Status update: Busy

Teaser photo

Hi again everyone. Here's another update for you all. At some point during the month of August, Seattle decided that we would have a summer. It's been really nice and the weather forecast has more coming later this week. It had been so long since we had prolonged hot weather that I forgot what it meant for our plants. I didn't water them for a little while and killed our marjoram. I also put the rest of the potted herbs through a lot of suffering.

The current weather is very agreeable to our tomatoes, but not before they got some blight. July was wetter than normal and our tomatoes got a fungal infection. The cure - cut off the blighted parts and throw them away. Here are some pictures of the damage:

Seeing the blighted fruit really broke our hearts. We get little enough as it is and don't want to waste any. We can't do anything about though. All we can do is deal. Since then, the plants have recovered well and new, healthy fruit has been forming.

And now the moment you've all been waiting for - the recipe. This pasta dish was taken from the Pioneer Woman's website: http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2012/08/buttery-lemon-parsley-noodles/. It was the perfect thing to make for a warm summer evening and really hit the spot. Here's the pasta recipe:

Ingredients

• 1 pound Pasta (fettuccine, Linguine, Angel Hair)
• 4 Tablespoons Butter
• 1/4 cup Finely Minced Parsley
• 1 whole Lemon
• Salt And Pepper, to taste

Preparation Instructions

Cook the noodles according to package instructions. (If using angel hair, stop just short of the al dente stage.) Drain and set aside.

Melt butter in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Throw in the cooked pasta and cook it around in the butter for a couple of minutes so that a few of the noodles get a little bit of a panfried texture to them, whatever that means.

Zest the lemon. Squeeze in the juice, then add the zest of half the lemon.

Add salt and pepper to taste, then toss around and serve.

*Note: as per the Pioneer Woman's suggestion, we used basil instead of parsley because we had a bunch leftover from making bruschetta earlier in the week. To us, basil is a more summery herb anyway and fits the season nicely.

The rest of the stuff:

The chicken and veggies are very easy to make. Marinate the chicken breast in olive oil, salt, and pepper for a day. This is a great way to increase the flavor without too much guilt.

Then, pound the breast so that it is uniform in thickness. This makes it really easy to cook the breast evenly.

Finally, through the breast onto a grill and cook until you get some nice browning over the breast. This adds two elements of flavor. The grilling adds some smokiness and the browning some sweetness. Browning happens when fat (olive oil) caramelizes into sugar. Be careful though. The next step after that is charring and burning. If the fire is hot, like on a grill, you can more from brown to black in a hurry.

The veggies are my easy stir fry veggies that I talk about in a previous post: http://oursuburbanprairie.blogspot.com/2012/05/easy-stir-fry-vegetables.html

So that's all for now. I hope you all stay cool out there!