Calamari Provencal.

There's a steak in there. © Ryan Schierling

There are a lot of things I don't understand about the ways of food wording. When a cow is grazing, wandering, giving milk, it's a cow. When it's butchered, it's beef. Baby cow... calf. Unless you're eating it, then it's veal. A pig is a pig until it's pork, a moniker issued upon its demise. Chicken, well, that's just... chicken. A squid out of the water and on its way to your plate is calamari, unless you're Italian. In that case, in whatever state, it's still calamari.

Most people are familiar with the breaded and deep-fried rings of calamari, oft-dipped in marinara or aioli. This chain-restaurant appetizer staple endured somewhat of a scandal a while back. Given the shape, color and texture of calamari rings, some insidious folks had been passing off "imitation" calamari as the real thing, and you don't want to know what the faux calamari was made of. Or maybe you do. Let's just leave it at the fact that "seafood fraud" is apparently a common occurrence in the food industry, and you may have been enjoying a delicious plate of sliced, deep-fried hog rectum. Prepared in a similar fashion, pork bung has a texture that is frighteningly close to calamari rings. Fried and dipped in a sauce that masks most flavor, not many would be able to tell the difference. Hell, after a few glasses of wine, most people would mistake supple Italian shoe-leather for milanese if you breaded, deep-fried and seasoned it nicely.

Shrimp, grits, gravy and greens.

Fried grit cakes with boudin gravy, dandelion greens and shrimp. © Ryan Schierling

Every Southern cook worth their heritage cast iron pot-and-pan collection has a shrimp and grits recipe that's the best. Of course, it's a recipe that was bestowed to them in hushed tones by their mama, from their mama's mama, and so on and so forth, down a long line of mamas. My mother doesn't have a shrimp and grits recipe and I'm not a southern cook. I rock the cast iron, but there is no lineage that would tie me to a historically time-honored shrimp and grits recipe.

I'm not looking to give you one more traditional (or non-traditional) reinterpretation of what started as a Low Country breakfast dish. It's been done.

While I have a deep and abiding respect for the classics, I wanted a fussy, sassy, gussied-up little Southern belle that was more a complete plate than just shrimp and grits. Call me a Yankee all you want – but when you taste these fried grit cakes and boudin cream gravy, the little pickled green tomatoes, the robust, biting dandelion greens and that rich New Orleans-style barbecue shrimp – you will slap your mama.

Beer, billiards and bisque.

Tomato mushroom bisque with bread and butter. © Ryan Schierling

I moved from Emporia, Kansas to Fort Collins, Colorado in 1991. I was 19, and the little college town was blowing up with micro-breweries crafting incredible beer. If my parents are reading this, I certainly did not partake of alcoholic beverages until the day I turned 21. If you're anyone but my parents reading this, spending the previous year on a University of Kansas dormitory floor of brilliant art majors made creating fake IDs far too simple. Mine was used regularly until the day it was taken away by an overzealous doorman at a Fort Collins bar that shall not be named, and has since shuttered. No hard feelings.

New Belgium Brewing Company had just opened up shop with a dubbel named Abbey and a great little amber called Fat Tire. They only came in 22-ounce bomber bottles, and were unlike anything I'd ever had. O'Dell's Easy Street Wheat and 90 Shilling (still one of my favorite beers of all time) were of the same era, Left Hand Brewing started up in Longmont with their Sawtooth Ale, and soon it seemed you couldn't walk around the block without a new brewpub or home-brew store opening up.

CooperSmith's Pub & Brewing was in Old Town Fort Collins, and a short walk from my first apartment. A few years later, it was a short drive down College Avenue from my second apartment. 

Seriously, we can only eat so much fried okra.

Roasted okra and tomatoes with chili garlic vinaigrette. © Ryan Schierling

My first experience with okra was decidedly unpleasant – an unfortunate "high-brow" circumstance wherein a vegetable galette included its overly-mucilaginous presence.

Then we moved to Texas. If you know anyone with a big garden in these parts, you're certain to find okra offered to you by the cubic bushel in late summer. Okra thrives in the heat and seems to defy the sun-baked earth, and it's been showing up on our doorstep for the last few weeks.

So, how do you say "no" – in good conscience – to the pound of okra that arrives with every late summer CSA delivery? We joined for the local and seasonal offerings, and it just wouldn't be right to turn it away or not make good use of it. 

What exactly are you supposed to do with this stuff? Common wisdom points immediately in the direction of pickling, making gumbo, or battering and frying. But there's only so much pickled okra that's going to get eaten at our house this year, and if I'm going to make a mess of my cooktop with a pot of boiling fat... well, I can't honestly say that okra is the first thing I'd choose to fry up.

In a flash of merciful recollection, Ryan remembered seeing a recipe for roasted okra and cauliflower salad in a cookbook we got last year – Smoke and Pickles by Chef Edward Lee. It has been our salvation over the past few weeks of CSA deliveries. (You can also find it featured in this post by CBS The Talk, where he was a guest last Fall.)

Tomatoes rock.

Tomato carpet at the now defunct Emo's on Red River - Austin, Texas. © Ryan Schierling

My mother always describes eating fresh tomatoes out of a childhood, long-ago family garden – plucked ripe from the vine, warm from the sun, juices dripping down her chin on the first bite. I imagine it is what tomatoes were always supposed to taste like... killer.

Grocery store tomatoes are a sad affair, no matter how organic or fresh. Compared to home-grown, they are typically a little mealy, a little dry, lackluster and lacking in fresh-picked, sun-ripened flavor. When we buy tomatoes outside of our Central Texas growing season – which is to say, November through March – they're usually used for making salsa or tomato jam. The little actual tomato flavor they've got is augmented by other, bolder ingredients. But when it's summertime in Austin – which is to say, April through October – we have two garden plots that are a cage-match tomato free-for-all.

The larger varieties don't usually fare so well. They split before they're ripe, they are susceptible to leaf-footed bugs, and we've found that crafty mockingbirds abscond with bits and pieces of them as soon as they're soft enough to poke a beak in. Sweet little cherry and grape tomatoes are prolific and quick to grow, the medium-sized orange ones do well, and small heirloom varietals have been very successful. We stick with the tried-and-trues, and use them to their tomato-ey fullest while we've got them.