Filbert Berry Bliss Sundae

Last night we had Joel over for dinner. Joel is a young man who moved out here a few years ago, and works in landscaping in the Eugene area. He did a tremendous amount of work at the house when Emma was setting it up. We want to have people over for dinner, so that we can share our recipes and make friends. We prepared chile garlic bread, a nice salad with lettuce, fresh herbs from the garden, and some avocados from my buying spree (89 cent Hass avocados!); and a whole wheat linguine tossed with egg yolks, olive oil, rosemary, and truffle salt. We were passing through the gourmet section of the market, when Erick, one of the stores employees, saw us eyeing all of the specialty salts. He had us take a whiff of the truffle salt, and we were done. It is a $7.00 gourmet salt with flecks of real black truffle and is completely divine. I have a feeling that I don't need to justify this to any of you. I knew that a basic preparation, carbonara style, of egg yolks would showcase the truffle flavor best.

For dessert we made Filbert Berry Bliss Sundaes. They are really really good. We had hit up the Eugene farmer’s market yesterday and bought some local filberts from Hentze’s Family Farm. They were tasty raw, but when I dry roasted them and ground them up, and they released a full nutty flavor that was surprisingly sweet. The Sundae is now in our recipe bank, but it is basically a combination of fresh raspberries, ice cream, filberts, and a crème fraîche whipped cream. Delicious.

As we get into our rhythm of working in the garden in the morning and at night, we will be cooking away, discovering new things, and posting as much as possible!