me make food

Bruschetta sure tastes great with stuff off the grill. Theresa has been making it for years and has it down. Our tomato plants are huge this year so we will be enjoying it often. She uses tomatoes, Garlic, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, basil, salt, and some parm cheese. We use Le Quartier bread since it is a bit warm to be baking. Theresa infuses olive oil with garlic and basil and lightly brushes the bread with some shredded parmesan.

In the pic above on the right is some risotto. Theresa has that down really good too.

Since it is nice out and we are always looking to create something new and a bit healthier, we figured some foil wrapped meals would be fun to try. Figured chicken would be a good meat for this since Theresa is not fond of seafood. We really like the flavor for a good seared piece of meat, so the idea was to partially cook the chicken in a very flavorful pouch and then finish it off on the grill.

Was kind of hard to decide what to include in the foil with the chicken. We were thinking something like a marinade coating the chicken and some fresh vegetables to impart their flavor.

Decided to use carrots, celery, onion, red pepper, and garlic for the main flavors. I put all of those along with some olive oil, basil, and lemon juice into a cup and used my stick blender to make up a goop to coat the chicken.

Borky Lou 3:52
IMG_0876 on Flickr – Photo Sharing!
figured out a secret last week. put the basil on top of the sauce but under the cheese to keep the flavor in there and not let it burn

Spkthed 3:54
whoa, that’s fascinating…

Loves me those Le Quartier pizza crusts. Really light sauce, fresh mozz, garlic salt, black pepper, and mushrooms and olives that pee all over the pizza and make me have to soak it up with a napkin

A week early, but we decided to do it anyways. Headed tot he Old Cheney farmers market and picked up some good stuff. Only one place was selling corn and it was only $5 a dozen and we ended up with 17 ears to make up for the size. Boiled in the brewing equipment outside, tossed into a cooler full of ice, and zipped the corn. Got 3 pretty good servings out of it because we figure that will make us through the week. It is corn season and we are ready to go.

Next week the holy grail of sweet corn producers around these parts and we are not ready. Daniels sweet corn is the absolute best. They pick the morning of sale and hydro cool the corn to 38 degrees from picking time for sale that day.We still need a better way of storing it and after asking around on the forum and the web we found you do not can corn, you freeze. Now we froze our crop last year and learned about freezer burn. We are awaiting our next payday to get a vacuum sealer food saver.

Basil, gonna wait till we get the sealer to send.

Headed to the Old Cheney farmers market again this weekend to pick up 3 more dozen sweet corn from Daniels Produce. It is so good, oh man. I asked JR of Hollenbeck where to get my sweet corn from and he said without question it is the best at the farmers market.

From their site:

We preserve the natural sugar in every ear so our corn taste as sweet and fresh as if it just came off the stalk. All sweet corn is hydro cooled with 38 degree water within 30 minutes or less, after picking

That pretty cool. We only have about 3 more weeks to get more so I guess we will be stocking up on tons of this corn. We have had it with almost every meal this last week and I am still craving it right now. Shucking, boiling, ice bath, and cutting the corn off the cob is a bit of work, but so worth it.

Corn likes kicking it next to other corns. The three big plants I had in the main yard were not close enough to the main corn plantation to get adequate germination. Still I took what I got from my 8 corn plants this eve and got some killer corn. Enough ears for 3 sides of corn, and sweet as heck. Darn good for being something I fricking grew.
Would I do it again? No
But at least I grew my own corn and am darn P-roud.

It is too easy to buy 3 dozen sweet corn from the farmers market for me to deal with growing corn again. Still uber proud for actually eating corn I grew from seed. It is as close to animal husbandry I will ever achieve I bet.
We will not ever give up on normal garden stuff though. Fresh tomaters, herbs, cuces, and peppers cannot be beat.

My friend hooked me up with a big ol sack of corn for free.

Tomatoes are ready to eat and Theresa just loves making bruschetta. We have some small and large tomatoes and dice them up. Add some fresh basil, parsley, shredded garlic, balsamic vinegar, and fresh shredded parm cheese. The toasty bits have some garlic and basil infused olive oil brushed on them as well as parm cheese. mmmmmmm………….