A Summer's Worth of Food

We have been cooking up a storm this summer (maybe literally, Hurricane Bill is heading our way!) and have been pretty good about taking pictures but I am terrible about posting them. The good thing about waiting so long, though, is that I can post it all at once. Take a trip through our summer in Mema's kitchen :)

The first thing we had to do was clear out all of Mema's expired food. This is only a small part of what we threw out and some of it was a few years past the expiration date. To be fair, they don't cook much but we had to make room for food that wouldn't kill us.

Our first big attempt was at Alton Brown's French Toast. We were watching "Good Eats" one night when he made the most incredible looking (and complicated) French Toast I'd ever seen. We're suckers for trying new things (and taking trips to Publix daily) so we gave it a whirl. We documented the entirety of making these bad boys but the final product is the most beautiful. This bad boy was deeeee-licious!
We have also been following a friends' cooking blog - Vintage Victuals. This girl has some of the best recipes ever and is also a fabulous photographer. Just looking at her food pictures makes me drool! She posted a recipe for Emergency Chocolate Cake that we just had to try - it was everything I was dreaming of, and then some. Quick, easy, chocolaty, delicious. We had to buy a lot of the ingredients (see: first picture) but any normal kitchen would already have them, which makes it even better!

After that chocolate cake desire was fed, we moved on to chocolate cupcakes. Cake mix is always BOGO at Publix so I have a ton that we needed to start eating. And eating we did. David cooked up 2 dozen cupcakes that we polished off in just a few days. And I once caught him eating 4 in a row!
Eventually we decided to go on a slightly healthier kick. One of the things I miss most about being in Athens is my Dad's grilling - he makes the BEST hamburgers but he can grill just about everything, and I love grilled squash. When I saw it at the store, I bought way more than I should have and we just tossed it with a little olive oil, salt and pepper and grilled it on George Foreman. It is AMAZING!
Our success with the yellow squash got me curious about other produce...so when I saw a Chayote at the store, I got excited. This is the UGLIEST fruit/vegetable thing I have ever seen. So I bought it. It kind of looks like a wrinkly Pear from the side but the bottom has big disgusting lips that resemble an old person without their false teeth in.

We had no idea what to do with it but after a little research, I learned that it is firmer than a squash (with a consistancy similar to an apple), pretty bland and takes on the flavor of anything it's with. We decided to go big on flavor and sliced it up and then covered the pieces in butter, minced garlic, italian seasoning and mozarella cheese. Here's the result:

I have no idea if that's what you're supposed to do with it, but I believe that EVERYTHING tastes good when it's covered in butter, garlic and cheese and this was no exception. I don't know if it is something I'd eat on a regular basis but it was quite delicious and I like to pretend that it's healthy since there is a fruit/vegetable in there somewhere.

And most recently, David attempted the Deen Brothers' Red Potato and Green Bean Sautee. Don't look at that website though - their picture puts ours to shame. Anyways, it was delicious - I'm lucky to live with such a good chef! I love green vegetables and those little red potatos are fabulous. We tried them roasted with carrots and pearl onions too. YUM!

Paula Deen's making macaroni and cheese and peach cobber on TV, the sun is setting over the ocean and it's dinnertime. This is the life!