As I mentioned the other day, I haven’t had nearly enough peaches this summer.

I’m trying to compensate. I’ve been eating them with granola, and also straight up, over the sink, with juice dripping down my chin.  Please don’t tell my husband.

Typically I find peaches so sweet that I don’t enjoy them in pies and such because added sugar makes them just too cloying.

But the other day I scored a bag full of seconds, those slightly bruised or dented fruits that otherwise might go to the farmer’s compost pile.  And that would be a shame because these beauties were only gently dinged up, like a fender bender rather than a head-on collision.  And at 50 cents a pound, I’d be out of my mind to not stock up.

So my mind went to spoon food.  Some sort of jam, preserves, an improv something at the stove.

Enter Russ Parsons, who I met at the Food Writers Symposium at the Greenbrier way back when Sam Snead was the golf pro there (my dad was impressed), and who wrote the delightful and informative How To Pick a Peach: The Search for Flavor from Farm to Table.

Russ also recently wrote a piece for the LA Times that really opened my eyes about what I’d like to call intimate jam making.  His position is that small batch preserving is more interesting because you can vary flavorings, and that big batches aren’t for us anyway, unless we have an orchard in the back yard and a long hard winter to avoid starvation.  Take a read here.

OK, back?

So I was thinking about my aversion to too-sweet peach things, and also poking around for embellishment for my peach-and-a-half experiment. I arrived at the idea of cider vinegar (you can use lemon) to balance out the sweetness.  And I also tossed in some candied ginger from my last outing with my homemade ginger ale.

This is definitely an improv recipe, where I started out by weighing one pitted peach (10 ounces) and figuring that six ounces of sugar should do it.  Once I brought everything to a boil and let it sit, I decided I wanted more fruit, so I added an additional half peach, mostly because I ate the other half.  I then cooked everything until it thickened, then stirred in the vinegar because I wanted that fresh acidic flavor.

Please remember that this does not have enough sugar to process and keep for a year.  Have some now and stash a half cup in the freezer for a chilly January surprise.

And let me know how your own experiments work!

Ginger peach spread

Makes about 1 cup

14 ounces peach pieces (about 1 1/2 peaches), cut into 1/4-inch dice

6 ounces sugar (about 1 cup)

1 teaspoon candied ginger, minced

1/8 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon cider vinegar

Place one peach, diced but not peeled, sugar and salt into small saucepan over high heat.  Bring to a boil, then remove from heat. Cool, then let sit overnight to macerate.  Dice additional half peach and add to mixture.  Bring to a boil, and cook until thick - this will vary depending on your preference.  I look for the consistency of runny jam, knowing it will thicken as it cools.  Remove from heat, stir in vinegar and pour into containers.  Keeps in the fridge for a couple weeks (we wish), or in the freezer for one year.

And if you want to go the big-batch preserving route and make gifts for your friends, the folks over at SweetPreservation.com have some lovely downloadable labels.

Recipe and photo from Janine MacLachlan, www.RusticKitchen.com.  All rights reserved. If you enjoy this post, please consider subscribing to my newsletter, or my feed. Or let’s tweet!

I’m sad because of fruit.  I know what you’re thinking.  How can a diehard food enthusiast be sad because of fruit?  I guess wistful is more accurate.  Mournful maybe.  OK, sad.

I know a lot of us feel this way.  Labor Day is around the corner and I haven’t eaten nearly enough peaches.  They’re vibrant and slurpy now and I’m trying to make up for lost time.

Because this isn’t the first year the summer escaped me, and slurpy peaches are an important part of summer.

Last year I spent most of the summer tooling around the Midwest in my sporty red Mustang visiting farmers markets.  Yes, a great gig, but I felt like I missed the summer.  Tomatoes failed, and not just mine, but I didn’t have the ginger-ale-on-the-back-porch kind of summer I wanted.  And not this year either.  I still can’t figure out what happened.  I didn’t stock my freezer with strawberry bourbon sauce, or the cupboard with blueberry basil preserves.  And my tomatoes were again lackluster performers, but that’s because I need raised beds and new soil to counteract the burned-down barn residue.

So what happened?

My season wasn’t a total loss.  I made luscious carrot soup at the Chicago Botanic Garden, I grilled some corn, and my chili-blend butter recipe for grilled corn ran in a bunch of Tribune newspapers.  I gardened enough to flair up my carpal tunnel, a gardening injury from several years back when I ordered ten yards of topsoil in hopes of Michelle Obama arms and a more level back yard.

But back to the peaches.

I’m making up for lost time by buying up as many peaches as I can get my hands on. Today I enjoyed them with my new favorite granola.  Typically I make mine with honey, but my cupboard was bare of my favorite sweetener.  I had bookmarked Melissa Clark’s recipe from the New York Times using olive oil and maple syrup, both of which were handy this morning.  This is a pared-down bare-bones version of Melissa’s, perfect for sprinkling on top of slurpy peaches. And if you’d like homemade yogurt with your peaches and granola, The Kitchn has a great post here.

Olive oil and maple improv granola

Riffed from the Melissa Clark’s fantastic recipe in the New York Times.

Makes three cups

3 cups old-fashioned oatmeal

1/4 cup fruity olive oil

1/4 cup maple syrup

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Turn oven on to 350 degrees.  Pour oatmeal into a three-quart shallow baking dish, then drizzle with olive oil and maple syrup.  Sprinkle with salt and cinnamon.  Put into oven for two or three minutes, then remove and stir thoroughly. Return to oven and bake until golden brown, about 20 minutes.  Store tightly covered in the refrigerator.

Think about subscribing to my newsletter, or my feed. Or tweet with me! Photos and recipe compliments of Janine MacLachlan, www.RusticKitchen.com.  All rights reserved.

Yesterday I made my annual pilgrimage to the Chicago Botanic Garden to appear at the Garden Chefs Series.  I found myself a little challenged this year because I haven’t been doing much cooking (!).  In my defense, I’m working on several writing projects, and with the summer bounty I eat well, just not with a recipe sort of cooking.

What I needed was a go-to recipe.  Something simple, that could be made quickly within the half hour I had to cook AND talk.  This is a avidly interested group and I like to have time to cover my key messages about why people should buy food at the farmers market beyond that it’s a lovely place to shop.  And they always have great questions, and often ideas about variations on the recipe.

I needed my carrot soup.

This is a riff on a soup I’ve made since culinary school.  It’s a gorgeous color, and is great as a cozy winter lunch with crusty bread, or as a chilled “shooter” to start a summer dinner party.  And I always have fun mixing up the spices and the herb oils I use to dot and squiggle, just kind of jazzing up the presentation.  It’s particularly good for right now because carrots are coming straight out of the ground, and for the demo I scored some Purple Haze carrots from Green Youth Farm at the Chicago Botanic Garden’s own farmers market.  That’s Emma, Johnny and Kristi at their booth.

The secret ingredient, aside from flavorful carrots, is a starchy potato, which dissolved to make the soup taste rich and thick, but without any cream to make it too heavy.  Plus I used a mix of whole seeds I had on hand, then crushed them with a mortar and pestle.  A teaspoon of grated fresh ginger will also do the trick. I hope this soup will make your own go-to repertoire.

Carrot soup with cilantro-infused oil

Makes about six cups

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 pound carrots (about six), cut into 2-inch pieces

1 medium onion, diced

1 small russet potato, peeled and cut into 2- inch cubes

1 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon cumin seed

1/4 teaspoon fennel seed

1/4 teaspoon celery seed

1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes

4 cups vegetable broth

Preheat a medium saucepan over medium high heat.  Add olive oil carrots and onion, and saute until carrots begin to brown.  Meanwhile, crush the seeds and red pepper flakes with the salt in a mortar and pestle. Add potato and spices to the carrots, and continue cooking for a few more minutes until potatoes are fork tender.  Transfer to a blender and pour in vegetable broth.  Puree on high until well blended, a good five to seven minutes.  Taste, then add salt and pepper as needed.  Serve warm or chilled.  When serving, decorate with cilantro-infused oil.

Cilantro-infused oil

Bring a pot of water to boil.  Holding a bunch of cilantro by the stems, dip into the hot water until it turns bright green, about five seconds.  Immediately plunge into ice water.  Pat or spin dry.  Plop into a blender with 1 cup olive oil and blend until smooth.  Let steep for an hour or so, then strain.  If you like, use the cilantro paste for an improve pesto by mixing it with minced garlic and grated Parmesan.  Pour the cilantro oil into a squeeze bottle and dot your soup.

And thanks.

A big shout out to the staff and volunteers who make my annual visit worth the effort.  Thanks Mary, Kristie, Barb and Jackie!

Think about subscribing to my newsletter, or my feed. Or tweet with me! Photos and recipe compliments of Janine MacLachlan, www.RusticKitchen.com.  All rights reserved.

Gracious the summer flies, doesn’t it?  I guess all seasons fly, but the way summer fruit zooms past sometimes takes my breath away.  One year I was working on a particularly busy project and completely missed strawberries.  That was a tragic year, because I’m always prattling on about waiting for those berries that are red all the way through and how we should never bother with the ones in the grocery store.

There’s a reason fruit, well, flies

A lot of vegetables can be planted in sequence, meaning seeds go in the earth every week or so, guaranteeing a steady stream of carrots, beets, greens and the like all season long.  Perennial plants, like asparagus, have a shorter season.  And a shorter season is the story with most fruit, which grow on trees and bushes.  I think of blueberries like lilacs or tulips.  There are early, middle and late varieties, thus extending the season.  But still.

We still have a whisper left of blueberry season, depending on the variety your farmer grows, and I thought it would be fun to share a few recipes from the archives.  First there’s my go-to recipe, Spiced blueberry sauce.  I go to my neighbor’s farm Pleasant Hill Blueberry Farm, where they grow 40 acres of organic blueberries with their team of oxen Henry and Buck.  John von Voorhees and his wife Joan Donaldson tell me that oxen bond with each other.  When one of their previous team died (I can’t remember if it was Tolstoy or Leo), the other eventually had to be put down because he was heartsick.  I buy ten pounds, then cook up batches and batches of this sauce to keep in the freezer all winter and serve on pancakes or ice cream.

Recently I posted again about my favorite jam, Blueberry basil preserves, and received a comment that my freezer jam option easily translates to processing and keeping in the pantry.  If you’re a canner, this might be an option for you.

And if you’re looking for desserts…

American Spoon Food, a Michigan company that makes gorgeous preserves, makes a blueberry lime variety.  I used the flavor combo in my Blueberry lime curd tart (top photo) and I have to say it’s a casual dessert that packs a beautiful punch.  If you have less time, pull out the frozen puff pastry and toss together my Easy blueberry thyme galette.

Whatever you do, don’t miss a day of luscious summer fruit!

Think about subscribing to my newsletter, or my feed. Or tweet with me! Photos and recipes compliments of Janine MacLachlan, www.RusticKitchen.com.  All rights reserved.

Oh boy do I love apricots.  And they are such a tenuous fruit, one of our truly seasonal foods.  You never see Spanish-speaking, out-of-season apricots in the dead of winter, making that long journey from Chile or Argentina.  They’re simply too fragile.

And sometimes you don’t see them here in the heartland either.  Some years a late frost wipes out the blossoms and we have to wait another year.  A whole year.

But not this year.

This year’s apricots are delectable, luscious little morsels.  I find I can’t use them in recipes.  I’ll buy a quart at the farmers market, intending to make a tart, like this one from Tartelette, or an upside down cake.  Maybe a clafoutis.

But by the time I get the flour down from the top cupboard, a half of them have gone somewhere.  Never sure exactly where. Actually sometimes a few don’t event make it to the kitchen.  A popular fruit, those apricots.

Note to self:  plant an apricot tree.

If you are like me and find yourself only with straggler apricots, here are a few ways to savor them:

• Cut in half, topped with a dollop of mascarpone cheese and a kiss of honey.
• Halved, brushed with melted butter and grilled, face down, just until slightly soft.
• Steeped in brandy and sugar for about six weeks in the fridge.
• Sliced on top of granola with plain yogurt.

“Recipes” and photo compliments of Janine MacLachlan, www.RusticKitchen.com.  All rights reserved.

North America is grilling up a storm this weekend.  Between Canada Day (today) and the Independence Day weekend in the U.S., picnic tables will groan under the summer bounty.

And my husband’s native Uruguay is playing in the World Cup, so in my dreams that entire country is tailgating from afar, because certainly there won’t be any work going on.

So by now everyone has their picnic menus mapped out, and their list ready for a swing through the farmers market.  Megan’s making a Texas sheet cake, and Locavorious has a blueberry pie on the menu. Noelle is making a Mediterranean portabella salad with herb bread.

But what about breakfast?  Dog Hill Kitchen has an intriguing Fire and Ice Sour Cherry Oatmeal, contrasting frozen cherries with warm Scottish oatmeal.

A long weekend often means visitors, particularly if you live near water or have a pool, and at this time of year it’s important to start the day right, but with an easygoing attitude.  I’ll be using what may be the last of the strawberries in my favorite strawberry smoothie.  And I’ll make cold-brewed coffee, both to get the morning started with little effort.  No heat required — it’s supposed to be steamy!

Quick-and-simple strawberry smoothie

Serves four

1 cup milk

1 cup plain yogurt

1 cup quartered strawberries

1 banana

6 to 8 ice cubes

Whirl all ingredients in a blender until smooth.

Smoothie tips

• Half a banana, a generous dollop of cottage cheese, or a few tablespoons of rolled oats will give your smoothie substance and body, almost like a milk shake.
• Put the liquid in the blender before any of the other ingredients.  It’ll go easier on your blender motor, particularly if you’re like me and like to load it up with fruit.  Give it  a good whirl, then drop the ice cubes in through the opening on the lid.
• Switch things up with unexpected ingredients.  Peanut butter, grated ginger or a smidge of almond paste will add a little zip.
• Freeze fruit to preserve your farmers market bounty past the season.
• Patience is key.  Walk away for five minutes to let everything get nice and smooth.

Cold-brewed coffee

This is the easiest to make: simply scoop your ground coffee into a pitcher and top it off with one cup water per one to two tablespoons coffee, depending on how strong you like it.  Put in the fridge overnight and you have iced coffee ready for the earliest riser.  Pour it through a strainer right into the glass.

By the way, I first learned this method from the folks at Kickapoo Coffee in Viroqua, Wisconsin, and I just discovered my friend Marc will be working with them.  It brings to mind my favorite tip:  find a local roaster who has good relationships with growers.  I found one at nearly every farmers market I visited last year.

Cold-brewed coffee tips

• Sweeten with simple syrup:  boil equal amounts of sugar and water until syrupy, about eight to ten minutes. Cool and keep in a pretty bottle in the door. Clear glass soda bottles are great for this.
• Use your leftover coffee to make coffee ice cubes.  They’ll keep the coffee cool even on the sultriest day.

Note:  My comments are broken!  So sorry, and thank you to those who’ve let me know.  I’ll be extending my giveaway, to give people a chance to enter, and will put up a post once I’m operational.

Recipes and photos compliments of Janine MacLachlan, www. RusticKitchen.com. All rights reserved. If you enjoy this post, please consider subscribing tomy newsletter, or my feed. Or tweet with me!

Today is Lauro’s birthday.  One of the things he says he likes about living in the U.S. is that here we have cake AND ice cream for our birthdays. Such indulgence.

I baked this yellow cake glazed with strawberry preserves and Cointreau.  It’s a lovely cake made lovelier with Organic Valley pasture butter and Songbird Acres farm eggs from these hens.  Sunny golden yolks add so much to a cake, don’t you agree?  Add Pioneer Sugar from my hometown and it’s practically a locavore cake.

And I was able to polish off three almost-finished jars of preserves in the fridge, making room for this year’s harvest.  It’s so great to feel virtuous and decadent all at once.

Last year I made the fancy chocolate cake he spotted the cover of Dorie Greenspan’s treasure trove Baking From My Home to Yours. I wonder how many years it will take for us to arrive at the classic this-is-always-the-one birthday cake? Because I already have some thoughts for next year.

Do you have a go-to cake for birthdays?

A few cake tips

• Sift the flour through a strainer, then measure.  It’ll assure you have no lumps and give you a lighter cake.
• If you don’t have cake flour, measure your all-purpose flour and then scoop out one level tablespoon per cup.  For this recipe, that’s two tablespoons scooped out.
• A stand mixer can help ensure a great texture.  You can walk away and do other things while the butter and sugar are creaming, and again when you add the eggs.  If you don’t have a stand mixer, exercise patience and hum a mantra while those beaters whirl.
• Give it an extra few minutes.  Baking time is just a guide.  Once to top springs back when tapped and a skewer comes out clean,  it’s a good idea to bake another three minutes, just to be sure the cake is baked all the way through.

Jam-glazed yellow cake

Cake adapted from Epicurious

Serves eight to ten

2 cups cake flour

1 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature

1 cup sugar

3 eggs

1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla

3/4 cup whole milk

Glaze and filling

3/4 cup strawberry preserves

2 tablespoons orange-flavored liqueur, such as Cointreau or Grand Marnier

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and generously grease two 8-inch round cake pans.  Whisk together flour, baking powder and salt and set aside.  Beat the butter and sugar together in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment.  Beat until well blended, a good five minutes.  Add the eggs one at a time and continue beating until each is combined.  Add the vanilla.  Alternately add flour and milk in three batches, beginning with the flour.  Divide between the two pans and smooth the batter.  Bake in the center of the oven until a skewer comes out clean and the cake pulls away from the sides of the pan. Cool for five minutes, then invert onto a rack and cool completely.

Scoop strawberry preserves into a small saucepan and pour in orange-flavored liqueur.  Warm over low heat until smooth and liqueur in fully integrated.  Invert bottom layer onto serving platter, top down.  Spoon slightly less than half of the preserves onto the cake and spread to the edges.  Top with second layer, top up.  Spoon remaining preserves and spread to the edges.

If you enjoy this post, please consider subscribing to my newsletter, or my feed. Or tweet with me!  Photo and recipe compliments of Janine MacLachlan, www. RusticKitchen.com.  All rights reserved.

Hello, dear friends.  Oh, how I’ve missed visiting here.  For some reason my blog became crippled, and the therapy needed to get it back on its feet was long and painful.  But finally, at long last, we’re back up and running.  At least up and strolling. Although I still mourn for the charming comments that were inadvertently deleted in the process.

So what have I been up to?

Well, I’ve been up to my elbows in dirt, er, soil.  I’ve decided that this is the year I’ll finally get on top of the garden at lovely Pinecone Meadow Farm.  I’ve been saying that for years, but this time I think it’s more than wishful thinking.  For newer readers, my three-and-a-half acres was mostly unmowed when I bought the place in 2007.  I still leave a good third or so as natural meadow for the critters and birds. Which doesn’t keep some four-legged marauders from knocking over the birdbath and raiding the bird feeder. But the rest is a challenge, with difficult decisions every day, like whether to pull this four-foot-tall milkweed.  Because it’s a weed, even though it’s pretty.

Everything’s coming up roses

The good news is that June is busting out all over.  And roses are EVERYWHERE.  I even found a few I didn’t know about, including a beautiful one growing inside the dead euonymus, with an unbelievable number of deep burgundy blooms.  About six feet tall.

Otherwise the flower beds that have gotten me down.  They contain a treasure trove of what nurserymen call “plant material.”  Flowers, shrubs.  Exuberant perennials like bee balm, yarrow, coneflower.  The thing is, those gorgeous plants have joyfully intermingled with weeds and grass, so dense (I estimate about a decade) to the point where I really need to dig everything out and replant.  So that’s what I’ve been up to.  First I edged the beds to at least make them look tidy.  Tidy from afar.  Then dig up perennials, divide, pick out the persistent grass, and replant.  Foot by foot, yard by yard.

In the process I’ve been laying newspaper as a weed barrier and then topping off with compost and wood chips.  Black newsprint only, please — the Wall Street Journal used to be great for this but now that they use more color, not so much.  The Blackhawks championship practically did me in with all those full pages of red ink in the Chicago Tribune.  It will compost in by next year, blocking weeds for a while.

And then we rest

Gardening sure can make a person thirsty, that’s for sure. So I’ve been making sparkly drinks to enjoy on the back porch.

First, there’s my widely-published recipe for homemade ginger ale.  I make ginger syrup in big batches and keep it in a bottle in the door of the refrigerator.  Add club soda and you’re set.

And then there’s my cabernet syrup for strawberries, and now for soda it seems.  This photo is of my rhubarb fizz. The concept is so easy — make a simple syrup of half liquid, half sugar.  Boil until thick.  Cool and top with sparkling water.  The possibilities are endless.

Which flavors can you think of?

Dot, dot, dot…

In other news, I went to a vintage auto show in South Haven, Mich., and took a LOT of photos. I stumbled on it on my way to the farmers market and was enthralled.  Not only by the unbelievably gorgeous cars (and so shiny!) but by the interesting people.

If you enjoy this post, please consider subscribing to my newsletter, or my feed. Or tweet with me!  Photo and recipe compliments of Janine MacLachlan, www. RusticKitchen.com.  All rights reserved.

I was surfing around  for rhubarb pie recipes, looking for some interesting flavor combinations, when I came across a link to one of my favorite comedies, from 1951.

The name of the film is Rhubarb, and Ray Milland is the protagonist, a publicist for a baseball team who’s charged with caring for an orange cat who was bequeathed a baseball team when his eccentric person dies.  The team doesn’t liked getting razzed about playing for a cat, and the owner’s daughter wants to do in the cat to inherit a fortune.  Hilarity ensues.

I have often joked about this movie, not so much lately since Illinois law now specifies that you can provide for pets in your will.  It seems that this should always be true, but that’s not the case.  I guess in other states you have to trust that the person you leave money to will care for any animals left behind.  I always fantasized about leaving my fortune to my furry friends.

The title character, Rhubarb, was played by Orangey, the orange tabby who also played Cat in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.  I remember an interview where Audrey Hepburn talked about being traumatized about sending Cat out into the rain during the final scene.  Even Audrey had a soft spot for orange boys, as does Rie of Home & Harmony, and my realtor friend Linda.

I’m feeling pretty tender about them myself since C.K. Dexter Haven went to cat heaven a couple weeks ago.  I had posted about a vet emergency averted, but it turns out this was not the case.  Dexter’s asthma got progressively worse when he did not respond to the a series of inhalers and steroid medications.  He was only six years old, and I tell myself I can be grateful that his illness was not a long, lingering one.  He had a lot of personality and I didn’t even mind when he made himself at home on the Mustang.  He will be particularly missed in these posts since he came with the farmhouse and will always be associated with Pinecone Meadow Farm.

But back to rhubarb.  I also feel tender about this ruby stalk, because my grandmother grew it behind the garage and I remember her pies as a big inspiration for me. A couple years ago I posted a rhubarb ginger compote to go with thyme shortcakes, but today I made some straight up, with just sugar, for scooping over ice cream, or my breakfast granola.  Sometimes simple is best.

Simple, unembellished rhubarb compote

1 pound rhubarb, sliced into one-inch pieces (about three cups)

1/3 cup sugar, or a little more to taste

1/4 cup water

1/2 teaspoon salt

Bring all ingredients to a boil over medium high heat.  Cook until rhubarb is soft — you can help this along with a potato masher.

If you enjoy this post, please consider subscribing to my newsletter, or my feed. Or tweet with me!  Photo and recipe compliments of Janine MacLachlan, www. RusticKitchen.com.  All rights reserved.

Spring.  We have so many things to love about it.  Besides the fact that the blizzards stop for a while.

Outside we have blossoms everywhere.  Warmer weather means that hens lay more frequently, and thus egg dishes populate springtime menus.  On the table we have asparagus.  And we have morel mushrooms.

For three springs I’ve kept my eyes peeled for morels in the backyard at Pinecone Meadow Farm.  They’re delightful little morsels that can’t be cultivated, which is why you won’t see them in the grocery store and why they claim a dear penny at the farmers market.

In my area of southwest Michigan, neighbors talk about mushroom hunting in their woods, and have suggested that I should be able to find a few under the giant spruce in my back yard, the one that kids used to climb for a view of Lake Michigan a few miles away.  (At least that’s what the guy at the paint store told me — he grew up knowing the family that lived there years ago.)

But for three years, nothing.

And then, one morning early this week, there it was.  Right next to the French doors amidst the fallen crabapple petals and creeping myrtle.  My first ever morel mushroom.  A big fat white one.

After photographing it for posterity, I searched the rest of the three-and-a-half acres.  Nothing.

Not to be put off, I picked my mushroom, swished it in a little glass of water to get any undesirables out of the crevaces, and chopped it up.  Moments later it was my breakfast with some luscious farm eggs from Songbird Acres.

Scrambled eggs with morels

Per serving

1 tablespoon butter

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 tablespoon minced onion

1 chubby morel mushroom, coarsely chopped

1 egg (or two if you like)

1 tablespoon heavy cream or milk

Salt and pepper to taste

Preheat a skillet over medium heat.  Add butter and oil and swirl the pan until the butter melts.  Add the onion and morel and gently saute until the onion becomes translucent.  Meanwhile, break the egg(s) into a small bowl and stir vigorously with the cream until thoroughly blended, but don’t be so vigorous as to beat in a lot of air — you don’t want bubbles.  Pour over the onions and mushroom and let sit for a minute or two.  Patience is key.  Season with salt and pepper.  Gently fold the eggs into the middle, giving the skillet a good shake or two to move the uncooked egg onto the pan’s surface.  Keep folding until they reach your desired consistency.  I like mine on the damp side, although I understand that others want them fully cooked.  You decide.

If you enjoy this post, please consider subscribing to my newsletter, or my feed. Or tweet with me!  Photo and recipe compliments of Janine MacLachlan, www. RusticKitchen.com.  All rights reserved.