During July, the strawberries are "long gone" so blueberries are the fruit dujour at the local farmer's market. We have eight small blueberry bushes planted in our yard, but their yield is still rather small. So to honor John Alexander's love of French toast and make the most of local blueberries, I made a DIVINE concoction that I call Blueberry Baked French Toast. I have to confess that only three blueberries were ripe on our bushes...most were from the Renston Homestead booth at the farmer's market.

Brimming with three cups of berries, dusted with confectioner's sugar, topped with freshly whipped cream, and garnished with lemon zest, a fresh blueberry, and a lemon verbena leaf...the finishing touch was a tiny pool of warm maple syrup that we added just before eating.

Easy to make as most of the steps take place the night before allowing the bread to soak before baking the next morning. Here is the recipe:

Blueberry Baked French Toast

INGREDIENTS:

1 loaf of challah or brioche cut or torn into large pieces
6 eggs, beaten
1 ½ cup milk
¾ cup heavy cream
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon cinnamon
¼ teaspoon nutmeg
½ teaspoon salt
½ cup brown sugar
3 cups fresh blueberries
1 tablespoon butter

DIRECTIONS:
Whisk the milk, cream, vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg, salt and brown sugar into the eggs. Pour the custard mixture over the bread and toss. Seal in a container and refrigerate overnight.
Preheat the oven to 375 F. Toss the bread mixture lightly and stir in blueberries. Butter a large 9 inch pieplate and fill with the blueberry-bread mixture. Bake until lightly golden brown, about 45 minutes. Let cool 5-10 minutes until it slices well.

Sprinkle with powdered sugar and serve with whipped cream and warm maple syrup.

Well, Amy Goldman has NOTHING ON US! Stephen has grown multiple varieties of heirloom tomatoes from seed and our garden is brimming with herbs and ripening tomatoes. The tiny SunGolds are coming off of the vines by the handfuls and our first WHOPPER Cherokee Purple tomato weighed in this past weekend at 1 1/2 pounds. It morphed into… not one, not two, not three, but FOUR tomato sandwiches last week! Its size was only surpassed by its delicious taste.

This past weekend, a new “record-breaker” was plucked from our vines. It was another Cherokee Purple that topped the scale at 1 9/16 pounds. The pics of this gorgeous tomato were made on the scale so that there was no question about its size. Needless to say, these beauties are very happy in the soil that Stephen worked so hard to prepare with load after load of leaf mulch… Can you believe that these tomatoes are all organic…no fertilizer, no pesticides, no chemicals of any sort?

Perfectly GORGEOUS Heirloom Tomatoes

Amy Goldman's book, The Heirloom Tomato: From Garden to Table: Recipes, Portraits, and History of the World's Most Beautiful Fruit , will simply take your breath. The recipes are "to die for" and the photographs (by Victor Schrager) are artistic masterpieces. The author's expertise is clearly evident. According to Amazon, "Amy Goldman is a passionate gardener, seed saver, and well-known advocate for heirloom fruits and vegetables. She is the author of The Compleat Squash and Melons for the Passionate Grower, and she appears frequently on such TV programs as Martha Stewart Living and Victory Gardens."

http://www.amazon.com/Heirloom-Tomato-Recipes-Portraits-Beautiful/dp/159691291X

If you love to cook, have a passion for local food, or simply want to peruse an incredible feast for the eyes, this book is for you. The sources in the back of the book allow you to order and experiment with growning a wide variety of heirlooms. My experiments are in tiny peat pots and sprouting "to beat the band."

Listen to the Wind....A Beautiful Children's Picture Book

It seems that I always get some of my best recommendations about "books too good to miss" from friends and colleagues. It was only fitting that my good friend and former colleague, Francine Johnston, would come to me at the North Carolina Reading Association Conference in March with a copy of Listen to the Wind in hand. It was Francine who originally recommended Three Cups of Tea...see previous posts. Does this woman know how to recommend wonderful books, or what? Of course, I had to have my own copy.

After perusing this marvelous picture book (you can peek at the book via the active link above via Amazon.com), it not only describes Dr. Greg Mortenson's valiant efforts to provide more than 50 schools for children in remote areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan, but does so within the beautifully rich context of fabric collage illustrations that will take your breath. The book details the process by which illustrator, Susan Roth, created the collages with cloth fragments, and actual artifacts from Baltistan and surrounding areas.

For those of you who have not read Three Cups of Tea, here is a bit of background information that also provides the basis for Listen to the Wind. In his quest to repay the people of Korphe who helped Mortenson when he lost his way while on an expedition to climb K2, he learned that what the people of this small village wanted more than anything else was a school. He kept his promise to build this first school and subsequently founded the Central Asia Institute and Pennies for Peace, whose mission is to build more and more schools in this remote area of the world. Mortenson contends that American efforts to fight Islamic extremism in these countries must focus on substantive efforts to address poverty by increasing access to education, primarily for girls. His story offers a message of hopefulness in terms of bridging world cultures, as well as looking beyond one's biases and perceptions, keeping promises, and helping others in need.

Video related to Three Cups of Tea

I f you didn’t have the opportunity to view Frontline: Children of the Taliban (aired April 15 at 9PM on UNC-TV), you MUST view this program. Unfortunately, the UNC-TV rebroadcast is scheduled for April 16 at 3AM, but the video is posted at:http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/pakistan802/index.html

While the video takes 36 minutes to view, I assure you that you will not regret spending this time looking at the world through the eyes of the Pakistani children featured in this documentary. Additionally, the insights that reporter Sharmeen-Obaid Chinoy provides are striking within a country where schools, education, and the rights of women are being greatly influenced by the Taliban.