summer camping
Cooking Comments Off on summer camping
My summer food memory is making s’mores around the campfire at our family campground in central Oregon. We meet every 4th of July at our property on the Little Deschutes river, and eat and drink for a week with family and friends!
the art of waiting
Gardening Comments Off on the art of waiting
There was something so soul-satisfying about waiting for summer produce when I was young. As I think back about delicious summer food, all of my memories are about perfectly ripe fruits and veggies! There were no jets flying raspberries around the world in February and no grocery stores full of tasteless melons in March. It was a waiting game.
When I was a small child, there was a wild cherry tomato vine that sprawled over a rock wall in our backyard in Kentucky. I have never forgotten how those tiny tomatoes tasted, warm from the sun. Years later, summers were spent working as a camp counselor on the California coast. On my days off, I would buy bags of ripe peaches and eat them, one after another, until I finally had my fill. Then I’d start on the plums.
Even as an adult, a friend and I would spend a few August afternoons filling buckets with warm, sticky blackberries that grew around the creek near our homes. Most of them made it into pies, full of the crunchy seeds that wild blackberries have.
Now I have to convince my kids that, no, we don’t eat watermelon in December, we eat oranges. No, we’re not buying nectarines in April. Some things are just worth waiting for!
