To be a good wife...

Today I made an apple pie, zucchini muffins, zucchini cakes (savory, like a fritter) and feel so proud. Except for the zucchinis (which may be multiplying!) in my fridge.

Hooray!

B and I also have opened and started enjoying some of our Fiestaware - it's so cool! Fiestaware debuted in 1936 and is so pretty and mod. I love it! Dinner off Fiesta shamrock plates is delightful.

Right now we're making some dinner - I'm roasting a ripe tomato to eat with some ravs. This weekend we'll work on conquering the wedding cake, new kitchen supplies and even more produce. Wow!

A favorite: How to Cook Everything

Since it's mid-summer and the produce is rolling in (literally, if you open my fridge you might be attacked by blueberries, squash, zucchini and some other round items) I want to share my favorite cooking resource besides my M.O.M. (one of the best cooks ever).

I rely upon How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman. It's enormous and there are only pencil sketches - no food-porn photos of the recipes. But it's amazing.

I love Mark Bittman because:

1. He loves food. Like real food. Like bacon, vegetables, fruit, bread, potatoes - there's quite a list of real foods, you know. He doesn't encourage things like adding a pouch of "white sauce" from the mix section of the grocery. He advocates being sensible about what you eat and knowing what you're eating. Wholesome, modern and delightful.
2. He writes for The New York Times so I can read something new when I'm in the mood. I can also watch videos which is what I do if I don't know how to do something or if I'm cleaning out my closet and itching for food porn. (Food porn is, to me, video footage of food that makes you hungry or excited about cooking.)
3. He is all about substitutions. I am too. So is my mom. Cooking is all about making things work for you. Certainly, as a chemistry fan I can assure you, there are some rules to cooking. You cannot skip the corn in corn salad. You cannot (as I tried to do as a pre-teen) skip the oil in brownies. You must put good things into what you cook to make good food.
4. The book is a resource. There are charts and pairings and ideas galore.

Tomorrow I'm using my produce to conquer the world. I'm making zucchini bread, pesto, a summer vegetable gratin, potato leek soup, some fresh wax bean deliciousness and some other good stuff. Yay for food! (Yes, I might be a little more ambitious than necessary).

For the record

It only takes ONE zucchini to make zucchini bread - disappointing!

But possibly delicious.

I have like 23 zucchinis in my fridge. And a wedding cake.

Ridiculous!

Challenge - Engagement Corn Salad

This corn salad is really an easy recipe. It's so easy you can take it on a long bike ride to the Botanic Gardens where you can ask someone to marry you, or be asked to marry someone.

That's what B and I did at least.

And now we call this simple one-skillet dish Engagement Corn Salad. It's delicious. And super easy:

• Chop up some (turkey) bacon and let it grill a bit.
• Add some chopped onion. Let the bacon and onion hang out together.
• Add corn (we used 3 cups frozen corn, but fresh is better, of course).
• At the last moment add some tomatoes.
• Dress with lime juice, cilantro and scallions.

We've added cheese, pepper, avocado - all sorts of extras change up this dish. This is the basic form, and I can guarantee it will travel at least 23 miles by bike.

Produce Used

• Delightful tiny tomatoes
• Scallions
• Cilantro
• Corn (frozen but still produce, right?)
• Lime

Produce Adventures - Spicy Peanut Noodles & Twice Fried Green Beans with Turkey

B is on his way to a full recovery! Yay!

We've cooked more this week than we have in nearly the entire last month. We've wrapped up a lot of wedding planning (still a few details...) and our house doesn't look so scary.

Monday night B made pasta, Sunday I made a grilled corn mess (delicious but totally hodge-podge) using some CSA baby potatoes. Tuesday's dinner though - it was amazing.

B used yellow and green beans and a recipe we've tried before - Twice Fried Green Beans. The snap beans get a little crunchy and take in a ton of Asian-food flavor. We grilled up some ground turkey in the same spices too. I used our immersion blender to mix up some Spicy Peanut Sauce for Spicy Peanut Noodles. We topped the noodles with cilantro, red pepper and scallions. Easy as pie - seriously.

We have leftover peanut noodles until the end of time, too. The peanut noodles I've had from Wow Bao are usually served cold. These leftovers should help us solider through the next few hot days.

Produce Used:

• Green Beans
• Yellow Beans
• Scallions
• Red Pepper
• Cilantro

Yay!

How to stay cool

We do not have air-conditioning.

It's true.

We don't have a window unit or central air, to be precise. But we do have a box fan, a stand-up rotating fan, a Honeywell QuietSet magic fan machine and two ceiling fans. And windows! And an apartment close enough to Lake Michigan that we get a lovely breeze about 95 percent of the windows-open season.

But there are days - when our thermostat reads 89.9 (digital thermometers are awesome!) and it's a little difficult to absolutely love the freedom of open windows and the sweaty breezes floating in from outside.

Here's how we keep cool and collected during these hot spells:

• Ice and water - Drink lots of it. It's 90 degrees right now and I'm cucumber cool after chugging two frosty glasses of H2O. I also splash water on my face, shoulders, and back of my neck if I come home feeling overheated.
• Frozen Grapes (pictured) - I love frozen grapes. They're sweet and tiny and delicious. They're like little icy bombs to eat. Plus they're fruit so they are good for you. I buy grapes whenever they're on sale, give them a rinse and pop them in a freezer bag so I can take a scoop whenever it's hot.
• Escaping - Whenever it's really hot we take a walk. Almost everywhere besides our apartment is cooler than our apartment. So, the grocery, the pub down the street, CVS - all prime candidates for visits from us when it's hot-hot-hot.
• Remember - it's summer! It's supposed to be hot! We appreciate the heat. It's time to wear shorts and lay about. Come winter time it will feel good to make soup and wear hoodies - that's the fun of seasons. When I go to school, the air-conditioning requires me to wear a jacket! I want to dress for the season that's really underway, not for artificial temps.

A Lyme-y Fourth

I might be getting what I deserve for adoring hospital documentaries - some real face-time with doctors, some serious mystery symptoms and a diagnosis, that leaves B and I spending the Fourth at Northwestern Memorial.

Brian's been feeling run-down and crappy for the last few weeks. He took antibiotics for clinically diagnoses pneumonia in early June - after a wacky-busy week that we presumed wore him down. The antibiotics knocked out the wheezing, but B never quite felt 100 percent. Not quite 100 percent devolved into neck pain, head ache, exhaustion and finally - the symptom that really did it - facial paralysis. Yow.

We spent time in the emergency room on Saturday and after determining that he didn't experience a stroke the detective work began. Our extremely attractive doctor asked the million dollar question: Have you been camping lately?

Yes! Once in late May and again last weekend! B was indeed bit by a dirty, rotten tick and indeed, it seems, exposed to the tick-borne yuckiness that is Lyme Disease.

We'll be watching the fireworks from the 14th floor (east facing!) of Northwestern Memorial and waiting to get a PICC line so I can really act like a nurse and administer IV antibiotics for the next 26 days. B is feeling lots better with pain medicine and antibiotics - hooray!

If anyone is looking for a (reportedly) mediocre view of the fireworks which you can watch with B and I - let us know! We have glow sticks and pretty soon I'm hopping over to the grocery for some hospital-approved snacks. Right now we're watching clouds roll by and getting better.