Savvy Eats

It was a busy weekend. We stained and sealed the deck, and made two trips to the farmers’ market. We cleaned and organized in the wake of last weekend’s “move almost all of the upstairs furniture” spree. We hiked Buttermilk with Adam and Laura, and had multiple game nights.  I made dilly beans and pear [...]

I struggled on my bike ride last Saturday. My muscles felt tight and tired as we set out, but I chalked it up to the weeklong break from cycling and my need to warm up. But instead of feeling looser and more energized as we rode, I felt progressively weaker. After a mile of constant [...]

This is apparently the month of margaritas.  Which is funny because I’ve never been much of a tequila drinker. But after some successful vodka-infusion experiments — peach, strawberry and blueberry — I decided to branch out and try something new at the very end of July.  I just couldn’t stop thinking about blueberry margaritas for [...]

In the rush and tumble of summer, I somehow forgot about this lentil salad entirely.  The photos have been sitting on my desktop, waiting patiently for me to come back to them. Lentils are just that kind of food.  They aren’t flashy and demanding with a short season or shelf life like berries. No, lentils [...]

I’ve been spoiled by fresh blueberries. Every summer, I fill bucket after bucket with the little blue balloons of fruit at the U-Pick farms, barely restraining myself from employing a ‘pick-one-eat-one’ policy. Aside from this being unfair to the farms, I remind myself, I don’t want to turn into a Violet Beauregarde blueberry-person being rolled [...]

I don’t spend a lot of time cooking in the summer.  I can and preserve and blanch and freeze, but very little cooking happens.  Most of the time, it is just too darn hot to cook inside, and I’m too busy doing summery things: gardening, cycling, hiking, keeping score at Dan’s baseball games and going [...]

Twenty-five pounds of strawberries have gone through my kitchen in the past two weeks.  We ate some fresh, in strawberry mint salad, in pancakes, in sorbet.  We preserved even more, slicing and freezing, macerating and jamming.  And then we drank some, via strawberry-infused vodka. Print Strawberry Vodka Yield: 1 quart Strawberry-infused vodka adds a fruity [...]

These are the scenes of summer: Driving down country roads with Dan, my bare feet resting flat on the dashboard, eyes closed, singing along to Pentatonix. Coaxing my sungold tomato plants towards their trellis to keep them from toppling over when they get top-heavy with fruit. Keeping book for Dan’s baseball games, smelling of sunscreen [...]