Food Life

Strawberries!

If you haven’t heard and haven’t noticed the low price, there’s been a bumper crop of strawberries this year. Strawberry season usually comes a little later but right now the fields are filled with berries! We went out to Alvin, TX this afternoon to take the girls strawberry picking at the Froberg Vegetable and Fruit Farm.
It is about a half hour drive from downtown Houston.
It took much longer than that to get everyone out the door. But once we got there I was surprised at how quickly we filled our buckets. We wound up with about thirteen pounds of berries.
Now the question is what to do with them!

    For my first strawberry project I made a sorbet which needed to set a little longer in the freezer.
Then I set aside three pounds to use for a batch of strawberry wine I’ll try to start tomorrow. Then I made some pastry cream and a graham cracker crust to make a quick tart. I decided it needed chocolate (or perhaps I needed chocolate) so I drizzled some chocolate ganache overtop.
Finally, Sam macerated a couple pints with some port, sugar, black pepper and balsamic vinegar. I had a slice of the tart and a small taste of the sorbet and I’m looking forward to trying the macerated strawberries over a little vanilla ice cream.

    We still have several pounds of strawberries to use up so I may make a charlotte or preserves.

Hello Again

I have been out of commission the last several months; allow me to introduce the two main reasons: Justine and Roman.
They were born September 18^th and are both doing well. Between the two of them they are eating 16 to 24 times a day which is making me feel very much a part of the food chain!

Yesterday, Lydia and I wandered through my overgrown back yard and found that the mandarin orange tree I planted last spring has borne it’s first fruits and we were just in time to discover the first ripe orange.
It was surprisingly good! Since I put no effort into this plant I was expecting a dry and flavorless specimen, but no, often enough plants thrive when I leave them alone.

Apart from the citrus trees, grape vine and herb garden, the summer of neglect has left my garden rather decimated. But my optimism has kicked in once again and Saturday I made a trip to Buchanan’s nursery in the Heights and picked up some herbs (I’m making my annual attempt to grow lavender – why can’t I learn it only grows well in France?) and I’m going to try leeks, mesculin mix and artichokes from seed. The mesculin mix is one that works for me most seasons and results in enough tender leaves for salads. I grew an artichoke plant last season but I’m not sure whether its sudden death was the result of a lack of gardening efforts or because the timing was poor and they succumbed to Houston’s summer. The leeks are a completely new endeavor.

Finally, I am going to be starting up my Daring Bakers and Daring Cooks challenges again. If you’re up for the challenge and live in the area I invite you to join the group and we can tackle the challenges together in the Urban Chef kitchen.