More or Less Basic Beginnings

This is a first attempt! As a brand-new blogger, I have absolutely no idea how to approach this, so please bear with me as I work out the kinks and figure out to transfer some better quality photos. In the future I may break into more in-depth recipes, but for now we'll just work on the basic content.

This has been my first week of the summer without any wedding planning or school work, so I've taking advantage of the situation to do some more focused cooking. I have a great fondness (weakness?) for farmers markets, and we have finally hit the "full-steam" mode of summer veggie fare: basil, tomatoes, mint, eggplants, onions, cucumbers, etc. Tonight's menu reflected as many of these goodies as I could easily manage. The result is a nice twist on some summer basics.
Wednesday Menu
Mike's Dubbel
Chicken Breast with Basil and Tomatoes
Minty Cucumber Salad
Tomato/Basil/Mozzerella/Balsamic Vinegar side
Megan's Cherry-Shiraz Soup with Fresh Peaches and Vanilla Frozen Yogurt

We got married last week, and our friend Mike Herman gave us the incredible gift of his home-brewed beer. In addition to the IPA, lager, pale ale, and scotch ale that we had on tap during the reception, Mike bottled a batch of Belgian-style Dubbel specifically as a wedding present. This will continue to age in the bottles, but for now we couldn't help ourselves and we've been breaking into a few.

I tried out the Minty Cucumber Salad for the first time tonight - straight out of the Silver Palate Cookbook. It didn't quite have enough time to marinate, so I'll wait to fine-tune it until later, but it was still pretty refreshing and sweet for a hot night.

Another perk of our recent wedding was a slew of Crate & Barrel gift certificates (thanks, guys!). We used some to purchase Chris' new pride and joy - a two-burner griddle. I'm sure I'll be talking about the griddle a lot in future entries. Tonight, Chris pulled out the griddle and got the chicken done in minutes. The chicken recipe was based on one of Mark Bittman's many simple varieties from How to Cook Everything. The recipe itself was pretty straightforward - marinated with olive oil, lemon, and fresh basil, then sprinkled with tomato at the end.

I did not splurge on the farmer's market mozzarella, but we did use store-bought for a tasty side with sliced tomato and basil (and balsamic vinegar for me).

So where are the cherries?! Not in a cocktail this week, but we did have a special treat courtesy of our good friend Megan (and some of our leftover Shiraz from the wedding). An incredibly sweet cherry-Shiraz soup that we scooped over some lowfat vanilla frozen yogurt and some fresh sliced peaches I'd picked up from the Keown Orchards stand at Copley. Yummmmm. Please note the beautiful blue bowls our friend Stu got us as a wedding present!

Thank goodness for summer and all this fresh food. So we'll give this whole blog thing a shot until school starts back up in 2 weeks - hopefully I'll still have time to keep it up. Stay tuned!