Summer Eats

This summer has been filled with a good balance of staple recipes and new culinary adventures. This summer I cooked over and open fire for the first time while camping. Sure, all I did was open some cans of vegetables and beans and throw it into my trusty cast iron skillet, but it was a step beyond roasting veggie dogs on a skewer over a campfire. (Which I did my fair share of as well.) I also made sushi for the first time this summer!

plum sake, you cruel mistress.

 Sushi is the perfect summer food. The only cooking involved is steaming the rice, and two nori sheets worth of sushi yields enough to feed 3-4 guests. I kept it simple for my first try, using a filling of carrots, cucumber and avocado. Next time I think I'll try the spicy tempeh filling from Vcon.

check out the steak fries! recipe courtesy of Rachel Ray.

 Tragically, I'm a regular viewer of 30 Minute Meals. Ray Ray has passed some nuggets of culinary knowledge down to me over the years and this is perhaps one of the most useful. 30 minute homemade fries! I don't really like buying prepackaged, frozen fries. They're expensive in comparison to their natural counterpart and you an't control the sodium/oil content.

wannabe 3D steak fry shot.

Scrub your potatoes and the slice them lengthwise in half. Cut each half into 5 strips and parboil the strips for 5 minutes. Preheat your oven to 500 degrees. Place a cooling rack over a backing sheet. Coat your parboiled and drained potato slices in oil, salt, pepper and whatever other seasonings you want. I chose rosemary. Arrange the slice on the cooling rack and bake for 25 minutes. To channel my inner Ina Garten- how easy is that?

gratuitous homemade thousand island dressing shot.

I've probably made these biscuits and gravy over a hundred times. It's such an easy, reliable one. It's the recipe from the Vegan Girl's Guide to Life and I feel no need to use another recipe ever again. The gravy in the recipe is just a plain white gravy, but I added some mushrooms for texture and what not.



















I really need to make more recipes from Appetite for Reduction. Most of the recipes are cheap to make, super easy and super tasty. Plus the meals are light which is quite welcome in the dense Appalachian heat. I made the Every Day Chickpea and Quinoa Salad. I never keep raw cashews in the house and even if I did, Tybrus would surely scarf them before I had the opportunity to cook with them. I used almonds instead and it was still good. My only additional vegetable was grated carrot.

I've been eating more oatmeal lately. Mostly because I've been really broke lately and oatmeal is much cheaper than cereal. But hell, I could use the fiber. My everyday oatmeal is topped with agave, walnuts and cranberry. So... what's everyone else been eating?