Saskatoons to sorrel

The native blackberries are nearly – but not quite done now, and a few premature Himalayans are peeking out on the roadsides, but not enough to pick yet. I found a precious few saskatoons when I was picking the other day: my dear Saskatchewan friends will be interested to know that they are native to this part of the world as well as theirs. I didn’t find enough to do anything more than mix them with other stuff, but still. Exciting to the berry-fingered.

Last week at Haliburton Farm we were pulling and cleaning garlic,

getting it ready to hang.

Their veggie stand always looks enticing; love those little round zucchini.

I made an exceptionally good zucchini parmigiana the other night, which was just like melanzane parmigiana only different in one fairly obvious way. I got my version from Jane Grigson’s excellent Vegetable Book which is funny and encyclopaedic and fun to read cover to cover.

This week we were pulling weeds, and I encountered a lot of red sorrel,

which made me think of sorrel soup, which is an excellent thing as you can eat it hot or cold. I brought a couple of hefty bags of these lemony weeds home with me, cleaned as much as I had patience for, and used this recipe, without the spinach. I didn’t cook the sorrel, just dumped it all into the blender with the broth, onions (had no leeks) and potatoes, and the heat cooked it as it landed. It is a good idea to sieve it though as some of it is kind of stringy.

And I ate it with a dollop of Greek yogurt; I have found a passable if not authentic version of this in Victoria which does ok for purposes like this and for making tzadziki to eat with another excellent zucchini dish, Delia’s version of kolokithokeftedes (Κολοκυθοκεφτέδες).