Cooking Up A Storm

It has been a wild week at Casa Horowitz. It was our fist full week off from school, but it was as busy as a work week. The first half of the week was spent getting J ready to go to Las Vegas to work on a fireworks show. He's a pyrotechnician for Grucci Fireworks and he loves making things go boom! during the summertime. The second half of the week was spent running errands and trying to have some fun while J was away. On top of all of this activity, I cooked almost every meal during the entire week and I got back into the routine of baking all of our bread from scratch. This week, I baked a boule, two ciabattas, a sandwich loaf, and a pizza bianca. I love the yeasty smell of rising bread dough.

We managed to use up everything from last week's shares except the zucchini. There really wasn't much I could do with two tiny little zucchini. Fortunately, this week's shares contained more (and bigger) zucchini, so I think we've finally reached a critical mass of squash for something good this week.

Let's take a look at how the produce got used up. Everything in green below came from our shares. Everything in blue below came from the farmer's market in Union Square.

broccoli rabe + garlic scapes + garlic + local white wine + really tasty olive oil + red pepper flakes (in abundance) + mozzerella + homemade bread = fabulously crusty, crunchy, garlicy panini

kale + olive oil + salt + red pepper flakes = crunchy spicy kale chips (so good as a potato chip-like side with the panini)

mesclun + blue cheese dressing + bacon salt + wood fired bread + soy bacon = salty, smoky, creamy, crunchy bacon salad panini

spinach + garlic scapes + garlic + shiitake mushrooms + olive oil + red pepper flakes + nutmeg = garlicy greens and mushrooms saute served on the side of fettuccine alfredo (not the lightest meal of the week)

sliced snowpeas + baby bok choi + vegetarian Vietnamese noodles + soy sauce + sesame oil + Sriracha + vegetarian oyster sauce + eggs = noodle stir fry garnished with slices of thin omelet

eggs + corn tortillas + homemade salsa = huevos rancheros

strawberries + lemon + cornstarch + graham crackers + sugar + butter = strawberry refrigerator pie

strawberries + lemon + tequila + sugar + triple sec = strawberry margarita sorbet

I actually cooked a couple of meals without using any ingredients from the shares during the week as well. It felt good to be back in the kitchen and it felt even better to be cooking from the "What do I have in the refrigerator?" point of view rather than the "What do I feel like cooking?" point of view. Now that we're eating more local foods and trying to take advantage of what's in season at the moment, I've been pushed in the creativity department. That's a lot of fun!

Stay tuned for news of this week's shares and my culinary adventures!