Summer

Although we certainly are carnivores in my family, I love to eat meatless meals and try to eat about three dinners a week without any meat. For those interested in the health and environmental benefits of eating less meat, you can read books by Mark Bittman and Michael Pollan, who both still enjoy an occasional steak. On our weekly pizza night, I always fix a vegetarian pizza for myself (with maybe some good anchovies). I try to fix at least one or two seafood/fish dinners a week and I love to make meatless pasta dishes. But one of the best meals you can fix for dinner involves that super food: beans.

It's a high quality protein that is very cheap with no animal fat and lots of fiber. I get my beans these days mostly from Rancho Gordo, that wonderful farm out in Napa Valley run by Steve Sando. He grows the most high quality, fresh beans you will ever taste. You certainly can used canned beans and they are fine, but try buying some great quality dried beans sometime. They are still so much cheaper than buying meat. He has some wonderful varieties that you will never find in the grocery store. For this recipe, I used cellini. You really can use any bean you like.

A lot of people are confused about how to cook dried beans and are scared to try. It's so easy. You just soak and simmer. Sometimes I just throw the beans in a pot and cover with cold water to soak before I go to bed. If I don't do that, I just go ahead and throw them in some water in the morning and let them soak all day. There is no exact science to it. After they soak you just need to give yourself a couple of hours to cook them, depending on what kind of bean you have and how long they have soaked. I just put mine on to simmer with some aromatics and start tasting them after an hour and keep tasting them until they are the texture I like. That's it.

My friend, Lynn, rubs up with mosquito spray and grabs a bucket as she heads out each year at this time to pick wild blueberries. She's been doing this for years, so it doesn't take her long to pick enough of those small, sweet berries in her secret spot to make at least a couple of blueberry pies. And, she makes the world's best pie crust. This year, she brought me a small pie that was perfect for my husband and I to share. We savored each bite of flaky crust that held her homemade wild blueberry pie filling. It was absolutely heavenly.

I don't pick wild blueberries, except for the few that grow along my driveway. Too many bears, woodticks and mosquitoes to worry about when one is out in the woods picking berries. And, I don't make pies. I make at least a few dozen of my favorite bluebery muffins each year at this time.

Today, I tried something a little different by baking a whole batch of my favorite blueberry muffin recipe in a springform pan to make a muffin cake.

Where would I be without California farmers? If it weren't for them, I would never have discovered the sticky, caramel bliss of Medjool dates, the tropical pina colada flavors of cherimoya, or the simple joy of munching on raw summer sweet corn. Yes, raw corn.

At first, I was skeptical. Having grown up in New England, I was accustomed to bright yellow, fat kerneled ears of corn steamed to perfection and doused with melted butter and salt. But the LA farmer insisted I taste the raw corn he was offering: raw, white, small kerneled corn. How could such puny corn possibly be good without butter and salt?

Still, I held out my palm while he filled it with a scoop of raw corn kernels. With one swift swoop of the arm, I popped the entire handful in my mouth. It was crunchy, as in snap! crackle! pop! crunchy and surprisingly juicy. As for the flavor, well, it was natural. Just unadorned, mildly sweet, old-fashioned corn flavor. I was hooked.

Berries are fragile, which is why we love them so much off the bush or in a bowl But there are a couple of things to keep in mind once you decide to cook them, like in a pie.

First. Often they are less sweet than you imagine, even when they are perfectly ripe. Don’t confuse the full berry flavor with sweetness.

Second. Blueberries tend to need some acid to brighten the flavor and even blackberries can use some for balance.

Third. I believe in adding some starch to thicken fruit pies. I don’t want berry juice to run all over the plate. I want to get it into my mouth. That is the role of starch as a thickener.