The Calendar Says July but the Weather Says March

It's July 1. We're definitely, officially, 100%, smack-dab in the middle of summer. And yet, today, in Seattle? 62 degrees. That was the high. The low was 54.

And so on this summer day, I had polenta and sausage, which can be found on the List of Things to Eat When It's Frozen Outside. It was wonderful and I loved it. In concession to the calendar, I did put mizuna, fresh tomatoes and avocados on top. I heart avocados lately. Mizuna belongs in the "green stuff" family, if you're not familiar with it. It's a little spicy like arugula, though it's technically in the mustard / cabbage family.

Polenta intimidated me for a good long while. It seemed like it was hard work and there was all that stirring.

If a recipe includes the words "stir constantly," odds are good that I'll skip it. Particularly if they're followed by the words "for 30-40 minutes." If I'm stuck to the stove for that long, there damn well better be chocolate involved. Fortunately, Alton Brown rescued me with a baked polenta. It does still require a whisk, but not 30 minutes of constant whisking, thankfully. I wholeheartedly recommend this recipe. I've never had polenta turn out with clumps, or burnt to the bottom, or icky in any way. It's always been delicious.

Once the polenta has been cheese-ified, stack on the sausage.

Tomatoes, salt, and pepper.

Delicious, happy mizuna and avocado.

I liked the difference in texture from the polenta and sausage and mizuna. The mizuna also made it a little more interesting.

Polenta and Sausage
1 recipe polenta
1 T olive oil
6 oz beer
4 sausages
1/2 c diced tomato
1/4 c diced avocado
1/4 c chopped mizuna
1/4 t salt
1/4 t pepper

1. Heat the olive oil in a sauce pan over medium heat. Add the sausages and the beer. The beer should just shy of halfway up the sides of the sausages. Cook over medium heat for 20-25 minutes, turning them periodically.
2. Slice the sausage into 1/2 inch pieces.
3. Layer the polenta, the sausage, the tomato, the mizuna, salt and pepper, and top with avocado. Serve.

Quinoa and Squash

I'm crap at math, so even though it's just me this week, I'm still shopping and cooking like there's two of us here. Since my shopping week started Saturday morning, I'm knee-deep in leftovers already and it's only Monday. I had roasted squash and pork roast from the weekend, so I added bacon, quinoa and onions and called it dinner.

It doesn't look like much, but onions sauteing in bacon made the house smell amazing. When I added the squash, everything got nuttier and richer. Please excuse the dark, grainy photos - I had to use the backup camera.


It may look a little plain and monochromatic, but this was serious comfort food and can easily be amended to make use of whatever leftovers you may have lurking in your fridge.

Quinoa with Squash
The beauty of it all is that since I was using leftovers, this came together in about 15 minutes.
1/2 c chopped onions
2 strips bacon, chopped
1 t salt
1 t pepper
3/4 c quinoa
1 1/2 c water
1 c pork, chopped
3/4 c roasted squash
1 small tomato, roughly chopped
1/2 avocado, chopped (optional)

1. Bring the water to a boil, then add the quinoa. Reduce the heat to medium-low and cook the quinoa for 15 minutes.
   
2. Put the chopped bacon into a saute pan and render until crisp. Drain all but 1 teaspoon of the fat. Add the onions and saute until translucent. Add the squash and allow it to get brown and slightly caramelized in places, 3-5 minutes.
   
3. Add the pork and tomato and stir. Cook 5 minutes, until heated through.
   
4. Serve with chopped avocado on top.

Wednesday Night Cookies

It's cookie time again in our house. Cookie time is that random day - usually a weekday - where the rhythmic scooping, measuring, and pouring rights all the wrongs of the day and yields (hopefully) delicious cookies.

Inspired by one of the featured recipes in the Culinate Newsletter, but stymied by a lack of rolled oats, I started looking around. I wanted to replicate a cookie from eons ago. Crisp and crunchy, with soft chewiness from the chocolate chips and slightly-sweet-because-they're-just-a-bit-burnt raisins, I try now and again to recreate it.

Today's attempt started off as the infamous Cup of Everything cookies, so called because - yay for creative naming! - most of the ingredients are measured in cups. Somewhere along the way, they turned into something else, something soft and light and chewy and crunchy. It may not quite be the cookie I remember so fondly, but it's awfully close.

Everything Cookies
These cookies are rich and on the sweet side. I'm not a huge milk and cookies fan, but there was something about these that made milk sound like the best idea ever (probably all the sugar). This recipe makes 4-5 dozen, depending on how big you make the cookies.

1 c (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1 c brown sugar
1 c sugar
3 eggs
1 c peanut butter
1 c. flour
1 c. chocolate chips
1/2 c white chocolate chips
1 T. baking soda
3/4 C. rolled oats
3/4 c coconut
1 c. dried cranberries
3/4 c. pecans, roughly chopped

1. Cream the butter and both sugars until creamy. Add peanut butter and mix to combine.
2. Add the eggs and mix well.
3. Add the flour and baking soda and combine.
4. Stir in the chocolate chips, white chocolate chips, coconut, oats, cranberries, pecans and mix thoroughly.

Bake at 350 for 15-17 minutes, until the edges are golden brown and the tops look done.