Pictured are my garden potatoes, pan-roasted. They have now been fully rehabilitated after a not-so-successful-(at-least-in-my-opinion) debut last week. The only reason I’m posting this is because James said that those were the best potatoes he’d ever tasted. False modesty aside, they turned out pretty good. So good, in fact, that James didn’t even use Russian dressing to dunk them into.
I simply cut them (without peeling — the skins are still pretty tender and delicious) in 1/4 – 1/3″ slices, threw them on a large pan with canola oil, medium heat for about 15 minutes, stirring and turning them occasionally. Then I added some chopped onion, thyme, sage, paprika, coarse sea salt and cooked for another 5-10 minutes. Immediately after turning off the heat, I sprinkled them with 2 finely sliced (or chopped, doesn’t matter) cloves of raw garlic from the garden (it hasn’t fully matured yet, so I can use it raw without any risk of severely damaging my vampire friends). Voila!
The salad was also the simplest: lettuce, cucumber, tomato, sweet pepper, dill, scallions. I dressed it Russian-style — with only sunflower seed oil, salt and . . . CONTINUE READING → nostalgia on a plate, in a good way
Fortunately, the beet’s been on the rise lately. 2 years ago, 
2 days ago we had our friends A & D over for dinner, and I was very excited to show off the midsummer harvest I brought back from the garden. My new potatoes were making their debut, and last year they were just so delicious. Also, my Belorussian soul always elates whenever potatoes are involved.
One of my favorite gustatory experiences of the past weekend — as well as one the most delicious Eureka! moments that ensued from our meticulous meal planning — was this recipe (or as Lucy refers to it, “no recipe”) for grilled asparagus with balsamic reduction, sunny side up egg, and Parmesan. The sophisticated and deeply satisfying taste of this dish is almost incommensurate with the simplicity of its preparation (my food model‘s stunning manicure in the background is used to highlight this point).
Brush asparagus with olive oil and sprinkle with coarse salt, if desired. “In a grill-less situation, the asparagus can easily be roasted.” “To make the balsamic reduction you just cook down cheap 
and a little unpaid product placement with that.
2. The arugula I brought back from the garden turned out a little too bitter/spicy even to my taste… I made quinoa fusilli with fresh arugula, basil, garlic, mozzarella, and tomato sauce for dinner and had to fight my way through the second helping – so spicy it was… Also, not sure adding basil & garlic was the right idea for that combo. However, I still remain a real fan of the quinoa pasta.
The proper etiquette for greeting a cavalcade of horseback riders whose entourage includes a spotted poodle mandates that you jump out the door, preferably breaking the sound barrier, and scream: “I’m admiring your spotted poodle!” Fortunately, Lucy has read her Emily Post and did just that when such a cavalcade appeared on the road on Saturday morning.
Having thus set the proper tone for the day, she returned to the kitchen to join James in making blueberry pancakes for our breakfast. Since blueberries will continue to dominate the gastronomic atmosphere of the weekend, I will limit breakfast coverage to the photographic evidence and save the actual blueberry pancake recipe (delicious!) for a blueberry special.
here (they arrived late last night), our food planning got much more organized.
Take a good look at my basket — you’ll be seeing it a lot. It’s very large, wide-bottomed, comes with a convenient handle, and is finally being put to use after years of serving as a piece of kitchen decor. Yesterday I took it for a test drive and filled it with kale (turned into AMAZING kale chips — thanks to Marina and Sandy for the recipe and for advertising them so well!), turnips (made braised turnip greens for dinner), young squashes (baked with salmon as a sort of an improvised side ratatouille with a bunch of different herbs from the garden: sage, thyme, garlic chives, parsley, oregano, green coriander seeds — they are all on the bottom of the basket), beet greens, scallions, and I don’t remember what else.
The fog was so thick this morning that you couldn’t see the lake from the window. On my morning walk-through, wrapped in a magic foggy mist, I noticed the first sunflower! — as if the sun made a cameo to make up for its absence. Cheered up, I performed a few sunflower salutations with my camera.
A new lily opened its petals in the fog but you can’t see it from everywhere under the yellow umbrellas of dill flowers that grew wide and tall around it in the last couple of days.
It rained and drizzled all morning and early afternoon, so Barbara and I used the rain break for a long-planned trip to Zema’s nursery in Stephentown — where I’ve never been before — to pick out some new plants. It has a pretty large selection, and I, as expected, had to see 
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