Patriotic Celebration

Hope everyone had a wonderful 4th of July!

I have been quite the absent blogger. Last week we mostly ate leftovers from the CSA every night - but did plenty of cooking and eating this weekend on the Cape! In fact, that's basically all I did. We drove down to the Cape Thursday night, and spent Friday hanging out on the beach. I went for a 7.5 mile run as well. My 8 mile race is in less than 2 weeks! We had a big crowd at the house this weekend - so big that Derek and I slept in a tent on the deck. On Friday night my cousin Corin, who learned to cook in some top rated restaurants, steamed some 1.5 lb lobsters for us.

To accompany them he made a warm potato salad with capers. Delicious!

I had lots of CSA greens so I braised swiss chard and kale in white wine with raisins.


Saturday morning - had to be pancakes!

I made a huge stack with blueberries and bananas.


For dinner my father and I made dueling paellas. His had chicken and chrizo, along with littleneck clams, shrimp, and scallops. He also threw in a lobster tail I had saved for him from my Friday night lobster.


My paella has lots of vegetables - peppers, mushrooms, artichoke hearts, peas, roasted red peppers, and olives. And any seafood I could steal from my dad's paella - which wasn't much.

I can't judge which paella was better, since I didn't try the meat one. But my guess is my dad's has a bit more flavor from all that meat.

On the side I made a big salad with some CSA lettuce, goat cheese, strawberries, and pecans with balsamic and EVOO.

I picked up lots of local rhubarb at the South End Open Market last weekend, and wanted to try something new with it. I used this recipe for a Rhubarb Clafoutis. Its sort of like a cobbler but the fruit is topped with an eggy batter. It puffed up like yorkshire pudding - there were some huge bubbles! Unfortunately, by the time I got a shot of it it had deflated.

I served it with lightly sweetened whipped cream. We obviously hated it.

After cleaning up all the dishes (we made a lot of dishes!) my mother and I prepared Paula Deen's French Toast Casserole to sit overnight. In the morning we scooped on praline topping and baked it for breakfast.  We took a much needed 3 mile run while it baked.

We also had melon and strawberries. Check out these beautiful hydrangeas from my mother's garden!

For dinner Sunday I made 2 big seafood lasagnas. The lasagna itself was a basic recipe with ricotta, mozzarella and tomato sauce, but with scallops, shrimp, and lobster added into the layers. I also added some roasted red peppers.

Each slice was topped with a rich tomato bechamel. This was not a light meal!

I also made a Cesar salad with garlic croutons. Corin made some amazing garlic bread and I used some of his roasted garlic butter to toast the croutons.

Earlier in the day I prepared a banana cream pie that we ate for dessert.  This had a special addition - I added a layer of chocolate ganache over the graham cracker crust.



I think this was my favorite dish of the weekend. It also got topped with freshly whipped cream.

As you can see I have not been going hungry in my blogging absence. This morning we woke up to a beautiful, sunny day with a perfect, calm ocean. And then got in the car and drove to work. I miss the beach!