Summer Food

Mom says "I love summer food. It's so easy." I agree, and in the summer we're on the go so much and the kitchen is so hot, it's gotta be easy. These are three meals I've made in the 80-90 degree weather of the past several days:

This is a classic post-ride meal. Craig and I did a good 43 miles on Saturday, starting at noon so we'd be sure to be really sweaty and disgusting by the time we finished. Dinner that night was frozen tortellini from Putney Pasta and pre-cooked apple chicken sausages. I sauteed some tatsoi from the CSA and topped the tortellini with roasted red peppers and chevre left over from those awesome sandwiches Craig made. The tortellini were sundried tomato flavor, and I thought they were a little too rich, but this was a great quick meal.

Sunday's dinner. It was going to be tabouli, then I read in Tara Parker-Pope about how good raw beets are for you, plus between the farmers' market, the CSA, and our garden, we have about a gajillion beets. So it's similar to tabouli in that it has bulgur wheat, lemon juice, olive oil, and mint. It also has grated raw beets, sliced haruki turnips (CSA), carrots, preserved lemon peel (awesome), and toasted walnuts. It was really really good! I am definitely going to make it again. Craig suggested raisins, I think he's right, or maybe currants.

Date night dinner last night. Mark Bittman had a cold avocado soup recipe in the NY Times that I really wanted to try and Craig agreed to at least taste (he's a little weird about avocado). It's just ripe avocado pureed with whole milk, salt, and cayenne. I topped it with chopped shrimp and cilantro. It was pretty good--very filling though. Behind it you can see the two things I'm really proud of. The beets are just raw beets and some harukei turnips tossed with lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper, then at the last minute I got inspired and tossed in some fresh thyme and the rest of the chevre. Super! I served it room temp and would have preferred it cold, at least last night (93 degrees at 7PM), but was really impressed. Also on that plate is what was going to be Ute's flatbread, only made on the grill pizza stone. I started it in the morning and put it in the fridge, and I guess the yeast had a good time, because once it was on the grill it really puffed up! I had added sun-dried tomatoes and fresh rosemary, so it really was like grill foccacia, and a pretty tasty accident. Definitely a recipe I'm going to have to perfect, and a great way to keep baking bread in the summer! Wonder what else I can make...