The Food of Love

tomatoes from farmer brown's garden

Last year, cherry tomatoes sprouted next to our house. We didn’t plant them, we didn’t put up tomato cages, we barely watered them, but there they were like the blessed Garden of Eden. I ate scrambled eggs with cheddar cheese and tomatoes for breakfast every single day all summer. My gestational diabetes nurse tried to convince me I could diversify my breakfast menu, but she was wrong, and that’s why Jack was born one-third tomato.

That summer, every morning Chris walked to that little patch, picked a handful, and washed them. Then they waited on our kitchen counter until I eventually woke up to eat. Shakespeare opens Twelfth Night with a theory about music being the food of love, and I hate to contradict the Bard, but food is the food of love. And more specifically, every morning when I walked into the kitchen, I knew the food of love was cherry tomatoes.

This year we’ve had cherry tomatoes on chicken pesto sandwiches like a billion times. Obviously this sandwich is best with summer tomatoes, but no one likes to run the oven when it’s too toasty outside. So. Know thyself, etc. So these are some chicken pesto sandwiches that are NBD to make if you already have pesto on hand.

Eat on,

Plum Sorbet

Our neighborhood was a Santa Rosa plum orchard in the 1940s, and last month we discovered that one of the trees in our backyard is a plum tree. It is so old that one of our neighbors thinks it might be from the original orchard. I don’t know if that’s true, but I do know our tree makes the sweetest, most delicious plums I’ve ever had. Whenever I eat them I hear William Carlos Williams saying, “They taste good to her, they taste good to her, they taste good to her.”

Our tree is almost empty now, but most nights for the past couple weeks Chris and I have been out picking a few dozen plums while the sun sets. It’s been one of my favorite things we’ve ever done together.

After a few harvests we had hundreds of plums and no idea what to do with them. I made one small batch of chocolate plum jam, but we packed most of them into lunch sacks and gave them away. Also, over the weekend, my sister and I picked a few plums together and juiced them to make a plum sorbet.

Plum Sorbet

We started with about 25 plums, and my sister and I crushed them by hand, removing the skins and pits as we went. We strained the fruit through a sieve until we had 1 quart plum juice. This juice is pretty sweet so we only used a half a cup of sugar, but this is a judgment-free zone if you decide to add way more than that. I stirred in the juice of half a lemon (probably two tablespoons). We poured everything into the ice cream maker, and let it run until we had a nice, sorbet texture, then we let it set in the freezer overnight.

It’s definitely a minimalist recipe, so the sorbet tastes exactly like a fresh plum, “so sweet and so cold.”

lovelovelove,

britt

The Breakfast Club Pancakes

Chris started working at Google two weeks ago. Google is a workplace paradise, where bidets abound, shuttles pick you up from home, there are “napping pods,” and employees enjoy endless options of free gourmet food. Let me Oprah voice that last bit for you: FREE GOURMET FOOOOOOOOOOOD!!!

With my penchant for melodrama at an all-time high, I was convinced that Chris and I would never eat a meal together again for the rest of our lives. Please note: our dinners together have not changed even the smallest bit, but I have a tendency to blow things out of proportion, especially when I’m competing for mealtime with battalions of world-class chefs. To make me feel better, Chris suggested that we start a tradition of making a big brunch together every Sunday morning.

I loved this idea, and stopped cryeating plain peanut butter with a spoon as soon as he suggested it. For our first Sunday brunch we found a recipe for the pancakes we ate at the Breakfast Club. Chris isn't into pancakes, but he loved these. I've translated the recipe to American cookery, but you can find the original recipe here.

The Breakfast Club Pancakes
makes a dozen pancakes

1 1/4 cup all purpose flour
1 tsp salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda

2 cups + 1 tablespoon milk

2 large eggs
1 1/2 cups + 1 tablespoon oats
2 tablespoons vanilla syrup (e.g. this)
2 tablespoons melted unsalted butter
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

Whisk together flour, salt, baking powder, and baking soda in a large bowl.
Add milk and eggs and whisk until smooth.
Add the remaining ingredients and whisk again until as smooth as possible.
Cover the bowl and chill overnight (or a minimum of two hours).

To cook the pancakes, put the stove on medium-high heat, melt butter onto pan,
and pour ¼ cup of batter per pancake. Cook until puffed up and golden.
Stack up the pancakes and top with real maple syrup and berries.
For whipped cream, mix maple and vanilla into cream to taste, and dollop on top.

britt