an urban harvest.

picker

Friends and family know that I could rant for hours about my love of Portland. It is everything I want in a city- old, dilapidated buildings are interspersed with modern high rises, overgrown front yards spill over onto sidewalks, and everything is so lush and green! The food here is amazing, with lots of restaurants buying direct from local farms, serving organic meat and produce. You can find vegan ANYTHING (remember the vegan fish sauce?) and you can hop on a bus to any corner of the metropolitan area. Huge book stores, friendly people- do I need to go on? I love it here. I've been here my whole life, and I don't know if I'll ever be able to leave.

picker2

Summer and I like to take our boys for strolls through the neighborhood, either to get coffee or just take in scenery. We've been keeping our eyes peeled for ripened fruits, and today we decided to go harvesting. Now, I have a few personal rules when it comes to urban harvesting- I only like to take fruit from trees that are on the street side of the sidewalk- not technically in a "yard." I don't pick from trees without much fruit, and if the homeowner is nearby, I like to holler for their attention and ask permission to pick. That said, I've found that most people who have fruit trees in front of their houses are more than happy to give up some of their fruit, rather than let it splatter all over the sidewalk, where they'd have to clean it up anyway.

urbanharvest4

We're coming into pear season, and the very beginning of apple season. I can't wait for local apples to get huge and ripe, yum! Today, we picked a handful of asian pears from an overflowing tree near summer's house, some lovely green pears (with homeowner's permission) a few blocks down, and a large handful of plums from a sidewalk tree further on our walk.

Summer & I have been chatting all evening, planning our friendly get-together tomorrow evening, (I've got to be honest- it's an America's Next Top Model premiere party.) and discussing potential recipes for this giant haul. I can't wait to see what she comes up with. We've got plenty of stuff, so suggestions are welcome. Look forward to seeing these fruits in different forms, very soon (if we don't eat them all first).

urbanharvest5

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Delicious Dried Plum Dessert for Autumn

Image
Two years ago in October everyone's favourite Parisian-American foodblogger, David Lebovitz , hosted a one-off Prune Blogging Thursday that resulted in a number of recipes using the humble wrinkled prune , aka dried plum. I submitted a recipe for healthy prune cake , which tasted much better than it looked. However, this time I've got a dried plum dessert recipe that both tastes good and looks good . The recipe is adapted from an Estonian cookbook " Kohupiima- ja kodujuusturaamat " (100 Rooga) and yields 6 small portions. I've garnished mine with sweet pomegranate seeds , but you can use lavender or lemon balm or simply dust the dessert with icing sugar. If you cannot find curd cheese (a popular ingredient here in Estonia), then ricotta or even cottage cheese (press through the sieve) would probably work as well. This would make a nice Christmas dessert - just in case you're already imagining the Christmas menu in your head :) Dried Plum and Curd Cheese Desse...
Read more

layered brownies.

Image
After the spice explosion of Thanksgiving (cinnamon and nutmeg and cloves, oh my!), all I could think about on Monday was something rich and chocolatey. Searching through my pantry, I was dissapointed to find nothing but a tiny bit of cocoa powder and some chocolate syrup. I was quite close to giving up and baking something else when I came across a recipe in an old christmas cookie magazine for brownies using chocolate syrup instead of regular melted chocolate. Hoorah! I was saved. The original recipe for these used a combination of chocolate and peppermint flavoring, but halfway through making them, I sadly found that I had no more mint extract. Instead, I mixed in some caramel extract into the cream mixture, which seemed to turn out just fine. I am sure a lot of different extracts and flavorings would work nicely: cherry extract, Kahlua, Amaretto, coconut flavoring, etcetera. Be on the lookout though. The spices will be back shortly. It's holiday time! Layered Brownies: recipe ...
Read more

Moist, moister, moistest: rhubarb muffins

Image
Photo updated in May 2009 We are still enjoying the rhubarb bounty . Here's a recipe for really moist rhubarb muffins that I made twice last week. Firstly, they were served at a 'girly' housewarming/ birthday party last Thursday, attended by all my aunties (that's three maternal and one paternal), my parents (my dad was unable to attend the 'real' birthday party on a previous weekend), as well as some of my first cousins (not all 11 though:). Instead of birthday cake , I made lots of these rhubarb muffins that day, served as a pyramid on a cake stand. Very pretty!! But in the midst of all the buzz and excitement, we forgot to take a picture. Not that it mattered much, as it gave me a good excuse to make these very same muffins again on Sunday. These muffins, let me tell you, are the moistest muffins you'll make. They're so moist, that even if you eat them on the following day, they taste like they're freshly baked. Delicious! Rhubarb muffins ( Rab...
Read more