When your parents meet at the outdoor sporting goods store REI in the 70s, it is pretty much a given that you will spend many of your childhood years camping.
It is sad to admit that nowadays the closest thing I get to being outdoors is grilling up free range sausages in Prospect Park on a sunny Saturday. Not even close, I know.
Lucky for me I got to head up to the Sierras last weekend for a beautiful wedding celebration AND get my camping fix on.
Camping has a sneaky way of making any food taste better. I think this has to do with being outside in a scenic location and therefore one doesn’t seem to care that the mac and cheese was as a little (or lot) burnt on the bottom.
Just blame it on the fickle camping stove.
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When life presents you with a bucket of freshly picked red currants you know it is time to get your bake on, or your egg white whipping skills on, or your butter and flour on, because a bucket is a lot of red currants and they aren’t going to eat themselves.
I will admit that before my visit to Prague I had only had red currants a handful of times and those times had happened oh so long ago that I’d actually forgotten how good they are!
Tangy, sweet and bright red – red currants are the perfect summer fruit. They are also absolutely perfect in a meringue tart.
The first task at hand is to remove the berries from their stems. This whole bucket of red currants came from about one quarter of one bush. Red currants grow like they just don’t care.
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So, Paris was pretty cool.
Highlights included a macaroon making class at Lenôtre, a boat cruise that was surprisingly fun and informative despite being over-the-top tourist, a behind the scenes tour of the pâtisserie Sucrécacao, and a whole lot of walking from a café here to a lazy lunch there to then finally a dinner of delicious. It isn’t called a vacation for nothing.
This trip has most certainly got me inspired to bake it up but it has also been nice to be out of the kitchen for a bit and enjoy the offerings of summertime. I hope you are all doing the same.
That said – I have been doing a bit of baking and upon arrival in Prague I made this red currant meringue tart. The recipe will be up next!
Happy summer y’all!
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I hardly need a reason to have a backyard BBQ – a summertime Saturday is good enough but the little thing that gets in the way most of the time is that I do not have an actual backyard. I guess that is sort of an inconvenient problem but it doesn’t stop me from showing up at the door of a friends’ house with some sort of baked good the minute someone says grill.
The Fourth of July just another day in Europe but if I was going to show up at a party to celebrate the holiday here are some things I would bring.
Do you know what is pretty much summer in frozen form? Root beer float popsicles. They also happen to be one of the easiest recipes on this site. All you need is root beer, vanilla and a popsicle mold. No mold? Use little paper cups instead!
Potato chips are practically a BBQ requirement so why not crush them up and roll peanut butter cookies in the crumbs. Fill the centers with your favorite jam and you have super cute little crushed potato chip pb + j thumbprint cookies.
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The past few days have been quite a blur!
For one, BMUB has been live on the internet for one year and is just shy of 100 posts. If baking had a Chinese Zodiac calendar this would been the year of the butter and the brown sugar.
I was going to make a cake to celebrate but because it was about 105 degrees in New York before I left for Europe, I made a different type of treat – an ice cream pie. The strawberry basil combination may sound strange but I promise that the basil only enhances the sweet summer strawberry flavor. It is practically a no-bake dessert and the only turning on of the oven that is required is a brief toast of the waffle cone crust which makes it a perfect thing to make when your kitchen is so hot that it feels like the inside of an oven.
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What they don’t tell you about living in New York is that the minute you move here, you begin to carry your life around with you in a variety of different sized bags.
Grocery bags, gym bags, purse bags, perhaps the occasional backpack if you are about to really find yourself on a journey – one needs many options for carrying things.
One of my biggest summer challenges is making baked goods that will travel well for al fresco parties. A ridiculous statement, I know. Life can be so hard sometimes!
But let’s say that I have to go to a summer BBQ in the park and I have to take the train/walk/ride a bike there. What do I bring?
Cupcakes?
Probs not. I just can’t bring myself to buy a cupcake carrier, so those are usually out. I will make them if I’m hosting or have a large shoebox laying around (which, let’s be honest, is usually something that I have to spare).
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At sixteen I had my first overseas adventure.
Even without a transatlantic flight, I thought I was pretty cultured in my own kind of teenage way. I wore black-frame glasses with plastic lens. Amélie had just come out and I was convinced every moment of my trip would be filled with upbeat accordion music. I was in French III and knew how to conjugate le subjonctif.
I was going to Paris.
And was it ever glorious! I ate escargot and croissants in cafés with actual upbeat accordion music and because my parents had signed a waiver, I drank wine with a dinner of steak tartare (now as an adult I know one must be drunk to consume what is basically a raw hamburger). As a souvenir I purchased a tiny tin of mini cappuccino flavored cigars.
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When one is 14 years old, the goal of life is how one can – at all times – push the envelope.
I do not know this from personal experience or anything, but I do know that as Freshmen in high school we were not allowed to go “off-campus” at lunchtime.
This was slightly inconvenient for me because the best cookie my young palette had ever tasted was sold several blocks away. What a difference two city blocks can make to a hungry 14 year old. So close yet so devastatingly far away.
Never underestimate what someone will do for a good cookie.
Also while we are on the subject – never schedule a math class the period directly before lunch.
The first time I got past the fence to the sidewalk with no lights flashing or alarms sounding I realized there was actually very little envelope pushing going on and really nothing to feel guilty about. As dozens of smart teenagers before me had realized, the “off-campus” rule was one I’m fairly certain no one ever enforced.
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I have had the house to myself this week which means that I’ve been able to catch up on long overdue lady dates with friends, make and eat too many salads, and watch TV that I would already be watching alone – but at least I don’t have to share the couch.
Even though it has cooled down a bit outside my apartment it is approximately one billion degrees inside my apartment and since installing the air-conditioning unit in the window is a two person job, my only option to stay cool is through the old fashioned way: cocktails.
Half and Half’s, Arnold Palmers, iced tea and lemonade – however you know them – are pretty much the best thing ever. With gin? Even better.
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At some point in the near future, I need to come to terms with the fact that I have not lived on the West Coast since I was 19 years old.
You would not know that however, as I routinely introduce myself as being “from Seattle”. It is like the whole act of living in New York for eight years has been just temporary.
To really stave off any realizations that I may actually be required to call myself a New Yorker at some point in my life, I found myself in a relationship with a man from Berkeley, California and whose love the West Coast is mutual.
Between our shared closet of “nice going out” fleeces, the amount of burritos we consume on a weekly basis, and entire conversations consisting of the word “hella” – one would have no reason to assume we had ever even lived a minute in New York.
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