Last week's food

It was more of the same but I haven't got tired of it yet.

Monday lunch was a leftover "burger" from our cookout, corn on the cob, green beans and carrots, and sliced tomato.  The burger is topped with salt-free mustard, cucumber and tomato.  My drink is water that the carrots and beans were cooked in.  I admit, that's going a little far but it tastes pretty good.

The weather turned cooler and I started panicking about summer and the corn season ending, so I started eating 2 ears of corn!  I don't get it every day so it probably evens out.  Here it is served with some broccoli, and a small baked potato topped with parsley and home-made soy yogurt.

This time the corn was served with beans, sliced tomatoes and baked kohlrabi (sliced).

Today I cooked up some okra (from the farmer's market, a rare treat here), tomato (from the garden), and a cut up potato (baked last night), and a little parsley and basil.  very good.

Breakfast had a new twist this week.  I combined oat bran, buckwheat and corn grits in equal amounts, cooked that up (1/4 cup dry), and added in the greens I made the previous weekend (kale, eggplant, tomato).  I like this.

My weekend breakfasts were treats from the farmer's market.   Saturday it was melon (like a cantaloupe), blueberries and soy yogurt:

Sunday it was a peach, blueberries, and soy yogurt:

Dinners were usually beans and rice (from last weekend's food prep), a salad, maybe a small potato.

On the bad behavior side, I overate blueberries and carrots this weekend.   You might think that would be hard to do, but I succeeded.  The carrots were from the farmer's market and were very sweet.   Having eaten them all, the temptation is gone now.  sigh.

Ah Sweet Corn is here

We've been having sweet corn for about a week now.  As expected, the first few batches were good but not great, but within only a few days, they went from a B rating to A+.   We have a corn stand from a local farm that's just a short walk from our house, so we eat it every day.  I even changed my schedule around so I can eat it at lunchtime at home.  I can't do this every day--for example, for the next two weeks I'll have visitors at work, so will be back to a 10-5 schedule (I try to work 75% time), and then eat the corn at dinner time.  And when the Fall semester starts, we'll have lunchtime meetings most days so I'll go back to 10-5 again.  But my summer schedule has been great for productivity.  I get a lot of concentrated work done in the mornings and then do my administrative work and meeting with students and other colleagues in the afternoon.  

Here's a typical lunch out on the deck.   This is what we live for.  We dream of this in winter.

Besides the corn, there a "small" serving of my mid-summer salad at bottom, and a bowl of steamed green beans from the garden with cauliflower and herbs.  If you've never had freshly picked green beans, you don't know what they are capable of tasting like.  The answer is very yummy.

Corn, walnuts, and coconut

This is a nice little dessert for me. It might sound odd, but it's good. The trick is to get high quality sweet corn; otherwise, it's not dessert.

Ingredients:

High quality sweet corn, fresh or frozen

chopped walnuts

spoonful of unsweetened coconut shavings

Combine in a bowl, heat in the microwave until warm. This follows a similar theme as my sweet pea snack and berry dessert.

summer meals

We have this every day from about July 4 - Sept. 4. We get it fresh picked from a local farm, and they are nice enough to locate their stand a few blocks from our house.

I am sorry to have to tell you that there is nothing better than Wisconsin sweet corn. I'm sorry you don't get to experience it. We don't eat much else at this meal since the corn is filling and we require two ears to satisfy our desires. We might have some cooked veggies with it. Notice the avocado at upper right in the picture. That is a mashed avocado, nothing else. It is our "butter", only better. Our SAD (Standard American Diet) guests agree. The tomato is fresh picked from the garden. I also make a rockin' collards dish from the garden too. I'll post that soon. And oh my god, the eggplant from our garden is fabulous. It's our first time for eggplant. When you pick it fairly small, it is almost sweet. There is no bitter taste! Yes, we are enjoying our summer produce!