A Cooking Life

Insanely Great Chocolate Ice Cream

We had a confab last week with my husband's family – his mom and two sisters, all of their kids and three of ours – at his sister's place in New Jersey. We've done it for several years now, descending on Carolyn's house for a few summer days of hanging out by the pool, cooking, eating, doing a lot of nothing. I'm not sure who it was dubbed the joint “Rancho Relaxo”, but that pretty much covers it. The house is big enough that everyone can cooexist without driving one another apeshit, and that includes 8 cousins ranging in age from 6 to 16 – all playing happily together. I managed to forget my camera, so no pictures of the food. The photo above is from 2 years ago: all of the cousins plus a few friends.

A Massive Canning

I've fallen perilously behind on production of jam, etc., owing to stacked up deadlines that just keep pressing. I completely missed out on summer raspberries (the reds, that is) and will have to wait for the fall crop to make jam, and hope that the sun in September is hot and plentiful. Loyal patrons have been begging for hot dog relish – my hairdresser takes it in trade for lopping my tresses – and I've been sold out of artichoke tapenade for over a month. There were gorgeous figs at a local farmstand last week (brought in from California) and I couldn't help ordering up two cases for making fig conserve (another late summer bestseller). I delivered another big project on Thursday, so I had a window in which to get sort of caught up before the next book hits. Friday was a 12-hour day in the kitchen; I put up 32 jars of fig conserve, 20 of artichoke tapenade, 16 of hot dog relish, and 10 of an experimental fig mustard that will age for several months before I pass judgment on it.

Garden Report: August 12th

I've been thinking a lot about how off it might seem that I post so much about gardening on a blog that's supposed to be about cooking, and that I post so little about cooking (or that I post so little at all). The truth is, cooking and gardening occupy approximately the same coordinates in my firmament. If I lived in a place with a milder climate, and could garden for more than the few fleeting months allotted us in the hills of Vermont, my blog might easily have been called “A Constant Gardener”. I often fantasize about having my own paradise, overgrown with flowering plants and exotic fruits. But I suspect I'd tire of it, and I'd miss the snow.

A Gift of Chanterelles

A few evenings back, when I finally wandered into the kitchen to start thinking about dinner, I found lying on the counter a plastic Pepperidge Farm bread bag containing a few handfuls of fresh chanterelles. I knew without having to ask that they'd come from Rob, the fellow with whom my husband works building stone walls.