First Post- on friends, tiny plums and doing the work

Hello World!

Looks like I've lived my way into another virtual adventure.  And it's all Amarilys Olivo's fault.  She's hooked me up with free produce and it's got my brain whirring with ideas for how to take full advantage of my good fortune.

And because the only thing I love as much as food is words, I'm thinking the answer is a blog.

The plan is to use the stuff I get each week from the farmer's market to make recipes I've never tried before, then review them here. There will be pictures.  There will be impromptu dinner invites.   Mostly, I hope there will be opportunities to share friendship and memories through the language as food...because growing up Italian American, it's truly is my first language.

This week's haul was three ears of corn, two onions, five tiny plums, three peaches and two onions. I can't even tell you how excited I was to get them home. There's something about knowing my friend tended them with her own hands that made them seem like that much more of a gift.

And given that tremendous responsibility, and the alarming rate at which one of the peaches was beginning to fade, I thought it best to address the matter with some sense of urgency.

So I made this, minus a half cup of sugar.  I started at around 9:45 and the finished product (which did not break, not even a little bit, while I was removing it from the pan) was sitting out to cool by 1 am.  Given that anything made in a bundt pan tends to take approximately 45 lifetimes to finish incinerating on top while the center remains liquid  baking, I considered that a rousing success.  This recipe was SUCH a keeper.  The grease-and-sugar method for the pan is a thousand times better than grease-and-flour...more effective, not drying, and adds an extra layer of texture and flavor to boot.  I brought the finished product to work and everyone who tried it enjoyed it.  The decreased sugar is noticeable but not in a bad way.  I'd definitely make this again, and will utilize the sugared pan method for and similar cake from now on.