Red, white and blue potatoes are being harvested right now from our gardens! I am writing a round up of my favorite summer recipes over at Virginia Living Magazine - and it includes a grilled potatoes recipe that is a staple go-to. I made potatoes with paprika and rosemary (from our herb garden) for dinner last night. We'll be eating a lot of potatoes - so please send favorite recipes.
Loving evening walks after a good rain storm in which Otis and Willa wear each other out in the best of ways. Post-drizzle, galosh-wearing walks (top photo) were also very welcome this weekend. We had rain and cloud cover and appreciated every minute of it. Everything smelled like life instead of the crispy, singed-to-death landscape of the past month-and-a-half.
Meet Yer Eats Farm Tour! Cool!
I'm just a wee bit excited about Rob Sheffield's new book. If you didn't read Love is a Mixed Tape, drop everything you are doing to fetch yourself a copy. And if the title Talking to Girls About Duran Duran and the Quest for a Cool Haircut doesn't speak to you in some way, it must mean that you weren't knee-deep in high school angst in the 1980s?
I made the Peperonata in saor last week. Wow. Yum. Especially good with grilled salmon on top of it. Next from the Adventures with Ruth recipes to try? The strawberry jam tarts. I don't have elderberry flowers, but I have the freezer jam from this past spring. And I'm sure I can track down some creme fraiche. (Because I have a nose for that sort of thing.) This weekend I also quick-preserved some lemons to use in a future attempt at the tagine recipe from her Moroccan episode.
Also - while writing about cooking. We don't have cable out our way, so my discovery of shows (through Netflix) can actually be something that started airing in, let's say, 2005. Like Anthony Bourdain. I have now traveled with him to Iceland, China, New Jersey, Vietnam, Las Vegas and Paris. I could do without the scenes in which he eats cow stomach or fermented shark, but can't seem to get enough of watching him smoke and drink and stuff his skinny self alongside self-deprecating humor and a super-sharp, super-fast take on things. I hear he has a new book. Perhaps I'll experience his latest endeavor in real-er time.
