Good Press

My family is fortunate that my husband’s grandfather planted eight blueberry bushes in his backyard. Now our front yard blends into it and our daughter often walks down and stands among the bushes picking and eating the fat blue-black berries till she’s full or bored. We don’t usually snack between meals but I don’t mind her grazing at the blueberry bushes. Sometimes she will take an 8-cup lidded Tupperware measuring cup by the handle and pick alongside her grandmother, bringing home berries that I stir into pancake or waffle batter. Recently she brought so many that I made a pie. This year, thanks to their daily picking, we beat the birds to the berries. I’m not a berry pie or cobbler baker or lover (I don’t like the little seeds in my teeth) but I recently made individual (think cupcake-sized) peach “cobblers” – really they were more like pies – for a church bake sale. There was a berry variation listed so I adapted this recipe when I made my full-size blueberry pie. Then our culinar...

Weekends are the time for farmers markets. Here are some of my finds from recent trips and what I've done with them. I'm lucky to live across the street from my community's farmers market. It's also on Friday mornings so I can go to neighboring towns' markets on Saturdays. To find a farmers market near you, go to www.localharvest.org . Sheesh! Blackberries are expensive! Ads in our local paper range from $15 to $18 a gallon. I paid an indulgent $7 for a quart at the market. Next time I'll just pick them myself. But these made a lovely cobbler with my mom's crust recipe. 2 cups flour 1 teaspoon salt 3 teaspoons baking powder 1/2 cup sugar 1/3 cup Crisco 3/4 cup milk Preheat oven to 350. Grease a 9-by-9 glass baking dish. If you have enough berries to make a 13-by-9 pan, double the crust recipe. Rinse and pick over berries. Sweeten with sugar as desired (maybe 1/2 cup). Stir in cornstarch or tapioca -- I'm bad at estimating this and my filling is always ru...

I'm all about food, and sometimes that's a bad thing. Like when I can't get to a grocery store that carries chorizo, Manchego and membrillo (quince paste). Or when I don't get my expected freelance check and have to eat canned soup instead of another "splurge." But I digress. I had hoped this would be a light-hearted post about how food-centric and quirky I am. I noticed it a few months ago when I responded to a silly MySpace game asking me to blog about six weird habits/things associated with me. Four of the six were about food. Here's the text of that post. "Tia tagged me to blog about six weird habits/things associated with me. It wasn't easy coming up with them probably because there are some really weird things about me that I consider perfectly normal. And further, if I consider it weird, then why do I want to point it out? "All this to get to No. 1: I tend to overthink things. "2. I put ketchup on my scrambled eggs, too,...