What I just did: From the "Hardly Qualifies As Cooking" department

[kestrel91316]

Ok, this is the time of year, in a good year, when I LOVE Los Angeles: I just went out into my back yard, flashlight in hand, and picked about a dozen nice big spinach leaves from my sizeable patch of Bloomsdale Longstanding Spinach. Brought inside, rinsed in the sink, chopped it coarsely. Put in a salad plate/bowl with some roasted, peeled, diced red bell pepper and some chopped brown Italian mushrooms. Topped with a little balsamic vinaigrette (homemade, of course) and some freshly grated parmesan cheese.

Salad doesn't get any better than this. And this type of spinach is a savoy-leaf, meaning crinkly instead of flat, and it's gorgeous to look at and actually kind of crisp and substantial. Even my cat loves it and tries to steal it.

[NMDemDist2]

1. it may not be cooking...

but it sounds pretty gourmet to me

:bounce:

[wildeyed]

2. mmmmmm!

Sounds perfect!

[Warpy]

3. Mine was about as easy

I'd bought a baseball bat (English cuke) last week. I got out the mandoline and sliced it fine, then sliced up a Texas sweet onion. I threw them into a colander, salted them, and walked away for half an hour.

I rinsed them, squeezed the water out, then mixed them with some pressed garlic and fresh finely chopped parseley and sour cream, few grinds of pepper.

That and pumpernickel bread was supper. Food of the gods, and there's more for tomorrow's lunch.

[kestrel91316]

4. Yummy!

[Duer 157099]

9. Great idea!

I've got 2 English cukes in the fridge, now I know what I'm a doin' with them tonight. Cept, I don't have any sweet onion, but I do have some radishes and sour cream and grape tomatoes. Sounds like a plan.

[lavenderdiva]

5. sounds absolutely delicious!!

[NMDemDist2]

6. great smilie for in here!!!! ROFL n/t

[lavenderdiva]

8. thanks, AZD!

n/t

[grasswire]

7. today in my garden....

....the seeds are up. Broccoli rabe, three kinds of peas, mache, spinach, chard, three kinds of radishes, purple carrots and more. Yes, it's a little late but our weather has been so impossible this year! Hopefully I'll harvest before it's time to put in sets of summer items.

I'll try to plant our raised bed with items that will give the most return for the money. But tomatoes will go in another area, and beans and squash and cukes will grow up the fence. And the herbs will be in pots. So I have the bed of about 3 x 18 feet for other summer foods.

I'd like to know what everyone's planting this year!

[Duer 157099]

10. and this reply "Hardly Qualifies as an On-Topic Response"

But just today I was lamenting the one thing I miss most about So. Cal, and that is the abundance of fresh sweet strawberries.

I'd drive through Camarillo where they have acres of strawberry fields, and pick up a half flat once a week or so.

::sigh::

Now, in Nor. Cal, there are strawberries in the stores, but I tell ya, it just ain't the same. (and they're never as good)

[kestrel91316]

11. And the season is almost upon us. The best strawberries are

found in our farmer's markets, like the one in Goleta (Santa Barbara area). The ones in the stores are always huge and hard.