Pat came across some pawpaws on a recent fishing trip and brought them home for me to experiment with. For the uninitiated, pawpaws are a native fruit not typically found in the grocery store or even at farmer’s markets. They tend to fall off the tree when they are fully ripe, which happens to coincide with them being incredibly delicate. This delicateness is a large part as to why they aren’t well known – they don’t travel well and need to be eaten almost immediately while giving off an aroma that permeates the surrounding area. They smell like they taste, tropical and yeasty – think a slightly fermented mango-banana mix. They aren’t much to look at – shades of green and black. Peel the skin off to find pulpy, soft flesh littered with large seeds, that require some work to get to the fruit. A 3″ pawpaw produces a surprisingly small amount of pulp. It takes a number of fruits to be able to make something with them, so if you come across some, grab more than you think you’ll need. They can be eaten raw, but they bake well too, especially when paired with dairy. Continue reading
Quick Cherry Tomatoes and Pasta.
A gardening friend gave me two Sweet 100 cherry tomato plants that have had us swimming in the teeniest, tinest tomatoes this summer. I’ve been harvesting a few pints of them weekly and in order to keep up with them, I had to get creative. I was slightly inspired by a recipe my friend Martha used in her cooking class last month, but because these tomatoes are so tiny that cutting them would be a complete pain (and waste of time), I decided to just throw them in the pan whole.
(They also have a slightly annoying habit of splitting upon being picked.)
A grand adventure.
We are back to real life after having had a grand adventure last week of the most delightful sort – a trip to Florida to spend a week with our friend Eric and his son AJ at their vacation home on the Gulf Coast.
How is it almost mid-August already?
Summer has been flying by. I had a long list of things I wanted to accomplish while Edie was at camp for three weeks, which completely wilted in that heat wave we had. It was all I could do to walk the dog in that 100+ degree weather some days. Continue reading
Stovetop Granola is totally a thing.
My go-to summer breakfast is fruit with yogurt and granola. I typically buy my granola in the summer, not because it’s too hot to turn the oven on, but because I’ve fallen in love with a ginger granola that I’ve yet to be able to perfect at home and I find ginger granola to be the perfect complement to any fresh fruit combo I throw together. That changed last week however, when not only was I out of granola, it was so incredibly hot outside that just the thought of getting in my car to go get granola was out of the realm of possibility. I began to wonder if stovetop granola was a thing and if it wasn’t, then could I make it a thing? Continue reading
Getting Schooled.
I spent three very delightful evenings this past week assisting down at the Charlottesville Cooking School with my friend Martha, who taught an Every Day Cooking Skills Series. It’s a three part class that is usually taught over the course of three weeks, but Martha decided to teach it over three consecutive evenings in one week as a trial summer run. The concept is sort of like a boot camp for cooking – it covers a variety of basic cooking techniques so that participants walk out with skills to throw together simple seasonal and delicious dinners regularly. Sounds too good to be true, I know, but Martha is an amazing instructor who can make this happen and I don’t just say that because she’s a friend. Martha is a trained chef, who has been teaching cooking classes longer than she wants to admit (which is also longer than I’ve been cooking).
Lazy, hazy days
We spent the better part of last week down at the lake with the Smileys. After feeling like our summer was highly overscheduled, it was a much needed and welcome escape from town and schedules. Continue reading
Pickled Cucumbers, every which way.
Cucumbers are starting to come in and since I have a bit of reputation for pickling everything in sight, I’ve already started fielding requests for my favorite cucumber preserving recipes. I thought I’d go ahead and put all my favorites into one post, so from here on out, I can just send this link in response to “What are your favorite cucumber pickle recipes?”
Summer adventures.
Edie and I took a quick road trip the other day – she chose to knock out next year’s PE requirement during a summer session, which put a bit of a damper on our usual June roadtrip plans. We’ve been a bit more grounded and structured than I care to be during the summer, but such is life.
Books of 2016, part three
In keeping with my resolve to write down every book I read this year, here is the latest installment of “Books I Read in 2016”. For parts one and two, go here and here. Continue reading
