We ate this too quickly for a picture but trust me, it’s good.

• wide pasta, preferably homemade
• 1/4-1/3 lb. guanciale (aka jowl bacon)
• ~4 lbs vegetables (I used about 2lbs cherry tomatoes, 1 lb chard, a few small eggplant, and an onion from our garden)
• a strong, washed-rind cheese
• red pepper flakes/pepper/basil etc…

Cook the pasta and reserve a couple ladlefuls of the starchy water before draining. Render the guanciale till almost crispy. I added the onion and eggplant and cooked for a while, then the chard, and finally the tomatoes. The eggplant was I then put in the pasta, the reserved water, and cheese, and then turned off the heat. I then added the herbs and spices to taste. Really awesome if you manage to track down the jowl bacon and cheese. I suspect almost any combination of vegetables would be tasty with that.

I thought that sungolds were indeterminate, but they all seem to be coming at once. I also bagged eight big cucumbers–sheesh!

Andrea & I toasted each others birthdays at the Publican over the weekend. If you haven’t heard of the place, give it a look–it’s pretty darn good.

In lieu of our trip to Morocco in a few weeks,my sister sent me a very thoughtful present: a Moroccan cookbook and a jar of homemade preserved lemons. I guess it worked, since I’ve made some Moroccanish stuff the last couple days. Yesterday we had lamb meatballs using lamb from our market that were quite yummy. According to the book, Algerians put eggs on top of their lamb meatballs, which sounded great, but I was feeling a little pudgy from last week’s Gordon conference. Instead I made some cold, minted peas which was fitting considering it was 95 F outside. With the big haul from the garden today, I decided to make a couscous salad with cukes, tomatoes, herbs (tons of parsley, mint, basil, and lavender) with a green olive/preserved lemon dressing. Omomomo…it was pretty great. The olives were stuffed with garlic so the whole thing ended up being wonderfully briny and smooth. I really haven’t worked with preserved lemons before, so I rinsed out about half a lemon and emulsed it with a lot of olive oil. It was like an exotic, savory curd afterward. Anyway, here’s the evidence.

I also found some pictures from a little adventure the other day. Rather than dragging the dusty weber out, I grilled some squid using some tinfoil, a cooling rack, and my most powerful burner. It worked suprisingly well. I then used said grilled squid in a pa jun with some pickled radish and green onions. So good.

As requested, here are a few photos from my 3 [!] plots that I’m working on at Argonne. Everything this year was grown from seeds that I bought from this place.

First up: I grew a bunch of sugar snap peas this spring. Here they are about a yard tall in mid-May., but they eventually got well over six feet tall in June before going to seed. I’ll definitely be planting a lot more of them for a fall harvest. The beets and lettuce (leopard oak shown) were also happy with our extended, wet spring. (The lettuce has since gone feral, growing long stalks like a milkweed)

I planted a bunch of napa cabbages for kimchee-making. (I just sowed another row in my new plot) I like how they just squeeze together.

My peppers and eggplant have been slow-going, waiting for the hot weather to show up, but they’re growing pretty quickly now. I just noticed some flowers on them for the first time today too.

I devoted much of one plot for tomatoes. In May, they looked so scrawny compared to other people’s greenhouse plants. Now, they’re out of control.

Last year, after dabbling with a bunch of different types of ‘maters, I decided to focus on three varieties: sungolds [cherry tomatoes], sweetheart [grape toamtoes], and striped romas. While most of the tomatoes are still flowers, there are a lot of little green guys out there now. Check them out:

Since my peas were long gone, I tore out their trellis and strung up my longer-than-expected cucumbers. The bees have been all over these guys.

I recently got a third plot, already double-dug, from Julie Cross. She also gave me some Italian swiss chard seeds. It’s early, but I like this cute little plot.

After all this, I got hungry so I took some of that wild summer lettuce and tamed it into a beef salad with a Vietnamese-y dressing.

And since there are no x-rays tonight, I think I’m going to make some vanilla ice cream to go with some berries from the market. (Yes, I finally got an ice cream maker!)

I have been learning how to fabricate and characterize small electrodes on our thin film samples over the past couple of weeks. Here is an SEM picture from my latest effort on a bare YSZ substrate. Without any additional information, can you guess what I’ve imaged above?

I don’t have much time to write up our trip to Grant park for Obama’s big win, but it was pretty neat. Andrea put up some photos of the event here. While we were standing for ~6 hours, I often wondered what the Obamas were up to the whole time. I guess now I know, since they have a flickr photostream with new pictures taken during the returns! (thanks dillon!)

Also, I have updated the blogroll with Andrea&Nubia’s sewing blog and Michael Pierce’s enviably-named science blog.

Not that market, the farmer’s market!  With the first frost predicted in the coming days, we say goodbye to the wonder and beauty that is our Oak Park Farmer’s Market.  When fruits and vegetables good for little else than decoration crowd the grocery, our Market has supported our culinary adventures with bright tastes and more nutrients.

Since our hero has been spending his nights with Lady Synchrotron and his days counting sheep, I filled the role and brought back this little bounty.  Pies, roasted veggies, cabbage experiments, and nummy apples await.  Hopefully, our hero will rejoin the daytime living by then and partake.

Who knows when our hero will remember this humble little blog!  He’s been occupied with designing a chamber for a mid-winter beam run, working on a book chapter, and fleshing out some explanations for out-of-phase crystalline film behaviors.  And he thinks I don’t listen.  In the meantime, our little household is chugging along!  This past Saturday, we had separate but equally important causes to tend: Tim’s, to ensure that we would eat delicious vegetables through the winter, and mine, to do what I could to help Barack and Michelle move their lil munchkins into the White House.

Clockwise: Some homemade tomato sauce, baked Hubbard squash (the farmers recommended dropping the squash from a balcony to open it), and blanched corn stripped from the cob.  The end result will be more photogenic, but having reserves is endlessly reassuring.  Bread-n-butter pickles!

Next: A standing-room-only crowd of volunteers at Illinois’ 7th District Democratic Headquarters; a man giving a spontaneous speech about how we are realizing MLK’s vision of judging a man by the content of his character; chaotically and democratically splitting up into cars for the 2.5 hr ride to Michigan; the Kalamazoo Democratic Headquarters.  My group spent half the day registering voters in a subsidized housing development and the other half talking to undecideds about where they stand and what would convince them.  We were only five people, but beyond the actual contacts we made, the presence of volunteers for a candidate is sometimes a strong message alone.  Or so I hope.

With the first 40-degree nights in sight, we’re getting ready for the impending doom that is winter in Chicago.  Our hero and I scooted over to Michigan over the weekend to shake down an apple orchard and ride our bikes along the lake, where we learned that much of the lakeshore is private property and not so visitor-friendly.  Our hero would want me to tell you that we picked 45 lbs of apples, so says our bathroom scale.  Jonagolds, Empires, Fujis, and some contraband Honeycrisps –apparently they were off-limits but too tempting to pass up– turned into apple oatmeal, applesauce, and apple crisp yesterday.  Mmm.

Fall also demands a fall jacket!  This muslin pattern will (hopefully) be transformed into a jacket using these fabrics — the satiny being the liner.  I think the colors are more pumpkiney and cornflowerish in real life.  The sewing exploits may spin-off onto a separate blog in the future, lest the land of Lester and cooking be sullied by thread and bobbins.

In the absence of other things to occupy my time, I have taken up a new hobby which is taking our dining room by storm — a storm of thread and fabric scraps, that is.  Please note: if you have miniature people in your house, you’re more likely to get homemade things from my neighborhood sweatshop.  From top left: jammies for the twin nephews, furry block for niece Sarah, chair cover for Tim’s bum, and furry hat for Tim’s head.

Apparently Chicago is prone to hurricanes. First Gustav and then Ike, with a vengeance. With all the flooded roads between here and Argonne it took at least an hour each way in the car. I guess I’ll bike again tomorrow since that’s a shorter-feeling 90 minutes. The one downside: the stench of mildew and sewage at certain points along the way.

In other news…not much going on! Postdoc is humming along well I guess and I’m still cooking a lot. Although I’m dreading the demise of the farmer’s market in October. Andrea is spending about 14 hours a day on her sewing machine, so I guess that was a good b-day present on my part. Honestly, I haven’t felt much urge to update this l’il website since she’s been out here, but I’ll try to once in a while.

Here are some pictures I found on the camera…explanations below.

(working across) nanoprobe, taken downstream; my peach b-day cake; new, nappable couch with our heroes; new, nappable couch with Andrea and Nubia (not exactly chopped liver); Andrea’s homemade beer cozies (get yours now!); a flock of Fisters; four pictures from a fancy dinner I made (local cheeses from down the street, beet salad, corn flan, scallops and roasted cipollini, shrimp with toasted cumin, ricotta/marscapone/lemoncurd/berry tart); Lester and his new, homemade cat toy; a bunch of tomatoes prior to getting sauced.