The big Costco-box strawberries were good but had been in there since Thursday. Cooking them would definitely extend their shelf life.

So I blenderized them with a quarter cup sugar and about 2/3 a teaspoon of King Arthur Instant Clearjel, ie very processed (corn?) starch for, y’know, sour cherry pies and the like. Nuked it twelve minutes and poured it over sliced mangoes with leftover sauce for tomorrow.

And that was going to be the end of that.

Until he looked at the ice cream maker.

Can you put corn anything in ice cream? I asked, knowing that of course you can if you want to, it just sounded so strange.

Why don’t we try it?

So: 3/4 c. strawberry sauce, cream to fill it to two cups, two more tablespoons of sugar after a taste test and into the machine it went.

A few minutes later while doing a puzzle.

Him: I think we should check it to see if it’s done.

Me: It just started!

Him: I think we should check.

Me: If we check every three minutes we’ll run out before it’s done!

Him with a grin: Is this a problem?

Turns out the machine wasn’t turning so it’s a good thing we did check. Fixed that. We let it finish its business in peace.

And the verdict is, next time I think I’ll go half sauce/half cream because that was super rich. The sweetness level was not too much, just right.

It was very very good. Ten stars.

I knew they wouldn’t be anything near Andy’s but they were pretty and I was missing fresh peaches. What I’d forgotten, though, was the likelihood that Costco late-season US-grown ones would be clingstone. And clingstones that had never been allowed to ripen.

After several days, they were beginning to soften up but the nose knew. Oh well, that had been a given all along.

They held onto those pits like a toddler guards its favorite toy, and when I finally managed to work them loose, my peach halves lost a chunk of their innards.

I scraped the mashed-up bits off as best I could and put them back in the centers.

Hey. I filled the centers with raspberries. Melted a quarter cup butter with maybe a bit more than that of brown sugar and some cinnamon (lemon would have been good, too–next time) and spooned that over the raspberries and took their pretty picture and then baked them for about an hour.

Stuffed peaches, there you go. Is that a thing? It is now.

He needed seconds to use up his ice cream. As one does.

I finally finished the 90-stitch hat that has been demanding to stop being possibilities hidden within a ball of yarn this past month.

I watered all the fruit trees–a day early, but so I don’t have to worry about whether I’ll have time to get to it.

I made almond muffins with a spoonful of Nutella in each and really made my sweetie happy.

I took a pound of apricots, split them, melted some butter in a stoneware pan, swirled it around to coat it, poured the rest of the two tablespoons’ worth out into some brown sugar, and then put the apricot halves in the stoneware and a dot of the mixture in the center of each. Forgot the cinnamon. Forgot the bit of almond extract that really adds to that. Because I was running in and out between that and setting the timer for three minutes to move the hose 18 times. Oh well. 350F for 40 minutes to make one of my favorite comfort foods and they are definitely good enough.

They originally told me the surgeon was booked up FAR out, so sorry. Then they called back saying they’d had a cancellation and would next Thursday be alright.

(Did I ask for a cancellation. No, no I did not.)

Thursday it is.

Today was coping mechanisms day.

Our friend Dani stopped by two days ago with some Alphonso mangoes–a real sacrifice on his part. One whiff and a long exhale and the thought, Now THAT is what a mango is supposed to be. Thank you, Dani!

Then I took the sad little wannabes from Costco that had been picked too early, chopped them up with a bunch of green onions and threw them in with some peanut satay sauce: playing vegetables was the best they could attain to.

Dani’s were the real thing. Peeled and devoured.

So my thought was I’d sprout the seeds from his. I know he doesn’t have space nor sun but maybe he’d love gifting a baby tree to someone who does. And maybe I just want to see what they do.

Mangoes come mono- or polyembryonic. You want the multiple embryos if you want one just like the parent whose fruit you ate, while monoembryonic is a genetic potluck–so of course the Alphonso is a mono type.

Googling ensued. Videos were watched. One person said let the pit dry for two days and then cut the seed covering here with scissors and pull the seed out.

I tried that. It was every internet hahahaaayouactuallybelievedthat?!! result.

The next video, the guy got a gouge going in that woody thing and then took needlenose pliers to try to slowly, forcefully, hopefully, with great effort, manhandle that thing open and off.

The camera cut away and they did not show you all of what he had to go through, but there it was. Voila. Seed.

My scissors had gone, What are you trying to DO to me! Back into the kitchen gadgets drawer.

My pruning shears went, I’m not going to try it, you try it! Okay, you tried it. I won’t do it. So there.

Huh. Well I do have those long-handle tree pruners where you pull down the string that pulls on the lever that moves the blade that cuts the limb a dozen feet over your head and hope you have a good helmet on; maybe I could manipulate that blade up close while pulling on the string way over thataway out of reach without, y’know, cutting my finger off or my skirt in half in the process. Dunno how well that would work for a precision cut on such a small piece. Where is that thing, anyway?

Remember the old Life cereal commercial, Let’s get Mikey to try it! He hates everything!

Yeah, well. Around here, Mikey seems to have gone into hiding. And that’s probably a good thing.

Our house guests last fall (hi, Amy!) left behind a jar of Skippy peanut butter that wouldn’t go in their carry-ons. Actually, it was labeled peanut spread: roasted peanuts, palm oil, and salt.

It had never been opened. There was a layer of oil at the top, just like the natural peanut butter it almost attained the definition of. It was time to figure out what to do with it. (And an excuse–I’d been craving a good cookie.)

I found this recipe, although it’s only partly what I did. I figured if the Washington Post was linking to it that’s a decent recommendation.

I used the peanut butter without stirring the oils in; some flowed to the bottom as I scooped, but I figured a cookie recipe with no other fat in it has to have what it can from what was there.

I started to type out all the other changes I made and thought, nah, just type the thing out.

So.

One cup old-fashioned rolled oats. In retrospect, quick-cooking would have done just fine.

1 tsp baking powder, not the specified baking soda which I really don’t care for at all

a pinch of salt that may have been as much as 1/2 tsp but probably not but definitely more than the 1/8th they said

2 large eggs, not quite straight out of the fridge but almost (such a rebel)

1 c natural peanut butter (well, it tried to be)

1 tsp vanilla. Given that the president just slapped his big tariffs even on an island inhabited only by penguins, can you imagine what replacing that bottle of the second most expensive spice in the world is going to cost? Two teaspoons for that much batter? Nah, one’s fine. It was.

Whisk eggs, add 2/3 c packed dark brown sugar from Trader Joe’s that may have been turbinado type, add peanut butter and vanilla and then the oats+baking powder.

I had a small handful of salted caramel chips and one of chocolate chips ready on a small plate and worked several of each into each cookie. Nowhere near the amount they called for, we’re old farts, we don’t need that much extra sugar.

They say refrigerate the dough so they won’t spread. Yeah, you do for normal chocolate chip cookies with flour and butter but I didn’t see the point with these, I just put them straight in at 350F for 14-15 minutes. They barely spread.

They were great. Seriously good. I have found my new go-to cookies.

I told Richard as we munched, Y’know, these are your daily oatmeal but with peanut butter and eggs and chips added. Extra protein.

So I guess the question in the morning is going to be, Crunch? Or slime?

—

(Ed. to add: they were very crunchy last night coming out of the oven. After a night of San Francisco fog and being left on the counter, they were not, they were a soft cookie. Use an airtight container if you want yours to stay crisp.)

Nope, didn’t feel the quake, wouldn’t have known it had happened if I hadn’t glanced at a headline in my inbox just now. A 3.9 on the East Bay tonight is how we like them: for entertainment purposes only.

I was busy in the kitchen with fond memories of my in-laws visiting from Maryland thirty-odd years ago. I’d said to my MIL, Remember that Hot Milk Sponge Cake that you and my mom both used to make from the 1950s Betty Crocker cookbook (and that I’d found a pristine copy of at a garage sale my senior year of high school–score!)

Yeah?

Well, I substitute fresh-squeezed lemon juice for 2/3 of the milk.

Her next words were diplomatic but her face was in utter disbelief at such a use of such an expensive ingredient: Why would you do that?

I laughed and gestured: Because I have a tree!

And because it makes almost a lemon curd effect across the top by the next day, if the cake somehow lasts that long with kids in the house.

So. There’s that almond orange muffin recipe I experimented my way towards and that Nina thoroughly approved of during our yarn crawl last week. We are going again. There must be more snacks.

But my freezer is now empty of that puree and my mandarins need another month and it would be a crime to pick them too early.

The Meyer lemons, on the other hand…

But their piths are famously bitter. You boil seedless oranges for 20 minutes to make the orange puree (discard the water they’re boiled in) to get rid of any bitterness. Okay, I made it 25 min with the Meyers just to be sure. I drained them. I cut them open and spent awhile picking out every single seed.

My Cuisinart bowl being in the dishwasher, I threw them and the juice that had come out of them into the blender and let it run for awhile.

It came out the texture of the most fabulous lemon mousse you ever saw. I measured out 2/3 of a cup and then put the rest in silicone molds in the freezer for next time.

So here’s how I tweaked the recipe:

Lemon Almond muffins (gluten free, wheat free)

2 c. almond flour

1 tsp baking powder

about, ummm, that much salt, I dunno, half a teaspoon-ish?

a hair under 3/4 c sugar, which is a lot, but these are lemons we’re talking about. When I’m making this with oranges I use 1/3 to 1/2 c; my husband’s sweet tooth prefers the 1/2 c.

a generous 1/4 c melted butter, ie that’s what it was meant to be but it measured out closer to 1/3 and I’m okay with that and remind me not to grab the Costco butter that’s all one pound lumps next time

3 eggs (I know, living like kings here. Eggs!)

and the 2/3 c pureed boiled lemon into the mixer at the last.

12 muffins, 350F, 23 minutes in my oven. Will be on the pale side when the toothpick is clean. As always, almond flour muffins hold together better if you wait till they’re completely cool to eat. I use paper liners in the pan to counteract any early stick-and-crumble factor.

Definitely, definitely making these again.

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.

We had a spur of the moment lunch out with old friends, a great time, and a restless toddler at the next table where two couples were doing the same thing we were.

A panda puppet. Happy faces.

On a side note, if you take my favorite blueberry cake recipe, use Forager cashewmilk yogurt because the dairy-allergic kid is gone and it needs to be used up (but real butter because I can again), swap 2/3 c of the flour out for 2/3 c of almond flour, and sprinkle the tops with half the blueberries and then maple sugar and bake for 23 minutes, it makes eighteen blueberry almond maple muffins and they came out very very good.

I went looking for a pumpkin variant on the almond flour muffin theme and played with a recipe I found at Iheartvegetables.com. (Note that there’s 1/3 c more almond flour from when I first played with this last September.)

My updated recipe as of December 2022:

Bowl 1: 1 2/3 c almond flour, 1 tsp baking powder, 1/2 tsp salt, 1 tsp cinnamon. (Yes her baking soda might have made it lighter. This is why I will never ever put it in, much though I still love that old college roommate, and the texture was quite light just the same.)

Bowl 2: melt 3 tbl butter in a glass measuring cup–almond oil works fine–swish it around, pour it into the now-empty third-cup measuring cup you used on the almond flour, add a maybe generous 1/4 honey to the butter-coated glass one: it makes it so much easier to get all the honey out. Beat together 2/3 c canned plain pumpkin, 2 eggs, the butter, and a tsp vanilla, then add to the almond flour mixture.

Note that if your honey is crystallized go ahead and use it anyway, just beat well.

Twelve muffins. Sprinkle crunchy sugar on top. I used the maple sugar that had been sitting in the cupboard for two years needing to be needed and it was a superb choice. Highly recommended. (Tripping and spilling batter like I did the first time these went into the oven, not so recommended.)

Bake at 350 with paper liners for 22-23 minutes.

These do not have to be put in containers to keep overnight, and the texture improves markedly when fully cool vs first coming out of the oven–they hold together better.

Just for fun, a Ukrainian beaded necklace in granny squares. In late ’60’s colors to keep in character.

Made some progress on the afghan.

Meantime, I had some plums from Andy’s that needed to be put to good use, most quite small and a few of another variety a fair bit bigger. I whipped a warm stick of butter with 2/3 c sugar, then with 2 eggs, then added in a mixture of 1/2 c flour, 1/2 cup almond flour, 1 tsp baking powder and a pinch salt. Put it in a 9″ nonstick springform pan with a parchment bottom (my 9″ circles came with pull-up handles) and arranged halves of the small plums in a circle, skin side up, and half one of the big ones in the center.

I should have taken a picture of my pretty sunflower cake before baking it. It really did look like one with those golden plums and darker plum in the center.

When I pulled it out of the oven 45 minutes later (the recipe I was riffing off of with that almond flour said an hour and I knew that was wrong, 45 was pushing it but okay) I looked at that thing and there was only one description for it.

A bellybutton cake.

And it is very very good.

The essential sandwich of August. Thrown together after a Trader Joe’s run. So simple, so good.

Brioche slices spread with chopped sun-dried tomatoes, then slices of ham and cheese on top. Note that the New Zealand Organic cheddar cheese slices are on the thick side and big enough to pretty much cover that bread.

But then this: cut figs in half and put them, stems off, on the parchment paper next to the sandwiches as they bake at 350. Take the pan out at 13 minutes, put the half-roasted figs on top of the cheese, put it back in the oven another three minutes or so to let the fig juices run across the top. It surely would have been just fine with the figs on top from the get-go, but I forgot them until the things had been in the oven a minute already and I just kind of threw them at the pan.

Messy and worth it.

Our school district held to the traditional Tuesday-after-Labor-Day opening long after that was no longer fashionable. Years ago we got next-day camping spots at Yosemite, passing school bus after school bus as we drove there–and ran into a family we knew who were doing the same thing: no six month wait, just call and come right in, everybody else’s kids were in class.

The good old days.

Our friends Phyl and Lee throw a ‘last Saturday of summer!’ pool party every year before school starts. We older parents all remarked how odd it felt that that meant today.

Richard and I always arrive late when the sun is low.

I wasn’t about to go swimming with a heart monitor on, but sitting around the pool with old friends at a potluck, that we were definitely into. Made new friends who let me hold their baby.

All of this by way of saying that if you ever make my chocolate hazelnut torte recipe as four dozen mini cupcakes, if you get them in the oven and five minutes later see the bowl still sitting there on the counter waiting to go into the batter that has the half pound of hazelnut puree/cocoa/salt and you exclaim AAAGH! loud enough to be heard across the house and you only got the quarter pound of hazelnuts in that was a different step of the process–no worries. It’s all good. Yes the texture is more crisp cookie on top and a smoother texture than usual below because it’s got all that extra sugar relative to the ingredients that actually went into it, and not a whole lot of Cuisinarted nuts.

The verdict? They were devoured fast and I’m glad I saved a few here for breakfast.

I do have that half pound of waiting hazelnut meal with cocoa in it to play with, though. Whip some egg whites and sugar to meringue them into cookies? That’s my guess so far.

I bought some Hemskirke apricots at Andy’s for my friend Nina on Tuesday and she dropped by tonight to pick them up.

The muffins were cool enough to offer. I’d looked up the raspberry cupcakes in Sweet and even though they’re great, I wanted less fat and sugar, so I thought I’d play with it a bit.

They’re not too sweet, I warned.

I like not too sweet, she answered.

One bite and she really wanted that recipe. I told her I’d have to go write it down quick, I had winged it on the fly. So before I forget what I did, here goes:

Oven at 350, I used paper liners in my 12-muffin tin

1 c flour

1 c almond flour

1/2 sugar

1 tsp baking powder

about a half tsp salt.

Mix.

Separately, whisk:

5 tbl melted butter

1/2 c Greek Gods Plain Traditional yogurt, which is quite thick and has zero runniness

2 eggs

1/2 tsp almond extract

Mix the wet ingredients into the dry, spoon out into the muffin tin, put three or four raspberries on top of each (that have been carefully patted dry with paper towels after rinsing) and sprinkle across the top with turbinado sugar or, what I had on hand, Costco’s organic sugar.

I checked them at 22 minutes and took them out after 23 after a toothpick test.

Nina said they had a bit of a marzipan aspect to them, and I said, Yeah, I like that, and she said she did, too.

And then she happily took her apricots home along with a muffin for her husband, with me saying, If you have more than you can eat, make those muffins–only put a cut-side-up apricot half on each one. (Let the skin of the apricot hold in the juices because Andy’s Hemskirkes have a lot.)

She was looking forward to it.

And a good time was had by all.

(I should go look around here to see how similar this is to the last time I did a batch along these lines.)

Edited to add, and if you ever wanted to hear Sandra Boynton’s voice, here’s your chance. Avec des petits pois.

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 c flour

1/2 c almond flour (original recipe simply called for 1 c plain flour)

2/3 c sugar. (original recipe said 1 c plus another 1/4 across the top, which I didn’t do, and as it came out I’d probably do a half cup next time instead of 2/3. Unless grandkids were around.)

1 egg

Mix until you have small crumbles

In buttered 8″ pan (ceramic one in my case), put two cups of fruit. (Raspberries, here.) Top with mixture. Use a spoon to scatter 5 tbl melted butter across the top, put in 350F oven, bake 45 minutes (for me since ceramic pans take longer.)

Crunchy on top. Just right. Going to try it on some apricots next with a bit of almond extract.

My friend whose husband just got his PhD and they’ve been getting ready to move away…after being so careful for so long, they and their boys came down with covid last week. Thankfully they had all been vaccinated so it wasn’t as serious as it could have been–but.

I offered to bring dinner.

They are well loved; I had to wait my turn.

Y’know, I love a good split pea soup. Celery, onions, green onions, red pepper, chicken broth, halved grapes, an intensely flavored Californian EV olive oil and ham. (Theirs is THE best olive oil out there. It is like the difference between a rock-hard tasteless grocery store peach and an Andy’s Orchard peach.)

It was the first time I’d tried cooking the split peas first in an Instant Pot. There’s no rhyme nor reason to the recipes out there; one said 15 minutes’ pressure, another, 30. Hmm. Risk grit or liquid? Thirty it is. (Two boxes of broth to a 14 oz bag of the peas.) Verdict: definitely the only way to go next time.

The vegetables sautéed while that was going on and then everything into the dutch oven on the stove for an hour or so because I just couldn’t get the IP to maintain the temp I wanted for simmering.

I hauled out the hazelnut chocolate torte recipe. I have two 24-mini-cupcake pans, mostly because I’d forgotten I’d already bought one. Good thing! That recipe was the perfect amount for filling both, and it is way easier to freeze some for future breakfasts in that form.

Aubrie had reminded me that Eric was allergic to dairy, and of course we know that one well. I melted cocoa butter for the butter. Turns out it’s a very stable fat with a shelf life of 3-5 years–I checked, because mine was about a year old. Not a problem. Worked great.

Two paper plates full of those, a bar of freshly made chocolate, a box of Andy’s slab dried Blenheim apricots that they love, some cherries from the Stella–hey! Getouttamytree! I chased away the two squirrels and picked some before they could.

And some fresh juice. Because when you’re sick you have to have juice. It’s the rule.