7/27/09


I’m alone tonight. What should I eat? I like to treat myself well – after all, even alone I showered, dressed and put on purple earrings. So why shouldn’t I eat well, too?

It’s July and the garden is bursting, even after the almost continuous rainy, cloudy and cool weather. It is only marginally drier now, but hotter.

So, what do I have? Let’s see. Hmm…, beets – such a magnificent color. The tops, the beet greens, are yummy too. I can use them but I have to examine them carefully for Beet Leaf Miner, a tiny larval insect that tunnels between the upper and lower leaf surfaces and create a brownish discolored area on the leaf. This is easy to see and I just slice off those parts and throw them in the compost receptacle on my counter. Next I wash two beets, chop them and set them aside in a tiny white dish. They look beautiful.

The first thing is to put a little olive oil in a sauté pan and start heating it.

Those onion tops left from the other day look nice, and one even has an aromatic purple flower on it. I slice the hollow stems into rings and throw them into the pan. I toss in the flower too, for fun. The chopped beets go in, as well.

I picked red-streaked radicchio today and I wash it carefully, checking for slugs. There’s a plague of slugs this season because of all the rain. I set the chopped radicchio aside for a few minutes because I’ve just remembered the snap peas I picked. I quickly wash them and pull off any strings and throw the pods in the pan with the gently sautéing beets and onion greens.

What else is there to eat? In the fridge I find a small piece of tofu floating in water in a plastic container. Rinsed, patted dry and diced, it goes into the sauté pan.

I remember some roasted vegetable ravioli in the freezer and I take out 4 of them. On the back burner I set a small pan of water to boil.

Meanwhile, the beet greens and radicchio go into the stir fry, and then the ravioli into the boiling water.

I need some sort of a sauce to top it all off but my tomatoes aren’t ripe yet so I rummage in the back of the fridge again and fish out a jar of tomato sauce lurking there. No good – it’s moldy and even I won’t eat it. Even I, (who thinks eating a little green/blue mold won't hurt occasionally), think this sauce is too far gone. So I open a jar of spicy salsa and spoon a half-a-cup over the sautéed vegetables and heat it through.

Nearly ready! I drain the ravioli and throw them into the stir-fry; toss it all together with wooden spoons and slide the whole thing into a large amber-colored soup plate and sprinkle it with coarsely shaved Parmesan cheese and freshly ground black pepper.

A glass of red wine – Carr Cabernet Sauvignon from Napa Valley and I’m all set. I take it out onto my screened deck and listen to the rain coming down on my garden, (again!), and to Pavarotti on the CD player. A Common Gray Treefrog trills its song near me outside the screen. It has taken up residence under the gas grill cover for the summer.

What could be more divine?