My dinner with Chrissy

Last weekend Chrissy came up from Santa Cruz to hang out! Yay! We made mimosas and peanut somen to celebrate.

This instance of peanut somen included a diced yellow carrot, a big pile of shredded green cabbage, a bunch of powdered ginger (though fresh would be far superior), and a not even remotely authentic poblano pepper.

Start by chopping and sautéing a bunch of onion and garlic in olive oil and a touch of sesame oil. You can also use the whites of green onion if you want; save the greens for garnish. Peanut oil would clearly be great here too.

Dice a hot pepper; scrub and chop a carrot; shred up a whole bunch of cabbage. Add all these to the pan, season everything with some pepper, sambal oelek, ginger, and soy sauce, and cook.

Item: you should always use twice as much cabbage as you think.

We used about a third of a large head of cabbage. It was not enough. More cabbage! MORE!

Once the onion & garlic, poblano, cabbage, and carrot were soft, we added a big spoonful of peanut butter, a splash of rice vinegar, and a head of chopped broccoli. Be sure to use the broccoli stem! Just peel it, chop it up, and throw it in there. I actually think this is the best part. You may want to add a little water to loosen the sauce as well.

When everything is cooked through, correct any seasonings. I like to add more sambal at the end, since earlier additions become sweet with cooking.

Finally, cook your somen, drain it, and add it to the pan. Somen only takes about a minute to cook, so as long as you have hot water ready, you can just boil it on the spot. Add it to the pan in small batches, stirring thoroughly after each addition. This keeps your noodles from sticking together in one big clump. You're welcome.

Divide your noodles and veg into bowls. Top with any garnishes you want; chopped peanuts, green onion, toasted sesame seeds, cilantro leaves, or a couple drops of sesame oil all work well.

Eat. Drink mimosas. Realize that mimosas do not go with peanut somen whatsoever. Have a glass of water instead.

And yes, this was technically our brunch with Chrissy, but that title just doesn't have the same ring, does it?

Ol' Reliable

The other day, John and I were discussing which dinners we would eat with no pause, no matter what mood we were in. The Ol' Reliable--a green salad with seared marinated tempeh--tops the list. (Other candidates included the Big Pan of Enchiladas and the Massive Stockpot of Chili.)

Man, do I love the Ol' Reliable.

We have made and eaten it many, many times. Here's one with carrots, frisee, and mushrooms. Here's one with cherry tomatoes and marinade-based salad dressing. This current salad features mushrooms, sungold tomatoes, cucumber, yellow carrot, and green onion over a farmer's market mesclun mix.

The basic premise is always the same: marinate cubed tempeh in your choice of delicious marinade. Sear. Throw on top of salad greens. Add vegetables and dressing of your choice. Eat. Feel better.

Our base marinade for tempeh is generally olive oil, vinegar, soy sauce, sriracha, crushed garlic, fresh rosemary, and veg broth, with whatever other additions sound good at the time. The vegetables can range anywhere from plain greens with no dressing to a huge melange of whatever's in the crisper. It's all good.

Refrigerator pickles!

One vegetable I planted for our ceremonial first in-ground garden was cucumber. Why not? Cucumbers are great and crispy and full of life-giving water! They also seem to go bad very quickly after being bought in, say, a store. Clearly, keeping them on the vine until we want to eat them is the perfect solution. So I started some Japanese cucumber seeds, transplanted the seedlings into the ground beside our garage, and trained the resulting vines around a couple tomato cages to ward off any potential ground rot.

Then we went off to Oregon for vacation. When we came back, the vines looked normal and healthy. The cucumbers, however, had erupted into 12-inch behemoths. I picked one to use for salads. It took us more than a week to get through maybe half of it. In the meantime, the rest of the cucumbers were getting bigger and bigger.

Well. It was clearly time to make some pickles. Yay, pickles!

Since there are so many different pickles out there, I thought I'd start with a small refrigerator batch. That way, if we loved them, we could make more, and if we hated them, we'd only be out a few cups of brine. So I went over to Food in Jars and found these refrigerator dills. Perfect.

So, after acquiring the dill seed that I for one totally did not have kicking around the spice cabinet, I chopped a single cucumber into a bunch of 5-inch spears and set out to make two pints of refrigerator dills. Obviously, I used a Japanese cucumber instead of a bunch of Kirbys. I also changed the apple cider vinegar to plain white vinegar, because that's what was in our cabinet. Otherwise, I went entirely by the book:

- Wash cucumber, trim ends, and cut into spears.
- Boil 3/4 c water and 3/4 c vinegar with 2 tsp salt until salt dissolves.
- Get out two pint jars; add 2 peeled garlic cloves, 2 chopped green onion whites, and 1 tsp dill seed to each.
- Cram cucumber spears into jars.
- Pour hot brine over cucumbers, leaving 1/4 inch of space.
- Cap, cool, and store in the refrigerator.

Yes, that is one cucumber.

While I was filling my jars, I kept flashing back to the bit of Emily of New Moon (or was it Emily Climbs? Who knows) in which Emily learns how to put pickles in jars in patterns. I most certainly didn't get my pickles into the jars in any sort of pattern. I was just happy to get them upright in the jars with minimal crushage.

I was a little wary of the result, since most pickle recipes I've seen use actual heads of fresh dill instead of seeds (of course, there must be seeds in the heads, but still). So we gave the pickles their alloted day to set, then cracked open a jar and tried some. Verdict: these are some good dill pickles. Since the cucumbers aren't cooked, they are super crunchy and light in color, while still providing a significant garlic-dill kick. Success! I will pay $3.50 for a jar of pickles no more again forever!

Roasted tomato & tempeh loaf sandwich

At least the tomatoes are in the oven this time, right?

We actually had this excellent dinner nearly a month ago! That's ok, though--it's way more appropriate for a brisk fall day than a sunny summer one.

In this instance, we wanted a whole lot of roasted vegetables plus tempeh seasoned to approximate meatloaf, so we could have a dinner of fall veg and pseudo-meatloaf sandwiches.

So. First I marinated strips of tempeh in a mix of veg broth, ketchup, hot sauce, soy sauce, sriracha, apple cider vinegar, olive oil, crushed garlic cloves, and probably some fresh rosemary. The secret ingredient to practically any good tempeh marinade is rosemary, in my experience.

We don't steam the tempeh before marinating it. However, we generally do make the veg broth immediately before marinating, so the marinade itself is pretty warm. I'm not sure whether this has any effect on the supposed bitterness of tempeh, since I have nothing to compare against. It works fine.

While my tempeh was marinating, I cut a whole bunch of potatoes into steak fries and broccoli into florets, tossed each pile with some olive oil, salt, and pepper, and put them all in a 350/375F oven to bake.

Next, I washed a bunch of cherry tomatoes, tossed them with the aforementioned olive oil, salt, and pepper, and threw them in the oven as well.

After the vegetables were about halfway done, it was time to cook the tempeh. I decided to just throw the strips in the oven, basting occasionally as they cooked. While this did produce tasty tempeh, it also produced a pan that was nearly impossible to clean. I'd recommend just searing off your tempeh in a decent frying pan instead.

When everything was done, I whipped it all out of the oven, toasted some bread, and made some tempeh loaf sandwiches. Here, have a terribly lit 9 pm picture!

John's sandwich had just tempeh, mustard, and lots of lettuce; my sandwich had all of the above plus a big layer of the roasted tomatoes. This meant my sandwich was substantially more drippy. That didn't matter. It was totally worth it.

More late season tomatoes

I'm just going to try and get through the last few super-summery tomato suggestions, ok?

Make a tomato & avocado salad. Slice up tomatoes & avocados; mix together with shredded basil, salt, and freshly ground pepper.

I ate my salad plain, since it already featured an entire small avocado, but you can drizzle on some olive oil or vinaigrette if you really want to.


I actually really wish it were fall, and that I could then eat the fall food to match. But we live in California, and thus there is never a fall. It's so frustrating.