Eric continues to amaze me in a multitude of ways not the least being his food adventures.  Purchases are focused on locally available produce whenever possible – in season.

Let’s start with his onion soup.  He cooked down sliced onions until translucent, letting them simmer in some homemade beef stock.

Meanwhile………….prepping our ramekins with cheese and french artisan bread (baked locally).

Before adding more cheese and broiling them in the oven to finish.  That was our supper one evening.

BTW – one thing that makes his life easier is this chest freezer.  Throughout the year he cooks down stock for any future meals thus only requiring some defrosting for his prep.

Digging in the freezer one day, he came across pulled pork.  With our recent visits to a local ‘fusion’ takeout, he made our own street tacos.  While the pork was thawing he made the topping.  OMG – where does he find this stuff?  I can tell you now, these spices are nothing that I would consider if I was grocery shopping.

The results were amazing, adding in some advocado and crème fraiche.

Eric was sneaky and captured this photo.  We’re really enjoying the ‘tailgate meals’.  When done, dump any leftover food onto the paper tablecloth, roll up and throw away.

This is also the time (mid-May) for Florida sweet corn and our visits to local Farmer’s markets have been fruitful.  Sticking with ‘street’ food, he made some ‘street corn’.

OMG – I may never eat sweet corn any other way!  His method was (1) grill corn with husks on (2) remove the silks (3) slather on butter (4) place back on grill for more char (5) brush with Eric’s special ‘corn butter’ before devouring.

                

Man – look at those flames, they were kissing the corn.  The street corn was so good we had a repeat performance later in the week while grilling hamburgers.

Our goal is only two meals daily – so his inspiration doesn’t run out – while also keeping an eye on calorie in-take.  People are joking about the ‘furlough 15’ so we don’t want those extra pounds if we can help it. One evening we tried his version of a kimchi hot dog.   It was good, but not as good as Tako Cheena (sorry hon).

Or when super hot outside,  Greek salad with pita bread.  Those squares of yellow below……….our yellow tomatoes harvested that morning.

We’re not above having a typical ‘breakfast’ for a meal other than breakfast.  A Cheese omelette and sausage patties satisfies the soul.

While this next dish was not for a meal, it qualified as a snack.  We had something similar in Lyon – but it was MUCH better there.  Maybe it had somethng to do with the country and company.  🙂

I planted some French radish seeds a month ago, on the cusp of our planting season, and we’re starting to harvest them.  Dip them in softened butter, a little bit of sea salt then eat.  You can see how the bottoms are scored in the left photo.

We had another ‘tailgate’ meal that was totally awesome – grilled pizza (the small red tomatoes were from our garden).

Since we have time on our hands, Eric wanted to make his own pizza crust – of course.  After mixing the yeast, flour, sugar, water and olive oil the dough balls sat out in our Florida room to rise.

Added the homemade tomato sauce with fresh buffalo mozzarella balls and fresh basil (also from our garden) and the topped pizza was complete.

He placed a ceramic tile in the oven before the grill to get it super hot prior to adding the pizza.

Totally awesome pizza, but the ceramic tile broke while cooking.  Two days later we tried again and used our pizza stone.  It was also really good pizza – but not as good as with the tile.  The tile put a char on the bottom of the pizza that tasted great.  Eric guessed the tile must have been close to 700 degrees F.

Everything is not always successful.  One night we felt like Mexican and Eric thought ‘Chimichangas!’ would be interesting to make.  Started with a flour tortilla, put a layer of refried beans, meat and a bit of shredded cheese.

A few minutes in the fryer then topped with a green tomatilla sauce.

It looked good, satisfied our need for sustence, but does not bear a repeat.

Once in a while, Eric wants to do some baking.  We came across a farm stand with Florida peaches.  They’re such a rare commodity,  it was a no-brainer for our purchase.

Going in, we knew these peaches were not ‘cling-free’.  I was good at peeling, Eric was good at slicing.

First attempt was fried peach pies.  They were good.

Second attempt was a peach tart.  Dough was made along with a (fantastic) cream filling.

With a beautiful (and tasty) finished product.

Wow!  Again, Eric continues to amaze me with his culinary adventures – a definite plus during the furlough.  🙂

Ginny