Cooking all the things!

I love summer, but OMG the garden and my CSA basket are exploding. And I can't resist a bargain... Yesterday's adventures included the purchase of okra because it was on sale. Which meant I needed to buy chicken and look up a recipe for frango com quiabo (chicken with okra, a traditional recipe from Minas Gerais, Brazil). I also have beets cooking up for a cold borscht. I finally sauteed my swiss chard to eat with rice and beans (I hate chard but can't let it go to waste; I have been using all sorts of other greens while waiting for my collards to grow big enough to use, so I figured the chard might work too). Tomorrow I need to get down to the serious business of making pesto, as my basil is exploding. I have discovered that carrot tops make a decent pesto, so I may experiment with adding them too, or I could just sautee them. Usually I just pitch out the green tops, but this year I am trying to learn to use everything.

My freezer will be nicely filled, but I will also have a lot of other foods I need to use up. Summer is the time when my craving for coleslaw kicks in every year, so I bought a cabbage which I haven't had time to use. Last night's CSA basket included a second cabbage, so I will be making cabbage roll casserole for the freezer, just to make room for non-freezable vegetables in my fridge.

How about you? Do you live where summer bounty changes what you eat? Do you prefer old favourites or do you like to experiment^

Cleaning stress

I'm trying to catch up on cleaning and I keep getting sidetracked. There is so much I want to do, but today I just can't break it into manageable chunks and actually finish something (anything!).
How do you do your cleaning?

[Poll #2050710]

Changing Tastes

Do you find that what you like has changed over time? I know there are a few things I like better than I did as a kid, but mostly I have remained a fairly adventurous eater. There have been a few changes, though, and I wonder whether it is the food itself or how it was prepared. Today's example is okra.

When I lived in Brazil, I tried the traditional Minas Gerais dish of chicken and okra stew. I thought it was pretty loathsome because of the gluey texture. I haven't had it for years. However, a few years ago I made a spicy andouille sausage and needed something to use it in; the solution was a chicken and smoked andouille sausage dish that also had okra. This week, okra was on clearance sale so I bought 2 pounds of it. I didn't have any andouille, though, and didn't feel like making any, so I found a recipe for that Brazilian chicken and okra stew. I just tasted it and mm.mmmm..mmmm.... The okra had quite a lovely texture. Maybe I didn't cook it as long as it was cooked in restaurants in Brazil?