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You are here: Home / Food & Recipes / Cooking / Open Thread: Thursday Night Menu

Open Thread: Thursday Night Menu

by Anne Laurie|  May 13, 20109:30 pm| 16 Comments

This post is in: Cooking, Garden Chats, Open Threads

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Take it away, Bad Horse’s Filly…

We had snow two days in a row and today was still 20 degrees below normal temps. My tomatoes have been living under black plastic and have their own hot water bottle. So far, so good. Despite that, this weekend looks great for grilling in my neighborhood, so here is something just a bit different to spice up traditional hamburgers. As usual, this is a quick and tasty dinner, don’t want to spend what nice weather I have stuck cooking. I’d probably add chips to the menu – have to balance out those green beans. Also, I’d love to know how your garden is growing this spring and summer and if you’re growing anything unusual.

On the board tonight:

1. Italian Hamburgers
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2. Crusty Sandwich Rolls
__
3. Green Beans
__
4. 3-Layer Bars

As ever, recipes and shopping list at the link.
__
__

P.S. from Anne Laurie: First of two shipments of tomato plants arrived in the mail today: Rose de Berne, Oxheart, Pineapple, Black Cherry, Juliet (all of which we’ve grown before and loved); Chocolate Stripes, Black Krim, Carmello, Vintage Wine, and Opalka (which are new to us). Of course, after an unusually warm April & May, our area north of Boston has been under a frost advisory ever since the plants were shipped from Alabama Monday… but at least we haven’t had to worry about snow!

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Reader Interactions

16Comments

  1. 1.

    justinslot

    May 13, 2010 at 9:57 pm

    Oh those Italian burgers look wonderful. And with garlic bread buns!

  2. 2.

    Mark S.

    May 13, 2010 at 10:30 pm

    I might have to try those Italian burgers. I love Italian sausage.

    I was about to make a joke about suicide watch in Cleveland but LeBron just hit back to back threes.

  3. 3.

    Kristine

    May 13, 2010 at 10:31 pm

    Of course, after an unusually warm April & May, our area north of Boston has been under a frost advisory ever since the plants were shipped from Alabama Monday… but at least we haven’t had to worry about snow!

    Umm…you’re not concerned about blight, are you? We had a bout of it here in northern Illinois last summer. According to the local extension office, the sources were tomato plants grown in southern greenhouses. The good thing about my bout of blight was that it didn’t spread from my storebought Roma to the Sweet 100s and the Black Crim until the first cool snap in early September, so I didn’t lose many tomatoes. Another good thing was that it apparently isn’t able to survive northern winters, so I didn’t have to replace all the dirt in my raised beds this Spring. The bad thing was that I had infected plants in the first place. I bought mine at an Ace. I’m really reluctant to ever trust storebought plants again.

  4. 4.

    SIA

    May 13, 2010 at 10:33 pm

    FYWP

    Shorter 2nd comment (after losing my 3 paragraph first comment to da evil WP)

    BHF, sounds delish as always! Mmmm!

    Anne Laurie, from what company are you buying your tomato plants?

    Mr Screaming doing veggie garden this year, hooray. Can’t wait for the veggies. Once you’ve had them out of your own yard, the stuff from the stores taste like styrofoam.

  5. 5.

    Elie

    May 13, 2010 at 10:40 pm

    I just want to eat these burgers…

    I am so upset about the BP oil thing — if the current rumors are correct, we literally could be killing the life in the Gulf of Mexico — the oil plume is huge and subsurface and the consequences are largely unknown…

    Lets enjoy the simple pleasures of this life…good food among friends and laughter and hope.

    We have much work ahead. And we have the need for justice.

  6. 6.

    ceece

    May 13, 2010 at 10:43 pm

    Black Krim is one of my absolute favorites. yum. Opalka is a reliable paste tomato, good flavor when cooked down. I didn’t like Carmello, but my plant was kinda wimpy so who knows what it will do for you.

    I agree with SIA on the foam tomatoes. I have become a veggie snob. Almost everything (except maybe cabbage) seems better when I grow it myself. But I know I’m biased!

  7. 7.

    Anne Laurie

    May 13, 2010 at 10:57 pm

    @SIA: Tasteful Garden (today’s delivery) and Territorial Seed Co. Last year I went online looking, unsuccessfully, for Black Prince tomatoes, and ordered other varieties from both these companies which did very well in our planters. This year Territorial had Black Prince plants — we should get that order in the next week or so — but nobody I could find was selling Black Pears, which were last year’s big suprise favorite. Ugly-looking, potato-leaved plants producing brown-green-bruise-colored fist-sized fruit that was absolutely delicious, even though they looked like organic Trunk Nutz.

    @Kristine: Yah, I did wonder about the new blight, but we had plants from these companies last year & only the usual post-September blight. I believe the problem was the giant “industrial” growers in the South — both Tasteful Garden and Territorial grow their own plants, mostly heirlooms and non-standard varieties that wouldn’t be profitable for the big-box home & garden stores. So I’m taking the chance again, along with plants from the local dedicated nursery (Mahoney’s, for those in the Boston area), and hoping for the best. We’re quite isolated from other tomato growers here (our neighborhood is a handful of houses in a light-industrial/commercial zone) so at least I needn’t worry about contaminating more dedicated seed starters’ gardens!

  8. 8.

    cmorenc

    May 13, 2010 at 11:32 pm

    This spring I finally got round ‘tuit to plant an herb garden immediately outside my kitchen, in a wedge of space fifteen feet long by three feet wide between a back walkway and a row of nandinas that sit immediately outside the house along that wall. There’s a huge window by our kitchen table that overlooks the nandinas and the herbal garden.

    I did include four “big boy” tomato plants, but the rest of it is all-culinary herbs: Four different kinds of basil, thyme, italian oregano, greek oregano, majorim, sage, dill, and tarragon. This herb garden occupies a space the former owner had planted with four boring boxwoods and some sort of pretty, but dense and invasive ground cover that had the nasty habit of trying to climb the bricks and woodens siding, on the adjacent house and sink destructively clinging tendrils into them. A couple of weeks ago, I ripped all that out and replaced the boxwoods with a row of much prettier, more maintainable Nandinas and still left a three-foot strip available for my herb garden between the nandinas and the backyard walkway.

    Immediately around the corner from this strip, there’s another shorter one formerly occupied by dwarf boxwoods that I ripped out last summer and replaced with a row of five rosemary bushes. When I grill pork or fish, I simply snip some off the plant and crush/sprinkle it directly on the meat as it cooks.

    It’s going to be fun trying different mixes of homemade pesto and trying out the taste effects of really, really fresh herbal spices on meats, stews, soups, younameit.

  9. 9.

    Bad Horse's Filly

    May 14, 2010 at 12:13 am

    @cmorenc: This sounds wonderful. There is going to be some tasty things in your kitchen this year.

    Anne Laurie – when I have more room, the first thing I’m going to try is some of those black tomatoes. I’d never heard of them before, until you mentioned them last season. Dying to try some.

  10. 10.

    Kristine

    May 14, 2010 at 12:25 am

    @cmorenc:

    You can’t beat fresh tarragon. Very tasty in chicken salad.

  11. 11.

    Yutsano

    May 14, 2010 at 12:34 am

    @Bad Horse’s Filly: The one variety I want to try/grow (although I have the blackest of black thumbs) are zebra tomatoes. They’re an heirloom variety, stay green even when ripe, have darkish green stripes, and are supposed to have a fantastic flavor. I might talk the folks into planting them this year as my mom grows stuff like a champion and I’ll provide the seeds if I can find them willingly.

  12. 12.

    Linda Featheringill

    May 14, 2010 at 12:52 am

    About the Gulf Oil Spill:

    It seems that the estimates of the amount of oil being spewed into the ocean that individuals have done [separately and in various places] are finally hitting the mainstream media. These estimates are based on different information, pictures, views, etc., but they all come up with a figure that is 10-12 times the official estimate.

    Nola dot com ran an article about one guy’s estimate. According to the comments in response to the article, the people of New Orleans believe the higher estimates. The commentors are a bit scared [they should be] and quite angry that they have been lied to about the amount of oil [again, they should be].

    Some of these folks are threatening to stage protests and take some sort of political action. I don’t know what will come of that. But some of them plan to be at Sen. Landrieu’s office on Friday morning at 11:00.

    We will see.

    I will be at Sen. Landrieu’s office tomorrow at 11 am.

  13. 13.

    Bad Horse's Filly

    May 14, 2010 at 1:02 am

    @Yutsano: Oh, you just gave me a great idea! I can ask my dad to plant some black varieties – we’re having a family reunion this summer so I would be home just in time to try them out. I could send him some as an early Father’s Day gift (and I know that sounds cheesy but he’d get a kick out of it). Thanks.

  14. 14.

    Yutsano

    May 14, 2010 at 1:05 am

    @Bad Horse’s Filly: If you can find some and do the zebra tomatoes, please let me know how they turn out. I’ll do some searching for the seeds online and buy some for my folks, assuming they garden this year. They just moved, so they’re still sussing out land usage on their property and it’s a bit late to start anything I think. But they have seven acres.

  15. 15.

    Anne Laurie

    May 14, 2010 at 1:30 am

    @Yutsano: The Tasteful Garden site says they’ll have more Green Zebra plants in a couple of weeks. Tried them one year, but they were a little high-acid for our taste buds and not very productive. The kind I’m curious about this year is called Chocolate Stripes… my supertaster Spousal Unit and I agree that all the “black” tomatoes we’ve tried so far have been very tasty, rich and complex without being too acidy or too bland (like some of the yellow varieties). Black Prince, Black Pear, Black Cherry, Cherokee Purple & Eva Purple Ball are not always the most photogenic specimens — although a more careful gardener would probably get prettier results — but the flavor is incomparable.

    As far as the “black thumb” issue, believe me, tomatoes are super-easy or they wouldn’t work for me. The reason I buy plants instead of seeds is that we’ve only got 2 south-facing windows and 3 cats… I did try sticking a handful of Black Prince seeds in a planter last May, but by the time the plants were big enough to start flowering it was mid-October. Your folks will be able to tell you if you need to buy plants instead of seeds now, but all that tomatoes actually require is 5 or more hours of sunlight, a minimal amount of dirt (Iike, a 6-inch or bigger pot) and plenty of water. Staking keeps them cleaner & easier to pick, and fertilizer will give you a bigger harvest per plant, but they really are very forgiving plants.

  16. 16.

    Yutsano

    May 14, 2010 at 1:36 am

    @Anne Laurie: The higher acidity wouldn’t bother me as I tend to enjoy that flavor on my tongue. I also happen to have several planters sitting on my back porch that most likely would take very well to a little fertilizer and water. I also have a wonderful window box in my kitchen that I would turn into an herb garden in a heartbeat. We finally started warming enough that I feel comfortable enough to get a few basil starters, so maybe I’ll get some thyme and sage and transplant the chives in my yard (they’re in a bizarre spot) and start trying to grow stuff this year. Assuming the chickens don’t get too tempted. Oh and most heirlooms are ugly duckings but totally worth every bite.

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