Hands Down, my favorite picture of the Summer – of Santa Rosa Plums – courtesy Frog Hollow Farm in Brentwood Calif. –  hoping to visit there in September

I love listening to people talking about wine.  Even though it’s all a little overwhelming to me, the phraseology they use  – evoking flavors, tanins, fruits other than grapes, woods, smoke, etc. — is intriguing and draws me in.  And then there are the rituals of swirling, resting and swishing and spitting –   I’d skip the spitting part.   I have pledged to myself to take a good wine course – I have a credit for one at ICE – but haven’t gotten there yet.

Anyway, my favorite phrase from the wine aficionados  is “fruit forward”.   I wonder who comes up with these phrases, but I am glad they have – since in this case, for me, I am borrowing it and applying it to the Season itself.    For me, this entire season, and, actually, right through the Fall, should be, first and foremost, “Fruit Forward”.

Summer seems to have a confounding way about it – we wait so long for the days when we can enjoy the outdoors and all the bounty that the earth sends forth.  We anticipate, we yearn, we dream.  Then just as Summer arrives and we start celebrating, it begins its accelerating ways – it seems to gather its own momentum and rush through to the end of August.  I am caught trying to hold onto every blessed day, and along with it all those glorious fruits (and vegetables) at the market.

And yes, I want every day to be “Fruit Forward” –  for every vision and thought we give to a meal, a recipe, a treat, I am an advocate of the idea that it should be Fruit Forward.  You get what I mean.

For those of us who don’t live in California where they harvest Strawberries in February around San Francisco, I especially want to extract every fruit idea I can from the season.  This year, my favorite website/fb page is Frog Hollow Farm in Brentwood.  They post the most amazing pictures of their fruit.  Take a look – if this doesn’t make you want to move there, or at least visit, then I don’t know.  I am hoping to get there in September.

Anyway, as I travel through the offerings each day on my Facebook page, featuring mostly “likes” about food sites, I view with interest and a little confusion,  the creations which appear to be “un-seasonal” to me.  Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t want chocolate and peanut butter cupcakes in July, (s’mores items are one exception in the chocolate category ).  In fact, I am off the chocolate thing for the most part (blasphemy?), along with other “heavy” items that I associate with the colder seasons than Summer.  I don’t get that people want them now.  The chocolate-cherry thing is another exception.   To not take advantage of every meal as an opportunity to incorporate the great availability now, is in my mind, a great oversight.  That’s just me, just saying.

Lest you think my posts are becoming redundant and even boring, I’d like to tempt you with these few additional goodies to consider for your day – as I am doing – and,honestly, the recipe compendium, in the “great” category, with fruit being forward, could go on forever.

BLUEBERRY SORBET

I love this recipe for its purity – however, I may be tempted to add a little lemon zest here………

Blueberry Sorbet Recipe – Chef John Besh

Makes 10-12 Servings

Notes:
Sorbets often contain too much sugar and too much water. I love using fresh berries at the peak of their ripeness to make very straightforward purees that can be frozen for sorbet. I use the egg method to make sure the purees will freeze into a smooth sorbet with intense fruit flavor.

Ingredients:
4 pints blueberries
1/2 cup sugar, if needed

Procedure:

• Puree the blueberries in a blender for several minutes. Strain the purée through a fine sieve, pushing it through with a rubber spatula, into a medium bowl.
• Test for the proper sugar content by floating a whole egg, shell and all, in the puree. If the egg floats so that only a nickel-size portion of the egg is exposed at the surface of the sorbet, there is enough natural sugar – no need to add more. If the egg sinks, remove the egg and add up to 1/2 cup of sugar, blend, and retest with the egg. If it floats too high in the puree, then add water, a bit at a time, until the egg sinks to the correct height.
• Pour the blueberry puree into the canister of an ice cream machine and freeze according to the manufacturer’s directions.

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Courtesy Verses from my Kitchen:  FALL STONE FRUIT CAKE

 

Fall Stone Fruit Cake

Ingredients:

• 3 nectarines, sliced into wedges
• 18 cherries, pitted and halved
• 2 sticks unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1 1/4 cup superfine sugar
• 2 tbsp. orange zest
• 3 organic eggs
• 2 cups all-purpose flour, sifted
• 1 tbsp. baking powder
• pinch of salt