Category Archives: blackbird

I logged a lot of time at the kids’ table in the kitchen processing fruit for my mom. She was bound and determined to give her city girls a country education, so she and my dad transformed our backyard into a decent facsimile of an orchard in Michigan, where they grew up. We had twoContinue reading “Summer in a Jar”

Before I even get started, this is a story of failure. Umeboshi, Japanese salted plums, get their plum-purple color traditionally not from the fruit itself–Japanese ume are actually yellow–but from red shiso, an herb in the mint family with an inimitable flavor. I have tried and failed to grow red shiso so many times. It’sContinue reading “Umeboshi and the RBQ”