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Pickled Sugar Snap Peas
For the last few years we’ve grown sugar snap peas in our garden. Before I grew these little crispy gems, I hardly ever ate them; they just weren’t on my radar. I actually started planting them with the kids when they were really little because the seeds are so much fun to start indoors between two damp paper towels on a cookie sheet. They sprout quickly and they love, love, love our damp chilly springs. For five seasons in a row now they have been the very first thing I’ve planted in the ground in late February or March. They’ve fed my need to garden even before it’s really gardening…
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Steak with Béarnaise
As June comes to an end, I think a lot about the nature of rituals in our lives. Every morning on these summer days, I make my coffee and go visit my garden, sometimes to water, sometimes to smash cabbage worms or pick a few strawberries, usually I do the heavy garden work later, saving my morning visit just for that, to visit, while I sip my rich coffee out of my favorite mug and breathe in the scents of roses and lavender drifting to me. I rub my basil leaves, take a photo in my mind of each new tomato blossom, admire the inches the sunflowers have stretched overnight,…
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Chive Vinaigrette
A month or so ago I made some Infused Chive Blossom Vinegar. I let it sit for almost two weeks, then strained the chive blossoms out of it, and was left with this beautiful, purple, oniony scented vinegar. At first I wasn’t sure I liked the scent. It’s such a gorgeous color that I wanted the smell to match that beauty. But then I started pulling out all my vinegars, the white wine, champagne, apple cider, and smelling them. Vinegar isn’t necessarily the best smell in the world, is it? But oh what the right amount of vinegar does for a recipe, how it pickles things, the way it can –…
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Family Camping at Moran State Park
We took the kids camping last weekend on Orcas Island. Let me start off by saying I hate camping. Seriously, I do. I have nightmare camping memories. When I was a kid in Denver I went to Camp St. Malo for a week one summer. One of the nights we camped outside it was POURING down rain, there were at least twenty kids plus counselors in a large tent (more like a big tarp tossed over some stakes) and not only were we trying really hard to stay dry, but so were the mice who kept coming into our tent. Twenty soggy, tired, cold girl campers, their counselors and mice.…
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Strawberry Lemonade Popsicles
Yay! The school year is over. Finally!!! It was a rough one for us and right now I’m just glad summer vacation is here. And it’s hot here, people, am I right? Not blisteringly hot, not sweltering Midwest hot and sticky, just hot enough that the grass around us is starting to dry out and lose it’s emerald green quality for the summer, hot enough that when Jasper sprays me with his squirt gun it feels great, perfectly hot enough for popsicles!! We have had so many strawberries this year, like bowls full every morning for weeks. I almost can’t keep up, it’s almost too many! It seems absolutely crazy…
