Hi There!! Wow, I think I’m overdue for a post…It has been an AMAZING summer, one of the best in a long time. We’ve had so many visitors and visited so many great friends. Lots of BBQ’s, late night dinners, gatherings at lake cabins, weekend trips to Seattle and Portland and the icing on the cake, the bookend of the summer, my dear friends Sylvia and Brian got married on the Fall Equinox…and we hosted the wedding reception at our home.
A couple weeks ago Sylvia asked me to help her with a photo shoot, she needed to borrow my hands. She is amazing. She has more talent in one finger than I do in my whole body! She can do anything. And she’s not afraid to try anything. I think it boils down to confidence. She has a lot of it. If you don’t already know she is the former owner/founder of Mizuna restaurant in Spokane, Wa and for the last few years has had her own catering business Feast with which her husband (wow, that sounds weird!) is a tremendous help. She has been blogging her recipes for about a year-but it’s so much more than just recipes-she takes you deeper. Its like food therapy. There’s emotion. You can feel the love right through your computer screen...and the way she captures food on film is beautiful!
Last summer I grew A LOT of summer squashes and after one loaf of zucchini bread I decided I needed more options so I tried pickling them. You can pickle pretty much anything. I experimented with some basic pickling recipes from Cooks Illustrated and a few other random recipes. I actually canned a few batches last summer. I grew patty pans and 2 hybrids called Eight Ball and Piccolo from Territorial Seed Company. I took them to probably every single dinner/BBQ we went to as a side, mainly to just get rid of them because I hate to waste anything. Well, they kinda turned into a big hit and all my girlfriends kept asking for them. There was discussion about canning and selling but that just sounded like a lot of work!
After I finished “hand modeling” for her photo shoot she had me make a quick batch of pickles. You’ll notice some yellow squash in the mix which I did not grow but she had on hand. I like the contrast of a bright colored edge. Above are some of her pictures I borrowed and here is where you can read the entire post.
Give it a try! Happy pickling!
