in an octupus’s salad with purslane

Sunday, July 25th, 2010

Well, I usually make this salad with octupuses. (Look for the little red Matiz Gallego boxes of tinned octupus and sauté them in olive oil.) Instead of octupus, yesterday I found beautiful local squid at the market that I battered in a 1:1 mix of flour and beer, fried in a shallow pan of olive [...]

Posted in Food, Market, Santa Cruz, light | 2 Comments »

artichokes, breaded and trimmed

Tuesday, July 20th, 2010

With only a vague idea of what Saturday might bring, I made a speck sandwich (this is the beautiful La Quercia Speck Americano you may be able to find near you) after yoga and waited for my wonderful friend Margaret and her family to arrive. Another stop in downtown Santa Cruz for our friend Stephanie [...]

Posted in Food, Market, Santa Cruz, Travel, garden | 2 Comments »

time for summer pudding

Saturday, July 17th, 2010

These are marionberries, and below are olallieberries. See the difference? It’s difficult. The olallieberries are slightly longer. (And the family tree of berry cultivars is fascinating, if you’re into that kind of thing.) I wanted to wait until after the July holidays of American and French independence before posting about my favorite summer dessert that [...]

Posted in Entertaining, Food | 2 Comments »

you are awesome and beautiful

Friday, July 16th, 2010

Last night was another magical Thursday summer salon at Fairy-Tale Farm in Santa Cruz, and the crafts table was soon crowded with feather artists and those skilled in the ways of pink fur. Margaret’s daughter Zsa Zsa (wearing a pink dress that matched her zebra jacket) showed us her flower clip creation, and I noticed [...]

Posted in Food, Market, Santa Cruz, garden | 7 Comments »

dahlias and apricots

Wednesday, July 14th, 2010

Even more beautiful than big, bright dahlias (that apparently the Aztecs ate—but the flowers are not the food subject for this post), my sister Kassandra came to visit this past weekend, and we made roasted portobello sandwiches with homemade aioli, cut cherry tomatoes, and rocket on local bread rolls while we spilled secrets, as sisters [...]

Posted in Food, Santa Cruz, flowers | 5 Comments »