Summer – Page 2

Marnie’s Blueberry Ring

June 15, 2015 Leave a Comment

We’ve been berry-picking on an almost weekly basis for going on two months now.

Strawberries are my personal favorite, but E. is especially fond of blueberries (even though he tends to call them grapes). He has been on a real blueberry bender lately, working steadily through the big bucketful that we picked a few days ago.

I feel bad denying my baby fresh fruit, but I had to hoard a few of the berries so that I could make my great-aunt Marnie’s blueberry ring.

Marnie had a big, metal recipe box full of recipe cards and newspaper clippings that I was lucky enough to inherit several years ago. She loved to entertain and her recipes reflect that, with little notations about dinner party menus or cocktail pairings, like the words “good port” scrawled at the top of a recipe for chocolate walnut wafers.

Flipping through the recipe box is like stepping back in time. There are handwritten recipes for gingerbread and lemon meringue pie attributed to my great-grandmother who died 80 or 90-some-odd years ago, when Marnie was just a teenager; instructions for once-fashonable dishes like tomato aspic and Waldorf salad; a newspaper clipping about crab imperial from the now-defunct “Washington Star” newspaper….

Butter beans with melted leeks

June 3, 2015 Leave a Comment

On a summer evening some years ago, two of the South’s most celebrated writers, William Faulkner and Katherine Anne Porter, were dining together at a plush restaurant in Paris. Everything had been laid out to perfection; a splendid meal had been consumed, a bottle of fine Burgundy emptied, and thimble-sized glasses of an expensive liqueur drained. The maître d’ and an entourage of waiters hovered close by, ready to satisfy any final whim.

“Back home the butter beans are in,’ said Faulkner, peering into the distance, ‘the speckled ones.”

Miss Porter fiddled with her glass and stared into space. “Blackberries,” she said wistfully.

-Eugene Walter, American Cooking, Southern Style (1971)

If that doesn’t make you crave butter beans, nothing I can say will.

For those of you who don’t need any convincing, I have a confession to make: I have been holding out on you, eating the most delicious butter beans imaginable for a few months now without sharing the recipe.

In my defense, I did have my reasons….

Old Bay Okra

September 9, 2014 Leave a Comment

Old Bay Okra from https://test.pleasepassthepeas.com

I know plenty of people don’t like okra.

I think it’s the texture that tends to turn people off. When cooked for a long time, okra turns mushy and oozes a mucous-like substance. It’s gooey in the worst possible way.

That’s why okra is used in gumbo, because it acts as a thickener.

But quickly-cooked okra is like another vegetable altogether. It’s not gooey in the slightest.

So if you think you don’t like okra, I would urge you to give it another try….

Roasted muscadine grapes

August 23, 2014 1 Comment

roasted muscadine grapes from https://test.pleasepassthepeas.com We are deep in the throes of moving right now. The bookshelves are bare, the closet almost empty and the kitchen half packed.

Fortunately, it is a much less stressful experience than our previous move just three months ago.

For one thing, we never finished unpacking the last time and so a lot of our belongings are still boxed up and ready to go. For another, we don’t have to figure out how to get three cats, two cars and a baby halfway across the country with our sanity intact. Across town is infinitely easier — at least that’s what I’m hoping.

If you know otherwise, now would be a good time to keep it to yourself.

fresh muscadine grapes from https://test.pleasepassthepeas.com …