Blueberries

I've got heaps of catching up to do! Summer is so full and time gets away from me. Before I know it, it's gone and I've posted next to nothing. While I organize all of our end of summer thoughts and photos, I'll tide you over with blueberries. 

Looking back at my Instagram pics, I'm finding blueberries pretty heavily featured. It was a great year for them, true, and apparently I was enamored. Still am, because I was pretty down when I went to pick last week and they were finally gone. It's sort of ridiculous to expect blueberries in September, but that just goes to show what an awesome harvest it was. (Sigh) With that, blueberries:

Fresh blueberry pie:

Combine 2 cups of blueberries with 1/3 cup of sugar, 2T cornstarch and 1/3 cup water. Bring to a boil & cook, stirring, until thickened (just a couple minutes). Stir in the juice of a 1/2 lemon and let cool. 

Spread 4oz of cream cheese (or mascarpone) in the bottom of your favorite pastry shell (pre-baked and cooled). Mix 1 1/2 cups fresh blueberries into the cooked mixture and spread on the top of the cream cheese. Top with another 1/2 cup fresh blueberries. Chill and serve. 

Perfect summer pie (and fits the bill for breakfast too...)

More Autumnal Goodness

Some fall fun, above, and fall food, below. I love this season! Or as Neighbor JoCameron says, "It's not a season, it's an emotion." Yup

 

(End of) Summer Menus

Well, these just didn't have the rhythm of the spring menus. There were a couple reasons, I suppose. First - we ran into a couple recipes we were ho-hum about (time-wise or taste-wise) and had to shuffle things around. I got lucky with the spring plan and didn't have to toss any recipes after the first go-round. Second - the available summer produce changes pretty rapidly and I really wanted to buy fresh or use whatever was growing in the garden. Turns out those things don't follow my Type-A "plan". At any rate, we used these, but not in constant rotation like the spring ones. Summer is a little more free-form and that just worked better for us. But I'll post them here anyway, just because.

Summer Meal Plans:

(Click on an image to bring it up and right click to save it)

Enjoy! Sorry it's already out of season!

[And by the way, I never ended up getting the WW points on here. And I still have to add the links to our recipe page... but that's got to wait for a shift in priorities. I've got fall knitting to do!]

Whitefish Chowder

It's a staple around here (whitefish chowder, not milkweed). We like to do fish on Fridays and whitefish is fresh and local. Kind of a no brainer. Our version is adapted from Hollyhocks and Radishes, one of those local/regional cookbooks that is always a little suspect. But we really like this one. It's big on character and big on yum. Whitefish chowder is a year-round soup for us. 

Speaking of our seasonal menus, I'm working out the kinks in our summer rotation. I somehow got lucky on the spring menus and didn't really need to edit much after the first 4 weeks. But summer has been a little trickier. I'll post them here when I think they're ready for prime time. 

In the meantime, Whitefish Chowder. Enjoy!

Whitefish Chowder
2 Tbsp butter
6 green onions, chopped
3 carrots, diced
1 large potato, diced (we leave the peel on)

Melt butter in a large saucepan or dutch oven. Saute onions, carrots, and potato (you may want to put celery in here. I don't of course).

1/2 tsp thyme
1/2 tsp dill
2 Tbsp flour

Add herbs and flour, stir to mix.

16 oz can of diced or stewed tomatoes
3 cups of milk
1 1/2# Lake Superior Whitefish (we've also made with lake trout, walleye... other meaty white fish)

Add the tomatoes, milk, and fish. Simmer until heated through. Stir in:

1 cup grated cheddar cheese
2 Tbsp parsley

before serving. Serves about 4-6 happily.

Give Peas a Chance

The peas are coming! The peas are coming! (Actually, the peas came, and went! We ate the last of them yesterday. That's what happens when a couple weeks go by between starting and finishing a blog post... But I digress.) 
Delicious to eat out of hand, throw in a lunch, top a salad... But we've also been making pasta and peas, a recipe I adapted from Williams Sonoma Pasta cookbook. It's unusual, a hit with the big and little people in the house, and darn quick. Here you go:

Curry Pasta with Peas:
2 Tablespoons Curry Powder
2 Cups Shelled Peas
1/2 Cup Plain Yogurt
1 Tablespoon Butter
1 Teaspoon Brown Sugar

In a saucepan, combine the curry powder, sugar, yogurt and butter, heat slowly. Meanwhile, cook a pound of fettuccine in a pot of salted water. Two minutes before the pasta is al dente, add the peas. Drain both and pour into a warm serving bowl. Toss with the yogurt mixture. Season with salt, pepper, and your favorite cheese. Yum.

And now, your photos. These have nothing to do with peas and everything to do with enjoying summer with friends: the post-race lake party. Good times!

(Looking at that last photo, who do you think ran the half-marathon?)

Sprucing Up: The Edibles

We've been sprucing up the old place. Trying to improve on our half-hearted gardening efforts of last summer and seeing if we can't actually devote a little time to the garden and land this year. The beautiful weather has helped tremendously, so we've gotten a good start.

 

 

Berries: Let's see, I ordered some weird varieties from a nursery (honey berry, Goji berry, and pink blueberry) and got some currants from the Conservation District. A generous neighbor gave us a bundle of her raspberry canes and strawberries early this spring and we ordered some more raspberries from the Conservation District. And then another neighbor gave us a bundle of new raspberry shoots! I finally found some zone 4 blackberries (from a Michigan company!) and they are in the ground now. I'm the dissenter in the family, but I love the blackberries more than raspberries, thorns and all. And just this week we found some new growth on our old raspberry and blackberry transplants. We also have a new blueberry patch starting up in the middle of the yard.

 

 

 

 

Woodland: We dug up some of the wooded area along the fringe of the yard for growing mushrooms (I got these morel "spawn" kits) and ramps, or wild leeks. We got the leeks from a farmer I work with. I'm excited for them to take, but we won't see any results (if any!) until next spring... 

 

Grapes: We got some grapes from the nursery (fairing poorly) and some others from the neighbors (fairing excellently). All of these new ones are planted on the south and west sides of the garage. We intend for them to grow up a trellis onto an arbor, but have no idea when that structure will actually be built. For now, we'll just concentrate on the plants (and the snake in the grapes!).

 

Veggies: After countless strolls, discussions, layouts, and opinions, we finally decided on a little plot for the vegetable garden. Or at least veggie garden part 1. We thought this was the most we could handle right now, size-wise, and if we want to expand we can find a different spot for part 2. It's only 16' x 18' and it's cozied up to the screen porch. Surrounded by rhubarb, asparagus, and some native pollinator plants. Darling tilled and dug and is currently rigging a permanent fence using some pipe we got from the old cabin. The kids and I hauled some wheelbarrow loads of tree cookies from the woodshed and I laid them in the sand for a little path. (Um, thanks for the wheelbarrow, Pap-pap. It's been in near constant use.) We've probably got enough to do our garden paths (between beds) with them too. I got a couple tread-strong thyme and moss plants to tuck in the voids. On Memorial Day weekend, around 10pm before the deluge, I got the last of the seeds and seedlings in. Whew. Garden whirlwind. I'm exhausted but excited. Feels like good nesting that we needed to do.