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When my husband and I married, our friends Chris and Melanie gave us a waffle iron as a wedding gift. Waffle irons, along with toasters, are often the butt of wedding jokes, but for us, this was a perfect gift. We adore waffles and make them nearly every weekend.

At first we struggled to find the right recipe. Sometimes the waffles would come out wet and eggy; other times they were as crisp and dry as fall leaves. We even gave boxed mixes a try with disappointing results. Finally, we found the perfect waffle recipe in Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything. He gives two recipes: one for raised, which include a bit of yeast, and a quick version without yeast. My husband and son prefer the taste of the quick version, and since I’m the one whipping these up in our cold, early morning kitchen, so do I. The trick is the folding in of two whipped egg whites, which give the waffles their airy constitution. Sometimes I get lazy and don’t bother whipping the egg whites, and you know what? They’re just as tasty, although not quite as light. These waffles freeze beautifully, too, making it easy to have a waffle breakfast during the week.

Quick Waffles
Adapted from How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman
Yield: 12 waffles

2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 tsp. salt
2 T sugar
1 T baking powder
1 1/2 cups milk (sometimes I substitute buttermilk)
2 eggs, yolks and whites separated
4 T butter melted or 1/4 cup oil
1 t vanilla extract

In a large bowl, preferably one with a pouring lip, whisk together the flour, salt, sugar, and baking powder.

In another bowl, whisk the milk, egg yolks, melted butter and vanilla together. Stir the milk mixture into the dry ingredients until just combined; do not overmix. It’s okay to see little clumps of flour at this point.

Whip the two egg whites until stiff. Fold 1/3 of the whites into the waffles to lighten them up. Then fold in the remaining whites. Cook the waffles according to your waffle iron’s directions.

Lee Gomes at the Wall Street Journal has it right: American cookbook publishers should start listing weights next to ingredients, not just volume measurements. Publishers argue that American cooks typically don’t own kitchen scales, so why include these measures? To which I say “Balderdash!” Most serious home cooks do own electronic digital scales, and if they don’t, so what? Cooks who don’t want to ditch their measuring cups can rely on the more imprecise volume measurement, while those of us who revere our scales can follow the weight measurements.

One important point Gomes alludes to in his essay but doesn’t spell out is why ingredient weights deserve, well, more weight in the kitchen. It’s this: a cup (or a tablespoon or a “pinch”) isn’t always a cup, a tablespoon, or a “pinch.” It’s why your cereal box includes the message, “Sold by weight, not volume” or warns “Settling may occur.” A recipe tester’s measuring cup might be slightly bigger than the measuring cup you inherited from your Aunt Matilda. Or the cookbook author may have baked in his dry New Mexico kitchen and you’re baking his bread in your humid Houston home. Humidity can definitely affect volume measurements of ingredient like flour and sugar (as well it does weight, but still, weighing gives you a better chance at accuracy).

So, long story short — you’ll get the best result from a recipe when you know the precise weights the recipe developer/cookbook used. (And always be wary of recipes that specify a “pinch,” especially when it comes to cayenne pepper — one cook’s pinch is another cook’s pain in the ass!!)

I was scanning a sale announcement from Jessica’s Biscuit, one of my favorite virtual cookbook haunts, and I zoomed in on this book, Consider the Eel, by Richard Schweid. A cookbook about eels? Indeed. The author discusses the fascinating life of eels (did you know every eel starts out in the Sargasso Sea and spends up to three years of its early life drifting to either European or North American rivers? I didn’t!) and includes historic and contemporary recipes for this odd-looking fish. I’m tempted to order the book, although eels squeesh me out, visually and texture-wise. They remind me of snakes, and the few times I’ve eaten eel, the sliminess of it turned me off.

I’ve never seen eel on a U.S. menu, except in sushi restaurants. Eels seems to be more popular in Europe, where I occasionally see it on menus. Next time I’m in Europe, I want to try two new-to-me eel dishes: jellied eel when I visit London (which won’t do much to quell the slime factor) and deep-fried elvers, or baby eels, a Basque specialty.

Until then, you’ll have to look for your eel recipes somewhere else on the web — or order this book from Jessica!

I alluded that we get a lot of greens in our CSA pickup each week, especially at the beginning of the season. And yes, being that I’m in New England, mid-July is still considered early season. Over the next few weeks, the composition of our basket will become less green, and more red and yellow.

And although I love greens, even the bitter ones, it does become tiresome eating them the same old way, which around here is sauteed in either olive oil and garlic, or bacon and onions. So Sunday night I flipped through one of my favorite recent cookbook acquisitions, Alice Waters’ The Art of Simple Food, and settled on a kale and potato soup. It was perfect because it also happened to use up some pantry items. My walk-in pantry and chest freezer are heaving with food and I really must empty both out this summer to make room for the winter.

Have I mentioned how much I love Alice Waters? I know it’s fashionable in some quarters to make fun of her. Like, “Oh, who do you think you are, Miss Fresh, Local & In Season … Alice Waters?” Screw those folks. Alice rocks. Her recipes are simple, and as long as you use fabulous ingredients — not hard to do in the summer — you’ll be rewarded with a dish that’s flavorful, good, nourishing, and totally non-pretentious, so I don’t know where these anti-Alice people get their ideas.

Alice’s kale and potato soup is one of those recipes. It’s so hearty, a meat lover would enjoy it, and although it contains few ingredients, its taste is complex — definitely more than a sum of its parts. I happened to have two quarts of fantastic homemade chicken stock in my freezer, which elevated the soup flavorwise. It would be just as tasty with a homemade vegetable stock — barring homemade, a good quality packaged chicken or vegetable stock would make a decent base. The other winning flavor component is the real Parmesan Reggiano cheese garnishing the soup. It has a nutty, salty flavor that lacks in domestically produced Parmesans. Were I not to have the $15/lb. cheese on hand, I’d probably skip it and garnish with bread chunks fried in garlic oil.

This soup makes the perfect Sunday night supper, even in July.

Kale and Potato Soup
Adapted from The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
2 onions, sliced thin
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 bunch of kale, tough center stem removed and leaves sliced into thin shreds
1 lb. Yukon gold potatoes, peeled and sliced into 1/4″ rounds
2 quarts homemade chicken broth
Kosher salt, to taste
Fresh nutmeg, to taste (optional)
Shaved Parmesan Reggiano cheese, for garnish

1. In a heavy soup pot or enamel cast iron Dutch oven, heat olive oil over medium heat. Add onions, stir to coat with oil, and cook for 10 to 12 minutes, until soft and just starting to caramelize. Stir in garlic and cook for another minute. Add kale and potatoes, and stir to coat with oil. Cook for a couple minutes, then add broth. Bring broth to a simmer, reduce heat and cook for 30 minutes, or until potatoes are cooked through.

2. Taste the broth. Does it need salt? I don’t salt my homemade broths, so here I add a teaspoon or two of salt, tasting as I go. Store-bought broths tend to contain lots of salt, so taste first! Serve soup in large bowls, scrape some fresh nutmeg over each dish, and top with shavings of Parmesan cheese.

Friday is our pickup day at Bear Hill Farm. We’ve been CSA members for three or four years … can’t remember the exact number of years. But I can’t imagine not being members.

The first few weeks are a little slow, which I actually appreciate. It gently acclimates me (and my refrigerator) to the preparation and storage of vegetables. Tender lettuces must be quickly washed and chilled, lest they wilt — not to mention that having washed greens ready to go for my lunchtime salads makes life pleasant. By mid July, harvest time hits and I appreciate having a system in place for all the greens, squash, beets, kohlrabi, beans, tomatoes, corn, and more … so much more.

So this week our share started to look substantial. In my basket there’s a pound of beets (plus their greens), a head of lettuce, a bunch each of rainbow chard and curly kale, 4 summer squash, 3 kohlrabi, and 2 bok choi. Something else, too, but I forget. (ETA: collard greens! How could I forget my beloved collards?)

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After I finished filling our basket, we noticed a beautiful bird making a loud racket in the field. Anne, who owns the farm with her husband Mike, told us it was a Guinea Hen, a native of Africa. They’re feral and roam the farm at will. This hen had chicks with her. Can you see the one by her leg? “They’re terrible mothers,” Anne said. I guess the mothers kind of wander off, letting their chicks fend for themselves. Already this mother has lost one of her babies. I felt kind of sympathetic toward this hen, because not five minutes earlier, I’d lost track of the Oyster, who’d been sitting quietly at the picnic bench while I dithered about buying some local cheeses available from a local cheesemonger.

On Fridays we clean out our fridge and bring past-due foodstuffs to feed to the pigs, chickens, and goats. This week we didn’t have anything for them. When the animals figured this out, they refused to pose for photos. However this ameraucana hen did deign to pose for us. Ameraucanas are the hens that lay the lovely blue-green eggs I call “Martha Stewart eggs.” I once heard someone at a farmer’s market ask a vendor if the yolks were green. When I spoke to the vendor later, he said he got the question at least once at every market.

When I get home, I sketch a rough plan for our week’s supply of veggies as I wash and bag them. The beet greens were sauteed with garlic for our Friday side dish, and I made a marinated beet salad, which I’ll eat throughout the week. The bunch of kale was earmarked for a kale and potato soup for Sunday night supper. The lettuce — a no-brainer. That’s for my lunch salads. The squash I’d julienne and toss with warm garlic- and rosemary-infused olive oil, a recipe I’d tested from Carol Field’s Italy in Small Bites. The kohlrabi would be shredded and mixed with shredded Yukon gold potatoes for a latke dinner. Still haven’t figured out the swiss chard or bok choi. Any suggestions?