What a great weekend. Anyone have any culinary adventures or experiments to share?

With Labor Day weekend officially landing, I’m going to take a wild guess and say there’s a good number of you all with BBQ plans in your immediate future. We’re looking at some fantastic weather ahead of us in my area, despite Hurricane Earl being just off the east coast now.

So on that note I bring you an assortment of some awesome things to take to your BBQ, care of myself and some of my favorite other bloggers. Some are prep at home, some you can just do straight on the grill. All are guaranteed hits.

Drinks

1. Blackberry Tom Collins from the White on Rice Couple.
2. Mint Juleps from Alice at Savory Sweet Life.
3. Peach Coolers, also from the White on Rice Couple.
4. Fresh Blueberry Margaritas from me, MSCK.
5. White Peach Sangria also from MSCK.

Sides

6. Bacon Wrapped Water Chestnuts from Savory Sweet Life.
7. Caprese Salad from Kim at Rustic Garden Bistro (or also right here at MSCK).
8. Cheese Fritters with Balsamic Sun-Dried Tomato Dipping Sauce from Krysta at evil chef mom.
9. Three Ways to Do Watermelon, also from evil chef mom.
10. Classic Cornbread from Ali at Three Baking Sheets to the Wind.
11. Vegetable Tian from Saint Tigerlily.
12. Roasted Rosemary Nut Mix also from Saint Tigerlily.
13. Crispy Roasted Chickpeas from Jaden at Steamy Kitchen.
14. Homemade Hummus from Alice at Savory Sweet Life.
15. Chorizo Cheese Dip from the White on Rice Couple.
16. Mushroom Pockets from me at MSCK.

Mains

17. Sweet Chili Ribs from Jaden at Steamy Kitchen.
18. Soy Citrus Planked Chicken also from Jaden at Steamy Kitchen.
19. Perfect Burgers, or at least my take on them at MSCK.
20. Thomas Keller’s Ribs from me at MSCK.
21. Filipino Chicken Barbecue from Erika at the Ivory Hut.

Desserts

22. Candied Grapefruit Peels – or – Orangettes from Smitten Kitchen .
23. Grilled Peaches with Ricotta Cheese from Alice at Savory Sweet Life.
24. Lemon Bars from Ali at Three Baking Sheets to the Wind.

Did I miss anything? Do you have a BBQ favorite I forgot? Please share with the class!

Have a wonderful holiday weekend!

I decided I wanted to try making polenta, or grits, from scratch mostly to get an idea of how it’s done and for a better understanding of the food I eat. The process is fairly laborious and probably not really something I would do often, though the results were pretty fantastic. I have consistently had a kitchen full of corn for quite some time now, between getting it from my CSA and being unable to resist it at the local markets every week. So I’ve been looking for some creative outlets, and this little experiment here piqued my curiosity.

I will say one of the significant plus sides of a process like this is that you could really store the dried corn kernels for quite some time, provided you keep them in an air-tight container. So if you have a major surplus of corn and won’t be able to eat it all before it goes bad, drying and storing can be a good route to consider.

I did this over two days – the steps included cleaning the corn from the ears, drying the kernels, grinding kernels into a coarse meal, re-hydrating and cooking the meal in a double boiler, and of course eating.

Here’s how I did it.

I started with 6 ears of corn. Even though you’re drying the kernels out, you still want to start with the freshest stuff possible. Harvested within the past 24-48 hours is ideal.

1. Shuck the corn, remove as much silk as possible.

2. Break ears of corn in half for easy cutting; cut kernels off ears.

3. Drop kernels of corn into a large bowl, and with a wet hand run your fingers through the corner to remove any excess silk that you missed – it will stick to your hand. Wash it off and repeat if necessary until all silk is removed.

4. Dry the corn. I did this by spreading it in one layer on a large baking sheet, and leaving it in an oven at 180 F for about 8 hours. If you have a food dehydrator, use it.

5. Remove corn from the oven, it should be thoroughly dried and hardened. At this point, you can move the kernels to an air-tight container to store indefinitely, or in my case just overnight so I could get some sleep.

6. Pound corn in a mortar and pestle until it is a coarse meal – this will take some time and definitely some energy. I may be in the minority on this one but I personally enjoy getting a little workout when I’m playing with my food.

Once you’ve got all your kernels pounded down, you’re ready to actually cook it. You may choose to strain out the finest of the powder to reserve for a cornbread or something, but I didn’t bother. There are many options here for cooking the corn meal – I went with a double boiler because I wanted to cook it for some time to reduce as much as possible, but didn’t want to have to stand over it the entire time either. A slow cooker would probably work well too.

7. Assemble your double boiler – in my case I use the ghetto-rigged method of putting a large metal bowl over a pot of boiling water. This works just fine. If you have an actual double boiler, fantastic.

8. Add 4 cups of water to every 1 cup of corn meal and add to bowl. My 6 ears yielded about 1 cup, so I added 4 cups of water here. I also added 1/2 cup of heavy cream, 1/4 stick of butter, and some salt and pepper.

This may have been where I went wrong. I suspect that I added too much liquid, because after cooking it down for quite some time, it was still very runny. I probably would have had more success with the polenta actually setting if I had either used a bit less liquid (perhaps 3c water instead of 4), or if I had reduced it even longer.

9. Reduce at a simmer over double boiler for 60-90 minutes. Make sure to check your pot so the water doesn’t run out and you don’t scorch it, I had to refill mine once over the duration of the time.

10. If you are making grits, you’re done. Pour it into a bowl and enjoy while nice and warm, or store and re-heat for breakfast. If you are attempting polenta, pour it into a pan and refrigerate overnight. If you’ve got the right consistency, it should set overnight and when you are ready to serve it you can warm it up, or fry it in some oil.

So yeah, as I mentioned it’s quite a process and very time consuming. But the grits I made were some of the best I’ve ever had, and it was certainly cool to actually step through the process myself. I felt like I was channeling the ancestral Puebloans 1,000 years ago (whose homes I visited earlier in the summer) while I was pounding out the meal. Never mind the fact I was watching a soccer match on TV while doing so.

I peppered a bit of cayenne over top of a bowl and it was delicious. My final result gave me about 4 large servings worth of grits.

Between learning these techniques and the shiitake mushroom yield I am expecting soon, I’m thinking a food dehydrator purchase may be in my future sometime. It would certainly have made much shorter work of the process, and it would be really nice to have a stock of home-prepared corn and dried mushrooms to keep in my kitchen cupboards at all times.

Have you ever worked with dehydrating foods?

10 – The math behind the outbreak.
It took only two farms, both operated by the same owner, to affect the supply of 17 brands, which in turn accounts for over a half billion (550 million at last count) eggs. That’s nearly two eggs for every person in America. These farms are both located in just one state – Iowa – and yet supply our entire country with eggs.

9 – The FDA has no legal power to force a recall.
You may have noticed all the articles speaking of a “voluntary recall.” That’s because that’s precisely what it was. While the FDA may have the power to levy fines, and restrictions, it cannot force a recall on such products. It is up to the owner of the individual farms – in this case Wright County and Hillandale – to choose whether or not to recall their product. Even now, a year after the large scale peanut butter recall prompted an outcry for increased FDA power in authorizing recalls, its ability to do so remains limited.

8 – The powers the FDA does have are ineffective.
This case strongly illustrates the fact that the fines and regulations that are within the FDA’s power to enforce are simply ineffective. The owners of these two farms have long been listed as “habitual violators” – meaning their fines are even heftier than those of most farms and they are unable to open new farms until the title has been lifted – for their various transgressions (including worker conditions, manure runoff/pollution, sexual harassment including rape and abuse, employment of illegal immigrants, and – of course – animal cruelty). Yet these people remain in business, their farms in operation; FDA fines notwithstanding.

7 – The amount of things eggs are used in and places you can buy them.
Eggs are prolific in cooking, they are used in so many places for so many different purposes. Are you sure you can remember all of them every time you go out to a restaurant? Or to the grocery store? Sure, we can remember not to order them over easy at the sketchy diner down the road, but what about that bottle of mayonnaise you just bought? Do you know where the eggs came from that were used in it? How long does mayonnaise stay on the shelves, anyway? Or how about that cake mix? We can count on the egg recall itself to blow over in a fairly limited time, but will we ever really know how many other products may have been made with those tainted eggs? No, we just won’t. There’s no way.

6 – On that note, think about how many eggs you eat on a regular basis.
According to the egg board, the average American eats 20 eggs a month – whether they come in a carton, from a restaurant, or from some other kind of food product. The egg board further breaks down this figure to say that 60% of eggs purchased in a month are used by consumers, 9% by restaurants, and the remaining 31% are used in food products. That means over 170 million of these eggs have been, or would have been, used in other food products. Can we really have any confidence at all that the recall was issued quickly enough, and enacted thoroughly enough, to think that these tainted eggs wouldn’t have made it into other aspects of our food supply? If I were a betting man…

5 – Over 1,300 salmonella cases have been reported to the CDC.
It’s not so much this number itself that’s scary, it’s the number of cases that are not going reported. The CDC admits that for every case reported, there could be as many as 30 more that go unreported. Assuming that’s not a conservative number (which is a big assumption), that’s almost 40,000 cases of salmonella – so far. Now, salmonella symptoms include nausea, diarrhea, abdominal pain, vomiting, fever, chills, and so on. And that’s for a healthy person, much less a child or someone with a weakened immune system. We’ve all known someone who has gotten the generic “food poisoning,” or we’ve been unlucky to get it ourselves. Same results. So how many of us actually reported that to the CDC, or even to our own doctor? And how many of us instead just waited it out, knowing what it was and that it would go away soon enough? Is 40,000 even close to accurate?

4 – The whole entire approach to egg safety in this country is probably, most likely, completely wrong.
Okay, here’s the thing. Egg shells are porous. It’s the only way chicks could ever develop and grow – they do need to breathe in there. But it also means that bacteria like salmonella can get inside. And it means that when you wash eggs, particularly in a massive factory operation on a conveyor belt, some of that wash is going to get inside too. Inside an egg factory, there are giant tubs of egg wash that the conveyors will move huge amounts of eggs through at a high speed. Naturally, sometimes the eggs break. And then more eggs break. But the ones that don’t break – they keep getting run through the same wash. And the risk of bacterial contamination grows exponentially. The best protection an egg can get is from residual birthing fluids from it’s mother chicken, precisely what we’re spending all this time washing off. But in the US, it’s illegal to sell unwashed eggs, even though washing them only drastically increases their risk of bacterial infection – it’s like scrubbing off their natural armor. Yet EU law, on the other hand, mandates that Grade A eggs (those for direct sale to public) must NOT be washed or cleansed. We can’t both be right.

3 – The FDA has clearly shown it cannot handle food regulation on such a large scale, yet the approval process for genetically engineered salmon – the first GE animal meant for human consumption – is about to begin.
Talk about Pandora’s Box. AquaBounty salmon is engineered to grow faster and bigger in smaller spaces than regular salmon. So salmon farms can pack more salmon in to smaller places and get the same return, yield wise. But the thing about salmon farms is, the fish escape from time to time. According to the AquaBounty patent, the engineering is only for sterile females. But the thing about fish is, they change genders from time to time. It’s just one of those things they do. If we can’t even monitor what’s going on in our food system when it comes to something as basic as chickens and eggs – on land, at a farm, being raised by a farmer we’ve had clear cause to keep our eyes on, how can we possibly dream of any sort of monitoring of GE fish in the ocean?

2 – The egg recall was announced less than two weeks ago, but it’s not the only recall going on since then.
Everybody knows about the egg recall because of it’s sheer size and the media attention. But recalls are happening all the time – just look at the FDA page that lists them. Cheese, nuts, candy bars, etc. Salmonella, listeria, and so on. It’s all there. In fact, Tyson announced a recall of 380,000 pounds of deli meats just yesterday. And while none of the other recalls currently listed is of as much significance as the egg recall, it’s an indication of a trend. A trend that is going to get much worse before it starts getting any better.

1 – The egg recall, though still growing, is only the tip of the iceberg.
Same could be said about the peanut butter recall, or the spinach recall. We haven’t yet begun to see what real devastation could be caused by the concentration of supply in our food system – but these recalls give us a pretty accurate glimpse. Over the past twenty years, the number of egg companies who own 95 percent of the eggs sold in this country has dropped from over 2,500 to less than 200. And 200 is actually a good number, when you look at how few beef, pork, and chicken suppliers are out there (less than 5 companies control the majority of production for most industrial meats in our country). Elanor at the Ethicurean recently wrote a good article summing up this issue… it is one of the best and most important reasons for eating local.

In 2006, the bagged spinach e. coli recall affected 26 states.

In 2008, 143 million pounds of ground beef was recalled.

In 2009, 4,000 peanut butter products were recalled.

And in 2010, we have our egg recall which trumps them all.

So who wants to take guesses at what 2011 and 2012 will have in store for us?

For further reading, check out this page with the latest on the recall put together by Food & Water Watch.

Mythical, magical, wonderful tomato consommé.

I’ve been waiting until the height of the tomato season to give this dish my first attempt, but man if I haven’t read about it everywhere. A consommé is one of the critical skills taught to all first year students at the CIA (that’s the culinary institute, not the intelligence one – although, maybe we’d make a few more friends internationally if we started teaching some of our boys how to make a mean soup). As I read through Michael Ruhlman’s book, The Making of a Chef, it was mentioned countless times. The delicacy of maintaining your raft, the importance of the clarity of your consommé, the power of the flavors of the clarified soup. I was intrigued at the complexity of the dish, at the science behind it.

And then I had my first taste of a tomato consommé at the Slow Food Annual Farm Dinner about a month ago. Heavenly. Incredible. It’s like a soup that takes a short-cut through your taste buds and goes immediately to the receptors in your brain and screams TOMATO! – that’s how powerful the flavor is. But even then it’s not overwhelming. It is amazing.

So I set my sights on Summer Fest 2010 week five – tomatoes. This would be my moment. My first real attempt at a tomato consommé.

At this point I realize you may think I’m getting a bit dramatic, but I assure you it is fully warranted. This is a labor and ingredient intensive dish, and in creating it you *will* be working some serious magic in the kitchen. Though I approached it with a degree of trepidation myself, there is no real reason to be afraid… and your effort will reward you in spades. Assuming that that’s what you want, you know, spades. Personally I’ve never felt a great need for spades, but I’m always getting rewarded with them. Always thought it was kind of weird. Speaking of which, if you need a spade – give me a call. I’m your man.

Anyway. Let’s making some freakin good-ass soup.

I used the Epicurious recipe as my base for this, really only made a couple small substitutions with some herbs and such.

Prep time: 20 minutes
Cook time: 1 hour
Chill time: 2-3 hours

These are very rough estimates. I made the consommé while I was preparing a dinner so I had a number of other things going, but if you focused on it solely you could get it done in an hour to an hour and a half. It does require your attention, though, so try not to get too crazy.

You will need 1 large stock pot, 1 smaller stock pot or large sauce pan, and a sieve, or a chinois if you’ve got it.

Ingredients…

- 5 lbs fresh, wonderful, luscious tomatoes – the best you can get
- 2 large onions
- 2 garlic cloves
- 1-2 lbs fresh fennel
- 2 tbsp fresh basil
- 2 tbsp fresh tarragon
- 1/4 cup fresh flat-leaf parsley
- 1 tsp black pepper
- 1 1/2 tsp sea salt
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 8 egg whites
- 1/2 cup ice, lightly crushed if cubes are large
- a large handful of cherry or grape tomatoes for garnish, sliced or halved lengthwise
- 1 1/2 teaspoons Sherry vinegar

Yes, that’s a massive amount of egg whites. I know. And the whites aren’t used in the final dish, instead it’s a tool for clarification. I reserved the egg yolks in a mason jar and used them for breakfast the next day to minimize waste. Make sure you know where your eggs are coming from and are aware of the massive egg recall that’s gonig on right now.

Okay, so first step is to coarsely chop your onions, garlic, and fennel. Reserve a few fronds of fennel for garnish, but toss the rest – along with onions and garlic – into a large stock pot with olive oil, and soften it all up over medium heat for about 12-15 minutes.

While the stock pot is warming up, coarsely chop up your tomatoes and puree in a food processor. Add puree to onion mixture, toss with sea salt and half of your pepper.

Simmer tomato puree in onions, garlic, and fennel on medium heat about 20 minutes.

Next, pour the tomato mixture through a sieve or a chinoise (I want one so bad), into a second pot.

Now that the mixture is in the second pot, you need to let it cool. You can accelerate this by putting it in the fridge for 20-30 minutes or so, or just leave it on the stove for awhile. The reason behind this is that you are soon going to put the egg whites into the mixture and you need them all to heat up together, concurrently, for it to cook properly. If you put the egg whites into a hot tomato mixture they will cook immediately.

So here’s what’s so cool about this dish. When you add the egg whites to the tomato mixture, they are going to sink to the bottom of the pan and slowly start to cook. As they cook, they will rise up through the soup, and as the proteins in the egg whites bind together they will clarify the soup and bring everything but the strong flavor of the tomatoes up to the top of the pot with them. This will then form a raft on the top layer of the soup, while underneath it continues to be clarified as it cooks.

Once the tomato mixture has cooled, put the egg whites into a separate bowl with the crushed ice (don’t use full cubes), herbs, salt, and remaining pepper. Whisk the whites into a bubbly froth, then quickly add to the tomato mixture. Whisk vigorously in the mixture a few times, then let it heat up to a simmer.

Because of the delicacy of the raft, and the importance that it is maintained and doesn’t break apart (if it breaks apart it will all mix up with the soup), you want to bring it up to a simmer very slowly. Keep a close eye on it. Once the raft is substantial, break a little hole in it like in the picture below.

As the consommé simmers, you will see bubbles, foam, come up through your hole. Spoon it out with a ladle and discard. When the bubbles stop coming and the consommé looks clear underneath, then you’re ready to take it out.

Removing the consommé from underneath the raft is a delicate procedure. You want to break as little of the raft as possible, but you have to get underneath it to remove the liquid. I had read recently about a method that Michael Symon uses for his consommé where he takes a length of plastic tubing to siphon it out, thereby making only a very small break in the raft. Well, I tried this. Didn’t work. Couldn’t get a siphon going… I imagine it would have been more successful with a restaurant size stock pot because you’d have more to work with, but with my little sauce pan.. not so much.

Instead, I just enlarged my break a little bit more with a ladle and spooned it all out as gently as I could. Once you’ve removed all of the consommé from the pot, refrigerate it for 2-3 hours and serve chilled with a frond of fennel, and a slice or two of tomato. Discard the raft.

So mine went pretty well. It was still a bit cloudy (I would have clearly failed my CIA Skills exam), but for a first go I felt pretty good about it. And, cloudy or not, it was incredibly, amazingly delicious. Worth every minute of the effort.

I’d be lying if I said I’m going to make this regularly (though I would if I had the time), but for special occasions and guests it is a wonderful dish for the summertime. This has also put the idea of a corn consommé into my head, which – although I’ve never heard of or tasted one – I think could be really spectacular and I’m going to try to attempt it before the summer is out.

So what else is being posted for Summer Fest tomato week?

• Nicole at Pinch My Salt: What to do with slow-roasted tomatoes
• Alison at Food2: Heirloom tomatoes
• The FN Dish: Tyler’s Ultimate Tomato Salads
• The Gilded Fork: Celebrating summer lusciousness with a tomato dossier and recipes
• Diane and Todd at White on Rice Couple: Sun-dried tomatoes (actually made in the sun!)
• Paige at The Sister Project: 3 substantial, healthy, vegetarian tomatoey main dishes
• Liz at the Cooking Channel: Easy Tomato Tart
• Kelly at Just a Taste: Tomato Jam
• Alexis at Food Network UK: The seven deadly tomato sins
• Gluten-Free Girl and the Chef: Heirloom Tomato Tart with Parmesan Crust
• Michelle at Healthy Eats: Top 10 Things to Do With Tomatoes
• Marilyn at Simmer Till Done: Cherry Tomato & Maytag Blue Beignets
• Alana at Eating From the Ground Up: Roasted Green Salsa (green zebras and tomatillos), and how late August makes her hurt for New Mexico
• Caron at San Diego Foodstuff: Chunky Garden Gazpacho with Flowered Corn Tortillas and Melissa Clark’s Tomato Tarte Tatin
• Caroline at the Wright Recipes: Savory Tomato Crumble
• Judy of Divina Cucina: Tomatoes the Italian way
• Tigress in a Pickle: Over 50 ways to preserve tomatoes in jars

And if you haven’t already, take a moment to check out this fabulous tomato and corn pie or heirloom tomato stuffed with shrimp.

FireWorks, an upscale pizza and beer joint, is opening in Arlington. Today, I think, being their first official open-to-the-public day. My wife and I were fortunate enough to be invited to their soft opening event on Friday, and were really impressed with the place.

So look, this place is literally right next door to Amanda’s office. It’s a block away from mine. Mike, Ali’s husband, now works there. Many more of our friends live or work within 15 minutes of the spot. In all honesty we’d probably start going there somewhat regularly just from those details alone. But there is so much more icing on this cake, I just had to share some words about it.

Let’s start with the beer. The moment you walk in the door you know these people know and love their beer. There is a large open windowed room to your immediate left where you can see all the kegs that are currently tapped. The keg lines run up, out of the room, over your head, and back down over to the bar through heavy industrial metal pipes into two rows of beautiful draughts. On draught, you will find offerings from Allagash, Bell’s, Duck Rabbit, Founder’s, Lagunitas, New Holland, Stone, Victory, and the likes. On top of that, they have over 100 bottled beers to choose from, and beer to go – they even sell and fill growlers there. If you’re a craft beer drinker of any sort, these words alone should get you in the door – and if you’re not, then this is the kind of place you need to go to if you’d like to become one.

But as I mentioned, it doesn’t end with the beer. The food was fantastic. The menu is primarily specialty pizzas, but they don’t neglect their appetizers and also had a pretty decent sandwich list. I started my meal with a wonderful spinach, duck, and spiced pecan salad with orange vinaigrette. They’re not taking short-cuts with their ingredients either, sourcing much of the produce, cheese, and meats from local and sustainable purveyors – I recognized many names off the menu including Cherry Glen Farms (cheeses), Baker Farms (hams and meats), Fields of Athenry (produce), and more.

Long story short, this place is doing it all right. And dessert? Three words.

Chocolate stout cheesecake.

Having this kind of spot move right into your life like this is certainly a gift. But truth be told, on behalf of my wallet and my waistline, I can’t help but be just a bit scared as well.

Why is that, you may ask? (Look, I know you’re probably not really asking, but it’s, you know – a literary device – and it makes me feel better to pretend). Sadly, the answer is simply that there really hasn’t been much running this summer.

Which means any hopes I had of a marathon in the fall have been out the window for some time now. It’s taken awhile to come to grips with that – as a newbie runner, you tend to lock on to goals pretty quickly and easily (or at least I do, anyway). This may or may not be why I haven’t mentioned it in awhile.

I still love running. I’m still going to run a marathon. But as it turned out, I underestimated the seriousness of my PFPS injury that I got from running a half-marathon back in May. It made it pretty much impossible for me to top three miles without limping around in pain for a couple days afterward. I can do short runs okay, but I have to stay away from hills and, if I am to increase my mileage at all, I have to do it in tiny (read: agonizingly slow) fractions.

Also, the DC area in the summer is obscenely hot and nasty. I’m not sure how I could have trained through July/August even had I been in perfect health. It is brutal out there.

So I look forward to the fall, cooler weather, and a return to more mileage. In the meantime I’ve kept up with cross-training, and have been doing as many miles as possible on a treadmill to build up my joints. Perhaps I will consider another half-marathon before the year is out, but I’m reluctant to fast-track any training the way I did before as I’m sure I’ll wind up in the same place again. I haven’t run in any races all summer and I miss that. At the very least, I will tackle a 5k or two, maybe an 8k or 10k. No solid plans at the moment though.

While I’m on the topic, I did want to make a mention – as I did on my facebook page yesterday – that Mark Bittman has started a running blog on the Runner’s World site. I have high hopes for this as one of the things that interests me about running is how to build the perfect diet to support the habit. You don’t need a subscription or membership or anything like that to check it out.. but there’s not too much there just yet though.

Have you been keeping up with any new, exciting physical activities this summer? Or a favorite thing that you’ve always done? What got you outside this summer?

First a word about the ingredients. You *need* fresh peaches here. Don’t even bother with the canned stuff. It’s just not worth the time. Amanda and I were on a trip down to the eastern shore recently and I couldn’t resist the myriad local produce stands along the side of the road, so I had stocked up on more fresh peaches than we could probably handle without some clever tactics. This bread pudding calls for three pounds of peaches – which is somewhere in the neighborhood of 7-9 peaches – so it’s a good way to tackle quite a few of them.

As an aside, I had planned to write a post about our little weekend beach trip, but the food experiences there just made me all kinds of stabby and I really didn’t feel I needed to write such a negative post. Suffice it to say, after driving through about 2-3 hours worth of Maryland’s tastiest corn fields, I was not a happy camper to be served canned corn at all the restaurants. Thumbs down.

Anyway, enough of that, who wants some bread pudding?

Prep time: 20-25 minutes
Bake time: 1 hour 15 minutes

Ingredients…

- 3 pounds peaches
- 4 cups torn French or Challah bread
- 1 can (14 ounces) sweetened condensed milk
- 3 eggs
- 4 tbsp butter (half-stick)
- 1/2 cup peach nectar
- 1 1/4 cup hot water
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 1/2 cup crushed pecans
- 1/2 cup whole pecans

Ingredients for sauce…

- 1/2 cup peach nectar
- 1 tbsp honey
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 2 tbsp heavy cream

As tends to be the case with baking, there are a lot of big question marks on the food miles chart this time. I’m particularly not really sure about the condensed milk, as I don’t know much about the process behind it at all, and I’m next to certain that it’s not from happy cows. I gave that stuff a mean glare when using it though, so that helped me feel a little better anyway. I’m sure if I could get accurate counts on the mileage many of those products traveled it would put me well over the 5,000 mark. I wish, at the very least, I could source some nuts and spices that were Fair Trade certified, but I can’t even seem to find that much.

And so on to the recipe.

First step is to skin the peaches. This is done by using the same method for skinning tomatoes that we used a little ways back. Make an X with knife on the bottom of the peach, and drop it into water at a rolling boil for about 5 minutes. Remove, and dunk in a bowl full of ice water to stop any carryover cooking. After they have cooled in the bowl, you should be able to take them out and the skin will slide right off.

Once the skins are removed, dice up the peaches. Size of the dice is up to you – if you want big peachy bites, leave them a bit large.

Pour condensed milk and crack the three eggs into a large bowl, mix well.

Tear or cut the bread up into small bite sized pieces, and add to the bowl. Reserve some bread for the topping. Mix well and moisten everything.

Melt the butter in the microwave, and add it to the bowl.

Add diced peaches, vanilla, cinnamon, hot water, peach nectar, and crushed pecans to the bowl.

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.

After contents of the bowl are well mixed and saturated, pour it out into a 13×9 baking pan. Add some larger pieces of bread and whole pecans to the top, moistening slightly.

Bake at 325 for 1 hour and 15 minutes, use the toothpick test for doneness.

While the bread pudding is baking, you can make a simple sauce on the stovetop.

Add 1/2 cup peach nectar, honey, cinnamon, vanilla, and heavy cream to a small saucepan over low heat. Mix well, and reduce to desired consistency over heat.

Remove bread pudding from the oven when it’s done, and serve with some vanilla ice cream or whipped cream, and top the ice cream with your sauce. A little garnish of mint won’t hurt either.

Of course, I was so eager to eat the pudding I forgot to sauce it before the picture. You’ll have to use your imagination.

Peaches have also made another recent appearance here on MSCK – if you missed it, have a look at my peach salsa recipe.

So what else is going on today in the Summer Fest world of stone fruits?

• Sara at Cooking Channel: Savory Stone Fruit recipes.
• Todd and Diane of White on Rice Couple: Riesling Poached Pluots.
• Margaret at A Way to Garden: What is stone fruit, anyhow? Plus: Clafoutis batter revisited.
• Caroline at The Wright Recipes: Ginger and Vanilla Poached Peaches.
• The FN Dish: Paula’s Perfect Peach Cobbler.
• Alison at Food2: Peachy Party Foods.
• Kelly at Just a Taste: Peaches & Cream Cupcakes.
• Liz on Healthy Eats: Puttin’ Up Peach Pickles, Compote and More.
• Food Network UK: How to Poach a Peach.
• Judy of Divina Cucina: Chocolate Amaretti Baked Apricots.
• The Gilded Fork: dossier & recipes featuring peaches, apricots, nectarines, plums, cherries, almonds, coconuts.
• Cate at Sweetnicks: Blueberry Peach Smoothies.
• Tara at Tea & Cookies: Making Peach Jam.
• Caron of San Diego Foodstuff: grilled peach parfait and coconut peach gazpacho.
• Gluten-Free Girl and the Chef: gluten-free peach-blueberry buckle.
• Paige at The Sister Project: A Summer Fruit Whatchamacallit (not a pie, not a crisp, but delicious).
• Tigress in a Jam: nectarine preserve with summer savory and white pepper.

Coconut-peach gazpacho? Seriously? Yum.

The fruits of my gardening labors have been coming in somewhat slowly, but very steadily. I have three different healthy Green Zebra tomato plants, and two Early Girls – making for a pretty steady stream of tomato production, but never really leaving me with more than I can deal with. I also have one Cherokee Purple plant which has one great big tomato on it, but only the one. Both the Zebras and the Girls have so far turned out to be extraordinarily delicious.

Unfortunately I’m losing maybe a third of the tomatoes to blossom-end rot, and as I’ve mentioned before there is a pretty much constant onslaught of these tomato hornworm bastards. They are huge, and have an appetite to match.

I catch at least one or two every couple of days.

The black chiles are maturing to a beautiful bright red color that practically glows.

They have about the same heat as a jalapeño but a little smoother flavor, it’s a more subtle heat.

My plumeria has started flowering.

Plumeria is a tropical plant used in Hawai’i to make leis. It has a wonderful fragrance and a flower that you don’t typically see in Northern Virginia. My father realized years ago that he could bring plumeria back from the islands (where my brother and his family have lived for nearly 20 years now) and grow it in containers here, back east, while bringing it indoors to go dormant through the winter. This is the first year I’ve grown any but it’s doing very well out on the deck.

I’m also embarking on a new project – growing shiitake mushrooms. I’ve done the whole mushroom-kit-in-a-box thing, with some success now (grew them in a kitchen cabinet), so I wanted to move on to something new. It also didn’t hurt that one of the main purveyors of shiitake spores and logs in this area has been a close family friend for years and years – Paul Goland of Hardscrabble Enterprises. He doesn’t seem to have much of a web presence, though.

There isn’t much to show you now, cause all I’ve got is a log with spores injected into it and sealed. I’ll show you anyway, though. You ready for it?

Here it comes.

Log!

You can see the spots where the spores have been implanted. To start production, I have to “shock” the log into action by placing it in cold water, fully submerged, for 18 to 24 hours. So I have to give it a bath. Then, mushrooms will emerge in a few days and be ready to pick a week later. Up to a dozen crops may be induced every 6-8 weeks during warm weather, and the log will supposedly last up to 3 or 4 years.

I’m going to start production on it this weekend, hopefully. Can’t wait to see what happens.

I hope everyone’s been having a great summer.. it will be September in the blink of an eye. I don’t think I’m really going to do any secondary fall plantings, but maybe. I’ve already started to plan what I’m going to do differently next summer though.