These busy summer days have not been too conducive to organized trips to the grocery store. Try as I might to buckle down and plan out dinners for the week, I keep finding myself at the store, starving, and no plan. These trips usually end with a huge cart of groceries, and no clear idea of how the things in it will turn into dinners. Or, on the other hand, we find ourselves at dinnertime with no real food in the house at all, because no one has remembered we actually need to purchase food in order to eat. That would be this week.
We have been eating a lot of the same easy dinners: sandwiches, tacos or burritos, and more sandwiches and burritos. Either too hot, or too busy to spend much time in the kitchen. But Yesterday we found we had even eaten through the last of our tortillas and bread. Hunger struck in the afternoon, before dinner even, and my kids and I looked forlornly in the fridge–oddly stuffed with veggies (thank you CSA), and a couple hunks of cheese, but little else. I opened the freezer. Popsicles. Ice Cream. (Somehow I always remember to stay stocked up on these int he summer). But wait. What was this? Frozen sweet potato fries. That would just might do it.
My children ended up opting for a deconstructed burrito (heated beans, with melted cheese sans tortilla), but I satisfied my snacking with those sweet potato fries, and a little roasted red pepper aioli I fashioned—so proud of myself for noticing those roasted red peppers in the fridge with the cheese and veggies. Nothing is going to waste this week in our house, and I’m determined to not head to the store until I have some dinner plans. Any suggestions? Hot weather here this week, so nothing too stove intensive.
In case you find yourself smilarily desperate, you might want to tuck this aioli recipe away somewhere. You can always make the sweet potato fries from scratch too (I have in the past), but I was glad to use up what I had on hand. Desperation can lead to wonderful things.
Roasted Red Pepper Aioli
You can make aioli from scratch with eggs (epicurious has this version), but we were out of eggs too (having had them for dinner the night before), so I went for the mayonnaise version inspired by this one at foodnetwork.com and a couple other I say, trying to replicate a taste I’d had at Laiola in SF (they served a spicy pimenton aioli with their fried potato wedges–so good I think our table went through 2 or three orders of them). Of course, I just did a little reading, and found that traditional Catalan aioli doesn’t use eggs at all, but oh well–this one sounds easier then their mortar and pestle version.
1-2 garlic cloves
1 roasted red pepper, or about a 1/2 cup-drained
3 heaping Tbsp of mayonaise (approx. 1/3 cup, but I didn’t care to dirty my measuring cup)
lemon juice
2 glugs, or about 2 Tbsp olive oil
couple shakes of tabasco, tapatio, chulupa or other hot taco sauce
salt & pepper to taste
Using a cuisinart/food processor, start with your garlic and chop until fine. Add in pepper, and pulse a few times. Then add in lemon juice and mayo. Add the oil with blade going. Finish with hot sauce to taste. I did about 4 shakes and it had a nice spice level. Serve with bread, sweet potato fries, or what ever catches your fancy. Beware. This is garlicky.
Sweet Potato Fries (from scratch)
Preheat oven to 450. Peel sweet potatoes. Cut into wedges or fry shapes (as you desire). Put on a baking sheet and drizzle with olive oil or other oil. Bake for about 15 minutes. Flip. Bake for another 10-15 minutes. Season with salt, pepper, paprika, cumin, or what have you. The thicker the cut of the “fry” the longer they may take to cook, or vice versa.
The picture above does not do justice to this zucchini bread. Or perhaps it does. It does document how good it was. So good, that it was all but gone when I realized that I hadn’t snapped a pic of it, and was planning on posting about it today. You’ll notice that I only show a portion of the loaf. That would be because the rest of it was gone. Oh. And the other 3 loaves as well. Eaten for breakfast, midnight snack, car snack, and afternoon snack. In about 2 days flat. Almost all by me. I kept trying to share, but was fighting a hoarding instinct the entire time.




Summer is chugging along at a rapid pace. What happen to those long lazy days I remember from childhood, stretching endlessing ahead? I hope my kids still feel that way, but we’ve been so busy it is flying by for me. One thing keeping us busy is dipping into our 




Happy 4th of July! I’m not the most patriotic gal on the block, but I do look forward to some great food, and old fashioned fireworks. I’m a sucker for letting my kids stay up late, and this year we will be out at my mom’s where we can walk down to the bridge to watch the show, small town style.
O.K. So not the prettiest of pictures of this scrumptious dessert, but it went so fast, this was the best I could do. More important than the picture though is to send a HUGE thank you to my friend since pre-school (right?), Anna, who sent me a delicious early b-day present a couple weeks ago–a cookbook that led to this yumminess above. It still surprises me how much Anna and I have in common, and how well she knows me. We haven’t lived in the same town since we were about 10 years old, but every time she sends a gift I LOVE it. Now how many people can do that? She has some sort of talent! She has introduced me to some of my favorite musicians through CD gifts, and to top it all off, when we had a visit last summer after a couple years, we were surprised to find we read many of the same blogs. 
Yes, I like to pretend I am vegetarian. Mostly. But this is not strictly true, as I’ve hinted here before. And what I am about to post will make this clear. Below is my favorite chicken-salad recipe. Uh-oh. Cat’s out of the bag now. It is true. While we don’t eat a lot of meat in our house it is not banned from it, but, if I am going to eat it, it needs to be delicious. And this is.
I grew up in an old-fashioned resort town. Strange to think it now, but that’s really what it was. Of course by the time my childhood rolled around, it was a resort town that was undergoing some change, drawing in different crowds, and adapting to the times, but plenty of charm left. One particular charm was the type of friends we made there: summer friends. We lived in a couple different houses growing up, and in each neighborhood there were still summer homes owned by city-folk, that in the summer housed for just a few weeks (sometimes months in the summer), kids to play with. They even sometimes came, like a delicious present, at spring or winter break. Beyond those friendships, our town also housed evidence of a past over-run with a summer presence of city-folk, including a small amusement park, miniature golf, and (one small town away) a movie theater.




A Series of Unfortunate Events- Series
Bad Bear Detectives: An Irving and Muktuk Story
Ella Enchanted
Kapow
Kat Kong
Max Found Two Sticks
Mungo and the Spiders from Space
The Fairytale Detectives- The Sisters Grimm-Book 1
The Penderwicks on Gardam Street
The Spiderwick Chronicles-Series
What the World Eats
Do Not Deny Me
Ecocriticism Reader
falling cloudberries
Linen, Wool, Cotton
Rustic Fruit Desserts
Sugar City Quarterly
The Believer-June 2009
The Birth of Biopolotics
Weekend Sewing