renaissance literature 101: pop quiz

Q: Would a berry by any other name taste as sweet?

Fig. 1

A. No. These may look good, but strawberries are the most delicious.

Fig. 2

For tomorrow: Compare strawberries to a summer's day. Hint: Summer's lease hath all too short a date, which is why we're now eating raspberries and blueberries.

Class dismissed.

last week's booty

The reason I'm not posting recipes is that I'm just not cooking, except to soft boil an egg to serve over asparagus, or perhaps sauté some greens. Most of what I'm eating is from the farmers market, and so delicious in its simplest form, no recipe is required.

Raw, with sea salt, or sea-salty butter, or sliced on top of sea-salty buttered toast.

Pea shoots! Lightly sautéed, or mixed with baby greens for salad.

Doe's Leap Trappist. Sliced, bitches. Just slice off a piece and pop it in your mouth. No cracker or bread required.

Strawberries. At least twice a day I eat a bowlful of strawberries, usually with some Greek yogurt. Can't. Get. Enough. [Note to yachtsman: It's shortcake time, honey, which is like Hammer time, except instead of dressing up in your Hammer pants and lip synching in the kitchen you make me a little biscuit-like cake to eat with my strawberries. Can't touch this.]

Freshly picked whoopie pies.

This weekend I'm hoping for peas. Also, some deeply discounted peonies. Also, I hope whoopie pies are still in season.

the sweet taste of not being bitter that it's winter, because I'm pretty sure WINTER IS OVER, BITCHES!

The first strawberry of the year. And I still have eleven apples left in my refrigerated hoarding chamber! Although I've decided that my collection of apples is not hoarding at all. When people of yore (and homesteading hipsters of today) preserved and canned and filled their root cellars with turnips and rutabagas, it was not called hoarding, it was called trying to survive winter. I hoarded stored apples to survive winter. And now I will enjoy the hell out of summer. Unless it rains a lot, in which case I will take to my bed and weep.

the sweet taste of not eating local

I started to feel guilty today eating my little breakfast of figs from California, strawberries from Quebec, and yogurt from Greece.


But then I was all like, f*ck that. I live in Vermont. Summer here lasts four days. Woman can not live by nuts and berries and root vegetables alone. Oh wait, nuts don't grow in Vermont. Make that zucchini and berries and root vegetables.

Tomorrow I plan to make a localvore dinner to compensate (as if I have something to compensate for). If all goes well, I'll post about my tomato goat cheese tart here Thursday. If not, I'll feast on mangoes and avocados and bunnies imported from Australia, and tell you about that, instead.

not too good to be true

I don't how or why, but they had Vermont strawberries at the co-op. I mean, sure, Alburg is up north, and it's been a cold-ass summer, but strawberries in mid-August? And where have they been since mid-July? And why am I still asking questions and not eating strawberries?

i do feel bad for blanket

The yachtsman just called me from the airport in DC and offered me $5 to have the air conditioner on when he got home. I'm considering his offer because I can be bought, but usually not for so little. [If you're reading this, honey, call back and offer to make me strawberry shortcake this weekend, and it will be a cool 72 degrees when you walk in the door.]

The yachtsman also said, "I can't believe Michael Jackson is dead," about five times during our brief phone conversation. Michael Jackson has been dead to me for awhile now, so I'm not that shocked.

What I do find weird is this description of the content of Gov. Mark Sanford's e-mails to his Argentinean mistress, from the South Carolina newspaper that published a bunch of them this morning: "There is talk of Coosaw, his Beaufort plantation, and his love of digging holes on the property."

Huh? Digging holes as a pastime? Is that a Southern thing?

I tried reading the e-mails, by the way, and just cannot recommend them. They're (a) boring, (b) trite, (c) cliched, and (d) hackneyed. I couldn't make it past the descriptions of sunsets and tan lines to the promised, more original material about hole digging.

it's also good eaten straight from the jar with a spoon

Do you know what this is?


It's a strawberry dipped in raw cream.

Do you know what raw cream is? It's the cream from raw (unpasteurized) milk.

Do you know how raw cream is made? After someone not scared of cows does the milking and sells the resulting product to your mother-in-law, who gives a jar to you, you put the milk in the fridge and the cream rises to the top. "Elementary, my dear Kate," you're probably thinking in the British accent you use for internal dialogue, and it is sort of fourth-grade science, or the kind of tale your grandmother would tell while you sat at her kitchen table eating Lucky Charms for dinner because you were not allowed to have sugar cereals at home, and though that's how they may have eaten their Lucky Charms in the olden days, you did not like the idea of adding milk straight from the cow to your verboten pink hearts, yellow moons, orange stars, and green clovers.

But when it's happening in your fridge, this separation of milk and cream, it seems magical (especially when the only kind of magic your fridge has seen before involved mold and the yachtsman's leftovers). And when you skim a fresh, local strawberry over that thick layer of cream and pop it in your mouth, the result isn't just magical, it's magically delicious.

don't read this if you're sick of looking at strawberries

Actually, don't even read this whole bl*g, if you're sick of looking at strawberries. Because if you're sick of looking at strawberries, you're crazy, and GFD is written for the sane by the sane.

(With Greek yogurt. Some of these are from Adam's, some from Mazza's. We did a taste test this morning, and the two kinds of berries are decidedly different. If I had a refined palate, I would tell you which berries had notes of berries, but instead I will tell you what my mother used to tell my sister and me: I love them both the same, just differently. [Note to Mojie: That was Mom's code for, "Katie, I love you the most. Now run along and taunt your sister with this knowledge."])

how do i love thee? let me count the ways

For now I'm happy eating them just like this,


but before the season's over I'm going to try this, eat lots of these, and use a coupon I received for my birthday to get the yachtsman to make me this.

Happy summer to me.

farmer booty

My take from the farmers market included rainbow chard and baby beet greens, D'Avignon radishes, three kinds of cheese, a kale-and-garlic stuffed bread from Naga (where they grow and mill their own wheat -- welcome to Vermont, party people), more microbasil...but I think the highlights are the first strawberries of the season (I feel like I've been waiting my whole life, but in reality winter was a mere nine months long)


and fresh eggs.


While the yachtsman dreams of living on a boat (please don't make me), I fantasize about keeping chickens; if I could have a couple in our 740 square foot apartment, I would. This week, however, I bought my eggs from Boucher Family Farm, where the chickens have more square footage then I do, the lucky bastards. I mean, bitches. I mean, chickens.

P.S.
In an unfortunate turn of events that involved my dog bleeding profusely from the nose while I chased him with a wad of paper towels and cried hysterically, I was unable to make it to the first Summer Fry Fest. But the event was attended by the (vocal) majority of GFD's readership, who promised to take photos while they rudely had fun in my absence. I will post an update when I am updated.