Napa Cabbage.

Our kitchen table, May 2010:

One half a gigantic Napa Cabbage from our garden, next to its other half, soaking in salt for kimchi.

A 2nd Vegan Spring Dinner Party (Grills & Gardens).

A 2nd chapter in the Liz & Rin Have A Dinner Party With Our Cute Boyfriends saga.

The rules, as always, go as follows: 1. no pre-planning of the menu. 2. spend little to nothing on ingredients. 3. Be wildly decadent & excessively creative anyway.

The themes for this occasion? The grill Owen & I had bought the night before & hadn't had the chance to try out yet & the beginnings of our garden produce & a delightfully hot, midsummeresque late May evening.

The menu: 1. Mesculin Salad with Radishes & Silvered Almonds, & a Fresh Herb Vinegrette.

2. Garden Greens & Pickled Radishes: Spinach & Napa Cabbage sauted in kimchi juice with picked radishes & a vidalia onion.

3. Shit On The Grill: Vegan Sausages (only for Rin will I consume a vegan sausage), & zucchini, corn, & green peppers.

4. Beer, Wine & the Latest Issue of Cosmo.

Finally, this meal was almost entirely fregan, composed mainly of free things from my work or things we grew or made.

Spinach, napa cabbage, radishes, dill, cilantro, & Mesculin mix = garden produce.

Zucchini, green peppers, corn, oranges, olive oil, silvered almonds= free from work.

Onion, garlic, sausages, shallot, & white wine vinegar, plus condiments = purchased (mostly from the asian market or Deals & Steals).

Kimchi & salad dressing=homemade.

Cost of meal= maybe $2 or $3 a person. Not a bad way to live.

Garden Food Begins: Lettuce & Radishes.

Within the last few weeks, our garden plot has suddenly started to produce real food. Weird. Seeds are rather magical that way. You put some very tiny things in the ground in early April, & suddenly so much gorgeous food is free.

We start with lettuce, oh so much, we are actually swimming in lettuce right now, Salad City, this is from our Mesculin patch, begun from some seeds acquired from the Lost & Found at work, planted in a small plastic pot in the living room way too early when I had garden spring fever & forgotten, they mysteriously turned out very well & now are a whole glorious row in the garden...& then there is the green leaf, the red leaf, the butter crunch, the red boston...yup, we got lettuce.

& radishes, here shown being pickled in the liquid from some previously homemade kimchi. Soon we will have black radishes, too.
& the garden is really starting to step up the pace...spinach, huge insane napa cabbages (more kimchi in progress right now in the kitchen), dill, cilantro, basil, the broccoli just started flowering, the first strawberry turned red, the red chard doubles in size every day...you get the picture. WAY more local then your produce, no matter where you buy it (co-op in-joke). & yesterday we bought a tiny grill for our downtown Noho backyard. Meat is being grilled as I type this. YAY summer.