House Spouse

Oh, wow. What’s it been, like 18 years since I last posted? Between picking up some extra hours at work for the summer and doing an independent study in reading French, I’m not so much busy as I am drained from having to employ so much self discipline for three months in order to accomplish anything. (I hope that sentence wasn’t so long and full of prepositional clauses that it was impossible to understand. Edit: I just went back and read that sentence and it wasn’t so bad after all. See, all this memorizing of the different ways to translate “celui, celle, ceux, celles” and all of the other relative, interrogative, disjunctive and demonstrative French pronouns has me thinking only in terms of grammar these days.) I did accomplish this lovely recipe some months ago, though, and never got around to posting. It’s simple, pleasant and refreshing.

Lemon Sesame Green Beans

Ingredients
(note: The amounts are approximations. In all honesty, I just added things until it tasted right.)
1 pint of green beans
1 tsp sesame oil
1-2 T olive oil
juice of 1 lemon
1 T honey
1 tsp sesame seeds
1/2 tsp salt

Directions:
Blanch the green beans in a pot of boiling water for about 1 to 2 minutes. Drain and rinse with very cold water or place in an ice bath. The beans should remain tender-crisp. While they are cooling, prepare the dressing: Whisk together the oils, lemon juice and honey. Add the salt to taste (the dressing should be just slightly bracing). Toss with the beans and sprinkle the sesame seeds on top.

Although my fall semester begins in just a week, I do have a list of things to cook and post about. Here’s a preview: preparing dry beans (for Louisa), lemon layer cake (for me!), and Mexican salsas.

Perhaps the only thing better than getting to bike too and from a fabulous farmers market is preparing (and eating!) a meal so fresh and delicious that even a skeptic’s eyes are widened with surprise as he chews what he expected to be a dry and bland slice of pizza.

This was a happenstance meal, my favorite kind, because they remind me that while I spend far too much time reading food blogs and cook book for recipes, that sometimes I am truly inspired and am able to cook with both heart and creativity. Not that I’m not already doing that, but occasionally I’ll wonder what happened to the days when I never used recipes and just threw things together for dinner. Granted, there were some real doozies, but the thrill of just trying to see what happens was pretty fun, too.

The salad is just a spicy mix of wild arugula and watercress, slightly wilted under a warm balsamic vinaigrette. Those little purple flowers are chive blossoms, which I promise to tell you more about some other time because it included a personal encounter with a celebrity chef. The boldness of the greens was mellowed slightly by the warm dressing, but not so much that it didn’t provide a nice foil to the rich, almost buttery pizza. I used a Joy of Cooking recipe for the crust and red spring onions from the farmers market, but I’m sure this would be nice with large red onions, too.
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Lunch for me can be either daunting or thrilling, or both. When we got back home from Georgia (I know, I know, enough about Georgia already), I vowed to make myself fresh, healthy, vegetarian lunches for the rest of the summer. This is daunting because there are always dishes to be done post lunch that can throw me off track for the rest of the day: while doing dishes, I always notice something else to be cleaned, creating a sort of spiraling frenzy of house keeping all day which puts me in a bad and resentful mood. It’s also thrilling because I am so fortunate to work at home and thus get to eat freshly made lunches.

I am somewhat embarrassed to reveal that the brown rice with peas was inspired by French Women for All Seasons, and so I should qualify why I have the book to begin with. Andrew sometimes brings home books sent to work for review that no one wants to review. He thought I’d be interested, at the very least, in the recipes and the approach to eating seasonal. I’ll save you from my own book review and just say that I appreciate the approach to eating.

So, where was I? Oh, yes, freshly made lunches. I pared down this recipe to be enough for one and, of course, adjusted it to my tastes and what I had around.

(recipe after the jump) Read the rest of this entry »