Image from Lorenzo's website

Have you been to Lorenzo’s? We had dinner there last night and the food was awesome! It reminded us of our travels in Italy, specifically this trattoria in Firenze. For our appetizer, we ordered the smoked cheese on fingerling potatoes with prosciutto. Melt in your mouth goodness, even the bread was great. For main courses, I ordered the Fresh Black Linguine with Prawns and Scallops while Marcel had the Chicken and Eggplant Parmiggiana.

When it comes to restaurants, we have our own set of criteria when judging whether it goes on our list of recommendations. This one makes the list. We look for reasonable prices – here it is $9-$15 for mains, casual atmosphere – we don’t like paying for fancy tablecloths and designer interiors, down-to-earth not overly friendly service and of course, most importantly good quality, great tasting food. Don’t get me wrong, I still believe that there is a place for fancy tablecloths in our lives but that is more the exception rather than the rule.

The verdict? We will be coming back for more.

For those of you who are wondering, this is what a typical CSA share looks like. We get ours from Sun Gold Farm. Average cost is $20/share. It is supposed to get bigger later in the summer.

CSA Share June 27, 2009

Sugar Snap Peas from our Garden

The summer’s bounty greeted us warmly last weekend when we received our first CSA Share. Although smaller than I expected, we still got some good stuff including strawberries, onion, lettuce, kohlrabi, rhubarb, pinto beans, and a calendula plant which we planted in a bigger pot. We picked up the share at the Beaverton Farmers Market but did not buy anything else as everything seemed to have gone up in price. I made some strawberry rhubarb crisp, used some lettuce for noodle soup, and made green curry with the kohlrabi. The curry was really interesting and surprisingly good. We’ve never had kohlrabi before but we experimented and diced some up for the curry. With the addition of sugar snap peas and Thai basil from our garden, it turned out to be one of the best curries that came out of our kitchen. There was no recipe as I used Curry Simple which I highly recommend, by the way. Not the most cost-effective but I make it a point to always keep some in the pantry. There is no picture either as the veggies came out slightly overdone making them less presentable Those sugar snap peas from our garden were awesome! I don’t normally like peas but these were delicious. I have to find more recipes to make them.

Do you have any good sugar snap pea recipes to share?

Kish, a friend from Denver came to visit last weekend. We had a great time with food, hiking, and people-watching. He even provided live guitar music during his stay.

Kish made Breakfast Tacos

Mulder got a bath

Kish makes a Tree pose

Marcel on Saddle Mountain

A local friend Vivek on Saddle Mountain

Fresh Romaine Lettuce from our Garden