Summertime Soul, Volume 1

I don't know what I am going to do when summer is over. Frequent, easy, and rewarding access to my neighborhood Greenmarket has completely spoiled me. No longer do I discuss foods in combination with each other("meals" if you will), but rather as entirely independent beings with no need nor desire to maneuver around one another within a single dish.

Whole, fresh heirloom tomatoes straight from the vine. Hunks of unblemished, ripe, yellow mango. Avocado scraped directly from the shell. Peaches, apples, and plums. Eggplants! Does this all sound familiar? It should! If not creative, it is certainly satisfying.

In an effort to recapture the spirit of cooking ambitions past, I recently took all of these things fresh from the Farmer's Market, slapped them together between two pieces of bread, and called it a 'sandwich'. I know that it's borderline ridiculous to post this as a "recipe", but the gooey, toothy mess of delicious that it produced was too good not to share. So, without further ado, let me infringe on your conscious with the Eggplant-Avocado Sandwich.



Eggplant-Avocado Sandwich

You Will Need:
1/2 avocado
Hummus
Eggplant
Tomato
Mustard
1 tbs. olive oil
Salt+Pepper to taste

(That's IT!)

To Make:

Pre-heat your oven to 350 degrees. Slice the eggplant, brush it with olive oil, and arrange it in a baking dish. Pop it in the oven. Smear your bread with hearty portions of hummus and mustard. Add wedges of avocado and tomato to that, contributing a dash of salt and pepper just for fun. After the eggplant has been baked soft, remove it from the oven and let it cool for a second. Then layer it on top of the avocado and tomato, and smash everything together immediately. With any luck, the eggplant will still be warm when you start to eat.





(If applicable, lay in sunny park during consumption.)

Spoiled rotten, I tells ya!

Roofies

It was a perfect summer day, so Siri (of Ringo, Have A Banana) and I celebrated it on my roof by making salads and drinking an entire bottle of wine to ourselves. Afterward, we were determined to watch the Royal Tenenbaums for some reason...I can't really quite remember why, though. Either way, the dream remains unrealized and we've now retired to the couch to eat ice cream and watch Seinfield. Ain't nothing wrong with second-bests. It was a lovely evening.

Sum-Sum-Sum I Sum(mer)- I Let Go

I'm not normally a big maker of salads. Big time lover of them, yes, but not a big-time maker. Although I've always silently acknowledged this fact about myself, I've done little to try and understand it. See also: any other single characteristic I've ever exhibited in my entire life. Woe is me, though, the onset of my first humidity-happy, East Coast summer has been very convincing in favor of salads. The idea of anything but the lightest and coolest of cuisines is difficult to stomach--waka waka waka.

Salads are excellent dumping grounds for leftovers, cravings, and all kinds of seasonal goodies. Anything that happens to strike my fancy at the grocery store can easily be negotiated into a salad by weeks end, a quality that I'm particularly fond of in a dish due to my bad habit of wandering into corner stores and emerging hours later the proud parent of 8 pounds of strange vegetables. Also, keeping myself in supply of fresh spinach and mesclun mix is as easy as 1-2-walk to the corner store and buy a container for only two dollars-3. The rest is a revolving door of ingredients and fly-by-night fancies. This tempeh and avocado concoction was dreamt up as I scavenged my recently cleaned (i.e. everything thrown away) fridge for a satisfying lunch. It's definitely light, but full of good proteins and veggies for a filling and utterly delightful dish.

You Will Need:
8 oz. tempeh
1/4 an avocado
1/2 med. sized tomato, diced
1/4 cup chickpeas
1/2 cup sliced carrots
Handful of sliced almonds.
Spinach
A few tbls. of vinegar

To Make:

Tempeh preparation takes longest, so best to do it first. Dice up the tempeh into 3/4 inch cubes and lay them out on a baking sheet. No oil or prep is necessary. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees (or somewhere in the vicinity), and slide the baking sheet in. Check in on them periodically, turning to make sure all sides turn golden. Once they are crispy and brownish, they're ready to go.
Rinse your spinach and toss it with the chickpeas, diced tomato, carrots, and almonds. Place this part in a bowl and lay some avocado slices over it. When the tempeh is done, throw that on top and drizzle vinegar to taste over the whole she-bang. I say this every time but: delicious!

Enjoy Every Sandwich!

I am partial to a good tuna sandwich. But sucks to my as-mar, my definition of good tuna never seems to coincide with the vision of mayonnaise and limp meat that makes up deli-counter tuna. If I want a good tuna sandwich, I gotta make it myself. I will, too! In the morning/before work/in my underwear...my favored method, as has been previously discussed. To make your own version of the beast pictured at left, I have included the recipe below as exactly as I can recall it from its spontaneous concoction in my mid-morning kitchen. Of course, if you're also of the crowd that dislikes mayo-drenched tuna, this recipe is applicable to all kinds of exhilarating situations!

You Will Need:
1/2 can of tuna
2 Slices Rye Bread
Handful of Pea Shoots, coarsely chopped
A Few Slices Tomato
A Few Slices Onion
A Few Slices Cucumber
Lemon Juice, Black Pepper, Ginger Powder (to taste)
1 tbsp. olive oil
1 tbsp. mustard

To Make:

Mix the tuna and the tbsp of olive oil in a small bowl, well enough so that the tuna is coated and cohesive. Then mix in a dash of lemon juice, black pepper, and ginger powder.Only the faintest touch of the ginger is necessary, mind you. It's mostly the lemon juice and black pepper that will make good company for the tuna taste. Stir everything up nice, then smash it down onto one slice of mustard-slathered rye bread. Pile your tomato, cucumber, and onion on top of the meat. Then comes the finishing touch: a pile of chopped pea shoots. Smash the other piece of rye bread down over the whole she-bang and immediately transfer the finished product to some kind of holding cell (plastic lunch bag, tin foil--whatever is your preferred method of food transportation). Viola! LUNCH!