Is there anything like the taste of the first deep red strawberries of the year? Sweet-tart and juicy, local strawberries ripened on the plant before picking are a perfect example of the advantages of eating local foods. Berries shipped in from California and elsewhere and ripened in a box are just not the same quality.
Deep red color and fruity fragrance add to the sensory pleasures of this early local berry. This recipe takes advantage of all your favorite features of strawberries to celebrate their peak season. Continue Reading
I had an inordinate amount of eggs on hand, and was thinking about recipes which use lots of eggs. Pound cake usually has lots of eggs in it, but I had never tried making it with honey instead of sugar. 
Today, I continued taking advantage of the abundance of locally produced eggs currently available. When I was young, one of my favorite pies was custard. During the years that eggs were getting a bad rap for causing heart disease, I quit making or eating custard pie. 
It was the last Farmers Market of 2011, and I was looking for an ingredient to make a festive, end of the year dish which would be both a flavorful and a visual end-of-season celebration. I found exactly what I needed at Alm Hill Gardens–chioggia (pronounced “kee-OH-jee-ah”) beets. 
In our family, holiday feasts always end with pumpkin pie. I don’t know when or how it became a tradition, but I can tell you in my family pumpkin pies are taken very seriously. Perhaps it was because my mother made pies that won purple ribbons at the County Fair.
After tasting honeycrisp apples grown at BelleWood Acres, I wanted to prepare them in a dessert that would change the flavor as little as possible. Many fruit desserts have so much added sugar and spices that it’s hard to enjoy the basic apple taste. 
A “clafouti” is an odd sort of thing to describe. It’s kind of a fruit custard, only not really. It sort of has the texture of pastry, but not quite.
A Rustic Apple Tart is the centerpiece of a meal menu I created after a visit to 
This recipe was quite a challenge. First I had to figure out how to substitute honey for sugar in a pie crust that is essentially a replacement for a graham cracker pie crust. The dough was similar to the texture of silly putty, but had a beautiful silken sheen from the honey. When I first put the crust in the oven to bake, I expected it to melt to the bottom of the pie plate. Happily, that didn’t happen! The crust didn’t shrink at all during cooking. 
Strawberries! The first of the season! These strawberries were from Boxx Berry Farm (Ferndale), though there are also many other producers in Whatcom County.
My grandmother was a classic “handful of this, pinch of that” Indiana farm wife cook. When I was young, we moved across the country so I didn’t often have the opportunity to learn how she prepared the amazing meals she served to family and farm hands every day, with ingredients from her garden and the farm. 
Hazelnuts, also called filberts, are a good way to save carbon fuel by eating locally. The majority of the world’s hazelnuts are produced in Turkey. We’re fortunate to live in one of the two states in the U.S. where hazelnuts can be grown commercially (Washington and Oregon).
Sometimes I happen to create a recipe that is a serendipitous combination of simplicity and deliciousness. This recipe is a perfect example. It’s so good!
