Friday, August 8, 2008

Vietnamese Style Fajitas

I make this for Rachel and Mike when they come over because they flatter me with rave reviews for it, and I usually forget about it otherwise. We will be seeing them tonight, so Orion and Maia helped me mix up a batch of the dressing. This is from Cooking Under Wraps, and it's a great recipe as is, but here it is w/my changes:

Chile Dressing:

grated zest and juice of one lime
3 tbsp. soy sauce
2 tbsp. brown sugar
1 jalepeno
fresh ground pepper
1/4 cup olive oil
2 tsp. garlic

Make dressing ahead if possible and let it sit.

Chicken, pork or steak
2 bell peppers
1 large onion

Grill these. Blacken peppers, steam in paper bag and peel. Slice meat, onion and peppers fajita style and toss with the sauce. Serve on warmed tortillas with any or all of the following:

lettuce
mint
cilantro
tomatoes
avocado
sour cream
shredded cheese

I usually keep these separate since I have a couple people at my house with very particular tastes, but pre-kids I used to throw the lettuce, tomatoes and herbs in there with everything else.

Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Early Girl


Our first early girl tomato! I picked this after it got pretty red on the vine on July 30th, which was 66 days after transplanting (on May 25th). Also featured are some red cherry tomatoes and some sungolds, both of which we've been getting since July 19th or 20th. Our second early girl will be ready today or tomorrow.

Here's how all our garden plants are faring (this is more an inventory for me than anything else):

Early Girl (from local nursery): healthy
Mountain Fresh: (nursery): healthy and prolific

Sungold: (heirloom from farmer's market): a little scrawny and sparse, but tall with a fair amount of fruit

Green Zebra: (farmer's market heirloom): beautifully healthy and bushy, lots of flowers but no fruit....I'll be very bummed if this one doesn't pan out.

Better Boy (nursery) and Striped German (farmer's market): These are both in a location that turned out to be too shady. They are small (but healthy), with only a few fruits.

Cherry Tomato (in pot): Initially the best plant (got HOT in the full sun on our patio), it got attacked by aphids and it is now a sad, spindly plant.

And the 2 surprises: a plant that got crushed by a lattice that I threw in the flower garden, and is overcrowded but healthy and producing some fruit, and an insanely healthy volunteer cherry tomato plant that is growing like wild out of our compost bin.