THIS IS TEACUBE.

Behold! This is what happens when you unsuspectingly (or, you know, suspectingly) wander into the remaindered food aisle at TJ Maxx: you end up buying a massive teacube, containing 100 bags of green tea, for six dollars. Then you take it home to discover that the tea is not only subpar but also packaged individually, and not in paper, like any self-respecting Asian grocery bagged green tea, but in plastic.

So even though each of the individually wrapped tea bags cost you six cents, which is cheaper than nearly any prebagged tea on the market, and definitely cheaper than paying 75 cents on the street corner for a cup of coffee, the whole transaction is kind of crap. Every time you make a cup of tea you have to deal with a little sliver of plastic, the stuff you have eight assorted reusable shopping bags to eliminate. Then the tea itself is slightly stale and off. That's not surprising, considering that tea sold in bags is consistently lower quality than tea sold in leaf. Then consider that this tea was also REMAINDERED.

In conclusion, go to the food co-op and buy green tea in bulk instead.

Oh yeah

Also, leftover lentil soup makes the best, quickest, most completely perfect pasta fagioli in the west. Er, east. Yeah.

Pasta lenticchie

That's "pasta lentils", much like "pasta fagioli" is "pasta beans". Say it: len/TEE/chee/ae.

1. Cook some ditalini or other small, chunky pasta.
2. Heat up your leftover lentil soup.
3. Combine drained pasta with soup.
4. Add parsley, shredded grating cheese and/or toasted nuts.
5. Eat it! EAT IT HARD.


In addition, I wasn't kidding about the pasta and greens.

Yes! It's mesclun!

Pasta pomodoro with mesclun

"Pomodoro" is Italian for "tomato". It also supposedly means "apple of gold", i.e. "pomo d'oro". However, through copious internet research, I have discovered that the word for "apple" is actually "mela", and "pomo" actually means "knob". Whatever! "Pomme" is definitely "apple" in French! IT REMAINS AWESOME.

1. Soften onion, garlic, and good tomato with olive oil and salt.
2. Cook it slowly! Slowly! until the tomato dissolves.
3. While the tomato melts, cook gemelli or other pasta of choice.
4. Season the tomato business with oregano, basil, pepper.
5. Mix drained pasta with tomato business.
6. Serve over a plate of washed mesclun or other salad greens.
7. Add parsley, grating cheese, and/or nuts.
8. Mix it up! Eat it hard!

YES.

Celery and mustard greens

Behold! A terrible muddy-looking picture of lentil soup!

I was trying to remember what all went into this, because lo, it was really good lentil soup. I think the secrets were 1. lots and lots of good celery (cut off a celery root and everything!) and 2. baby mustard greens.

Ok. Celery is nothing new in lentil soup, or really any soup, but this particular celery was so good! At first I was really focused on the root, since we'd never had such a thing just lying around the kitchen before. I spent a couple days fantasizing over remoulade recipes before I really thought about the stems at all.

Then, of course, I made lentil soup, and the celery stems suddenly transformed into the greatest things ever.

We didn't even have any carrots! No mirepoix!

The mustard greens were a different story. The CSA gave us three bags of different baby greens in one week. Great! Except that there are only two of us! It's hard to get through that amount of tiny baby greens before they curl up and die. We were putting them in Everything: multiple pastas with spinach, grilled cheese with mushrooms and mustard, and the aforementioned huge salads.

Mustard was the hardest green to use. I tried taking some to work and just eating it as plain salad, like I'd do with any baby green, but they were just too strong. We had to cook them. In this case, they made up for my pitiful lack of mustard seed perfectly.

A lentil soup with good celery and mustard greens.

olive oil
onion
celery
curry spices: curry powder, ginger
(I had some fresh ginger; why didn't that go in? Oh well.)
bay leaf
red lentils
a small potato
veg broth/water
white wine vinegar/other acid (lemon juice)
salt, pepper
mustard greens/other greens
sourdough toast to eat it with.

This is not a particularly innovative soup. It's just good.

First, warm some olive oil in a soup pot. Peel and dice an onion, then soften it slowly in the oil. Finely dice some stems of celery as well. I like to do this by making a long cut or three up the stalk, then dicing across. A fine dice is important, since it eliminates any issue with long unwieldy celery strings. You're welcome. Also, if your stalks happen to have leaves, throw them in too! I used all of mine, and the result was awesome.

Throw the celery in the pot with the onion, season with whatever curry/lentil spices you find appropriate, and cook on medium, stirring occasionally. You'd traditionally have some carrot dice in here as well, but I didn't have any, and it turned out fine. For spices, our cabinet is still lacking a bunch of odds and ends (such as mustard seed), so I just used a store curry blend and some ground ginger. I know! It was still good.

While things are cooking, peel and dice your potato. The finer the dice here, the less time that potato will take to cook. You can also make veg broth if you want, or wash some dishes. Etc.

When the onion and celery have softened, add several cups of water or broth, a big handful of red lentils (I used maybe 2/3 cup?), your potato, and a bay leaf. Stir it all up, put on the lid, and bring the business to a boil. Lower to a simmer and cook, stirring occasionally, until the lentils and potato are fully cooked and dissolving into the soup. This should take maybe twenty minutes; taste both the potato and lentil to make sure things are done to your liking. You can simmer it longer if your soup is too watery; this will let the extra liquid evaporate. Then remove the bay leaf, add salt and pepper, and make any other seasoning correction.

At this point I took my soup off the heat and puréed it with the stick blender. If you like a more chunky soup, feel free to leave it as-is.

Add a tablespoon or so of white wine vinegar to the pot, stir it up, taste it to make absolutely sure of seasonings, and you're done.

Serving: take a handful of mustard greens for each bowl. Keep in mind that mine were BABY greens; full-grown mustard may need a short dunk in the actual soup pot over the heat. Other greens should work fine too, as long as you keep in mind their various cooking needs.

Anyway. For baby mustard, chop the greens roughly and divide them into your bowls. Then ladle your soup directly onto them. Let the soup sit for a minute or two before eating, so the greens wilt just a touch. Perfect!

Eat it with toast or warm pita. Hummus is always a good idea here. So are olives. I'm just saying.

Summer summer salad's gonna turn into fall salad

You and your baby doll/better go to the beach

Oh wait, I already made that joke once this year. My bad.

So. Hey, SALAD.

We got a pint of mixed cherry tomatoes and three separate bags of baby greens in the CSA box. Clearly we were meant to eat capacious salad.

But wait! We also got the aforementioned pears in the CSA box. Pears and tomatoes are both good, but they pretty clearly require two separate salads.

Ok. Two salads.

Summer salad

mesclun mix/baby spinach
cherry and grape tomatoes
good vinaigrette
salt, pepper
seared shrimp if you want it

Wash and dry greens; rip them up; strew them artfully across a plate. Toss with a little vinaigrette to coat. If you have any fresh basil, you might want to rip some of that up and add it too.

Cut tomatoes into halves or quarters; add them to the salad.

If you want shrimp, sear them in a little olive oil and add them to the salad. I am obviously a little obsessed with shrimp lately, so I went for it. If you don't want shrimp, it's totally fine to just leave them out. You could also use something totally different, like garlic croutons, sautéed red onion, toasted pine nuts, or cheese of some sort. I bet some cubes of seared halloumi would be really good.

Add salt, pepper, and maybe a finishing few drops of dressing.

Eat it!

Fall salad

mesclun mix/baby spinach
ripe pear
pecans or walnuts
dried blueberries/other fruit
just pepper
dressing: lemon juice and olive oil, or maybe poppyseed

Wash, dry, and arrange greens as above.

Core your pear and cut it into pleasing chunks. Strew them across the greens. Add a handful or two of dried fruit. We have these awesome dried wild blueberries from the food co-op, so that's what I used. Most kinds of dried fruit would work well, though: cherries, cranberries, figs, apricots. Of course there are also fresh figs out now, and we all know how I feel about fresh figs.

Break some pecans or walnuts up coarsely. Toast them quickly in a little frying pan, tossing frequently to avoid burning. Seriously, nuts burn in about two seconds, so be careful and watch them closely! It should take maybe 3-4 minutes on medium-high heat to get a golden brown toast. I used mostly pecans with a few walnuts mixed in, but probably all kinds of different nuts would work well. Slivered almonds would be good with a cranberry or cherry salad, and pistachios would be good with figs or apricots.

Let the nuts cool slightly before adding them to your salad. Then pepper it, dress it however you like, and eat it.

John had this salad with no dressing at all, but I think I would use at least a squeeze of lemon. If you like heavier dressings, poppyseed would probably be really good. Maybe even balsamic vinaigrette?

Salad!

Chili and a fried egg

A couple weeks ago we made an attempt at some normal fall food storage. Since I have yet to persuade my mom to actually give up her canner and ship it up here, this generally means freezing food. So John and I made a massive batch of chili, stuffed it full of corn straight off the cob and fresh farmer's market garlic, ate a lot for dinner, and still managed to freeze 6 containers.

Then we started eating them. I think there's one left. (Note: we're eating it in about fifteen minutes.) That chili will certainly last us though the cold, cold winter nights. Good job, us!

Of course this also means we ate lots of delicious, delicious chili, so I think I can deal with it.

You can do many things with chili in the freezer. First, you can obviously just warm it up and eat it. You can puree it and use it as an enchilada sauce. You can mix it into some mashed potatoes. Or, in my current favorite version, you can make chili with an egg on top.

Chili with an egg on top

chili
an egg per person
butter
greens/maybe herbs for garnish
maybe some tomatillo salsa if you have some left
maybe some sambal oelek if you want super-spicy egg
maybe some chips if you want it with some chips
salt, pepper

Ok. First, warm up your chili on the back of the stove. Make sure it's hot by the time you start cooking your egg. Easy.

Now make your egg. I think a fried egg is best on top of chili, although scrambled eggs have also been tested and found acceptable. Cook your egg however you like it, adding salsa or sambal if you so desire. Keep it on the undercooked side so the yolk will run nicely and the white won't turn to leather in the chili.

Get out a couple leaves of decent greens and chiffonade them finely. I used some raw chard, which was an excellent plan.

Now ladle some chili into a bowl. Gently slide your finished egg on top. Salt and pepper, garnish with greens, and eat it.

I totally love to break the entire egg up and stir it through the bowl, so the yolk dissolves into the mix. You get an egg-thickened soup without doing any of that annoying tempering. The greens wilt a little in the heat of the soup, and the egg white stays nice and hot.

If it's this awesome in September, how awesome is it going to be in January?