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Summer’s Here!

jeffcox — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 17:59:58 +0000

Summer’s here at last and now The Big Summer Cookbook is ready to be dog-eared with use. The book has gone into its second printing. It could be the most useful book you’ll have this summer. I’ve been doing radio interviews all over the country and will be doing a couple of recipes on TV (The View from the Bay on Channel 7, ABC, in San Francisco on July 19). Have fun this summer and eat well! –Jeff

Winners!

jeffcox — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 06:00:10 +0000

I couldn’t decide whether rileyp or toy corinne cox had the better summer recipe–so you BOTH win! Send your mailing address to me at jeffcox@sonic.net and I’ll send your signed copies of The Big Summer Cookbook right out to you. Everyone else, keep submitting summer food recipes and we’ll have another gifting of free books in late July. –Jeff

Contest Ends Soon

jeffcox — Sat, 15 May 2010 03:44:26 +0000

C’mon folks–post the best summer food recipe and win “The Big Summer Cookbook,” with 300 great recipes for using summer foods, the book all signed to you by the author (me) and sent to you at no cost. We have three folks in contention now. Contest closes May 30. Then there will be a new contest for the best Memorial Day food memory, also with the book as the prize for the winner. Step right up, folks. This book is better than a kewpie doll any day.

The First Fruits of Summer

jeffcox — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 19:32:57 +0000

As spring morphs into summer, the strawberries come ripe.

The best strawberries, in my opinion, are the tiny, native wild strawberries of North America that grow east of the Rockies (Fragaria virginiana). In the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania, they ripen in the second week of June. The fields around my boyhood home were carpeted with them—they grew prolifically in the poor shale and clay soils of our hilltop. When the hot June sun baked these fields, great clouds of strawberry fragrance would rise to meet me and I spent many happy, sweaty hours down among the grasses and weeds, eating them straight from the plants. The berries are only the size of your little fingernail, but each packs all the intense strawberry flavor of a full-size hybrid berry—and then some.

I was lucky to be back in that vicinity a few Junes ago and drove to that hilltop to see if I could find some wild strawberries. I hadn’t tasted them in probably 30 years or more. As I entered an open field near my former home, I was greeted by the familiar smell of strawberries, and looking down, saw them dangling red and ripe from their little plants by the hundreds. I got a small paper cup from the car and quickly filled it, then drove down to the village diner where I had my first job (washing dishes) and ordered a scoop of vanilla ice cream. When it was set in front of me, I poured the wild strawberries over it and dug in. Though time has, I’m sure, dulled my senses somewhat, they were still as rich and luxurious a flavor as I remembered.

Win a Copy of “The Big Summer Cookbook”

jeffcox — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 03:18:55 +0000

I will award a copy of my new book, “The Big Summer Cookbook,” to the best recipe for using summer fruit or vegetables in a creative way. So submit your entries by posting in this blog. The cookbook gives 300 recipes for using the fresh, locally-grown foods we only get in summertime (melons, corn, tomatoes, strawberries, peaches, apricots, and so much more). Once summer passes, fresh and local summer food passes with it for another year, so enjoy it while it’s here! –Jeff

Summertime Joys

jeffcox — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 07:19:27 +0000

First, here’s an incredible version of Summertime by Ella Fitzgerald, a singer who’s underrated. She is so great! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1j6avX7ebkM&feature=related.

Also, people wonder why New Jersey corn and tomatoes are so good–it’s because both days and nights are hot and humid, and that makes the best corn and tomatoes. Yum!

July Flame

jeffcox — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 18:43:58 +0000

Laura Veirs is an indie singer-songwriter who makes beautiful music. Here’s a link to the title track of her new CD, “July Flame,” the name of a locally-grown peach in her Portland, Oregon, neighborhood–and of course, what we call summer love. Take a bite of this:
http://lauraveirs.com/wp/?p=691

Have Yourself Summer Fun

jeffcox — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 19:30:10 +0000

Here’s a link to Mungo Jerry’s hit song, “In the Summertime,” featuring images put together by folks in Germany. The German title means, “Have yourselves fun in the summer.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJ7XoAvwYcw&feature=related

summer camping

sgoodwin — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 17:48:43 +0000

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

christaresing — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 17:48:16 +0000

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!