Somehow I blinked and it’s mid August. Labor Day is in sniffing distance, the days are getting shorter, the stores are full of sweaters, and I seem to have missed summer. Every year I have a mental list of things that I will do in the summer. Swimming in a cold pool, then lying in the sun until my swimsuit is dry, then jumping back in. Going on the ferris wheel at the pier. Sitting in my garden as the sun gets low, drinking Pimm’s Cups and chatting with good friends. And here it is nearly September and there are so many things still on my list.
But one thing I have done is enjoyed the summer produce. I love the berries and the peaches, the watermelon and the plums. But nothing screams summer quite like corn and tomatoes. These vegetables, so anemic and disappointing if you venture to eat them fresh during any other time of the year, bust out into full, sweet glory in the summertime. More than anything else, summer is eating corn, spread with butter, each sweet juicy kernel bursting in your mouth. And summer is the smell of red, ripe tomatoes, the juices dripping down your chin.
This pie is summer. I saw the recipe last year, when it was printed in the dear, departed pages of Gourmet, and filed it for later. Later is now, because this pie is phenomenal. Sweet crisp corn and juicy tomatoes, bound together with creaminess and cheddar cheese, and if that wasn’t enough to tempt you, the pie crust here isn’t a regular old pie crust, but buttermilk biscuit dough, rolled thin. This pie is the taste of summer camp, of fireflies, of jumping in a cold lake and sweet months of vacation. This pie is the summer I’ve been missing.
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Tags: buttermilk·corn·Tomatoes·Vegetarian
We are in full on girly mode in the Savour Fare household. The Nuni is two and a half years old, and is seriously interested in the following (in no particular order): twirly dresses, crowns, glass slippers, toenail polish, my makeup, shiny shoes, and anything with sparkles. I would freak out in a feminist quandary, except I have a fuzzy memory of being VERY into princesses and makeup when I was quite young myself, and I am a perfectly acceptable adult with a career and a family and a tendency to wear Old Navy tee shirts to work.
In the Nuni’s world, her current favorite book is one called “Fancy Nancy”, about a hapless girl who LOVES being fancy — she likes to write her name with a plume (which is a fancy word for feather), her favorite color is fuchsia (which is a fancy word for purple), and she can’t WAIT to learn French, because EVERYTHING sounds fancy in French. Poor Fancy Nancy is beset by a thoroughly plain family, who thrills her one night by dressing up in accessories, going to a restaurant and ordering parfaits, which are “French for ice cream sundaes”.
Now, accuracy aside, parfaits are a very fancy dessert, and as the parent of a wee one who loves all things fancy, I thought I would accommodate her wishes and make them. As she also loves all things pink (as she regularly tells me, “Pink is my favrit color, mamma.”) I thought I would turn to the pinkest of all pink things — rhubarb. Sure, it doesn’t sport the aggressive magenta of anything made with beets, but for rosy, fancy, girly pinkness, rhubarb is your ingredient of choice.
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Tags: Kid Friendly·rhubarb
I don’t really understand the marketing of Mother’s Day. I see all these floral pastel cards and delicate lacy handkerchiefs and early morning breakfast in bed and advertisements for “brunch” and “afternoon tea” with fussy hats implied. Let me set the record straight. I am a mom, and I know a lot of moms. An informal survey of what our ideal Mother’s Day would look like involves 1) sleeping in; 2) a pedicure with some celebrity gossip magazines; 3) sushi; 4) chocolate and 5) lots of wine. Maybe this holiday doesn’t sell so well on a greeting card, but it sounds pretty awesome to me. Too awesome to be an also-ran Mother’s Day. Maybe I will name it something else, like “Saturday”. And it will fall once a week.
If your Mother’s Day veers towards the more traditional, or you’re trying to fill the time between pedicures, sushi and wine, try cooking brunch at home, and avoid the overpriced and overcrowded restaurant brunch options. (For more on this, see Brooke of FoodWoolf’s insider’s take on the restaurant Mother’s Day brunch. If you’re not feeling confident in your hollandaise sauce, or you’re a late sleeper yourself and don’t want a giant fuss in the morning, this is the brunch dish for you.
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Tags: brunch·cheese·eggs·holiday·Mother's Day
