strawberry season--part two

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yeah yeah, storing berries is all well and good. But what about EATING them?  

all the Berries!

Other than just eating them, straight, I fall back to a few options.

that's brown sugar on the strawberries, not blueberries.

First, sliced berries with a bit of sugar.  I make my own vanilla sugar, which is killer sprinkled on the berries.  But also a bit of brown sugar is FANTASTIC. Sprinkle the sugar and let it sit for a bit, drawing out the juices of the berries--this is called macerating.  

Then, if you want to get fancier, add some cream--whipped or not.  Whipped cream is easy enough to do a small amount by hand with a whisk, just add a pinch of sugar (white or brown!) and beat the hell out of the cream with a whisk until it's thick.  You don't need to fully beat the cream to stiff peaks, even softly beaten cream is great.  Or just pour a bit on the berries.

Or, if you don't have heavy cream on hand, stir a bit of brown sugar into a little sour cream and plop that on top of the berries. 

Want strawberry shortcake? Make some of the cream biscuits (add a tablespoon of sugar to the dry ingredients).  Split them, top with the macerated berries and top that with whipped cream. DONE. 

Also, here's a little whipped cream trick: add a little bit of sour cream to the heavy cream before you beat it.  It'll help stabilize the whipped cream to make it last longer (it won't deflate in the fridge or weep liquid), and adds a little tang, similar to what creme fraiche is like. 

strawberry water.  take the tops out before you drink though.

One last thing you can do with the berries: throw the tops into water, and keep in the fridge for an hour before fishing out the berry tops.  Now you have fancy spa strawberry water!



Strawberry season

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Yesterday, we got two boxes of strawberries in our csa share. You guys they are so good. There's nothing like truly ripe strawberries that are red all the way through.

bowl 'o berries

I love strawberry season. But it doesn't last long, and neither do the berries once they're in my house. While the biggest little isn't the fruit fanatic that the littlest little is, both kids will eat strawberries until they turn into one. 

The problem is that berries, especially the ripe ones, are so fragile and spoil quickly. and because I am a hoarder, and want to eat all the berries when they're around, keeping them from getting gross before I can snarf them down can be tricky. 

There are a ton of articles about how to keep your strawberries for longer, and BELIEVE ME I've read them all.  Here's what works for me. HOT water (or vinegar water), and perfectly dry berries before stashing in the fridge.

Wash the berries in the hottest water you can get from the tap. Or, wash the berries in vinegar water. OR, wash the berries in HOT vinegar water.  Ditch any berries that have any mushy spots (or, realistically, carve out the mushy spots and eat those berries RIGHT NOW), and any signs of mold (don't eat these). Then make sure they're all 100% dry before putting them in the fridge. 

To wash in hot water, you can either fill the sink with the hottest water you can stand, then let the berries sit for a few minutes in the hot water.  Or, depending on the cleanliness of your sink, put them in a colander or strainer in a SINGLE LAYER, then rinse with the hottest water you can stand. It's a bit of a pain in the ass to place each berry in a single layer, but you need to sort through them anyway to ditch the gross ones, right? Then pat them dry on the dish towel or if you could fit your whole batch in the colander in a single layer, just let them dry there.  

To use vinegar water, fill the sink with water, and throw in a solid splash of white vinegar.  Let the berries soak for a few minutes.  Fish them out and let them dry or pat them dry.  And same thing for hot vinegar water--hot water in the sink with vinegar.

The hot water and vinegar will help kill the stuff on the berries that'll make 'em go bad.  Keeping the berries dry keeps them from rotting in the fridge.  I also don't stack them too high, because then the ones on the bottom get smooshed.

Next up? HOW TO EAT THEM.  Other than, you know, cramming them in your face hole. Which also works. 

It's not easy being green--keeping up with the CSA

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(Could I resist that headline? No, no I could not.)

We are members of our local CSA--that's Community Supported Agriculture, aka when you pay a farmer in the winter/spring and get shares of the veg/fruit/etc. that he or she grows over the course of the season.  Our local CSA is awesome, and has a fantastic farmer at the helm of the food.  There's also a separate fruit share--POUNDS AND POUNDS OF PEACHES PEOPLE!--eggs, chicken, the whole nine yards.

Anyway, one of the blessings and the curses of belonging to a CSA is figuring out how to cook and eat truly seasonally.  And because we are in New Jersey, and not like Portland or the Bay area where temperate climate means year round growing seasons, almost, our season runs from June through November.

And it also means a shit-ton of greens at the beginning and end of the seasons.  (Did I mention the BUCKETS of Jersey tomatoes in August? Oh wait, I did not, because it's not nice to make people jealous on purpose.)

I love me a good salad, but I am also lazy and fickle when it comes to planning my dinner. And, dude, keeping up with things like a CSA is not my strong suit, I am the first to admit. So JBB and I have figured out a few ways to manage our CSA share, especially when the CSA share consists of like 6 bunches of different kinds of lettuce. The first principle is one that food writer Tamar Adler helped popularize recently with her book, An Everlasting Meal (not only is that an affiliate link, but I went to college with her. Different years though.), and that is to prep and process food when you get it. That way when you go to make a meal, everything is ready for you.  25 minutes one day gets you set for the rest of the week, and takes making a salad from a pain in the ass production to a quick solution for a meal.

Once a week, when we get the CSA pick up, we "process" the greens and wash them all at once, and store them, ready to go, in the fridge. 

Here we take a page from Alton Brown's book (show, really), and put Science to Work! We always try to wash the fragile greens like lettuce and arugula and the like right away, since they're leaves, they wilt, and when they get gross they stink.

Fill a sink with cold water, tear the leaves off the core of the head of lettuce (don't cut! Cut edges brown), and throw them in the cold water. Completely submerge them and swish them around a bit.  If they're at all wilted, let them sit in the cold water for a while. The water's not going to hurt the greens at all, so be lazy and let 'em soak.

big sink o greens

big sink o greens

Do you have a salad spinner? WHY NOT? They're awesome for this thing, though a pain in the ass to store, but they do double as a nifty Wheel of Death for Hot Wheels cars, as well as a lesson in centrifugal force, so there's that.

(NEVER A SINGLE TASKER, ALTON! NEVER A SINGLE TASKER!)

Ours is Oxo (affiliate link), but there are a ton out there that are good.  I prefer the pump kind with a brake to the pull-string kind.  Though growing up, we totally had the pull string one, which was super entertaining when you're eight. Which might be why I now prefer the pump kind, since now I'm the grown up and have to clean up after the designated spinner.

Salad spinners are great, though, for real.  I highly reccomend them.  In a pinch you can suck it up with a clean non-terry dishtowel or pillowcase, but the spinner is the easiest. Swish the leaves again in the water, and DON'T DRAIN. Just gently lift out a handful or two of just leaves.  Shake off some of the water, and toss them into the salad spinner.  

handful o greens

Don't try to pack in all your lettuce at once.  The leaves need some room for centrifugal force to work its magic, fling the water off the leaves, and get 'em dry. (If you are using a dish towel, lay the wet leaves on the towel and gently pat dry.  If you are using a pillowcase, stick the leaves inside the pillowcase, hold the open end tighly closed and swing that sucker around in a circle, without knocking your shit off the walls. THAT'S why I have a salad spinner.)

Keep going, drying off all your leaves. When you're done, and left with a sink full of water, check out the bottom and look at all that crud! Satisfying, no?

big sink o dirt

Using all your lettuce right away? Good on ya, you are ready to go. More likely than not, you'll be hitting a week where you have more lettuce than you can eat that day. This is the trick to keeping things fresh and crisp for days.  Grab a stretch of paper towels, or a clean, dry, non-fuzzy dish towel and lay it out flat in front of you.  Spread your leaves out in a single layer (mostly single layer, I fudge it a lot).

big paper towel o greens.  note the salad spinner in the background.

Roll up the towel loosely, like a jelly roll, and pop the roll into a big ziploc bag. Press out some of the air, and boom into the fridge.

The towels absorb any extra moisture from the greens, and then will release it back to them so they don't wilt.  Don't press all the air out of the bag, because the greens will still be respirating--exchanging oxygen and carbon dioxide--as they age. Also, to keep waste to a minimum, we get the 2 gallon size of ziplocs so we fit more than one head/roll of lettuce in there. We also reuse the bags (and sometimes the paper towels, dried) for the next week's greens.   

big jelly roll o greens

 I don't bother doing the full jelly roll with hardier greens like kale or swiss chard.  Those are sturdy enough to last just fine once washed and dried.  But the lettuces? This jelly roll trick is effing MAGIC.  Greens, even fragile ones, will last a full week, or longer. 

Next installment? We'll talk big salad for the week.

French radishes

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French radishes: not really two words you'd associate, right?

And yet. AND YET. 

 

mmm butter and crunch.

mmm butter and crunch.

One of the things I love about spring is these French breakfast radishes.

bread and radishes

bread and radishes

We get them in our farm share/CSA, the first box of which we picked up a few days ago.

And last night, JBB brought home wine and cheese and a baguette. And so i had wine and cheese and baguette slices with salted butter and thin-sliced spicy crisp fresh radishes with flaky salt.​

Yay spring!​

the big change ahead: going freelance

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So the big changes that were afoot?  Are that after sixteen years at my current job, and eighteen years in publishing, I quit my job. My last day is this coming Wednesday. And I'll be doing freelancing (come check it out at jenbonnell.com!)

A blurry sun setting over Jersey, from my office window.

There is no reading between the lines to be done here (publishing people, I know how this works, yo), it was my decision to leave Puffin, the imprint I've called home--in the truest sense of the word--for the last sixteen years of my life.  And it was one of the hardest decisions I've had to make.

I love books, I love publishing, and at Puffin (and Penguin!) I've worked with some of the most insanely talented, generous, kind, smart, and loving people. I am honored to know them, and to see the creative things they can do.  And I am honored to call them my friends.  They have seen me through so many major stages of my life--when I started at Penguin, I was 23 and single living in an apartment.  I'm leaving at 39, married with two kids and owning a house.  They saw me through everything from my first date with JBB through getting hitched, three miscarriages, two successful pregnancies, buying two houses, renovations, and everything in between. I am going to miss going to hang out with my friends everyday. 

the Today Show

And I got to do some pretty cool shit: meet Paula Danziger--hell, sit NEXT TO PAULA EFFING DANZIGER at my very first sales conference and try not to shake while meeting my childhood favorites; act as line bouncer for a bunch of rowdy teachers and librarians waiting to meet Henry Winkler;  have (many) drinks with Tomie dePaola and hear a master storyteller at work; visit an animation studio; make someone's dream come true by acquiring her young adult novel, and in the process make a lifelong friend (with excellent taste in shoes and pink barns); write several books (one even credited!); go to the Today show with Jeff Probst for a book that hit the Times list; pitch an idea and put together a project that becomes a New York Times bestseller, year after year; participate in a book-themed-cake-off to celebrate an author visiting the office (I lost.  I knew I should have gone chocolate and played to the judges); watch authors go from a regular anonymous person folks to superstars; and most of all read and work on a shit ton of amazing books with talented folks. 

Cake Off!

It was awesome.  It IS awesome. But I'm just done with the stress of it all.  The lack of balance in my life was killing me. I was constantly running--running to the train, to work, running to relieve the sitter, running running running.  And those who know me know how much I HATE running. I was lucky enough to be working at a company with excellent parental policies, and for two working mothers who knew EXACTLY what I was going through and doing.  Thank god for that, because otherwise I would have melted down years ago. 

Train sunset. 

But no matter how much I loved the people, and working with authors and creating books, I needed the balance back. I've never been one of those people where my entire world is one thing, it's never been just children's publishing--as this blog shows, I have a ton of things I want to do.  I want to make things and hang out with my kids and read not-for-work again and edit cool stuff.  And I am in a privileged enough position to be able to gain the freedom to do the ton of things I want to do by doing something terrifying and scary like quitting my job and going freelance.

Freedom Tower, on the rise. Statue of Liberty in the background.

The thing is, I am the WORST with change. The absolute worst.  My entire family--including my kids--can testify to that.  And don't think that I'm not second guessing my decision every day, wondering if I made the right choice.  But for once in my life, I think I'm actually ok with this change.  (I say this now.  Talk to me after my last day and the many many ugly cries.)

So, if you're in the market for some editorial consulting, go check me out at jenbonnell.com!

And meanwhile I'll try to get better about posting more regularly, now that I have no good excuse not to. 

 

big changes afoot

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There are some big changes afoot for me (some of you, aka the only people I know who read the blog, probably know to what I am referring).  More to come shortly once things are settled.  

All of this, ironically, when I am not good with change, never have been.  I may be a Sagittarius, and supposedly up for adventure, but I like my routines, I like knowing what's coming, and what to expect. And I am terrified of heights.  

And here I am, about to throw a giant monkey wrench into all of that.  Voluntarily, even! 

More to come soon...