July 4th and Berry Season!

Hello! Hope you had a great July 4th!

We did.  Look at that cake!  Erin's strawberry-blueberry flag cake is now a tradition.  Especially eaten in Washington Park during the fireworks.

It's the tail end of strawberry season, with overlap of the next crop: raspberries, blackberries, and blueberries.

Sadly, I didn't see any berries at the farmers market this week, but I have been running into them pretty much everywhere else.

As yummy as they are straight from the crate, I've been experimenting anyway.  Mostly with the strawberries, since I don't really like them a lot by themselves (thanks to an unfortunate strike of the stomach flu immediately after strawberry shortcake about 4 years ago).

So... I made muffins!

They were very pretty, and made a lovely breakfast.  I just followed my basic muffin recipe but added 1 cup of fresh diced strawberries. (And left out the whole wheat flour to keep them light.)

I still had a bunch left over, so I sliced the really ripe ones and put them over my pancakes with some Hay maple syrup.  This was my best idea yet.  Pretty super.

I mean, that's restaurant quality.

That gave me the idea for my leftover blueberries.

As I was making the pancakes, I let the blueberries cook down in a sauce pan with some water, honey, and a little butter.

(Also notice the superb scrambled eggs complimenting my pancakes.  That's what I call team work.)

Berry season is quick... enjoy them!

Breakfast for Dinner

My face is still numb from my filling at 11AM this morning.   :(

After choking and cheek-biting my way through lunch, I decided to have pancakes for dinner.

Of course, I used Bisquick.  Who doesn't?  This post isn't so much about the pancakes, but what I used on top.

Really, I've just been waiting for an excuse to make pancakes, ever since I splurged on this:

Yes.  REAL maple syrup.  And not only is it real (which tastes completely different from fake), but it was made right in Cobleskill by someone I work with.  Double awesome.









So I stirred up my Bisquick, adding some cinnamon because it's yummy.  (For the record, I used Byrne Dairy milk and Cottonhill farm eggs, as well as some flax from the co op, so there's some local in there.)

Then I fried about the best darn batch of pancakes I think I ever made.  I'm getting a hang of this cooking thing.

I highly recommend real maple syrup, and while you're at it, you might as well get it from the Hay family.  Their bottle says "The World's Best," and I think they might be right...

** Look for them to be selling syrup again around March. I also hear there's tours...