Cook Food

I am not generally big on pictures of food, but I couldn’t resist sharing this beaut I got at the Old Oakland farmers market this afternoon. It’s going to be part of tonight’s reading/cooking demo (I’m planning a cucumber and tomato salad with lemon-mint dressing).

First I just took its picture:

Then I realized that you’d have no idea why I thought it was special from looking at that picture. So I took this one:

Yes, that’s a full-size mug.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that huge cucumbers are often bitter and I should have gotten a smaller one. But here’s the thing: This is some different variety of cucumber that I have never even seen before. It was actually the smallest one of its kind that the farmer had.

True, I have no idea how it’s gonna taste. I’ll let you know later; it could be an unpleasant surprise. But that’s what improvisational cooking demos are all about, right?

This might be kinda bad for a cookbook author to admit, but I’ve been having a lot of trouble getting motivated to cook lately. I’m sure it’s temporary—it has to do with the fact that I’m living in a temporary apartment where the kitchen is, um, problematic—but it’s been weighing on me nonetheless. I’ve been feeling unhealthy and totally sick of takeout, and I’ve been wanting to cook but unable to make it happen.

But now that the summer veggies are coming in—cucumbers, corn, and tomatoes in addition to the green beans and snap peas that have been around for a while and the radishes and carrots that are pretty much always around—I can do the no-cooking cooking that only works well in hot weather: salad. I’m pretty picky when it comes to salad; I don’t really like lettuce that much, and unless the temperature is above 80, I really need to eat hot food. But a mess of chopped veggies with some beans or tofu for rib-sticking-ness is feeling really perfect right now. Even more so because I can “cook” lunch for myself in 10 minutes before I leave for work.

So every day for lunch since last Monday, I’ve been eating a simplified version of Cook Food‘s Citrus Vinaigrette for Any Salad (lemon juice, olive oil, salt—I’ve been too lazy even to crush some garlic) on top of an assortment of everything that looked good at the farmers market last Sunday and yesterday. Today’s version was broccoli sprouts, a lemon cucumber, a Japanese cucumber, a carrot, some radishes, some green beans, and some precooked lentils from Trader Joe’s (I felt kinda bad about the level of packaging, but, well, see “problematic kitchen,” above). Tomorrow’s: corn, pea sprouts, snap peas, more radishes, more cucumbers, more lentils.

Oh, wait, there was the one day I didn’t bring my lunch; instead I got to have lunch with the lovely staff of VegNews magazine—and eat home-cooked vegan French toast and talk about food politics and magazine publishing.  That was awesome.