Month: July 2006

Cookin’ in California

Chocolate_chef.jpgChocolate Chef

Our week entertaining niece Masha was chugging along even with the worst heat wave in recent memory hugging the Bay Area. Monday was Chinatown day with all the usual shops and of course, dim sum.

Tuesday we had invited friends for dinner. Marc made the menu and then as usual said “dessert is your part”. After some thought, I decided to do fruit and chocolate,have it done ahead and something fairly simple. Masha has always loved to make strawberries dipped in chocolate so why not branch out. We rolled bananas in dark chocolate & nuts then froze them; dipped Turkish apricots in the same chocolate; then made Masha made white chocolate patties with dried apricots, cranberries and toasted almonds.

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Potato Bugs

Picked 30 July on two rows of potato plantsBesides black flies, Windswept Farm is plagued with Colorado Potato Beetles (CPB – Leptinotarsa decemlineata), whose larvae will chew a potato plant like a dog chews a smoked pigs ear, and almost that fast. They don’t touch the tubers underground, but if there’s no plant to feed the tubers, you don’t dig potatoes in October. They are a scourge not just here in Monroe Maine, but around the world despite originating in Colorado. The Wikipedia article mentions that they may have been used as a crude form of biological warfare against Germany in WWII, and the Soviet Union in the 1950s.
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Back from SC

AB on the Beach

Alison on the Hunting Island Beach

Alison and I just got back from a nice little visit to Alison’s parent’s place on the South Carolina coast (with apologies to the Traveller’s Rest crew, who we probably flew over twice on our way in and out of the Charlotte airport). Her parents are retired and live beyond Beaufort, SC, which is pronounced “Byoo-fort” and you will be corrected on the spot if you mistakenly use the NORTH Carolina pronunciation of “Boh-fort.”

“When you like the way something looks, you don’t say it is “BOH” -tiful, do you?” The natives will point out with a smug smile at their unassailable logic…

“BYOO-fort” is a “BYOO-tiful” small city that reminds me of Belfast, Maine because it features many restored period buildings in its walkable downtown, it’s right on the water, and it’s the ‘step-child” of a nearby famous resort town (Hilton Head), which means that it has been spared many of the unappealing aspects of wild growth. The Berards live beyond Beaufort in a non-famous resort community at the end of the state highway heading east through a clump of islands amid the picturesque brown and green spiky estuaries (think The Big Chill, Prince Of Tides, and Forrest Gump — all of which filmed scenes around these islands) bordering the Atlantic ocean called Fripp Island. Alison’s sister Leslie and niece Tait were visiting at the same time to make it a full Berard family reunion.
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