Blackberry Harvest

Our blackberry harvest is in full swing now.  We’ve had some very hot days and when that happens, the blackberries ripen very quickly.  There are still a lot of red ones, but I’m picking a basket of ripe ones every other day.  

We can’t eat them fast enough because we’re also picking raspberries and strawberries, so I freeze them.  I think about the black smoothies, blackberry crisps, and other treats we’ll be able to eat in December when fresh, local, organic berries are not available. 

Buckwheat Noodle Salad with Orange Peanut Dressing

The inspiration for this salad was a recipe in the Fields of Greens cookbook by Annie Somerville.  She’s the executive chef at Greens, a celebrated vegetarian restaurant in San Francisco.  While their noodle salad has been a favorite on their menu since the late seventies, I felt it needed updating.  I didn’t want to blanch the vegetables..I didn’t see the point.  Carrots and peas are wonderful when they’re raw and crunchy.  I also changed the dressing by balancing the flavors more to my taste.  The result was wonderful.  One of our new favorite dinner salads.  This recipe makes four decent sized servings but Mr. RK and I ate the whole thing.  We had to have seconds, it’s that good.

Daring Bakers' Challenge: Fresh Fraisiers

Jana of Cherry Tea Cakes was our July Daring Bakers’ host and she challenges us to make Fresh Frasiers inspired by recipes written by Elisabeth M. Prueitt and Chad Robertson in the beautiful cookbook Tartine.

Fraise is the French word for strawberry.  A Frasiers is a cake made with fresh strawberries and filled with pastry cream.  Making the required sponge cake was not the challenge for me.  I used my normal egg free cake recipe except that I substituted cake flour for all purpose flour to give it a lighter texture and I add a teaspoon of lemon zest.

Peach Crispy Crumble

It seems that most people, including myself, get confused when talking about fruit crisps and crumbles. Half the internet thinks a crisp had rolled oats and a crumble doesn’t.  Don’t get me started on cobblers, grunts and pan dowdies.  However, after extensive Google searches, I’ve come to realize that it’s a country of origin thing.  Americans and Canadians call them crisps and the British call them crumbles whether or not they contain oats.  I’m going with “crispy crumble” because my technique creates a wonderful crispy crumbled topping for any fruit.

Dragonflies in the Garden

This beautiful dragonfly showed up in our garden yesterday and Mr. RK got some pictures of her.  She’s a Flame Skimmer (Libellula Saturata), common in Northern California and usually found near ponds or lakes from April to October.  You can tell that she is a female because she’s more of a burnt orange color rather than bright orange and has a white stripe between her wings.

Simple Garlic Almond Green Beans

It’s green bean season.  Green beans are a summer staple in our diet.  My favorite way to eat them is to steam them for 3 minutes and then toss them into a pan with garlic and almonds for another minute.  They still have a nice crunch and a wonderful garlicky flavor.  This dish take all of five minutes to make and makes ordinary green beans into something wonderful.

July Garden Update

This is what we picked today from our garden.  Raspberries, peaches, strawberries, blackberries, blueberries and our first tomato.  The raspberries are amazing.  We get a container like this about every other day.  You’d think I would be able to freeze some for the winter but Mr. RK eats a pile of them on his oats for breakfast everyday so I’m just lucky there are some left for me.