A Recipe for Rose Sangria

   Summertime... and the livin's easy... 

The best summer days begin with blue-sky mornings, carry on with sunny afternoons at the pool or the beach, and end with lazy, comfortable chit-chat among friends as the sun dips below the horizon.  Of course, summer afternoons and evenings are made inevitably better if you are relaxing with a cool, sweet drink in your hand.  So when one of my friends and readers asked on my facebook page for a sangria recipe, I was surprised to realize I had not shared one with you yet.  Naturally I could not let her question go unanswered, so put out a request on Twitter and got some great links to share from The Pioneer Woman, Eat.Drink.Smile, and Aggie's Kitchen. 

And then promptly got straight to work making my own batch of Rose Sangria.    

Next to lemonade, sangria is probably the most quintessential satisfying summer beverage, and I love it.  With a glass of sangria in my hand, and my friends and family by my side, I am a happy lady.  

Regardless of whether you make your sangria with white, rose, or red wine, the best part is definitely the wine-soaked fruit.  Don't you just love fishing out those boozy fruits from the bottom of the glass?  For my summer Rose Sangria, I love adding in ripe peaches and strawberries, sliced oranges, and plump raspberries.  The sliced oranges are so beautiful, but my favorite to eat are the peaches - they soak up the sugar and wine to become tender and just perfectly sweet. 

Red, White, and Blueberry Tart

The Fourth of July weekend is finally here...

I don't know about you, but I am definitely looking forward to a little time away from work for some fun in the sun and the chance to get to eat my favorite All-American summer foods.  Plus, my sister is coming to visit, the weather will be in the mid-to-high eighties (which means lots of pool and beach time) and I capped off this week with an appearance on Channel 6, San Diego Living.  It was my first time on live TV and I had so much fun doing a live cooking demo of a Red, White, and Blueberry Tart for the Fourth of July.  Since it was right before the holiday weekend, it was the perfect time to share a classic red, white, and blue dessert recipe like this tart.  I know some people that are local to San Diego already tuned in live yesterday morning, but you can watch the clip here!  

I want to send a big thank you to the great people at San Diego Living for inviting me on the show, and if you haven't watched before, definitely visit their website.  When I was there on Friday, they also had fantastic segments from SD Bargain Mama about how to save money on summer family fun, as well as a cool makeup artist and beauty consultant with great summer looks.  All the videos are right on their homepage so you can easily scroll through and view them all!

Ok, now let me quickly tell you a little more about this fantastic Red, White, and Blueberry Tart - the crust is made from homemade sweet tart dough, which is also known by the fancy french name of 'pate sucree,' although there is really nothing fancy or complicated about making this.  I have made this dough at least 4-5 times now, and it is fool-proof - it turns out perfectly every time.  Plus it is quick to make.  With a food processor, you can have it ready and chilling in the fridge in under five minutes.  I promise.  

Once the sweet tart crust is baked, the "Red" layer comes from sliced fresh strawberries topped with sweet summer strawberry preserves.  As I mentioned in my last post, I think you get the most authentic strawberry taste when you make the preserves at home, but store-bought preserves also work great for this recipe.  The fresh berries with the preserves provide a great textural element as well as sweet taste. 

More berries! Summer Strawberry Preserves

Be it strawberries, cherries, or blueberries, I have been buying summer berries in bulk from the farmers market and eating them like there is no tomorrow.  Which, to be honest, is sort of hilarious, because there is definitely no shortage of sweet berries here in Southern California.  For us, the berry season in the summer is pretty long which means I am a lucky lady (with a belly full of sweet berries).  

At the farmer's markets and even the grocery stores, strawberries are plentiful and perfectly ripe right now, which makes it the ideal time for turning those berries into jam and preserves.  I told you a few weeks ago about my first love - cherry preserves - and a few readers were curious if the same recipe would work for other berries like strawberries or blueberries.  Naturally I couldn't let this question go unanswered (since own curiosity often gets the better of me) so I decided to cook up some strawberry preserves.

Strawberry Lemonade Cupcakes

Ahhh... Summer.  Those lazy days when the living is easy and life is breezy.  I definitely love the bright blooms and fresh air of spring, the changing colors and brisk chill of fall, but I feel like I live for summer.  (Winter, eh, not such a fan.)  I think some of that summer love comes from a strong sense of nostalgia; dreaming about long midwest summer days filled with splashing around in the pool, running through sprinklers, and selling lemonade at the corner of our street for 25 cents a glass.  Of course, I love San Diego summers too, with the salty spray from the Pacific Ocean, backyard barbeques with friends, and an abundance of fresh produce.      

And I have always loved summers for the food (even before I actually knew I was a bona fide foodie).  There really is nothing like a thick hamburger or a steak, fresh off the grill...juicy watermelon or strawberries...and a tall glass of lemonade or iced tea.  Somehow, if I sat down to enjoy a meal like this in the spring, it just wouldn't feel the same as if I was relaxing with my feet up on a balmy summer evening.   

Although dessert is usually not the star of most summer meals (and those men hovering around the grill would deem anything other than meat-worshipping blasphemous), I wanted to make something summery but unique.  I found the recipe for these lemonade cupcakes in a cookbook I borrowed from a friend.

Fresh Berries with Limoncello and Lemon-Honey Yogurt

So, do you remember how I said there were two desserts with berries that I really wanted to share with you?  Well, you can see the first one in my most recent post, and this is the second one.  And trust me, just because I am posting it second, doesn't mean it is not first-rate in taste.  This was soooo good.  As in, I easily ate three portions of it without even noticing it, good.  After trying this just once, I plan to put it on my regular rotation for dinner parties or evenings with friends, and I have a sneaking feeling you might do the same after trying it yourself. 

I thought I should share this with you on this lovely Sunday morning, since it was  a couple of weeks ago on a Sunday that I made it.  To be precise, it was exactly two weeks ago, on Sunday, May 9th... Mother's Day.  Now, I wish I could say that I made this for my lovely, wonderful mother on that particular Sunday; but alas, I am more than 2,000 miles away from any immediate family.  So on Mother's Day, I woke up to a slightly gray, cloudy morning feeling lonely and missing my mom and family.  I lay there feeling sorry for myself for a little while (cue the world's tiniest violin playing the world's saddest song), and then I got up and went into the kitchen.  I made myself a cup of tea and surveyed the options for breakfast.  That left me uninspired and still feeling blue.  So naturally, I grabbed a stack of cookbooks and crawled back into bed. 

I don't really know what it was about paging through the recipes, but I immediately started feeling less lonely.  Maybe because cooking and eating is generally a communal experience?  Probably more likely because my main associations of food and cooking, and my most fond memories of eating, are with family and loved ones.

In any case, I was paging through one of Ina Garten's Barefoot Contessa cookbooks (don't we all love them?), and then I saw it: this beautiful dish with berries was calling out to me like a siren.  The fog of my self-pity lifted (thank goodness), and I recalled that I had just bought some amazing organic strawberries and mulberries from the farmer's market the day before.  The mulberries were an especially awesome find, since I rarely see them at the market, and these ones were ripe, with a deeply mellow, sweet taste.

California Cutie Pie

I really just could not wait to share this recipe with you. Can you blame me? Even right now as I am writing this, my heart is pitter-pattering just thinking about this lovely, juicy, sunny strawberry pie.

So, its really no secret that I have been obsessed with fresh, in-season berries. I just can't get enough of them; when I see them at the farmer's market, their beautiful, bright faces just seem to whisper, "Take me home with you..." And of course I am a more than happy to oblige them. If if wasn't for the fact that berries are packed with antioxidants, this might be an unhealthy obsession. Lucky for me, I can even bake strawberries into a pie and call it healthy. 
I decided to make this pie as a submission for a contest put on by Ms. Humble from Not So Humble Pie. I LOVE her blog, and it is definitely close to the top of my list of favorites. She has a wonderful voice when she speaks about her baked goods, and every single one of her dessert creations seems like the food equivalent of a runway model with a mellow soul: gorgeous enough to be straight off the page of a magazine, but not so pretentious that it is unapproachable. Everything Ms. Humble shares always makes my mouth water, my tummy rumble, and all those sweet tastebuds on my tongue scream for attention. And it certainly doesn't hurt that she was a scientist in a former life.
 

I am not really sure how popular Strawberry Pie is out on the west coast, but growing up in the Midwest we had strawberry pie all the time.  It is really popular in a lot of homestyle diners, and is always heaping with strawberries and served with a big dollop of whipped cream.  I wanted to replicate that here, but with more of a California feel to it. 

So to make this a California strawberry pie, I used local strawberries and I also included some mandarin segments in the filling.  As I mentioned, strawberries are in season here, and I always get mine from the local farmers market.  The strawberries they sell are outstanding, and they are picked in Carlsbad, which is just about 15 minutes north of where I live.  Also around this time of year, you can also buy bags of these adorable little California mandarins.  They are so tiny, that they would just fit in the center of your cupped hand (maybe a little bigger than a golf ball).  On the bag they always call them "California Cuties," and it seems appropriate; everything is cuter in mini-size.  Like the strawberries, these mandarins are sooo sweet and juicy, so it is a perfect pairing for this pie.

Crepes with Fresh Strawberry Jam

The first time my boyfriend told me he was going to make me pancakes, I expected a tall stack topped with Aunt Jemima; these are what he made me.  I was both surprised and excited, because I know this dish as a "crepe", and I love them!  It turns out that Norwegians (including my boyfriend) call this a pancake, and call our buttermilk goodies "American Pancakes." 

I can almost guarantee that all the things you need to make these crepes are in your fridge or pantry right now.  You only need three ingredients to make the crepes themselves, and your local farmers market is the perfect place to pick up some ripe strawberries for the jam.   

We LOVE to eat these crepes, most often for breakfast, but almost as often for lunch or dinner as well.  Although I suppose it is technically like "breakfast for dinner," I have never really thought of it that way.  For me, crepes are a special treat, and I usually end up eating them until I feel like my stomach will burst.  And then I still want more.