Happy September! My favorite month! You get all the late summer produce, sunshine, and that delicious beginnings of fall in the same month!
This summer I have been more obsessed with summer produce than any before. Surely some of this is due to my continued interest in cooking, but also the classic “want what you can’t have” scenario. So much moving around has made it hard to cook and enjoy this amazing season. I baked a loaf of bread for the first time since May this week and made it in a loaf pan to be fit for sandwiches this week. Today at the farmer’s market the perfect heirloom tomato looked me right in the eye begging to be turned into a BLT. The sandwich loaf, tomato, salad mix, and some homemade mayo that didn’t quite come together perfectly emulsified, and some bacon made one of my all time favorite foods. With no photo taken of this sandwich before the tomatoes and runny mayo got drippy and I had to eat it before the structure of the sandwich got too compromised.
The farmer’s market also had one last bag of squash blossoms, so I went out and got some ricotta, picked some herbs and prepared the fixins.
This is my first time making ricotta stuffed squash blossoms, so I looked at a few recipes and landed on stuffing them with ricotta, parmesan, basil, garlic, lemon juice and zest, and S&P. The batter is flour, salt, and seltzer water. It turned out great! A little overfilled with ricotta, so a few got a little goopy in the oil, but overall delicious. It made me want to fry more things asap. Maybe apple cider doughnuts when we get to Maine?
A lot of this summer produce excitement comes because Karl and I are staying with his parents in the wonderful Willamette Valley, and specifically around the corner of Gathering Together Farm. GTF has some of the best veggies in the area, especially their tomatoes, lettuce, salad mix, onions, cabbage, carrots, etc etc etc.
This week has been a week of cooking because there’s so many people around to eat, and there’s a lot of time in the day when you’re trying to avoid applying for jobs! I had a sniffle in my nose, and a perfect rainy summer day led to making Molly Baz’s Get Well Soup. The perfect congee-like soup filled with garlic (10 cloves!), ginger, green onions, turmeric, and chicken and the juice of two limes to make it soothing, filling, and delicious.
It's been a challenge to finally have time to cook and bake but all my cookbooks are packed in our shipping container, other than a very select few that have made their way with me this summer. (Those include the Saltie book, both of Carter’s books, A Long Loaf, and I just purchased a copy of the Kachka book after a fabulous dinner there with friends for a goodbye dinner). I have used a lot of recipes from the internet without vetting them too much for cooking lately and it's been mostly successful. I got some farmer’s market peaches and made a cobbler. It was my favorite cobbler texture I have ever made but the whole thing was too sweet.
Here’s the Pinch of Yum recipe and with edits I will make next time, to cut down the sweetness and add some acid.
Peach Filling:
-sliced peaches (about 5-6)
-1/4 cup sugar, Depending on peach sweetness
-1 TBSP of vinegar or lemon juice
Cobbler Topping:
-½ cup salted butter, melted
-1/2 cup sugar
-1 teaspoon vanilla
-1 cup flour
-1 teaspoon baking powder
-pinch of salt
Preheat oven to 350F, put peaches and sugar into pan and mix around.
Mix crumble in separate bowl, and then disperse on top. Keep some of the crumble bits large to give the variety of texture.
Bake 40-45 minutes, then broil at 475 for a few minutes. Watch carefully to prevent it from burning!
My last food note for this week is this breakfast! Sage fried eggs, tomatoes, and some sauerkraut I added some leek, apple, and fennel to (but mostly just tastes like cabbage)
A few notes on style:
It’s bow season, people. Madre Linen with their new ribbons, Sandy Liang’s Maine wedding, transitional hairstyles for fall; all covered in bows.
Karl found these vintage green Filson wool jackets in an old house that had been fairly taken over by rats, which led us to some deep cleaning and a nice wet dog smell. It's been a couple days of drying, still with the old wet wool smell around but I’m still excited to see how they fit.
This writing has been a great way to romanticize and capture some of my favorite moments to help take my mind away from whenever our next trip might be. Seeing a lot of people’s pictures throughout Italy, France, Portugal, and more has me hoping to plan a trip soon! But our big trip for now will be Maine, so here’s a clip from the Lourve from a trip long ago.