pineapple-coconut upside-down cake with ginger

I'm on a pineapple upside-down cake kick. A couple weeks ago I found a great recipe for the standard, retro-style cake. You know, the kind your mom made, studded with sweet maraschino cherries placed in the center of canned pineapple slices to top the cake. It was really good, even though the center didn't bake all the way through (we just ate around it). The cake was just as I remembered it growing up and and was what I was craving that day.

Today, I tried a more modern version. I'm a big fan of crystallized ginger and coconut goes beautifully with pineapple. So for this cake, the topping consisted of fresh pineapple, minced candied ginger, brown sugar and a generous splash of dark rum.

For the cake, I subbed in coconut milk and added a little coconut extract for good measure. The whole thing baked up in my handy dandy cast iron skillet. And there were no problems inverting it onto the cake stand. Everything came out of the pan perfectly.

Since it was just Abby and me for dinner tonight we had it all to ourselves. We enjoyed a wonderful meal of barbecued chicken, caprese salad and farm-fresh sweet corn on-the-cob, which we finished off with a big slice of this cake. The cake was delicious. Now we're vegetating in front of the tube to digest it all!

If you want the recipe for the newfangled version of pineapple upside-down cake, post a comment or send me an email.

local vegetation

I was outside admiring the ginormous daisies growing next to my patio and decided a garden update was in order.

The daisies are huge, about 4 1/2 feet tall:

And here's the view looking up as they tower over me (well, not really, I'm not that short).

Oh, and this is nothing short of a miracle: my hydrangea has bloomed for the first time in the five years since I planted it!

And speaking of flowers, the strawberries sprouted more blossoms and the makings of another batch of fruit.

That rhubarb we planted in the spring has also taken off! My mother in law says I should harvest it, but the instructions the nursery sent with it said no harvesting in the first year. Any opinions on that? Can I safely steal a few stalks for a pie?

My raspberries are starting to ripen, but I don't think we'll have the deluge that my mom has to deal with. I ate this one:

Lastly, and most disappointingly are the tomatoes. I was so excited for this year. We built new beds specifically sited to work better for the tomatoes. I didn't overcrowd when planting and put in special tomato fertilizer. Then we had oh, let's see, roughly 8 weeks of rain. Needless to say my plants are again suffering from foliar disease brought on by too much moisture. But there are a few fruits on there, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Looks like I'll be able to eat my first two cherry tomatoes in a couple days.

our new home in cyberspace

Wow, it's been a long time since I've posted. I don't have a good reason, but here are my excuses:

1. We were on vacation and I was avoiding my laptop like the plague;
2. This week has been really busy;
3. Tim managed to catch swine flu (or some variation thereof); and
4. I've been working on moving my blog over from TypePad to Blogger (which is requiring some painfully manual cleanup and reformatting for each post).

So in the future, you can find this blog here, at the following address: http://goingbonanas.blogspot.com/. Update those bookmarks!

I've also redirected the feed to the new site for readers who are subscribed. This way, if you are using a feed reader, it should continue to work but point to the new site.

I hope to blog about our vacation soon, so stay tuned!

cape cod here we come

Tomorrow morning we leave for a week on Cape Cod. This will be our 5th trip to the Cape. It is so serene and beautiful. The girls love the beach and we are big fans of the uber fresh lobster, oysters, cod, and other seafood available there. This year I'm going to try my hand at cooking fresh seafood purchased from the local fish markets. Live lobsters in the fridge is always a hoot.

Here's a shot we took during our trip last year looking out across a tidal marsh on the ocean side.

Ahhh.... I can feel the stress melting away already.

comfort on a plate

This was dinner tonight:

You're thinking, "So what? It's just pasta." But really, this is no ordinary pasta. It's linguine with the most delicious basic tomato sauce you've ever had. Comfort on a plate. The recipe is from Marcella Hazan who is regarded by many as the mother of Italian cooking in America. If you've never made it, plan on it for tomorrow. Really. Tomorrow. The beauty is in its simplicity, and most surprisingly for a tomato sauce, the liberal use of butter.

I almost always have the ingredients on hand (28 oz can of whole or crushed tomatoes, butter, salt, 1 onion, pasta) which makes it a go-to meal for us when I'm pressed for time or energy. Marcella Hazan's basic tomato sauce recipe can be found all over the web. Here is a link if you need one.

is it bedtime yet?

Today was the first day of practice Kindergarten for Mira. The school brings incoming Kindergartners in for a week during the summer to ride the bus and participate in a morning program at the school to help ease the transition in the fall.

Mira has been asking to ride the school bus since she started talking roughly three and a half years ago. So you can imagine how excited she was when the bus actually stopped at our house this morning. She was ready to hop right into her seat when the school principal (who was on the bus helping the bus driver) had to remind her to stop and turn around so I could snap a quick photo.

She got back home just before lunchtime and began asking if it was bedtime yet. She was asking not because she was tired (although, she was pretty tired), but because she was so eager to get back to riding the bus and attending school the next morning. Let's hope she remains this committed to her education for the next 17 years or so.