Over the last few weeks, Hungry Bear and I have bought a ton of strawberries from Rodriguez Farms, our favorite strawberry vendor at the Serramonte Farmers' Market. The berries were sweet, juicy and a great value, a flat (12 baskets) was only $14. And their organic berries were just a few dollars more.

Needless to say, we've eaten a lot of fresh strawberries lately and needed to make something with them. After pondering what to bake, we decided to turn our amazingly simple blueberry kuchen recipe into a strawberry kuchen. The only changes to the recipe were the substitution of lemon zest and vanilla extract for the cinnamon.

The end result was a delicious strawberry pie that was a snap to make. We love the buttery crust of this kuchen. The baked strawberries turned into a wonderful compote and the pie looked beautiful topped with the fresh berries. We served the kuchen with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and the combination was magnificent!

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Last August, my parents came out to visit me in San Francisco. One of our excursions was to the Serramonte Farmer's Market, our favorite farmers' market for fresh fruit. My mom was very excited when she saw the fabulous blueberry vendor. She immediately bought a couple of quarts of blueberries and made three blueberry kuchens for us and friends.

The kuchen was simple to make and it was absolutely delicious. Hungry Bear got the recipe from my mom, but sadly, we didn't make a kuchen before blueberry season ended. We thought we'd have to wait until summer before finding high quality, reasonably priced blueberries again.

A few days ago, we were trying to survive the craziness at Costco and stumbled upon big packages of fresh blueberries. Hungry Bear declared that we should buy some blueberries and make a kuchen! It turns out the blueberries are from Chile and the growing season down south is November to March. So much for eating local, as the blueberries looked too good to turn down, and we needed a blueberry fix badly!

We searched our email archives and found the blueberry kuchen recipe my mom sent and made it yesterday for dessert. It was really easy to make and only required fifteen minutes of prep time and forty or so minutes of baking. Our kuchen turned out great with a nice golden crust and a not too sweet, jam-like blueberry filling. Fresh blueberries were added on top of the filling and each bite of the kuchen sent us to blueberry heaven!

Update February 11, 2008: The first picture in this post won the DMBLGIT Feb 2008 Edibility Award! We are very honored to win the award. It's the first time the blog has won anything! You like us, you really like us!

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Oysters and hot dogs? What the hell? That was my first reaction when Jane invited us over for dinner last Saturday. I asked her what her inspiration was for this odd food pairing. She responded with "it's what I'm craving." Alrighty then! I have to admit, oysters and hot dogs is the most original surf and turf combination I've ever heard of.

The actual dinner dishes were...

• Champagne and oysters with three different type of sauces — cocktail sauce, red wine mignonette and champagne mignonette.
• Grilled bacon-wrapped stuffed hot dogs
• Stir-fried Chinese long beans and eggplant
• Banana cream pie

Hungry Bear and I brought over the vegetables that we got from the Serramonte Farmers' Market and Garry's friends picked up a banana cream pie from Mission Pie. Not only did we have a really peculiar surf and turf, the rest of the meal was an eclectic pot luck.

Jane ordered eight dozen oysters form Royal Hawaiian Seafood...

• Malpeque PEI
• Kumamoto Point Reyes
• Fanny Bay B.C.
• Malaspina B.C.
• Effingham Inlet B.C.
• Kusshi Petite B.C.
• Beau Soleil
• One more type I didn't catch

We had the oysters raw with the three sauces, which Garry made from the Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home cookbook. I'm not a big champagne person, but it went really well with the brininess of the oysters. My favorite oyster was the Malpeque PEI with the cocktail sauce, however I'm not an oyster expert. After sucking down a few, they all tasted the same. Maybe Jane, our oyster connoisseur, can add more commentary on the oysters?

I thought the highlight of the meal was the bacon-wrapped hot dogs. Garry made the dogs using this grilled bacon-wrapped stuffed hot dogs recipe. The frankfurters were stuffed with mustard, ketchup, cheese, onions and sauerkraut, then wrapped with bacon! I usually don't like sauerkraut on my dogs, but I didn't mind it this time. Who's not going to like a bacon-wrapped hot dog on a toasted bun?!? I really liked the extra crunch the grilled bacon added to the stuffed dog. The wieners were accompanied by a side of stir-fried long beans and eggplant. We definitely needed some healthy veggies with the heart attack on a bun.

For dessert, we had banana cream pie from Mission Pie. The pie was good and was not overly sweet. The predominant flavor was banana and not sugar... a big thumbs up from me. We are going to have to try different pie types from Mission Pie.

Overall, dinner was fantastic. It was the strangest assortment of dishes I've had in a long time, maybe ever. Oysters, champagne, hot dogs, Chinese vegetables and a banana cream pie. Can anyone else top this meal in terms of goodness and quirkiness?

SNDsters: Garry, Karen, Eva, Yvonne, Keith, Jane, Mark, Hungry Bear, Chuck

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