I carry no phone An aspiring Luddite In a wired world. Mastodon Verification Link	Jeff Berry is an early adopter of the Internet and the Web, a late adopter of Twitter, and declines to adopt Facebook. With the death of Google+, he migrated to the Fediverse. He admins a medievalist Mastodon instance. He hates cell-phones.

Travel is great. I'm a fan of getting out and about and seeing what there is to see. This summer is rather travel heavy for me, which is all by way of apology - when I'm travelling, I'm not writing down recipes, even if I'm cooking.

To compensate for the weeks with no updates, I'm offering two recipes this week, both pretty straight-forward and both leaning fairly heavily on the produce which has begun to take over my house since CSA season has arrived.

The first recipe sees me going once again to the pork-belly well, so to speak. This time, however, I'm taking advantage of the fat that renders out during the roasting to cook some beet-root. (The beet greens were steamed for lunch the next day.)

On a hot day, cold soup sounds appealing and gazpacho is quick and easy. Especially if you cheat, which I did.

• 800 gm/1 lb pork belly
• 3 medium beets/beetroots
• about 2 Tbs of your preferred dry-rub

A word about the dry rub ... since spicing is so much a matter of personal preference, I'm going to leave you all to your own devices concerning the dry rub. I have a more-or-less standard one that I keep handy, which I use for barbeque and the like. It consists of salt, black pepper, cumin and two or three different kinds of chile powder - usually ancho and chipotle, and sometimes pequin or arbol. For this recipe, use what sounds good to you. Simple salt and pepper would work just fine.

In any case, put the meat and beets into a fairly tightly fitting dish and pop it into a 350F oven. After a half an hour, flip the beets. After another half-hour, raise the heat to 375F. After another half an hour, start testing the beets. You want them soft but not completely mushy. When they get to that point, pull the dish out and serve.

Warning, there may be leftovers! In which case, here are some of the things you can do with various bits and bobs.

• Use the remaining rendered fat to fry bread. Almost unrealistically good.
• Trim the belly and make sandwiches with the meaty bits. Lettuce and mustard work quite well. Fry the bread first, as above.
• Render down the rest of the fat, since, well, lard! It's got the spices in it, so it's not general purpose lard, but it's great for frying things. (And not just bread.) I used it to start a batch of smoked pig-skin (essentially tightly trimmed fatback), so I got smoked, chile cracklings.

• 3 scallions
• 2 cucumbers
• 1 yellow summer squash
• 1 Tbs cilantro
• 2 Tbs lime juice
• 2 tsp salt
• 1 28 oz. can of crushed tomatoes
• 1 cup cold water

When you're just about ready to serve, add the tomatoes and stir well. Add the water to thin it out. One cup was about right for me, your mileage may vary.

To serve, garnish with whatever takes your fancy. Sour cream or crème fraîche is good. (A little red salt on top of that looks nice.) If you want a little heat, add some chile powder or chile flakes, or a dash of Tabasco, or even some salsa, if you've got it around.

Of course, if you've got lots of tomatoes, use them instead of canned. Tomatoes have not yet started appearing at my CSA, which is why I went for canned. And, of course, mix up the vegetables according to taste and availability.