Summer Days, Trips and Food

I haven’t been blog­ging much lately, par­tially because I am still some­what busy with work, and also because those times when I’m not busy, I’m usu­ally tak­ing it easy. The weather has been so warm and sunny, and this time of year the sun sets so late (usu­ally around 9:20 PM) that we are tak­ing some walks after din­ner, partly for weight con­trol, partly because it’s just too good to miss the sun­sets and light on the water.

With the good weather have come some trips that were a photographer’s hol­i­day, notably one where we met my brother and his fam­ily at the tail end of Skagit Tulip Festival:

We also had a nice walk through the Rieger Bird Sanc­tu­ary on West­ham Island (where we intend to go to pick berries in a cou­ple of weeks):

Finally, we took a cou­ple of walks through Stan­ley Park and Pacific Spirit Park:

As you might expect, with the laid-back weather and walks have come the sum­mer fruits and veg­eta­bles. It’s been a great year for aspara­gus, and we heard that the straw­berry har­vest, due to the dry, warm spell, is excel­lent. The apri­cots (both orange and pur­ple), sweet Donut Peaches (sorry, Mom and Dad, this time they were per­fect — not like the ones you had), and Dinosaur egg plums are all appear­ing in the mar­ket, and today we saw the first of what we hope will be bushels of blue­ber­ries. Tonight, we decided to fol­low the cue of Edi­ble Van­cou­ver mag­a­zine and make this superb appe­tizer, Stuffed Apricots:

Stuffed Apri­cots

10 small, per­fectly ripe apri­cots
2 oz.(55g) blue brie or other mild blue cheese
4 oz. (115g) cream cheese
10 small leaves fresh basil
20–40 pine nuts, toasted

Halve apri­cots and remove pits. Mix cheeses together until well blended. Fill each apri­cot half with cheese and gar­nish with one basil leaf and one or two pine nuts.

Here’s what it ends up look­ing like:

Thanks again, Dad, for the camera.