June, June, June, June!

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: June is busting out all over! My mother always sang that song from the musical Carousel on this day, and as a June baby, I always felt it was meant for me. (When the puberty fairy arrived with her bike pump, it took on a new meaning, sigh.)

 

 June always feels like a month of infinite possibilities and celebrations. Weddings, graduations, school letting out, the start of summer vacation, everything in the garden bursting to life. (So much life, it becomes hard to keep up with the mowing!) 

 

I know if you’re living in the southwest, like Jenn and Debs, it’s a bit different weather-wise. My high on Monday is predicted to be 64°/18°    and Jenn’s is 103°/ 39° !!!!!! But the rhythms of the season remain the same no matter where you live.

 

The baseball season is in full swing. Your friends are talking about where they’re going this summer (my prediction is a revival of the staycation, as the price of gas reaches eleventy hundred per gallon.) The local grocery store has a towering display of everything you need for a cookout, and you buy hot dog and hamburger bund for the first time in nine months. (Don’t forget to toss the two buns you put in the freezer last October, optimistically thinking you would use them at some point.) It’s your last chance to find bathing suits in the stores, so Debs, get moving!

 

Since my June includes two weeks with Youngest and the Very Tall Dutchman (whom I will now abbreviate VOC, and the commenter who tells my why gets a virtual guilder,) and a concurrent visit from The Sailor, it’s kicking off in grand style. We’re going to a Sea Dogs game, taking VOC hiking in a wilderness area, and, if the weather cooperates, swimming in Celia’s lake. (The lake does not actually belong to Celia.)  VOC also wants to see a super Walmart, but I may not tag along for that glorious excursion. Toward the end of the month, it’s a five-day oceanside writing retreat. Do I plan to go down to the boardwalk and buy 5,000 calories of greasy, salty beach fries? Yes. Yes, I do.

 

How about you, Reds? What does June mean to you, and what are your plans for the month?

 

HALLIE EPHRON: Spring makes me think of that song too… With special meaning because my dad was the director of the movie Carousel and he used to talk about the changeable Maine spring weather… They began filming that number dancing on a pier in Bar Harbor and had to relocate to the sound stage in Los Angeles to finish the scene because of the weather. If you know it’s coming, you can see the difference. So yeah, changeable.

 

JULIA: Every once in a while we have a discussion and I'm suddenly reminded our Hallie's family were genuine Hollywood royalty! 

 

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: And now I am singing!  June used to mean freedom, and that whole long long long summer where we could do  anything we wanted. Including slathering on iodine mixed into baby oil and sitting out in the sun with aluminum foil to get tan. I do NOT miss that! And still have the  freckles to show for it.

 

Now it means three months until the book is due, and the whole month will fly by. It’s all good, I’m delighted, but also here in Boston is it FREEZING so it does not feel like summer yet.

 

I have actively scaled back on events this June–although I am interviewing some fabulous authors in person, and speaking at a big Girl Scout convention, adorably–but have to keep my days and nights open  since I am gearing up for a fall book launch, and also, see above, my book is due. So June is a writing month. And you will find me at the computer for most of the time!

 

JENN McKINLAY: June is not the happy occasion in Arizona that it is elsewhere. We’re checking the AC unit and making sure the pool is ready for the dogs to shift from walking to swimming (with me, of course). It’s more of a girding the loins until September month for us.

 

 

That being said, I’ll be in Colchester, CT on June 12th at 6 PM at the Cragin Memorial Library to give a talk and a signing. Click HERE for details. After time with the fam, I’ll be flying down to Myrtle Beach, SC to visit my college bestie and get in some beach time! Woo hoo!

 

RHYS BOWEN:  I’m glad it’s June because May was not an easy month for me, as you can imagine. Planning a funeral, wading through endless paperwork, seeing bank, attorney etc etc. So I’m hopefully moving on to a time when I can enjoy summer. At this moment it’s cool and cloudy but it should warm up and then pool time. 

 

My family has been so wonderful and supportive that I’ve hardly been alone, and this month I have good things to look forward to: granddaughter graduates from Santa Clara University and I’m hosting a big party here. Clare and Tim will be here for a couple of weeks and we’ll do fun things and then at the end of the month I’m flying to Canada with Dominic and Meredith. We’ve an AirBandB on Vancouver Island, on a secluded beach and then a few days in Victoria. They have been several times before and know the best bakeries, oyster farms, blueberry farms etc. So that is definitely something to look forward to.

 

DEBORAH CROMBIE: It is truly summer here. We’re easing into the low nineties, but we’ve had a lot of rain and the garden is glorious. I’ll be doing lots of grilling and hopefully a bit of lying in the hammock with a book, before it gets too hot to stick a nose outside. Other than that, I suspect it will be edits, edits, edits, and I’m looking forward to that.

 

Oh, and some birthday celebrating, too. Kayti and I are going to see Matt Haig (on tour for his new book, THE MIDNIGHT TRAIN) at the Dallas Museum of Art on Friday, with dinner at one of my fave restaurants beforehand. And I’m hoping that Rick will take me out for a movie date to see THE TUNER, as I’m a huge Leo Woodall fan. (And Hoffman fan, of course!)

 

LUCY BURDETTE: I’ll be in the writing cave with Hank–hoping to finish the Paris book this month! John is going on a Grand Canyon adventure for 9 days so it will be quiet here, no need to cook big meals either. So I don’t have a good excuse not to buckle down. I’ll also be playing golf, and some pickleball, and taking another quick trip into New York to hear Sting’s opera with two of my good pals. 

 

JULIA: How about you, dear readers? What's on your calendar for June? 

Celebrate Spring with a Blueberry and Lemon Curd Pavlova: Celia Wakefield

 JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Once more, ladies and gentlemen, our own Celia Wakefield is here with an elegant, (relatively) easy dessert that will wow your guests and tastes like spring sunshine exploding in your mouth.

 

Good morning JRW’s and JRR all, it is such a pleasure to be back with you, and my grateful thanks to Julia et al for encouraging me to write more. As I am over my three score and ten, I am a little late to take up fiction or biography but memoir through food is most enjoyable.

 

I had lots of ideas to talk about but was side tracked by Hanks “Mystery in the Freeza!” The title alone along with the photo was enough to spur my imagination. Hank’s original photo when compared with liver in my own freezer certainly didn’t look anything like blueberries. I mourn with Hank the loss of those precious berries, particularly if she picked them herself. However, while I left it to the Facebook world telling her how to tackle freezing blueberries, not to mention what not to do.  But I have blueberry stories too.

 

Our first house in Chappaqua had a peculiar structure in the back yard. About 10ft by 10 by 10 with netting surrounding some bushes. I thought to myself, ‘well that’s coming down when we move in’. The previous owners were a pleasant couple who invited us for coffee and pie. This pie was a dark blue purple color like no fruit that I had ever seen in England or anywhere else that I had lived. I took the slice offered and cautiously bit into it. How delightful, so sweet and juicy and tangy and quite different from the berries I was used to eating. I asked what the fruit was and they pointed to the cage in the yard. Blueberries, high bush blueberries and in full fruit as it was summer. OK, we kept the cage but I really didn’t appreciate what we had. I would go in and pick 8 cups for a wonderful Gourmet Magazine recipe I found which Victor loved. Unfortunately that recipe has joined the great lost recipe raft somewhere.

However the opportunity to pick our blueberries turned out to be a most popular offering at local fund raising auctions. I think the top weight picked was twenty plus pounds of fruit. I’m sure I must have frozen some for us probably with the same result as Hank. But it wasn’t until we moved to Maine and bid our bushes goodbye that I really started to appreciate blueberries and what we had in Chappaqua despite the year battle with birds. Maine is a blueberry capital and while I don’t chose to crawl around picking the wild blueberries, we do have wonderful places to pick high bush around where we live.

 

I bring the blueberries home and freeze them on a cookie sheet. I don’t wash them. Really, most local farms don’t spray the fruits and we have had no problems. Once frozen and  then bagged, (this part is important to do at speed as they defrost very fast,) I’m set for the next step. I think you all make pies, muffins, scones, blueberry loaves and other baked goodies. I like to turn frozen blueberries into smoothies, just with a banana and some yogurt, or make blueberry sauce which is very like making blueberry jelly but you don’t have to get it to a set point (reached by testing its consistency after 20 minutes of hard boiling.) Store it in the fridge and there it is ready to pour over ice cream, pancakes or French toast.

 

Somehow I found myself hosting a small luncheon party on Easter Day. I needed a meal plan and found that my on-line grocer Big Tree Foods, was offering a par-cooked leg of lamb and some special potato dish and all I had to do is heat them and serve. But what about a dessert? I had saved a lovely article by Dorie Greenspan who has a new blog, xoxo Dorie which is all about baking for which she is famous. The article was about a shop in Paris where she lives part time, which sells only citrus fruits. You must read the article, I was amazed by the splendid choices of fruit. To go with the article, Dorie gave a recipe for lemon curd. I love lemon curd and the recipe looked very easy. Realizing I had not put in a recipe yet, what would be nicer than lemon and blueberries in an Easter dessert. I chose to make a blueberry lemon pavlova. Looking back we had a JRW pavlova recipe on March 28th 2021. You can follow the pavlova recipe for the shell or you can use another recipe for your shell or cake base. I made lemon curd from Dorie Greenspan's recipe as what I loved was its simplicity. And it works.

 

However I added a little hack. My days of play dough and other doughs are over and the idea of massaging the sugar and lemon zest didn’t appeal. Why not try my Cuisinart? I do encourage you to go to Dorie’s blog, first to look at the glorious photos and also to read her directions. I have put in a cut down version below but the recipe is hers, I am just trying to keep my fingers clean.

 

MY HACK

 

- Zest the lemons and combine with 1 1/4C of sugar

I measured the sugar and zested lemon into the Cuisinart bowl.

 

- Break 4 large eggs into a second bowl.

 

- Squeeze enough citrus to measure 3/4C

Prepared my citrus using 1 1/2 Meyer lemons, 3 regular lemons, 1/4 cup lime juice. This was squeezed into yet another bowl taking care not to allow pips into the juice.

 

- Cut 1 stick of softened butter into small cubes.

 

DIRECTIONS:

First whirl the sugar and zest until it’s all incorporated, then pour in the eggs with the processor still going.

The next step involves some dexterity so pour the juice down the funnel and add the butter.

Switch your processor to PULSE and pulse it for a couple of minutes until the mix looks reasonably incorporated. Dorie has great directions.

Pour into a heavy saucepan, whisking all the while until bubbles appears, and suddenly, just like MAGIC, the mix thickens as you remove the pan from the heat and pour into a glass bowl covering with plastic wrap.

 

FINISH

Unwrap the pavlova, and spread a layer of lemon curd over the base generously.

Cover with blueberries and whipped cream.

And the moral is don’t toss the bag of mystery food from the bottom of the freezer until you find out if there is really treasure inside it. Hank’s bag - blueberry syrup possibly with some sugar, a little fresh lemon juice and a hit of Gran Marnier, makes a great addition to any dessert.

BEACH EATS AND READS

LUCY BURDETTE: Even though it didn’t feel much like summer this past week, Memorial Day weekend is supposed to mark that transition. Which makes it time to talk about what to read and what to eat while we’re reading. We have a lot of authors who visit here to tell us about their books, so maybe we’ll choose one from someone who hasn’t come to JRW?  

My pick is Walter Wells and Patricia Wells WE’VE ALWAYS HAD PARIS...AND PROVENCE.  I’m definitely a Francophile so I snatched this up when I saw it at one of the Key West Library’s book sales. If you aren’t familiar with the Wells family, they left good jobs at the New York Times to move to France when Walter was offered a job at the International Herald Tribune. Patricia managed to work herself into the position of food critic at L'Express, unheard of for a woman, and an American to boot. 25 plus years later, they are still living in France. The chapters alternate between the two--both are excellent writers and their journey is fascinating and mouthwatering.

Now what to eat...I’m dying for some real summer tomatoes. And once they arrive, I am going to make Patricia Wells’s recipe for puff pastry (found in THE FRENCH KITCHEN COOKBOOK) and serve tomato and olive tarts!

HALLIE EPHRON: Last month I did a shared event and got to know Holly Robinson. I adored her new book, "Haven Lake." It's one of those multi-generational stories that just have you rooting for everyone in it, though I confess I identified with the former-Hippie mother. So I've been saving one of Holly's other books, "Beach Plum Island," for a relaxing summer read. Great setup: Ava Barrett's father's last words on his deathbed: "I want your brother to know the truth." But Ava doesn't have a brother. What I didn't know about Holly: she wrote a piece for a women's magazine years and years ago called "Mom on Strike." It caused quite a stir, and I vividly remember reading. (Click here if you missed it and want to see what it said.)

What to eat? Peaches! Our produce market has just starting to get those little southern tree-ripened peaches that are exploding with flavor.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  I  just did  shared event with the amazing Elin Hilderbrand--we had a fabulous time, laughing and  sharing stories.  She's written I forget how many--17?--NYT bestselling beach-read books about life on Nantucket. People were coming to her signing line with arms full of books, each sharing a personal nugget about how they'd connected with her stories. So, yeah, I bought two, and cannot wait. Her newest one is THE RUMOR, coming soon.

But generally, um, that's not what I read. Those family saga books make me sad, I have to admit So I--well, I remember spending delighted summer vacations with WINDS OF WAR, and BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES.  With THE GREEN MILE, remember? And UNDER THE DOME. Stephen King is a perfect beach read for me, as is Nelson DeMille.  Lisa Scottoline. And there's a new Linwood Barclay coming! So that's my kind of summer read…

As for food? CORN! Grilled outside. Fresh basil and mozzarella. Prosciutto and gorgeous melon! And gin and tonics! And lovely chilled rose wine.


SUSAN ELIA MACNEAL: Usually loaded down with research books regardless of season, but I _am_ looking forward to one "fun" read in particular, called I, RIPPER: A NOVEL, by Stephen Hunter, about — yep, you guessed it — Jack the Ripper. It's the Ripper's story (of course), but entwined with that of a fictional Irish journalist who's covering the case — "and how the two men stalk each other."

I'm not really into those generational family saga books, although I do remember loving THE JOY LUCK CLUB and THE SHELL SEEKERS. If anyone has a great recommendation, I'd certainly try it!Summer food — tomatoes, mozzarella, basil drizzled with oil and vinegar. Anything grilled, especially corn on the cob. The Kiddo is obsessed with S'mores and the hubby does a great job with grilled meat and fish. It seems like we're house-sitting the late Jane Henson's (Jim Henson's widow's) country house in Connecticut for part of this summer, while Noel teaches a puppetry master class, so that's where we'll be....

RHYS BOWEN: Ah, summer reading. I'm hoping to do some un-work-related reading on a beach in Corfu next week. I met James Runcie at Crimefest and have one of the Granchester books to read. Also Connie Willis"s Blackout Books on my Kindle. And I love multi generational books. I'm a huge fan of Kate Morton... The Forgotten Garden etc. and to eat when reading? Being. Messy person it can't be peaches, Hallie. I'd drip all over the pages. But a favorite summer food is cherries. A bowl of cherries, and smoked salmon on thin brown bread, and Pimms to sip.... Now I'm really being indulgent!

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Rhys, you will love Black Out and the James Runcies, I hope! Lucy, I have Patricia Wells' cookbook, too! Time to get that out and be inspired--although it feels more like monsoon than summer here. No beach for me (Rhys oh so casually says "on a beach in Corfu" and we are all dying of envy...) But I would just be thrilled to see sunshine. To sit on my deck in the mornings. To--gasp--lie in my hammock on my new (drowned) patio! As for summer reading, I have to confess that I have been re-reading Diana Gabaldon. I'm now halfway through Voyager, and at this rate I might get caught up on the books I haven't read by Christmas.  But if I picked a summer read for the days when I will eventually get to enjoy my hammock, I'd start with the Nancy Thayer  novel I bought last week, then move on to the Patricia Wells memoir that Lucy mentioned.

Summer food most anticipated?? Real tomatoes, with basil and olive oil. Cantalope with prosciutto. And TEXAS BLUEBERRIES by the pint!

What are you going to read and eat this summer Reds?