This is one is for you, Lee Langill.
Hope the rest of you like this too, and here's a word of explanation: On my Twitter feed (amytimberlake) and on Facebook I post photos of my purchases from Green City Market in Chicago every Wednesday and Saturday. I go shopping at my farmers market twice a week.
My friend Lee said: What do you make with all that food? Can you give us a recipe?
That's a great idea! If it were anybody else. The truth is I eat like a peasant. And maybe I'm giving peasants a bad name -- I'm sure there are peasants that can really cook a moose (antlers and all), but truth is I like simple food. Fresh food tastes great. Maybe I secretly love it because I don't have to do that much to it. Instead, I spend most of my cooking time shopping (which means a nice long walk to the farmers market) and not cooking.
(By this, I do not mean baking, or canning -- both of which take more time and both of which are apparently a de-stressor for me. A good muffin makes me feel good.)
And one more, last aside: I grew up hating vegetables. I swear it. My mom says the only things I ate growing up were hamburgers, pizza, and corn on the cob. I still eat all three. I just like other stuff too.
Anyway, these days I repeat the same recipes over and over and over. I either bake, boil, steam, scramble or pile. I'm particularly good at piling -- piling on pizzas, piling on salads, piling on pasta. If you can't find much lettuce in a salad made by me, it's because I had more of something else in the fridge.
Food Whispering
Because I'm lazy (and yes, this is true) I let the food tell me which needs to be eaten first. Some things don't taste as good after the first day. (Do they get grumpy? Seems like it: ignore me and I'll go blah on you.) As a rule, I don't argue with my food. I eat the demanding ones first. For instance, corn on the cob is best the first day. Also, peas, green beans and cauliflower. Raspberries have a habit of mouldering after a few days, so might as well start in on those. And right now, some of the plums last only minutes. Get them home and pop them in your mouth immediately.
Likewise, peaches should sit a couple of days on the counter before being eaten (and a soft spot only indicates that today is the day -- not that it's bad. Moldy is bad. Soft is YUM.). Greens can stay fresh for weeks in the fridge in an air-tight container.
This week's "cooking:"
So out of Wednesday's stash above? First thing I did, was this:
Washed the carrots, put them in water and put them in the fridge. (I also like to make things that I can snack on, can be part of a meal, or can be served multiple times. This is a reason I don't make pancakes much -- though Phil would like that.)
Then Phil made his lunch, which looked like this:
Phil's lunch was almost all from the farmers market: Bottom layer contained fresh basil (from our garden), heirloom tomatoes, carrots, and dilly beans (pickled green beans). Top layer held elk meat sticks (boys love them), fresh mozarrella cheese, a hard boiled egg. He also wrapped some bread (rye bread made by me) and a muffin (also made by me).
My lunch that day looked like this:
That's a grilled cheese sandwich with a heirloom tomato, 3 dilly beans and a couple of carrots. (I did add some garlic scape pesto to the inside of that sandwich -- and burned it a little on the bottom -- but you can see that I'm not doing anything too fancy, right?)
Then Phil comes home for dinner on Wednesday, and we have a feast. We call it our farmers market meal, and usually we have this for lunch. But this week he was away, so I had my little grilled cheese, sadly whiling away the hours until:
Full disclosure: This wasn't this week's meal, but my photo looked so palid and unappetizing that I decided to use this one. Food photos should make you want to eat, not remind you of things that churn in composters. And we didn't have burgers this week. We had beans and corn on the cob. But we did have plums, and ate a bunch of bell peppers too. I chopped them up and piled them on a plate. Piling is the key to all eating.
As for cooking: It's just boiling the corn (5 minutes) and slicing a few things up. I steamed the beans and ate them with my fingers. (I'm sorry grandmother, but I hate wrangling beans with forks. I am at home -- I will eat as I please.)
Thursday breakfast?
Yogurt used to be from a vendor at the market. Now they just sell at Whole Foods. Granola is something I make (about every week and a half). I don't like the stuff at the grocery store and the fresh stuff is amazing. I found the recipe in a Moosewood cookbook. I keep my granola on the counter in this:
(There's a splatter on the wall behind that container -- nice. And now that splatter is on the web too. Well, there are no secrets here. Not anymore...)
Finally, for lunch I did a tiny bit of cooking. I made Phil and I big salad, and oven baked some potatoes (a mix of purple, red, all sorts), torpedo onions (red) and patty pan squash.
Oven baking is super easy and I'm sure you know how to do it, Lee. But I'm writing it down anyway. You chop up the stuff you want to bake. Toss it into a bowl. Pour on a slug of olive oil (or other oil). 'Slug' is a cooking term all respectable chef's use. Yes they do! Pour in more spices than you think is prudent. (Except in the case of cayenne -- go easy on the cayenne.) Grind in some fresh pepper. Toss with spoon. Spread out on a baking tray. Cook at 450 degrees for 23 minutes exactly. (Yes, I use 23 minutes. And yes, in that hot an oven. I'm sure it would be better if you did it slowly. But I don't. It works fine for me. But try cooking it at a lower temperature for a longer period of time. It'll probably be better and that's what everyone else will tell you to do.
Here are Thursday lunch photos:
And the salad (the eagle-eyed among you will note the 'piling' technique mentioned earlier):
Whew! That's it. It's only been 2 days and we've eaten a good chunk of our produce. Promise. If you don't believe me, you can come over here and check.
And if you want to know all the secret habits of vegetables, fruits and mushrooms, I recommend these books: Elizabeth Schneider, Vegetables from Amaranth to Zucchini, and Larousse Gastronomique: The World's Greatest Culinary Encylopedia. (Love that title -- full of humility.)
These books will tell you how to prepare a vegetable in its most basic way. That way you can buy ANYTHING you want from the farmer's market and you'll know what to do with it. Then you taste it, and it'll probably remind you of something that you like, and next time you make that thing you like, you add the new vegetable or fruit or whatever that zombie root you got from the farmers market. This is how -- for instance -- I found out that sauted kale is amazing on burgers -- olive oil, a little fresh ground pepper... I never did like cold, slippery lettuce on top of my burgers.
Maybe Mom is right -- all my cooking goes back to hamburgers, pizza and corn on the cob.
Any questions?
Now that I've spilled the beans (so to speak), what did you eat this week, Lee? (And give me another writing assignment -- this one was fun...)
Amy
March 17, 2012 
Hancock Building puts on a green stripe for St. Patty's Day
Here's a photo of what I got from the Green City Market today. It's going strong this year. Every Saturday! Which means you can get the best greens EVER all winter long. With the stuff I canned and froze last summer, this is by far our best year of winter eating. Yum! 
