9.20.17 Wisconsin Grown | Part 20

My life these days feels incredibly hectic. Obviously this should come as no surprise when the majority of one’s time is spent keeping tabs on a small, incredibly active person. A person who has recently learned how to open the refrigerator and the back door. A person who is overjoyed with his newfound skill of unscrewing lightbulbs. A person who’s a genius at figuring out ways to climb up onto the countertops and loves to hide things all over the house (not so bad when it’s magnetic alphabet letters in the cupboards; not so great when it involves a remote control getting stuck behind the dishwasher). This kid, he keeps me on my toes.

Sometimes, this means that after a day of putting out fires (but not literal fires, fortunately) I’m way too exhausted to do much in the cooking department. But we have so many lovely vegetables, we have to eat, and phoning it in and ordering Indian take-out is a backup plan I try to resort to only in emergency situations. For all those other days when I don’t feel like cooking, I try to take it easy and keep things simple. The good news is, with all this fresh local produce, keeping things simple isn't actually that hard. Here are the simple things we’re cooking this week:

Luckily, Tomatoes make for some of the easiest meals ever, and they just keep coming. We’ll be lunching on all manner of Tomato Sandwiches, we’ll be marinating them with herbs and eating them with cheese and crusty bread, we’ll be topping big slices with creamy burrata, fresh basil, olive oil and flaky salt, and we’ll be tossing them with fresh pesto and hot pasta for the simplest of suppers. Also probably a million other things. When it comes to lazy cooking, tomatoes are a godsend.

With this week’s Sweet Peppers and Onions, we’ll be making up a big batch of Serious Eats’ Peperonata, a southern Italian sauce of peppers cooked down in olive oil until they basically melt in your mouth. It’s incredibly simple to make, and will make a great topping for scrambled egg tacos, grilled chicken, and crusty bread rubbed with Garlic.

We’ll be going the main dish salad route this week with our Green Beans. I’ll give them a quick blanch, them toss them with Tomatoes, Slow Roasted Salmon, cubed crusty bread rubbed with Garlic, thinly sliced onion, and top it all with a drizzle of olive oil, a squeeze of lemon, and plenty of flaky salt. Boom.

It doesn’t take much to make a bunch of Kale into a simple delicious salad. Just slice it thin, massage it with plenty of olive oil, lemon and salt to soften it up a bit, and top with copious amounts of shaved parmesan. Perfection.

I’ve found that taking 10 minutes to pickle up a batch of Banana Peppers is a surefire way to ensure that any future sandwiches and pizzas we make attain maximum deliciousness.