every day I write the book

cold noodles for summer, and breakfast rice

Hello again, my friends. How is it we’re halfway through July already? It’s that point of summer where the weather doesn’t change too much, and I’m trying to balance my need to have a good time while it’s nice out with the anxiety I feel when I try to pinpoint the last time I can remember it raining.

But if the weather is going to insist on being unsettlingly nice all the time, tonight— Thursday, as I write this— I might check out Deckchair Cinema at the Shipyards, a by-donation event that’s put on weekly by the Polygon Gallery all summer. I’ve always meant to go and never remembered to do it, but some of the films they’re showing this year have me very pumped (Xanadu during Pride Week? yes) so I’m really going to make an effort to check out a couple. Tonight’s film is What We Do in the Shadows, a movie that made me laugh so hard the first time I watched it that I had to pause and skip back multiple times because I missed subsequent lines of dialogue. Maybe I’ll get a little treat from Cream Pony before I head over there.

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With travel, friends coming to visit, and my oral surgery, our usual Friday pizza night was on hold for a few weeks, but we were glad to come back to it finally! After having the vegan bee sting pizza last week at Pizzeria Grano we were inspired to make a (non-vegan) one with pepper salami, basil, goat feta, and hot honey. And because it’s difficult to make pizza and not have one with olives on it, the other was hot capocollo, black and green olive, and fresh oregano. We also bought some fresh mozzarella at Costco, and I enjoyed tearing it into big shreds with my hands to put on the pizza, rather than using slices (or the grated type of mozza, which is less creamy and flavourful when it’s cooked in such a hot oven).

I’m not one for cooking breakfast very often— normally I eat yogurt or sometimes Jeff will make me an egg sandwich— but every once in awhile I have some leftovers that inspire me. I had some leftover rice from a stir-fry last week and made a little pan of mushroom fried rice, and then cooked an over easy egg to put on top along with some chili miso. Jeff is an omelette person in the mornings, and he doesn’t always have the gentle touch required for a soft-cooked egg, so that’s something I like to do every once in awhile just to remind myself it’s a skill I possess. This little bowl was so satisfying I might have to start keeping rice in the fridge at all times, just in case.

I spent most of Sunday sitting in the yard reading a novel, enjoying the heat in the safety of the shade. But that meant that when it was time to make dinner my brain had sadly floated away. So I made a quick noodle salad with peanut sauce, another hit from Isa Does It. The recipe uses thick rice noodles and a base of salad greens, and I do like it this way, but I went for instant ramen this time, and cabbage shredded on the mandoline since I was already using that to slice radishes and cucumber. The ramen noodles are nice because they have a bit less of a tendency to glom together in a big ball if you let them sit for a couple of minutes, and I liked the cabbage for its additional crunch and slight bitterness. Plus it can be mixed right into the rest of the salad without it wilting, rather than having to ration the dressing to make sure there’s enough for the lettuces when you serve.

Really, though, you could put any number of things into this peanut dressing and it would instantly become a delicious meal you cannot seem to eat fast enough. Just watch the type of peanut butter you’re using— if it isn’t the natural type without salt or sugar, you’ll want to adjust the agave or soy sauce amounts accordingly. Two ramen packets, one Persian cucumber, a few radishes, and a wedge of green cabbage made the perfect amount for Jeff and me with no leftovers of the salad. The leftover dressing (a third of a cup or so) is waiting patiently in the fridge to be turned into a rice bowl or lunchtime slaw with carrots and more cabbage.

With the first small tomatoes ready in our garden, I used a handful of them and some local ones from the store to make this lovely pearl couscous with slow-roasted tomatoes. I’m often too impatient for slow roasting, but an hour isn’t too bad when the rest of the meal only takes about fifteen minutes, and the flavour is so amazing. And they look so cute on the sheet pan.

Some of the tomatoes get blended into a dressing with olive oil and roasted garlic and a touch of lemon, and the rest get mixed into a salad along with the couscous, some chopped kalamata olives, and fresh herbs (I used mint, parsley, and basil). I added some crumbled feta, too, because it always works well with olives and tomatoes. The texture of pearl couscous here is great, though orzo would work too. Sadly, we only had half the amount of couscous and tomatoes the recipe called for so I couldn’t make a full batch and have leftovers, because this is really good the next day. This would be nice along with some marinated grilled tofu or roast chicken, but it’s a perfectly satisfying main— the half batch was about the right amount for two of us, so it would stretch to serve three or four as a side.

I did end up making the raspberry oat bars I mentioned last week. I’ve always made a half batch before, but turns out we’d picked almost exactly a pound of berries so I was able to make a full pan this time! I do think next time I’d use my smaller pan, though— the stoneware pan I used is technically 9”x13” but it’s a bit convex so it created a little more surface area, and subsequently the berry layer ended up a little sparse. So they came out a little crumbly without the good coverage of the middle layer to bind the crust layers together. But no matter! The important thing to know is that they are very satisfying to eat: jammy, textured, perfectly salted and not too sweet. If you see fresh raspberries at the farmers’ market this weekend, get some and make these. I’d intended to slice up half the pan to put in the freezer for another time, but we ended up eating them all in four days, instead. We still have more berries so I might even make them again.

Our garden is now producing zucchini as fast as we can use them. If you’ve ever grown zucchini, you understand this predicament, and why August 8 is the little-celebrated ‘sneak some zucchini onto your neighbour’s porch’ day. I’m not quite at that point yet, but I am having to come up with an ever-increasing list of zucchini dishes to keep me from getting bored with it. This week, I tried a delicious-sounding zucchini pasta with mozza and a basil oil similar to pistou. I used the recipe in Plenty, but it’s available here with very slight modifications. I’ve happened upon this when looking for pasta salad recipes in the past, but never wanted to bother with, because who wants to fry that much zucchini? Count me out.

I’m sure it’s perfect and amazing if you do make it as-is, but to save myself getting mad about frying three to four batches of zucchini, I sliced them lengthwise to the same thickness, brushed with oil, and grilled them instead. Do they look a bit less cute when they aren’t cut into nice little rounds? Sure. Is the flavour different? Probably. Does that make it better or worse? Who’s to say. Personally I enjoyed the way the zucchini tasted with a little char from the grill, lightly marinated afterwards in a splash of red wine vinegar, and I also enjoyed that it took all of ten minutes to cook them this way.

I made the rest of this pretty much as written, though I used less loose basil leaves in the salad (because I didn’t have that many) and I threw the edamame in the pot during the last few minutes of cooking the pasta (because why boil water twice). I do think more capers would make it even better, but the lemon zest had everything perfectly balanced otherwise. I loved the way the cheese pieces soak up the sauce. There are already two zucchinis in my kitchen to replace the two I used in this dish, so I’m sure I’ll be making this one again before September comes around.

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Thanks for reading— if you enjoyed this newsletter, please share it with someone new! I like providing this to you for free, but it does still involve time and effort, so donations I can use towards cookbooks or future treats are much appreciated. We’re headed on a road trip next Friday, so I may or may not have time to write a newsletter on Thursday while we prepare. Anyway, as a hater of anything that automates labour while failing to provide for workers, and a hater of grocery stores making record profits while punishing consumers under the guise of ‘inflation’, my response to this news is: good.