Tell Me Your Favorite Bite:

Hi! You’ve found your way to “Yes, I Am A Hungry Woman” and I am excited to meet you. Have you subscribed?

The Pinner House, Suffolk, VA - had birthday crepes here!

Monday morning is here! I am writing to you from my comfy, dumpy arm chair, fresh off a string of birthday plans. I somehow didn’t cook for a week straight (having been visiting family and then feted across town at various restaurants). I ate many, many delicious meals in the interim, but it was also weird to reacquaint myself with my own dishes. Yesterday morning a summer cold - oh dreaded thing - finally reached me, and took me down. I can’t write brilliantly about food when my head feels like a swollen thumb, so you’ll have to settle in for a cozy chat about what I’ve been eating, looking at, or conspiring to cook. I’ll be back with a fresh recipe later.

a delightful passionfruit & chocolate dessert from Codex, Norfolk, VA

If I’m learning one thing this summer, it’s that adequate rest does miracles. Believing this, I stayed home from church yesterday morning (who wants to share a summer cold anyway?) and pottered around my house putting things to rights. A fridge cleanout was long overdue, which led to a freezer cleanout, which led to a cauldron of bone broth simmering on the hob while I curled up on the couch and watched Harry Potter at an insane time of day to be doing either (10:30 AM if you must know). Then I made Cajun sweet potatoes for our breakfast and a lacy fried egg and cooked up the rest of the bacon. Afterward, I realized that cleaning out the fridge logically meant I ought to turn my brown bananas and the end of a sour cream container into a loaf of Alison Roman’s banana bread from her new Sweet Enough cookbook. (Sorry, fellow Chesopeakians - I’ll return it to the library soon.)

Only after I had written two thank-you letters and mopped the floor did I sit on my laurels. Of course my head still felt like a hot air balloon and I made the mistake of tipping it backward and then had to cling to the microwave handle so as not to fall into the soup pot. But as the day progressed I felt on the rise, and I hope to be totally repaired within a short time. I suppose none of that sounds like resting, but sometimes being around just dabbling with home-y things is delightful.

I wanted to thank you all for the warmth and support with which you read last week’s letter. I’ve always shared a portion of the realities of my life with you, and it had become increasingly hard to hide our current struggle with infertility. A tough aspect of infertility is how lonesome it can be: very very few people share that they are struggling with it, which leads to deep isolation; all of us feel that we must be the only couple we know who can’t get pregnant, and that’s simply not true. So thanks for reading. Being able to share with you feels like the most authentic way to show up, and you know me: I couldn’t lie if my life depended on it.

For my birthday, my Mama and I went blueberry picking. We like to go to a farm way out in Surry - Drewry Blueberries - where the picking stand is run on a cash & check honor system and you never meet another soul your whole time in the patch. It’s extremely rural, and their price is the cheapest I’ve found for U-pick anywhere: $3.50/pint. We like it because it is so far out in the country that it’s never crowded or over-picked. The Rabbit Eye variety must enjoy the horrible heat we’ve been having because the patch was flush with berries. We picked seven pints in a short time, even going slowly. I am sorry to say that we had to pay for all seven pints in quarters, which I counted, tossed in a Ziploc, and pushed carefully through the money slot. I can never be relied on to carry cash, but Mama and I combined our stout jars of homeless quarters for the purchase. I hope the Drewry farmers were in need of some change…

At present I don’t know what I’ll do with so many blueberries. Muffins come to mind of course, but I need to admit something to you: I’m not a muffin girl unless it’s a muffin that tastes like a cupcake, in which case it’s ceased to become breakfast. A smoothie feels like a waste of precious, in-season bloobs. I do like blueberry pancakes (tasty) and blueberry waffles (same thing, different shape). But I think I like best just snacking on blueberries at will while they live on my kitchen counter. Nicola Lamb’s delightful Substack, Kitchen Projects, just went into a spiral about preserving fruit. Guest-writer Camilla Wynne admitted that she prefers to eat blueberries on their own rather than try to force them into jam or compote, and I tend to agree.

In-season fruits always make me feel like a forest creature: one can’t help getting caught up in the excitement of the summer’s plenty. I feel especially like a bear when I get hold of some good, fresh salmon or am foraging in a berry patch. Last year I cooked a dinner inspired by all these grizzly bear things: salmon, blueberries, some fresh greens. It was a perfectly satisfying meal, and I have been thinking about it ever since going picking last week. Naturally, I don’t remember what recipe I followed (or if I even followed one) but this year I have my eye on an NY Times recipe for Salmon with Agrodolce Blueberries, which simmers the berries with white wine and shallots. Or maybe this is the year I finally make blueberry gravlax…

But now I want to know what you’d do with a glut of blueberries. I want to know what menu you’d plan, inspired by daydream meals or the forest creature within you. I want you to tell me all about the best thing you’ve had to eat recently. What bite, however briefly, took you to another dimension? Maybe it was a fried rockfish wrap like the one I ate in Manteo on Saturday, or a smoky corn and clam chowder made from scratch. Don’t hold back on details. I’ve got nothing but a stuffy nose, a clean kitchen, and plenty of time to read what you share with us.

Love,

Rachel