corny and sweet

we survived the fourth with our home, eardrums and nerves intact. it was a hot one yesterday, the high 80's and so i didn't heat up the house by cooking indoors. Instead we had honey mustard basted tuna on the grill along summer squash and the most amazing corn i have tasted since childhood.

Living in the deep south for so long I had forgotten how much is brought in, unripe by super markets. other than peaches, pecans, peanuts and cotton, it isn't famous for its crops. but this willamette valley produces amazing food. last night's corn had a nutty taste that triggered the memories of long lost summers with corn on the cob. and the local raspberries jim brought home from the market were huge, perfectly ripe and completely unblemished.

Since living here food has been a veritable proustian journey, the berries, figs, corn, tomatoes that are tasty enough to chomp like an apple, great wine bargains and the bakeries. Montgomery had one bakery- called Ligers- that the poor uneducated to good food and real bakeries thought was good. it was white bread sugar overload heaven, a place where they used sugar frosting to fill a cream puff rather than the custard that a real cream puff fan requires. yeah you could buy a challah with advance notice but it was essentially white bread with yellow food coloring added. no sense of egg or the moist sweetness that should accompany shabbat bread. Okay NOLA has it's beignets, Charleston its she crab soup, Savannah it's decadent desserts and Atlanta ( the land of CoCola) only has the imports from other places) I mean I can't call fried cat fish , hush puppies or okra something to wax poetic over. maybe for the natives these foods are trips back to more innocent times but for a former New Yorker, it's balderdash. I was raised on garden fresh produce, duckling, softshell crabs right from the sound, and drop dead amazing ethnic food from all the groups of people entering NY as a doorway to opportunity. So I won't be modest about the fact that I know food, can produce great food and apprpeciate great food. and yes, peoples, oregon has G R E A T food.

That I have arrived in the land of milk and honey , bakng is no longer a requirement but rather a joyous occupation. The same for everyday cooking. especially with two convection ovens ( that means SIX racks at a time) an amazing grill on my wolf rangetop and a small but awesome ducane grill.

Few things compare to the delights of taking fresh ingredients and turning them into love fests for the mouth. Blueberries anyone?

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caluna on

Re: corny and sweet

Well now I know how your 4th went: food, food, food ;~) I agree dear. We live in a place where all the foodies have gravitated towards, for sure. And yes, you don't need to make anything out here unless you truly WANT to. I have the most delightful bakery here in town. It's Swedish and they don't even use yeast in most of their breads. I've brought you some of their seeded sourdough in the past, but I'm sure you have equivalent bakeries up there. Right now, I am picking pluots from my own tree, having already gone through my plums. My tomatoes are getting ripe, as are so many other things in the backyard. The pears come in very soon. I have Bartletts and damn, can't remember the name of the later ones - harder, for cooking. My apple trees are absolutely loaded this year. Three different kinds of apples: red delicious (not like the grocery store kind), golden delicious and Fujis. I don't need to grow Gravensteins, as they are all over the place around here. I love summer - my time of year, with all the luscious fruits and veggies. My lemon cucumbers are flowering and beginning to set too. Love you