Oh my, Friday, already, with chilly nights, earlier sunsets, furnace coming on in the morning, and winter squash looming in the stores, farm stands, and Farmers' Market. That means one thing: time to clear out my herb pots! To get started with that, while still enjoying our glorious summer produce, for tonight I'll be doing soupe au pistou, the Provencal soup that showcases beautiful summer veggies topped with a vitalizing blob of homemade pesto from my basil plants. I've made mine for years from beloved old cookbooks, but Mark Bittman's soupe au pistou from the New York Times looks like a great online option. Oregano, basil, parsley, and savory from my herb pots will also go in the buttermilk salad dressing I always make from scratch for the side salad (more about that later, if time permits).
For tomorrow, with a sense of urgency in terms of getting more of our summer grilling in (yes, folks, it's still summer until the 23rd), I'm thinking of going decadent with the racks of spare ribs that Sprouts has on sale for just $1.99 a pound. We could healthy it up with diced yams grilled in foil packages, with some ears of Munson's corn on the side, flavored with some of the wonderful olive oil with Tuscan herbs from Alfalfa's, instead of butter. Or we could get a little bit more decadent, enjoying both the corn and our current freshly roasted chiles with creamy stovetop corn with poblano chiles from the New York Times. A little creme fraiche never hurt anyone, right? Or, my favorite Straus European-style nonfat plain yogurt also substitutes well in recipes like this, so long as you take care not to really boil it.
By Sunday, I'll be ready to make my first real capitulation to the impending fall season, turning on the oven to actually roast some chicken. The Rosie organic whole chickens on sale at Sunflower are my inspiration for this, in combination with a recipe I just encountered in the current September issue of Bon Appetit, roast chicken with herb-and-garlic pan drippings. Since roast whole chicken can get a bit on the greasy side, especially following a bbq of ribs for tomorrow, it's also possible that I'll substitute the boneless skinless chicken breasts on sale at Sprouts instead to lighten it up. With the oven running, I'll make the most of it, baking organic russet potatoes, and also some organic acorn squash, which is just $1 a pound at Whole Foods this week.
And that will get us through to the weekday planning.
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Hmmmm....a vitalizing blob.....now there's a juxtaposition I've never heard before. I guess you've coined a new phrase!
ReplyDeleteOh dear, and perhaps incorrectly so. Upon reflection, is a blob two dimensional and a glob three dimensional? So perhaps the strange phrase to be coined is a vitalizing glob? (Retaining the weirdness of the juxtaposition, of course!)
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