Simple Super Yum!

Millions of peaches, peaches for me,
Millions of peaches, peaches for me...

These peaches, however, did not come from a can...

Fresh, ripe Idaho peaches

I put together a fruit salad this weekend that turned out to be just fabulous and sooo simple I thought I would share. Typically, when I make a fruit salad it's pretty generic. I tend to use cantaloupe, melon, strawberries and grapes. This time though I thought I would try to be a little inventive with some help of course from Google.

I was going to a potluck where the main course was marinated grilled pork tenderloin so I let that be my starting point. And what doesn't go better with pork than peaches? Well, apples do too but since Idaho peaches are really just perfect right now that's what I went with.

And here it is:

5 peaches
1 pint strawberries
a couple handfuls of baby spinach
1 lime
a stem or two of cilantro

Cube the peaches, quarter the strawberries, toss together in a bowl (separate from the bowl the salad is to be served in). Squeeze the lime all over the peaches and strawberries, chop up the cilantro and sprinkle over fruit mixture and toss all over again. Line the bottom of the salad bowl with the spinach and dump the fruit on top.

Very simple and super yum! And...it presents great too!

I also created a lime cilantro vinaigrette which is where Google came in. I used the first recipe that popped up when I googled 'lime cilantro vinaigrette' which was courtesy of About.com in their home cooking section. I modified it slightly and it turned out to be the best dressing I've ever made. Following is the ingredient list that they provided with my modifications listed in parentheses.

Lime Cilantro Vinaigrette

1/4 cup fresh lime juice

1/8 cup white wine vinegar

1/2 cup cilantro leaves, no stems

1 Tablespoon honey

1 Tablespoon brown sugar (Nebraska Knoll Maple Snow, pure Vermont maple sugar, the only sugar I use)

1/4 teaspoon kosher salt (medium grain sea salt)

1 teaspoon fresh chopped garlic

2-1/2 teaspoons Dijon mustard (Sun Valley Spicy Sweet Mustard)

3/4 cup light olive oil (organic, extra virgin, expeller pressed, a little more aromatic)

About.com directs all ingredients to be mixed in a blender but I always make my dressings in a pint jar and shake, shake, shake, shake that boooty, allows for the textures and various colors to still shine on their own.

I did not add the dressing to the salad (you can completely skip the dressing if you want, the lime and cilantro alone are enough) but provided it on the side, along with some chopped pecans. Everybody loved the salad and the dressing and not only did they use the dressing for the salad but they also put it on the pork and used it for dipping their bread into. (All ingredients used were organic and the maple sugar is shipped regularly from Mom in Vermont.)

Mountain Mushrooms

Fall is fast upon us and the wild flowers are wilting.

It has been an amazingly wet summer though and the fungi are out in abundance; pink, purple, red, brown, black, striped, big and small, flat and fat, wrinkly and crinkly. They are all out there.

Makes me wish I knew my mycology. I never knew there were so many different varieties. My knowledge of any type of exotic mushroom is limited to picking morels for saute in the spring and purchasing portobellos for grilling in the summer.

A little garlic, a little butter...aahhhh for now, just a thought.
































































































More mushrooms here.

B is for baby

This weekend I attended a party which was in honor of two of my best friends' first child (party photos). He is due any moment and the following is in celebration of baby Theobald a.k.a. 'the bump' (great maternity photos taken by another friend of theirs, Kristin Cheatwood, Cheatwood Photography, Ketchum, Idaho).


B
is
for
baby

and bike and bat and ball

and boarding on Baldy (be it one board or two)

and the big, big, fish in the Big Wood

and bananas and bongos
and bubbles and butterflies

and burritos and beer

and Buddha

and books,
lots and lots of books

and lets not forget frisbee

big, brother 'Boose (the best mountain basset ever)

and

being
best of friends.

most this amazing

i thank You God for most this amazing
~ e e cummings

i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any - lifted from the no
of all nothing - human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

Boulder Mountains from Baker Lake access road