blueberries

Cool, and Light, and Best of All, Pre-Made

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summertimeWith all due respect to the Gershwin Brothers and DuBose Heyward, they must have been high when they wrote, “Summertime, and the living is easy.”

‘Cause it ain’t.summernicEven when people lived very close to the land, in previous centuries, summer was no golden hazed, idealized dream world of fried catfish, starry nights, and summer breezes.

If you laid around in the summer instead of working your non-air-conditioned fingers to the sweaty bone come winter time you and your family would likely starve.  The summer is time for tending the fields, harvesting and canning, and killing, butchering, and smoking.

vacay traffic

A vacation traffic jam III Painting by Hilde Goossens

Nowadays we bustle around taking the kids to camp or intersession care.  At work we’re either filling in for vacationing co-workers or getting ahead for and/or catching up from our own vacation.  It’s hot, the traffic’s a mess, and tempers are short.  We’re horrifying ourselves shopping for a bathing suit, aggravating ourselves by returning said bathing suit, or giving up and getting no bathing suit at all.hot flashI am not even joking a little bit when I say I am over the summer already and impatiently awaiting the State Fair and sweater weather (the feelings may be exacerbated slightly by these hellish, fury-provoking flashes of heat I’ve been experiencing lately).

This week’s newly revamped summer recipe can be eaten for breakfast, as a snack, or dessert.  It contains seasonal fruit, and it’s vegetarian, but can be made vegan, gluten-free, keto or paleo.OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAIt’s chia pudding.  Chia seeds are small pips which swell and soften when mixed with liquid.  It’s similar to tapioca pudding but is so much quicker, easier, and healthier.

I’ll give you a quick basic recipe, then break down ingredients so you can make substitutions and create something that is uniquely yours, tailored to the tastes of you and your family.

Summer Chia Seed Puddingchia pudding recipe

1 ½ cups milk

2/3 cup whole chia seeds

3 tablespoons liquid sweetener

½ teaspoon extract or flavoring of your choice

pinch of kosher salt

1 cup berries

Garnish and topping

Directions

Place berries in bowl and mash almost completely with potato masher.

Put milk, chia seeds, sweetener, flavoring and salt into bowl with berries.  Stir ingredients together.  You’ll feel the seeds start to absorb the liquid and swell. 

Cover and refrigerate for three hours or overnight, until seeds have swollen and softened to the consistency of tapioca. 4 servings.perfect chia puudingMilk-use anything from whole milk to fat-free; white, buttermilk, chocolate, or strawberry.  Don’t use anything thicker than whole because it will become greasy cement.  You can also use nut milk, coconut water, or fruit juice—cook’s choice.

Chia seeds-you can find them everywhere.  Buy black or white ones, organic or conventionally grown, it doesn’t make any difference.syrupsLiquid sweetener-Honey, maple syrup, agave, corn syrup.  If it’s sweet and you can pour it from bottle, you can use it.

Berries-they’re needed here because they add extra liquid to the pudding.  But another very juicy fruit works such as very ripe peaches, citrus fruits, or even tomatoes.juicy fruitsMix-ins and toppings-I love toasted pecans and dried cherries.  But what about salted peanuts and dried banana?  Or chocolate chips and biscotti pieces?  Or pomegranate seeds and pistachios?

Service-Ladle it into jars and sprinkle on toppings.  Then grab and go from the fridge or stick them in a cooler for road trips.  Or layer it (unset) into parfait glasses with cookies or pound cake for a dessert trifle.chia trifleThe whole idea of this chia pudding is that it’s stress-free and open to a multitude of interpretations.

And while summer may be anything but easy, this cool creamy treat truly is.

summer village

Not an actual depiction of an actual summer.

Thanks for your time.

Happiness by the Pound

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I really like a dish detergent that smells nice.  For a long time I used one that smelled like green apple Jolly Ranchers.  But it became harder and harder to find, until I had to look for another.

So there I was in Kroger, facing the great wall of dish detergent.  They were every color of the rainbow and every botanical aroma in the olfactory rainbow.

Then I spotted a bottle of creamy violet liquid.  And ever since the first grade when I saw purple socks on Donny Osmond, all shades of purple have been my favorite color.

It was Palmolive blueberry/almond.  I love blueberries.  By themselves or in stuff; don’t care.  Last weekend I was at Maple View Dairy and had their scrumptious blueberry ice cream.  I even have a small blueberry bush in my yard.  Unfortunately, it only produces about twenty berries—and I have to arm wrestle neighborhood birds for those.

This is Rodney.  He sucks.

Dumb birds.

Back at Kroger I unscrewed the cap and took a sniff.  It smelled just like sun-warmed blueberries, and lightly toasted almonds.

I took it home.  It’s become my brand.  The best is when I squeeze some onto a hot pan.  I get a face full of steam that smells like warm desserts stuffed with blueberries and almonds.

Which got me thinking…if hot dish detergent smells like something I’d like to taste, what if I baked something with the same ingredients, but without all the soap?  My nose was already convinced it was a great idea.

I decided to try the combo in a pound cake.  But I didn’t want it to be an ordinary pound cake.  The combination of blueberries and almonds remind me of hot summer nights out on the back porch, quiet country lanes, and small town farmers markets.

My pound cake would be an old-fashioned, traditional pound cake.  That means no leavening (baking soda and baking powder).  The bulk of the lift would come from the air beaten into the batter.  The NC state fair even has two different categories for the pound cake contest; one with leavening and a traditional one, without.

It’s also started in a cold oven.  The slower heating gets every last bit of rise out of it before the cake starts to set.

Traditionally, a pound cake was made with a pound of butter, flour, eggs, and sugar.  My recipe uses cups, ‘cause that’s just how I roll.  And the salt in the recipe is only for enhancing flavor.

Blueberry Almond Pound Cake

blueberry pound

Ingredients:

6 eggs

1 cup butter (2 sticks)

3 cups sugar + 2 tablespoons

3 cups all-purpose flour (divided)

1 cup heavy cream

1/2 teaspoon almond extract

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 1/2 cup fresh blueberries

1-1 1/2 cup raw sliced almonds

big pinch of salt

Instructions

Generously grease and flour tube pan and set out eggs and butter to allow them to come to room temperature.

In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar until smooth.  Add the eggs, one at a time, beating for one minute after each addition.

Reserve 2 tablespoons of flour and sift the rest with the salt and add it to the creamed mixture alternately with the heavy cream, starting and finishing with the dry ingredients.

Mix until fully incorporated, and quite fluffy.  Stir in the vanilla and almond extract.

Toss the blueberries with 2 tablespoons flour to coat, and gently fold into batter.

Pour into prepared pan.  Sprinkle almonds on top, and then sprinkle 2 tablespoons sugar over.

Place in a cold oven. Turn the oven to 300 and bake for 80-90 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, but moist.

Cool for 20 minutes then remove from pan and flip back over so that almonds are on top.

Serve with more berries and ice cream.  Or, Spread butter on slices and toast in oven until golden brown.  You should get about 16 slices.  Store in airtight container.

Don’t let this cake intimidate you.  Remember, this is the way folks baked for millennia.  Only you have the advantage of an electric mixer.  In addition, you probably don’t have to milk a cow, or fondle a chicken for her eggs.

Thanks for your time.

Honey, It’s You

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So there I was, seven years old, laying on my stomach with my pants down, trying not to cry  while my friend’s mother tried to gently pull the stinger out of my butt.

When I was informed that after a honey bee stings a person, it dies, I thought it was a fitting punishment for the mortifying position into which it had thrust me.  But the bee was actually a victim of my adversarial relationship with gravity (I’d fallen keester first on it while the poor thing was just minding its own bee’s wax).

I may not have appreciated honey bees when I was a child, but I do now.

They’re actually much more useful and impressive than most people you’ll meet today.

Honey bees do two huge things for us humans.

In the US alone, they pollinate 14.6 billion (yes, I said billion, with a b) dollars of crops a year.  They are the sole pollinator of almonds.  Without their industriousness, countless crops would be greatly reduced.  If you think produce is expensive now, think about paying $50 for a head of broccoli—if you were lucky enough to find one.

And then we get to their sticky, amber-colored signature product; honey.

Before we even get to its yumminess and versatility, we need to talk about honey’s miraculous properties.

Unlike just about every other food you could name, honey never goes wonky.  Archeologists found honey in 2200 year old clay jars that was safe to eat and still yummy.

It has antibacterial and anti-fungal properties.  Put it on a cut—no infection.  Dab it on a zit, let it sit for 10 minutes or so and rinse it off.  The redness will go away, and in the morning, the pimple will be gone.

And it tastes so good.  The thing I love about honey is that not only will it sweeten anything it’s added to; it also adds its distinctive flavor.  And the flavor varies according to which flora the bees danced their pollination mambo.  The rule of thumb is; the darker the honey, the stronger the flavor.  My new obsession is buckwheat.  It has a surfeit of “honey-ness”.  It adds its uniqueness to all kinds of recipes.

Blueberry buttermilk chia seed pudding

blueberry chia

1 ½ cups low fat or fat free buttermilk

2/3 cup chia seeds

3 tablespoons honey

½ teaspoon vanilla extract

Pinch of kosher salt

1 cup blueberries

Directions:

Place blueberries in a bowl and mash with a potato masher.

Put buttermilk, chia seeds, honey, vanilla and salt into the bowl along with the blueberries.  Whisk until fully blended.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Cover and refrigerate for three hours or overnight, until the chia seeds have swollen and softened to the size and consistency of tapioca. 4 servings.

Gramma’s Cough Syrup

cough syrup

Juice of 1 lemon

¼ cup honey

¼ cup Bourbon

Whisk together and drink at room temp, or spoon into hot tea.

Chrissy’s Dressing

chrissy's dressing

1 tablespoon honey

1 tablespoon Dijon mustard

1 shallot

¼ cup Balsamic vinegar

1/3 cup olive oil (approx.)

Salt and pepper to taste

Put first four ingredients into a blender or food processor.  Blend ‘til smooth.  Slowly add oil until it is a dressing consistency.  Season, and taste for seasoning.  For best flavor, eat within an hour.  Makes about one cup.

And if you’ve never tried creamed honey, give it a go.  A schmear makes a piece of toasted multi-grain totally taste like decadent French toast.

You may have heard of colony collapse disorder.  They truly are in peril.  So, support your local honey bee.

Don’t sit on them.

Thanks for your time.

Liberté, égalité, blueberry

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While in office as president of France, Charles De Gaulle said, “How can you govern a country which has two hundred and forty-six varieties of cheese?”

Currently there are over 600 distinct types in production there.  And they take their cheese very seriously.

They have a government agency which tightly restricts cheese and many other products.  Once a food has this designation, you just can’t produce it anywhere or in any manner willy-nilly.

Authentic brie has to be made in the Ile de France.  And, the milk can only come from a cow.  No goat, sheep, or whale milk allowed (it really exists and I would totally pay to see somebody milk a whale).

They don’t mess around when it comes to carbs, either.

Boulangeries are bread bakeries.  And the French government has some very strong ideas on the making and selling of it.  Just to be called a boulangerie, each location must choose their own flour, knead their own dough, and bake on premises.

The bake shops in France are separated into two groups.  In one group everyone must vacation in July, the other, August.  This is to make sure all the bakeries won’t close at the same time.  The only other business considered this essential to the welfare of the people of France is pharmacies.  They too, are on staggered vacation schedules.

Sugar is taken quite seriously, as well.  Most French folk purchase sugary baked goods at a place called a patisserie.  To be called a patisserie the shop must employ a licensed maître pâtissier (master pastry chef), who has gone through lengthy training, apprenticeship, and a long and difficult written test.  There are combination boulangerie/patisserie shops, but they must adhere to all the rules for both types of shops.

Did you know the French helped our fledgling nation during its struggle for independence in many vital ways?

They supplied 90% (you read that right—90) of the gunpowder used by the Colonists.

Contrary to being a bunch of “cheese-eating surrender monkeys”, they sent over more than 250,000 soldiers, including Lafayette and Rochambeau.  French ships threw up a blockade that almost kept the British Navy bottled up in their harbors in England.

I’ve often thought that many in the ruling elite probably regretted this martial assistance when two years after the Americans “brexitted” English rule, the French people revolted and years of chaos and slaughter ensued.

So this week to celebrate our own independence and express gratitude with the French, I have created a French dessert; a galette, a rustic, free form pie, with brie.  There’s an American thrust in the choice of fruit, and the store-bought nature of the crust (using my God-given right as an American to half-ass it).

Old Glory galette

galette

1 refrigerated pie crust

8 ounces brie

1 ½ cup fresh blueberries

1 cup frozen cherries, thawed and drained

2 teaspoons very finely minced fresh rosemary

Juice and zest of one lemon

Pinch of salt

2 tablespoons light brown sugar

1 beaten egg

2 tablespoons sanding sugar: a large grain decorating sugar that sparkles and won’t dissolve while baking

Preheat oven to 350.  Place parchment paper on a cookie sheet.

Lay the crust into the center of the parchment-lined sheet.Cut the rind off the brie and cut into strips about ¼ X 2 inches.  Leaving a 2 ½ inch border around the outside of the crust, layer the brie onto the crust.

In a bowl, combine blueberries, cherries, rosemary, lemon zest, salt, and brown sugar.  Spoon 2/3 of the mixture over the brie.

Fold the border of the crust up and around the outer edge.  Put the rest of the berry/cherries on the center of the galette.

Brush the crust with the beaten egg and sprinkle with the sanding sugar.

Bake for 20-25 minutes or until golden brown and bubbly.  Let sit 10 minutes before slicing.  Serves 6.

This is a festive, easy dessert for a July 4th picnic or cookout.  And if you want to get all French-ified and fancy, make your own pastry dough, and make six individual galettes.

And when you serve them, you speak in a French accent.  Just like Pepe le Pew.

Thanks for your time.

Ate My Fill On Blueberry Hill

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About six years ago, I was disgusted.  And also, scornful.

image(1)

That’s me in 11th grade with my best buddy, Waldo.  Fat and spotty–it’s a wonder that boys weren’t lined up around the clock…

Since junior high my weight had stayed around 185.  I’d fluctuate; from an infrequent low of 160 to my max weight of 227 after The Kid’s birth.

But finally, I made a decision.  My weight was creeping back up to 200, and my clothes felt tight and uncomfortable.  I was sick and tired of being fat.

This time, I made two changes that made all the difference.

I increased my activity level from nonexistent to light.  As I got healthier, I moved more.

And I finally realized that losing weight was just the beginning.  I had to keep the weight off once I reached my goal.  But I also knew there was no way I could live the rest of my life only eating rice cakes and poached chicken.  A life without potato salad and cake was not a life in which I wanted to participate.

My primary strategy would be to limit calories.  One meal per day would have a maximum of 300 calories.  Then I’d eat a normal dinner with unlimited fresh fruit or veg between meals and a bite of something sweet before bed.

This is an actual picture of me, grazing.

This I could live with.

I had another tactic.  I would absolutely not eat flavorless “diet food”.  I held “frou-frou” food in complete disdain.  Most healthy swaps little resembled the food they were imitating, and not only did they not hit the spot, they had no idea where the spot was, or what to do with the spot if, on the offside chance, the spot was located.

But.

If there’s a healthier option for something, I give it a go.  If I’m unable to tell the difference between the more voluptuous version and its healthier variation, I go for healthier.

This diet philosophy worked.  It’s been five years now, and my weight stays around 128 pounds.  I wished I’d figured it out decades ago.

Last week when Petey and I were in Whole Foods, Demo Specialist Joe DiBario had a table set up and was serving Portobello sliders.  For dessert, he’d made a delicious treat that I ended up buying.  At home, after I polished it off, I called the store and asked for the recipe.

It’s a creamy blueberry pudding topped with goji berries and cooked dried apples.  I could eat a bowl of the apples and goji by themselves.  They’d make an awesome topping for all kinds of things, like oatmeal, or pancakes, or even on pork chops.

It becomes pudding by using chia seeds, a food that a few years ago I would have laughed at, not eaten.  Chia seeds are insanely good for you and when allowed to sit in a liquid will swell and form into a texture that is quite similar to tapioca pudding.

Team Leader Andrea Mastrobuono, was kind enough to act as a go-between, get the recipe from Joe, and send it to me to include in today’s column.

Blueberry Chia Pudding with Turmeric Apples and Goji Berries

Blueberry chia pudding:

blueberry puddng

1 cup chia seeds

3 cups apple cider

½ cup crushed blueberries + ¼ cup whole

Zest and juice of ½ lime

½ tablespoon honey

¼ teaspoon allspice

Pinch of salt

Combine all ingredients in a bowl and whisk together. Refrigerate for 3 hours.

Turmeric apples:

turmeric apples

1 cups agave syrup

Juice and zest of ½ lime

Pinch of salt

1 tablespoon turmeric

1 cup dried apples

In a small saucepan, combine agave, lime, salt and turmeric and bring it to a simmer. Remove from heat and pour over dried apples.

Goji berries:

goji

¼ cup goji berries

¼ cup orange juice

Cover Goji berries with OJ and let them sit at room temperature for 15 minutes.

Assemble the dish with your pudding as the base and top it with turmeric apples, and goji berries.

Makes 8-10 servings at around 200 calories each.

This pudding is the kind of thing I want to eat on a rainy day fresh from the shower.  Whether you’re watching your weight or not, it’s delicious.  But it just happens to be better for you than a handful of Flintstones chew-ables.

I loved Romper Room, but Miss Carol never, not once, saw me in her fickin’ magic mirror.

Definitely, happily, on the do-bee list.

 

Thanks for your time.

Pucker up

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What’s better than lounging around your pool, drinking a thick, creamy, chocolate milkshake?  Or if you’d rather, a daiquiri; you be you.

How about Antonio Banderas holding that glass for you, and bringing the straw to your lips.

You know…I don’t even need the pool, the milkshake, or the boat.

What’s better than lounging around your pool, sipping on a drink held by Antonio Banderas?

Drinking from a glass held by Antonio Banderas while lounging around the pool on your disgustingly opulent yacht.

In that same vein, what’s better than a creamy lemon cheesecake?

full cheesecake

A creamy lemon cheesecake that’s unbelievably, insanely, easy to make, and topped with a lemony blueberry streusel, that’s what.

When I started cooking in earnest, I loved to pick up the little cookbooks in the checkout line in the supermarket.  My favorites are the Pillsbury Cook-Off booklets.  They have the top recipes from all categories.  I purchased my favorite, which I still have and use, in 1994.

Although there are quite a few dishes in it that I still prepare, there’s one recipe in it that I’ve made literally hundreds of times.  It alone was more than worth the price (which back then was all of $2.75).

As always, I played with it, tweaked a few things, and made the recipe my own.  The newest twist is the addition of blueberries.  I love them, but my mom’s really crazy for those navy nuggets.  She is whom I had in mind when I made the change.

It would make a terrific dessert for Easter dinner.  And it travels great, in case you’re doing dinner elsewhere.

Vanilla bean lemon cheesecake with blueberry streusel

lemon blueberry cheesecake

Crust:

1-18.25 ounce package lemon cake mix

½ cup butter, softened

Zest of 1 lemon

Filling:

2-8 ounce packages of cream cheese, softened

3 large eggs

1-8 ounce container lemon yogurt

1-16 ounce can lemon frosting

1 vanilla bean

Topping:

1-2 cups fresh blueberries

Heat oven to 325 degrees. Lightly spray bottom of 9 or 10-inch spring form pan with non-stick cooking spray.  Place a piece of spayed parchment that is about 2 inches larger all the way around over the bottom, then clip the bottom and ring together, letting parchment hang outside. 

Blend cake mix, butter, and zest in large bowl at low speed until crumbly. Reserve 1 cup of crumb mixture for topping. Press remaining mixture into bottom and 1 ½ inches up sides of pan.  Using a metal measuring cup to help form it will get a smooth, even, crust.

Beat cream cheese, eggs, yogurt, frosting, and vanilla bean innards in same bowl at medium speed with whisk attachment until completely smooth. Pour into crust-lined pan. Very gently, one at a time, place the blueberries evenly on top.  Sprinkle reserved crumb mixture evenly over berries and filling.

Bake 1 to 1 ½ hours or until center is set, but slightly jiggly and edges are light golden brown. Cool 30 minutes. Run knife around sides of pan to loosen. Remove sides of pan, then carefully slide the parchment off the pan bottom onto serving plate and trim the excess paper. Refrigerate 2 hours before serving.  Slice with unwaxed dental floss or serrated knife dipped into very hot water.  Sliced thinly—and you really should, this serves 16.

lc4

Store leftovers in the fridge.

This makes a delicious lemon cheesecake.  But the only thing limiting the potential flavor is what kind of cake mix, frosting, and yogurt you pick.  You could also combine flavors, like chocolate and coffee, vanilla/pomegranate, or orange/caramel.

Heck, this fall you could go nuts and get your pumpkin spice on.

QzifXu7

Or not.

Thanks for your time.