Red plum alert, raspberries too

The black plums having all gone into jam, I can now attend to the red plums which have been ripening on the counter.

I made one of those Melissa Clark Figgy Demerera Snacking Cake deals. No figs, no Demerera sugar, but that's fine.

It occurs to me that my Inner Me needs four workspaces to make a simple cake.

The instructions

One lot of ingredients

The plums

The buttered, floured, tray.

But I do get plenty of steps in, whipping back and forth.

And I get a cake organized with red plums.

And sampled, with a cup of tea. 

I have ordered another supply of tea, this time Scottish Breakfast, in honor of Glaswegian Handsome Partner whose 89th birthday is tomorrow. He stopped ten years short but who's counting.

And I have this year's raspberries, so expensive but I'm worth it, in the freezer for some purpose TBA. Three pints. Picked by the farm yesterday a few hours before I froze them.

It's a short season, just a few days now, more in September when they bear again.

If you have ideas other than jam,  please let me know. 

Farm to fork!

Stopped at the farm on the way home, and added freshpicked lettuce and raspberries to my lunch of local mushrooms, pasture raised egg and roasted Yukon gold potatoes in a crust of parmigiano reggiano.

New kind of bread, and other great stuff

Before I go out to a local concert this afternoon, and a visit to the library gallery to cast a ballot for best in show at the artist's group annual exhibit, a bit of baking and other things.

Tried Patricia Wells ham and cheese loaf. I think this is in her salads book, but in the book the list of ingredients is in italics, too likely to cause slipups on measuring. So I just googled on it, and you can too. Here it is, and pretty successful. Since it had eggs, cheese and ham, it's great with a green salad or, for me, as a breakfast food. Warmed a little to soften the cheese.

And a German potato salad, red local potatoes, one of which I planted for future ones, tossed with olive oil, bit of minced fresh tarragon, and vinegar I made from Chardonnay.

And, since raspberries are in at the farm, some in the freezer, maybe for jam, and one lot to eat fresh, little sprinkle of sugar.

Good food, set for several days.

Roast vegggies, raspberries and respite

As you know, I don't make a lot of references in here to current tragedies, because this blog is meant to be a little respite from the crushingly terrible things happening out there.  I do a good number of active efforts to improve things, very aware of needing to do my part. But in here, it's okay to breathe, enjoy a little something now and then.

And today the respite is roasted vegetables.  I did a large amount of roasted sweet potatoes, fresh from the farm, apples, likewise, and frying peppers, from neighbor's garden, he grows them, asks me to take care of eating them.

This time, along with a dash of molasses and a sprinkling of cornstarch, the flavorings were fennel seed, Old Bay Seasoning, a red, spicy, peppery mix good with fish, seafood and poultry, and seasalt.  I tossed all the ingredients in with the seasonings and let them sit a few minutes while the oven heated up to 400F.  Twenty minutes roasting, and all's done.

One thing to bear in mind when you cook for one as I do often, but make full size recipes, with several dinners in mind, is to note which flavorings hold up the second time around.  And fennel seed does this to a faretheewell.   Really good the second time you have a dish of this mixture.   All the seasonings sort of matured and blended and it was, if anything, better than the first night I had it.

The recipe this time made for three full dinners.  If I'd been using it as a side dish probably more like six dinners. Or if Handsome Son were in the party, I'd be lucky to have leftovers at all.

And dessert is a dish of fresh raspberries, from the farm, they're still harvesting them, with a spoonful of plain yogurt, and a pitterpatter of sliced almonds.  See I can write twee with the best of them!  

Do you remember that movie about the bookstore,something Charing Cross Road, where Anne Bancroft is getting help from New York English neighbors in picking out interesting foods to send to the bookstore staff in wartime England after she realized they were nearly starving?  

One thing she lit on in her catalog was raspberries.  Her neighbor being a cut glass English Southerner, called them rahzbriz.  And she bursts out laughing saying, imagine a whole island full of people saying rahzbriz!  Well, no, only some Londoners, but nemmind. Real people call them rassbrees.  Either way, they are lovely, especially now that I don't have a place to grow my own.  You can't get them in shops, because rassbrees don't ship well, too fragile. Rahzbriz too, for that matter.
  
This dinner will cheer you up any time.  And a nice glass of Merlot to go with, too. Shopping for this was  a Fall event, now that pumpkins are out and more varieties of apples are coming in. 

I did get a little sugar pumpkin for soup.  Maybe in the next couple of days. Probably with carrots and ginger.  Carrots don't grow well in this region at all, never get them at the farmer's market or farmstands.  So those are storebought, from some other state. I try to hold down the distance between farm and my table, but have to cede now and then.  A lot of my food is grown about a mile away.