If there is one good thing this hot and humid weather is good for, its the garden. My wee vegetable patch looks like a jungle bursting with greenery. But when I took a closer look this evening I found some sweet surprises camouflaged by all that foliage. There dangling before me were the most unassuming pea pods patiently waiting to be picked. Not a huge harvest, but a good start to the season, those little green suckers were so sweet that I actually wrestled them out of my six year old’s hands to get a taste.

I’ve also been watching the progress my grape tomatoes have been making in the planter on my deck. They have to reach the right shade of red in order to be picked, but I’m reticent to wait too long lest the skins split, which was the case many times last summer. So I’ve been monitoring their progress daily and I just harvested the first half dozen or so, which will no doubt be devoured once again by my two pint-sized munchkins who are almost as keenly interested in the garden as I am when there is food involved.

And finally the last but certainly not the least, my grandfather’s raspberries. This year has produced a bumper crop of the sweetest most delicate jewels. We’ve been picking most of the berries from my parents’ raspberry “forest,” but when I checked my little patch by the air conditioner shoved in the most unattractive corner of our garden, I was pleasantly surprised by the berries I found. While I love picking berries (straw, rasp or blue), I prefer turning them into pies and jams rather than eating them raw. So the bowlful of berries now sitting in my fridge will join their cousins from my parents’ backyard in the jars of jam I’ll be making tomorrow night.

Progress report on the rest of the garden: the red cabbages and savoy cabbages are exploding, as are the tomato plants. The cucumber plants and pumpkin plants are now flowering and I expect to see fruit begin to form soon. There is a mammoth red pepper dangling from one of three pepper plants–a couple smaller ones on the other plants but nothing to blog about right now. And I’ve got dozens of golden beet seedlings but I’m not sure when or how to transplant them into the garden–suggestions anyone???

My appetite has excellent timing. It’s been “on leave” for a while. Ironically, my stomach isn’t fond of the food that I like to eat. In fact, my entire digestive tract doesn’t like anything I put down my gullet. Humor me here for a minute: imagine eating a simple meal; it could be toast with peanut butter and a banana with a glass of O.J. in the morning. Or maybe a bowl of soup and tuna sandwich for lunch. Now imagine not feeling the slightest bit hungry when you’re supposed to be eating those meals and a full three hours later you feel as though you’re going to upchuck the sandwich, salad and the full breakfast. These have been the joys (or misfortunes) of my dining experiences as of late. I brought this to my doctor’s attention several months ago. This was followed by some tests, which included drinking the most awful chalky concoction after which I was expertly tipped flat on a cold metal table while having my innards X-ray’d. I’ve even been injecting with radioactive nuclear medicine, which I’ve been assured will not shorten my lifespan nor make me glow in the dark. Neither of these tests has revealed the great mystery of my incredible indigestion. However the doctor decided to put me on a prescription strength anti-acid, which I think has helped my case. I no longer wake up in the middle of the night with the feeling of someone’s fist forcing its way up my esophagus. But the most miraculous improvement has been my appetite and it couldn’t have returned at a better time. Thanksgiving weekend is a glutton’s wet dream come true. It’s the harvest. There is no shortage of good, fresh food. So I decided to embrace the spirit of the holiday and cook and bake for my family while up in prime harvest territory: at the cottage. Saturday’s dinner consisted of chicken stew with chickpeas, sweet and yellow potatoes and sweet onion. We had a fabulous salad of fresh lettuces on the side and not one but TWO pumpkin pies! We only polished off one of the pies, but that meant I could use the dish to bake the most scrumptious apple pie for the Thanksgiving dinner. I decided to pay homage to the slow food movement by making beer-braised beef short ribs, steamed savoy cabbage with roasted chestnuts and garlic mashed potatoes. Yes, I roasted the chestnuts and the garlic. And let’s not forget the pies that came at the end of the meal. It was one of those meals that makes you want to hibernate for the winter or put on a cable-knit sweater and cozy up by a fire. And guess what? Not a single bout of indigestion the entire weekend (you know I’m going to live to regret writing that down). Boy was I thankful this weekend, if for no other reason than I was able to enjoy a good meal with my family for the first time in months. To tell you the truth I would have been just as happy eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich if it meant  I could eat without fear of my food revisiting me in the middle of the night. But having a good meal go down certainly doesn’t hurt.

Beer braised beef short ribs

Garlic mashed potatoes

Savoy cabbage and chestnuts

Not one, but TWO kinds of pie!

I just finished reading Molly Wizenberg’s A Homemade Life. Not surprisingly I devoured the book and the recipes in it. I have yet to make the chocolate cake that appears at the end of the book, or any other recipe for that matter, although I’d like to, but I did manage to make one. It’s the recipe (if you can even call it that) for slow roasted tomatoes. My mother, my sister and I bought a half bushel of roma tomatoes a few weeks back thinking we’d all take our thirds away and turn them into tomato sauce or something like that. Mine sat in the fridge pining for attention, but I just didn’t have the time or the energy to put into them. Finally one Saturday rolled around and I decided it was now or never for those tomatoes and based on my interpretation of Molly’s recipe, slow roasting them would be the simplest thing to do to them. So, I set the oven to 200 degrees, bisected the tomatoes, threw them on a cookie sheet, drizzled the appropriate amount of olive oil, sprinkled kosher salt and popped them in the oven for a full 5 hours. Out they came, slightly shriveled and sweet as can be. I brought them to my parents’ house for dinner that night and my dad oohed and awed as he ate them, along with everyone else. I single out my father because I consider him a tough customer to please when it comes to culinary achievements. He likes things simple and full of flavour and this fit the bill. Take a look at the pre-operative and post-operative tomatoes!

Roma tomatoes

Ready for the oven

Slow roasted tomatoes

Meet Arlene. A lady of many talents. DIY’er, graphic artist, designer, mother, gourmand and baker. In this particular category we are kindred spirits. For the last nine months or so, I had the pleasure of working with Arlene on a television show–she as a stylist, me as a producer. Over the course of the nine months we exchanged recipes, discussed cooking and baking methods and even had the odd “bake off.” For this, the rest of the staff was grateful. Since production of the show has wrapped, we have all been scattered like seeds to the wind, keeping in touch primarily through Facebook.  But today Arlene and I, along with Lindsay, an equally talented and fellow show stylist, joined us for a bite of lunch at my place. I provided most of the nibbles, but the topper were the perfectly tangy, sweet and just gooey enough lemon squares Arlene baked. I could have inhaled the entire pan, but that would have been unladylike of me. So I restricted myself to just one, but kept a plateful to eat after my guests had departed. Lemon squares can be finnicky. The shortbread base needs to be baked for a brief period of time before the lemon filling is poured over top. And the filling needs to be baked long enough to set, but not too long. If you overbake the squares, you’ll end up with a burnt base and hard, chewy lemon filling. And if underbaked, the filling just oozes everywhere, making an awful mess. Not the least bit enjoyable to sink your teeth into. Thankfully this was not the case as I gingerly removed the squares from the pan, which came out perfectly, well, square.

The lovely & talented Arlene

Arlene's lemon square

Lindsay, stylist extraordinnaire