This week was bizarre. A lot of good things and a lot of bad things. My BFF bought a house less than two minutes away! That’s good! I drove my car into her new eco-friendly garage door like some unstoppable moron. That’s bad. My mother-in-law won the best person of the year award by picking my kids up in the morning and keeping them all day long, giving me a blissful day to myself (I went to two grocery stores and lingered in the aisles! I had tea with a friend! I got my blood drawn after having the paperwork since April!). That’s good! I’m getting my period and became furious with Andy for washing the dishes with headphones on, which prevented me from sharing a story about my whittling with him. That’s bad. Yeah, I really did get mad at him for that. I felt completely justified at the time. Oh me! I also made three different kinds of cookies and two different gift baskets. Here we go!

Greek-Style Grilled Chicken with Lemon and Oregano, Naan, Cucumber/Yogurt Thing. Oh, I liked this chicken! I cooked it a lot longer than the recipe called for and I thought it was perfect. I’ve got one of those big barrel-type charcoal grills and I think it doesn’t get as hot as the regular kettle kind (at least with the same amount of charcoal) so chicken cooked indirectly seems to always take longer than the recipes say. That was boring and you don’t care. But make it and cook it longer than it says to if you feel like it, that’s all I’m saying.

Frito Pie. The hits just keep on coming! This was great. Instead of chili, the traditional frito pie topping, I dumped ladle-fulls of defrosted-reheated red beans and barbecue thing from late-May on top, and it was magnificent. If you’re in the dark, this is called a pie for exactly zero reasons. It’s a meaty chili thing on top of a fistful of fritos, classed up with avocado and lime juice.

Cobb Salad. Who needs lettuce? Let’s eat all the best proteins and fats, puddled in lemon-dijon vinaigrette, and call it salad. Henry insisted upon every bite he took to be constructed as follows: avocado + chicken + bacon + tiny piece of lettuce, which left more egg/tomato/blue cheese for the rest of us, so I was all for it. Plus he ate some lettuce, which means I am a successful parent.

Viet Hapa Pho-ish. My broth was just chicken stock infused with the spices and aromatics called for in the recipe, but was still so satisfying. The bok choy was so bitter, but I ate it dutifully anyway, because I am very healthy.

Gluten Free Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies. Exhibit A in my “very healthy” case file. We went swimming with my sister-in-law and she’s so great that I wanted to celebrate with cookies! I used cup4cup instead of all purpose and otherwise made no changes and everybody loved these.

Ultimate Ginger Cookies. Exhibit B. These are not the ultimate ginger cookies because I didn’t have any candied ginger, and made them anyway, but they were still pretty good.

Salted Chocolate Chip Cookies. Exhibit C. Aaaaaaahhhh these are amazing and I gave them all away (after eating 6 in a row) and I’m so sad they’re gone. They’re supposed to be made with a chopped up chocolate bar (or 3, I guess, because you want a half pound of the stuff), which makes pools of melty chocolate. I didn’t have that and used chocolate chips instead and they’re still glorious, though I can imagine they’re truly extraordinary with the chocolate pools. And they’re no harder than tollhouse assuming you have a tiny amount of turbinado sugar in your pantry.

Some of the Stuff I’ve Canned This Summer Plus Chocolate Chip Cookie-Basket. A family friend gave us some fantastic wooden shelves that form the shape of one of those Olympic medal ceremony podiums when you push ’em together plus the most wonderful loft bed for freeeee! Henry has been newly obsessed with parkour, and these additions were perfectly timed because they both seemed to have been designed to climb all over. Cookies and canned goods made a meager thank you for such generosity!

Lunch for Friends on Moving Day Basket. When you drive into someone’s new garage door, which is attached to their brand new house, you should apologize by making them pan bagnat sandwiches and cookies and kale salad. It worked for me!

Extra Pan Bagnats for Us. I read lots of recipes for this pressed picnic sandwich, and liked the ingredients in the linked-to one best, but I layered them instead of chopping them all up and mixing them with the tuna. I didn’t press the sandwiches overnight either- they were perfectly flat and lovely after about 30 minutes under a gallon of milk in the fridge.

Butternut Risotto with Rosemary and Parmesan. Earlier in the week I asked Henry to help me pick what to make for dinner. I had a list to read to him but he interjected excitedly “do we possibly have the ingredients for risotto?!” It was so dear that I had to add it to this week’s menu, even though it’s 104 degrees outside.

Suppli, Roasted Baby Sweet Potatoes with Bacon, Apple and Bacon Salad. I rolled leftover risotto into balls, dipped them in beaten egg and coated them with breadcrumbs and deep fried them. We also ate tiny sweet potatoes with crispy bacon, and salad with crispy bacon, and everything was right with the world. Well, not quite, but close enough.

We’ve been watching too much TV. We go swimming a lot, but it’s so much work to get the kids in all their suit-pieces, covered in sunscreen, and encased in float-y things that I’m feeling tired of it. So TV it is. Andy and I are no better- I watched the last four episodes of Wet Hot American Summer on Netflix last night instead of writing this post (that show is fun and really stupid! it’s only eight episodes so you can burn through it), so now I’m writing while the kids watch more Jake and the Neverland Pirates and hit each other. S’gonna be a good day! Here’s what we ate this week.

Vietnamese Pork Meatball and Noodle Salad (Bun Cha). I stole this from Last Night’s Dinner’s pinterest board, which is full of lovely dinner ideas. I was immediately smitten with the idea of putting Vietnamese flavors into a meat ball and serving them with bright fresh herbs and noodles. In execution, the meatballs were delicious, and great with the herbs and noodles, but the ratios in the sauce are totally wrong. The vinegar/sugar/fish sauce are watered down so much that you really can’t discern them on the noodles. Next time I’ll triple the amounts of every sauce ingredient and then add water a 1/2 cup at a time until the sauce tastes right.

Fried Provolone and Tomato Sandwich, Charoset Tabbouleh. It’s a Last Night’s Dinner love fest this week- this is her sandwich and damn it’s good. You fry the provolone in a little olive oil and then drain it on paper towels before sliding it onto your sandwich. The first time, I tried to flip the provolone too soon, and it slopped everywhere. But by just letting it go a little longer, it got crustier and was much easier to flip.  I thought it would stick to the paper towels when you drain it, but it didn’t at all. And the combination of cheese, tomatoes, and mayo on good bread is delightful. It will be a summer staple for years to come, I think. The charoset tabbouleh is my first entry into a food52 contest in a good long time. I made it for the first time after passover, because I was going to make tabbouleh and didn’t have tomatoes, and looked in the fridge and thought leftover charoset (honeyed dates and apples and nuts from the Seder) would be good instead. It was! I love grain salads with a huge variety of flavors- fruits and nuts and greens and a tart lemony dressing.

Orange Cardamom Fig Newtons. I prepared the woe-begotten figs from last week in three different ways- these newtons, the fig and blue cheese tart below, and halved and dried in a low oven for 24 hours- I’ll use them later in these scones, or rehydrated in mulled wine or something like that for a devils on horseback variant. But these newtons are great! They are made with a pound of fresh figs (that gives you two sheet pans-full of cookies). The outside cookie is soft and cake-y, as it should be, and the inside is beautifully flavored with cardamom and citrus (I used lemon because I didn’t have an orange). We gave half to our neighbors as a thank you for the figs and ate the other half while singing the old fig newton jingle, as taught to me by Homer’s mom, Mona Simpson, low those many years ago.

Fig and Blue Cheese Tart, Pea Shoots with Bacon and Lemony Vinaigrette. This dinner was not well-received by the kids. I set down a plate in front of Henry and he said “are there more and different foods?” I didn’t love the tart either- The puff pastry under the figs never really puffed which made the tart soggy and hard to eat. It’s drizzled with thick balsamic and honey before baking, which definitely added to the sogginess. The flavor combination is great though. If I were to do it again, I think I’d try baking the puff pastry by itself first, then adding the figs and blue cheese halfway through, then drizzling with the honey and vinegar after it came out of the oven? Meh.

Avocado Sushi, Roasted Eggplant with Caramelized Miso, and a Combination of Both. I missed my regular farmers’ market this week because we were having a sleepover at Grandma and Grandpa’s house on Friday, and then out to breakfast at Casa Alde the next morning (NB: if you love breakfast tacos and haven’t been here, you should drop everything and go. They are the ultimate in tex-mex breakfast tacos, all served on handmade flour tortillas that will change your life. Try their exceptional migas, served with a pour of queso inside (genius), or the fatty, which has every breakfast food in one convenient taco). Casa Alde is across the street from the Saturday Morning farmers’ market in Buda, so we stopped there. It’s a little heavy on the prepared foods and light on fresh vegetables, but I did pick up these adorable baby eggplants, the tiny tomatoes from the fried provolone sandwich above, and red potatoes. I’m not very creative when it comes to eggplant, and followed my normal method of roasting them with miso. Since they were so wee, I rolled some of them into avocado sushi rolls and drizzled some of the watered-down miso sauce on top for an extra sweet and salty touch. We loved them.

Potato, Poblano, Cotija Tacos. I’m a sucker for a potato taco. For these, I made a big batch of those crispy smashed red potatoes and then tossed 4 of them with roasted poblano chiles and sliced onions and cotija, and let all those things get crispy in the pan too. We ate them with avocado and salsa verde. The jalapenos were in my picture-taking spot because I’m going to be fermenting them this week, and not because I’m trying to tango with the big-name ingredient-scattering bloggers. (For the diligent link-followers- don’t those corn cakes sound good? They’re on my list). We’re in the middle of the Hatch fest at Central Market (hooray!) so you can save a step and pick up some pre-roasted New Mexico chiles and use them in place of the poblanos.

Corn Dogs and Hush Puppies. This was one of those days where I couldn’t do anything right- these corn dogs were no exception. A few weeks ago we drove out to Lockhart for barbecue and I was seduced by a package of “smoked wieners” at the checkout. My sister and brother-in-law both call hot dogs ‘wieners’, which offends my ears, but for some reason I felt pulled to that label on this occasion. They’re scrawny little things and I thought they’d make great corn dogs. When I went to fry them it turned out that they were raw, so I had to delay dinner by first roasting them in the oven. Then I didn’t have any bamboo skewers, and chopsticks were too thick for these spindly wieners, so I used little metal picks. Then the batter wouldn’t stick to the hot wieners, then I burned the shit out of my fingers by carelessly picking up the metal pick moments after I’d pulled it out of the fryer. To top it off, the meat absolutely sucked. It was really oddly textured, and it felt to me like the sausages had been made with floor sweepings from the meat-grinding room. You’d bite into it and get a gritty-crunchy bit in almost every bite. Gahhhhh. I did scoop spoonfuls of the corn dog batter into the oil, which puffed up into fantastic little hush puppy-like things that we ate with butter, and those were really good, so that’s something at least. The hush puppy on top of a really bad day.

Gluten Free Blueberry and Peach Buttermilk Cupcakes. These were for my niece Phinnie’s first birthday party! My sister made her a spectacular seven-layer beehive shaped yellow cake with lemony cream cheese frosting, but wanted something for the gluten free folks in Phinnie’s life and asked me to cover it since I always have a bag of Cup 4 Cup in the freezer. These cupcakes are made following the directions of the linked recipe, but replacing AP flour with an equal amount of C4C. I doubled the recipe to make this many cupcakes. If you make them be sure not to fill the cupcake tins more than about half way full- the batter rises spectacularly in the oven. I was so happy with how these turned out.

So much love to you, Phinnie, on your first birthday! You are equal parts contemplative and exuberant, passionate, patient, and more cuddly than any baby in the whole history of the world. I love you!

My neighbor came over today to sound the annual alarm that the figs on her glorious backyard fig tree are ready to be picked. Henry and George and Andy and I all bounded over there with a big bowl in hand and got to work. Our idyllic summer activity didn’t last long though, because Henry and George both had horrifying and almost-instantaneous allergic reactions to the milky sap that comes out of the fig tops when you pick them. They rubbed the stuff all over their faces, god knows how or why, and ended up with swollen eyes and red rashes  that made them look like Vigo the Carpathian after he’s transformed into that alien-demon thing. I need to watch that movie again. Anyway, they’re doing better now. And I’ve got a giant bowl of figs from before everything went to hell, so that’s good. Providing that the kids can eat figs? Ohh anyway. Looking at this picture I’m a little alarmed to realize that we ate that whole bag of popcorn in less than a week 😐 I also pickled that okra! It takes a month to cure but then you get to cut them in half and stuff them with pimento cheese and I’m real real excited about that. Here’s the rest of the stuff we ate this week.

Southern Fried Chicken, Corn, Tomato, and Avocado Salad. This dinner was my favorite. I made that corn salad over and over again last summer, but kind of burned out on it and hadn’t made it again this year. It is really so wonderful. I spooned some of the fat I fried the chicken in into a cast iron pan and tossed in the kernels I cut off of four ears of corn with a generous pinch of salt. I cooked that until it was sweet and bright yellow and then let it cool down before tossing it with halved sungold tomatoes, cubed avocado, basil, the juice of a lemon, and more salt and pepper. My favorite fried chicken is from The New Best Recipe Cookbook, and it has the best crust ever, because you double dredge it in flour plus a baking soda-buttermilk mixture that gets super thick and foamy and makes tons of flour stick to the chicken. But this is a new recipe from my celebrity crush J. Kenji Lopez-Alt, so I had to try it. The crunchy outside is not as good as TNBR’s recipe (which could very well have also been a Lopez-Alt recipe since he worked there before moving to Serious Eats (I love you Kenji! ❤ ❤ ❤ ), but the inside is waaay better- so perfectly flavorful. Plus I like his technique of finishing the chicken in the oven, because mine always ended up a little dark when cooked completely in oil.

Peach and Blueberry Cobbler. This is an adaptation of Thomas Keller’s blueberry cobbler in Ad Hoc, which is all blueberry and calls for eight cups(!) of the fruit. I’m sure it’s great, but my god man, that’s like $20 worth of blueberries and I just cannot. I used peaches plus one pint of blueberries. The cakey stuff on top is ok but not amazing. You sprinkle cinnamon sugar on top which makes it taste like coffee cake. I think I prefer the biscuit-style cobblers.

Tempura Vegetables, Cilantro Cardamom Sauce, Sparkling Limeade. Growing up, my family would occasionally go out for a fancy dinner at Shogun, a Japanese place that’s still going strong in far south Austin. I loved eating there because we always sat in a little room with paper walls, and you got to take off your shoes and eat at a table on the floor, and what could be more fun? My sister and I always ate vegetable tempura with white rice and I still love it. When I saw a kabocha squash at the market I knew I had to tempura it. This is Ottolenghi’s recipe, and it’s great and adaptable to whatever vegetables you have on hand. I had somehow gone through a whole box of cornstarch (how does that happen? what do I use cornstarch for?) and had to omit it and the stuff came out great anyway, though I did have to add quite a bit more sparkling water to get the batter to a nice thin consistency. What I really love about this recipe is the dipping sauce- instead of the traditional salty brown soy saucy sort, this is bright and tart with tons of cilantro and lime juice and zest. It’s perfect with the fried vegetables. I had a few splashes of sparkling water left over so I made Henry and George bubbly limeade drinks.

Roasted Kabocha Squash, Lentils, Tahini-Tangerine Sauce. I only used half of the kabocha squash in the tempura dinner, so I searched my pinterest dinner board for ideas for what to do with the other half and came across the linked recipe. I subbed cooked French lentils for the rice, because that’s what I had and I thought it was delightful. The squash is roasted in coconut oil with little flecks of minced garlic that get deliciously crunchy in the oven. The tahini sauce is gorgeous with it. Click on the link to see a really lovely picture of this dish that will do more to convince you to make it than my ramblings ever could.

Chard Yogurt Dip, Chard Stalk Hummus, Cream Cheese with Pepper Jelly, Hard Boiled Eggs, Pita Chips. I’ve blogged about that yogurt dip before- I love it. But a new recipe for chard stalk hummus went up on food52 recently and I thought that  those two things together would be real nose-to-tail cooking, so to speak, and use up every bit of the chard- the leaves in the yogurt dip, the stalks in the hummus. I love shit like that. Problem is nobody loved the chard stalk hummus. It is indeed hummus-like, but mine turned out sort of thin and watery tasting, which makes sense because you boil the chard stems for 20 minutes. Maybe I shouldn’t have let them go as long. I loved the idea in theory but don’t think I’ll be trying it again. Maybe I’ll just serve the chard dip with pickled or grilled chard stalks instead as another means to get that zero-waste boner. You’re welcome for that.

The habanero apricot pepper jelly is just the tops. I linked to the recipe on Mrs. Wheelbarrow’s blog, but far prefer her revised recipe for the same stuff in her new cookbook. The new recipe is way less work, with way smaller quantities of expensive ingredients (local honey, specifically) and just as delicious. I had tried to make a batch of this stuff earlier this summer, and overcooked it so badly that it turned to solid rock in the jars and smelled vaguely of charred onions. It’s the saddest when you mess something like that up- so much work mincing peppers (and habaneros too that require such careful handling lest you inadvertantly nurse your baby almost-two-year-old and get the pepper oil on your ever-widening areola), carefully monitoring the jelly, testing it, sterilizing jars, waiting an hour to get your giant canning pot to come to a boil, only to have to throw it out and start all over. And you don’t even get to just throw it out! You have to save the jars, which means soaking your rock hard jelly in four changes of hot water. Actually Andy did that part because he’s dreamy, but still. It’s a sad loss. Anyway, I’m thrilled that this batch turned out, and it did so because I completely ignored my candy thermometer, which I’m pretty sure is broken. Ooph, that was a lot about pepper jelly. And areolas.

Grilled Vegetable Pizzas. I under-sauced and under-cooked these pizzas, but even in their slightly doughy state they were so great. There are two recipes embedded in those links- the first is for my friend Abbie’s “marinated garden”, which is grilled garden vegetables layered in a jar with oil and vinegar. She made grilled pizzas for a food52 party 5ish years ago (?!) with these vegetables on top, and I still remember how fantastic they were. It was also the meal that convinced me that eggplant doesn’t have to taste like a watery sponge. Every year I make vegetable pizzas in an attempt to recreate some of that Abbie magic, and they’re always delicious but don’t quite live up to my memory of hers. This is Roberta’s pizza dough, brushed with oil and grilled less than it should have been, then topped with pureed cherry tomato sauce, mozzarella, and the grilled vegetables. The second link is a good overview of how to grill pizza, if you haven’t done it before.

Next week: mini eggplant, corn dogs, potato and poblano tacos, and lots of fig stuff assuming this allergic reaction works itself out Until next time!