Sipping On Sunshine

Monday morning was drizzly gray and I was a moody blue. I needed instant sunshine. I needed an influx of happiness. But how can you generate that from within a foggy funk? Fresh fruit (and a little alliteration) always perks me up. Maybe it was time to do something with the mangoes I got at the market the other day (2 for $1.00!). It's as good a starting point as any, and frankly, a lot better than some.

Tender Sweet Apricots

I always have some sort of dried fruit in my pantry. Always. Dried fruits keep practically forever and are endlessly versatile. One of my very favorite dried fruits is the dried apricot. Soft and sweet with a honeyed-tang. They are amazing in everything from oatmeal at breakfast to turkey stuffing at Thanksgiving. Dipped in dark chocolate, well then  they've dried and gone to heaven.*

In summer though, my thoughts always turn to fresh fruit, and the little fragrant fresh apricots often get overlooked as I bee-line to the berries, peaches, plums and melons. They even get overshadowed by their own genetic offshoots: pluots, apriums, etc. Whats next? Grapricots? Aprinanas? It's time I took another look at the subtle and classic blushing beauty that is the fresh apricot... 

 

These desserts all look so very tempting, my problem now is to pick one:

• A yummy Apricot Cake and Apricot Fold Over Pie both from Serious Eats
• Tea-Steamed Apricots & Blackberries on page 20 of Healthy Desserts  (Williams-Sonoma Collection, 1995 )
• This gorgeous Walnut Apricot Bread also over at Serious Eats uses one of my favorite flavor combinations
• Apricot Slice, a tasty looking thing that would be equally at home either for breakfast or dessert (I just love those). Found on page 23 of Best Of Baking (Wolter and Teubner, 1980) 
• The Martha Stewart Cookbook (1995) has Apricots Baked With Vanilla Sugar (pg 422) and two kinds of Apricot Tart on page 453 (one with Grand Marnier and the other with rum... yum!). 
• Also from Martha are two apricot-almond recipes: a Fresh Apricot Tart and a simple dish of Baked Apricots with Almond Topping..

* I really have to apologize for that cheesy awful joke.

Summer Thyme Biscuits

I just received the ultimate compliment: "OMG! These biscuits are wonderful!"  And this was from a man who grew up eating biscuits as a regular feature at dinner time. To say I was pleased as punch would be an understatement.  I thought they were pretty darned great also, it's just that I don't have a lot to compare them with.

On An Especially Clear Day

couple of weeks ago during a break while doing more canning, I laid down on a bench in the backyard (I thought it would feel good on my back, and I was right). No sooner did I open my eyes when I very nearly gasped out loud, my breath caught in my throat. The sky overhead was so clear and blue and there was a patterned veil of little clouds draped across the middle distance. It looked like lacy white bubble-wrap (the kind with the big bubbles). It's probably futile to even attempt to describe the sensation I experienced, but I have to try, if only to remind myself of it later. The sky seemed... endless. It pretty much is endless, infinite and all, but everything was so clear... it actually felt endless... and I could see all of it with a clarity that my near-sighted eyes could only dream of.*

Sandwich Bread

Newly empowered by making my own mayonnaise, I was now faced with a need to find ways of using it up. We normally don't consume a lot of mayo but the recipe made 2 cups of it, so we racked our little brains to come up with all the different uses we could think of. One of those was: sandwiches. Yeah, I know, stop the presses. Since we stopped buying bread and started making it, I haven't been able to wander too far away from sourdough. So I don't. But faced with a mayo surplus, a nice sandwich loaf seems to be in order.