Welcome to the first of a series of monthly contests I will be hosting here at Small Measure! The contest will be posted on the first Monday of each month from now until the release of my book, Homemade Living: Canning & Preserving with Ashley English. Each month one lucky person will win an artfully crafted canned item featured in the book and made by yours truly. For July, in honor of Summer, I’ll be giving away a jar of lip-smacking Peach & Lavender Butter. It’s the perfect blend of nostalgic juicy goodness blended with a touch of floral.
How to enter: Simply leave a comment to THIS specific post by telling me your favorite Summer food memory. Your comment must link to your particular blog or web site (and therefore to your contact information) or include your e-mail address. Otherwise, I won’t be able to get in touch with you if you win. Any entries that do not include some way of getting in touch with you will be disqualified.
Deadline: Comments must be received by midnight EST July 20th, 2009. Odds of winning will depend upon the number of eligible entries received.
Other rules:
1. You must have a mailing address in the United States of America. (Sorry, international folks!)
2. Only entry comment per person.
How it works: Each comment will be assigned a sequential number. The winning number will be selected from a random number generator, so there’ll be no favorites, simply a game of chance.
Keep coming back each month to see the next tasty item up for grabs! And feel free to tell your friends or repost this on your own blog!
86 comments:
Grandparents house (white, on a gravel road) Under the huge tree in the front yard...handcranked ice cream...nothing fancy ...vanilla, fresh milk and eggs
http://stephaniecbrown.wordpress.com
Oh - the fresh butterbeans and creamed corn at my Granny's house... She'd spend hours shelling and cutting the corn off the cobs, but the results were deliciously worthwhile. She'd let me race corn worms around the dining room table while she shucked the ears... That's love, I tell you.
Oh, there are so many... selling avocados from my front step when I was a kid... Fresh squeezed lemonade from the Ponderosa Lemon tree in the back yard... blueberry picking (and eating) with the kids... playing in the sprinklers on a hot day, followed by a big bowl of home made rashpberry ice cream!!
My mom would drop my brothers and sisters and me off at the public pool with a bag of peaches and a bunch of cheese sandwiches. I'd get a cold can of grape soda from the vending machine, which back in '82 was a special treat (and only cost 50 cents.)
Watermelons and seed-spitting contests when I was a kid - grass under foot, late summer evenings with sweet melon dribbling down your chin.
summer IS stopping at road-side fruit stands and buying pounds of cherries and nectarines to devour during family road trips. mmmmmmm....
My birthday is July 2, so cherries are always in season for my birthday. I have many fond memories of gorging myself and staining my fingers and lips with a mountain of cherries on my birthday!
Anything that has to do with fresh fruit and you-pick or farm stands. One particular summer of running through a Northern Florida organic blueberry field, trying to eat all the blueberries without being simultaneously eaten by mosquitoes will always be remembered.
stephanieschilling@gmail.com
Thanks!
Cool fresh watermelon on a balmy summer night after a real sweltering day is one of the best feelings in the world. Throw in a bunch of happy laughing people, and there's little more a person can ask for.
Summer food memories... other than the aforementioned watermelon, fried chicken, and lemonade, I particularly remember frying fish with my mimi that my granddaddy had caught at the lake that day... (and remember cleaning the fish too)
My mom's fried squash, homemade peach ice cream at a church ice cream social, and snapping fresh green beans. Those top my favorite summertime food memories!
After a tough kayak trip, I hiked my kayak up to my car only to discover wild raspberries growing along the path up the hill. I quickly secured my kayak to my roof rack, then ran back down and stuffed myself full of them as fast as I could without scratching up my arms.
Picking raspberries with my mom, sister, cousin, and aunt. All of us would spend an entire day picking berries along a dirt road near my mother's house in PA. We'd go there mid-morning with a picnic lunch, pick 'til we were hungry, stop and eat (raspberries for dessert, of course!) and then pick a bit more until we had nowhere else to put the berries. It was the distilled essence of summer - hot, sweet, sticky, and almost unbearably awesome.
As a kid, I spent every summer with my Granny and Papa in Toronto. I remember most fondly picking out ears of sweet corn from local farmer Alice's roadside stand. Foraging for berries in the ravine behind the house and riding my uncle's childhood bikes from the 60s down to the corner store to get popsicles and Smarties (and free-styling songs on our way describing the quick errand). Even though it was sweltering outside, my Granny would get up early to make apple pie and cheddar cheese buns--- my two favorite breakfasts.
kendraelyssa@gmail.com
My memory is not very wholesome. I grew up in the suburbs. Special trips to the local frozen yogurt shop with my mom and dad. I always opted for crumbled Reeses cup as a topping, my mom, wet walnuts!
31mayapples@gmail.com
Digging the worms from under the step. Sitting next to my Zza-Zza, an expert fisherwoman who showed me how to bait my hook and place my red bobber on the line. Learning to cast and sit patiently and quietly for the fish to bite.
Catching your first trout of the summer and placing it in the wicker creel until there was enough for a late breakfast early lunch.
Climbing back to the cabin and watching as she cleaned the fish on the porch where it was cool and smelled like fresh pine.
Heading in to the well worn cast iron skillet where fish rolled in corn meal was lovingly placed in butter and oil. Eggs went in next, fried quickly over easy with lots of salt and pepper.
To the table where my Paw-Paw, in his blue jumpsuit and who smelled of sweet pipe tobacco waited for us and fawned over the expert fishing skills of his little granddaughters.
Sopping toast in runny eggs that had a hint of butter and trout and saving the crispy crispy fish tail for the very last bite on the plate.
Heading out after lunch to pick wildflowers in the Big Elk Meadow behind the cabin and chase the chipmunks. Picking fresh wild raspberries on the path home for dessert. Scolded by my great grandmother to save some for later but they tasted so good in the warm sun.
My favorite summer food memory has to be my several year obsession with blackberry cobbler. I would 'borrow' a big bowl from the kitchen, and go trotting to the woods across the street in a tee and shorts. My legs would get all messed as I waded though brambles having a great time trying to get the biggest, best looking berries. Once I had the bowl overflowing, with blackberry juice mashed all over my shirt, I would take it back to the house for my mom to make cobbler. She used a lot of sugar and it was good stuff. I had seeds stuck in my teeth all summer long.
emandjames@gmail.com
My favorite summer food memory is seeing my mom cooking the custard while my dad got out the ice cream freezer going; I loved hearing the hum of the freezer, twirling round inside the layer of salt rock, knowing that I, as the youngest, got to lick the ice cream paddle after the ice cream was done!
Jane
e-mail: mtglu2000@yahoo.com
At dusk the damp would start to settle in the grass of my grandmother's front lawn and we'd quit our games of leap frog and kickball for ice cream cones on the porch. Nothing special--some store brand like Perry's or Blue Bell and those cardboardy, tasteless cones. But sitting on the floral patterned, vinyl covered cushions on the chaise or the glider sofa or leaning against my mom as she tousled my hair, listening to crickets, watching moths at the streetlights and savoring the breeze off Lake Erie after a sticky hot day I'll never forget.
kristinLmarsh@gmail.com
The first and freshest to come to mind is from only 2 days ago ... collecting pattypan squash, basil, peppers and peas from my very first garden and packing them up for a backpacking trip to Ivestor Gap in the Shining Rock wilderness. Cooked em' down under the stars and let me tell you its true that everything tastes better x10 after a veryvery long hike.
http://www.shiptoshoreshop.com/
Most of my childhood summer food memories involve peaches & corn on the cob from a road-side stand, grilled cheeseburgers, and watermelon eaten on the picnic table in our backyard. I remember my 5 year old cousin grabbing for corn like her life depended on it!
Gainsville florida an abondoned blueberry farm, gallons and gallongs of blueberries.... Later a dance party in honor of a friends passing.... indulging in a raw dessert of a cashew nut date cream with blueberries and peaches.
mmmmmm... then dancing dancing dancind
definitely blackberry cobbler! My grandparents have a cabin in western north carolina, and my brother and I would spend summers with them when we were younger. Grandpa would cut the top off of a plastic milk carton (the kind with a handle) and send us out to the brambles out back to pick berries. Granny made the best cobbler in the evenings....miss those days.
Sitting on my grandparents' front porch at the beach, eating cantaloupe and blueberries from the Farmers Market for breakfast!
funnelcloudrachel@yahoo.com
My mouth is absolutely watering at the idea of peach and lavender butter!
Mine...
Going to my family's island cabin in Alaska every weekend as kids. We'd fish for trout, dig clams, and pull crab pots all in the same weekend, and do nothing but feast on fresh Alaskan seafood and root beer all weekend!
Definitely sharing a chair on my grandmother's deck with my cousin and making our moms arrange our plates in the exact same way. Erin liked mustard on her hamburger and I didn't but I would suck it up in the name of symmetry!
Picking strawberries with my family... Two for the bucket, one for me... Then watching my mom make jam to can. I can still smell the jam cooking.
at my friend's organic veggie/fruit farm eating melons until i was on a great sugar high, i was about 6 and probably ate 5 melons all by myself. it was like a healthy buffet! also almost getting lost in the corn field! scary when you are 4 feet tall and its august!
My daddy's corn grilling next to a big old burger, smelling the sweet smoky husk and pulling it back to reveal the golden gems of corn. But mostly, the sweet, salty butter dripping off my chin.
My favorite memory from summer - going to the small town ice cream social in the park with Grandma, eating homemade strawberry ice cream, then going home and running around carelessly, catching lightening bugs, screaming and laughing. What great memories - the careless, lazy days of summer - how I miss them! Elaine
dsrtblsm@charter.net
While I could talk about canning chunky applesauce in the hot kitchen with my mom growing up, I have to say that this year is my best memory in the making. I've created a 'driveway garden' - sold my car a year ago and put containers in the driveway instead (see my ecogrrlnetwork.blogspot.com site for pix), and it's all about karma i do believe. my sweet peppers are exploding, my blueberries and basil and cucumbers and tomatoes are happy as ever, and i have more gorgeous onions on their way than i could have ever imagined. to create my own food memories are the best. later this summer i look forward to the freezing and canning, but more importantly, the EATING of what i have brought onto this earth with my own hands, a li'l dirt, sunshine and rainwater...
boysenberry picking in my grandparents' backyard, where i lived on and off as a kid. snapping green beans with my grandma.
popsicles. hands down. popsicles.
congraced at gmail.com
There are a lot of memories for me, growing up in a home where the words "homemade" and "food" went hand-in-hand. My favorite memories always revolve around times when my mom would make homemade pie. Pie has always been my favorite and my mom is the expert in the family. Long ago she passed it down to me, and now I know in the future I can make pie for my own family.
http://laurablumenberg.blogspot.com/
Working for a fine dining restaurant that catered many expensive wedding receptions gave my young tongue a growing appreciation for the work that goes into crafting a beautiful tapas-like Mediterranean Table. For quality assurance, my brother, the boss and chef of this particular restaurant, would allow me to test many of the items. My fondest food memories come from working this job during the summer (the wedding season), hanging out around the stainless steel kitchen equipment with my brother and the other head chef munching on delicious (free) food such as baked calamari, marinated squash, freshly made mozzarella, stuffed mushrooms, olive tapenade and many other delicious little trinkets. For me there was always an element of danger that the owner of the restaurant would come back and catch us doing this, but my brother never seemed to thrown by this potential dilemma.
What a great idea, Ashley. And what a fabulous canning class last night -- can't wait for pickling.
My stand-out summer memory would have to be eating still-warm-from-the-garden tomatoes whole, like apples, right over the sink in my Aunt Mary and Uncle LaFon's big ol' kid- (and cat and dog) friendly country kitchen. Salt shaker close at hand. My aunt and uncle both passed away recently, so the memory is all the more meaningful. Thanks for the chance to write it down.
Its at my grandparents house, the morning we leave to go to the cottage with them... we eat puffed rice cereal, smothered in raspberries and then doused in cream from a neighbor's cow. My email is geills75 @gmail.com
My favorite summer food was blueberries! My family would go into the woods to pick wild blueberries each summer. When we would get back home, we would have some blueberries with a little sugar and milk. That was my favorite! The milk would get all purple from the blueberries. I thought it was the best ever.
My favorite summer food memory is shucking corn on the back porch step with my sister. I don't know why but that was always our job, and I used to love peeling each and every silken hair out, the wonderful perfumey corn smell, and giggling with my sister. Hmm, I still do, actually. Oh wait, this is tied with drinking Pepsi floats made by my grandmother. Peach and lavendar butter sounds delicious! I can't wait till your book comes out!
Favorite summer food memory? Tough question! There are so many. Salty, buttery sweet corn on the cob, sweeter-than-candy cherry tomatoes warmed by the sun, peaches so perfectly tender and sweet that the juice runs down the chin, a perfect open faced sandwich of sliced homegrown tomato and purple basil on homemade bread toasted and rubbed with a clove of garlic, the grilled burgers I used to make with ground lamb and fresh thyme leaves mixed into the patties... I couldn't really narrow it down any more than that, I'm afraid. Will it do?
Sun warmed peaches. Sun tea. Slightly charred burgers. Watermelon. Strawberry shortcake. My new favorite, Honey Mead.
All of my favorite summertime food memories have to do with food grown by my Dad.......fresh tomatoes hot from the intense Florida sun....stuffed zucchini large enough to feed 6 people....homemade peach ice cream....not to mention his cobblers.......
toyiarenee@hotmail.com
New reader here *waves*
One of my favorite memory is when I was visiting family in Croatia and a farme would drive by in his truck yelling, "Watermelons! Watermelons!" And they were indeed wonderful watermelons.
My favorite summer meal has always been watermelon with feta cheese. You take one bite of melon and one bite of feta. Wonderful! And yes, even as a child, this is what I ate.
Thanks for the delicious giveaway.
I have two memories:
Eating peas right off the vine on my friend's farm when I was about 7 years old. I still long for those peas!
Having a watermelon seed spitting contest with my brother every summer. Not sure why we stopped...
http://riverdogprints.com/photocardblog/
Hm. So easy. Summer's at grandma and grandpa's. At dusk they'd sit in their screen porch, rocking on their metal rocking chairs (painted bright yellow and white and ever-so-classic) while my sister and I would run barefoot in the back yard, chasing fireflies. Cradling them gently in our cupped hands, watching for the twinkling lights...ah, the smell of the air and the sensation of the cool, soft grass underfoot...it's as if it happened yesterday.
Thank you for the opportunity to go back! : )
Freshly caught halibut cooked over a campfire on "our own" little alaskan island. Growing up in rural alaska had its perks :)
http://www.synchronicitysimplified.blogspot.com/
Fabulous idea! And Happy Birthday to you on the 11th!
My favorite summer food memories are of eating home-made peach ice cream on the brick steps of our house after returning from a boat picnic on the lake consisting of southern barbecue (SC-mustard based), baked beans, deviled eggs and coleslaw. Yum!! Summer days are the best.
Leigh
nasturtium@fastmail.fm
Tomatoes. In any form. But mostly just eating them just sliced next to fried chicken and iced tea in my grandmothers kitchen.
At my grandmothers house, sitting out in the shade next to the air conditioning unit - eating juicy fresh watermelon - best summer food memory for me.
Kids and adults alike were covered in juice and seeds...and the kids all got hosed down when we were through.
If I close my eyes, I can still smell the freshness of the fruit and hear the laughter of all the family members - it's a great memory!
Making tomato sauce with my two daughters using a hand cranked strainer that an elderly neighbor gave us then canning it on an old wood fired laundry stove on our patio. When the last jar was out of the canner they both told me that the 2nd best thing about putting food up was spending time with me. The 1st was the food!
http://thirtyfivebyninety.blogspot.com/2007/10/utilizing-child-labor-opportunties-aka.html
Wild Cherry Raspberry Pie from fruit picked locally - it's cooking in the oven right now - that's a memory for this summer!
My favourite childhood food memory is fresh watermelon in the summer at my great grandmother's house. Or maybe rhubarb warm from the garden, eaten raw...or no, fresh garden peas!
rmaclary(at)gmail.com
Growing up, my neighbors had a pool that we could use- they had blackberry bushes growing around the edges of the brick patio and we would pick the berries as we took turns waiting to use the diving board- those blackberries, hot from the sun coupled with the chlorine and sunscreen smells- pure summer.
When my cousins and I were in elementary school - we use to pretend we were Power Rangers. Since there were 3 of us girls, and only 2 Power Ranger girls, we would always fight over the pink and yellow ones!
I lived in the country...upstate NY. Sometimes fresh peas...on the vine would fall off a farm truck. We would grab them, sit outside and shell them....and eat them raw. There were never enough to cook! Ahhh...how sweet they were. This was before any of us upstate knew what sugar snap or snow peas were.
Toast topped with a light layer of cream cheese & slices of perfectly ripe tomatoes with a dash of salt & pepper... so easy & so yummy!
My favorite summertime food memory is of going to the local farmers market on the weekends. This was an old tobacco warehouse where all the local farmers would come and set up their goods on Saturday and Sunday. Everything was there and it was huge! Fresh green beans, watermelons and cantaloupe all of these bright wonderful smells set against the dusty musty smells of the tobacco and old warehouse. Peaches by the box and beans by the bushel to freeze or can, corn to cut off and fry, okra and potatoes. The backs of trucks would be overflowing with crates and produce spilling out of them. We would load up the car and head home and feast on what my parents called a "farm supper"
When I was little, my stepdad used to take us hiking up the nearby ski mountain. When we reached the top, we'd grab a little rock or pebble - then he'd take us to TCBY where we'd 'trade' the rock for a parfait. Yum!
one of my favorite summertime food memories is having fresh oysters with friends at point reyes, in california.
My mom's strawberry shortcake with homemade biscuits and whipped cream. Absolutely delicious!
Sipping a fresh coconut mojito under the Pagoda at Salvation Cafe (Newport, RI) while the rain poured down, the thunder roared, and the tropical "breeze" shook the palm leaves . . .
my grandmother used to pick zucchini flowers fresh from her garden, lightly batter them, and quickly fry them for the most delicious snack. i spent most of my summer with my grandmother and my cousins, aunts and uncles, at our beach where more delicious treats and comfort food were always on the table, but these flowers were always grown and fried back in our hometown. they only came for a few short days at the beginning of summer when the buds of the zucchini bloom. she used to lay them on stacks of kraft paper to drain the hot oil and we (adults and children) would sprinkle salt on them and eat them right there gathered around her frying pan in her tiny kitchen, occasionally burning our tongues but never getting shooed away. no matter how many she fried we gobbled them right up! more addicting and better tasting than any potato chip! its been 18 years or more since her last batch but i can still taste the fresh salty flower like it was yesterday, i can even smell the hot oil cooking. no snack was ever more appreciated and enjoyed when eaten and never more missed when gone.
The memory is the summer I spent with my grandmother in the 70's.Its eatings red peaches, sucking on lemons with salt, and eating a delicious breakfast of fried potatoes,chorizio and eggs, and fideo. My mom was shocked because I got so fat.I had a Mexican grandmother...what can I say?
My favorite summer food memory isn't a specific day, but every summer as a child meant that it was time for freeze pops: http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=freeze%20pops&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi
These simple treats still invoke summer for me with their bright colors and different flavors.
the_peon_queen[at]yahoo[dot]com
my favorite summer food memory is basil egg salad on olive bread with pickled red onions, potato chips and a cold beer. all of this enjoyed on a camping trip in oregon with my foxy husband. feet in a cold river, an enormous stack of magazines by my side and an impossibly long weekend away from my (then) loathsome job.
my birthday is in late summer, so i always had an outdoor birthday party as a kid. i loved the grilled corn on the cob. and endless hours of playing on the swingset in my parents' backyard.
Sounds weird, but my mom always fixed us cottage cheese, watermelon, and avocado. It's awesome on a hot day, sitting on the front stoop...
My favorite summer food memory comes from when I was a kid and we lived in Eugene, Oregon for a couple of years. Every summer, the blackberry vines would just be bursting with fruit - so my brother, step-dad and I would all go rent a canoe and paddle up and down what I think was part of the Willamette River. We'd fill up a couple of bags of blackberries and then come back and turn them into pies - and of course devour the entire thing in one day. The blackberries were so juicy and sweet - it's still one of my favorite memories!
Camping with my family in the Smoky Mountains- we'd make all of the Girl Scout standards like s'mores and baked potatoes over the fire!
Granada, Nicaragua. Aunt's house, waiting to ride horses to the annual Tope. Eating "raspado"--shaved ice with a dulce de leche-style topping. The best!
Mm, both are in Williamstown, MA where I went to college and worked during the summers in between. One was picking and eating raspberries superwarm from the sun for the first time in between biking from job to job. I'd never done it before, growing up in suburban NJ - just picking things off the thing it grew from and eating it. 2nd was taking leftovers from a dishwashing job at a lovely little sandwich place on the one street in town, on my bike, with the warm container on my lap, and biking to the river to sit and eat while the sun set.
I remember my brother and I sneaking down to my grandfathers garden at night when we were supposed to be camping out in the back yard and eating the corn right of the stalk. It was the best corn I have ever eaten!
As a child I loved picking the raspberries in my grandparents' garden. They had so many more varieties than you find in the store: Amethyst, Brandywine, Black Hawk, and the reds, whose names I don't remember. This will be a good reminder to ask my grandparents. I was so torn between competing to see if I could pick more berries than my mother and grandmother, or just to eat them straight from the bush, the way they taste best.
I also remember fondly backpacking in Italy, and having to tear the incredibly ripe, strong, full-flavored tomatoes in order to put fresh olive oil, salt, basil leaves, and mozzarella on them, because I didn't have a knife and was eating them out by the side of a vineyard. Along with a munch or two of grapevine tendril afterwards as dessert - it's tangy. So good.
juxt.wordpress.com
An iron skillet filled with hot blackberry cornmeal cake topped with Bluebell's Homemade Vanilla ice cream melting down into the cracks of the cake. Summer perfection.
michele_spano@yahoo.com
When I was younger, everyday was spent outside with friends. We'd eat juicy peaches, and I'd wait for my mom's sun tea to be ready for dinner.
Sarah
therobinson4 at aol dot com
a july afternoon, just a bowl of tiny strawberries and a jar of goats milk in a sun-filled meadow
thanks!
http://www.waulkinghymn.blogspot.com
alexaraehotz@yahoo.com
Boysenberry picking...early morning....under the briar, crouched against the cool earth...sound of the soft wind in the eucalyptus trees. And all these smells, rolled into one...berrys, earth, eucalyptus, summer.
at my grandmother's house when i was 10. i asked what was for dinner and she said, "Let's go in the garden and see." we had sweet corn, a bibb lettuce salad and baked sweet potatoes and homemade ice cream.
ingrid
ihu@cbsnews.com
It would have to be either sitting on the neighbor's porch, after a ride on the tractor, husking corn to roast on the grill... or the long, hot days with friends in rural Germany, climbing tree limbs out to the edge to pick cherries, and laboring over strawberry plants low to the ground to fill aluminum pails with their squishy goodness.
arendtian@gmail.com
sifting through piles of cherries trying to find the 'twins' and then wearing them like earrings while eating the rest!
susanna
susannafry@yahoo.com
Squash blossoms. Picked that morning by my grandmother and fried for dinner. And along the way, we'd pick fresh peas and eat them right there in the garden.
pmariani21 at yahoo dotcom
Just picked corn on the cob!
rositatony at yahoo.com
My parents used to send me to suburban Israel every summer to stay with my grandparents. I think they were really just sending me abroad to fatten me up. I remember playing in a kiddie pool on my grandmother's terrace, while she made her special Russian/Georgian meat pies that she had lured my father's taste buds with and assumed would win me over as well. At the time, however, all I wanted to eat were french fries. So, my grandmother made me the best french fries I've had to this day--twice fried until they were a dark, golden color and delicious. While chomping on my homemade fries, I would watch her knead dough and fill it with ground beef to make piroshki, or khachapuri--a flatbread topped with cheese and baked with an egg on top. If only I had paid better attention to her recipes--I crave her homemade savory pastries constantly! I wish I could re-live those summers with her.
old creaky and rusty red swingset a bowl of sugar and a salk of rubarb! yum.
Bright taste of summer peaches that we picked ourselves, while discovering a wild patch of mint growing by a near by stream.
email: angelazukowski (AT) gmail.com
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