Warm Chanterelle Salad with Onions, Summer Berries and White Cheddar Toast

IWarm Chanterelle Salad with Onions, Summer Berries and White Cheddar Toastt’s the Berries!

Lately, the weather has been kinda, well, weird. It’s Summer. It should be warm–or at least warmer. Yes, we had a few days of super hot temps, but those came and went.

The good news is that the cooler weather is making my black­berry bramble come to life. If this keeps up, I’m gonna be knee deep in berries. I know. There are worse prob­lems to have.

I will use ‘em for our annual jam, and I am looking for other ideas for my excess of berries. There are the obvious cob­blers, crum­bles, scones etc.…but I am longing for some­thing less bad for you and more on the savory side. It ain’t easy. How­ever, I am dis­cov­ering promising possibilities.

I’ll start with a Warm Chanterelle Salad with Onions, Summer Berries and White Cheddar Toast. The recipe below is from one of my absolute favorite cook­books, Wild­wood: Cooking from the Source in the Pacific North­west by Cory Schreiber. This is the kind of book that makes a cer­tain indi­vidual want to drop every­thing and move to the country to start raising goats to make cheese regard­less of whether she knows what she’s doing. Sigh, someday…

If you can’t find chanterelle mush­rooms you can use cremini, but I rec­om­mend the chanterelles when you can get ‘em.  Read more…

Southern Fried Chicken and Ranch Potato Salad

Southern Fried ChickenFid­dlin’ Around

Every year for the last nine years we have spent Father’s Day in Grass Valley. Why, you may ask? Well, if it’s Father’s Day in Grass Valley it means that the Blue­grass Fes­tival is being held at the Fair­grounds. Both my daughter and hus­band are blue­grass musi­cians (or at least they are working real hard at it). We will go this weekend so that they can be with their own kind and jam.

The fes­tival is three days of non-​​stop pickin’ and fid­dlin’ and I do mean non-​​stop. Most of the atten­dees spend the weekend camping at the Fair­grounds in their tents and/​or RVs. But if you thought you would be able to get sleep at night you would be wrong. Once the “main” con­cert shuts down for the night the ”real” con­cert begins in the camp­grounds, and it goes into the wee hours of the morning if it stops at all.

While there are headaches (lit­er­ally) involved with going up there, the music is great and we gen­er­ally have a good time. There are some great ven­dors there, which for the non-​​picking mem­bers of the audi­ence is awe­some. There is a lovely lady who sells hand made jams, pre­serves, and vin­tage aprons in her booth. I make cer­tain to get an apron each year to add to my col­lec­tion. If I had one com­plaint (okay, so there might be more than one), it would be the food.

It is unrea­son­able to expect Thomas Keller five star dining at a music fes­tival, but I would settle for some­thing a little bit north of edible. Maybe I’m being harsh. Maybe. I love burgers and bur­ritos as much as the next guy, but one can live on burgers for only so long. (Wait. Was that my out­side voice?)

Each year we have the con­ver­sa­tion about how we would improve or add to the food. The pos­si­bil­i­ties have ranged from healthy bento-​​type boxes for the kids, to giant fresh salads, to some serious BBQ Ribs. The best idea might be the Picnic Basket Booth. It would offer the kind fare to take on a country picnic: fried chicken, fresh potato and mac­a­roni salads, corn bread and bis­cuits, fruit hand pies, and a big jug of iced tea. Of course you could just go wacky and add on a three bean salad and some home­made dill pickles.…grilled corn? The pos­si­bil­i­ties are end­less, and they are the per­fect accom­pa­ni­ment to the music. (Blue­grass and fried chicken? We got our­selves a hoo­te­nanny boys!)

Who knows? We may get there Friday night and be pleas­antly sur­prised but I’m not holding my breath. In the mean time, try my favorite recipe for fried chicken and potato salad for Dad this weekend, and let me know if it’s got booth poten­tial…  Read more…

Eggs Florentine

Eggs FlorentineThere’s Nothin’ Like A Good Book

I love to read. Ever since the fourth grade when my best friend in the whole wide world intro­duced me to Sidney Sheldon and Danielle Steel, I have been a vora­cious reader. Yes, fourth grade may have been a bit early for Sidney, but there was plenty of Judy Bloom and Sweet Valley High thrown in there for good measure.

From there it was on to Robin Cook and Coma. Can you say freaky? Tom Clancy and The Hunt For Red October came next and was later fol­lowed by Diana Gabaldon and Out­lander.

I have a long list of favorite authors but I’ll read just about any­thing. My hus­band jokes that he is mar­ried to the back of a Kindle, and if the story has a dead body in a dump­ster, Seal Teams blowing stuff up, a biol­o­gist trying to save the world from the latest gov­ern­ment spon­sored out­break or a semi-​​clothed High­lander in a kilt, I’m reading it. And, of course He’s right :) . Don’t even get me started on Janet Evanovich and Stephanie Plum.

One of my favorite things in life is the feeling I get from laughing out loud while reading. If people aren’t giving me strange looks, than I’m not doing it right. I admit though, that there are times when a good story trumps meeting the needs of my family. Dum­b­le­dore is dead and you need your dinner now?! Are you kid­ding me?!?

Over the weekend, I read the latest Dan Brown novel, Inferno. Like mil­lions of other readers, I have been a fan of his since The DaVinci Code. This cur­rent book is set in Flo­rence, Italy and if you have even a small love of art you will enjoy it.

His numerous ref­er­ences to Flo­rence brings to mind the word Flo­ren­tine which, in turn makes me think of spinach, which makes me think of the fol­lowing recipe.

It’s going to be really hot this weekend, so get­ting any­thing mean­ingful done out­side ain’t gonna happen. My sug­ges­tion is to grab a book, crank the AC or a giant fan and eat a plate of these.  Read more…

Mesclun and Cherry Salad with Warm Goat Cheese

Mesculin and Goat Cheese SaledThe stone fruit season is here!
Can I get an Amen?

Last week, our first ship­ment of Fitzgerald Farms nec­tarines and peaches arrived. If you don’t know why that is such a big deal, then you’ve never tasted one of Fitz’s Carmen Miranda Nectarines…so get in the car now and come on down.

This is my favorite time of year for fruit, and lately I have been knee deep in it. Last weekend, I relieved my brother-​​in-​​law of 30 pounds of gor­geous apri­cots from his back­yard, which were imme­di­ately made into 8 pints of jam. The remaining ‘cots were packed in school lunches or put in my dehy­drator for snacking later. Yes. I have a dehy­drator. Doesn’t everyone?

On Sunday, I went to the farmer’s market, and not only did I load up on even more nec­tarines, I went crazy for the cher­ries. We love cher­ries in my house. If I can get them to last more than a day it’s an accom­plish­ment. My kids eat them like candy to the point we have to put them on cherry rations so they don’t make them­selves sick.

More often than not we eat the cher­ries as is, and they are gone before I can make any­thing with them. But one of my favorite ways to eat cher­ries is tossed in a salad with some nuts and blue cheese. It’s a per­fect lunch or light dinner for when the weather gets hot. If you add some nec­tarines and/​or apri­cots, so much the better. Go crazy. Toss this with a walnut oil or white bal­samic vinai­grette and you’re good to go. Or, if you like, go fancier with this recipe from Bon Appetit.   Read more…