Thanks Caroline. Forwarding this to my fellow gardeners in our community garden in Portland. Out of 28 plots we’ve had 5 ripe tomatoes so far this year!

I just did that Sunday. Your casserole may have tasted just fine. My strawberry cake, with the first decent harvest of berries of the season, did not. Come to think of it I’m not sure the paragraph I was writing while I was baking turned out any better.

One of the uses of quotation marks is to connote irony. “Well done!”

What that all proves is that you are designed to “cook” and your mother is designed to “bake!” Those are different skill sets, mind sets, but together they make a great dinner.

Lovely, Nadia. Just lovely. Dry your tears and impose your fruit on them! They are truly missing out on the larger world.

Brava Caroline. My allotment and the care it takes are not free. Neither are the supplies from canning what comes in from them and the farmers markets. I too, adore NS online shopping for that reason-and believe that their annual buy in bulk sale is coming up! That shopping “trip” will be over three digits!

Rum Balls by Lisamary Wichowski on Dec 2, 2009 at 1:03 PM PST

My mom made these and sent them to school with me for the nuns. They were really funny after lunch that day. She made them with bourbon and I do that plus switch out local Oregon filberts.

Thank you, Caroline. A lovely, honest piece, one of the best things I’ve read this year.

Asparagus, Hood strawberries, the first favas. Although my favorite market is biweekly in the winter and I have a great CSA I admit to getting a bit tired of beets and kale!

thought I had some gelatin but it was nowhere to be found. Ran it through the ice cream maker instead. Satisfied my “I want to be somewhere tropical” need ...almost.