Lest I overwhelm the collective voice of the blog via my self-indulgent introduction, I will provide the breakdown of the Watermelon and Feta salad I contributed to V-Bar’s delightful engagement party. I can’t take credit for the Jambalaya, that was all the boy and The Fat Man (Paul Prudhomme).

Watermelon and Feta Salad

adapted from Jacques Pépin

1 Watermelon, cut into bite-sized chunks or balled, if you have the patience

1/3 cup olive oil (the unsullied kind)

3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

2 teaspoons kosher salt

Tabasco (I like a good amount, but add to your taste)

Freshly ground black pepper

2 cups crumbled feta cheese

1 small sweet onion, diced

1 cup coarsely chopped mint leaves

Jacques adds olives, but I omit.

Whisk together everything you can whisk in a big bowl, then add the watermelon, feta, and anything that’s not so easy to whisk and toss. Garnish with the mint. Eat soon, it quickly turns to soup as the melon de-bloats.

well this crow has been MIA for far too long! the past few months have been quite the roller coaster!  the boxes are almost gone and i FINALLY made my first meal in our new nest in Oakland, CA.  after a successful trip to COSTCO, our freezer is packed w/affordable organic chicken and turkey and the other night, i decided to give this recipe a whirl.

Turkey Meatloaf with feta and sun-dried tomatoes

ingredients:

• 1/2 C dried bread crumbs
• 1/3 C fresh flat leaf parsley leaves
• 1/4 C chopped oil packed sun dried tomatoes
• 2 crushed garlic cloves
• 1/4 C olive oil
• 1/2 C crumbled feta
• S&P
• 1 lb ground turkey

Preheat oven to 350F. In a large bowl, combine all ingredients, adding the turkey last and stirring gently so as not to over work the meat.  Carefully pack the meat mixture into a loaf pan and bake for 45 minutes.  I used a meat thermometer to test the internal temp and it took my loaf more like 55 minutes to finish.

from Giada De Laurentiis’s Giada At Home

Fresh Salsa
1 pint cherry/grape tomatoes, finely diced
1/2 red onion, finely diced
1 jalapeno, finely diced (use your discretion on seeds)
1 garlic clove, pressed (optional)
1 lime, zested and juiced
handful of cilantro, chopped
salt and pepper to taste

Add all ingredients into a bowl, once mixed salsa should be ready to consume.  The lime zest is what really made this salsa pop for us crows, why do we not zest more often?

c/o Real Simple

I love eating sandwiches on the beach.  When I’m in Maine I have to go for the Amatos Italian, but when I stick around the Boston area I need to come up with some sandwich alternatives.  Flipping through the most recent issue of Real Simple I laid my eyes on this beauty pictured above: Salami Sandwich w/ Goat Cheese and Fennel.  I rediscovered my love for salami after the delicious antipasto platter we had at VBar & Mark’s engagement party, and who can deny fennel, goat cheese and arugula!?

Even though this recipe only has about 5 ingredients I tweaked them to make it real simple for me, aka using up the items i had on hand rather than making another trip to the grocery store.  My version was a pita pocket, with grainy dijon mustard, genoa salami, provolone, thinly sliced fennel and green leaf lettuce.  Emily and I enjoyed these bad boys on the beach yesterday along with a whole slew of other tasty treats we had prepared all day Saturday.  Stay tuned for some more beach friendly recipes!

Check out www.stilltasty.com to find out!  It’s a great resource for all your refrigerator quandaries.

Pine Point Co-Op

An old onion bag works great to hold your mussels in and it would also behoove you to wear some type of water friendly footwear so you don’t scrape up your feet on the barnacles.  My brother and I like to debeard the mussel as soon as we pick them to get all of the dirty work over with or you can wait and do it in your kitchen sink.  A trick we use to get the barnacles off the mussels is to scrape them against the other barnacles on the rock, with those removed they start looking more like the ones you get in the restaurant.  Before I cook the mussels I like to soak them in a bucket of water with a couple tablespoons of flour for an hour or two so they can discharge the excess grit and sand.

Basic Sauteed Mussels are a perfect recipe to wing, here are the key components:  olive oil, tons of garlic, white wine, diced tomato, freshly chopped parsley and a large saute pan with a lid.

Heat olive oil and garlic in a saute pan until fragrant.  Add mussels and white wine (don’t go too heavy because the mussels release a lot of juice) turn up the heat and put the lid on.  After a few minutes stir them around and add the diced tomatoes once some of the mussels begin to open.  Put lid back on and keep checking/stirring every minute or so until all the mussels are opened.  Add freshly chopped parsley to the top and serve with grilled bread and a freshly picked salad.

Arugula and Chive Salad
Summer took care of the salad while I cooked the mussels.  She picked some lettuce, arugula and chives from my brother’s garden and made a simple vinaigrette.  The fun part about the salad was that it was made in early June when the chive blossoms were in full bloom and added beautiful taste and color to the freshly picked salad.

A delicious Summer Meal by Land…

& Sea…

In true Crow fashion, there was way to much food. It is always better to have too many with leftovers, than not enough to feed everyone. Although, one day it will be nice to figure out exactly how much food 20 people will eat over the course of a night of casual munching, being left with loads’o'leftovers at the end of the evening is still okay in my book.

For Holly’s & my contribution, we decided to honor our great Sicilian lady friend with an antipasto platter, and a grilled fennel & herb salad.

Here is the lovely spread! Below you can see the close-ups of our veggie & meat platters

On the platters:

Olives
Marinated Mushrooms- store bought and jazzed up with fresh herbs
Fresh summer Tomatoes
Balsamic Marinated Onions
Roasted Garlic
Roasted Peppers
Pickled Peperoncini w/parsley

Hard Salami
Genoa Salami
Provolone
Prosciutto
Holly’s mega-homemade mustard

I think we are getting the hang of this cooking thing!

Ricotta cheese topped with honey and berries.  Just right.

In case readers are interested, my ManCrow and I recently made it official and got engaged.  Yay!  We had a celebratory party last weekend and the amazing outpouring of love that came from my fellow Crows made my lil’ heart swell.  Lucky for me, a lot of this love came in the form of amazing food, which I will leave to them to share.   Let me just say that the antipasti was legendary.

Along with the Crows, I was lucky enough to have the beautiful company of two of my all time besties, Elaine and Katlhleen who came all the way from New York for a mere 14 hours just to show the love.  They also brought me some just amazing (and unecessary!) gifts- a beautiful bamboo bowl and a lovely leaf platter from the MoMA.  Also, a cookbook/culinary essential that I have been meaning to pick up for a long time: Alice Water’s The Art of Simple Food.   I can’t wait to sink my teeth into it.

I used Elaine and Katlheen’s gifts for the fist time tonight, and I think that along with some leftover Cava, they made for a beautiful spread.

I’m a lucky lady, in so many ways.  Our quick and easy summer dinner included:

-Brown Basmati Rice

-Green beans- grilled in a pouch with lemon rounds, crushed garlic and olive oil. Topped with clumps of riccotta (not shown)

-Grilled chicken sausage

-A fresh garden salad with white balsamic

A perfect solution to the to-hot-to-cook rule is always to grill.

I have a quick technique to share with you that I tried out last night after being inspired by the latest Bon Appetit Magazine: Grilled Pork Chops, Yucatan Style.  The recipe was shared by my favorite BBQ hero: Stephen Raichlen.  Bobby Flay’s got nothing on this grill master.  His website may look a little corny but this guy knows how to grill and his expertise is shown in the latest BA issue and through his two entertaining shows BBQ University and Primal Grill.

He stated that the major problem with grilling pork chops is having them dry out, i followed his two easy steps of buying bone in chops and brining them prior to grill time and they came out juicy and delicious!

Grilled Pork Chop Brine:
2 cups water
3 TBS kosher salt
2-3 bay leaves
5 pepper corns
1 tsp all spice

Stir all ingredients together in a bowl until salt is dissolved.  Place chops in a baking dish and cover them with the brine.  Cover and refrigerate for one to two hours.  Pat chops dry and throw them on the grill, 4-6 minutes per side depending on thickness and let set for 10 minutes before eating.  Mine were tasty but Stephen would have been disappointed in my lack of cross-hatch grill marks, definitely something I have the rest of the summer to work on!