Too Many Cooks: Local Seafood, Purple Couscous, and Clara

You'll be hearing from the staff at FOOD52 every week in Too Many Cooks, our group column in which we pool our answers to questions about food, cooking, life, and more.

There's something about August that calls for simple meals, lots of fruit-laden dessert, and...making a mess with your CSA's extra tomatoes? Here's what we've been up to this week, from babies to gingerbread beach babes.

Amanda: The first of our 2 CSA mishaps. Local food on the mean streets of Brooklyn Heights.

Merrill: Clara's first trip to Pok Pok. (She packed her own food.)

Kenzi: It's pretty lovely up here in Maine. (But the mosquitoes! Oy.)  Here is breakfast eaten on a porch that overlooks the ocean (!!), complete with wild blackberries we had just picked. (The rest of our haul is destined for an adaptation of Blueberry Snack Cake later tonight.) The other one is a tray full of haddock sandwiches and seafood chowder from a local greasy spoon on Main Street.

Kristy: Summer on a plate.

Kristen: Sunday supper menu planning, LA-style.

Nozlee: In a hurry to make a quick lunch for work the next day, I cooked regular, white pearl couscous in water with two chopped-up magenta carrots I bought at market. When I came back to stir the finished couscous, it had turned bright purple from the carrots! Totally unreal. (My friend Maggie described it as the opposite of the disappointment you feel when you blanch purple green beans.)

Michael: Last week my wife and I threw a dinner party. In addition to genius cucumber I made Sichuan-style pole beans and one of my standbys: a great Food & Wine recipe for coconut laksa with shrimp. I subbed out some shrimp for Montauk squid from the Park Slope farmers market. Having recently moved from hundreds of miles inland, I'm totally geeked on local seafood!

Christina: It's taxi cab-yellow sunflower season at the greenmarket!

Rachel: Silly gingerbread people ready for vacation.