Pickled Grapes!

Hello there! I know it's been a while - like "one year" a while - and even before I disappeared I had trouble keeping up with regular posts. What can I say? Adjusting to life back in the States was difficult, especially the whole "working and writing a cooking blog" part. And some other parts, too, but that is for another post on another day. Today, though, is about pickles, sweet, delicious pickles.

I first noticed this recipe from Smitten Kitchen while living in Kuwait, where fresh grapes were either unavailable or expensive enough to keep thoughts of recipe experimentation far from my mind. These days in Texas, however, grapes of all varieties are dripping over produce displays and I thought to myself, "Yes."

Blueberries Two Ways

Continuing with my current berry obsession I bought 5 pints of blueberries from HEB the other day because they cost $1.67 each. 5 pints of blueberries - local blueberries - for less than $10! I am only surprised that I didn't go and buy 20. Nevertheless, I was left with 8 cups of blueberries sitting in my fridge, twice as much as I needed for my open-face blueberry - my concession to patriotic desserts. Also, one of my favorite pies to make if only because it is so simple. You prebake a pie shell - homemade or store-bought, I don't judge - then add your slightly cooked blueberry filling. Chill for a couple of hours and slice into berry heaven. The filling takes less than 15 minutes to make and once you've tasted you'll wonder why anyone would bother buying canned blueberry pie filling, anyway.

 The remaining blueberries left me in a bind. Sure, I could leave them to be eaten as snacks or with yogurt, though I had no yogurt, but without fail some of them (most of them, likely) would go moldy before I (or Seth) had a chance to finish them. I hate to let food spoil. And yet I'm not much of a breakfast person in that I don't care for breakfast, at all (I'd rather wait for lunch) so blueberry pancakes were out. I could only see one way out: I had to make another dessert. Le sigh, my life is so very difficult.

Happy 4th of July!

Though my last post was on willful ignorance, specifically of international and national news, I simply have too much American spirit - in the form of patriotic Crown Royal and tequila, just as the Founding Fathers intended - to write about anything other than: Happy Fourth of July! Go watch 1776 and be merry!

Summer Apple Raspberry Pie

I love berries, from the exotic lingon to the oft-despised rasp, the flashy strawberry to the humble blue: I want them all. With berry season in full-swing I have been buying pints and quarts every time I enter a store, then gobbling them by the handful like the candy they are. It's been three years since I've had fresh berries, considering they weren't available in Uganda (not the right climate) and while blueberries and blackberries were occasionally imported to Kuwait, Seth and I looked at the price of a pint and decided to go on a trip to England, instead. But here in Texas I have fresh berries grown right in the states. Not since LA I have tasted anything so sweet.