We got caught in a rain storm, we were late getting home, we had pancakes for dinner.

• A Small Batch of Basic Pancakes •
Adapted from the New York Times Cookbook’s Basic Pancakes
3/4 cups all purpose flour
1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 egg
3/4 – 1 cups milk (3/4 cup for thicker, 1 cup for thinner, more for very thin.)
3 tablespoons melted butter
1 teaspoon vanilla 

Mix together flour, baking powder and salt in a medium bowl with a whisk. Combine egg & milk, add melted butter & vanilla. Pour milk mixture into dry ingredients and stir only enough to moisten the dry ingredients. Melt a pat of butter on griddle or in a non-stick pan over medium heat. Pour batter into the pan using a ladle or pitcher. When bubbles come to the surface of the pancakes and then pop, the underside should be perfectly brown, check then flip. Cook second side, peeking to see when it looks just golden enough. Keep on a platter in a warm oven until all pancakes are done. Serve with maple syrup and butter.

We eat beans & rice pretty regularly around here. It’s quick, nutritious and you can buy all of the ingredients at the corner store. I do love to make beans from scratch using dried beans, but I’m not a good planner-aheader so it doesn’t happen very often. Below is my recipe for quick beans. In order to make beans & rice a truly quick weekday meal, I cook my quesadillas in the oven and make an extremely simple guacamole. I also cook the rice while I’m making the beans.

• Oven Quesadillas •
Heat your oven to very hot 400 degrees or hotter. Sandwich some grated cheese between two tortillas, place on a greased baking sheet and oil the top side of the quesadilla. Cook for 3-5 minutes until underside is brown and then flip and cook again, until both sides are brown and cheese is melted. Remove from oven and cut into triangles. These come out a bit crispier than when cooked in a pan, but it’s quick and easy to cook several at a time and it doesn’t use up range-top space.

• Quick Guacamole •
Mush together one or two ripe avocados with lime juice, salt and chopped cilantro leaves. Taste as you go.

• Quick Black Beans •
2 14oz. cans black beans (I like Goya), 1 can drained and rinsed and one partly-drained and not rinsed.
1/2 onion diced
1 tsp. ground cumin 
2 tbsp. olive oil
salt to taste 
red pepper flakes (optional) 

Sautee onion in oil, until soft and translucent. Add beans and cumin. Cook for 10-20 minutes. You can mash them a little bit with a potato masher to release some of the starch and thicken them. If they get dry, add a little water. Season with salt and red pepper flakes to taste.

Our color’s a bit better tonight, and the tomatoes and cukes were divine. I made Pasta With Tomato and Ginger Salsa and Creme Fraiche and a very Meyer lemony cucumber salad with basil.

For the salad, I made Rita’s Dressing with Meyer lemons instead of regular lemons, added some extra lemon juice, and served it over cucumbers and basil.

The pasta recipe is from Rachel’s Favorite Food at Home by Rachel Allen, which was given to me by my lovely sister in law Barbara. If you haven’t had dinner yet, you should stop whatever you’re doing and make this dish now, it’s that good. Thanks Babs!

The recipe caught my eye because of the unusual combination of ginger, creme fraiche and pasta. Plus, my gorgeous August csa tomatoes were smooshed and had to be used right away. I made the sauce last week and refrigerated it. I used regular sweet onions instead of spring onions and doubled the fresh ginger. It’s very quick to make and keeps well in the refrigerator, but leave the creme fraiche out until serving time.

We had a humble, brownish meal of cabbage and rice tonight, but please don’t stop reading because it was really tasty.

The thing about cabbage is that I used to think coleslaw was made from the recently deceased. Recently deceased people. When I was 4 or 5, our neighbor’s husband died. After the funeral, the family came by with a huge amount of leftover coleslaw and I came to the very logical conclusion that they’d made the offending dish from the dead guy. Suffice it to say, my relationship with cabbage was off to a rocky start.

I been over the dead guy thing for a long time now, but cabbage can be uninspiring, don’t you think? Do you sometimes sigh when it appears, yet again, in your csa box? Cream braised cabbage, however is a totally different story. It is so surprisingly delicious that I’ve even served it to company. The recipe is easy but takes about an hour to make.

I also made risotto cakes which is a recipe my friend Britta has been asking me to post for a while. I usually make them with plain old left over rice but they were extra-good with leftover risotto. They are very quick and easy to make.

• Risotto Cakes •
1 1/2 cups left over risotto or rice
2 eggs
2-4 tablespoons finely grated pecorino or parmesan cheese
salt and pepper if needed, if you’re using well-seasoned risotto you may not need salt & pepper 

Combine all ingredients in a bowl. Melt some butter in a non-stick pan over medium heat. Drop the rice mixture by large spoonfuls into the pan and cook for 3-5 minutes per side or until nicely browned. Done.

Growing up I was somehow led to believe that eating starch with starch was somehow naughty. Not truly bad naughty, but devilish, sneaking candy before dinner naughty. Nowadays, whenever I make pasta with corn, I feel a bit like I just got away with something slightly illegal. The recipe for Pasta with Bacon and Corn, is from Dinner A Love Story, one of my favorite blogs. It’s a great read if you don’t know it.

All of the veggies tonight were from my csa box except for the corn which was frozen (organic sweet) corn. For the tomatoes, I just cut them into halves and chunks and drizzled them with olive oil, basil leaves and salt which I’d blended together with a hand-blender.

The whole meal can be made in 35 minutes if you put the pasta water on to boil right away, and remember to put the pasta in to cook as soon as the water boils. And also if you use frozen corn, cutting it from the cob would probably add 10 minutes or so.