Pétit Déjournal

On the menu this week:

- more three bean salad

- sauerkraut

- cold-brewed iced coffee

- homemade frozen burritos

- heirloom tomato salsa

Last week G. and I were fortunate enough to be the recipients of oodles of fresh, local produce. As part of a "Chef's Tour" organized by the Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project, a co-worker and I, along with at least a dozen others from local area restaurants, were treated to a tour of Jake's Farm in Chandler. At the end we were presented with three tables of vegetables and large paper grocery bags and and told to help ourselves. There were potatoes, sun gold tomatoes, eggplants, carrots, herbs, cucumbers, okra, green beans, arugula and mooooore! Later that day I picked up some friends' farm-share since they were headed out of town and was relieved to find corn, onions and tomatoes. Simultaneously, our garden produced another foot long zucchini, another pound of green beans, four tiny little leaves of kale and the tiniest, squattest cucumber ever. Even after piling toppings on pizza and slyly leaving vegetables behind at a friend's house we still had more than we could possibly eat before it would spoil.

Growing up, my mom always planted a huge garden, which always resulted in a basement packed full of canned green beans, corn and beets. I'm not prepared to commit the time and space needed for canning so I took an alternate route - blanching and freezing. All fruits and veggies are full of enzymes which help them mature. Blanching stops the enzymes and helps prevent the foods from losing vitamins and acquiring a funky taste. The process of blanching is nice and straight forward: the veggies are dumped into a pot of boiling water, then partially cooked, removed and plunged into a bowl of ice cold water. The University of Missouri Extension Service provides a pretty thorough guide to boiling times for various vegetables and not martha's written up a great little illustrated guide for freezing kale.

The majority of our leftover vegetables were sauteed up and set out in a parade of fillings for burritos - broccoli, corn, summer squash, onions, refritos, and cheese. Each wrap was placed on a piece of aluminum foil, filled, rolled up, wrapped up, put into a freezer bag and then into the freezer. I honestly never would have thought to make and freeze my own burritos and probably would have eaten sauteed summer squash and onions for a week solid if it hadn't been for Dyani. The beauty of the frozen burrito isn't limited to it's long-lasting lifespan, no no, it's easy to make, the ingredients end up make many many burritos, and they're so so easy to bring to work and reheat. So easy. I made the rookie mistake of only bringing home one package of wraps, next time I'll make sure to pick up two. Maybe three.

Continuing with simplicity (necessity, maybe?) let's talk coffee. One of my favorite afternoon treats is coffee, however, the last thing I want to sip on a hot, muggy, southern summer afternoon is hot coffee. I'm more than willing to throw ice cubes in my fresh brewed cup and stick the whole thing in the freezer for a while. There is, however, a distasteful change that occurs in coffee when it's brewed hot and then chilled. Bitterness? Shallowness? I can't quite place my finger on it. Luckily and logically, making a cup of cold-brewed coffee is a simple as making a hot one - it just takes a little bit of thinking ahead. After doing a quick search I found a highly recommended NY Times recipe. It only makes two glasses so I've taken to doubling the recipe, next time I just might triple it.

Cold-Brewed Iced Coffee

1/3 cup medium-coarse ground coffee

1. In a jar, stir together coffee and 1 1/2 cups water. Cover and let rest at room temperature overnight or 12 hours.

2. Strain twice through a coffee filter, a fine-mesh sieve or a sieve lined with cheesecloth. In a tall glasse filled with ice mix equal parts coffee concentrate and water , or to taste. If desired, add milk.