Just briefly. Nothing torrential or dramatic or tree-downing, but it rained. And the world was quiet. And I sat in a chair and read a book. Writing Down the Bones, by Natalie Goldberg. It's dated, for sure, but several friends recommended it, so I'm giving it a go.
So it was quiet, and I read, and it rained, and I took a walk. And all of this may seem very mundane, but I've got to tell you, it was momentous given the chaotic state of these past few weeks. Everything is good, wonderfully good, but that quiet hour fed me like a bowl of warm soup.
I'm home now, scrambling to catch up, and the hours slip and slide. Head down, keyboard out, shoes off, back hunched, I type until my wrists ache. I'm grateful, if addled, in this state of overwhelm, a state welcome and unnerving, familiar and exotic.
I close my eyes.
I hear birds.
I listen.
Remember the quiet, they trill, softly.
It will return.
And you'll wish, once again, for the thunder of today.
...
Recipe for Avocado with kumquats and walnut oil
When I have no time to fix a proper meal, I fake it by combining two or three things. I take my plate outside and turn my face towards the sun. Just 5 minutes of peace, 5 minutes of fresh air, 5 minutes of sky, and I'm ready to return to my desk.
1 avocado Handful of kumquats, sliced Walnut oil
Eat slowly, outside.
...
Come see me in June in California and Seattle. Here's where.
When I eat bananas, I don't think about potassium.
When I eat radishes, I don't think about lycopene.
When I eat green vegetables, I don't think about isothiocyanate.
When I eat oranges, I don't think about cryptoxanthin.
My point is this:
Why do we as a culture try to persuade people to eat better by focusing on one of two extremes? On the one hand, we toss around this crazy scientific terminology that's so inscrutable to the average person that it's basically meaningless. I pulled the lutein, isothiocyanate, and cryptoxanthin examples from a chart that a popular magazine sourced from The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. The chart is useful enough, I guess, but I don't believe most people make food choices this way.
On the other hand, we insult the intelligence of the American eater with hyperbolic headlines claiming that eating more produce will instantly make us younger, happier, sexier, and skinnier.
Two extremes: one that's overly detailed, another that strains credulity.
I propose a different conversation entirely, one that promotes the same idea (produce is good), but with a more moderate tone and a more meaningful approach.
Produce didn't used to need advertising the way newfangled, packaged foodstuffs did. People just knew intuitively it was good for them. But now, to compete, we push its nutrient composition to the fore, as though this were its primary selling point in our diets, as though these features had magical powers. To me, this direction is actually a step back, as it confuses the straightforward but boring reality that fruits and vegetables are simply good for us. That's the nugget. That's the sound bite.
But it's not newsworthy.
So it doesn't sell.
I wait eagerly for the day when bizarre diet books don't dominate bookstore shelves, when headlines like Fiber Your Way to a Younger You! stop screaming from the newsstands, and when we can once again focus on the pure joys of good food.
When our commercials, our magazines, our celebrities, and our very culture openly acknowledge this:
Some Food is Quite Obviously Good for Us, and Some Food is Quite Obviously Bad for Us But We Choose to Eat It Anyway.
It's a long, clunky, non-newsy headline.
And to me, it's the only one that approaches the truth.
A few weeks ago, I was talking with a friend about how I got started as a food writer. I was going through my whole wacky, completely nonlinear career -- the philosophy degree; the years in the Justice Department; my time as a nanny in Paris when I had to watch Beauty and the Beast every single day; my Peace Corps service; grad school; and on and on. None of it made sense, not from any angle. There was no cohesion, no logic, no way to pretend point A influenced point B influenced point C. Frankly, it didn't. My career to that point was a happy mess, a colossal grab bag of experiences whose contents, while colorful and lively, were disconnected from one another in every conceivable way.
And that was all pre-1998. Then came the tenure research, and the babies, and the early years of motherhood during which I struggled to find my place as an at-home mom who yearned to be two places at once -- in a career, and on the floor with my boys. I wanted to be home, but more than that, I wanted to WANT to be home, and that part was the hardest. Because those years were tough. They were tough not in spite of, but precisely because of the relentless activity in that preceding decade. I also felt that, while some women could successfully navigate domesticity as a full-time gig, I, perhaps, might suddenly be out of my league.
I would ask myself, looking at my boys, does this count? Can I actually do this and have it count, not just to them, but to the outside world? Am I fulfilling the role I set out to fulfill, or failing, somehow, to achieve some nebulous goal? I would reflect back on the bosses from my earliest jobs and wonder: would they be disappointed to learn that I'd stepped off the career-track, even though the track I'd been on was shaped like a curly fry?
Let me just say this: I loved those years. I questioned every little possible thing, and I second-guessed often, and deeply, but I loved those years, and I would not for a second grab Father Time's hair and yank him around so I could re-do it. No way. I treasure those years at home with my boys. But they were hard, dude. They were hard.
I spoke with a young woman recently. She's 24, and uncertain about how to fulfill her ambition. She knows she wants to be successful, but her path is shrouded in mystery. Well, yes, of course it is. Hello, young me. There's fog ahead, I hear you, but you just step into it, find your fulcrum, and do your best to wade on through. The fog will lift, eventually, so take your time. The years you spend tiptoeing, then leaping, first left, then right, watching Beauty and the Beast, staying home, changing diapers, feeling scared and unsure and uncertain that what you're doing is the right thing for you, those years count. They count.
The fog will lift.
And you'll have that journey.
And be grateful for it, too.
...
Recipe for Ouzo-Steeped Calimyrna Figs
I recently had a few couples over (my first dinner party since the Stone Age), and I wanted to put out something simple to accompany the baklava I knew a friend was bringing for dessert. I didn't want to compete with her, or to make the meal end on a heavy note. A few hours before the gathering, I filled a few glasses with ouzo and dropped in some Calimyrna figs. I decided it counted, even though it took about 6 seconds to prepare. By the time the meal was finished, the figs were nicely drunk, and plump, and crazy, crazy good.
Dried figs, preferably Calimyrna Ouzo
Fill a few glasses with ouzo and drop in some dried figs. Let steep for several hours. Serve, passing around skewers or fondue forks so guests can fish out the fruit.
Refrigerate leftovers, covered, in glass jars, topped off with additional ouzo to cover. These will taste terrific for days.
In the past 2 weeks, several people have sought my advice. During the same period, I've reached out to several other people seeking their advice. I get off the phone after dissecting one friend's issues, and 10 minutes later I'm back on the horn yakking about my own tangled knots to someone else. It's a weird, twisted, and utterly inefficient triangle. I'm this advice-pod, with inputs coming in one end and outputs streaming from the other. But the inputs and outputs don't align, so as much as I'd like to, I can't just recuse myself, connect them to each other, and go out for ice cream.
Instead, I'm sticking close to home, advising and being advised, strategizing and shoring up. During this incubation period, after which travel and mayhem take flight, I find some measure of solace at the market and by the stove.
On Sunday, I took my son out for breakfast, and during the hourlong wait for a table we hit the nearby farmers' market. We scooped up spring carrots with twirly strings and frilly tufts, and admired their non-conformity before dropping them in our bag. They're super-sweet, but weird-looking. (Any resemblance to persons real or imaginary is purely coincidental.)
When we got home later, the phone rang.
I touched two carrots together. Jammed them this way and that -- stem to stem, root to root, tuft to tuft, head to toe.
Nothing happened. Not a spark. Inputs/outputs unaligned.
So I took the call. Advised, and sought advice. Spoke up, and stayed quiet. And when it was over, this advice-pod, this info-portal, this giver and receiver, needer and provider, listener and listenee, we all sat down and ate.
...
Recipe for Spring Carrot Sauté with olives, garlic, and millet
The golden hue of this millet caught my eye, and with some advice from Maria Speck's wonderful cookbook Ancient Grains for Modern Meals, I learned how easy it is to cook. (Look for millet in the bulk bins at natural foods stores.) I used it here as a bed for garlicky sauteed carrots. The next day, I splashed broth over the leftovers, simmered it anew, and added a few shrimp for a speedy second meal.
Makes 4 servings
1 cup (dry) millet 3 tablespoons olive oil, plus more for drizzling 3 cloves garlic, peeled & smashed 1 pound slender spring carrots, scrubbed, halved lengthwise 1/4 cup pitted calamata olives, slivered 1/2 cup (packed) flat-leaf parsley Salt and pepper, to taste Optional add-ins/stir-throughs: cooked shrimp, cooked beans or lentils, peas, any leftover vegetables
First, cook the millet. Combine the millet with 1-3/4 cups cold water in a small saucepan, bring to a boil, then reduce heat, cover, and simmer until tender, 15 to 20 minutes. Remove from the heat. Keep covered.
Meanwhile, combine the 3 tablespoons olive oil with the garlic in a large skillet. Set over medium-low heat and allow to warm slowly, becoming fragrant, 5 to 10 minutes. Add the carrots and olives, crank the heat a bit, and saute until the carrots are tender but not mushy, 8 to 10 minutes, tossing frequently. (Cook time will vary based on the carrots' freshness and thickness.)
Scrape the cooked millet into the carrots and give everything a good toss. Sprinkle with the parsley, drizzle generously with additional olive oil, and adjust the seasonings to taste. (Add optional stir-throughs, if desired.)
To re-warm leftovers, moisten first with a bit of vegetable broth, then simmer gently.
Spending time online has real hazards. You can get spammed, hacked, unfriended, and cyber-stalked, all in a single afternoon. And that's just on the regular internet. On the food internet, you might encounter something far scarier: an endless barrage of photos showing foods shoved unceremoniously inside other foods.
I suppose it all started with the turducken, but soon even that became tired. Like, really, is a chicken stuffed inside a duck stuffed inside a turkey all you've got? The internet responded by wrapping the turducken in bacon, creating the turbaconducken. Because that's what we as a society apparently needed. We needed a turbaconducken.
Let's also not forget the Cherpumple -- a three-layer cake stuffed with an apple pie, cherry pie, and pumpkin pie. For those who need a sweet nibble after finishing their turbaconducken.
The problem is, since those illustrious items were invented, the bar has been reset quite high, and now people everywhere are trying to scale it. Apparently no food makes sense anymore unless it's cooked inside the cavity of another food. This is where we now find ourselves.
Happily, major food companies are right on trend. Kraft, for example, offers up a recipe on its website for an Oreo baked inside a cupcake. Why? I have no idea. Can't we just eat a cupcake, and THEN eat an Oreo, and then go about our business? Can't we carboload sequentially?
No, we can't. Fortunately, when we get bored with that -- it will happen! -- we can then enjoy Oreos crammed inside chocolate chip cookies or hidden inside peanut butter blondies. For some reason, Oreos are prime candidates for being thrust inside other edibles.
.
Honestly, I was going to end this diatribe with a plea for my fellow citizens to get back to eating foods consecutively, or at least side-by-side. But then, just for kicks, I stuffed a roasted squash half with some leftover chili, sprinkled it with cheese, and broiled it until bubbly.
And you know what?
Right. It was awesome.
Suddenly, things look different. I get it now. There's a beautiful efficiency to eating a food and its vessel simultaneously. It just feels good.
I challenge you all to predict the next big stuffed thing.
Obviously, it has to include Oreos.
...
Recipe for Chili-Stuffed Carnival Squash
First off, people tend to have a favorite chili recipe, so I encourage you to use whatever recipe you like.* And second, I'm not giving specific quantities for the remaining ingredients as they’re completely flexible. Scale up or down, depending on how many you’re serving. Serve with cornbread.
A few Carnival squashes (count on 1/2 to 1 whole squash per person) Vegetable oil Salt and pepper Your favorite chili, prepared to your liking* Cheddar cheese Cilantro
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Line a rimmed baking sheet with foil.
Carefully slice each squash end to end. (Use caution.) Scrape out the seeds and strings. Rub the cut sides and cavities with a bit of vegetable oil. Season the flesh with salt and pepper.
Roast cut-side down until tender and nicely browned, about 40 to 50 minutes, or longer, depending on the size and weight.
Fill the cavity with your favorite chili. Sprinkle with cheese. Return to the baking sheet and broil, face-up, and watching carefully, until the cheese melts and bubbles. Garnish with chopped cilantro, and serve.
*For this recipe, I made the Beefed Up Bean Chili from Almost Meatless, which continues to be one of my favorite cookbooks. It was terrific. If you don't have the book, or a chili recipe in your repertoire, I'd suggest trying Susan Russo's boozy beef chili (for you meat-eaters) or this vegetarian chili from my archive.
Welcome, friends, to another installment of What's Ripe Right Now. This month, I'm featuring squash, everyone's favorite gourd.
(If squash isn't your favorite gourd, I stand corrected.)
For those new to this ongoing series -- see Tomatoes, Apricots, and Cherries to brush up -- the idea here is to inspire each other with photos and recipes. I encourage you to play along in any way that suits you. Let us know how you cook with squash in the comments below, upload squash photos to the What's Ripe Right Now? Flickr group (don't use Flickr? upload them to the 5SR Facebook page), or link to squash recipes that appear on your favorite websites or blogs. There's no wrong way to participate.
And feel free to spread the word. With squash showing up everywhere, the more ideas we can generate as a collective, the better for us all. No one wants to eat squash pancakes 85 days in a row.
Don't put an onion ring near me. Just don't do it. Onion rings make me feel like I have to take a shower in really hot water, and that's not very good for my skin.
French fries are okay.
Potato skins are very TGI Friday's circa 1989.
Jalapeno poppers -- I honestly can't tell you what these are.
Popcorn shrimp -- if I had to, I would, but I generally don't have to, so I don't.
Fried mozzarella sticks -- see Potato Skins, above.
Fried zucchini -- why?
Fried okra -- let's please not go here.
Fried chicken? Yes, thanks.
Fried calamari -- I'll take a double order, extra lemon. (They never bring you enough lemon.)
Fried apple rings.
I said, FRIED APPLE RINGS.
I'd wear them on every finger and toe, if I could. I'd bling myself out. As earrings. Through my belt loops. One in each button hole, and a few dangling from the drawstring of my hoodie. Then I'd go dancing.
Trend alert.
American Apparel: call me.
...
Recipe for Fried Apple Rings, with icing
These are essentially ring-shaped, batter-dipped apple fritters. Fry up one or two, taste them, and then add more spices to the batter at that point, to your liking. Eat them hot or they will soften, and then your heart will sink to your feet.
Makes 18 to 24 rings, depending on the size of your apples
For the apple rings:
Plenty of vegetable oil, for frying 1-1/4 cups all-purpose flour 1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder 1/4 teaspoon salt 3/4 teaspoon cardamom 1 teaspoon cinnamon 1/2 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice (or more cinnamon/cardamom, or a little nutmeg/ginger/clove) 2 tablespoons turbinado sugar (or granulated sugar, or brown sugar) 1 cup milk (whole preferable, or 2%) 1 whole egg plus 1 egg yolk 1/2 teaspoon almond extract (or vanilla) 3 Fuji apples, peeled, cored, sliced into 1/4" thick rings
For the icing:
1 cup confectioners' sugar, sifted 1 teaspoon amaretto (or other liqueur of your choice, or more extract) 1-2 tablespoons milk
To make the apple rings: Affix a candy thermometer to the side of a deep saucepan. Fill with 1 to 1-1/2 inches oil, set over medium-high heat, and bring the oil up to 375 degrees while you make the batter.
Set out a large sheet of wax paper. Sift the flour, baking powder, salt, and all the spices onto the paper. If using turbinado or brown sugar, fluff it in with your fingers. If using granulated sugar, you can sift that with the other ingredients, or fluff it in afterwards.
In a large bowl, whisk the milk, the whole egg, the yolk, and the extract. Gather the edges of the wax paper and slide the dry ingredients into the wet. Fold everything together with a rubber spatula, being sure to moisten any bits at the bottom of the bowl. Drop in 4 or 5 apple rings and turn to coat.
When the oil has reached 375 degrees (you'll need to maintain this temperature throughout frying, so keep an eye on the thermometer), use a fork to lift each apple ring and let the excess batter drip back into the bowl. Set the apples in the oil and fry for 1 to 3 minutes, until golden brown, flipping carefully once or twice. Use a spider, slotted spoon, or a clean fork to lift the fried rings onto a paper-towel lined plate, and repeat with the remaining apples and batter.
To make the icing: Whisk the confectioners' sugar, liqueur, and enough milk to make a pourable but thick-ish glaze. Drizzle the glaze over the apple rings. Serve immediately.
Last weekend, Travel Oregon invited me and about 20 others to experience the culinary scene both within and beyond Portland's borders. Disclosure: they paid for everything.
My hope is that even though my expenses were paid, I can still provide meaningful, informative food coverage of some locales worth visiting. I try to be thoughtful. I try to approach these experiences with a critical eye. But whether I've succeeded is ultimately for you to determine yourselves.
Below is a key to my photos, which appear in the slide show above. In a follow-up post, I'll introduce you to some local artisans and their food crafts, and give you my sense of this changing, growing, youthful, and very quirky city -- warts and all.
Frame 1. Lovely Mt. Hood on a clear September day. Kayaks drifted. Trillium Lake sparkled. Flowers flowered.
Frame 2. A picnic bench at Penner-Ash Winery (15771 NE Ribbon Ridge Road, Newberg, OR). Dusk. I wanted to lie on that table, flat on my back, and gaze at the sky.
Frame 3. Powell's (flagship: 1005 W Burnside, Portland). I wandered the 68,000 square-foot bookstore, then got lost walking back to the hotel even while using the turn-by-turn on my phone's GPS. This is not unusual for me.
Frame 4. Dinner at St. Jack (2039 SE Clinton Street, Portland), named 2011 Rising Star of the Year by the The Oregonion. Highlights included the crispy-salty frites, chicken liver mousse, and...
Frame 5. ...a dessert of plums and vanilla poached pluots.
Frame 6. I like tea. This is no surprise. Portland is home to a fine little shop called Steven Smith Teamaker (1626 NW Thurman Street, Portland), which I'd toured back in 2010. Pictured is one of their herbal bags (Meadow?). I'd like to tape it above my desk, for art. It's prettier than what's up there now, which are some crappily framed postcards I bought when I was 17.
Frame 7. Dr. John Kallas led us on a leisurely forage through the woods and took care to point out several leaves and berries that would cause hemorrhaging and instant death should we consume them. I'd had romantic visions of piling a wicker basket high with chanterelles, or pretty twigs, but there was something equally pleasant, and less taxing, about listening to him speak knowledgeably about huckleberries, thimbleberries, baneberries, and cow parsnips, the lower stem of which can be peeled and eaten like a banana. I bet you did not know this.
Frame 8. A foraged salad at Timberline Lodge (27500 E Timberline Road), a ski lodge founded in the 1930s in the throes of the Great Depression under Roosevelt's New Deal. If you're an architecture buff, you'll enjoy this place and its historical importance. There were a lot of old people milling about, but that didn't faze me because a) I enjoy old people, and b) I was fed a salad of smooth yellow violet, indian paintbrush, wild ginger, tiny tomatoes, bush berries, huckleberries, and verjusette. I swear I did make any of that up. Executive Chef Jason Stoller Smith knows how to make food plucked from the forest taste like it came right from the earth. Oh, wait.
Frame 9. He also knows how to make ice cream threaded with pineapple weed, which pairs especially well with peaches and something he casually refers to as vanilla-olive oil powder.
Frame 10. Picturesque McCurdy Farms orchard (2080 Tucker Road, Hood River). The pears here grow in bottles. I'm not kidding. They grow inside bottles. More on that next time.
Frame 11. Here is a pear. I do recognize that this one is not, in fact, growing inside a bottle.
Frame 12. This man is making burgers on the roof-deck of the Wieden+Kennedy Ad Agency, which handles accounts for Nike, Kraft, Target, and (dingdingding) Travel Oregon. The building itself is crazy-ridiculous and security guards about the same age as my kids are apparently keeping all kinds of corporate secrets very safe. I'm glad they were there protecting me, too, since I was very busy eating sliders.
Frame 13. Sliders! These are the beef ones from Chef Gregory Denton of Metrovino (1139 NW 11th, Portland). They had a fancy sauce. (The menu actually said "fancy sauce.")
Frame 14. A close-in, mildly disorienting look at a gorgeous freekeh salad with toasted hazelnuts, pickled cherries (!), and borage flowers (!) from Chef Scott Dolich of Park Kitchen (422 NW 8th, Portland). Freekeh is a grain. Borage is a flower. They are both real things.
Frame 15. Dark chocolate-dipped caramels with sea salt. I dipped them myself. More on those next time.
Frame 16. And this is the real spirit of Oregon right here. There were 3 unscripted moments in the trip, all on the last day. Passing this sign while boarding my flight home was one of them. You'll have to wait for the other two.
Let's start with the recipes in Yotam Ottolenghi's Plenty that I have no interest in. This will prove that I have a critical eye and don't always give a ringing endorsement to everything in my possession. Of course, this criticism has never actually been leveled at me, but given my generally paranoid personality I'd like to prepare a preemptive defense.
Resolved: I will not make the following four dishes.
Cabbage and kohlrabi salad Okra with tomato, lemon and cilantro Stuffed onions Scrambled smoky duck eggs on sourdough
I think that's pretty much it. The remaining recipes in this stunning 287 page book I will probably make, eat, and hyperventilate about at some point, which is why I plunked down $35 (full price!) at an actual, physical bookstore just over a month ago. Locals who have never been to Books Inc. on Castro Street in Mountain View should really get some shabu-shabu and then walk over to show this indie bookshop some love. If you invite me to join you, I probably will. Let's shabu!
Also, did I mention that Plenty has a pillow-top cover, like a mattress? I would totally fall asleep on it should aliens invade the Earth and steal my bedding.
Several recipes speak to me in seductive, come-hither tones, including the Very Full Tart (with red and yellow peppers, tomatoes, eggplant, feta, and ricotta), the Artichoke Gratin, the Cardamom Rice with Poached Eggs and Yogurt, and the Figs with Basil, Goat Cheese, and Pomegranate Vinaigrette. Add to that list about 50 more.
I recently commandeered the book's Green Couscous to make this huge salad, which I brought to a pool party at my friend Becky's. The dish is quite substantial, plus I tripled it, so it fed about 60 million people. The spray of summer vegetables elicited oohs and ahhs, and since I used whole wheat couscous, I also earned a perfect 10 on the whole grain richter scale. Take that, Nadia Comăneci.
But the real reason you should give this book a look is the lusciousness of the photographs and the sheer splendiferousness of the recipes. This is a book I am very thankful came out a year before my own. I hope it will prime the pump so that when RIPE hits, people are all, YES! WE LOVE VEGETARIAN COOKBOOKS WRITTEN BY PEOPLE WHO ALSO LOVE SHABU-SHABU!
Not that I know whether Yotam Ottolenghi even eats shabu-shabu. But if he does, and he invites me to join him, I probably will.
...
Recipe for Big Couscous Potluck Salad with corn, feta, and herbs
This salad would make an ideal contribution to a Labor Day potluck. Go ahead and swap in any vegetables that are abundant near you. The herb paste makes it green, and beautiful, and special.
Inspired by Yotam Ottolenghi's Plenty(Chronicle Books, 2011)
Serves 12 (may be halved)
6 ears corn, husks and silks stripped and discarded 1/2 pound green beans, trimmed 3 cups whole wheat couscous 2-1/4 cups boiling water (I use a tea kettle) 1/3 cup (loosely packed) flat-leaf parsley 1 small bunch cilantro, leaves and upper (tender) stems only 1 cup (loosely packed) mint leaves 1/2 cup (loosely packed) basil leaves 2/3 cup olive oil, plus more for drizzling 4 to 8 small ripe orange, red, or yellow tomatoes, quartered 4 to 6 ounces crumbled feta
Prepare an ice bath and set aside.
Bring a tea kettle and a large pot of water to a boil. Boil the corn in the pot until tender, about 4 minutes (more or less), assuming it's very fresh. Work in two batches, if necessary. Remove the corn with tongs and set aside to cool. Before dumping the water, drop in the green beans and boil for 2 to 3 minutes, until al dente. Drain the beans and transfer to the ice bath. Drain again and pat dry.
Set the couscous in a large serving bowl. Pour 2-1/4 cups boiling water from the tea kettle over the couscous, cover, and set aside for 10 minutes. Fluff with a fork.
Meanwhile, make the herb paste. Drop all the herbs into a food processor and pulse until finely chopped. Drizzle in the olive oil and whirl until blended and emulsified. Scrape over the couscous and fork through. Cut the corn kernels from the cobs. Fork half of the corn through the couscous. Taste, and season with salt and pepper, if desired. Transfer to your widest, largest serving bowl.
Sprinkle the remaining corn on top. Mound the tomatoes and green beans in the center of the bowl. Sprinkle the entire lot with the feta. Just before serving, drizzle generously with additional olive oil. Serve at room temperature.
Welcome to the second installment of What's Ripe Right Now, a series on 5SR that allows us to collectively focus on one fruit or vegetable and share ideas for how to enjoy it. Please tell us your favorite ways of using fresh (or even dried) apricots. Go ahead and link to other apricot-related recipes, too, if you like.
As before, participate further by uploading your own apricot photos to the What's Ripe Right Now? Flickr group here. I'll get us started with pictures of apricot-vanilla anisette jam; whole wheat biscotti with fennel, apricots, and pistachios; grilled apricots with dark chocolate, cream, and honey; apricot-stuffed chicken; and spiced apricot paste.
I was blown away by the phenomenal cherry photos you uploaded in July. I can't wait to see what you do with this month's pick...
Welcome to my blog. I’m a Silicon Valley food writer with a lot to say and a keen desire to share it with a broad audience. I freelance for numerous national publications, but here you’ll find unedited tidbits to chew on, recipes to try, and provocative food-related content ripe for discussion. So poke around, read, comment, and please visit again.
To read my full bio and to see my print articles, please visit my portfolio website at www.cherylsternmanrule.com.
