Photograph of an outbuilding along Blue Star Highway compliments of 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!

Kate over at Centsational Girl is having a where-do-you-blog party.  How fun!

I’m one of those have-laptop-will-travel sorts of bloggers, and post from Uncommon Grounds Cafe in Saugatuck, or Chicago’s Cultural Center, or one of my corner coffee shops.

But this is my favorite place to write.

It’s the sunroom at Pinecone Meadow Farm.  The room is switched around a little now - the table faces the garden, and the view is much better since I replaced the circa 1970s sliders with chic French doors and framed them with crisp cotton curtains.  And I moved the flowers.

Another favorite place is the back yard.

Although that’s risky because I’m frequently distracted by the garden and lovely breeze.  But it’s a great place to contemplate my gardening posts, or to think about what’s for dinner.

And sometimes I blog at the Chicago loft.

Instead of a lake breeze, the distraction there is of the four-legged variety.  As with the farmhouse sunroom, this is an older photo of my glass-topped iron desk.

The setting is the same, but Dexter, the handsome orange boy with the v-neck sweater and oversized personality, went to cat heaven a few months ago.  Fiona still stretches out to help me work.

Photos compliments of 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!

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!

Photo of at-the-ready blueberry baskets at Earl’s Farm Market by Janine MacLachlan, www.RusticKitchen.com.  All rights reserved.

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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.

Photographs compliments of 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!

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.

Photograph of the front yard of Pinecone Meadow Farm compliments of 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!

Photographs of farm pictures at the National Gallery of Art in DC, including The Red Schoolhouse by Winslow Homer and Cape Cod Evening by Edward Hopper, compliments of Janine MacLachlan, who traveled to Washington to review grants for the Farmers Market Promotion Program, and discovered farm life was everywhere.

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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.