Where were we again?

Oh yea, blueberries and impending trip to Door County. And stuff I’ve cooked and not posted.

Looks like I’m just going to have to do another of those posts with lots of pics, and random thoughts that the pictures remind me of. So here goes:

On the last Weds. in July, it was my turn for writing the CSA recipes – I alternate weeks with another writer. We always try to have somewhere between 7 and 9 recipes; a few originals, where you cook and photograph the dish, and others where we search the interwebz for recipes that will use the veggies we’re getting in the week’s box, and link to them. We add a headnote with tips for substitutions, etc. Last year I was pretty good about re-posting the originals to my recipes site; this year I kinda suck at it. Although come to think of it, there are still a few text files of recipes on my computer desktop from last year that have yet to be posted. Anyways, one of my recipes was summertime vegetable curry.

And one of the ones I searched was this Smitten Kitchen Corn Salad with Chile and Lime, that I really kinda want to make now because I found a Penzey’s seasoning, pico de fruta, that I think is like the Tajín called for. Plus there’s good corn at the Farmers Market now.

I also made corn, summer squash, and chorizo tacos, and they were good, but I think this taco pie I made with the leftovers was better.

Also in that pie is what was left of this Korean Cheesy Corn, that was in the New York Times, that I’ve been wanting to make all summer, with fresh corn instead of canned. If you don’t subscribe to the Times like I do, looks like there’s a similar recipe here, that uses fresh corn like I did.

We also had Jerry Garcia’s 80th birthday in there. John & Al’s dad always sends out pictures of of musicians we like on their birthdays (whether they’re dead or alive) and this time I decided to send him one, and beat him by like 7 minutes. I was sitting in a coffee place on our last morning in Door County.

And oh yea, Door County.

We got there on Saturday afternoon, and had a little time before our 3:00PM check in at the AirBnB, so we went to Door County Brewing in Bailey’s Harbor.

For our first night, we tried to get a reserve at Wickman House, this hipster joint in Ellison Bay in an old farmhouse, but had to waitlist and Resy never texted. The restaurant’s in an old farmhouse, and we went there once before and you feel like you’ve stepped into a summer night in the 19th century, candles flickering, and the food’s really good, farm to table.

So instead we got tickets for a play, Ripcord, by David Lindsay-Abaire, at Peninsula Players, about two bickering old ladies sharing a room in a retirement home. I liked it a lot better than I thought I would. It’s Ripcord because on a dare – and because it’s one of the lady’s family business – they go skydiving.

We thought we could get pizza for dinner before the play – there’s a good pizza place called Wild Tomato, and one of their restaurants is in Fish Creek right outside Peninsula State Park, walking distance from our AirBnB. But they had a two-hour wait. So, we went across the street to the frozen custard place, and had pre-theater-sundaes for dinner.

On Sunday morning, since we only had ice cream for dinner the night before, we got a more substantial breakfast at a newish place upstairs of the Fish Creek grocery – called Shiny Moon Cafe. I think it used to be a wine bar. This picture is looking from the counter where you order towards the front of the building; we had the farthest to the left table you can see on the upper left.

Then we rented bikes and rode around in the park for a couple of hours. We hung out at the beach for awhile and read, which had been my goal for the vacay. We had reservations for a nice dinner at Chives in Bailey’s Harbor, and still had time to kill before we needed to go back and gert cleaned up, so we stopped at our favorite coffee place (Blue Horse) for drinks. Mark waited for the drinks and I went outside to get seats, and fell. They have a wooden platform outside, and I was stepping off that. Someone who worked there (or one of the owners), probably fearing lawsuits, helped me up and brought me a giant bag full of ice. Despite that, my elbow – where I landed – lumped up while we were at Chives, and I asked for more ice to rest it on. It didn’t come down that much while we were at restaurant, but I iced it more when we got back to the AirBnB, and it finally flattened out. Now – a week later – it’s just a bruise, all over the back of my elbow, like this one I got in Chicago back in May.

Monday morning we got up and had cherry pancakes at White Gull, walked up the road to look at the fancy lakeside houses, and packed up our stuff at the AirBnB, to be out by 11:00 as required. We got a last coffee at a different place across the street from Blue Horse, serving Colectivo coffee (I sent Jeff the Jerry pic from there) and drove home.

I don’t remember what we had for dinner when we got back, we did have the big breakfast so might not’ve needed much, except I suspect it was leftover curry, and maybe leftover turmeric chicken. Another CSA recipe, that I made with steamed green beans instead of asparagus – because green beans is what we got in this part of the summer.

And I think that’s gotten all the un-posted foods, except  this Dutch oven-roasted cauliflower with cherry tomatoes. We ate it with pasta with parsley-basil pesto. I kind of made it on spec anticipating cauliflower in a CSA box, but none has appeared as yet.

I mean, there’s still stuff I did not photograph. Like the desserts I made to take to Concerts on the Square – while we were driving home Monday I got email from neighbors who get a table for the season, and I guess they still needed a few people to fill it. The Wednesday concert got rained out, so it was Thursday instead. I made another Smitten Kitchen, brown butter cherry bars, using those sweet cherries from the the back seat of the car, that were very tasty but not very photogenic. They might’ve looked better Wednesday than they did by Thursday – the cherries were so big and dark. Since I had the extra night, I made carrot cake muffins with brown butter cream cheese frosting. The carrot cake was inspired by Yossy Arefi; the brown butter cream cheese frosting, Claire Saffitz.

Last night I tried the zucchini and butter pasta that seems to be popular this summer; I added parsley pesto in lieu of fresh basil.

And today, Sunday again, I made blueberry pancakes and scrambled eggs with tomato and fried ham and fried new potatoes. I managed to damage myself again – I got my knives sharpened Saturday and was enjoying cutting the tomato with a nice sharp knife and also thinking it was maybe too much tomato for the amount of egg. Until I cut my finger. I jumped and flipped a few chunks of tomato onto the floor, so I guess I decreased the tomato ratio. I bled all over the place too – it was the kind of cut where I had two bandaids & a wad of paper towel wrapped around my finger to stop the bleeding so I could finish cooking. But everything tasted good, anyways. It was a brunch mixing the savoy and sweet and we each had to have two plates.