Summer

I can, can you? Sure you can! Canning is not hard to do at all, especially if you pick a really easy project like canning fruit. This year I received a box of luscious peaches from Washington state. They were perfectly ripe, but a bit crushed in spots due to poor handling in transit. Instead of canning slices or halves, I used the fruit—some perfect and some not so perfect—to make peach ketchup!

Peach ketchup is a lovely peachy color, but it tastes very much like tomato ketchup. Taste it before you can it, and adjust the spices and sugar to suit yourself. Use really great tasting fruit, it should not be brown or overripe, but if it is soft in spots, that's ok. Use the tangy sweet and sour ketchup just as you would regular tomato ketchup. It’s particularly great on potatoes.

Sweet Preservation ia a great go-to resource for canning and freezing stone fruits, offering how-to-tips, recipes, health information, customizable canning jar labels and more.

Forgive me, Whole Foods, for I have sinned….

It’s been 2 months since my last confession…of taking one of your best dishes and taking out more than half the calories…

But before you make me count a dried bean rosary–or peacefully protest on my lawn– let me state my case…

I was in desperate need of a “Southwestern” dish for the pot luck dinner before the school play.

(It was sort of “How the West was Won”…but, occasionally, seemed to happen in real time…)

And, in old timey days (when I weighed 34 pounds more), I would have felt pretty good about picking up your original dish, just as it is. Like all dried legumes, lentils are loaded with nutrition…providing protein, folate, even iron. And, according to Dr. Perricone (and Oprah), lentils are a “superfood” that we want to make part of our diet.

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.

Fueled by the books of Michael Pollan and Mark Bittman, among others, and by the recent release of films such as Food, Inc. and Food Fight, a lot of people are talking about food policy in the United States.

With so many people suffering from diabetes, we know that Americans have paid a price for the convenience of fast food. When the First Lady digs up part of the White House lawn to plant a garden, you know we're either at war or there's a problem with what American's are eating.

Knowing that consumers want a reliable, healthy food supply, corporations use phrases like "Organic," "Farm Fresh," "Healthy Choice" and "100% Natural" as marketing tools to keep processed foods in our pantries.

Access to fresh, affordable produce is essential to good health. Those of us who live in communities with farmers' markets are lucky. In our area, we have two great farmers' markets: the Santa Monica Farmers' Market and the Sunday Pacific Palisades Farmers' Market.