The CrummyCook has branched out and begun, over the past few years, to grow stuff.

First, some herbs.

Then, some cucumbers.

This year, some tomatoes (against my better judgment: the problem with tomatoes is they all ripen at the same time and you’ve got a complete surplus of tomatoes for a couple of weeks and a famine the rest of the year.  Maybe there’s a fix for that).

In any case, I was a bit worried about my tender croppes this year.  It was too cold to put the cukes out for a long time in March and even in April, and everything got behind the 8-ball.

But things seem to be working out.

Here are the cukes.  They are leafing out nicely and are spontaneously trying to cling to the frame.  I’ll have them climbing up this weekend, I think.

The tomato plant that’s doing the best is in the middle of this picture.  Still pretty spindly and hardly needs the frame around it yet.  The one to its right is not in great shape.  And I only had room for two this year.

Herbs are doign great.  The chives are in the front, the oregano to the left, thyme in the upper middle, and mint just barely visible at the upper right.  The upper left is hot peppers.  They seem to be doing well, but this is my first time with them.  Have to see how it goes.

The rosemary (top) and lavender (bottom) are doing well as well.  Not sure how to use lavender yet, but it sure looks pretty.

Jewel in the crown this year seems to be the basil (pictured in the top of the post).

Generally going better than my pessimistic thoughts in May.

Not the most catchy title, but this Rachael Ray recipe is called “Indian Spiced Meat with Curried Potato Salad and Creamed Spinach”, and it was really good.

The reason she called it “Spiced Meat” is because you can swap out chicken for beef or lamb chops.  I used boneless chicken thighs, which was how I picked the recipe in the first place.

The “creamed” part of the creamed spinach is notional only, since the creaming agent is yogurt (and since, against her advice, I used 2% yogurt).  So it was nothing like the artery-clogging product you might get, say, in a steakhouse.  But spinach is pretty hard to wreck.

The potatoes with curry were pretty good.

Dammit, I like Rachael Ray’s recipes.  They’re easy to make (although I can’t do any of them in anything like 30 minutes; an hour is more like it), and, unlike some of the other Food Channel corner-cutters, they’re pretty tasty.

The curry rub for the chicken was good, and the whole thing just pleased Debbie and me.

I’m on sort of a “blast from the past” jag here with Crummycook-ing.  First coleslaw, now tuna noodle casserole.

On the surface, the motivation was quite different.  Debbie and I had bought a boatload of canned tuna at Costco and then more — on sale — at Giant, so we had a surfeit of tuna.

In addition, Debbie had, some years ago, attempted to recreate the tuna noodle casserole of her childhood, complete with potato chips on top.  As I recall, it was OK.  She seemed more wounded by the experience.  Her typical comment: “I thought that the potato chips on top would rescue it.”

So it kind of had to be a retro cut at tuna noodle casserole to honor Debbie’s bad experience, but it didn’t have to use cream of mushroom soup or any of the classic shortcuts.

So I found two recipes in Epicurious, a more classic one, albeit with a real Bechamel sauce and real sauteed mushrooms rather than soup.  And a more healthful one, which appealed to me because it had fresh herbs like rosemary and thyme which I could bring in from my herb garden.

Debbie didn’t like the looks of the healthful one, but I set out to get some missing ingredients for it anyhow.  Fortunately I had the presence of mind to get some cheddar cheese for the classic one, because, when I got home, that’s the one I proceeded to make.

Good news.  It turned out really tasty.  Debbie had small seconds last night, and some for lunch again this noon.  Her only beef was how many dishes it took me to make it.  I do a pretty OCD mise en place, with containers for everything, and the recipe called for three or four different pots and pans — a skillet for the mushroom mixture, a dutch oven for the roux and to combine everything, a baking dish for the sojourn in the oven.  I managed to use just a baking dish and a casserole, so I feel a bit falsely accused of too many pots, but she’s right, really.  I have to learn how to use fewer.

The Coleslaw Project takes its first steps.

Step 1 was to pick a starting recipe for baseline purposes.  For reasons discussed here I started with a Bobby Flay recipe.

Sadly, I improvised.  I didn’t have cabbage, just Napa cabbage.  And I inadvertently put in two tablespoons of dry (Colemans!) mustard instead of one.

Result? Nasal-passage cleansing coleslaw with not quite the right texture.

Here’s how it looks.  Decent texture, but definitely not cabbage-based coleslaw.

The mayonnaise (home-made) was great.  You could taste it.

So coming up, try the recipe again, this time with the right ingredients.

(Debbie liked it despite the horseradish-esque “notes”.)

Phase 1 in the Slaw project seemed to be making my own mayonnaise.

Of course you could do store-bought, but, c’mon, I’m Crummycook, I can’t just do that.

So Debbie and I set out to make mayonnaise from scratch over the weekend.

Or I set out to do it and she helped, criticized, and encouraged.  All at once.

The core of mayonnaise is emulsification: you whip the oil into an emulsion with egg yolk (in some recipes) or whole egg (in others) and a bit of acid (lemon juice, vinegar, Whatever).  By dribbling the oil in slowly while you whisk (or blend) the heck out of it: mayonnaise.

First thing we tried was a Mark Bittman recipe for blender mayonnaise out of the “How to Cook Anything” cookbook.  Foolproof, he says.  Egg yolk, Dijon mustard, lemon juice.

Well, foolproof it might be, but this fool was not able to get it to work.  After whirling away for almost five minutes I had a yellow mess of oil, an encouraging garlic smell, and no emulsification.

So we read a bunch of stuff in our cookbooks and the ‘tubes about the vicissitudes of mayonnaise, and then tried again.

This time a recipe with a whole egg from The Joy of Cooking (this link is the closest I could find to it online).

Maybe it was the whole egg.  Maybe it was the room-temperature ingredients.  Maybe it was slower dribbling.  Maybe it was starting with a small bunch of stuff in a small(er) blender bowl.  In any case, it worked.

Not a great photo, but you can see the pale yellow emulsion in the plastic container.  And it tasted great.