Yes- I am fully aware that it is summer and soup is not so much a summer thing. I am also aware of the big salmonella scare over most of the veggies I use in this recipe. No I don’t care.

Start with a good, strong chicken stock. I make my own fortified stock using a boxed stock as a starter and a whole chicken carcass (really easy if you had one of those roasted deli chickens the night before)

It was about a zillion degrees here today (which means 80s for you folks not in the damp Northwest) and I have about as much enthusiasm for hot food as I do for hope and change.
So I recreated a salad from a local grocery store deli. Weird, I know. But it’s a 24 hour grocery store right across from one of my favorite bars. I have eaten this salad piss ass drunk sitting on a concrete step at 2 am.

It’s really 2 salads stacked together. The first a simple romaine, tomato cuke blend. That goes on the bottom of your plate. Then a simple tuna salad (tuna, mayo, some diced red onions, a little lemon juice and spices. I use garlic salt, black pepper, paprika and dill) mixed with the large shell shaped pasta.

The real key is the vinegarette. I know it seems like overkill, what with the mayo-ee goodness of tuna and all, but trust me. It’s the vinegarette that makes this awesome. You end up with perfect bites of tangy crunchy creamy goodness.

I am a master of the vinegarette.

The trick is this. You need good vinegar (I use balsalmic or raspberry for any salad with fruit in it, red wine for a straight up veggie like this one) good olive oil for body, Then you need something to emulsify them (dijon mustard or honey workd

That giant pork roast is still alive and kicking, though I think for just one more day. By the time payday rolls around next week I think the kid and I will be so sick of pork products that we may even eschew bacon for a while (Not Bacon!!!!).

When I was in high school I learned a super easy recipe for fried rice that I have modified over the years so that it can be made with damn near anything that is left floating in the fridge (including bacon!). The trick, for the meat eaters anyways, is to cook everything in some kind of meat fat if you can. Bacon grease works very well. I used fat from the pork roast.

First, start the rice. Basic white rice is fine. I throw in a tablespoon of this Croatian soup starter that I have called Vegeta, but you can substitute some chicken of beef bullion (or leave it plain) if you like. While the rice is simmering you cook everything else.

So I took some of that congealed jelly/fat stuff that’s coating the bottom of the roast pan and melted it in my giant skillet/wok. Mix with a little regular vegetable oil (olive oil is too strongly flavored) to keep from burning. Then add your chopped veggies. Carrots (sliced on the diagonal so that there is more surface area getting heated and they cook fast)go first cause they are hardest. Then white onion sliced into long thin strips and some celery. You can also throw in whatever other veggies may be near death in the fridge, even thin strips of cabbage. Just remember that the veggies go in the pan in order of hardness so that nothing gets over cooked. Lastly I added some shredded bits of the pork roast and a few dashes of soy sauce. Then I turned the pan to low while waiting for the rice to finish.

If you have an egg or two, now is a good time to give it a quick scramble. If you have the space in your pan- just push all the veggies and meat to the side and scramble the eggs in the middle. If not, use a separate pan and add back into the veggies when they are cooked. Or skip the eggs if you’re out of them or don’t like them (we were out).

Once the rice is done, add a little extra fat to the meat and veggies, turn the heat up and dump the rice into the mix. Stir and heat till the rice gets that lovely brownish fried color, adding a bit more soy sauce to help the process. The viola, poverty fried rice. You can garnish with some chopped scallions if you like.

(When I learned to make this in high school it was with bacon and scallions and Chinese 5 spice. I don’t like the combo of 5 spice with savory dishes, so I changed it. But if you want to try something a bit different, give it a go)

ETA: Yes, you could even put cauliflower in this if you are an evil evil bastard.

So you know how food prices are skyrocketing because of gas prices? You know about those midwestern floods that have demolished huge swaths of farmland. You know that the combo of those two things is going to make trips to the grocery store a luxury for many of us?

I am probably going to have to start pulling out cheaper and cheaper recipes. Dear gawd please spare me from a steady diet of ramen noodles. I don’t like them.

The other day I found a giant (5 lbs) pork roast with just a wee bone in it for 10 bucks. It’s enough meat for 3 or 4 meals.

I was trying to figure out how to season it and first made a lemony marinade. But we were out of honey to thicken it up. So I used molasses and some other seasonings. Before I wasted 10 pounds of meat, I took a good sniff of the marinade. It was bad. Really really bad. Like I couldn’t believe a combination of things that were not spoiled or rancid could smell that bad. So I dumped it down the drain and went simple.

I salted and peppered the roast generously. Then I scraped out the remains of a jar of dijon mustard, mixed it with a generous helping of minced garlic, and gave the roast a meat massage with it. I threw it in the crock pot on low overnight and today we have a mountain of the most tender, delicious pork ever. It literally melts in your mouth.

I’ve decided to make lemony roasted potatoes to cure the citrus craving I’m having. I think I’m going to do a modified Lebanese style potato, with lemon juice, olive oil, and lots of parsley. If you have never smelled the awesome that is lemon parsley and olive oil, they you are truly missing one of the best scent combos ever.

And maybe glazed carrots using the molasses. Or not. Maybe just a shredded carrot salad with some raspberry vinegar for kick.

(Why yes this is a crappy cell phone pic of soup. Trust that it tastes much better than this pic looks)

This sunny, yummy Greek soup is also super easy to make when you have next to nothing in the fridge. And it really does taste like a mouth full of sunshine and happy.

As usual- I took someone else’s recipe and adapted it.

6 eggs
8 cups of chicken stock ( I used chicken bullion and it worked fine, really)
1.5 cups white rice
Juice of 6 lemons (I had a bottle of lemon juice in my fridge- I prolly used about 1.5 cups cause we really like lemon flavor)
Dill

In soup pot, bring stock to boil
add rice
In a medium bowl, thoroughly mix eggs
to eggs add lemon juice slowly

turn soup down to low

Temper the egg mixture with hot broth so that eggs will not curdle when you add them to soup by adding small amounts of hot soup to eggs and mixing until the egg mix is warm in the bowl

Add eggs to soup. Cook for about 20 minutes or until rice is done, stirring regularly.

Garnish with dill

I wish I had taken pictures of these- but we ate them too fast.

After wandering around one of the moving farmers markets (that happened to be on our street twice a week from 6am to 2:30p,) Ruth and I went a wee bit produce and cheese crazy. We bought these giant green onions that were perfectly mild and lovely, the best gouda ever, mushrooms, chervil, a bunch of thyme so fresh it still had dirt clods on the end, dill (I LOVE DILL!) olives and peppers, and so much more.

Ruth has all sorts of weird food allergies (no wheat, nothing that ever came from or touched a cow- so no beef, butter, yogurt, or milk, most beans except soy, and a few other randoms veggies like potatoes and bell peppers) so having a kitchen was a huge blessing in making sure she was fed all week and not sick ( a big problem when she travels and the reason I found an apartment to begin with). One of the things I love about my friendship with Ruth is that cooking for her is like an iron chef challenge. She is the reason for the all vegan but the turkey Thanksgivings (she can eat turkey)

After our little farmers market trip I made breaded veal with spring veggie rice pilaf. I also made a couple of lazy ass frittatas- one made with coppa, a thin sliced round shaped bacon and the other with smoked salmon. The recipes for both are the same, though the awesomeness of fritattas means that you take eggs, whatever cheese you have handy, and whatever veggies are dying in your fridge and have an awesome breakfast.

So- Smoked Salmon or Coppa Frittatas:

Pre-heat oven to 375.
Grease a 7 x 9 inch baking pan (I used french butter- the best butter in the world for the bacon one and veggie oil for the salmon cause Ruth can’t do butter)

Lay salmon or bacon (or ham or prosciutto) in bottom of the pan in strips. Pull some of the strips up the side so that little bitts will stick out of the top of the egg mix and get all crispy.

Mix 7 eggs with enough water or milk to loosen eggs up a bit, like a quarter cup. French eggs come from super happy, healthy chickens so the yolks are bright orange and they are thick as hell when whisking. Yuo will develop massive arms whipping french eggs. Whisk until little bubbles form at the sides of the bowl.

Grate in a generous about of cheese. For the salmon I used a mild sheep manchego and for the coppa I used gouda. I’ve also had greek style frittatas with good feta (throw the feta in in largish chunks)

Add whatever chopped veggies and fresh herbs that you like. We used chervil (which has a mild anise scent) dill and thyme. Also a few chopped mushrooms and some of those giant green onions. Leeks would work almost as well as the french green onions, but you could use shallots or a yellow onions too. Or even a red onion if you want the color. You could also throw in a handful of spinach and make a cheaters quiche lorraine or some flat leaf parsley. Some zucchini or yellow squash is also lovely. Or some bell pepper strips.

Generously salt and pepper egg and veggie mix. Pout into baking dish and bake until eggs are firm and set (our oven was weird and slow in france, what should have taken 10 minutes took 20) so check it regularly by pulling out pan and seeing if the eggs shake. When they don’t shake anymore and the middle is firm it’s done.

That’s it. Easier than omelettes cause there is no flipping and you only have to make one for a crowd of peeps.

If you’ve ever lived in Florida, you know the awesomeness that is a Cuban sammy, or Cubano. It’s simple and perfect and awesome.

Whenever I talk about them to people here in the drizzly cold Northwest, they want to know where to get them. Since you can’t get them here (Seattle has exactly one Cuban restaurant that is sooooo far out of the way that it would take 3 buses and more fortitude than I have) I have to tell them the truth. You can’t get them here, but you can bribe me to make you one.

So a normal cubano is pork, ham, cheese and pickles on a specially grilled roll with mustard. But as you peeps know- I am lazy. Grilling a roll in a special press is too much for me and the only way I’m getting pork sliced for sammies is if I have a leftover pork roast. So I half-ass it, and the Kid says they are The! Best! Sammies! Ever! They are basically extra-awesome grilled ham and cheese.

I start with sourdough bread cause it does nice things in a frying pan. On both pieces of bread, I spread a thin layer of mayo and good mustard (I’m not from the south, so I have a minimum of 3 kinds of mustard in my fridge at all times, I like spicy brown for sammies).

Now the stacking is important. On the bottom do a relatively thin layer of cheese. I like sharp cheddar. Then super thinly sliced ham (pastrami works well too). Then a layer of thinly sliced kosher pickles.

Melt some butter in a hot frying pan and throw the sammy in with the cheese side down. Cook until just golden brown and flip. Do the same for the other side. If your cheese was sliced thin enough, this should be all you need to melt it.

The heat will make the mayo-mustard combo a bit dribbley. So enjoy with a napkin very close by.