Cucumbers

I love cucumbers.  There is something wonderful about them and I never quite could figure out what it was I loved about them until I read The Red Tent by Anita Diamant.  Towards the end of the book the Dena moves to Egypt and she has cucumbers for the first time.  "But best of all were the cucumbers, the most delicious food I could imagine, green and sweet.  Even in the heat of the sun, a cucumber kissed the tongue with the cool of the moon. I could eat them endlessly without getting full or sick.  My mother would love this fruit, I thought the first time I bit into its watery heart."  Isn't that perfect? 

I can eat cucumbers right off the vine.  I can eat them with our without their skins (although my preference is without, especially for commercially grown cucumbers that tend to have tougher skins). Cool or room temperature.  It doesn't matter.  A cucumber sandwich is wonderful with just a very thin  swipe of mayonnaise and layered on white bread (although it is acceptable on wheat bread).  The less you do to the cucumber the more I like it. 

There are three main kinds of cucumbers: slicing, pickling and burpless.  I don't normally care for the flavor of a burpless and if you don't want to burp after eating cucumbers then don't eat the seeds.  But that's my favorite part.  Cucumbers have been grown as a crop for over three thousand years.  Someone had a good idea with that.  They are a fairly easy crop to grow unless you have squirrels who also think that cucumbers are tasty eats in which case you have to hover over your garden night and day with a threatening look on your face (not that my threatening look scares many squirrels much less my own children). 

If I have to do something to my cucumbers I do very little.  This is my favorite cucumber recipe:

Summer Cucumber Salad

4-5 regular cucumbers
2 t. dill weed (fresh is better, but then I always think that fresh is better)
1/2 c. sour cream

Wash, peel, quarter and slice the cucumbers.  Mix with the dill and sour cream.  Let it sit in the refrigerator for several hours.  (If you are going to a picnic or party, make it the previous day).  Serve.  It will serve about eight, but often times I have found people want this very difficult recipe.  Why?  Because it is so simple and fresh.

It's summer, so go eat a cucumber!

Chocolate Chip Cookies

I love a good simple cookie sometimes.  Chocolate chip is just that perfect cookie.  There isn't too much chocolate, just the right amount of vanilla cookie and, when fresh out of the oven, speak to my inner child.  Over the years I have toyed with a variety of cookie recipes.  Through a process of trial and error I have mished and mashed several recipes together to get the best dough and my favorite cookie.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

1/2 cup of butter softened
1/2 cup of vegetable shortening (although I usually make them with all butter.  Half shortening tends to make them a bit more chewy)
3/4 c. sugar
3/4 c. brown sugar packed
2 eggs
2 T. milk (trust me on this)
1 t. vanilla extract (if using artificial vanilla use 2 t.)
1/2 t. salt
1 t. baking soda
1/2 t. baking powder
2-1/4 c. flour (although this varies anywhere from 2 cups to 2-1/2 cups depending on humidity)
1-1/2 c. mini chocolate chips (although you can use any, I like the way that mini chips spread through out the dough)

Using a mixer add all the ingredients in order, mixing well before adding the next.  You can add 1/2 - 1 cup of chopped pecans, although I seem to be the only one in the house that likes nuts in my cookies, so I rarely get to have them.)  When the dough is thoroughly mixed, using a spoon.  Eat it.  OK, don't.  OK, do.  OK, technically you aren't supposed to eat cookie dough that has raw eggs in it, but in all my forty-something years of eating cookie dough I have never had a bad reaction.  And cookie dough is just so yummy.  But if you insist on baking cookies (which you really should because if you ate that much cookie dough you will get a tummy ache and it won't be because of raw eggs) heat your oven to 350°F and bake them on a baking stone for 12-14 minutes.  If you don't have a baking stone, then I recommend using parchment paper on a metal sheet.  It won't be as good as on a stone, but it will make clean up easier and you don't have to worry about your cookies sticking to your pan.  After they have baked eat them as fast as you can.  Have a glass of ice cold milk with them or a cup of tea.  It's best that way.

Ratatouille!

No, not the Pixar movie.  The food.  What exactly is ratatouille?  Basically it is peasant stew.  Sometimes made in a pot sometimes baked in an oven.  Most people associate ratatouille with eggplant.  Why?  Eggplant is nasty and slimy and putrid.  (Apologies to those of you who like eggplant.)  There is no hard and fast rule that ratatouille must be made with eggplant.  It's not Eggplant Parmesan which, by virtue of its name, would imply that eggplant is a big part of the pot. 

Ratatouille is a French Provencal stew.  And guess what grows really well in Nice?  Yep. Eggplant.  It is Nice's answer to the Pacific Northwest's zucchini. When I lived in Oregon, I used to wake up to find that someone had gifted me random zukes on my back step quite often.  People had so much of it that you had to actually either pay people to take it off your hands or gift it to people, thus making them feel obligated to use it. 

They key ingredient in ratatouille is actually the tomatoes.  Everything else is whatever you have on hand.  It can be eggplant (although I never have random eggplant just hanging around in my refrigerator).  But it can also be onions, garlic, zucchini, summer squash, carrots, bell peppers, celery, and mushrooms.  Go look in your pantry and see what you have available.  It probably can be made into this tasty stew.

There is also a big debate over whether ratatouille should be made from vegetables thinly sliced and layered or whether the vegetables should just be cut into chunks and all jumbled together.  Personally I prefer the thinly sliced variety of ratatouille, but I am not opposed to something that more resembles stew.  In fact I would bet that most housewives in Provencal France had more glop than layers. 

Here is my recipe for ratatouille:

6-7 medium sized squashes (this can be all one variety or a mix of zukes and summer squashes or if you so decide to eggplant)
1 pound of mushrooms, sliced

1 - 28oz can of diced tomatoes. (I prefer the petite diced, but have no prejudice to regular diced)
1 small onion diced
1/2 a head of garlic (I like garlic.  You may decide that this is too much garlic for you.)
2 T. extra virgin olive oil
salt
pepper
herbs  (whatever you like although basil and thyme are nice as are oregano and rosemary)

Slice your squashes.  I like using my mandolin (which I call my guillotine) for nice even thin slices.

In a medium sautee pan, heat your oil and add your onions and garlic (this would be an ok time to throw in celery as well).  Cook until the onions are tender.  I actually like to caramelize them just a bit, but that's up to you.  The important thing is to cook them so that the onions lose their bite and are sweet.  Add the entire can of tomatoes to the pot.  Do not drain them. Just open the can and dump.  Stir and add in your salt, pepper and herbs to taste.

Grease a 9x13 baking dish (I like to use my Pampered Chef baker, but whatever you have will work).  When the tomato mixture is hot, spoon some of it into the bottom of your prepared dish.  Layer your squashes and mushrooms.  You can make them all neat and prettyful or you can just put them in there so that they are all just all flat.  This is peasant stew.  Don't stress about it.  Pour the rest of the sauce over the squashes and mushrooms.  Cover (I prefer using parchment paper, but if you must you may use aluminium foil).  Bake at 350°F for about 25 minutes or until the squashes are tender.

Too many blogs

I've decided I need either A) another day that I catch up on my blogs added to my schedule or B) a better way to handle all my blogs so that I read them spread out through the week rather than on just one day. Unfortunately, not all the blogs I read are on Blogger so I can't add them to the "follow" feature and I haven't figured out how to manage the RSS feeds (and some people have websites that can't be -or I'm not tech savvy enough to figure out how to - be RSSed.) Anyone have a good tutorial? I tend to read a person's blog almost immediately if they actually tweet that they have a new posting, otherwise I wait until Thursdays and work my way through my list.

This week has been sort of odd. I finished another book and then took a break from writing to do the second edit on a different book. I always find it interesting that I will still find typographical errors in my second edits. Silly things like there instead of their or or instead of our and of course Word doesn't pick it up or find it completely nonsensical. Sent out a few more queries and received a few more no thank yous (thank you agents who are thoughtful enough to at least send a form e-mail).

In the knitting front I finally finished my Kiama shruggy-sweatery thing that I bought the yarn for at Stitches South. It is beautiful and drapey and soft and perfect as a summer sweater for here in the deep south where the temperature is 152°F (factoring in the heat index) outside and -15°F (with windchill) inside. I cast on a new shawl (Maja) out of Malabrigo. It is coming along nicely. And I joined a mystery knit-along that will also be a worsted weight shawl in the end. I'm using the yarn that I frogged from my Clapotis. The hexagon socks are still hexagonning and will eventually be finished.

I'm getting ready to try some new cookie recipes. I need to keep endeavoring on my cookie recipe idea that I've been working on. Anyone have any good ideas on what you think would be good in your perfect cookie?

OK, that is all. Back to blog reading.