Inappropriate Summer Meals

I love hot things. Why? I am routinely cold, and I am not talking a touch on the chilly side, I am talking my fingers or your bare skin results in frost bite. I’m talking there are throw blankets in every room of my house and in every car that I own. People: I have a space heater under my desk which has been turned on... in July! With record highs in North Carolina! Obviously I have to deal because I married a person who if I could harness their body heat into electricity I could power my house for free. It’s not natural how hot-natured he is and how cold-natured I am. It defies all logic. 

One of the ways I deal is I drink coffee like it is going out of style and eat soup for lunch on a daily basis. And yes I realize this is a totally normal thing-if you live in Sweden whose average temperature in July is 70. Pheft! 70? We’re lucky if it stays 70 degrees for 5 days in the spring. Which P.S.-- I would like to say I am officially mourning the loss of the season formally known as Spring in North Carolina. This year it went from 30 to 100 in a week.  Thou dost displease me weather! Make a note of it.

While I love a calm chowder, I wanted to make my own summery hot soup. So I did.

So it’s summer- this means summer squash and the last of those pesky acorn squashes from my produce box.
Preheat your oven to 400. Grab your food processor, one sauce pot and a saucepan and as P. Diddy says: LET’S GOOOOO!

Cut your acorn squash into 3-4 pieces and roast for 15 minutes. While this is roasting you can go ahead and cook the other vegetables.

Cut up 2 summer squash and add to a hot saucepan with EVOO. Cook on medium heat until soft. About mid way through add chopped onion and minced garlic. (I cheated and used already cut frozen onions) Once soft, add in shredded carrot and cook until all the vegetables are soft.

In your pan, cook down 2-3 chopped large field tomatoes on medium heat. I didn’t bother to remove the seeds, because usually this removed the goo that holds the seeds. I like to get all the moisture from the tomatoes that I can. Next: to this pan I add the scooped out flesh of the acorn tomatoes. I let these fuse together.

We’re ready for the food processor! Assemble and add the tomato and acorn squash mixture first. Turn on and mix until smooth. I then add the summer squash and carrot mixture along with 7-9 springs of FRESH basil. (You could also use cilantro if you were feeling funky) This will start to incorporate nicely.

This goes back into the pot where you can now decide how thick you want this to be. Dilute to your preference with stock (I wound up using about ½ cup of vegetable stock because I wanted this to be hearty soup.  Taste and add salt and pepper as needed.

Once finished, I knew I was missing something…you guessed it! TRADER JOES ROASTED CORN! Hate on it all you want- it definitely gave the finished product some needed texture and man do I love it’s flavor!

And there you have it! A soup that normal people could enjoy in the summer! And it was yummy!

TGIFS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

No. Not Thank God It's Friday- this post it Thank God It's Football Season! I love football season. I have loved it since my first game which was ironically on my 18th birthday way back in 20... well that part really doesn't matter. The point is I have loved every aspect of collegiate football and without fail. Yes, thanks for asking as a matter of fact I do judge people base on who they root for. I also without apology judge them harder if they root for a college that either they, their siblings, children or spouse did not attend. Truth y'all. It's all I speak,

Well now that the pleasantries are over with, I can also tell you that I also enjoy the tailgate aspect as much or quite possibly more than the actual game at hand. And for this years inaugural game we decided the best way to christen this event would be with a good ole' fashion Louisiana Boil. It was also our way of pouring one out to honor Lady Bird who cannot be here this season because she is attending Med School at fabulous Tulane in NOLA. I know- I am deeply jealous as well- but no worries folks! We have a crew all ready to go visit her when we find an awesome deal on a flight. I'll keep you posted for when that little adventure happens.

So back to the boil. I'll have you all know I had every intention of photographing every aspect of this boil, but as any good southerner knows: when the firefly sweet tea vodka starts a flowing- just go with it and let the night happen (I think that is in some famous quote book, but not likely. It should be).

This recipe was largely adapted from this website: What's Cooking America?

I only had a 2 gallon pot, so I made this in two batches. This was what I used:
For the actual boiling liquid:
2 garlic bulbs (1 used per batch)
3 oranges (1.5 used per batch)
2 lemons (1 used per batch)
4 light beers (2 used per batch)
water (~3/4 gallon per batch)
Crab boil seasoning (same bag for both batches)
8 bay leaves (4 per batch)

I let these items come to a boil. I will now list the ingredients as a per batch basis. If you have a larger pot then double this or do like I did and make it twice. First you add 9 new potatoes. These need to cook for at least 10 minutes, or until they are fork tender. I had frozen corn from my produce box so I added to the mix 3 ears that were shucked, pre-boiled and were cut in half. Next I added good ole' slice andouille sausage. 2 large links cut into 1/2 inch pieces and added into the pot. These cooked for 5 minutes.

Next I added 1.5 pounds of whole crawdads. As the kind folks at Earp's seafood kindly told me: this aint crawdad season (not to get political, but even it it was I am sure the oil spill would have something to do with the lack of quantity). Apparently crawdaddy season is from January from April. Hello? Who eats crawdads during this time of year? Those critters need to get with the program.  So... all they had were fresh frozen crawdads, which were fine by me. I let them cook in the mix for 5 minutes. Lastly I added 1 pound of frozen shrimp (hey the crawdads were frozen, so who really cares at this point?). These cook for 3 minutes MAX.

I remove everything by cooking everything in a strainer that fits snuggly in my pot. Technically you're supposed to lay everything out over newspaper- but we put each batch into a bowl instead and feasted. Once in the bowl we sprinkled some Old Bay on top for extra seasoning. It was a hit. No crawdad left behind, thanks Dubya. As it should be. Who knows what will happen at the next home tail gate season? We shall see. But this was definitely a hit, one worth repeating. When you have strangers coming up and asking you what smells so good, you know you have done something right!