Me, Myself, and Ina
For this post, I wanted to combine two summertime flavors into the crisp recipe one of my oldest Alaskan friends passed on to me years ago. Rhubarb, if you're unfamiliar, is a reddish stalk that kind of resembles really big celery. It's very tart and is most commonly paired with strawberry. I've rarely seen it star in its own show dessert-wise, but my friend Kylee has been making rhubarb crisp for years and it's the best crisp I know of. Blueberries are usually in season in late summer; I have not been home for a blueberry season since Dan's last deployment in 2018 so in order to make this recipe I actually used blueberries from a friend's parents' farm in upstate SC! They're a little sweeter than the blueberries I'd have picked at home, but they worked well. I'm going to pretend like I was actually picking blueberries at home in Alaska for the purpose of showing you what that would look like.
I was getting all ready to write this post, going through my process with photos starting in my kitchen when I realized that a lot of my friends probably don't know what fireweed is or where it comes from and this recipe actually starts far, far away from my kitchen. This will be the first of a few posts highlighting iconic Alaskan ingredients. I've wanted to do this for a while because my home inspires me in so many ways, writing and cooking particular among them. Fireweed is a wildflower that is rather ubiquitous in southcentral Alaska and is often considered a gauge for how long summer will last. It is said that when the blooms reach the top of the plant, winter is six weeks away. Whether or not that's accurate, fireweed is found all over in late summer in Alaska. Here is some I spotted in mid-July by Eklutna Lake:
About
About Katie
Ina Garten made me love cooking. Much to the surprise of anyone who knows me and my roots - Alaska-grown, proudly and decisively of a blue collar family - my enjoyment of cooking "uppity food", as my parents call it, began one fateful Valentine's Day when my husband Dan decided to cook for me and chose Ina's recipe for sole meuniere. He presented me with the cookbook, Back to Basics, when we were done eating, along with a dozen roses made out of bacon. In those early days of our relationship, he was always standing by in support of my culinary adventures; patiently repeating "I don't know" when I repeatedly asked if my custard was the right texture or suppressing laughter while I screamed at the prospect of shoving halved lemons up the butt of a raw chicken. The years between then and now have taken me through a lot of Cooks Illustrated articles, kitchen adventures, and emergency advice sessions with my food sensei and oldest friend, Merra, and a lot of hours of Food Network-watching. All of these things have helped me become less timid in the kitchen, leading up to the time at which I finally decided that yes, I can cook through an entire Ina Garten cookbook. Julie and Julia obviously provided inspiration as well.
The "me" behind all of these food experiments: a late-twenties Air Force spouse, currently residing in South Carolina. I work part-time at an insurance general agency and spend the rest of my free time learning how to play hockey and knitting things for people who live in places where knitted things are desirable. My husband, Dan, who frequently joins me in the kitchen and almost always taste-tests, is an aircraft maintainer, a hockey player, and a super cute guy. Along the journey of cooking through an entire cookbook, I not only want to make intensely pretentious food; above all, I want to reflect the heart of Jesus for sharing meals and sharing life with people - if you'd like to be part of our table, please, come. You may discover you love some fancy food, like I did, but since it's my house and not heaven, you might be eating it out of a Tupperware dish.
