Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Simple is good

With the heat index in the 100 degree range and the air so think that I feel like I'm treading water when I'm just standing up, the amount of energy I have for cooking is pretty minimal. Last week I made a strawberry rhubarb pie
(yes, it really was that fluorescent red orange color and mighty tasty too)
but this week it seems insane to have the oven on for that long. Hopefully some cooling breezes will come along because I'm taking Fiona blueberry picking at the Dexter Blueberry Farm on Thursday morning and I'd really like to be able to make a pie with them.

In the meantime, we are eating cold around here. Today for lunch I made the simplest and, in my humble opinion, the best potato salad. I had some cooked redskin potatoes left over from dinner over the weekend. I mixed up a dressing of lemon juice, olive oil, salt, pepper and chopped fresh dill. Then added about a quarter of a diced Vidallia onion and the potatoes. Done! Of course I would probably eat a brick if you doused it in a salty, lemony dressing...
I also had a tuna sandwich with slices of fresh farmer's market cucumbers (a completely different vegetable from the waxed supermarket variety and a fine excuse for having The Best Damn Summer Beer Snack every evening) and spicy sprouts. And you see a few baby carrots that Fiona wouldn't finish from her lunch which, in my role as the Human Garbage Can, I felt compelled to finish. (I alternate the role of Human Garbage Can with those of the Human Napkin and--reluctantly--the Human Snot Rag.)

We'll be doing some main course salads later this week, most likely another grilled tuna salade nicoise now that my green and purple beans are growing in the garden. And I might be able to stand turning the stove on just long enough to make these mango blue cheese quesadillas that I read about over at Weekly Dish (the small people will get their regular beans and cheese quesadillas) because they sound like a lot of flavor for little effort or btu's.

What are you eating in the heat?

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