peaches Tag

Writing a book is a lot like working in theatre. “Hurry up and wait!” is the mantra. You learn your lines (or write them in this case), hit your marks (deadlines) and then wait. For months. You watch the clock, the calendar and your nails...

The other day I admitted I had a great big culinary knowledge gap. Oh, I was willing to share my apricot ignorance, but I was a bit smug about peaches. I considered myself a veritable Ms Know-It-All when it came to my favourite stone fruit....

Gravity. It makes things fall. It's why sauces drip and eggs crash to the floor when dropped. It's why coffee pours out of the carafe and into the mug -- not onto the ceiling. It's why the milk bottle stays on the shelf after you...

Peach Sorbet is dairy-free, gluten-free and delicious - TheMessyBaker.com The other day I posted about fruit leather (aka fruit roll-ups), which is an easy way to use up fruit that's no longer ready for its close-up. Whether you make it in an oven or dehydrator, the method is embarrassingly easy. Just blend, pour, then abandon for hours on end. It's ideal for lazy people like me. And the results are quite possibly addictive. Just ask my sister. The astute reader will notice that I had more peaches on hand than a couple sheets of fruit leather required. And you'd be correct. I had enough on-the-cusp peaches for a batch of  peach sorbet. Clean, refreshing peach sorbet. See, it's already beginning to melt in the heat. 
  Peach tomato salad with bocconcini - TheMessyBaker.com When a spring frost destroyed much of the tender fruit crops in Ontario, I was afraid I wouldn't see a local peach this year, let alone one that delivered a true peachy taste. Fortunately, I was wrong. While the size of the crop may not be large, the peaches are beginning to roll in, and they are sweet, flavourful and juicy. After the intense heat of the past few weeks, I couldn't bring myself to turn on the oven. Too impatient for ice cream (and with a cracked filling that made me temporarily sensitive to hot and cold food), I decided to make something very simple with my first batch of peaches. Something that would also let me experiment with the new basils I have in the garden. Alongside the opal, leaf, and Thai basils, I planted lime basil and -- get this -- lavender basil. While the lime basil had a bright, citrusy taste, the lavender version was surprisingly mild and had a floral scent that screamed out for peaches. So I obliged.

If you drop an upside-down cake on its head does it revert to plain old cake? Sadly, no. It just becomes yet another item to file under "Kitchen Disasters." The only advice I can give you, other than not to drop the final dish, is to...

Here, in all her glory, is Green Leaf Platter in what turned out to be her final performance. Less than 24 hours before her untimely demise, GLP was working the salad like nobody's business. A true artist to the end, she presented like no one was watching. As promised, here is the recipe for the peach and arugula salad demonstrated a couple of days ago on CTV's News at Noon. You can watch the video
3  Peach Recipes - The Messy Baker I'm on Kitchener CTV's News at Noon talking about peaches. While they're generously allotting me 5 minutes, the entire news hour isn't enough time to tell you how much I love peaches. And just how much do I love peaches? Last year, I bought an upright freezer to accommodate my lust for Blazing Stars. To keep Andrew happy, I allow the odd batch of homemade Italian meatballs and bag of oven-dried tomatoes to take up precious freezer space, but peaches are the real reason a honking big white box sits in our basement sucking up energy at a horrific rate. Last year I looked at buying and storing peaches. But based on emails and discussions, a few unanswered questions.

A couple of days ago, I made a variation of my serendipitous nectarine and plum chicken. This time I substituted apples and yellow tomatoes for the plums. It was just as moist and delicious as the original, and I found myself planning side dishes appropriate...

The subtitle of this post could be Variations on a Theme. Brahms did it with classical music, William Carlos Williams did it with poetry and I'm doing it with salsa. And peaches. And more homegrown tomatoes. Now, I'm not claiming to be in the same league as the...