For a town of this size, Olympia has a really excellent Farmer’s Market. We oogled at rainbow chard, dahlias, Mt. Rainier cherries, baby artichokes, and other fresh summer produce and fruit. We got there just as it opened so the market was just waking up, but it’s usually hopping with live music and people dining at food stands by lunchtime.

We just got back from the family cabin, photos of which I’ll post later. We’re headed into Portland tomorrow morning for the weekend. Hope yours is a good one too.

I went on quite the shopping spree last week at the Union Square Greenmarket. Among the goodies I picked up were these nice zucchini flowers and a loaf of fresh ciabatta bread. Stuffed zucchini flowers are one of our family’s favorite summertime treats, but the dilemma, as always, is what to stuff them with. This time I chose the ciabatta bread, dicing up the crispy ends of the loaf and cooking it with onions and herbs. The mixture ended up resembling, well, stuffing, like the kind you put in a turkey, only without the heavy flavor of sage. This filling worked surprisingly well and would also work well with other things added (cheese, seafood, etc…). Just get the zucchini flowers while you can, the season doesn’t last long!

Bread and Onion Stuffed Zucchini Flowers (serves 4, or really 2 because you will want to eat them all)

12 zucchini flowers, washed well
2 tablespoons butter
1 small onion, diced
2 cups crusty bread (ciabatta, baguette, etc…), cut into very small cubes
2 tablespoons chopped fresh thyme
Salt and Pepper to taste
2 Tablespoons vegetable oil
1/2 cup buttermilk
Approximately 1-1/4 cups flour

Melt the butter in a saute pan over medium heat. Add the diced onion and cook until soft. Add the bread, thyme, salt and pepper. Stir well and cook for about 2 minutes. Add enough water to the mixture to bind the bread pieces together, and continue to cook for another minute. Remove from the heat and cool for a few minutes. Stuff each zucchini flower with the bread mixture, taking care not to tear the sides of each flower too much. Now, heat the vegetable oil in a clean frying pan over medium-high heat. Coat each stuffed zucchini flower in some buttermilk, followed by a nice coating of flour, then put it in the frying pan. Cook for just 1-2 minutes on each side, until they are crisp and golden all over. Drain on paper towels, then serve.

We ate the flowers with some fresh heirloom tomatoes and some homemade ricotta that I made earlier that day. Drizzle some olive oil, sprinkle some coarse sea salt, and you have a perfect bite of summery goodness.

The farmers markets around the city are starting to become amazing…more stuff available and it’s only going to get better from here on out. Although these were bought from the Union Square Farmers Market in Manhattan, we are pretty lucky that the one across the street from our house is getting better and bigger each year. This is what Mark brought home: heirloom tomatoes, sorrel (my fave), artichokes, dinosaur plums (not pictured) and squash flower blossoms. We’ll post how we ate them tomorrow.

What are you buying from your local farmers markets?

Hard to believe, but I bought my first sour cherries ever from the farmer’s market last week.  There are two main reasons I haven’t bought them before.  First, their season is very short so the chances of finding them are slim.  And second, they are very fragile and do not keep for more than a few days so you need to have time to use them if you don’t want to waste your money (and they can be expensive).  I bought these cherries without any clear plan on what to make, but decided on a pie when I got home.  I soon realized I didn’t have nearly enough for a full size pie, so I made a few mini-pies in a couple of individual tart pans.  The sour cherries had a wonderful flavor (they are the traditional pie-making cherry after all, but most recipes usually use canned cherries) and I don’t think I’ll be so hesitant to buy them again.

A note on making individual pies:  Roll the pie dough as thin as you can or else the filling to crust ratio will be off and it would be too much like eating the crust by itself.  To roll the dough extra-thin, make sure it is cold and try rolling it between two sheets of parchment paper to prevent it from sticking to your rolling pin.

As for the kids, Mia found a way to eat all the cherries first so there was a hollowed out pie shell before eating most of the crust.  And maybe Claudine didn’t like the cherries as much as everyone else because everything else was gone from the plate except for the cherries, which looked like all the juice had been sucked out of them.

Fresh Sour Cherry Pie (makes 4 individual 4-inch pies)

Crust:
2-2/3 cups flour
14 Tablespoons butter
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup cold water

Filling:
2 cups fresh sour cherries, pitted
1/3 cup sugar
1 tablespoon cornstarch

For the crust, mix the butter into the flour and salt with your fingers until mostly incorporated.  (You can use a food processor for this step if you like.)  Mix in enough cold water to make a dough.  Roll the dough as thin as you can (see note above), cut into 8 circles about 2 inches larger than your small tart pans.  If you need more dough you can just re-roll some of the scrap pieces.  Chill the dough until ready to use.

Meanwhile, make the filling.  Toss the pitted cherries with the sugar and let it sit for about 20 minutes.  Drain and reserve the juice.  Put the juice in a small saucepan along with the cornstarch and bring to a boil.  When it has thickened, remove it from the heat and stir in the reserved cherries.

To assemble the mini-pies, press one circle of dough into a 4-inch tart pan.  Fill almost to the top with some pie filling.  Place another circle of dough on the top, pinching at the edges so it is completely sealed.  Trim any excess dough and crimp decoratively as desired.  Cut a short slit in the top of the pie to allow steam to escape.  Repeat with the remaining pies, then bake on a parchment-lined cookie sheet in a  preheated 375-degree oven for about 40 minutes, or until the crust is cooked on the bottom and the filling begins to bubble out of the top.  Allow to cool slightly before eating.

I’m very happy that we didn’t miss the pick-your-own strawberry season this year and I’m equally as happy that I actually had time to make something with them.  The kids were sold on the idea of a strawberry pie while we were still picking the berries, but I realized that I had never made one. I ended up improvising this recipe right down to the pie pan – my glass pie pan broke months ago so I was forced to use a springform pan.  The fresh, whole, uncooked strawberries are bound together inside a graham cracker crust with a mixture of sugar, gelatin and strawberry puree.  The strawberries looked a little rough after I filled the pie so I covered them with a layer of stabilized whipped cream.  If you try this recipe, only use the best berries you can find because the flavor depends entirely on that.

Strawberry and Whipped Cream Pie (makes one 10-inch pie)

Crust:

1-1/3 cups graham cracker crumbs

1/4 cup sugar

1/4 cup flour

6 Tablespoons melted butter

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees.  Mix everything together by hand, and press firmly into a 10-inch springform pan.  The crust should also go up the sides of the pan about three inches.  Bake in the oven for about 12 minutes, until it has firmed up a bit.  Let it cool while you prepare the filling.

Filling:

5 cups strawberries, washed and stems removed.

1/4 cup sugar

1 Tablespoon gelatin powder, soaked in 1/4 cup cold water

Roughly chop one cup of the strawberries and place in a small saucepan with the sugar.  Cook until reduced to a puree.  Remove from the heat, then stir in the soaked gelatin.  Mix with the remaining strawberries, then immediately pour into the cooled crust.  Spread the out so the top is level, then prepare the whipped cream topping.

Topping:

1-1/2 cups heavy cream

1 Tablespoon powdered sugar

1 teaspoon gelatin powder

2 tablespoons milk

Whip the cream and sugar to stiff peaks.  Soak the gelatin in the milk for two minutes, then heat gently until dissolved.  Gradually fold the whipped cream into the gelatin, then spread on top of the strawberries.  Chill for several hours before removing from the pan and slicing.

Strawberry picking in June often marks the beginning of the fruit picking season. It was a little early when we went out this weekend, but there were still plenty of strawberries in the patch and we spent a few leisurely hours at the farm, feeding animals, eating apple cider donuts and slurping on apple cider slushies to cool off. It was fairly hot, the kind of day that reminds you that everyday in summer is like this.

I never went fruit picking as a kid. I don’t know if this is something that has grown in popularity as an outing destination in the last 10 years of so or if maybe it was just my family, but I don’t recall any of my friends going fruit picking either. So it was really interesting when one summer in 1990, during the 3 months off we had from college, I found myself picking blueberries in Maine, not for fun, but for money.

Don’t ask me how or why or what I was even thinking, and even though I can still remember how grueling the work was, I’m glad that I can count those 5 weeks of blueberry picking as one of my life experiences. You have to remember that I was a kid from New York City and knew nothing about farming and migrant workers, never mind how to pick berries off low laying bushes with a rake. I also really really sucked at it. You had to be strong to constantly bend down with your back to rake these berries for 6+ hours a day, scooping up as many as you can catch with your rake and dumping them in your bucket. You had to be strong to carry full buckets filled with berries back to the end of your row. It was all about being economical and efficient with your movements. I was neither of these things. I wasn’t strong and I didn’t move smartly. I also pretty much hated that kind of physical labor at the height of summer temps and back then, nobody wore sunscreen, so we got really tan, not to mention sore. But as a kid from New York City, it was an interesting experience and I don’t mean that in a condescending way. No, I have much respect for the way our food comes to us in stores. You don’t really think how the berries you eat were picked by people. We came across many illegal workers, but there were also folks who traveled from other parts of the country to do seasonal work and some of the women kicked ass and out picked any of the guys in the line on the field on any given day.

I think I lasted about 2 weeks on the first large, commercial blueberry farm that we raked at. It wasn’t because I wanted to give up, but because of the pesticides that the farms used. Some days you can see cloudy dusts of pesticides hovering over the fields in the sun’s haze. I knew this wasn’t good, so we sought out smaller, family owned organic farms. During these blueberry picking weeks, we’d stay at houses of people that we’d meet. That may sound crazy, but with a little caution and a good head on your shoulders, we learned that we can trust the world to take care of us. One of the houses that we stayed at was a true hobbit house built out of stone and mud. 2 big round rooms with pointed roofs and windows connected by a short breezeway. A vegetable garden out front and wildflowers all around. You had to drive on a half secluded dirt road off the main road to get there. I wouldn’t be able to find it again if you asked me to. Sometimes I wonder if the hobbit house is still there. Sometimes I wonder if it existed at all, but the only thing that convinces me that it was real is because I can remember the house so clearly. It was magic.

On the days we didn’t pick blueberries we drove out to the jagged coastline and swam. The nights were often hot, muggy and filled with vicious mosquitoes, but the days were beautiful and the water was dazzling. Wading out into those gentle bay waters surrounded by nothing but a million flecks of sparkling reflections made you feel like you were standing in the most awesome place on earth.

I haven’t been back to Maine since that summer 20 years ago. It has long since been on my list of places I want to visit again, but the drive is on the side of a little too long to make it comfortably with the kids. One day though, but until then I can can still see the purple fields filled with blueberries reaching all the way out to the horizon. I can feel that hot sun that turns the blueberries ripe and sweet. I can still smell the heavily perfumed scent of blueberries that seemed to follow us everywhere.

Mushrooms are fascinating. They are both delicate and alien and interesting to photograph.

Hard to believe we were at the beach last weekend. Oh March, you just had to remind us that you are fickle, didn’t you? It’s cold again. 40 degrees. Winter coats + scarves + hats. But looking at the forecast for this week and I see that it’ll be 70 degrees again by Thursday so it’s just a little cold blip in the weather.

We took a walk through the Union Square Farmers Market today. Lots of flowers out.

After being completely fed up with my hair last night, I got a haircut today after 7 long months. Its not drastically different or anything – a few inches shorter with shorter bangs – but I need to wash it and let it dry before making any assessments. I sort of hate what they do at the salon – put all this product in your hair, style and blow dry it in a way that I would never replicate at home.

I’ve been really tired lately and not functioning so well on 5 hours of sleep every night, but I have this design problem to solve for a monday deadline. I just want to go to sleep.

There are a few things worrying me today.

It’s not an orange. It’s not a grapefruit. It’s an ugli fruit and if you haven’t tried it, you should. Despite the name (although the ugli is not particularly ugly), the fruit is a super juicy, sour sweet citrus.

Mark tried to candy the peel. They accidentally got overcooked and didn’t work. Also, they ended up looking like gummy worms. I don’t really like eating gummy worms so that was okay by me.

We have a small farmer’s market across the street from our house that, until this year, ended in December. This winter, however, they have teamed up with the Can Factory Market so that we in the neighborhood can have our fresh veggies and pickles year-round. Mia, Claudine and I ventured over on an especially cold Sunday to check it out. I was actually a bit surprised by the selection. Lots of fresh herbs, good apples, and this beautiful orange cauliflower. Orange cauliflower is a bit sweeter than the standard white variety, which makes it perfect for roasting or sautéing. Make sure to get it nice and caramelized for the best flavor. We ate it with foccacia, roasted beets and salsify soup that day. Makes for a perfect winter meal.

Orange Cauliflower with Garlic and Lemon (serves 4)

1 head orange cauliflower, broken into florets (other colors of cauliflower can also be used)
2 Tablespoons olive oil
4 cloves garlic, minced
Juice of 1 lemon
Coarse sea salt and pepper to taste

Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Drop in the cauliflower and blanch for 2 minutes. Drain and set aside. Heat the olive oil on high heat in a large sauté pan. Add the minced garlic and fry until it just starts to brown. Add the cooked cauliflower and continue to cook for several minutes, stirring occasionally. It should start to brown a little bit. When the cauliflower is brown enough for you, squeeze in the lemon juice, cook for another 30 seconds, and serve immediately.