Food

A few days before the previous fiasco, I had just looked through the pictures on my cell phone and had to laugh:

Food pictures. Lots of food pictures. Can you tell I love strawberry season in Miami? We try to eat as many as possible. I made a strawberry torte with meringues in various forms - layered like a cake, individual servings made in cupcake tins, and crumbled up with strawberries, whip cream, strawberry sauce and lemon curd (I thought I was making that last one up, but who knew it was a real dessert called an Eton mess). It was the first time I'd made lemon curd however (to find something to do with all the leftover egg yolks after making meringues), but wow, it will definitely not be my last. I could probably drink the stuff. Made for a fabulous trifle. I also made various forms of strawberry sauce (cooked, uncooked, strained of seeds or not). I attempted freezing some to last us past strawberry season but it never made it that far. I also made the best darn fresh strawberry filled cupcakes (think loads of strawberries with some cream and marshmallow fluff) with strawberry icing. They tasted unbelievably like a strawberry milkshake.

Then it was over but along came my other favorite season - mango season. I am so jealous of all my friends who have mango trees right in their yard here! Too bad wherever we move isn't looking likely to be a mango-growing kind of climate. I would love one of those in my yard. We've eaten lots of fresh mangos, mango and black bean quinoa salad, and a lot of mango and black bean salsa - sometimes with roasted corn or tomatoes, or with avocados (another favorite Miami seasonal food). The abundance of these will be on the top of my (ahem, brief) list of things I will miss about Miami.

You'll also see I made a few variations on a moose munch caramel popcorn recipe - with milk chocolate, dark chocolate, white chocolate, you name it.

I realize this may be lame to listen to someone drooling over food, but well, eating probably comes in a close second to my family of things I love in this life. And maybe someday I'll look back and be inspired to make some of them again. Besides, what else am I going to do with all those pictures?