Greek Salad
It is wonderful to be back in the kitchen during tomato season. Even with a sparsely producing garden, there are ingredients to match my energy level without completely overwhelming me.
My temptation in these times– as during the weeks of chemotherapy with their rise and fall in energy level due to steroids and the effects of the chemotherapy– is to push to get things done and be ambitious in feeding mind, body, spirit… I want to write and I want to read and think about what I’ve been reading and I want to clear out the weedy garden beds and dig the potatoes and clean and store everything. I also want to visit people! I’ve had so many invitations to social engagements since announcing my “extra time” before surgery. I find I can only do one “big” thing a day, and often that has been a long, long, wonderful lunch with someone I haven’t seen in months.
So I often don’t have much energy left when it is dinner time. I’m trying to keep it simple. Every few days we have enough cucumbers for a cucumber salad with yogurt, sour cream, and dill. Dried dill from last year’s garden now that the dill plants are dead. I could eat a caprese salad with chopped tomatoes, basil, fresh mozzarella and olive oil every day, so as long as we have fresh mozzarella, that is on the menu.
Even the tomatillos are sparse. There are a lot of them but they just aren’t filling out and bursting their husks. But there are a few. One night when I was looking for a corn/tomato relish to go with scallops, I found something even better that I want to share here: tomatillo guacamole. I quickly forgot about the corn relish.
The tomatillo guacamole is so bright and citrusy and fresh, a perfect accompaniment to fish. It would also be great over some simple enchiladas. Or with chips. Or a dollop in chicken chili or chicken tortilla soup. We had the scallops with the guac and orzo, tomatoes just drizzled with oil and topped with basil, and leftover green bean, lentil and corn salad. Later I had the guacamole with the leftover orzo, which was also good! Here’s the link to the original at kitchn.com.
Tomatillo Guacamole
1 avocado, halved and pitted
1/2 pound tomatillos, husked and coarsely chopped
1/2 lime, juiced
1 garlic clove, coarsely chopped
1 small shallot, coarsely chopped
1/2 1 jalapeño, seeded and coarsely chopped (to taste)
1/2 cup cilantro leaves, coarsely chopped
1/2 tsp cumin
salt to taste
Combine the ingredients in the bowl of a small food processor and pulse until well blended. And if you know me by now, you know I used a teaspoon of cilantro chutney in place of the cilantro leaves. I think I had 6 tomatillos, probably less than 1/2 pound. I skipped the shallot, too.
Tonight, I made an easy Greek Salad. I had a mix of beautiful cherry tomatoes thanks to my friend and seed saver Scott Pauley. He’s growing 17 types of tomatoes this year, and I got some large, beautiful yellow grape tomatoes streaked with red from his garden. I had Supersweet 100s (the standard cherry) and also Mexican grape tomatoes (Scott gave me the seed last winter when we did our annual exchange).
I also remembered good old Patricia Wells. I have so many fancy cookbooks, now that the farm-to-table seasonal eating craze has taken off. But I still love Patricia Wells’ Salad as a Meal. This is the book I looked to when I wanted to store roasted peppers and to pickle jalapeno peppers. I also look to it to make sure I haven’t forgotten anything in a Salad Nicoise or Greek Salad. All you really need for Greek salad is tomatoes, cucumber, feta cheese and olives. To the one below you could also add red onion and other things. I had a nearly finished bottle of capers I tossed into the mix. I couldn’t remember the dressing ingredients so I consulted Patricia Wells– and learned she makes hers with lemon juice and olive oil, no vinegar. I added half a squeezed lemon, but still used a little white wine and white balsamic vinegar (no red in the house).
Greek Salad
mix of cherry and grape tomatoes, cut in half or quarters
2 medium cucumbers, ends trimmed then peeled and slices cut in fourths (It reduces the chance of bitterness to cut the ends off first. I like my cucumbers peeled in strips with some skin left intact.)
seedless olives (I usually have Kalmata on hand from Trader Joe’s) halved
1 red pepper diced
capers if you like them
feta cheese
dressing of red wine vinegar, lemon juice, salt and olive oil, whisked together and poured over the salad
torn basil leaves or fresh oregano added to the bowls when serving
This is enough for a meal on a hot summer evening. But Steve is a landscaper, so we ate this with some reheated chicken thighs from a barbecue last week. It would have been good with tortellini added right to the salad.
And for those nights when we have some zucchini or summer squash, zoodles or a simple saute still does the trick!
We have a date. It is September 7. That is when I will have my “debulking” surgery, known as the Mother Of All Surgeries (MOAS). I saw the nurse list it on a form as “exploratory/hysterectomy.” I’ve been calling it the hysterectomy+.
In the weeks that followed, I got gifts. So many gifts. And lately, after chemo finished, another round. Early, I received sharp knives from my Aunt Doris. I also received rosemary olive oil from my friend and fellow cancer survivor Jean.
Tonight I made two things, both inspired by recipes in Tender. One was a lentil and tomato salad. I used the rosemary oil and white wine vinegar for the dressing, with a little smashed garlic. I steamed today’s small harvest of green beans (the rabbits are still wreaking havoc there, but also the bean plants are somewhat sick and putting out little curved pods with a large bean at the bottom, clearly a desperate reproduction strategy in a bad season). And then I added an ingredient that does not appear in Slater’s book: corn. Corn is clearly not a British vegetable. It certainly is not an urban gardener’s vegetable! I cut the corn off the cob with the great knife from Aunt Doris.
And tomorrow, I’ll practice my scallop searing, with a tomatillo sauce. On the side, more corn with cilantro butter and potatoes. Or cilantro slaw… or, or, or whatever I come up with. It’s so great to be back in the kitchen.
And when we got home, I visited the garden, where I found many tomatoes! And a few more sad summer squashes… and lots of basil!
I also didn’t really feel up to making pesto, but what pushed me forward on this pizza was the fact that I had a lovely garlic scape pesto in the fridge (from my friend Maryjude made with garlic scapes I gave her). I suspect she used
Then I put slices of tomato all over the top and the mozz and parmesan cheese. I set aside the basil for after the pizza was done (basil doesn’t do well IMO in a 500 degree oven). It only takes 8 minutes to cook, then top with more parmesan, basil, and serve!
And I’ve been lamenting all summer my inability to drink the fine wines my brother supplied me with in the spring. (As my husband happily guzzled them– what a boor– though I mostly switched him over to beer.) My brother chose summer wines, so most have been sweet, and even this one was a little sweet for my taste buds in their current state. But it was so nice to open up and have a glass of fine wine, I didn’t fret.
They told us to just go down the road a mile or so and we’d see Loll on the right. So we did. And since it was late afternoon on a Friday in August, we were welcomed in, got to meet and talk to the designers, and were given a tour of the factory by Hattie, the very friendly front desk person. Here she is with Nate, who climbed up to get us our souvenir cutting board (which Hattie is displaying).
It is also a wonderfully Portlandia operation. Lots of men with beards and men and women with tattoos loving their old school uniforms with their names embroidered over the pocket. The company actually started as two guys making skate board parks. Like serious skate board parks with half pipes. The parks were made of plastic and compressed wood fiber board. And they wanted to figure out a way to use the scrap material. So they started making Adirondack chairs. And cutting boards out of the wood fiber. And eventually this became Epicurean for the wood fiber boards and Loll (which is short for Lolligagger) for the furniture. They don’t make skate parks anymore. And their plastic is very high quality and infused with sun diffuser to retain color fastness.
Loll became the theme of the trip. Friday night we went to the Rustic Inn, a restaurant in the wonderfully named “unincorporated community” (population 30) Castle Danger, where Steve could get his second burger of the day (and Castle Danger beer brewed in Two Harbors) and I could get a very good smoked salmon sandwich on Ciabatta (and a very bad Caesar salad that was iceberg lettuce with a few croutons and Caesar dressing from a bottle).
I bought the cookbook. It is thick. It is beautiful. It tells you in pages of detail how to make beautiful little plates of food, often one plate at a time. I am getting a collection of cookbooks (who am I fooling) that is replacing on the shelves my collection of African Literature (which I used to teach).
We finished our trip with brunch at At Sarah’s Table in Duluth. We got to sit outside, in the shade, with a view of Lake Superior. The food was delicious and there was a great Loll bench to sit on during the short wait. Steve didn’t get to read his plants book because we had to discuss, of course, why it was called “At Sarah’s Table.” Probably another Sarah’s Table in the state, Steve opined. To which I countered: But then why not Sarah’s Organic Table or something like that, not the set up of “At Sarah’s Table, (where….) ?? Our brunch table conversation was much more scintillating, I promise.
Even before they’re in full bloom, goldenrod are gorgeous.
Of course, in bloom they’re even more gorgeous!
Echinacea/purple coneflowers always amaze me.
As do the butterflies they attract. Anyone know what this butterfly is?
But they aren’t alone…
The bergamot are past their prime but still gorgeous– and bloomed in such big bunches this year.
You have to get up close to appreciate the sawtooth sunflower fully. The pollinators open up the core to expose more little flowers…
But the grey-headed coneflower is, for me, the Queen of the Prairie. She dances over all the other flowers on her narrow stem with her drooping ballet skirt.
This has been a tough year in general for gardening. Between chickens, rabbits, squash bugs, fungi, deluges of rain followed by heat and no rain, everything has struggled. The weeds have done extremely well. I have been operating at about 40% energy and strength. Put that together, and you will get meager harvests.
uce from the garden every day. We eat very well, in fact. It’s amazing what you can do with some basil, a few cherry tomatoes, and two medium zucchini (that took two weeks to get to harvestable size!)
Yes, there are four or five cucumbers hanging there, and I picked four after taking the photo, but they are small and misshapen. The high quantity of seeds inside speaks to their desire to reproduce against all odds.
But even the kale plant is short…
I never did get around to planting all the onions– though I stuck some in a bed thinking I’d harvest them as green onions or small onions. Small onions I got, a whole box full.
And I have garlic to beat the band (planted in two beds last October, the scapes dutifully cut by friend Henry Ebel, pulled by me and Nancy Ebel and drying in the barn). Which is a good thing because I won’t make it to the 
And despite borers of some sort and some very sad looking plants, the winter squash are producing– this butternut squash was on a plant I almost pulled up a few weeks ago because it looked beyond hope of recovery from the borer at its root. My friend Kate pointed out the new growth on the end.
Now I’d heard of this 
No, I didn’t pick these 10 lbs of blueberries. But they are seriously good, fresh, and in addition to freezing quarts and quarts and giving some away, I can eat them by the fistful. And I am. With both hands. Superfood.
And that comes to the second part of this story. The surgeon. The reason I was distracted at this happy last meeting with my oncologist. Because on July 30th my surgery plan, which was to happen on August 16, fell apart.
As I write, I’m looking out on our big pond. The big pond has been a mess this summer. Early on, it became covered with green algae. But then we had a deluge of rain and water rushed in from town through a giant culvert, and all the algae was washed away. It looked so healthy and great. Now though, red algae has formed or grown on the surface. The cattails along the edge are dead, probably from the high water levels earlier.
already in love with and tying my fate to? It was so BIG. Who would take on a project like this? And I wanted to make one thing clear: I’m not going to work in a tree nursery. As he pointed out where the deer had penetrated the fence, and as we walked the rows of crooked trees, deer-mauled trees, and rabbit-girdled trees, I was even more anxious. My perfectionist self couldn’t deal with this scale or, well, this chaos.
I had to get close to see that dock on the pond, one of three ponds on the property, and the deepest. It is also our “swimming hole,” and a hole it is. The dock helps you get in the water cleanly, but you still have to climb up the steep bank to get out. Only Steve and I of the people on the farm are willing to swim in that pond. Which is a shame, because it is deep and stays cool and algae-free into the heat of summer. And because from that pond you are surrounded by blue-bottles and willows and sky.
In fact, the petals are fingernails and toenails.
