In the summertime, a cool lemony drink makes so much sense. On Monday, as the thermometer passed 100 degrees and I slogged my way through wire services stories after returning from vacation, I ran into limoncello … twice.

The first time I encountered the sweet lemon liqueur was in Italy. I think it was the same trip in 2003 as the one with the divine mozzarella. We were in the Riomaggiore in the Cinque Terre — yes, I know it’s trendy, but it’s also really cool — and after tasting it, I brought a little bottle home with me.

I returned to the cute ceramic bottle a couple of months after I got home and tried it again. It wasn’t as good as when I was in Italy, I probably should have refrigerated the stuff. I think the bottle is still in the cupboard; I haven’t had it since.

Now, thanks to Kristin Tillotson at The Minneapolis Star Tribune, I’m making my own.

The two recipes that I found on the wire called for different methods. I have a feeling that either method would work fine. One uses the entire lemon rind, the other uses lemon zest. I chose to go with the lemon zest recipe since I recently bought a new Microplane grater and want to make good use of it. I am also a bit leery of using the entire lemon rind as citrus rinds can make foods taste bitter. So far, it’s been a very quick process. I probably spent more active time trying to decide which vodka to use than actually preparing the stuff. Now it’s just watch, shake and wait.

I’ll keep you posted with updates.

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Yesterday one of my coworkers asked me where to find the best tortillas in town. As I was about to say “make them” he stopped me and said, “And don’t tell me to make them myself.” So, I suggested heading to either one of the Food Pavilion stores in town for their fresh tortillas made in-house. The trick at the store is to go when the tortillas are coming off of the presses. Even though you are surrounded by hundreds of very fresh packaged tortillas, it’s best to wait in line for the ones made seconds before. You can also request specific amounts, as opposed to buying a big stack.

To be honest, though, I still prefer homemade tortillas. They taste fantastic and are well worth the effort. They’re thicker and, of course, fresher than any tortillas you’ll find in a store. However, making them does require some practice.

Last year, I was lucky enough to run into one of my elementary school friends at Starbucks, Veronica Hernandez. I had been hoping to find someone to give tips on tortilla making for a story. We hadn’t seen each other for a few years and as we were catching up she mentioned that she had just taught her preschool students how to make tortillas.

I came away from the ensuing interview very excited to make my own tortillas. Following her tips, the tortillas turned out to be very good. Now, I often make a half dozen tortillas just for fun. It’s quicker than you might think.

Last night I made some tortillas to go with baked cod. Topped with salsa and a bit of sour cream, it made a nice, fresh meal.

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That week-long vacation I took to the East Coast was full of food and excitement. My fiance (yes, you read that right, woohoo!) and his family made sure I ate well while in New Jersey and New York City.

One of the highlights of the trip was our Tuesday lunch stop at the Carnegie Deli on Seventh Ave. in Manhattan. On the suggestion of Brian’s cousin, Sy, we split The Woody Allen sandwich. It’s a corned beef and pastrami sandwich on rye bread. It would be more accurate to say that the sandwich consists of three pieces of rye bread dwarfed by a six-inch stack of pastrami and corned beef slices.

Being in New York, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to order a slice of cheesecake. It was huge and delicious. Needless to say, we didn’t leave the place with empty stomachs.

As we sat, surrounded by photos of famous people, we chatted, and when the University of Washington came up in conversation, the couple next to us chimed in to let us know they were from West Seattle. It’s a small world, especially when the Mariners and Pearl Jam are in NYC. Anyway, the nice couple suggested eating the corned beef from Roxy’s Diner in Fremont. I’ll have to go there next time I’m in Seattle.

Later on that day, we saw Wicked and afterward we went backstage and got to meet the actress who plays Glinda, Kendra Kassebaum. I even got to hold the wand! It was quite fun.

Overall, it was a fantastic trip. I’ll share more later.

By the way, the Carnegie Deli shares its cheesecake recipe online. I’ll let you know how it goes when I decide to make one.

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If you read the post written about two hours before this one, you might have been led to believe no Wenatchee-grown cherries were available in the Wenatchee area today. Well, all of us cherry lovers are in luck. I called up my friend who runs our family stand and, big news, cherries were for sale. They started picking today. I have a feeling they’re not the only ones.

Now I don’t have to bring airport gift shop goodies. I can bring real Wenatchee goodies instead.

See you in a week.

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Readers,

I am going on vacation. This means that Nosh On probably won’t be feeding you nuggets of food thought for the next week. Please try not to be sad. I plan to have lots of fodder for the coming weeks from my foray to New Jersey and Manhattan. Think of all of the possibilities! Pastrami. Pizza. Bagels. Hot Dogs. Cheesecake. Steak. Pasta.

The first thing we did last time I arrived in New Jersey was eat pizza. Seriously, I got off of the plane, Brian’s family greeted me, we grabbed my bag and then was treated to “the best” pizza in the state. It was good. I enjoyed it a lot. This time, they plan to take me to eat Chinese food after disembarking from the plane. I’ve had great Japanese food, excellent Thai food, fantastic Pho, but honestly I’ve never had good Chinese food. We’ll see what happens.

Being from (East) Wenatchee and having worked at the family fruit stand for years, I think I have a few sensational foods of my own to share with my hosts. My big plan after we made the decision about when to go, was to bring fresh cherries to share. The plans were dashed as spring continued to feel like late autumn and cherry trees suffered frost damage and cool-weather-related pollination problems. Usually by this time in the year it isn’t hard to find cherries. Now, I’m afraid I’m going to have to do something else, or God forbid, buy cherries that come from the Yakima area.

I had also considered making a side trip to Pike Place Market for some salmon on the way to the airport. However, that seems like quite a hassle for our airport-dropper-offer and my future-brother-in-law Justin. As it is, we’re asking him to drive 40 minutes to Sea-Tac and back. I don’t think he knew what he was getting himself into by asking to marry my sister.

No matter what, I’ve vowed to bring something from Washington to New Jersey, even if it’s one of those Chukar Cherries gift boxes from the airport gift shop.

While I’m gone, enjoy a few of my favorite food blogs: Bitten, DavidLebovitz.com, Orangette, Gluten-Free Girl, 101 Cookbooks 

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Every so often I’m reminded of the best mozzarella cheese I’ve ever eaten. It happened again yesterday. I was walking down the cheese/eggs aisle in Safeway and found myself face to face with the American supermarket version of fresh mozzarella. It took me back to my last visit to Florence, Italy.

It was early July 2003 and my mother, sister and I were staying at a hotel located in a very old large building. As I sat on the hotel’s veranda in the evenings I was treated to live orchestral music wafting from Piazza Santo Spirito below. I felt like I was in a Merchant Ivory film.

Back to the mozzarella. We ate dinner at a restaurant in the square pretty much every night we were there. In part, I think we ate there because of the mozzarella. Our first night in Florence, we ordered mozzarella as an appetizer. It came split open, lightly salted and drizzled with olive oil. I was forever entranced by the smooth, creamy richness of the center of that loaf of cheese. From the outside, the mozzarella looked pretty average. But when it was split open, the mozzarella revealed the fresh, creamy, salty interior. When we went to the restaurant the next day, I ordered the mozzarella again and ate at least half of it by myself. Maybe I ate the whole thing, I don’t remember.

Yesterday, instead of being a mozzarella snob and not trying the prepackaged white blob, I bought it. It looked fairly fresh and I selfishly grabbed one from the back with a late sell by date. Vowing not to let it get old in the fridge, I opened the package, split the cheese down the center, sprinkled it with kosher salt and drizzled it with my good extra virgin olive oil.

After letting it rest for a few minutes, I dug in. Knowing not to have my hopes too high, I wasn’t terribly disappointed. The cheese still couldn’t really compare with fresh Florence mozzarella, but it was good. It wasn’t tangy, but it didn’t have the oozing fresh cream in the center either. I think I’m going to have to make my own to get it as fresh as I want it. Or maybe I’ll have to make it back to Italy.

By the way, I snapped a photo of the cheese last night, but it looked quite unappetizing. So, no photo today.

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Summer has finally arrived, at least I’m crossing my fingers that it has. And with it comes fruits and veggies and farmers’ markets. For me, a major highlight of the features department’s trip to Twisp was a visit to the town’s Saturday farmers market. One of the first people I talked to when we arrived to town on Friday, jewelry designer Nancy Daniels of Peligro, asked me whether I was planning to make a stop at the market. She wasn’t the only one. Elise VanderYacht from the Methow Creamery asked me too. It seems like the farmers’ market is one of Twisp’s big events. With everyone in town eager for the morning market I wasn’t going to miss it.

Tiny Twisp’s show is awesome. Even with the cool spring and late season, there were two long rows of vendors selling crafts, jams, jellies, honey, plants, meat, veggies and other tempting treats. My finds included Sage Biscuit Mix from Bluebird Grain Farms, a beef brisket from Crown “S” Ranch and milk from the Methow Creamery. I really wanted to buy some garlic scapes as well, but alas, I ran out of cash.

The next day, as I evaluated my purchases, I decided the brisket and biscuit mix would go really well with baked orca beans I purchased at the Wenatchee Valley Farmers Market last Wednesday. If I weren’t headed to the East Coast for vacation this weekend, I would make that meal sooner. But I’m still pretty excited to create a real, local Fourth of July weekend barbecue when I get home.

I’m going to have to head up to Twisp again this summer for the market. I can’t wait to find what’s available up there when fruits and vegetables have had time to grow.

What is your favorite farmers’ market find? Do you have a favorite overall market?

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My mother requested biscuits with sausage gravy yesterday for dinner. I was happy to comply. A couple of weeks ago I bought a pound of sausage at the Wenatchee Valley Farmers Market and was eager to try it. Sausage and biscuits is one of those quick and easy dinners (or breakfasts) that I enjoy making. Fortunately for me, we also had just enough cream on hand that needed to be used up.

When I was a kid, I would occasionally help my grandmother make biscuits, cutting them out with the lip of a water glass. I loved cutting out the rounds. When I left home and made biscuits for the first time by myself, I was quite disappointed. The biscuits were hard and flavorless, less like biscuits than lumps of cooked flour.

Since then, I’ve had best luck using a cream biscuit recipe and hardly mixing the dough. Pie dough is similar; too much mixing and too much liquid will ruin it.

Yesterday, I used this recipe for biscuits from epicurious.com, which originally appeared in 1999 in Gourmet magazine. It’s very simple, quick and worked really well. The recipe says it yields six biscuits, but I made eight smaller biscuits from it.

Recipe

Biscuits

From Gourmet 1999 and epicurious.com

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
3/4 stick (6 tablespoons) cold unsalted butter
3/4 cup heavy cream

Preheat oven to 425°F. and lightly grease a baking sheet.

Into a large bowl sift together flour, baking powder, and salt. Cut 5 tablespoons butter into bits and with your fingertips or a pastry blender blend into flour mixture until mixture resembles coarse meal. Add cream, stirring with a fork until just combined. Transfer mixture to a lightly floured surface and gently knead about 3 times until it just forms a dough. Pat dough into a 6 1/2-inch round (about 1/2 inch thick).

Using a 2 1/2-inch round cutter cut out biscuits and arrange about 1 inch apart on baking sheet. Gather and pat out scraps and cut out more biscuits.

Melt remaining tablespoon butter and lightly brush onto biscuits. Bake biscuits in middle of oven until pale golden and cooked through, about 20 minutes.

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On Friday and Saturday a couple of my coworkers, Abby Holmes and Jefferson Robbins, and I headed up to the Methow Valley for a features department field trip. We want to know what makes the area tick. I think I can speak for all when saying we had a good time, met a lot of neat people and came back with good stories. We also ate some pretty good food and drank some pretty good beer.

The first day of the trip ended with a stop at the Twisp River Pub to listen to a little live music from the The Eagle River Band with Terry Lee Hardesty and sample the pub’s brews. It seemed like everyone in town made their way to the pub for the music, dancing and chatting with friends.

While there, Jefferson, Abby and I us sampled five 7-ounce beers brewed at the pub. We tried the Cream Ale, Hefeweizen, Vienna Lager, Porter and the India Pale Ale. It turns out that we all liked the sweet and smooth Vienna Lager a lot. If I hadn’t planned on bringing a bottle or two of the stuff home, I would have pouted about Abby getting the rest of the sampler.

As we tasted and talked, it also became apparent that none of us really ever like India pale ales, no matter where they were brewed. The three of us aren’t bitter hops fans. The Porter was strong and chocolaty, a flavor I always like. The Hefeweizen tasted like a good hef and the Cream Ale was tasty too. Hoping to take a bit of the pub with me, I headed home with two bottles of Vienna Lager and one bottle of Cream Ale.

Every time I go up to Twisp, I think I want to live there. It’s a vibrant community. As for the food, the pub made some pretty good hummus, and I’ve raved about their Buffalo wings from previous visits.

I’m going to have to go back pretty soon.

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When I was a little kid, my mom made chocolate frosting with a Jiffy mix. Canned frosting doesn’t compare. Jiffy tastes, at least to me, homemade. However it has been a long time since I’ve seen Jiffy frosting mixes in the grocery store, so I now make homemade frosting. Making homemade frosting is so much fun. It doesn’t really matter what you do, the frosting always tastes good. Sugar and chocolate can’t be bad.

Well, today is my boyfriend’s birthday and I told him I’d make him a cake. He requested boxed yellow cake mix with chocolate frosting. I’m OK with using boxed cake mixes, especially if it is requested. When it comes to the chocolate frosting, on the other hand, I refuse to go canned. I wanted to make it really chocolaty and smooth, so I melted some chocolate chips and started adding powdered sugar and cream/milk ingredients.

At first, I thought I might have erred when the frosting was looking greasy and chunky. I didn’t give up. Instead, I kept adding sweetened condensed milk, and as the whisk attachment flew around in the mixer bowl, suddenly the dark brown gooey chunks became smooth, pearly dark brown frosting. It was a sudden and beautiful transformation.

I dipped a finger in the bowl and scraped some chocolate off the top. It didn’t taste quite like Jiffy Fudge Frosting and was not at all like that canned artificial frosting. It was a lot like spreadable fudge and it was good.

Recipe

Rochelle’s Fudgy Frosting

11.5 ounces chocolate chips

4 tablespoons cream

1 cup powdered sugar

14 ounces sweetened condensed milk

Melt chocolate chips with cream. Beat together. Add powdered sugar and sweetened condensed milk. Beat on high until smooth and creamy. You may add more cream or regular milk for a thinner frosting, or more powdered sugar for more dense frosting.

By the way, checking the product locater at Jiffy’s site, it appears the closest store that sells Jiffy Fudge Frosting mix is a Walgreens in Battle Ground. I think I’ll stick with making it from scratch.

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