Hungry?
It’s finally tee shirts-shorts-sandals season and I’m ready for all of the summer fruit. I like to bake and cook with seasonal produce - everything from simple fruit crumbles with vanilla ice cream to huge salads with lots of flavor, different textural elements and easy homemade dressings. Berries and stone fruits are much more special in the warmer months; apples and pumpkin and cranberries are the familiar harbingers of fall and winter.
Food always correlates to my memories, both negative and positive, of meals and desserts marked by various holidays. I love eating leftovers, and I’m a big proponent of having dessert for breakfast.
On my Substack, you’ll find vegan, plant-based (and mostly gluten-free) recipes, along with helpful tips for streamlining weekly food prep (hello, dreamy-smooth vanilla-scented waffle batter) and make-ahead toppings (such as batch roasted sweet-and-spicy pecans; Dijon maple vinaigrette and my absolute favorite garlicky, lemony, spicy tahini Caesar dressing) that can be made and stashed in the fridge for when you want or need to use them. I daydream about making delicious things. I read cookbooks as though they’re novels; each ingredient is a unique character in its own right.
Two of my lifelong loves are camping and hiking, so I often approach our everyday routines with these activities in mind. If I bake a peach crumble, then I imagine how I can make a cast iron version over the fire on our next camping trip. Whenever I make a quick avocado toast for lunch, I think about how I can store the ingredients in the cooler to maximize their freshness for several days at the campsite - even in the sultry heat of summer. And in my opinion, everything tastes better around a campfire or on a hiking trail.