My boyfriend has been practically begging me for weeks to make him a batch of homemade jam. He keeps dropping little hints, like putting post-its that read “fill me” on all of the jam jars in the refridgerator. The other day I was getting ready for work and say that he had hung a basket and a sunbonnet on the hook in my closet. He keeps sending me links to articles about canning and the benefits of making your own jam from scratch. He bookmarked the pick your own berry farm in my google maps. When I found the DVR full of Little House on the Prairie episodes, I decided it was time I did something about this behavior. Saturday just happenned to be a beautiful day, although it was sunnier than I expected and I ended up getting a little color. I drove all the way up to Moorpark, CA and the Underwood Family Farm. It was a quaint little farm with lots of picking options and a full-service farm stand. They had everything from sweet potatoes to string beans, and I am definately going back in October to pick my own pumpkin (meetup outing, anyone?).

The next time I go to a farm, I am bringing some children. There’s a reason why schools had summer vacation, and it’s that kids are really useful when it comes to harvesting crops. They are low to the ground and have little hands. I, on the other hand, ended up with a sore back and scratches all over. The strawberry field was amazing, and there were so many ripe, delicious strawberries that I had a hard time choosing. The raspberry field was a little picked over, but I was determined to get enough together for a jam, and I managed to get an entire pound of them. It just took an hour and a half. I also picke dup some boysenberries, but I don’t think they were quite ripe enough, as evidenced by the disastorous consistency of my boysenberry jam.

I managed to find a basic jam recipe that worked well for all three of my berries.

Ingredients

• 3 cups fresh berries
• 2 c. of sugar

Use a potato masher to break the berries down into a pulp. Add sugar and stir well to combine. Pour into a saucepan over medium-high heat.

Over the course of about 10 minutes, stir the mixture frequently while it begins to boil. It will darken in color. The way to test the jam is by keeping a spoon in ice water and scooping up little bits of the jam. Blow on it to bring it to room temperature, and when it’s thick and gloopy, you have jam.

At this point, if you know what you are doing, you can pour it into sterilized jars. This is what I did, but I have no idea whether I did it right, so I can’t really dole out advice on that topic. For the record, I will be keeping my jam in the refridgerator and finishing it as quickly as possible.

Unfortunately, there is no picture to document the absolutely delicious and fat-free banana bread that I put together. It is August in  Southern California, and that means it’s not a good idea to make banana bread, wrap it in plastic, and leave it on the counter overnight. It gets moisture-ridden, icky, and fruit flies move in. I had to toss what was left of the loaf and disinfect the entire kitchen.

I’m not terribly sure how a fruit fly invasion starts, but we had the beginning of one this week. I responded by getting rid of any fruit that had been sitting out. This was a shame because I usually rely on buying bananas when they are a little under-ripe and then letting them sit out on the counter. Until the weather cools down, I guess that I will have to be a little more careful about picking out riper fruits and leaving them in the fridge, which I am slowly learning is where food belongs in the summer.

Anyway, you can find the recipe that I used over at fat free vegan http://blog.fatfreevegan.com/2009/06/blueberry-banana-bread.html. Sometimes her fat free recipes don’t really work out for me, but this one was pretty good. Originally, I planned on making the bread to share with some friends, but when it came out it just wasn’t up to par with something I would serve to a bunch of non-vegans. I’ve found that when feeding non-vegans, it has to be REALLY good, lest you risk tainting their opinions of all vegan food. However, for someone who is used to the texture and density of fat-free vegan baked goods, this recipe is amazing.

Anyone who has ever seen Hell’s Kitchen probably got this post’s headline right away. On Hell’s Kitchen, beloved TV chef Gordon Ramsey gathers a dozen or so aspiring chefs and proceeds to demean, belittle, and yell at them, which is good for about an hour’s worth of entertainment. The show goes on for a couple of weeks, until only two people are tough enough to be left standing. They battle it out head to head and the winner gets to be the new head chef and whatever restaurant Gord-o happens to be opening.
The thing that always strikes me about this show is how trashy the contestants seem compared to other cooking shows. Take Top Chef for example, most of those contestants are down-right classy. They know how to cook with fancy ingredients, and they are well spoken. Another show with good contestants is The Next Food Network Star, where everyone is  intelligent, even if their cooking skills are a little suspect. Hell’s Kitchen’s casting department, on the other hand, seems to be scraping the bottom of the barrel. Season 5 was an especially great cast, starring a 600 pound man, some girl from Detroit, and a guy with a whitesnake haircut and a backwards hat. But I digress.
My favorite thing about shows like Hell’s Kitchen is that I always know when certain things are going to happen. At some point into every dinner service, Gordon will start shouting about his risotto. There is something undeniably sexy about a good-looking, sweaty British man yelling about gourmet food. It gets me going. I’m not sure what it is about risotto that challenges Gordon’s rag-tag bunch of culinary hopefuls. The risotto is always too sticky or too al-dente or cold. Since my first exposure to risotto was through Hell’s Kitchen, I naturally assumed that it must be rocket science. I thought there was some secret window, maybe only 5 seconds, that yielded a perfect risotto and that everything else would produce rubbish.
Well I was wrong.
Risotto is super easy to cook, as long as you’re willing to ladle in broth while stirring the rice. That’s all there is to it. Make sure to serve it hot, and see if you can get whoever you happen to be dining with to do their best Gordon Ramsey impression as you bring it out to the table.
Add broth- stir rice- repeat.
Did I mention that it’s delicious?

Have you ever had one of those mornings when you knew that you needed to bring something for lunch, but had no idea what you were going to do about it? Due to my busy schedule, I have that morning more times than I would care to admit. The scenario: I’ve planned out some meals for the week, but not a full schedule. I have some vegetables left over from other dishes and know that I need to use them. I have all of my pantry staples lying around. This dish is perfect for mornings (or evenings) when you don’t have a lot of time, but you are looking for something that can be thrown together in the time it takes you to wash a sink full of dishes.

It’s only about once in a blue moon that I put together a sandwich. I never liked them much growing up, and often limited myself to peanut butter and jelly. In my adult life, I do from time to time enjoy a sandwich, with the following constraints.

Bread: The foundation of any good sandwich will be the bread. I try to stick to artisan bread (for this sandwich I used a rustic olive batard), and I always toast it before assembling. Even if I plan on eating my sandwich cold or at room temperature, I find this step is crucial to protect the crispness of the bread.

Spread: As you know, I am a conscientious objector to mayonnaise. As such, I find it helpful to use my oil-free pesto as a replacement. I have also been known to smash up an artichoke. The spread is important because it helps keep the bread from getting soggy, and once you’ve gone through all the trouble of toasting it, wouldn’t it be a shame to throw that all away?

Size: If you are used to a subway sandwich, you are completely off. 5 inches of bread, max.

Topping Ratio: Never make a sandwich so big that it doesn’t fit in your mouth. If you need to, you can hollow out the bread a little bit and fill it with your sandwich core.

One of my favorite things about summer in my new house is the smell of the peach tree outside our front door. While none of the peaches have been ripe enough to harvest, just the smell of fresh peaches  makes me feel sort of rustic and “farm-y”. It also makes me crave peaches, and they are in season, so I picked up some delicious white peaches at market. I guess that I’m lucky it’s not a chocolate cupcake tree, because that would be unfortunate for my waistline. I would hate to lose all of my hard-earned level 1 gymnastics skills by falling out of shape. Anyway, I had one delicious peach left, and decided to go the good girlfriend route and put together a little something.

This recipe is a follow-up to my failed attempt at peach cobbler (which will not be posted). Basically, I tried to make a fat-free, minimal sugar peach cobbler, and I severely missed the mark. The peaches were great, but I used too much oat flour and regular flour and ended up with baked peaches with dry crumbly shit on top.