The worst summer job I had as a teenager was as a "roller girl" at a small peach-packing plant in rural south Jersey. It made a change from waitressing, but it was hellishly hot, hard labour, and we girls of the rollers were constantly covered in … [Read more...]
Late-summer recipes
Skip to recipes The dog days are passed, but we hope for one or two last barks. We know it’s coming, but we’re not yet ready to hand over to autumn. No need, just yet, for summer’s exuberance is still here in the late-summer harvest that is … [Read more...]
Cherries sour, cherries sweet
I have a thing for sour cherries. To my mind, the Morello cherry beats every sweet cherry going when it comes to something cooked. I spent teen-aged summers picking them from ladders in southern New Jersey orchards where tall trees flourished, and … [Read more...]
Those summertime blues
When I arrived in Britain in 1987, it was impossible to find blueberries here. Now they are available year round thanks to their recent super food status, and are even grown here, their season peaking in July and August when harvests from the … [Read more...]
Bullet ice cream and other strawberry tales
The most enchanting strawberries I have ever tasted were Norwegian berries, bought from the grower in a gravel-strewn lay-by on a winding road along Sognefjord on Norway’s west coast. They were pale pink and I was suspicious of their anaemic pallor, … [Read more...]
A progression of rhubarb
Our colder than usual March here in East Anglia was good for primroses and daffodils, but the rhubarb on my village allotment used it as an excuse to tarry in hibernation. Where I would normally be harvesting the first stalks by now, I turn in … [Read more...]