I talk a lot about eating real food, the kind of food our great-grandparents ate.  Food that comes straight from the ground (or air, or water).  Unadulterated food, as opposed to “food-style products.”  I’ve heard similar ideas expressed as:  “Eat close to the garden.”  “Eat food that’s been through as few machines as possible.” “Eat nothing that contains more than four ingredients.”  “Don’t eat anything your great-grandparents wouldn’t have recognized as food.”  “Be wary of foods that never go bad; if the bugs won’t eat it, it’s not food.”  Many different ways of saying the same thing– eat real food. 

We spent the July 4^th weekend this past summer in the Watchung Mountains with my parents and extended family.  My mom and dad have been raising steer since 1973, when they moved their family to a 10-acre slice of heaven in rural, northwest New Jersey.  My mother also tends a small (her word), ½-acre,vegetable garden.  In past years there have also been sheep and goats, but no longer. Too labor intensive.  At any given time now, they usually have a couple of steer plus chickens, peacocks, and French guinea hens.  Believe it or not, steer are a lot less work than sheep.

My parents’ trips to Cleveland are usually accompanied by bags of produce and a few dozen eggs.  Sometimes a peacock feather or two.  They stumble out of the car into the arms of grinning grandchildren, and immediately hand over their gifts from the farm with strict instructions to ‘take these inside.’  Then, after the preliminaries, they head straight to the kitchen to empty their bags of produce onto the kitchen counters for everyone to inspect and admire.  And admire we do. This is what my family always does with newly picked produce.

             So when I got home from picking up my share one day, I spread out my new produce all over the kitchen counter.  Bok choy and kale.  Cabbage, potatoes, and onions.  Yellow squash, zucchini, patty pan squash.  Tomatoes, cucumbers, green beans.  Scallions.  Basil and cilantro.  Wow, I thought, we’re in full swing now.  Only a few leafy crops left on that proverbial vegetannual.  I set to work.

              First, I sliced ½ head of cabbage into thin strips, and left it on the cutting board.  Then I mixed ¾ cup of mayonnaise with ¼ cup of thyme vinegar left from last summer, plus a pinch of sugar to cut the acidity.  I grated in most of a lonely-but-otherwise-healthy-looking carrot I found at the bottom of the refrigerator.  Then I slid the cabbage, carrot and mayonnaise dressing into a large plastic bag, and placed the bag in a bowl in the refrigerator.  I turned the bag a few times over the next 2 days, and the resulting homemade cole slaw became a perfect addition to a
summer meal of barbecued chicken, corn on the cob, and fresh tomato salsa. 

              To make the salsa, I entered ‘tomato cucumber onion’ into Google’s search engine, perused the resulting recipes, and picked one whose remaining ingredients matched the contents of my refrigerator.  I started by adding a mashed garlic clove to a few tablespoons of lime juice.  I chopped the tomatoes, cucumber and ½ of a large onion into very tiny pieces.  I chopped up cilantro leaves very fine.  I slid everything into a beautiful pottery bowl, mixed it together, and added just one shake of salt and two grinds of black pepper to achieve summer nirvana. 

            The potatoes went into a saucepan with lightly salted water.  They cooked until they became quite soft, at which point I dumped the water.  I added a few tablespoons of olive oil, along with a generous bunch of coarsely-chopped Italian parsley from my herb garden, plus a teaspoon of kosher salt.  I placed the lid on the pot, and then shook the contents as hard as I could for about 30 seconds.  In my home, we call this recipe “smashed potatoes.”  It is delicious hot, cold, or warm. 

            I rinsed the kale and removed the thick, central ribs with a sharp knife.  I wrapped the wet leaves into a tight bundle, and then sliced cross-wise to make strips. These I tossed into a pan sizzling with a bit of olive oil.  I stirred the leaves occasionally until most were beginning to turn bright green (less than a minute), and then sprinkled them with a little balsamic vinegar.  This simple recipe is fabulous served warm, but it also tasted great straight from the refrigerator two days later. 

            Dinner time was calling.  I rinsed the green beans, sliced off the tips, and added them, along with slices of onion, red pepper, and the remaining cabbage, to a frying pan with some olive oil.  The mix of colors and textures was beautiful, and the onion, cabbage, and pepper softened just moments before the beans brightened.  I pulled the pan off the stove, and served the veggies right away with grilled cheese sandwiches (New York cheddar, whole-grain bread) followed by blueberries and fresh peach slices. 

            After dinner, I had one more project in mind — to make a dip out of zucchini and onions.  I sautéed the vegetables until soft, and then pulsed them in a food processor with parmesan cheese and lots of pepper until they were well-mixed, but not pasty.  There was still basil, squash and bok choy on the counter, but that was enough for one day. Simple food.  Simple recipes.  Simply delicious.