Ingredients:
10-12 cups finely chopped kale

There were 10 large tomatoes in my CSA box today.  Here’s something wonderful to do with them, adapted from “Poor Girl Eats Well.”

Gazpacho
                                                                                                  
5 large, very ripe tomatoes                                                           
1 medium cucumber, unpeeled
1 small bell pepper, red or green as you prefer
1 small red onion
1 large carrot

1 T finely chopped hot pepper (serrano, jalapeno)  
1/2 t crushed red chili flakes                                                    
2 large garlic cloves
2 c tomato juice
1/4 c olive oil
2 T balsamic vinegar
Salt & pepper to taste

Directions:
1.  Dice and mix together the onion, bell pepper, carrot and cucumber.  Separate into two equal batches, but put one batch in a large serving bowl (or pot) and the other in a small bowl.
2.  Chop the tomatoes.  Add one cup of the chopped tomatoes to the small bowl of vegetables to use later.  Add the rest of the tomatoes to the large serving bowl filled with chopped vegetables.
3.  Add the tomato juice, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt, and pepper to the serving bowl, now filled with tomatoes and vegetables.  Slowly puree the mixture using a blender or hand mixer.
4.  Finally, pour the reserved vegetables (from step 1) and tomatoes (from step 2) into the serving bowl.  Adjust seasoning and refrigerate for 30-60 minutes. 
5.  Garnish with cilantro, chopped scallions, or grated carrot, as you like, and serve.
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Running out of ideas for what to take to summer potlucks?  Run no more…

Mix spices with lime juice at the bottom of a beautiful, wide pottery bowl, and then add in the olive oil and salsa.
Mix in corn and all the beans. Add all but 1/4 cup of the celery, diced onion and diced tomato.  Mix them together, and then pile the small mixture in the middle on top as a garnish.  Let sit 1/2-1 hour, and then take to a pot luck.  Delicious!
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Some of the young people in my home have their own way of preparing tuna fish and I thought they might inspire you to think about other ways of making tuna than with the standard mayonnaise and celery. 

On Sunday evening, we had a delicious dinner.  That’s because Chief Cook ‘n’ Bottlewasher tossed a few items into the crock pot this past Sunday morning.  These included:

2 pounds of chopped turkey (thawed)
6 medium tomatoes, chopped
all the corn kernels sliced from 3 large ears of corn
1 cup of dry white beans
a teaspoon each of salt, black pepper, and garlic powder
one very hot pepper that I brought in from the garden
enough water to cover the ingredients by 2-3 inches

You can disagree if you’d like, but I’d call this a very simple recipe.  Easy for substitutions, too.  No tomatoes?  So use up the zucchini.  Or green beans.  Or sweet peppers. 

Red beans instead of white?  Fine.  No dry beans in the pantry, only canned beans?  Wait until one hour before dinner, and add them then.  Otherwise they’ll get mushy.
 
No hot pepper?  Not a problem — use tabasco sauce if you have some, or spicy paprika, or just skip it.  

Garlic doesn’t agree with you?  What about some onion instead?  Or maybe not.  It’s up to you.

What if you don’t have a crock pot?  Toss the ingredients into a soup pot, cover, and place in the middle of the oven at 200 degrees.  Either way, check it in a few hours and add some water, if necessary, to keep all the ingredients covered.  Cook for 7-10 hrs, make a green salad, and set the table.  Dinner is served.

P.S. Tried dandelion greens tonight with lemon juice and olive oil instead of last week’s dressing.  Pretty good.
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Yup, you read that right!  And it was deeeeelicious!  Here’s how a bowl full of weeds ended up on our dinner table this past Sunday night:  I went out into the garden Sunday morning to pull some weeds, etc., and discovered a patch of mostly dandelions on the shady side near the magnolia.  As I began to dig them out and toss them aside, I remembered my daughter having mentioned a friend of hers in Toronto who used to cook dandelions.  I began collecting the dandelions in a separate pile from the other weeds.  Next, I soaked them a LOT in multiple buckets of fresh water to get all the dirt off.  Finally, I brought them inside, cut the leaves away from the roots, and then checked one last time to make sure the leaves were perfectly clean.   I had about 4 cups of dandelion leaves.

In a medium-large bowl I whisked together 1/4 cup olive oil, 1 teaspoon honey, 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder (couldn’t find any fresh garlic), and 1/2 teaspoon salt.  I added the honey because I figured this wasn’t the kind of recipe that would appeal to your average uninitiated American, and I thought it would cut some of the bitterness of the leaves.  Bingo!

To the very-well-whisked olive oil mixture I added approximately half the leaves, now cut into 2-inch lengths (approx.), and stirred until everything was completely coated with the dressing.  Then I added the rest of the leaves and mixed again.

Dinner was served.  Barbecued chicken, homemade cole slaw, sliced radishes, watermelon, and the dandelion greens.  I called it “bitter greens salad” because I didn’t want to surprise anybody, nor did I want them to think it was sweet lettuce and be startled.  As I said, not a speck was left.  Kinda crazy when you think about it.  Weeds.
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Some foods seem so pure and unadulterated that it would hardly be necessary to check their ingredient lists just to be sure.  A couple of years ago I would certainly have included cottage cheese in that category.  That, of course, would have been before the day my young shopping assistant and ingredient list reader, looking through the contents of my shopping cart, asked me what “food starch” was.  Food starch, I said absentmindedly, usually refers to corn starch or white flour.  It’s used to thicken foods.  “It’s in the cottage cheese,” he said. 

• 1 quart of milk.  Milk that is no longer perfectly fresh, but not actually sour, is perfect for making cottage cheese.
• 1/4 cup vinegar.
• salt
• heavy cream, or half-and-half, to taste

Heat the milk to 120 degrees, and then add the vinegar.  Stir until well mixed.  The milk will start to create curds.  Allow to sit for 30 minutes.  Strain the milk in a colander lined with a tea towel. 
Gather the sides of the towel to make a ball of cottage cheese inside the cloth.  Run the ball of cheese under cold water while squeezing and massaging the ball.  Rinse thoroughly.  Open the towel onto a large cookie sheet and allow the cheese to dry.  Massage to break up the curds.

This is dry cottage cheese.  When ready to eat, season with salt and mix with cream if desired for a more creamy cottage cheese.
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This week my CSA (community-supported agriculture) share included red- and green-leaf lettuce, kale, tomatoes, garlic scapes, and scallions, and some other greens whose name I do not know.   All fresh, fragrant, and wonderful, eaten cooked or raw.  But that’s not what I want to write about today.  Today I have in mind a different simple idea:  roasted onions.

4 medium sized yellow onions with the peels ON
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
balsamic vinegar

Turn on the oven to 425 and put the rack at the bottom of the oven.  Slice the onions in half, and put them in a plastic bag or a large bowl that has a lid.  Add the salt, pepper, and olive oil.  Close the bag or bowl, and shake until well mixed.  Remove the onions and place them, cut side down, on a cookie sheet with an edge.  Roast approx. 25 min until tender and golden.  Sprinkle with balsamic vinegar if you’d like a little extra zing.  These are really, really gooooood, and they add a special something to every meal you can imagine.

I have made coleslaw twice in the past two weeks, so I think it’s time to share it with you!  The first time I made it with green cabbage and added in a little bit of red cabbage for color (and because I had some to use up).  The second time I made the whole recipe with red cabbage and it was very pretty.  Both times it came out equally delicious.

Combine all of these in a large bowl and mix well:
1/2 cup mayonnaise
2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
1 teaspoon honey
1/2 teaspoon each salt and pepper
1/4 teaspoon celery seed

Then slice very thinly:
1/2 head cabbage
1 small onion

Now make carrot peels with a peeler.

Add the onion, cabbage, and thin carrot strips to the dressing.  Mix very, very well, mashing the cabbage a bit as you mix.  Then let the cole slaw rest in the refrigerator for at least a couple of hours, and mix again before serving.  You can make it the day before if you want.