When a farmer hands you a beautiful fresh summer squash and tells you, “this is only the fifth zucchini I’ve picked so far this year,” you really want to do something nice with it. I made fritters.

Zucchini fritters are something I used to make a lot, but it’s been a while and I can’t find my original recipe, which was from a low-carb book by Fran McCullough and seems to be lost in the mists of time. I made something up, based loosely on my memories and on a recipe in Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, and a bowl of egg yolks in the fridge left over from my grandfather’s birthday cake. Next time I think I’ll actually follow a recipe, but this was still pretty yummy.

I grated the zucchini and pressed the water out (note to self: next time actually do the salt-and-let-stand-30-minutes thing first). I mixed in four egg yolks (because that was how many I had, not because it was the right amount), a handful of matzo meal, a bunch of fresh chopped parsley and mint from the garden, and salt and pepper. I dropped spoonfuls of the very loose batter into frothing butter in a cast iron skillet and cooked them until they turned prettily golden, turning carefully halfway through.

We ate them for breakfast with a perky mix of ketchup and sambal badjak (a recent find at Ranch 99, very spicy and delicious). I’m already looking forward to my next zucchini of the season.

This week has been crazy busy, but we did make time to get down to opening day of our local farmer’s market. It was a classic Pacific Northwest Memorial Day weekend, which is to say it rained every. single. day.

Fortunately there were plenty of vendors and customers, and the hardy Prozac Mountain Boys managed to keep the music playing without floating away.

We bought leeks, fingerling potatoes, asparagus, hothouse peppers, and butter, which seemed like a pretty good haul for the season (thank goodness for Hedlin Farms’ greenhouses). Then we checked out Gothberg Farms’ stand. A local goat dairy, they’re newcomers to the Mount Vernon market, and we’re really excited to have them here. I expect we’ll be eating a lot of their cheese in the months to come, but for now we limited ourselves to a tub of fresh ricotta and a block of Queso Blanco.

The ricotta blew us away. I mixed it with a little sugar and a drop of vanilla, and we rolled it up in warm eggy crepes with hot blackberry sauce. Incredible stuff, so fresh and milky and with a delightful springy texture. I am so buying this again.

The Queso Blanco was awesome, too. It’s very fresh and milky as well, with a firm texture rather like panir. I hear it’s excellent fried, but we ate it on garlicky chicken tacos with roasted bell peppers and cilantro and it was lovely. I tried marinating a little in a bowl with olive oil, salt and pepper, rather like mozzarella balls, and that was delicious. We also tucked some into quesadillas the next morning with hot sauce and scrambled eggs. The queso didn’t melt so much as warm and soften, but I thought it was a perfect breakfast cheese.

As it happens, Gothberg Farms is having an awesome-sounding farm day and BBQ this Sunday. We can’t be there (I have a pie class to attend), but I strongly urge everyone to go out there and support this place. They do amazing work!

In the annals of putting fried eggs on top of things, this breakfast came very close to perfection. Here’s how to make it.

Take one Dungeness crab, cooked and cleaned.

Pick the meat out and set aside. Put the shell into a saucepan, cover with water, and simmer for about 10-15 minutes. Strain and keep warm.

Make risotto. A little onion in the base is nice, with a splash of white wine. Use the crab stock you just made, and stir in plenty of butter at the end. No cheese.

Stir in the crab at the very end.

Roast some asparagus with olive oil and salt. Not for too long, just until done but still crispy.

Serve the risotto and asparagus for dinner, with a good sprinkle of fresh chives.

The next morning, melt a little butter in a nonstick skillet and scrape the leftover risotto into it (you do have leftovers, don’t you?), chop up the leftover asparagus and press it into the risotto. Cook until you get a good golden crust.

Fry an egg, keeping the yolk good and runny, and serve over the crusty risotto with a sprinkle of coarse salt. Feel happy.

Think about buying another crab.

A sudden craving last weekend had me searching my cookbook shelf for a recipe for buckwheat pancakes. I don’t know where the urge came from, but I wanted that earthy, rich flavor, preferably smothered in applesauce, for Valentine’s Day breakfast.

It was harder than I thought finding a recipe, but I ran one down in a true American cookery resource, Betty Crocker’s New Picture Cookbook from 1961. This is a book that reads like something from another dimension, including this marvelous bit of advice in the “Hints for the Homemaker” section:

Every morning before breakfast, comb hair, apply makeup and a dash of cologne. Does wonders for your morale and your family’s, too!

My family’s morale is going to have to wait until after breakfast, sorry, Betty. But in any case, the recipes are pretty sound. I halved the recipe for buckwheat pancakes, starting it  the night before as advised, and it turned out beautifully.

I thawed a container of Jonagold applesauce from last fall, and fried up a couple of homemade sausage patties that were left over from the previous week. The pancakes were wonderful, springy and chewy and with plenty of deep buckwheat flavor. They were also great with butter and syrup.

Even after halving the recipe, we couldn’t eat them all by a long shot. Eventually it dawned on us that we had made blini, and blini are made to be eaten with caviar. It was Valentine’s Day, after all…

So later that day, after a quick run to the store, the pancakes made a reappearance as a romantic appetizer with sour cream and dollops of inexpensive whitefish caviar, with glasses of cava alongside. We felt very fancy. I loved that something as downhome as a buckwheat pancake could be so easily gussied up, and be equally delicious either way.

Buckwheat Pancakes (Blini)

adapted from Betty Crocker’s New Picture Cookbook (1961 ed.)

Combine:

• 1 heaping tsp active dry yeast
• 1/4 cup warm water

Then add:

• 1 cup cold water
• 1 cup buckwheat flour
• 1/2 cup all-purpose white flour
• 1/2 tsp salt

Stir well, cover and refrigerate overnight. The next morning, pull it out and add:

• 1 Tbsp butter, melted
• 1 tsp molasses
• 1/2 tsp baking soda, dissolved in 1/4 cup warm water

Stir well and let sit 30 minutes. Cook pancakes in butter – make them small if you intend to serve them as finger food with fancy toppings. Serve hot or cold, with applesauce, syrup, jam, sour cream, smoked salmon, or caviar. But probably not all at once.

It baffles me that something as wonderful as a scone can often be so awful.

The scones I grew up with (my mother’s) were like rich biscuits: a little fluffy, a little crumbly, with a sweet butter flavor. They might have some currants or a bit of zest, but the main attraction was always the scone itself, plus whatever fabulous jam you smeared on top. They also weren’t too big, so you could have the pleasure of going back for seconds or thirds, perhaps trying a different jam on each one.

Commercial scones, on the other hand, always seem to be huge, floury and dry. Not to mention full of chunks of things: citron, cranberries, nuts – all distractions, in my opinion. This sort of scone gets you to drink a lot more coffee than you normally would, just to wash all that dry plaster out of your mouth. I can never eat more than a bite or two.

They need to be made at home, and eaten fresh. That’s all there is to it.

Despite my fondness for them, I make scones so rarely at home that I never remember what recipe to use for them. Sometimes I just make a regular buttermilk biscuit and add extra butter, sometimes I use the Joy of Cooking recipe. This time I chose to put my trust in Dorie Greenspan, whose wonderful baking book finally made its way onto my shelves. She has a way with the basics.

Made with heavy cream, these scones are not light, but they are so feathery-crisp that you’ll think they are. I added a bit of orange zest to brighten them, and to go with the rhubarb jam we bought at Franprix in Paris. Nothing could be better.

Cream Scones with Orange Zest

Adapted from Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 Tbsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 2 Tbsp sugar
• 5 Tbsp butter
• 1 egg
• 2/3 cup heavy cream
• microplaned zest from about half an orange

Preheat the oven to 400°.

Combine the dry ingredients in a mixing bowl, then cut the butter into them and work it in with your fingers or a pastry cutter until it’s like irregular gravel.

Beat the cream and egg together in another bowl, then pour them into the dry ingredients and carefully fold them together until barely combined. Turn out onto the counter and knead gently just a few times until you have a coherent dough.

Pat into a round at least an inch thick, cut into eight wedges, arrange them on a baking sheet lined with parchment or a silpat, and tuck into the oven.

Bake twenty minutes or until golden brown. Attempt to let them cool before eating. Split, butter, and top with rhubarb jam, or marmalade, or honey.

Eons ago, on our honeymoon, Jon and I stayed at a wonderful place in the San Juan Islands called the Inn at Swifts Bay. It was a charming little B&B with a hot tub tucked back in the woods and a movie library of great quality – and the breakfasts were amazing. It was fifteen years ago and I still remember some of the food (I told you I had food on the brain, didn’t I?). One thing that made a huge impression on us both was the smoothie that kicked off each morning’s dining. Served in a large goblet, it was a puree of peach, a whole lime, banana, and pineapple. It was divine, and as soon as we were settled in our new (married student housing) apartment and owned a blender, we started making them for ourselves.

These days I can’t eat peaches (and pineapple makes my mouth feel a little odd, too), and I usually prefer a glass of orange juice with a hot breakfast than a full-on smoothie, but we still make smoothies on weekdays, especially if we’re feeling a little frail and dehydrated. Every summer I buy flats of local berries and freeze them, so all winter we can mix berries with mangoes, oranges or bananas for a variety of flavors. My usual smoothie formula for the two of us is something like: 1-2 cups fruit, half a cup of full-fat yogurt, half a cup of orange juice, two scoops of vanilla-flavored whey protein powder, and water to dilute and top up.

It’s easy, tasty and restorative. Always a good backup during the holidays, when one sometimes needs a bit of restoring.

When it comes to festive breakfasts, it’s hard to beat a blintz. A soft white crepe wrapped around a cheesy filling, fried golden and drizzled with syrup…I’m making myself hungry just writing about it. Blintzes were one of the foods my husband wooed me with (along with breakfast burritos, chocolate pudding and curry (no, not all at once)) and I’d say they worked quite well.

There are a lot of directions you can go with blintzes. Sometimes we put fruit in, or you could make a different flavor of crepe to wrap around (buckwheat, perhaps?), but they’re really great made plain, so everyone can put whatever topping on they want. You could even do them savory: mushrooms seem like an obvious thing to try.

When Jon made these last weekend, we had some leftover raspberry syrup on hand, so I used that. Any kind of berry sauce would be good, of course, and maple syrup is traditional. Some people put sour cream on as well, but it’s hardly necessary.

We had a couple left over, so I ate them cold with a glass of red wine later that day. That was pretty darn good, too.

Cheese Blintzes for two

adapted from The Enchanted Broccoli Forest by Mollie Katzen

Crepes

• 2 eggs
• 1/3 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup unbleached white flour
• 1 scant cup milk
• 1 1/3 Tbsp oil or melted butter
• more butter for frying

Filling (unless you can get your blintzes really full, this makes a little too much)

• 1 lb ricotta
• 1 egg, beaten
• 2 Tbsp sugar
• 3 Tbsp flour
• 1/4 tsp salt

Whisk up the crepe ingredients, or toss them in a blender. Heat a bit of butter in a crepe pan or small nonstick skillet, and ladle in just enough batter to cover the bottom of the pan. Cook until the pancake just begins to pull away from the sides, then turn it cooked side up onto a towel or piece of parchment. You are not cooking both sides of the pancake at this time! Continue to make one-sided crepes, preferably while someone else begins filling blintzes.

Beat together the filling ingredients. To make a blintz, scoop about a tablespoon of filling onto one side of a crepe. Fold over the closest edge, then fold down the sides, then roll it the rest of the way up. You’re making as tight a package as possible, so the filling won’t leak out during cooking. Repeat with all the pancakes as they come off the skillet. Blintzes can be held at this point for later frying – you can even freeze them.

To finish, melt butter in the pan again, and add as many blintzes as will fit. Fry until they are golden brown on all sides, and hot through. Eat right away with whatever toppings you like. Or eat cold later, I won’t tell anyone.

This is kind of embarrassing, but I can’t deny (and you’ll know this if you’ve been reading for a while) that I will put a fried egg on almost anything. And when you think about it, French fries aren’t that different from hashbrowns, right?

I don’t usually bring leftover French fries home, but these were special fries. We had lunch at Nell Thorn last weekend, after spending a quiet Sunday morning in La Conner checking out some of the Art’s Alive exhibits. Thinking we’d be restrained and share an order (after downing some incredible oyster shooters), we asked for a single Nell burger with fries and a side salad. Unfortunately for our good intentions, the kitchen cut the burger neatly in half, put each on its own plate and filled in the space around it with fries. And these are Nell Thorn fries, done with local potatoes and herbs and served with spicy house-made ketchup. We ate far too many, then just had to take the rest home. And, of course, ate them for breakfast. What would you have done?

For those who have not had a large Rubbermaid container of leftover curried eggs to work through this week, and are therefore not completely burned out on them, here’s a recipe (I omitted to include it in my Easter brunch report, obviously a mistake).

Ideally, this should be done with freshly found Easter eggs, wet with dew, delivered to the kitchen by victorious children, anxious to get back out into the fray. The finished dish will be ready by the time all the hunting is done, assuming you’ve begun the prep beforehand.

If you have no children or Easter eggs available, however, you can boil eggs just for this purpose. You could even make them sometime other than Easter. I won’t tell.

Curried Eggs

adapted from the Vegetarian Epicure by Anna Thomas

• 6 eggs, not too fresh (fresh eggs are hard to peel)
• 2 Tbsp sour cream
• 2 Tbsp dried dill or 4 Tbsp fresh chopped dill
• 1 cup chopped button mushrooms
• salt and pepper

for the sauce:

• 3 Tbsp butter
• 3 Tbsp flour
• 2 tsp curry powder (I like one that’s heavier on the coriander than the mustard)
• 2 cups of milk, warmed
• salt and pepper
• paprika

Hard boil the eggs and cool them completely (this may be easiest done a day ahead – not a problem if you’re using found Easter eggs). Peel them, cut them in half lengthwise and scoop out the yolks into a bowl.

Saute the mushrooms with a little butter or olive oil. Let them cool, then add them to the egg yolks.

Add the sour cream and dill, then salt and pepper to taste. Mash it all up thoroughly, and stuff the egg halves with the mixture (they will be very full). Lay the eggs out in a single layer in a baking dish (you could refrigerate them for a while at this point if you don’t have the curry sauce ready).

For the sauce, melt the butter in a heavy saucepan or double boiler. Add the flour and whisk it smooth. Let it cook, whisking, until it turns slightly golden. Add the curry powder and whisk it in, then add the warm milk. Bring the sauce to a simmer and cook, still stirring often, until it has thickened to a nice velvety sauce.

Pour the sauce over the eggs, sprinkle paprika over the top, and bake for 15 minutes at 375° until hot through.

Serve with English muffins, asparagus, roasted potatoes and lots of coffee.

I’m not normally a huge pancake eater. They fill me up too fast and give me a sugar rush, and they take my focus away from important things like eggs and bacon. Jon likes pancakes – he can eat the always-amazing banana coconut cakes at the breakfast place down the hill, and live to tell the tale. I still feel a little faint when I remember the pancake plate at the Hawaiian Style Cafe in Waimea – twice the size of the head of the person eating it! I can’t compete with that kind of pancake devotion. But there is a pancake that I will eat at any time: the cottage cheese (or ricotta) pancake.

Like many cheesy items in our family’s repertoire, this comes from the original Vegetarian Epicure, published in 1972. It has many virtues: the recipe is simple to expand or reduce (we usually make a 1/3 or 1/2 recipe for the two of us), it’s very high protein and low-carb, unless you smother it in jam or syrup, and if you use cottage cheese, the curds melt and form little gooey pockets that are truly delightful. Ricotta is nice too, in more of an airy, dissolve in the mouth kind of way which is very misleading – these do fill you up pretty fast.

I’m particularly fond of these pancakes as a vehicle for stewed rhubarb, but blueberries are excellent, as is a good dollop of lingonberry preserves. We picked up a jar at IKEA last time we were on a furniture binge, and it’s great stuff: runnier than jam, and nicely tart. Maple syrup is never a bad choice either.

Cottage Cheese Pancakes
adapted from The Vegetarian Epicure by Anna Thomas

Serves 4

• 2 cups cottage cheese
• 6 eggs, separated
• 2/3 cups flour
• 2 Tbsp sugar
• 1 tsp salt
• cinnamon or grated lemon zest (optional)
• 1/8 tsp cream of tartar
• oil or butter

Combine the cottage cheese, egg yolks, flour, sugar and salt in a bowl and beat until mostly smooth. Add cinnamon or lemon zest if using.

In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites with the cream of tartar until stiff. Fold into the cheese-egg mixture.

Heat a nonstick or well-seasoned cast iron pan to medium high – you will probably need to adjust as you go. Add a little oil or a bit of butter to the pan.

Carefully place small dollops of batter on the skillet – it’s very puffy and lumpy, and doesn’t really pour, so we often use a small ladle. Don’t make them too large. Cook until golden brown on both sides – the insides may be gooey but they shouldn’t be wet.

For best results, consume as they come off the stove, slathered in butter, syrup or jam. If allowed to cool, they will still be tasty, but they will lose their ethereal perfection and slight crispiness.