Ironic isn’t it? Limes are my best crop this year. And they are off of a tree in a pot. All you have to do is keep them watered. These are going to a key lime (no, these are not key limes) pie for our neighborhood block party. I’m not sure how much fun this party is going to be, I don’t really know these people and when I asked how or where I was going to be serving the key lime pie. A friendly neighbor (who has kids) said “keep it in your house, kids will get their filthy little mitts all over it.” Alrighty then.
Side note: I’ve been busy. Really busy. So have fallen far behind on my posts. I’m gonna catch up now.
There is the rare occasion that I can come up with something or other that someone may like or want but those are few and far between. For me, I don’t want anything. At all. So I tend not to care so much about other people’s gift desiring. When my birthday comes around, it’s mine, no one else gets to dictate what I am doing and I really don’t want people making a big deal out of it. I hate birthday parties, particularly surprise ones (in this case either my own or any one else’s—OK, if they are casual surprises fine but the kind where they make you hide under the sofa and turn off the lights every time a car goes by and then wait for 20 minutes like that, ugh).
Anyway, it was the ol’ ball and chain’s birthday recently and what do you give someone who has more jewels and gemstones than Queen Camilla and who, and I’m totally serious, has a loupe with which he can determine cut and clarity?
I made him a mango cheesecake so he could take it to work glazed with mango gel for extra prettiness. I’m not sure what the clarity was but he did do the cutting. And quite neatly as you can see.
I picked serviceberries this summer—a lot of them—and froze them (I also have a bag of frozen cherries you will have to endure hearing about at a later date) so for a food group dinner with the theme of “Harvest” I decided to make a serviceberry pie for which I needed a recipe. I was surprised when searching for one to discover that in Canada, now renamed Northern North America, after a great lake of the same name, serviceberries are called Saskatoon berries.
(Serviceberries grow on the amelanchier tree which is a native tree and they are all over the place. In downtown Milwaukee there are several of them on the corner of Water and St Paul if you’re interested in foraging. I had them at my house on Meinecke but for some reason there the robins ate most of them and when I tried to even grab a handful it was a battle with birds. Here in Whitefish Bay there was no fighting with birds I’m guessing the birds up here have better things to do with their time and better things to eat so I got quite a lot of them.)
Saskatoon berry pie is also called Impossible Pie because, and I am guessing here, you make a batter, dump the berries in and it makes its own crust and custard layer with the berries floating elegantly on top. Elegant may not be the right word. (recipe here) But it was good, or good enough. I served it with vanilla frozen custard, the great maker-of-all-things-better.
Last night when my grand nieces and nephew sat down at the counter for dessert (brownies and salted caramel ice cream) Louisa, 4 years old, said very earnestly “Is this where you keep your bugs?”
I was thinking I’d really like a BLT, I had one leftover brioche bun from Sunday dinner but making bacon is a pain, it’s messy and smelly, and I don’t know what I was thinking because I didn’t have bacon anyway, but you know what? A tomato and lettuce sandwich is nearly as good. I had a great, perfectly sized tomato. I went for mayonnaise and saw this thousand island dressing. I could eat this entire jar with a spoon I love it so much and I thought, hell yes! But you know what isn’t a good match. These 2 things. I ate the sandwich because I’ll eat anything, excepting anchovies. But it was a disappointment, the dressing overwhelmed the rest of the sandwich.
I wasn’t sure what to expect this year. These plants did not flower. I consulted my resident expert Professor Google and he/she/they said that some don’t so if nothing else it put my mind at ease. Well, as “at ease” as my mind gets anyway.
I don’t recall where I got the seed potatoes or what kind they are but they have very thick skin. On the one hand I like a nice baked potato skin, but on the other peeling little potatoes is not exactly my idea of fun. I got enough big potatoes but mostly they are small Yukon gold sized which will need to visit the potato peeler.
My niece brought me a bag of peaches. They were delicious but there was no way we could eat them all before the fruit flies moved in and made them into a sex party location. So I dropped them into boiling water, peeled and sliced them before freezing them. And then I made this luscious thing.
I could not keep one of the 100s of peaches I grew, none of the strawberries or blueberries or more oddly not one of the 100s of olives. None, nothing nada. They ate them all.
Do you think they can be bothered to eat the damn acorns??? Isn’t that what their job is?
So I accidentally bought vegan ice cream. Not sure how I missed the green vegan sticker shouting at me on the side there, or the fact that it was a “vegan frozen dessert” rather than ice cream but that’s just me, not paying attention to anything. But OK, I had it I’ll eat it.
You know, I can be as vegan as the next guy. I get it. I spent 3 months being vegan and it wasn’t a hardship, well, the no-butter thing was not as fun as you’d imagine. But mostly what I ate was stuff that was just naturally not an animal product. Like vegetables, beans, chips and salsa (here’s a great vegan tip, hot salsa is a delicious soup). This stuff, salted caramel vegan frozen dessert, is some sort of cocked-up weird mess of chemicals trying too hard to be something it isn’t.
But what it mostly isn’t is good.
It was awful. I immediately spit it out. It tasted like rotting watermelon smells. I don’t recall if I could perceive salt, I was too busy being aggressed by the filthy taste exploding inside my head, but there was no caramel flavor in the least. I saved the carton just so I could photograph it for this missive but I would not even feed this crap to the squirrels. Well, I would but they’d probably love it so I won’t. Damn things. Now I can throw it out.
Gotta love the “plant-based blend” trying so hard to be vegan sounding. Below are the ingredients on a carton of Culver’s. thankfully I am a big fan of carrageenan and locust bean gum and they’re vegan!
These are mostly from my garden. The basil is too. I can hear my sister complain about the raw onions (not from my garden). The olives are not either. But I made a classic French vinaigrette, taught to me by my French teacher, may she rest in peace.
I sorta tucked the yellow ones under things for the pic because they while they are supposed to be yellow, this one is mealy. The result, I imagine, of the psychotic weather we’ve had. I’m hoping the vinaigrette makes up for it.
