Delicious distractions and the market specials

I really did think I'd get this newsletter out on time this week. I finished early in the kitchen both yesterday and today (hurray for efficiency!), but somehow I kept finding distractions. There was a tart to make with the wild berries Andy brought down from the mountain, and a review of Ta-Nehisi Coates' memoir to read, and then the call of the lambs quarter growing rampant among the squash in my garden was impossible to resist, so I had to make squash blossom, lambs quarter tamales (with farmer's cheese, arugula and cilantro blossoms, and Alex's mushrooms!). There were dishes to wash, plums to shake down from the neighbor's tree, Instagram pictures to scroll through, a moderately uninformed conversation about Greece that led me to this excellent blog post, and endless other interesting and delicious things pulling at my attention, until, suddenly, I discovered it was 8:30 on Friday night and I hadn't started writing. Oy vey. 

We went out to Hannah's Blueberries the other day—if you haven't been, it's a beautiful mess of a U-Pick with huge, un-managed, ancient, blueberry bushes of unknown variety and varied productivity—where I picked twenty five pounds of berries in two and a half hours. I'm sure the Sakuma workers pick that in a minute, but ten pounds an hour seemed like a lot to me. Most of those are packed up in gallon ziplocks in the chest freezer, but I saved a few (pounds) out for pastries. This week's special market treat is a lime and blueberry tart. The tarts are very tart, and just a little spicy. There's a mystery spice in the lime curd. If you can guess it, your next tartelette is free!

My kraut from last week fermented in record time, so I'm also breaking out the kraut bread I was daydreaming about last week. It's a light rye (which means low ratio of rye:wheat flour), with a bit of caraway and juniper, and a killer pink color. If you're celebrating the weekend heat at the grill, this bread would be fantastic with your brats.

All right. It's time to eat those tamales.
​
See you tomorrow.