We’re enjoying an East coast vacation with old friends—down the road from Boston, near Cape Cod–in a hundred-year-old cottage on a lake.  This is the land of baked beans—there’s a whole section in the supermarket—and laid-back meals cooked by a crew of ten, aged seven to fifty-something.

While we’re gone, please check out our recipe archive, or explore on your own. Improvise and try something new. Let us know what you come up with.

If we were home in California, we’d be roasting the green beans with onion wedges and tossing with lemon juice and zest, salt and pepper and Marcona almonds.  A favorite dish.

And enjoying the first cucumbers of summer.  Slice some into a tumbler of ice water or homemade watermelon agua fresca.  A refreshing drink on a hot day by the lake.  Or wherever you happen to find yourself.  Enjoy.

We’ll be back next week.

There’s a good chance you’ve driven by over the years, yet never noticed it.  On the way to the store or the doctor’s office.  Nestled at the end of a dirt road—between strip malls, townhouses and a medical complex—there’s an unassuming little plum orchard.  Right in the heart of Sunnyvale.  Row after row of ancient, gnarly trees planted back in 1952, long before the houses, schools and stores arrived.  Back when this valley was nothing more than stone-fruit orchards, it was one of many productive patches fueling the area’s economy, before technology became the next great thing.  Now the trees are all but forgotten, hanging on for dear life, surrounded by development on all sides. Lucky for us one man is still farming this piece of history—land that’s been in his family since 1881—with love and pride. The Santa Rosa plums are ripe and juicy, around the corner in Andy’s orchard.  This is what the fuss over local food is all about.

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10:09 pm, PDT, June 20, 2012 marks the Northern Hemisphere’s Summer Solstice—the longest day of this California year and the point in time when spring plunges headfirst into summer.  Thanks to the lopsided tilt of Earth’s axis relative to the sun we are blessed each year with a stretch of marathon days and toasty temperatures, and part of what makes the onset so blissful is the knowledge that such popsicle weather won’t be with us for long.  Six months hence we’ll find ourselves shivering once more in woolen sweaters, as we wistfully notice darkness sneaking in at a stern five o’clock.

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