(with a wave to William Carlos Williams)

Thank you for the peach pie

red gold, gooey, thick and crusty:

peaches carried heaped in a basket

up the hill from the tree we planted

seven years ago, watched over,

pruned, debugged, (harvested

one rock of a peach that first year)

and now its branches bent to the ground

on the uphill side, their burden of fuzzy

softening fruit almost more joy

than they can bear. Read on… »

There’s a reason, of course, that stone fruits and almonds are such a natural match, flavorwise–the pits of peaches, nectarines and apricots contain a kernel that is called the “poor man’s almond” because it tastes almondy, if a bit bitter. The kernel also contains cyanide (it sucks to be poor). It’s also what amaretto liqueur and those delicious little amaretti cookies are flavored with, as the cyanide apparently dissipates when the pits are roasted or processed. (Booze and cookies, the poor man’s salve.)

This cakey cobbler, or cobblery cake, pairs almonds and summer fruits with delicious results. It’s a very light dessert, perfect for a summer brunch or breakfast. I enjoy it straight, but you can gussy it up with Greek yogurt or a dollop of sweetened sour cream or mascarpone. Read on… »

Summer is my favorite food season. I know, I know–I just said that spring was my favorite. But I was just caught up in the lamb and peas and fava beans. I’ve also repeatedly claimed the fall as my favorite–all that squash, and pie!–and winter, since I love pot roast and potatoes. But in summer, we grow our own bounty chez moi, and there’s just nothing can beat that.

One of our annual harvests is the olallieberry, which winds delicately around our patio and every year gives us just enough berries to top our cereal or desserts. (An almond-milk blancmange I recently concocted was a natural fit.) I was first introduced to olallieberries when I was a kid and spent summers in Santa Cruz. We made a pilgrimage most Julys to Phipps Farm in Pescadero, CA, where we ate and picked our way through the day, and then went home purple-faced to stuff our freezer full of berries for the year to come. Read on… »

Mountain Bounty Farm, my local CSA, has an abundance of tomatoes this year; more fruit than can be included in the weekly distribution, sold at the Saturday’s Farmer’s Market, or to individuals focused on canning sauces and salsas.

With the threat of global economic collapse on the front burner, my partner Steve and I have decided to invest in tomato futures by freezing, drying, canning, and gorging daily on this sublime fruit.

Today is mostly cloudy and cool, a break from the blistering temperatures of summer. It’s a good thing that I’ve already dried 150 pounds of tomatoes in the last three weeks, when daytime temperatures stayed in the 90s with little humidity. Read on… »

First, I want to spread the word to all New Yorkers that the Edible magazine family has a new title: a two-week-old magazine called Edible Manhattan. Many of you enjoy Edible Brooklyn (I know I do!), and now we can read about the food culture of what we Brooklynites think of mostly as “the skyline.” I was fortunate enough to help the Edible folks out at a couple of farmers’ markets last week, and was struck by the loads and loads of tomatoes everywhere. These later-harvest fruits look to be enormous and very, very ripe. I started to fantasize about canning tomatoes, making and freezing sauce, drying them on the roof…One good place to start is with Kate Dwyer’s inspiring tomato story, and Susie Troccolo’s easy Pasta d’Estate. I may not get around to creating a tomato-product factory in my kitchen, so I’m going to binge on fresh ones ’til they run out.