You wanted to see the colorway. The tag in the bag says London Sky, but it could be the wrong one? It’s mainly on the brown side of purple, but that could be my cataracts talking.

Knitting intentions aside, it turned out to be a day for running around getting things done. Including a two-hour  trip to Andy’s.

Searching for Lorings, the great peaches of my childhood, is how I discovered Andy Mariani and his orchard I don’t know how many years ago now and it was a treat to bring some home. My family used to drive out to an orchard in West Virginia well after the peaches had been harvested: all the tiniest hardest rocks of fruit left behind would, by the time the farmer called Dad, have had the entire resources of the trees to themselves and by the time we six kids climbed the trees to get to them they were huge. How often do you get to eat a 24 oz peach that streams juices through your hands as you do? And that taste that good?

I did not believe there could be a better peach. Andy gently let me know in those initial emails way back when that, in fact, there is. And proved it when I tasted his Kit Connells and Baby Crawfords.

They’re not on yet and Lorings and happy memories would definitely do for today.

On a side note, I don’t know if you can buy a tree of it yet, but if you ever want the perfect nectarine, the Raspberry Red variety that Andy developed is the best I have ever tasted.

I knew Andy’s Orchard sells at the Santa Monica Farmer’s Market down south, which caters to top-tier chefs.

What I didn’t know is that Ken’s mom whom I wrote about last night discovered Andy’s there and loves his stone fruits as much as I do. She told me that out of all the vendors, there was just one who had a line fifty people long and she had to find out why. The rest is history. But she and her husband have since moved away.

I told her we’d driven past his freeway exit yesterday and since he’s not far from it, had almost talked ourselves into stopping. We just weren’t sure we would arrive in time with the traffic, and as it turned out we got there at exactly when we’d hoped to.

Had I had any idea, we would have left sooner and made time for all the peaches and apricots and the last of the cherries that they could have hoped for and for their grandkids.

But at least for any next time, now I know.

I had several pounds of apricots from Andy’s Orchard and they needed to be used. It would be criminal to let any Anyas just sit there.

In this heat wave I ended up warming the pan for the air fryer function on my Breville microwave+, halving the apricots, tossing them with a couple of tablespoons of melted butter, single layer, and cooking them at 400 for seven minutes. Repeat with the rest. Didn’t add any sugar yet; I wasn’t sure how this was going to work out and I didn’t want to burn anything.

My gadget came with 400F as the preset and I have yet to figure out how to turn it down. Up, yes, down, no.

The result was revelatory. No apricot will ever go unused in my house again. I started out by making pumpkin almond muffins and substituting pureed apricots and adding almond extract. Might add a tablespoon or two of liquid next time, but those were good.

Or I could make a cookie crust base, add the apricots, sprinkle some streusel on top. I did put some in my oatmeal this morning.

They had started to get a little dried, as apricots do. They are entirely revived now and the flavor and texture are all you could hope for.

I have a pie’s worth in a ziplock. I just need to remember when I take it out of the freezer that they still do need that sugar.

2.41 lbs.

These are getting to be a habit.

44. 65. 66.

Also, another 2.2 lbs of sour cherries (I’m keeping a running tally for the year here where I know where it is) were picked, pitted, and this time baked and we did indeed celebrate.

 (That subject line was for my dad. He’d have loved it.)

Sink, bowl, plate, small bowl. Far right, right, middle, left. Faucet for occasionally washing leafy bits off.

Pick up a cherry, swivel it in your fingers to where you feel and see the belly button of the thing pointing towards the left. Gently squish the pit out and grab it with your left hand and into its bowl while dropping the fruit onto the plate with your right. Each hand going in its natural direction, thus less likely to mix up which goes where.

With the small soft tart cherries, doing it by hand is faster than dealing with the pitter and you know you’re not missing any stones.

When I was done I drained the pits and added their juice to the bag.

I’d always wanted to know what the weight ratio of pit to pulp was. So now I know: for my English Morellos, it was 2.29 lbs of fruit for today’s picking and .314 lbs of pits.

The chance of randomly landing that second number hints at a sense of humor of the Divine. Love it.

Okay, so, divide the one into the other and you get 7.3 times and it’s all good.

Don’t forget Thursday’s debate. Whatever one’s political affiliations, we’ll get to see the candidates as they actually are, not as presented by political hacks doing video slices-and-dices.

Citrus has seasons, just like everything else, and right now the stores around here have small seedless mandarins. Trader Joe’s for one. Seedless is the only way to go for this, preferably organic.

Take a bag of those. I bought two pounds the first time, five the second because I wanted to be able to do this again any time I might want to in the year. Put them in a pot with enough water to cover them if they would stay under, which they won’t. Boil for twenty minutes. Drain. Puree. Pour into ice cube trays, silicone molds, whatever floats your boat but I find the silicone ones very easy to pop them out of after they’re frozen.

And there you have a strong orange flavor bomb to throw in anything. The freezing helps kill off any residual bitterness, just in case.

So:

2 c almond flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

about a half cup sugar, about a spoonful less for me and more sugar than I usually use for muffins

Mix in

three eggs

1/3 c butter, melted, 1/4 works okay too

1/2 tsp almond extract (optional)

1/2 to 2/3 cup thawed orange bombs (takes about a minute in the microwave), get it up to just about but not more than the 3/4 c mark with a little plain Greek yogurt or make it all orange, up to you, but so far this is how I’ve done it.

Beat.

Twelve muffin cups, 350F, 23-24 minutes or till a toothpick comes out clean.

SO good.

It’s been a long time since someone yelled at me like that. I was not supposed to be out there. I was not supposed to be in their space. I most definitely was not supposed to be picking the strawberries and blueberries that they hadn’t been able to get at underneath that bird netting.

I looked up. The mourning dove on the telephone wire tucked its head under its wing: Not me!

That mockingbird was somewhere but I wasn’t quite sure just which tree. Loud, insistent, and incessant! I was surprised that a bird could make a person who has such a terrible time hearing on the phone know just how big a piece of its mind it was giving me. Nonstop. I almost wanted to apologize to the neighbors, while at the same time, it was totally making my day. Look at this! I’m hearing a bird!

Here, I offered, looking at one strawberry and then tossing it to the ground, that one you can definitely have. And that one. That’s probably the bug that chomped them–that’s definitely for you, too.

I finished picking the ripe ones and headed on inside so it would know I was no longer–what, a threat to its babies somewhere above my head? Did I accidentally chase off its one chance at a late mate this summer? Beats me.

Meantime, my plastic container of sourdough starter had fallen out of the freezer and shattered and my good friend Sue fed hers last night and brought over a half a jar, ready to go.

And so for the first time in too long there is a loaf of cranberry pumpkin vanilla orange sourdough bread that will be ready by lunchtime tomorrow and we are so looking forward to it.

With berries at breakfast to tide us over till it’s ready.

Leftover strawberry pie filling (I know, you’re going what even IS that? Left over? How?) but there was: blendered strawberries, just enough sugar, cornstarch, boiled and now well cooled.

I quietly threw some blueberries in for my beloved who, inexplicably to me, likes to eat small fruits that are frozen, spooned it into mini molds (Bakedeco.com has lots) and threw them in the freezer for, I dunno, whenever.

It was worth it just for the look on his surprised delighted face after I pulled them out today and he asked, What IS this?

One small corner of the sour cherry tree, making promises. You should see the rest of it!

A solid bit of progress on the baby blanket.

And…

A neighbor had a spot prepared and pots ready to go in–of some beautiful trees and an ornamental grass that is invasively free-seeding, something I’ve been fighting in my back yard and despairing over and that shreds your skin if you try to pull it out once it’s gotten bigger, but she couldn’t know that. It’s marketed as drought–resistant. I saw it as we were getting in the car for a grocery run.

On the way home my sweetie said something that turned into comparing Costco’s new employee who was clueless but trying to be helpful to the CVS employee who’d stood there arms folded smirking as she ran out the six minutes on the clock while a pharmacy customer begged, to tears, for her to just fill her prescription, knowing the place would be closed on the morrow. I later filed a complaint and so did the customer.

“She should have been fired,” he said, and he was certainly not wrong, but I was like, let’s change the subject. Living through that once was enough.

Got inside, started putting groceries away, and the freezer with the broken shelf erupted. When I tried to rescue everything, he came in the garage just at the wrong moment, oblivious, and got in the way by trying to hand me something else to add and did I want to take one of these new macarons out of the box first? They were good!

Just. (Steam, meet ears.) Wait.

Got that dealt with, came back in, and told him, I am in a crabby mood. I don’t know why I’m in a crabby mood, I don’t want to be in a crabby mood, but I am.

I will go hide in my room, he said mildly.

We had run out of almond flour. I needed it for what I wanted to make for a potluck tomorrow. That was one of the reasons for the Costco run, and once I had everything in place and done at last, I opened a bag and started the familiar pattern. A cube of boiled pureed organic seedless mandarins out of the freezer (not THAT shelf), two cups of almond flour, eggs, butter, plain yogurt, panella sugar (might as well use the last of it up), set out the blueberries, too…

When suddenly I heard the words spoken softly, but carefully just loud enough for me to hear, coming from down the hall:

“Sneak.”

(Wait what was that? Did he say?)

A little closer. “Sneak.”

(He DID say that. Where is he.)

“Sneak.” He scootched just around the corner into sight. “Sneak.”

(What ARE you doing.)

“Sneak.” And this time he reached in for what, when my parents did it back in the day we kids would grimace and tease, Ooh, mushy-gushy in the kitchen!

And I laughed and laughed and kissed him again and that was that.

There was one last .02″ of rain left to come, they said while it was sunny. Amended to, Advisory! Hail in Morgan Hill moving northwest, take cover.

No hail here, but a good half inch of bursts of rain with thunder and lightning. Dinner was a what can I cook the fastest with the fridge and freezer doors left closed as much as possible.

The power held after all.

What is it about a cold rainy day that begs not just for warm food but specifically a bowl of nice hot soup? The power (well yeah that too) of suggestion?

They are the thinnest- and easiest-peeling mandarins there are, with no seeds and very nearly no whites.

The critters had been leaving my Kishu tree alone–till last night. So with about a pound and a half left of those very small mandarins (this was its first real harvest), I picked every one.

I knew there was an orange almond cake recipe out there that was very good but I didn’t remember where I’d found it.

Given the size, I wanted a recipe that didn’t just say throw a seedless orange in a blender–I wanted a measurement. I wanted weight. I went looking till I found it, and the fact that the author specifically says don’t throw in extra just because you have it made it easy to figure out that she’d played with this enough to know what she was talking about.

After it went in the oven I did my usual bowl scrapings onto a small plate and into the microwave for twenty seconds to get an idea of the taste and texture this was going to turn into.

Definitely what my Kishus had wanted to be when they grew up.

Fruit, almond flour, eggs, sugar, baking powder. No butter.

I have about five ounces of leftover mandarin puree to experiment with later.

Even my timer wanted it to hurry up: I set it for fifty minutes and it heard fifteen. Not so fast!

Update: it was very good. But next time I’ll put a parchment round on the bottom of the pan.

And to think I considered not going to that dinner.

I had biopsies–“just one more?” the doctor said apologetically this afternoon–to rule out uterine or endometrial cancer. Probably just autoimmune related but worth making sure.

I was bleeding, I was tired, all my body wanted to do was rest, or barf, and what on earth that had to do with anything from that procedure I do not know.

But there was to be a get-together of half a dozen women friends this evening that I’d baked a chocolate torte for. I’d been looking forward to it for weeks and I knew that it would be energizing to go. I had a ride.

Man. We had such a good time. I feel so great. Laughter really is the best medicine.

And everybody took a piece of leftover torte home to their husbands so they wouldn’t feel too left out.

I once saw a very old cookbook in a used bookstore with the exciting news printed across its upper cover that, Yes! It had recipes! For this rare tropical fruit. Are we excited?!

Bananas.

I remember that every time I think–or used to think–how glad I am that rambutan is so rare. Not so sure about that now; dragonfruit (is that a transliteration? Marketing?) is showing up in the local Safeway these days. I haven’t started carrying an epipen to restaurants but the day could come. The memory of my mouth and throat being on fire and my airway closing so close to entirely shut like that–yeah, you don’t risk that again.

I have family with allergies to foods they have to actively avoid on a daily basis, far more than I ever have to deal with, so I read this with great interest.

The FDA has approved a new med that interrupts the inflammatory cascade, stopping it from becoming fatal. That doesn’t mean go eat a peanut butter sandwich, but.

Being able to eat out without fear on the menu. That’s huge.

Man, am I glad my taxes help pay for medical research and oversight and, as a dusty old page for Democracy declares in Article 1, “provide for…the general welfare.”

I’m knitting all these peach and apricot trees and wishing for summer fruit.

So: take a bag of frozen fruit, berry mix, peaches, cherries, whatever grabs you. A typical one here is 12 ounces. Mix about a tablespoon of cornstarch (depending on preference, size of the bag, juiciness of the fruit after thawing–it’s all a guess anyway) with sugar. A quarter cup sugar with 12 ounces of tart berries begged for ice cream, a generous third cup sugar was too sweet for me and he thought it was great. But I interrupt. Sugar+cornstarch, then pour in your bag of frozen fruit and mix it all up really well in that two quart bowl made by Mel and Kris since you want to do visual justice to the goodness to come.

Cover with a plate and microwave. Stop and stir every few minutes, especially at the beginning. Remember that the cornstarch will thicken as it cools, especially if you put enough in but the amount really doesn’t matter all that much, you just want to make sure you get that fruit good and cooked.

Spoon it into pretty bowls. Mentally thank friends Kris and Mel again.

Take the good excuse you have right there for buying those Trader Joe’s cinnamon graham crackers that are so crunchy they shatter: break them up over the top of your bowl of what’s essentially now pie filling. Eat it before they get soggy.