thing, since it’s easier that way. That would have amounted to about 2 – 4 servings had I made the peppers that way. The casserole looks more like at least 6 – 8.

The Unstuffed Peppers Casserole is definitely going in my pepper recipe file. I like the Mexican variety quite a bit, but I’m looking forward to seeing what other varieties I might make. I’ll have to see what’s on hand the next time I get peppers in my CSA box. 

Eggplant Meet Crockpot

One of my favorite parts of getting a CSA share has been learning to cook and like vegetables I wouldn’t necessarily eat if they didn’t show up in my kitchen. One has been eggplant. Judging from the swap box yesterday, I can say that I’m not alone. I looked inside to see what I might swap my own eggplants for and found nothing but eggplants inside.

I received them in my last box too and instead of hiding them at the bottom of the crisper, decided to try to use them up right away. I did the same this week and I’m proud to say I have two new recipes I love for one of the vegetables I’m most likely to avoid. And as a bonus, they both use the crockpot and made tasty meals that I didn’t have to cook after a busy day.

Crockpot Spiced Eggplant and Lentils

Last week’s was inspired by a recipe I found in an Indian cookbook I picked up at a garage sale earlier in the year, Indian Home Cooking by Suvir Saran and Stephanie Lyness. I stole the idea of their recipe for Smoked Spiced Eggplant, by using some of the same ingredients and spices, adding lentils to make it more of a main dish, and adapting it for the slow cooker.

It worked out perfectly. It made a spicy dish that was good warm or cold. The best part was the eggplant. Sometimes eggplant has a slimy texture to me that isn’t appealing. In this dish the eggplant took on a firmer texture that tasted very good. Here is the recipe for Crockpot Spiced Eggplant and Lentils.

Crockpot Moussaka

For tonight’s dinner, prepped last night, I made crockpot moussaka. I already wrote about moussaka in this post, but I was looking for a quicker and easier way to enjoy one of my favorite meals. I found this recipe and adapted it a bit by using cinnamon instead of oregano and fresh tomatoes instead of canned.

It cooked all day while I was at work and tasted amazing. Although it didn’t have the béchamel crust it was still really good. If you want, you could add feta cheese for a bit more flavor, but I thought it tasted fine without anything on top.

I don’t know if I’ll be getting anymore eggplant this season, but if I do, I’m sure I’ll be able to find more recipes to enjoy it in. I think I might even be sad if I don’t get the chance. Who would’ve ever thought I could feel so strongly about eggplant. 

Convenience versus Homemade

I had every intention of making the crust by hand. But just in case, I picked up one from the refrigerated section of Copp’s on my way home from work with the rest of the staples I needed for the week.

After all, the recipe I was planning to make, Summer Squash and Ricotta Galette, featured a light flaky crust made with olive oil. I had read the directions a few days earlier and it looked pretty simple. I barely ever bought those store-bought crusts. Eating them made me think about all the trans fats and preservatives I was sure were inside making it so flaky. But still, I had a bit of headache, the heat had eased a little, but I was still hot, and convenience won out.

Squash galette assembled

After that, the rest was easy. All I had to do was cut up some summer squash (I used two instead of one and one zucchini as the recipe called for) and add it to some crushed garlic and olive oil. In another bowl, I combined the ricotta, egg and spices. To assemble, you put the ricotta mixture on top of the crust and top with the squash. Instead of combining my own ingredients, waiting for them to meld together and rolling them out, I simply rolled out the store-bought crust and could fill it immediately.

Squash galette fresh from the oven

I will definitely add this recipe to my rotation. But after eating it all week for more than a few lunches and dinners, and even one breakfast when I found my milk had inexplicably gone sour more than a week in advance of its expiration date, I have to say next time I’m going back to homemade.  The store-bought crust tastes fine, but it’s almost too perfect. I’m almost missing the imperfections of a homemade crust. I imagine they would go better with the fillings.

The perfectly flaky store-bought crust seems almost too perfect for this rustic dish. Plus, the crust is so flaky it keeps peeling right off the bottom, leaving flat cardboard pastry-colored pieces on my plate, which I haven’t been eating, but scraping into the trash can. I may have saved a few calories this way, but the homemade crust definitely would have been more enjoyable.

I’m not surprised, but it’s a good reminder that homemade does win out most of the time. It takes a little more effort, but somehow it’s worth it. 

Yin and Yang Cooking

Banh Pho Noodles

As I mentioned a few posts ago, I’ve been reading a book about the Chinese way of eating and cooking, Why the Chinese Don't Count Calories by Lorraine Clissold. I have to admit I didn’t have time to read the whole book before I had to return it to the library today. I skimmed the last few chapters, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t continued to inspire me.

It inspired me to visit one of Madison’s Asian grocery stores, Viet Hoa Market. Someone at work had mentioned it and when I passed it on my way from dinner with friends I had to stop. Inside I found everything I could ever want to make an authentic Asian meal, if only I knew how to read Chinese.

Peanut Sauce

Peanut noodles with carrot and cucumber

I perused the exotic meats and frozen fish, marveled at the produce, and picked up nearly every box of tea I passed. I ended up purchasing a hodgepodge of items including some coconut flavoring for my coffee, a tea ball, chrysanthemum tea, some noodles and some sesame cookies that had been delivered from a bakery in Chicago’s Chinatown.

Because I don’t usually cook Asian cuisine, it took a little research to figure out what kind of noodles I bought. They were banh pho, a type of rice noodle used in Vietnam for soups. I decided to make some peanut sauce and use them that way because I knew it would be a good complement to the carrot and cucumber I had recently received from Two Onion farm.

The dish seemed to be a perfect way to put a few Clissold’s secrets into practice: Bring yin and yang into your kitchen and Balance the flavors. Basically these two secrets discuss how the Chinese vary ingredients and cooking methods and eat foods with varying tastes and textures together.

Peanut sauce is a good example because it contains peanut butter (sweet) and curry paste (hot) and does not need to be cooked. I served it with the noodles, which needed to be soaked before they were cooked, and raw carrots (crunchy) and thinly sliced raw cucumber (slimy/soft). All in all, it was a combination of a lot of textures, tastes, and heat/cool.

The dish was perfect for a day when the mercury rose to more than 100 degrees and when it feels more like southeast Asian than Wisconsin. Although I had to return the book today, I did copy a  few of the other recipes, so I’m looking forward to trying out more of her secrets as CSA season continues.

Easy Season

This week my CSA box included:

Crustless broccoli quiche

• Broccoli (three heads)
• Red Onions
• Cucumbers (two large)
• Carrots
• Peas

That list is a little more streamlined than the original box, which included lettuce, mixed greens, and spinach but that were left behind in the swap box.

This is an easy box. I don’t need recipes for these veggies because they are pretty “normal” and ones I like. Although having a CSA share can be a fun way to try new recipes and eat vegetables that you don’t eat very often, sometimes it’s nice to keep it simple. This box is perfect for this time of year when I’d rather be at the pool than in the kitchen.

Cucumber salad

Without any need for research, I got right in the kitchen Tuesday night when I picked up the box. Before long the first head of broccoli was added to a crustless broccoli quiche. It was an easy recipe that did involve the oven, but not much planning or forethought. I also ate about half of the carrots as a snack with some hummus while I made the quiche.

Last night I still had leftover quiche, but needed a little something extra to go with it. I sliced one of the cucumbers very thin, did the same with one of the red onions, added some vinegar, water and a little sugar and I had salad to eat as a side.

Stuffed vegetable bread

Tonight I was feeling like junk food. Namely, a delivered pizza, but instead the veggies came through again. I decided to return, in a way, to the stuffed spinach bread of last week, with a baked stuffed sub. To do so, I sautéed some broccoli, plus some mushrooms and spinach I had on hand and added it to some jarred spaghetti sauce. I hollowed out some French bread and stuffed the vegetable the mixture with some mozzarella inside. I wrapped it up in foil, baked it and in about 15 minutes I had a somewhat healthier way to conquer my pizza craving.

It’s hard to say what has been my favorite dish this season so far, but the baked sandwich was right up there. It’s a good reminder that good food doesn’t always have to take a ton of effort.

One Squash Two Recipes

I’m always intrigued by those articles in magazines where you make one chicken and eat for a week. Not because you’re eating leftovers, but because you use one main ingredient over and over again in multiple recipes. I’ve seen a number of themes played out with a whole chicken or a roast, but since the I cook meat that’s pre-portioned, de-boned and skinless, those articles have never done me much good.

But over the weekend my own “cook once eat many times” idea took hold. It started on Saturday when I roasted a butternut squash in preparation for making Butternut Squash Ravioli recipe using wonton wrappers instead of pasta. The recipe appeared in the Wisconsin State Journal the day before. I had all the ingredients, including a butternut squash from one of my last CSA deliveries.

After the squash was roasted, I put it in the refrigerator to cool before I’d finish the recipe either later that day or Sunday. I didn’t feel like getting back to it until Sunday morning, when I added the ricotta, sage, nutmeg and Parmesan and mashed it all together. After that I put it back in the refrigerator for later.

I worked up an appetite for ravioli at dinner by Christmas shopping most of the afternoon. Luckily it didn’t take long to fill and cook the ravioli. I made or dinner and lunch today, but stopped after that. I figured the ravioli would taste better if I filled and cooked them right before dinner today.

I strayed from the original recipe, skipping the sage cream sauce it suggested and instead opted for browned butter with some garlic in it along with some toasted walnuts. The dish was as wonderful as I imagined, and tasted just as good today for lunch.

But by then the idea of stretching my creativity by making a different recipe with my butternut squash mash had taken hold. I wanted to make something that didn’t require a trip to the store, or at least too many ingredients I didn’t already have on hand. Because I always have black beans, they came to mind first. I knew black beans and squash paired well together, having used them together in at least one other recipe. Add them together with the corn tortillas I also knew I had and quesadillas it was.

I didn’t have any feta cheese on hand, a good substitute for Mexican cheese like queso fresco, so I did have to stop at the store, but it only took a few minutes. I was amazed at the number of different choices, but settled on quesadilla, which I assumed would be perfect for my quesadillas.

At home with the squash already cooked, the quesadillas were easy to make. After spreading it on the tortilla, I topped with some beans and cheese. In only a few minutes I had a yummy and pretty healthy meal. Plus by changing it up a bit, the squash ravioli won’t go from really good to really boring by eating it too many days in a row.

Dreaming of Next Season

So it’s been awhile. I was surprised when I came back here today to see that my last post was at the beginning of October. Since then I’ve been cooking all the fall vegetables that have been appearing in my CSA box.

There’s been lots of squash, some potatoes, bunches of leeks, kale, and carrots, plus beets, broccoli and Brussels sprouts too. I’ve managed to eat it all, so I guess I’ve been too busy cooking to write.

Sadly, though all things must come to an end. I realized that as I picked up my last box of vegetables for the season last Tuesday. In a few days I’ll have eaten them all and the CSA season will close for the year. Then I’ll have to make due with what I’ve frozen and begin dreaming about next season. But before I do that I wanted to be sure to capture two new favorites from the last month.

The first, Orecchiette With Braised Kale And Cauliflower, was good enough to be served at an Italian restaurant. I made only a few substitutions, including cutting out the currants and substituting chiocciole for orecchiette pasta, because I couldn't find it. I also planned to substitute almonds for the pine nuts, but forgot to add them before serving and found it was just as good without them. The recipe was a little more complicated than I usually make, with a few ingredients I don’t tend to have on hand such as anchovies, but completely worth the effort.

The second, Ravioli with Brussels Sprouts and Bacon, which I made this week, was from Real Simple. The Brussels sprouts are shredded and tossed with bacon, pecans and a little vinegar before serving with the ravioli. Again, this is a restaurant-quality dish, if I do say so myself, but a little less complicated than the orecchiette.

Of course both dishes are pasta-based, so it’s no surprise they turned out wonderful, but the addition of the farm-fresh vegetables made them even better. I could make these dishes again over the winter with store-bought produce, but I doubt they’ll be the same. Instead, I’ll dream about having them both next summer.

I Wanted Pizza, but I Ate This Instead

My craving for pizza hasn’t abated since this summer. Today seeing someone eating a piece of leftover Uno’s pizza at lunch set me off. I forgot about it for most of the day, but saw the box in the recycle bin at the end of the day when I threw my soda can in there.

Before the pizza box incident I was planning to make spicy carrot soup with the carrots I received in yesterday’s CSA box. On the drive home the battle waged between carrot soup and pizza.

“I could order the pizza and still make the soup tomorrow.”

“But carrot soup would be healthier.”

“But I really want pizza.”

“It’ll take too long to make soup.”

I finally made my choice in my kitchen with the carrots in one hand and the phone in the other. Not so much because I thought the carrot soup would be better, but because I wanted to prove to myself I could cook a healthy meal in about as long as it took for the pizza to arrive. I might even be surprised about how good the soup would be.

I put the phone down and began peeling and chopping the carrots while the water boiled. After that I chopped an onion, minced a clove of garlic and sautéed them both in a spice mixture of cumin, ginger and cinnamon.

In about 15 minutes both the carrots and onions were tender and I was way ahead of the pizza guy. Until I took out my new immersion blender. It wasn’t new, but new to me, a hand-me-down from my sister’s kitchen. I hadn’t used it yet and thought this would be the perfect occasion.

Since I was in a hurry I didn’t bother to read the directions. How hard could it be? Not hard exactly, I found out, but rather a bit messy. I glossed over the “immersion” part of the name and ended up with splatters of orange puree all over my kitchen. But never a slow learner, I got the hang of it after lifting it out of the bowl without turning it off about 10 times. Finally, on number 11 as the soup was done, I managed to remember to turn it off before lifting it out of the bowl.

With only an additional 5 minutes added on for searching out splatters and wiping them off my wall and countertops my soup was almost done. I had one final step. I didn’t want to be too virtuous so I topped it with some chopped cashews and it was ready to serve. All told from refrigerator to table it took about 30 minutes.

And it was very good. So good, I wasn’t craving pizza anymore. One other benefit was the wonderful aroma the spices left behind. When I returned from an after dinner walk they greeted me at the door. That’s something a pizza box can’t deliver.

The Easiest Soup Ever

I love my slow cooker. During the week there’s nothing like coming home to a hot, home-cooked meal after a long day at work. But it seems that most recipes for the Crock-Pot are high-fat or unhealthy. Most call for fatty cuts of meat or if they do call for chicken, they call for chicken thighs.

I understand that for some dishes, these juicier cuts of meat are used to keep them from getting too dry, but I’d rather use boneless, skinless chicken breasts. And when the recipe did call for boneless chicken breasts the recipe usually used some sort of cream soup to add in the extra moisture. To avoid any mishaps, up until now I stuck to recipes that called for ground beef or that were vegetarian.

But I recently came upon a recipe this recipe for Crock Pot Chicken and Rice Soup which not only used chicken breasts, but used them raw. Instead of cooking them first, they were cooked in the broth over the course of the day.

In addition, the recipe used raw rice and let that cook in the soup instead of cooking on the stove and adding later, as some recipes have you do.

With that discovery a new recipe was born. I stole the chicken and rice from the original recipe and turned my soup into a Broccoli Carrot Chicken and Rice Curry Soup. It couldn’t have been easier to make. I combined chicken broth, curry, ginger, broccoli and carrot to the slow cooker. Then, with a little trepidation, I cut up a raw chicken breast and added that to the pot. Next, this time fearing I’d come home to a starchy mass instead of soup, I poured in the raw rice. I flipped the slow cooker to low and left for work.

Ten hours later I came home and immediately smelled the soup from downstairs. Because I’d been gone so long I didn’t have a chance to check it right away, and instead took my dog Frisbee out for a quick walk. Back in about 10 minutes I ran up to the stairs for the moment of truth.

When I took the cover off the slow cooker I could see that everything had cooked together perfectly. I lifted out a piece of chicken and cut it in half. I was cooked all the way through and after it cooled a bit, a taste revealed that it was very tender.

I scooped out a bit of rice after that and it was cooked through, without any hard uncooked center as I also thought might happen. Although the rice was cooked through it did have a bit of an odd consistency in that it seemed to have fallen apart a bit. Instead of being regular rice-sized pieces, the rice seemed to have fallen apart into a couple pieces. I actually liked the consistency because it made the soup creamier. Alongside the broccoli it almost reminded me of the consistency of broccoli cheese soup, but at a lower calorie count.

All in all the soup tasted very good. I will make it again, but I’m also excited to come up with other new recipes now that I know I can cook chicken and rice raw in the slow cooker.

Trying Out the New Kitchen

As I’m sure I’ve mentioned before in this blog, I like zucchini pretty much any way you slice (or shred it). It was a nice surprise to find it last week in my CSA box, only the second of the season. It seemed early, but I wasn’t about to complain.

Since I’ve only been in my new home about a week, it’s nice to have an old friend, and something I can cook with my eyes closed, at my side. I’ve been eating it raw and on pizza, but I wanted give my new kitchen something a little harder to produce tonight. Well, not really hard, but at least little more complex, if only in flavor.

I found the recipe for Spaghetti with Zucchini, Walnuts and Raisins in a stack of those I shoved in my hutch before I moved. I had been tempted to toss the whole stack out in the last days of packing, but luckily my hutch could be moved with the contents intact as long as they weren’t breakable. Knowing a stack of recipes fit the bill, I felt better tossing them in there than in the trash.

I had most of the ingredients on hand, only substituting penne for spaghetti. The raisins were picked out of a bag of trail mix. I thought about leaving them out entirely, as they’re not my favorite ingredient, but decided to keep them in as they were pretty much the thing that made the recipe different from any other I had made before.

The recipe was from Real Simple, which as the name suggests means it was pretty simple. But as with most of their recipes, they don’t tend to be too boring, even if they are easy. It was a good recipe to try out the flow of the kitchen. I was pleased with how the kitchen worked and was able to whip the whole thing up in about 15 minutes. I was also pleased with the taste when I sat down at my new table.

The raisins gave the dish a nice unexpected sweet taste against the garlic and toasted walnuts. Of course the pasta and zucchini were good, but there’s no surprise there. I’ll be adding this recipe to the binder I keep of successful CSA recipes. That is, as soon as I find it.

They’re Back

The veggies that is. I picked up my first box of vegetables from my CSA share this afternoon. And although I’m excited, my enthusiasm is tempered a bit this year by the fact that I’m a week away from moving out of my house and into a new condo.

My first impulse upon dropping the vegetables on the kitchen table was to throw them all in a pot and make stew. That thought only lasted a second, not only because a lettuce, chard, beet, spinach, radish, kohlrabi, cucumber, broccoli, garlic scape and green onion soup sounds a little unappetizing, but also because I remembered I’d already packed away my stock and crock pots.

Unable to use up all produce in one feel swoop, or should I say soup, I've decided to do my best over the next week to eat whatever I can and see if the rest is hardy enough to make the move.

First up was the chard. It’s the most fragile and I knew that if I didn’t eat it tonight, it would be a wilted mess tomorrow. In fact, as I write this a few hours later, I see a leaf of chard that I missed beneath the bag of spinach already has taken on the consistency of a wet paper towel. It will be one of my final gifts to the compost bin.

I rooted through the pantry for a can of white beans I wanted to use up before I had to pack and move them and then headed to the freezer. There I found a turkey sausage that would likely end up in the garbage in a week if I didn't eat it soon. Before I knew it, I was getting excited again.

I thawed the sausage in the microwave and cut it into bite size pieces before putting it on the stove in one of the pans I hadn’t yet packed. Next I cut the ribs out of the chard and added them to the compost pile, before tearing up the dark leafy greens and throwing them in the pot. I cut up one of the garlic scapes and added that with the beans and a quarter cup of chicken bouillon. I let it cook for about 15 minutes on low heat, to let the chard soften and then it was done.

Overall, it was a good start to a new CSA season and a healthy meal in the midst of all the chaos and boxes filling my house right now. Earlier today I may have wished my CSA share would’ve waited a few weeks, but now I’m glad to have a few healthy choices on hand to nourish me as I finish packing up over the next week.

Potatoes Worth Waiting For

Tonight I said goodbye to the last of the fresh vegetables from CSA share. The pound of red potatoes in my crisper could have probably made it a little longer, but it seemed as if the time was finally right to make them. I didn’t want to wait too long and waste them, after all.

My friend Barb had given each of the attendees at our last Cooking Light cooking club event, a Spanish themed dinner, a small bag of saffron to take home. She received it from a friend and had more than she could use.

I had been burning a hole in my proverbial pocket ever since. I had never cooked with saffron, but certainly had tasted it on my trip to Spain. I found a recipe for Saffron Almond Potatoes on the Cooking Light recipe page and printed it out immediately. It called for red potatoes, which seemed like fate.

The potatoes are roasted with olive oil, salt and pepper, in a sauce of water, tomato sauce, and saffron, that is dusted with paprika. As it cooked, it filled the kitchen with a rich smoky aroma that was the perfect antidote for the snow outside.

I had plenty of time to take the scent in as I prepared the crumb topping, which I was quite excited about. First I toasted slivered almonds, then added them with two garlic cloves, some more olive oil and some toasted bread, to the food processor.

When the potatoes were tender I took them out of the oven and topped them with the almond mixture, while they were still steaming. The combination of the garlic and almond together was tasty enough on its own, but with the spicy, tender potatoes it was an especially nice juxtaposition. These were definitely the special potatoes I had been waiting for.

As I ate the potatoes I took stock of the CSA vegetables I still had preserved. I have quite a few tomatoes left and a few packages of pesto, but that's it. Next I counted the months until my first CSA delivery of the next season. Five. Remembering that I slowed down and savored my special potatoes a little bit more.