Bounty from the garden

Bush beans. I love the purple striations they get when they are still growing.

Walla Walla food adventures!

Burgers w/ green bean and feta roasted potatoes

Truffles. The one in the foreground is shiso sesame.

Farmer's Market is open!

sugar snaps

little tiny strawberries

I'm excited that it's finally Farmer's Market season! Pictured are the sugar snap peas and the strawberries I picked up from the Tuesday evening market. I feel lucky to live in a city that has not one, but four farmer's markets during the summer. That means four times a week that I can go to an outdoor stand and get fruit and veggies picked fresh that day.

The snap peas above were cooked with shrimp in a ginger-soy stirfry over somen noodles. It was okay, but nothing too exciting. The peas were definitely the stars. I prepared the rest of the snaps with a lemon-chive dressing. It is marinating in the fridge as we speak, we'll see how it turns out!

For some reason I have a hard time eating strawberries whole - if I leave them that way they tend to go bad. So I quartered the strawberries and tossed them with blueberries. Yum. That's my favorite summer fruit salad.

More food I made

salted brown butter crispy squares (from Smitten Kitchen)

dill popovers

beef stroganoff with green beans (my first attempt at cooking with mushrooms)

chipotle chicken salad with mango-papaya salsa

December in Food

A quick dinner using leftover stuffing breadcrumbs: cornbreaded chicken and steamed broccoli. Simple, healthy, and very good.

It doesn't look like much, but it's beouf bourgingon (or however you spell it) from Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Time-consuming to make, but worth the effort. This was Christmas dinner.

I know I didn't make this, but I have to pay a little homage to the best Friday-night food combo: cheap beer, pretzels, and yellow mustard. Best when paired with bowling. How I miss bowling.

Another thing I didn't make, and technically I ate it on January 1st, not in December, but this lamb burger I ate at Louisa's Bakery and Cafe in Seattle was delicious. It was lamb with a cucumber relish on top. Very tasty.