Simple Pleasures

I’m thinking about seriously curtailing my social media participation. It is making me anxious. It has always made me anxious, but I realize it feeds certain kinds of pressure… particularly my competitive nature when it comes to the garden and food.

I’m having seven women over to my house on Saturday. I’m already mad at the prairie for not maintaining it’s peak glory into mid-August. Why can’t they be coming when it’s all purple cone flowers and bergamot and rudbeckia and lead plant and and and?? Will they really just get to see some droopy yellow coneflowers and the incoming goldenrod?

And what about my pantry? The pickles aren’t ready! There’s only the single jar of salsa? Will I be OK if I start making the sauces on Friday afternoon?

The cucumbers seem to be slowing down… and the beans. Will I have enough for the salads I have planned? The dill is dying– will there be enough?

We are talking about 7 people here. Completely non-judgy, happy-to-be-here women. You do realize that I host Easter for 24-30, right? And in fact, even when it is just Steve’s daughters and the farm families, it is 12 people… Why am I freaking out?

I am blaming this self-imposed pressure on our glorious meal last night. Truly the apex of the summer cooking. I had some poblano peppers, beauties, that I wanted to stuff and grill. I ended up putting a little dab of goat cheese in each one and grilling them until blistered. Over the top I put a mixture of local sweet corn, rice, garlic, shallot, and local ground lamb. I used the rest of the pound of lamb to make lamb burgers a la kofta from the Jerusalem cookbook. With shallot, garlic, red pepper, herbs… Over the top of both of these things I put a smittenkitchn.com salsa verde made of garden herbs and lemon juice with the addition of two tomatillos.

I know. I’ve lost my mind. It was Monday night. Steve stumbled in from work in a daze and ate this stuff. I worked hard on this dish, and it did not disappoint. For good measure, and because some tomatoes were really about to go over the edge, I made a caprese salad. Seriously. Losing my mind.

Tonight, I pulled it all back. Somewhat sullen, I just went out to the garden to see what was there. I hauled in some more beans, and took advantage of “testing” some of the plumped shell beans, including some nicely developing scarlet runner beans. I cut up the various pole beans, simmered them in water with the shell beans. Then added the kernels from the remaining corn from last night. Oh, and a few small tomatoes. Blistered another poblano and chopped that up, too. And made a simple vinaigrette of balsamic, olive oil, garlic, lemon juice. Poured it over the so-called salad.

And OMG, it was delicious. I didn’t bother to take a photo because it didn’t really count in the pantheon of garden dishes.

And so I decided not to sweat the August gathering on Saturday. Whatever we have in the garden, I will make it. And it will be sooooo good.

I’m pretty sure there’s going to be stuff in the garden on Saturday.