Monday, June 25, 2007

cooking, picnic-ing, and (more) hiking

It's hot here . . .
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. . . but I discovered the trick to cooking though the heat while still not owning an air conditioner -- I only cook after 10 pm! This way, even if I have to turn on the oven and heat up the apartment, it's cooled off again by morning. Wahoo! Cooking during the summer is fun again! I made a couple of things last week:

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Jerk Tofu (from the Post Punk Kitchen) with a side of baked sweet potato and garlic-roasted asparagus . . .

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. . . and red lentil stew with saffron rice and cilantro yogurt cream. (The stew and cream were from an old issue of Cooking Light magazine, and I made up the rice.)

Also, I picked up a bunch of very delicious picnic-type foods, (hummus, wholegrain pita, orange cherry tomatoes, cucumber, olives, feta, stuffed grape leaves, and tabouli,) made some homemade lemonade (1 cup sugar, 1 cup freshly-squeezed lemon juice, and 6 cups of water,) and packed up a meal to go for Dan and I last Friday. (No pics of the food, sorry!) We drove down to Minnehaha Creek, set up picnic camp at the bottom of the falls, ate a bunch, and then walked off our lunch along the creek.

The falls:
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Alternate view of the falls (looking down from the top):
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Minnehaha Creek:
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Views along the creek:
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I'm planning sushi for dinner tomorrow night, (which you've seen a million times before, so I won't bore you with additional photos,) and have no idea what I'll come up with these next couple of days, so stay tuned! (And stay cool!)

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

the food looks great, great phtos.

Anonymous said...

I am so excited to see you back to blogging! Thanks for the tip about how to cook in the heat--I have been eating mostly salads and other non-cook foods...it has been really hot in MN!

Your food looks great, as always.

Courtney

Judy said...

I too get creative with my cooking in the warmer months. Lots of stove top cooking, or oven cooking before work so the apartment has time to cool off before I come home again! After 10pm - great idea!

theONLYtania said...

The tofu looks great! I suck at cooking tofu :-(
What a great day at that creek. I'm boring but my favorite is the 5th picture of it.. don't know why.

Michelle said...

Awwww...poor, poor Oliver. It looks like the heat got to him.

KleoPatra said...

Oh the falls! The falls! The falls are so RAD!!!

Your kitty, that photo cracked me up! Stay cool, cat!!

Love that jerk tofu with the sweet po and did someone say GARLIC ROASTED asparagus? (*swooning* here, FYI)

Waitin' on the next post. So glad you are back. You can be a big, fat liar anytime. We won't call you on it!

Shawn Powers said...

Beautiful scenery. :)

I have to agree with theonlytania -- I too suck at cooking tofu. Your photo makes me want to try again. I usually end up cubing it and haphazardly frying it up. It turns out yucky, but I love tofu so much I eat it anyway.

And that cat photo is begging for a LOLcat caption... :)

Here ya go!