A Great Year for Sweet Peas

On my way to the Farmers' Market today

I heard this wonderful story on NPR Weekend Edition Sunday. It's vegetables. It's mediterranean. It sounded amazing and this is a picture I pinched from website.



It's Plenty, a new book by London chef Yotam Ottolenghi.


You can listen to the story or read it, too, and there are two recipes: Green Been Salad with Mustard Seeds and Tarragon; and, Burnt Eggplant with Tahini.

Julia Child

New rose for my garden

Cinco de Mayo

and the rose of that name

Moraga, California

Mazus reptans

Cornus florida from Judy's garden

Cymbidiums in bloom on the porch

Wide-mouth Pint and a Half Jars for Canning

Last jar of Crunchy Dilly Beans
It is almost 7 inches tall and 3-1/4 inches in diameter
Jar on left is a Classico Mason Jar for comparison

The Ball wide-mouth pint and a half jars hold 24 oz. with about a 1/4-inch of headspace. The markings on the jars are not very distinct. It looks like it shows 2 c. and 500 ml markings and a fill-to line for freezing (just below where the band rests when it is screwed in).

Last summer I put up some green beans using a recipe from Sunset Magazine
and the result was crunchy, garlicky, dilly beans.

I used some lovely Ball jars from my jar stash that are 1-1/2 pint capacity. They were perfect for green beans and would have been great for asparagus. Of course, they made wonderful spontaneous hostess gifts. Soon I had only a couple of these jars left. I went to my local Ace Hardware stores (and my True Value, OSH, etc) searching for replacements. All winter long I kept checking at likely sources -- hoping to get a jump on the first jars to hit the shelves for canning season. Guess what? These jars are no longer being made. I think I learned this first from the Garden Web Harvest Forum, a great source of information about what to do with the bounty of your garden.

I wrote several letters to people at Ball Corp. and Jarden, the current manufacturer of Ball jars, telling them what a great size this is for beans, asparagus, etc., and what a great gift home preserved food is, especially in their lovely jars. I reminded them that home preserving is experiencing a surge of interest. I told them how much I loved the cute, squat jars in the Elite Collection.

I received this note:

"We appreciate your interest in Jarden Home Brands products. The 1-1/2 pint size jar was discontinued several years ago and our inventory has been depleted. We received several inquires from consumers regarding this size jar. If enough interest is generated, our marketing team would consider bringing this jar back.

Please send them an email at

JHBFreshPreservingInfo@jardenhomebrands.com

It's too late for canning season in North America but who knows, maybe they will surprise us for next year?

June 17

By now we've crossed and re-crossed many bridges, walked along La Seine, traipsed across Ile St. Louis for ice cream at Berthillon. Today the plan was to go by Le Metro to Montmarte. At Madeleine we managed to sortie when we were supposed to correspondance. But it was all good.

Sacre Coeur

We were mesmerized by this football guy doing his thing on a lamp post.

One of the remaining moulins.

Always a good idea to stop at a cafe.

Walking down from the heights along rue Lepic in search of Toulouse-Lautrec and Vincent,

and Julia Child's Paris.

June 16

Pont Alexandre III (maybe?)

even the backs are beautiful

Cleopatra's Needle
Place de la Concorde
part of our Tour de France pilgrimage

Well, we had to visit La Joconde

one of many artists at work Musee du Louvre

Notre Dame de Paris

back

and lovely, peaceful behind the cathedral

June 15

la coupe du monde de foot

now doesn't this sound much nicer?

just another front door

perhaps my favorite of the whole trip

Arriving in Paris

It all seems like a dream. We'd been planning our trip to France since the beginning of the year. Now that we are back home it's hard to believe that we were really there.

We left San Francisco early Monday afternoon and arrived in Paris on Tuesday. It was an 11 hour flight and 9 hours time difference.

We took the train into Paris and then got onto the Metro. There was a wonderful story on NPR last weekend about Le Metro.

Of course I'm besotted by all things French.

On the street where we live

Hotel de la Tour Eiffel, near the rue Cler, closer to rue Dominique and the Seine

We chose this Rick Steve's recommendation in the 7th because it is in the neighborhood where Alice stayed when she was last in Paris.

We couldn't believe that this is what we saw when we looked out the window.

A most charming member invited us into their space. The association has 15,000 members from across France. On the day we visited a small group was working on the Dear Jane blocks.

Paris!

Linda, Alice and I flew from San Francisco to Paris on June 13.

More silk dyeing

One more from the weekend

Silk habotai 10 mm: dyed, discharged with thiox, dye painted and screen printed.