Using up the Veggies

My dear friend Stephanie came to visit last week with her boyfriend Rolf. They live in Angola (in SW Africa where they speak Portuguese) and she visits the midwest once a year. Minneapolis and Iowa are always her stopovers to see friends and family and we happily play hosts for as many days as she allows us. We had a lovely time hanging out... cooking, eating, drinking, playing with the kids, remembering old times, taking a cooking class at Cook's of Crocus Hill, going to the cabin and more. We had a few friends over for a last minute barbeque, or as Rolf calls it, "a brai." I think that is the S. African way of saying "amazing BBQ."
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Ron and Rolf were in charge of all-things-grill and meat while Stef and I took over the crisper drawer and its overabundance of vegetables from several CSA shipments that hadn't been completely used up. Our goal was to use as many of those veggies as we could. I think we did pretty well: roasted vegetables with sundried tomato dip, refrigerator pickles with radishes and cucumbers and fresh dill, a Swedish beet salad with apples, onions, sour cream, a bit of lemon juice and s/p, and then a salad we had noticed at Whole Foods and tried to replicate with beet greens, swiss chard, shredded carrots, sesame oil and ginger. The steaks and chicken legs were amazing, but I found myself more impressed with the potatoes and onions individually wrapped and placed in the coals in the bottom of the wood-fired grill. I don't know if the men were more excited to eat it that night while it was fresh, or the next morning heated up for breakfast. Mmmm.