Category Archives: Recipes

The TLT: Summer Between Two Slices of Bread

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The TLTBoy, do people love their bacon. Rarely have I come across a food that inspires such raw passion in people. Just this week, while a co-worker, Devin, and I were discussing the Powerball jackpot having reached astronomical sums, he said that if he won, he would throw me a cool couple million if I, a longtime vegetarian, would eat an entire pig. I’m not sure if this was meant to be some kind of gladiatorial entertainment or if he merely wanted to share his love of pork with the world. Devin did not win Powerball, so I guess we will never find out.

But that does not mean that I am immune to bacon’s charms. I have very happy memories of childhood summer dinners that consisted entirely of big BLTs and fresh ears of boiled sweet corn. To me, bacon is the taste of summer, and a curious package that my mom sent me while I was living in Cambodia helped me to recreate that taste in vegetarian form. Along with other comforts of home, like American magazines, was a shaker of something called Bacon Salt, completely vegetarian but very bacon-y. Bribing the postman to get that package out of hock might have been some of the best money I ever spent. I sliced some tofu from the market very thinly, sprinkled it with bacon salt, popped it in the oven, and boom…it was like I was back in Ohio. The Tofu, Lettuce and Tomato sandwich was born.

Over the years I have perfected the recipe, and I think it’s much tastier than the substitute bacon that you can buy at the grocery store. I will share it below for any bacon-loving vegetarians or anyone who is craving something a little lighter than pork on a hot summer evening. Make one soon while the sweet corn is plentiful and the tomatoes are at their juiciest.

Tofu Bacon Continue reading →

Jay’s Summer Squash Shredder Sandwich

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Some people love summer squash.

I am not one of those people.

Zucchini, pattypan, straight-up yellow, all of these guys bore me a little.  They’re bland.  And for whatever reason, I have a hard time coming up with ways to sex them up like I can, for example,  for summer greens.

But Windfall Farms, our CSA farm, dropped some pattypans on us, and I concocted a sandwich that turned out really, really well.  This made me feel good not just because I made good use of the pattypans, but because pattypans are so cute, odd outliers in a world of goose-shaped and phallic cousins, and I like outliers.

Jay’s Summer Squash Shredder Sandwich (serves two)

Ingredients:

1 large of 2 small summer squash
strong blue cheese
a small handful of walnuts
arugula
basil
thick sourdough bread or equivalent
4 or 5 cloves of garlic
half a lemon
salt & pepper

Step One:  Grate (that’s right, grate) your squash on a cheese grater.  In a pan, fry the crushed garlic in a dab of butter and tablespoon of olive oil on low heat.  After four or five minutes, toss in shredded squash.  After another four or 5 minutes, add the juice of half the lemon, salt, and lots of pepper.  Remove from heat. Continue reading →

Food for the End-of-Weekend Blues

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wagon wheels!Weekends are supposed to be relaxing, so the rumor goes. But come Sunday night, after the hiking, carousing, drinking, sunbathing, running, picnicking, sweating and entertaining with which many of us fill our summer weekends (several times over on long weekends), I don’t think it’s unusual to feel exhausted. That is how I found myself at my local Mr. Melon store on Sunday afternoon, staring into space and trailing zombie-like through the aisles, loath to cook anything, but feeling sharp pains in my stomach and wallet at the thought of eating takeout food one more time.

I had walked in with a vague plan of making a pasta dish that I like, but the asparagus was looking limp, the only walnuts I could find were in enormous tubs and neither Jason nor I could remember if there was any pesto left in the freezer. So I gave up on that one. I think, really, the only thing to do when you find yourself in this situation is to grab the items that kindle a tiny joy in your tired heart, which is how I ended up walking to the register with 1) Brussels sprouts and 2) rotelle pasta (or if you prefer—and believe me, I prefer—wagon wheels). Seriously, try to find a more cheerful pasta shape. That’s right. You can’t.

I am certain that you, dear reader, are just as capable of this sort of improvisation as I am, but I’ll post the recipe I came up with, just in case it comes in handy some muggy Sunday evening. The veggies make it fresh and light enough for summer, but the bleu cheese gives it a creamy decadence that will send you into a deep end-of-weekend slumber.

Bleu Wagon Wheels Continue reading →

Crunchy Spring Feast

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About six weeks ago we visited Shannon’s parents in Ohio.  Dwight, her dad, has a garden, and the green onions had just come up.  He eagerly informed me of the existence of Onion and Butter Sandwiches.

Neither Shannon nor her mom were interested in enjoying one of these sandwiches, but one was made for my benefit.  I don’t know what I was expecting.  Something in which the whole transcended the individual parts, I guess.  It pretty much just tasted like onion and butter on a piece of bread.  I suppose it tasted like Spring, crunchy and green and all with the smooth glide of butter to add a farmhouse touch.  It was good.  That’s all I’ve got.

A Quick Note on Stomach Aches

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I go a little bipolar on dinner sometimes, occasionally eating just enough to be full, occasionally cooking a feast and going to town on it.

So stomach aches happen.

I’m in the Land of Milk and Honey and I put them on the table.

And I’ve discovered that better than anything I’ve ever purchased in a pharmacy, better even than the Yogi Tea Stomach Ache tea, is simple ginger in hot water.

Just cut some slices off a ginger root, drop them in some hot water, and presto. Continue reading →

What Puts the Key in the Lime?

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key lime pieFlorida is a good place to contemplate important matters of nature like the mating habits of bottlenose dolphins (colorful) and the take-off techniques of loons (unfortunate). On a recent trip to visit my parents, I also found myself thinking about the mysterious fruit, the key lime. Even though I spent many of the Christmas vacations of my childhood throwing fish heads to pelicans on Marathon Key, I believed that key lime pie was just lime pie that you ate in the Keys. I’m not sure it fully sunk in that the key lime is actually a fruit unique from the Persian lime (also known as the gin and tonic lime, at least to me). Here are some fun key lime facts:

  1. They’re not green. Or rather, the ones you should be eating are not green. The ripe ones are bright yellow.
  2. Most of them don’t come from the keys, at least not since the 1926 hurricane that wiped out most of the lime groves of Florida. Now we get key limes from Mexico.
  3. They’re native to Southeast Asia, so I was probably eating them all the time in Cambodia in place of Persian limes without ever realizing it.
  4. They’ve been known to cause phytophotodermatitis upon contact, making human skin extra sensitive to light. No word on how long this effect lasts, but it sounds like bad news for sunburned tourists in a tropical climate.
  5. They are smaller and seedier than their Persian brethren, and their flavor is more tart and bitter.

Okay, so none of those facts make them sound terribly appealing, particularly the last two. But because they have a stronger flavor, you don’t need much juice to get a strong limey flavor, which makes them ideal for cooking.

I suspect, though, that the real reason that key limes and the pies they go into are so popular is because we associate them with sunshine and sand and Ernest Hemingway and pelicans and fish heads. They’re a vacation on a plate. I mean, look how happy this guy looks. Continue reading →

Andrew Leahey’s Kale Banana Peanut Butter Smoothie

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For Christmas, my brother and sister-in-law gave us a homemade cookbook entitled Rock N Eat.  We talk like this.  It’s part of our culture.

The first entry is for a kale banana peanut butter smoothie and it starts, “This is much better than it sounds.”

It is.

I mean, it’s shockingly tasty.  I like kale a lot, though I don’t think I’d be too psyched for a kale-flavored breakfast, and thankfully the kale taste is nowhere to be found in this smoothie.  It’s all banana and peanut butter goodness, reducing the kale’s presence to tiny flecks while bestowing all the nutrition of raw kale, which is, as Andrew writes, “pretty much the best thing you can put into your body.” Continue reading →

Post-St. Patrick’s Day Stewed Leprechaun

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leprechuanEveryone indulges their mischievous and somewhat bawdy antics on St. Patrick’s Day, of course, but what is one to do with the surplus of leprechauns running around the house after the holiday? We have more than most—though I’m only about a third Irish on a good day, I have a name that makes me sounds as if I’m straight off the boat from County Cork, and the little devils just come flocking. To call them a nuisance would be an understatement: they harass the cats, they poop in the shower, they drink all the Scotch in the house out of spite. I think it will be a solid month before I can get the smell of pipe smoke out of the couch, and the red hair I keep finding on my pillow…let’s just say I’m not certain it’s from their heads.

Don’t get me wrong; it’s not that I find leprechaun slaughter an enjoyable task. (In fact, I prefer the term “leprechaun harvest” whenever possible.) But it’s important to remember that they’ve lived a good life, free to roam and tell dirty jokes wherever they like. And a little ether on a rag and then a quick whap against the edge of the sink is a process I find most humane.

Anyway, they make a first-rate soup. So come in out of the harsh March winds, sit down to a steaming bowlful and thank your lucky stars that St. Patty’s Day comes but once a year. For the recipe of what’s in the bowl, keep reading: Continue reading →

The Asparagus Cometh: Asparagus Salad with Mustard Dressing

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asparagus saladHark! What is that glimpse of green that is once again appearing in the produce aisle? It is asparagus, those elegantly slender and vibrant stalks, one of the first vegetal signs that spring is on its way.

“But, lo!” you are probably saying. “What’s with the pee thing?”

It has been noted by many trustworthy sources that asparagus has some unusual after-effects. In 1702, the author of Treatise of All Sorts of Food noticed that the stalks “cause a filthy and disagreeable smell in the urine.” Most who have experienced this phenomenon seem to agree with him about the off-putting nature of the smell, though Proust (always hell-bent on being an outlier) said that asparagus “transforms my chamber-pot into a flask of perfume.”

I would like nothing more, dear readers, than to offer my own opinion on this matter, but I just don’t smell it. (And before you offer, no, I do not want to smell your pee.) I always assumed that there was some difference in the way people processed this vegetable resulting in my unremarkable urine, but a groundbreaking study in 2010 opened up the possibility that I (along with about 78% of the population) might just lack the olfactory receptors necessary to detect the asparagus odor. (So even if I did consent to smell your pee, I might not be able to tell the difference.)

Regardless, I think this is a small price to pay for some delicious asparagus. To me, it tastes like a plate full of spring. Here’s an easy recipe to kick off your asparagus season: Continue reading →

Rollin’ the Recipe Dice: Lemon-Herb Vegetable Mélange and Easy Cactus Salad

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recipe diceAh, the cruelty of early spring, when the skies are gray and the produce selection is still scarce. The season has left me in a decided creativity slump in the cooking department. So it was high time that I broke out the recipe dice from my friend Mignon, who cleverly managed to combine my love of food and nerdy games into a single Christmas gift. Here’s the concept: you roll fourteen dice, each with cute little pictures of ingredients on each side. You’re allowed to re-roll a certain number of them, but you’re supposed to try to use all the ingredients in a single meal.

Okay, let’s get this out of the way: I cheated. But only a little, I swear! I took out the meat die, which is legitimate for vegetarian play, I think. I also had just made a huge batch of cauliflower soup just a day or two before and staring at the cauliflower heads in the supermarket made me vaguely depressed, so I threw that one out, too, though under different circumstances, I think it could easily be added to the mélange recipe below. I would like to point out, however, that I used the other twelve dice, even though I rolled nopales on my re-roll, the equivalent of pulling a Q in Scrabble, and went to four grocery stores before I found them. Here are the ingredients I had to work with: artichokes, Brussels sprouts, cheese, cous-cous, garlic, lemon, mushrooms, nopales, onion, peas, rosemary and tomatoes.

The dice definitely got me to think outside the box. And I’ll probably make both of the recipes again (though probably not in the same meal). In case you’re having your own kitchen slump, here are the two recipes I came up with: Continue reading →