The Whole Dish | Southern Oregon Food Blog
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Sarah Lemon covers the Rogue Valley’s food scene with an enthusiasm that rivals her love of cooking. Her blog mixes culinary musings and milestones with many tips and recipes.
The Whole Dish | Southern Oregon Food Blog
5y ago
Red, white and blue dishes feted in this blog have ranged from subtle blueberry-strawberry salsa and watermelon-feta salad to the truly thematic. Think pie assembled as an American flag and cake bedecked like Old Glory.
While the latter takes some effort, the former requires a
bit of imagination to associate with Fourth of July. For culinary fireworks in
a short amount of time, try the classic cherries jubilee.
Ignited with a splash of liqueur, this simple sauté of
cherries, sugar, butter and flavorings elevates a simple ice-cream sundae to a
celebratory course in your holiday spread ..read more
The Whole Dish | Southern Oregon Food Blog
5y ago
Another camping trip under our belts has left me craving
fresh vegetables.
After a weeklong campout featuring fairly diverse meals last month, my husband wanted a simpler format this time while staying in a campground lacking services of any kind. Enter the meat-bun format, as I’ve dubbed it.
About the only saving grace is hummus, one of my husband’s
snacktime staples, with carrot sticks, snap peas and broccoli florets for
dipping. Because hummus is available in so many flavors, Kalamata olive and
roasted jalapeno factored into our snacks. And because hummus also is (relatively
speakin ..read more
The Whole Dish | Southern Oregon Food Blog
5y ago
Watching my kids’ jubilation over cherries in our yard, I
can’t help but feel a pang for the apricot tree that passed on before they were
born.
The tree was gnarled and bent but every few years
produced a riot of pink flowers and the most delicious fruit I’d ever tasted.
Spindly to start with, it died back to just one main branch before my
mother-in-law, whose property surrounded the tree, declared it was time to take
it out. Removing it would benefit the garden beds with more sun and summer
vegetables.
Apricots have never been the same for me. Tracking down a
local source has been tri ..read more
The Whole Dish | Southern Oregon Food Blog
5y ago
Cherries just starting to redden on our tree this week
put me in mind of last year’s crop — still reposing in my freezer.
As I admonished my sons to wait a few more days for the
fruit to really ripen, I vowed in the interim to use up last year’s cherries,
followed by last year’s blueberries and perhaps the last bag of sweetened
strawberries that escaped smoothies and sundae sauce.
I’ve confessed to food-hoarding tendencies previously in
this blog. And although I’ve made more of a concerted effort in recent years to
use up canned and frozen goods, some deadlines still sneak up on me ..read more
The Whole Dish | Southern Oregon Food Blog
5y ago
Appetites sated on sausages, burgers, even kale salad after a week of camping, we couldn’t bypass a meal of mussels. The bivalves were a featured dish at a Hood River brew pub, our pit stop on the journey home.
We’d gotten our fill of little lake fish, referenced in this blog’s previous post. But mild, delicate trout only piqued our appetites for shellfish in a briny broth, a favorite under just about any circumstance.
Mussels could indeed translate well to the campsite, provided they were kept very cold and cooked within a day or so of arrival. Beachfront campgrounds near towns with r ..read more
The Whole Dish | Southern Oregon Food Blog
5y ago
Eating well in the outdoors elicited the past couple of posts to this blog, as well as my most recent column in the Mail Tribune’s food section. Read next week’s installment for a few more of my family’s campout favorites.
There’s often the chance, though, that any one of these
meals — carefully planned, prepped and packed from home — will incorporate a spontaneous
serving of lake fish. Trout, bass and crappie all were the quarry at mountain
lakes where my family camped over the week bookending Memorial Day. About half
the time, my husband and sons landed a large enough fish to afford each ..read more
The Whole Dish | Southern Oregon Food Blog
5y ago
Consider the first food you ever speared on a stick and
perched over a campfire. Chances are it was a marshmallow or hot dog.
While most of us tend to outgrow an affection for sticky blobs of scorched sugar (until we introduce our own kids), our tastes for meat-in-tube-form grow up. Good-quality sausages — Andouille, kielbasa, boudin, bratwurst and their ilk — are indispensable outdoor fare.
Dining around the campfire, I like to serve Italian sausages with griddled polenta and sautéed vegetables, featured in a previous post. Or boudin blanc with a simple salad of Puy lentils, sun-drie ..read more
The Whole Dish | Southern Oregon Food Blog
5y ago
Campout cuisine constituted my most recent column for the weekly food section.
While the piece focused on fried rice, I also gave tips for preparing foods ahead of time that can be laid away in the freezer and transported frozen to a campsite. Largely because of its sturdiness and relevance at any meal, polenta is one of my camping staples.
Made ahead, cooled and cut into squares, polenta can be
griddled or fried for a breakfast alternative to toast or pancakes with eggs
and bacon. We’ve also served it to rave reviews with good-quality Italian
sausages, sautéed summer vegetables and s ..read more
The Whole Dish | Southern Oregon Food Blog
5y ago
The garden is starting to show promise after long months
of little edible yields. Peas, artichokes, radishes and rhubarb all are coming
on in quantities large enough to constitute a meal. And still announcing its relevance
with a few new spears every day is the asparagus patch.
Although it’s slowed down a bit in the past few weeks,
there is still enough asparagus to be gathered over the course of several days
for a fine salad. And of course, June is when Washington asparagus prevails in
grocery stores, making this vegetable an ideal choice for warm-weather grilling
and picnics.
Here’s ..read more
The Whole Dish | Southern Oregon Food Blog
5y ago
Asparagus recipes had no sooner popped up on this blog than the weekly food section proclaimed it was time for peas.
True, the season for the two, when both are fresh and
locally grown, do overlap a bit. And that window in Southern Oregon is
typically June, when latecomer asparagus and the earliest peas are widespread at
farmers markets, farm stands and some locally owned grocers.
Here’s a simple but elegant salad that uses both asparagus and peas to full effect. Salty, crispy prosciutto offsets the fresh vegetable flavors. Cooked and crumbled bacon or diced, cooked pancetta are fine su ..read more