It figures that my balcony garden is as stubborn as I am, yielding only tomatoes (which I hate) while the beets, broccoli, green peppers, and strawberries (all of which I love) languish in that delicate balance between life and yellowy death. On a recent trip home I gazed with envy upon my father’s garden, which gives forth beans, kohlrabi, beets, potatoes, corn, herbs, tomatoes, and all sorts of other stuff with little complaint — unlike my troughs of ungrateful sprouts — and decided the Dumbass Gourmet could do potentially tasty things with its offerings.

After some debate and much recipe-searching online, we decided on chicken breasts with a peach-herb marinade, Szechuan green beans from our man Guy Fieri, and lemon parsley red potatoes. This is the kind of spread that I could never make in my apartment-sized kitchen, but my father and stepmother have a marvelous place with plenty of counter space and an abundance of cookware. (Conversely, the Dumbass Gourmet only has the two pots and one frying pan I purchased from Wal-Mart five years ago.) First things first: we needed peaches, conveniently located on the trees in the backyard. The recipe called for a mango, but we didn’t have one of those.

Apparently “mango” is what Pennsylvanians sometimes call a green pepper. Weirdos.

The marinade had about a million ingredients in it, all of which could be found in the pantry. Also in the pantry was a box of generic dog treats called “Companion Biscuits,” which made me laugh so hard I couldn’t breathe. One could argue that companion biscuits are what Harris and Kalie produce following the consumption of dog treats, but hey — we’re eating here!

Peaches and Herb.

The chicken poses next to the bottle of Bergwein, which we added to the marinade.

My stepmother had already picked fresh green and purple beans from the garden, so the only thing left to do was dig up some potatoes. Well, first we relocated a baby frog from the window well to underneath the porch:

Hello my baby, hello my honey, hello my ragtime gal …

My father wielded the pitchfork and we found a few good spuds, then traipsed back to the house bearing the potatoes and some Queen Anne’s Lace. When we were kids, we’d pick these flowers, put them in colored water, and, sure enough, within a day or two the buds would turn whatever color the water was. Unfortunately, mine remained stark white:

The USDA apparently considers this a “noxious weed.” So’s your face.

Our apologies go out to Guy Fieri, he of the Food Network’s “Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives,” because we seriously butchered his recipe for Szechuan green beans. First off, cilantro was out because it’s gross. Secondly, we not only didn’t have hoisin sauce, we had to look it up to see what it even was. Finally, we cut out the hot chili garlic sauce and substituted hot sauce and garlic instead. A few shakes of sesame seeds and the sauce was ready to go, so my father bravely shook the colander of green beans into some hot oil to fry:

Flames … burning on the sides of my face …

After my dad thwacked himself on the head with the ceiling fan trying to get an overall shot of the table, I decided to play it a bit safer with a close-up shot:

Food just tastes better served off Pfaltzgraff plates.

It was delicious, especially the green beans, which were garnished with chopped peanuts. I admit to scraping the green stuff off my potatoes because I despise parsley. Like onions, it’s not necessarily the flavor I dislike but the unpleasant feel of it crunching between my teeth. I just shuddered a little thinking of it.

Big news is brewing on the DG front, but I can’t tell you what quite yet. Patience, my dear grasshoppers! In the meantime, bon appetit!

Whenever we have company overnight, I make sure to roll out my mother’s breakfast casserole recipe because, to be honest, it makes me look good. There isn’t much you can do to screw it up, which is perfect for someone who routinely wanders off while pots and pans are left to burn on the stove. On Father’s Day weekend, The Husband’s father and younger brother were staying with us, so after everyone had their fill of wine, watermelon, and beer and had retired to bed, I set to work making the casserole so it’d be ready first thing in the morning.

I encountered difficulty immediately:

Any good cook realizes the benefits of adding Yuengling to the cooking process.

That cylindrical beauty rolling about in the saucepan would be a frozen lump of ground sausage because I forgot to defrost it. I literally had to cut it out of the wrapping, then squeeze it like a tube of toothpaste until the whole thing clunked into the pan. It took a little bit longer to cook as I had to keep constantly turning and scraping it, but pretty soon the beer was gone and the sausage was finished. This is where The Husband stepped in and mixed it all together with egg and milk while I cubed some bread, which went into the bowl before the whole mixture slopped into a casserole dish. A bit of time in the oven the next morning and this is what we had:

Breakfast casserole!

I know I’ve been off-schedule lately, but hopefully this heralds a return to dumbassery for me. Bon appetit!