What I've made so far, part 1

I used the asparagus RIGHT away.  I initially thought I'd make the shaved asparagus pizza I made a few weeks ago - it was transcendently good, and of course, T wikipedia'd asparagus and read aloud interesting facts about the vegetable while I baked the pizza, and then we felt very Roman eating our asparagus and drinking wine.

That's my pizza - half tomato, half asparagus, ALL good.  But it was WAY too hot to turn on the oven - yes, I do have central AC, but in the interest of saving energy, I try not to turn on the oven if it's not going to be in the 60s at night.  If I'm eating seasonally, I feel like I should prepare seasonally.  So, still wanting something hearty, I made an asparagus hash.  Of course, I didn't have the pancetta the recipe calls for, so I used bacon fat to cook some chopped prosciutto and it was fine.  I am that girl, the one with a container of bacon fat in her fridge.  I can't in good conscience throw it away, and it's great for situations just like this, and also for sauteeing spinach and swiss chard in...mmm, good.  Of course, you could easily make this vegetarian-friendly and use olive oil.

asparagus, ready to be cooked

cast iron is marvelous, truly.

my finished product.

I added an over-easy egg to the top of this pile o' hash to make it a little more decadent.  T was a BIG fan.

With the spinach, I made Spinach Pesto...with pistachios instead of pine nuts because that's what I had and Alton Brown said it was okay.  I trust Alton Brown implicitly.  

spinach, half a garlic clove, lemon juice, pistachios, olive oil, salt and pepper

The pesto was put on pizza as it was cool ONE night last week (and last night, which means I made pizza last night too...Pizza is a dinnertime staple, especially since I've learned to make no-knead pizza dough.  more on that later).

And while I had the oven on, I went ahead and used the rhubarb to make strawberry rhubarb crisp with some strawberries I had cut up and froze a few weeks ago. (they were on sale and I couldn't resist buying at such a good price but I also couldn't eat that many strawberries!).  I use Alton Brown's topping and looked up a strawberry rhubarb pie recipe to find out how much sugar/cornstarch to put it.  That's up for discussion - some people like things on the sweeter side than I, so I usually err on the lighter side when it comes to sugar.

especially delicious with a little vanilla ice cream on the side.

I still have the green garlic and the mint, and some leftover spinach pesto, so I'll be scheming and cooking this weekend with those ingredients!