Henny Penny Farmette

Memorial Day weekend marks the unofficial start to summer, which means time to grab a little reading pleasure and sample some locally grown produce to go with whatever you’re putting on the grill. And don’t forget dessert.  My mind is already spinning with ideas.

Hanging out in the hammock calls for a book, so if you haven’t already snagged a copy of A BEELINE TO MURDER, get your e-book today through May 30 for a great price from KOBO Books. Here’s the link: https://store.kobobooks.com/en-us/ebook/a-beeline-to-murder.

The first book in the Henny Penny Farmette series, Kensington Books 2015

For your grilling pleasure, choose some sweet corn to grill to go with the barbecue ribs or chicken. Here on the Henny Penny Farmette, our corn won’t be ready until July, so we’re going to pick some up locally grown corn at the farmers’ market in downtown Concord.

This corn has just started growing

We’ve got more than a dozen heirloom tomato plants with fruit on them. Vine-ripened heirloom tomatoes for a cool Caprese salad are also available from the farmers’ market. And as I consider salads for our weekend meals, a red-skin potato with pesto and shredded basil leaves sounds almost as good as a conventional country style potato salad. But then again, I’d love a fresh broccoli-carrot salad with an Asian sesame-seed dressing or a simple cold slaw.

We’ve got plenty of zucchini and sweet snap peas in my garden that are ready to eat. These taste divine tossed into a garlic and butter shrimp pasta with a little shaved Parmesan cheese. Add a nice chardonnay or a traditional Cuban lime mojito along with some fresh baked bread and you’re ready to head for the table in the orchard.

Sunflower-design bundt pan makes this cake pretty enough to eat without the the caramelized pecan frosting.

Desserts are on my mind too–a simple cake or a plate of berries or watermelon rings my chime. But then again, with company, I could bake some linzer torte cookies with home-canned apricot jam. Or make a rhubarb-strawberry pie. The rhubarb stalks are cherry red and ready to cut.

These are some of my ideas of simple pleasures for Memorial Day to get you thinking about yours. Wishing you a peaceful, blessed Memorial Day weekend.

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If you enjoy reading about keeping bees and chickens, raising heirloom vegetables and fruits, and other aspects of modern farmette life, check out my series of cozy mysteries from Kensington Publishing (New York).

A BEELINE TO MURDER, available in hardcover, will be released in paperback format in October.  THE MURDER OF A QUEEN BEE will be released October 1, 2016. Find these titles on Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, Walmart.com and other online bookstores and retailers as well as in traditional bookstores everywhere.

First book in Meera Lester’s Henny Penny Farmette series of cozy mysteries

Novel #2 in the Henny Penny Farmette series, available Oct. 1, 2016

Happy New Year! What are you planning for your New Year’s Day dinner? Here on our Northern California farmette, we love a New Year’s meal of cracked crab, sourdough bread, and a crisp winter salad, but this year I think we’ll have duck instead.

Crab season in Northern California has been put on hold thanks to an unprecedented algae season. Our local Dungeness crab has become infected with domaic acid, a neurotoxin produced by the microscopic algae that can cause human illness and death. Testing continues until the crab is safe to eat.

In the meantime, crab is being imported to local stores and restaurants, but it is expensive. With other issues with salmon, sardines, shrimp, and tuna, a seafood shopper might turn to Safeway. The store now offers Fair Trade Certified seafood, in an effort to reduce the seafood/fishing industry’s human rights abuses. But if there’s crab, it’s not local.

There are many other options, but I wouldn’t mind a farm-raised (mind you, I don’t mean “factory-farm raised,” which I’m against), free-range duck for dinner. I was raised on a farm and my grandparents (who raised me for a period in my life) kept chickens, cows, pigs, and horses. Meat (like Boone County ham and, yes, pickled pigs feet) was part of our diet along with all the delicious vegetables and fruits my grandmother grew and in her various gardens and preserved in myriad ways.

Maybe the rest of our duck meal could include a winter salad with citrus, pears, goat cheese, and sugared pecans; roast potatoes, green beans, and a chocolate sheet cake. We’ve got sparkling cider and wine. That sounds pretty good, but it isn’t crab, which is really the meal with which we wanted to start 2016. So, I guess duck will have to do.