So even though the blog was on hiatus for over a month (a month ?!?), I was still hobbling around the kitchen. Sourcing ingredients (shopping) is still a challenge — I just don’t have it in me to walk up and down every aisle in the store, or to visit multiple stores in a day (I have to pace myself). The CGP has done most of the marketing, but I’ve been trying to keep it pretty basic for his sake. But there was ONE thing that kept me from regularly ordering take-out or subsisting on Pop-Tarts: Fresh produce every Wednesday from Backyard Produce. I talked about this several months ago in a previous post, and it really did come in handy. It’s all familiar produce — things like kale and summer squash that are always welcome in our house. Knowing a few days ahead of time what was coming helped me plan upcoming meals and direct the CGP’s unsupervised trips to the grocer.

It also let him help out in a major way by cooking entire meals on the grill. Yes, grilling the meat is a no-brainer. But we made an effort to cook ALL the sides on there as well. I would do the prep work inside and just hand it all over to him for execution. We put diced new potatoes with a little olive oil, salt, pepper, and rosemary in a foil packet and cooked it alongside the meat. We did something similar with beets (no rosemary). Try eggplant, thinly sliced length-wise (I use a mandoline at 1/4″ or 5/16″) and brushed with olive oil. Corn in the husk. Baby tapas peppers on a rosemary skewer. Zucchini sliced length-wise into quarters (less likely to fall into the fire!).

So, a friend-of-a-friend is an established chef and cookbook author (as well as a member of Les Dames d’Escoffier). I had the honor of testing five recipes for her upcoming cookbook. So there were a couple of weekends in there that I was working on those. This cookbook will be geared to a specific dietary/health concern, so my testing was very analytical. I had to weigh my vegetables beforehand (just how much DOES a medium zucchini weigh?) as well as measure volumes (cups/tablespoons) of the finished product, so they can do nutritional analyses and describe serving/portion sizes. It was a blast and a very different style of cooking for me, because I had to follow the recipes to a “T”. I’ll keep you posted when the cookbook comes out — for now — I have to keep it all Top Secret :).

I also managed to put up a couple more small batches of jam. The blueberries and blackberries are really awesome this year. Shout-out to Twin Springs Fruit Farm and Westmoreland Berry Farm for my berries!