It’s the Berries!

By Sandy Hu
The latest from Inside Special Fork

Raspberries…blackberries…blueberries…strawberries. Summer is berry season. Have you had your fill yet?

Nothing to pit or peel, naturally formed in perfect bite-size pieces, berries are the ultimate convenience fruit. Use berries as a topping for breakfast cereals or pancakes, in salads, and over ice cream or puddings.

For a simple dessert, mix berries with sugar to taste and let set for about half an hour, until they give up their juices to create their own sauce. Serve the sweetened berries with whipped cream, heavy cream, or yogurt.

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Let the Salad Season Begin!

By Sandy Hu
The latest from Inside Special Fork

For any food lover, this is the best time of the year, when farmers’ markets and produce counters are burgeoning with seasonal fruits and vegetables. At the Alemany Farmers’ Market in San Francisco yesterday, stalls were bustling as shoppers filled market baskets and grocery carts, eager for a taste of summer.

From now through fall is peak salad time. Quick to fix and healthy (if you don’t overdo the dressing), salads are a boon to people too busy to cook. Toss in some protein – drained canned tuna, leftover shreds of rotisserie chicken, rinsed and drained canned beans, hard-cooked eggs – and you can make it an easy, no-cook, one-dish dinner.

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A Ducky Birthday Party

By Sandy Hu
The latest from Inside Special Fork

Ever since I saw the most adorable rubber ducky cupcakes in What’s New, Cupcake?, a book by Karen Tack and Alan Richardson, I’ve been dying for a chance to make them. Starting with a cupcake body, you form the duck using a doughnut hole for the head and a diagonally-cut marshmallow for the tail; then dip the whole thing into yellow frosting that’s been microwaved to whipped cream consistency.

Here’s the authors’ how-to demo; you’ll be inspired to try it yourself. I will caution that it’s not quite as easy for first-timers to control the drips and get a smooth frosting coating, as it is for these experts.

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Before the Barbecue – a Time to Remember

By Sandy Hu
The latest from Inside Special Fork

Last September, we took my mom’s ashes to be buried in the Matsukawa family plot in Hilo, on the Big Island of Hawaii. The graveside memorial service was a wistful gathering of my many cousins, my aunt and mom’s friends.

While in Hilo, we put flowers on my uncle’s grave at the Veteran’s Cemetery. Hiroshi Matsukawa fought with the Japanese-American 100th Infantry Battalion that merged with the 442nd Infantry Division, considered the most decorated infantry regiment of World War II. Uncle Hiroshi died in combat in Italy before I was born, but as kids, we spent every Memorial Day at the Veteran’s Day service at this cemetery.

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Strawberry Memories

By Sandy Hu
The latest from Inside Special Fork

I have a special place in my heart for strawberries. They are the prettiest of fruits, looking like juicy red Valentines. They’re packed with nutrition. And they figure into my early career in public relations.

One of my first accounts when I worked for a big PR agency was the California Strawberry Advisory Board (now the California Strawberry Commission). As the junior member on the account team, I executed a campaign in which America’s ten most wintery weary cities were celebrated with a flat of California strawberries sent to city mayors on the first day of spring. Flats were also sent to their local TV weathermen (no women at the time) and to the weathermen on national TV. This first campaign was so successful, it continued each spring for well past a decade.

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