We had our first barbecue of the season for Deirdre and Steve’s wedding! The kitchen loves barbecues - although more labour intensive (logistically speaking), we get to spend time in the sun and meet guests!
At last, the local Muskoka strawberries are in! A cool wet spring delayed their arrival until just today. We’ll be making strawberry/rhubarb jam this week! We made a batch of pear jam last week and were delighted with the results. Please note that pears have to be perfectly ripe for the flavour to come through in the jam; if under ripe, you get a sweet paste mess!
The herb garden is starting to look like summer. Everything is sprouting - tatsoi, arugula, our organic lettuces, lemon balm and lemon grass, mint and sorrel. You will find all of these in our summer salads.
The lavender patch is only a few days away from flowering. We use the flowers to make a lovely Muskoka honey and lavender ice cream. They also form part of the apple, rhubarb, and lavender sauce for the pickerel on Monday nights. We’ll have a bumper crop this year.
Our gardens help make it real for our cooks, some of whom have never followed a seasonal progression of products as they grow. This is very exciting for me and our team – to be able to make subtle changes to everything we do that is directly related to what's in the ground at the moment!
That’s it for today!
David Cooke
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