1. Learned about cooking with tomato leaves. I love the aroma of tomato plants so was pleased to find Harold McGee’s article about cooking with tomato leaves in the New York Times. I can’t wait to try this out for myself. I will use the leaves from my sweet 100 plant, which has a few tomatoes starting to ripen on it.
sweet 100 tomato plant
2. Tasted Tallgrass beef for hamburgers. I thought it was very good. Compared to all-natural ground beef there is not much of a difference. Both were delicious. The grass-fed beef burger from Tallgrass was just as juicy as the corn-fed all-natural, which was a pleasant surprise.
Tallgrass beef: ground chuck
3. Farmed turbot. I was given one whole fish to prepare and taste. It was very delicious. I sauteed a filet and grilled the rest. Grilling brought out the immense amount of natural gelatin within this fish.
whole farmed turbot
crispy grilled turbot
turbot plate
4. “Foraged” and cooked lamb’s quarters from my flower boxes. Was pretty cool to harvest a wild-growing edible weed from my balcony, only steps from the pan in which I cooked it.
lamb's quarters in my flower box
5. Prepared lamb’s tongue (meat) from Mint Creek Farm based on a sweet-and-sour preparation I tasted in Italy.
sweet-and-sour lamb's tongue
6. Butchered a big piece of meat and envisioned all of its possibilities.
big piece of lamb
many possibilities
7. Seeing our pleasant house kitchen featured on Apartmenttherapy.com’s The Kitchn. We’ve put a lot of work into our “lab” and are so proud to be able to share it and see it in such a flattering light.
our pleasant house kitchen
The Kitchn shoot menu
images by: evan thomas of studio thomas
8. Watching an online friend from the moderninmn blog build her own brick oven.
Splatgirl's brick oven project
9. Chokeberries! It’s been a few weeks since I had my last juneberry of the season. But the sight of ripening chokeberries has me excited for some late summer foraging.
chokeberries
10. “Make no little plans…” Daniel Burnham
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