blue_dolphin

That cake looks gorgeous and sounds absolutely amazing! Today is my birthday so I'm going to appropriate this as "my" cake for today - thank you for sharing it!

Gingerbread pancakes with sliced banana and walnuts. Maple-sage breakfast sausage. Big mug of black coffee, not pictured.

Not sure about what's in your supermarket but blueberries are in season in So Cal. Underwood Family Farms, not far from me here in Ventura county., has U-pick blueberries from the end of May through early-mid July. Pudwill Berry Farms in Nipomo, up in San Luis Obispo county bring blueberries to our local farmers market through the spring, using hoop houses to extend their season.

Just finishing The Food Explorer: The True Adventures of the Globe-Trotting Botanist Who Transformed What America Eats by Daniel Stone. I heard about the book through the Gastropod podcast episode that I linked below but the book contains much more information. I've known of David Fairchild and have visited the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden many, many times but I found the details of his life shared in this book to be a great read. Fairchild was apparently as prolific in his note-taking and letter writing as he was in plant collecting so the author had much to draw on in creating this written portrait of a fascinating man. I recommend it.

I happened on this recipe for a Grilled Aged Cheddar Cheese Sandwich with Pistachio Sage Pesto and instead made a grilled aged-Havarti cheese sandwich with dill-walnut pesto. Up front is the the Cucumbers, Scallions, Mint & Dried Chiles from Six Seasons. The original sandwich recipe adds a smear of applesauce to the sandwich. Since I switched everything up, I considered leaving it out but decided to go with the Apple Mustard from Deep Run Roots. It sort of mixed with the pesto and made it browner than would be most appealing but the flavor was good.

Thanks to @Anna N and @JoNorvelleWalker for the comments. I've been enjoying this book a lot. Although it's not cucumber season yet, I had half an organic hot-house cucumber in the fridge so I mixed up the Cucumbers, Scallions, Mint & Dried Chiles p 201 to go with my lunch. No great revelation here. I often make a similar cucumber salad, but without the mint and scallions and using rice vinegar instead of the white wine vinegar used here. The rice vinegar makes my usual salad skew towards Asian flavors and this one does not so it may pair well with other dishes. I'll certainly try this again once cucumbers are in season and I can get a variety to play with. On the vinegar, the header notes say that it's key to this dish and Katz late-harvest Sauvignon Blanc vinegar is recommended. Such recommendations usually make me roll my eyes, though the Katz vinegars are recommended upfront in the Larder section and since my favorite red wine vinegar is no longer carried locally, I recently ordered both red and white wine vinegars from Katz. The red is a late-harvest zinfandel and both it and the white are lightly sweet and have clean, fruity flavors.

Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Pancetta Vinaigrette from Six Seasons topped with a poached egg

Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Pancetta Vinaigrette p 289 in Six Seasons. Since I made the pancetta vinaigrette yesterday and had some sprouts in the fridge, it was easy to make these. Just roast and toss with the vinaigrette. I can see this working with any number of roasted vegetables.

Suffering from hock-envy and bacon seasoning FOMO, I recently caved and placed an order with Father's. It was shipped last Monday and arrived today so it took a full week. The smoky, porky smell has completely infiltrated the entire house and the volume of pork products I received sort of amazed me. I ordered one package each of hocks and seasoning meat, 1 lb of hickory smoked bacon, 1 lb of bacon end slices, a 2 lb slab of bacon and a small package of their sliced prosciutto. The bacon end slices look quite nice, not that different from the regular and much nicer than the bacon ends I've purchased elsewhere. One hock and one package of seasoning meat seem like they might have a poor seal so I'll use them first. There's a couple of good sized grease spots inside the box so I hope I've correctly identified those two as the culprits.

They are called mini croissants. They are smaller than some, but not overly tiny. I always keep them on hand and highly recommend them. Here's one from a lunch I posted a while back: They also have frozen almond croissants from time to time.

Butter Lettuce with New Potatoes, Eggs and Pancetta Vinaigrette p 102 in Six Seasons. I just love the contrast between the rich pancetta vinaigrette-dressed potatoes and the fresh butter lettuce. The parsley leaves add the perfect bit of bitter green flavor and the pickled onions p 59 bring both sweetness and a sharp acidity. Excellent salad!

Leftover hummus & vegetables I made the Edamame Hummus and Hummus with Preserved Lemon from The Moosewood Restaurant Table for a family gathering yesterday and brought leftovers home.

Thanks for that advice! I put them back into the oven for another 35 minutes. I thought they were still on the gooey side but I brought them to the party anyway and they were a big hit. The family could have been humoring me with the compliments, but the negotiations to divide the leftovers were real!

I'm always on board with starting with mimosas! What did you think of Father's bacon? I finally placed an order last Monday and am waiting for it to arrive.

For a family gathering later today, I made the Roasted White Chocolate Brownies with Strawberry-Balsamic Swirl from Irvin Lin's MARBLED, SWIRLED, AND LAYERED. Recipe available online here. Despite baking them for 10 min longer than the given time and testing with a toothpick, they are badly underbaked and quite gooey in the middle, though crumbly around the edges. Too bad. I guess I will pick up something from Trader Joes on my way over Edited to add that some googling told me that people have put underbaked brownies back into the oven, even after cooling and they came out OK so I will try it. I might put some foil around the outside so the edges don't dry out too much. Editing yet again to report that I put them back into the oven for another 35 minutes. I thought they were still on the gooey side but I brought them to the party anyway and they were a big hit. They could have been humoring me with the compliments, but the negotiations to divide the leftovers were real! Here's the white chocolate before roasting: And after: Batter before baking: After baking:

It's rarely gets that hot here in the early AM but on those rare occasions, I've been known to start my day with a Vietnamese coffee popsicle

Sounds like too much navel gazing to me.

The herb guy at yesterday's farmers market accidentally gave me two bunches of dill - BIG bunches - instead of one so I was looking for ways to use my bounty. Pasta with Dill Pesto and Roasted Fennel from The Moosewood Restaurant Table cookbook. I made the vegan version of the recipe using toasted walnuts instead of cheese in the pesto and as a garnish. The pesto used up 2 cups of chopped dill so I still have enough to make a kuku or something like that.

I'm not a regular consumer of carbonated beverages but I enjoy Bundaberg's diet ginger beer (25 cal/375ml or ~ 12 oz). It contains sugar, aspartame, Acesulfame K and Sucralose - a little something for everyone! I also like Q tonic. It's sweetened with agave and has 24 calories/5 oz serving.

Yes! I mentioned the first chapter about New Orleans over here, when @ProfessionalHobbit was visiting the city. That chapter and two recipes can be read in the Amazon preview and give a good sense of the book. I very much enjoy his writing and I think it's an excellent read. It's more of a memoir than a cookbook, although each chapter does include a couple of recipes. No photos either, though they are available on his website or Instagram. He says, "I want you to pay attention to the aromas, flavors, textures, to the feel of the food in your mouth. Don't worry if what you make doesn't look good enough to be on the cover of a magazine. If it tastes good, you've succeeded."

I bet they are great! Since I don't have an outdoor grill, I've pan-grilled some on the stovetop and they were excellent but I filled the place with smoke and set off all the alarms so I've sort of given up that tactic!

With an excess of scallions in the vegetable drawer, I went ahead and made the Charred Scallion Salsa Verde from Six Seasons p 109 without giving much thought to how I'd use it. Turns out to go very nicely on a plate of eggs. The scallions get charred all over by putting them into a hot, heavy skillet and then putting another pan on top to flatten them. I perhaps went a bit too far - as you can see, my scallions are well and truly charred but plenty of lemon zest and juice and fresh parsley brighten it all up. The recipe instructs the the parsley stems be chopped finely, like chives, and they add a nice texture. I think this would be good over a nice piece of fish or even on sandwiches. I'll certainly make this again if I find myself with extra scallions on hand.

More leftovers Sautéed spinach, toasted corn topped with pico de gallo and queso fresco, cornbread sprinkled with a little parmesan, a few white beans with soy chorizo topped with a fried egg.

Gingerbread pancakes from The Moosewood Restaurant Table, mango chunks and yogurt The cookbook includes a recipe for a lemon syrup to be served with these pancakes which sounded awfully sweet to me. Instead, I stirred some lemon zest into plain Greek yogurt and topped it with a few slivers of candied lemon peel. The flavor of these pancakes was good but my batter was much too thick to be poured on to the griddle. Not sure what I did wrong but I'm not going to worry about it.

BTW, I got some excellent ideas I can use to expand on my above experiment in this 1995 article from the SF Chronicle: SAVORY SHORTCAKES / The perfect shortcut for summer entertaining I think they are all for individual shortcakes but no reason I can't adapt them to the format I used above.