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On Sunday, Oliver and I drove to Ipswich, Massachusetts, which is about 30 miles northeasterly as the crow flies, but an hour’s drive, due to the circuitous highway system around Boston. No matter — Sunday was a gorgeous day and driving up Rt. 1 through the north shore is lovely this time of year.

We love Russell Orchards and go there two or three times a year, esp. in the fall for apple picking. It’s a bit too early for that, but raspberries and currants were ripe. And I had to buy these pastel-colored farm eggs. Pretty, aren’t they? They also have animals for the children to feed and pet, as well as farm equipment that kids can climb all over. Oliver loves the tractor, as you can see.

Nothing special about this ice cream except that it was made with the most exquisite white peaches that smelled so luscious! A simple custard base with pureed peaches. Oh, and I cooked some chopped peaches in the cream to give it more flavor.

The berry compote is made out of blueberries, red currants, raspberries, and gooseberries. Very tart, but nice with the sweetness of the ice cream. I ended up making tons of it, so I’ve been mixing it in with yogurt. Mmmm.

Here’s a picture of a corner of my dining room. DH gave up and finally put some industrial-grade shelving there so I could pile up some of my books and the tools I use most often.

This is probably 1/15 of my cookbook collection. The rest is stored in my office on two 5′-high bookshelves or they’re scattered around the house. I switch out books into the dining room, depending on what I’m cooking most. I also have a binder where I store recipes I find, and my precious cooking notebook is stored here. I take notes on nearly everything I cook. (OK, so I’ve got a geek gene.)

The equipment you see — over on the left on the bookshelf is a salad spinner. I use that constantly in the summer. On the top right shelf there’s my hand-cranked pasta machine (we’re having wild mushroom ravioli tonight!) and my ice cream machine. We make a quart of ice cream once a week in the summer. Between these you can barely see a small lab-grade scale. I use this frequently, mostly for baking. It also has a grams-to-ounce converter and it’s sensitive to 1/g. (More geek gene.)

On the second shelf to the right is a 5.5-qt. Le Creuset French oven which gets lot of use. Next to that is an el cheapo Dutch oven from TJ Maxx, which has lasted for years. The inside is a little dark, but it still works fine and is one of my favorite pieces of equipment.

Next shelf you see an antique 1 qt. Le Creuset saucepot with a pouring lip. I like this for melting butter. I don’t use it often, but it really comes in handy sometimes. Next to that is a 2.5 qt. white Le Creuset French oven. This gets almost constant use, summer and winter.

On the bottom shelf to the left is my water bath canner. This, too, gets constant use in the summer. I’m always canning jams, jellies, or tomatoes. In the next couple weeks I’ll be making pints of spaghetti sauce for the winter with the bounty of tomatoes from our garden. Next to the canner is a humungous Lodge enamel cast iron Dutch oven — apple green — a gift from mom for my 40th birthday. You could probably cook a turkey in this thing. I use the smaller Dutch/French ovens more frequently, but when you need something big ….

Next stop, my pantry. First I have to clean it up!

We’re being inundated with vegetables from the CSA. In the past couple weeks we’ve gotten bunches of collard greens. Hey, we’re in New England. We don’t eat that veg. So I did a bit of research on how to make collard greens. First, they have to be cooked a long time. I’m used to steaming things quickly — collard greens cook on the stovetop for about an hour. (Is there any nutrition left in those things?)

Once I saw that the greens are traditionally cooked with bacon, I stopped my whining. Yes, three strips of Niman Ranch bacon, plus sliced onions, ground red pepper, salt, and black pepper. I won’t show you the “after” shot — the greens sort of turn murky, but the whole dish is infused with the taste of bacon and onions.

This had turned out to be one of my favorite vegetable dishes. Probably unhealthy as all hell, but whatever.

We had a pint of raspberries we’d picked the day before. Raspberries don’t hold well, so they were past serving on their own. I went through Alice Waters’ Fruit and decided to make a raspberry coulis to serve on top of custard. I blitzed the berries, sieved them, added some sugar and a bit of framboise. Et voila.

The custard is basically a creme brulee without the brulee. The tartness of the raspberry coulis was delicious with the mild creamy sweetness of the custard.