The Bitten Word

Garden Update: Greens for Days

Tinkering in Our Backyard Garden

We've been away from home a lot over the last three weeks, between an adventure way down South, a trip to Kentucky for a friend's wedding, and work trips for each of us. 

With so little use, our kitchen must be feeling abandoned. Goodness knows we're ready to get back to it. 

While we've been away, and despite our neglect, our little backyard garden has been chugging along, getting a bit bigger every day. 

The squash, as you can see above, are blossoming (unfortunately we haven't been able to use the blossoms yet). Lots of big blossoms, but no actual squash just yet. We've been watching to see if they're male or female blossoms, and if we may need to pollinate the squash by hand, but so far all our blossoms are males. We will get some female blossoms, right? 

 

Creamy Onion Puree: A Reliable Stand-in For Mashed Potatoes?

Southern Living (May 2013)

Truth be told, it's probably been years since we had mashed potatoes.

Not only are they on the unhealthy, carb-heavy end of the spectrum, we just don't like them that much. Oh sure, we like butter, salt and gravy just as much as the next guys. But the actual potatoes? Eh.

So when we saw this recipe in Southern Living, we were intrigued -- and skeptical. Could an onion puree really be an improvement on mashed potatoes?

At first, we assumed this was meant as a healthier alternative to potatoes, but that isn't the intention here. The puree has plenty of fat to give it flavor -- there's three tablespoons of butter and one tablespoon of olive oil. Thyme is also in the mix for additional flavor.

Turns out, it takes a whole lot of onions to get four small servings of Onion Puree. The recipe calls for six large onions. Slicing them, we thought that surely this would make a huge bowl of pureed onions. But then they cook down and down and down, into a relatively small side dish. 

But a side dish we loved. The finished dish is buttery and delicious, with a wonderful, rich flavor that's so much deeper and more interesting than plain ol' mashed potatoes. Since sweet onions are used, the onion flavor is not overpowering. In fact it's very smooth, balanced by the herbs and fat. 

Want to mix up your mashed potato routine?

Ditch the taters and reach for the onions. 

Eating Puerto Rico

"I think I may have to go to Puerto Rico for work." 

"Well, you're not going without me." 

As we mentioned last week, Zach recently had a work assignment for his magazine, and Clay was in need of a few days of downtime. And so we wound up spending five days in Puerto Rico; we returned a little more than a week ago. 

Have you been to Puerto Rico? We hadn't, and we had very little idea what to expect. Typically, we plan out our trips fairly well -- What's the best breakfast place near our hotel? Which museums are free on what days? But this time, thanks to both of us being very busy right up until we got on the plane, we pretty much just showed up. 

And in no time at all, we started to love San Juan.