Summer

Strawberries, blackberries, and blueberries are coming into season and what a good season it is! There is nothing like the freshness of local produce, the best of summer’s offerings, and the memorable taste these fruits create. Unless, though, you can eat pints of fresh berries every day, these delicacies of nature are not long lived on the shelf…YET…there is a way to enjoy their flavor for days in a variety of ways!

A conserve is similar to a jam, yet this method of conserving fruit differs from jam and jelly, since a conserve (con, like a criminal – serve, as in time – ha!) usually contains the whole fruit rather than the juice only. Easy as pie (and delicious on a pie), conserves are a quick fix to a plethora of produce.

Taking the strawberries and blackberries I had left over and just could not finish, I added the berries into a small pot (large pot for larger quantities) set on medium heat. Once the berries hit the heat, they begin to release their juices and natural sugars and your kitchen will begin to smell divine. A dip of water, a splash of sugar, a squeeze of lemon, and a hint of good vanilla are all you need to complete this delicacy. Bring the concoction to a boil for a few minutes, stir around, and remove it from the heat and your conserve is complete.

Now how to eat this treat is probably the toughest part, for it is fabulous on cake and ice cream, zippy as a vinaigrette, or delectable as a seasonal marinade. Of course, in making such a tough decision of how to enjoy your conserve, this Farmer recommends you simply try all the options thus allowing your palette to be your gage.

What do potato salad, corn-on-the-cob, watermelon, and bean salad all have in common? They're requisite summer cookout foods.

When I was a kid growing up in Rhode Island, it was usually Italian-style pickled bean salad made with green and yellow wax beans and dark red kidney bean. I always ate so much that I inevitably ended up with pickled gray vinegar lips.

Then sometime in the '90's my mom replaced the Italian bean salad with a rich, sweet baked bean dish made with crispy bacon. It was so sugary good, that one year I ate nearly half of it while I was making it for the cookout. Not a good idea.

When we lived in North Carolina, it was either a mushy green bean salad with diced ham (yech) or a crisp black-eyed pea salad similar to succotash (yum).

A pleasant, bright fragrance wafted from the work bowl of my food processor as I pulled the top off. I had just whirled granulated sugar and chopped lemongrass through the sharp blade of my faithful workhorse, producing a delicately-scented lemon-infused sugar.

I was preparing to mix up a batch of zucchini muffins with subtle hints of lemon without the tart bite and plump, sweet blueberries.

I have lemongrass growing in my little garden this year. Lemongrass is a staple of Asian cuisines, used like an herb to add aromatic, lemony flavor without the bite of citrus. It looks like grass, but the portion closest to the soil eventually becomes long, thick, pale green and reed-like. This lower portion is the usable part of the plant.

If the farmers' market were giving out superlatives, heirloom tomatoes would get "most popular." No contest. Today there were several different farmers selling them from $5-7 per pound, and each table had a line of people at least four deep waiting to buy some.

Considering that one tomato weighs about half a pound or more, you could be in for a real sticker shock if you buy 3 or 4 of them! People don't seem to mind though; probably because after years of eating tasteless, hard, dry supermarket tomatoes, it's worth paying a little more to get heirlooms that taste as exciting as they look.

Who can resist brilliantly colored, endearingly odd-ball shaped tomatoes with whimsical names such as Big Rainbow, Green Zebra, and Brandywine? If, however, you don't want to break a $20 just to try a tomato, then consider baby heirlooms instead. These diminutive members of the heirloom tomato family come in a dazzling kaleidoscope of colors. Unlike their larger brethren, however, they tend to be neatly round, oval, or teardrop in shape. Most baby heirlooms are the size of cherry tomatoes, though once in a while, you'll find one the size of a golf ball.