One of the dreams Cindy and I had when we first opened the bakery was to celebrate in-season fruit every summer. It’s something we need to shout about a lot more.
When we were in Vancouver this summer I had the best appetizer of my life at Nook in the West End. Our waitress told us they just got some local heirloom tomatoes in and were making very simple Calabrese Salads with them. They were the best tomatoes I have ever tasted that weren’t from my own back yard garden. Sweet, slightly acidic and literally bursting with flavour.
Later, in Victoria, we sustained ourselves on fresh, local strawberries. The ever-bearers were giving up their second harvest and it seemed every Farmer’s Market had pints of them. We always bought two -- one for snacking today and one for breakfast tomorrow!
Back in Regina, we decided to really go hard on using fresh fruit for the tiny window of time we had it available. We had been using all the rhubarb we could find in the spring, and fresh Saskatoons for the two weeks they were available, but now it’s time for tree fruit.
We’re lucky to have access to the best BC tree fruit ever through our friend Brenda in Regina and her sister Betty who has an orchard in BC. At the end of August, three cases of peaches were quickly made into danishes, galettes and muffins. Delicious! All told, the peaches lasted 10 days, then they were gone. Kaput. That’s it for another year. But boy oh boy were they good when they lasted.
Now it’s Nectarine time. Three more cases and they won’t last much more than 10 days either.
Next up is plums, then maybe pears and finally new apples. Then it’s back to the canned fruit until next summer.
I think all of our sweets are excellent, but I want you to get a special “Wow!” in your tastebuds for these few remaining late summer days when the fruit has just been picked and the flavour is at its peak. So ripe and juicy and flavourful that it tastes like the sun and the sky, not the box it came in.
For a few short weeks every summer we can have fruit that is so much better than that Peruvian orange that’s at the grocery store in summer or the South African peach that is on the shelves in January. Please don’t miss out!