October 16, 2009

Pan-baked Lemon-Almond Tart: A Dessert Frittata?

I'm still trying to clean up and organize my "studio" (which seems to have proliferated far and wide) but ya gotta eat. I tried this NY Times recipe (there's a cute video--be sure to watch it but use the measurements in the recipe) last week and taste-tested it for dessert with the Wednesday quilters. It was quick and easy.

My first outing was not without its problems: I used a 10-inch pan because for some reason I didn't think I could use a non-stick pan in the oven; and as Kathy said, don't take your eye off it when it is under the broiler... I repeated it for Saturday breakfast with an 8-inch non-stick pan--much better: it makes a thicker tart and much easier to get out of the pan. We both loved it. I think it's a keeper. I toasted the almonds and be sure to use extra sliced almonds on top. A little crunch is a good thing. As Mark Bittman says, it's great for "a decadent breakfast, a new twist on a classic coffee cake, or a last-minute dessert."

The colorful season

Our trip to the farmers' market today was so inspiring. I saw, I shopped, I recorded.

Autumn

I'm in my studio: cleaning up, re-organizing, and fooling around. We were in Half Moon Bay last Friday for Friday Beach Day. Half Moon Bay may be the pumpkin capital of the world.

Art in Public Places

One of my favorites in our little village.

September 18, 2009

A Big Tomato Sandwich

We still have lots of tomatoes in the garden so tonight we had this.

I used a recipe from Local Flavors: Cooking and Eating from America's Farmers' Markets by Deborah Madison. It is such an inspiration. Each picture just makes you want to try it.

I started with a 1 lb. loaf ciabatta. You want a crusty, strong-textured bread. In the book she shows a round loaf which looks lovely. I sliced off the top third of the loaf and pulled out the inside to make room for the filling. I "painted" the inside of the bottom of the loaf with an herb vinaigrette (1/4 c. basil leaves; 1 T. chopped oregano (she suggests marjoram but I had none in the garden); 1 T. chopped parsley; 1 small clove garlic, minced; 1/3 c. EVOO; 4 t. aged red wine vinegar; 1/4 t. Salt, and freshly ground pepper.)

I alternated layers of sliced tomatoes, roasted red peppers, and 4 oz. fresh sliced mozzarella, on the bottom 2/3 of the loaf. After adding each layer I "painted" the vinaigrette on and seasoned with S&P.

Delicious!

September 11, 2009

Whaler's Cove, Pigeon Point, San Mateo County Coast, California.

Got Tomatoes?

Tonite I made the Pasta Primavera from this cookbook
http://tinyurl.com/lbvjps

The authors indicate that "this is the authentic Italian recipe for Pasta Primavera, which is called spring pasta because it utilizes the first tomatoes that come in." I love this recipe, even though I've been picking tomatoes for several weeks.


Here's the recipe:

4 c. coarsely chopped fresh, garden-ripe, never-been-refrigerated tomatoes
4 T. EVOO
4 T. fresh basil, chopped
1 T. Italian parsley, chopped
2 garlic cloves, chopped, or more, to taste
S&P (freshly ground P)
1 lb. spaghetti
EVOO, for garnish

In a food processor, combine the tomatoes, oil, basil, parsley, garlic, and S&P to taste; pulse to blend.

Bring a large pot of salted water to boil over high heat. Add the pasta and cook. Drain the pasta and toss it in a serving bowl with the raw sauce. Garnish each portion with a dribble of EVOO and serve immediately. Serves 6.

I made fettucine dough in the food processor this afternoon and let it rest in the refrigerator for a couple of hours. (1 c. unbleached AP flour; good pinch of salt; 1 large egg; 1 t. olive oil; a few drops of water). While the water was coming up to a boil, I cut the pasta with the pasta machine and tossed it with semolina flour to prevent it from sticking together. It was so quick. I made about 7 oz. of fresh pasta for two of us and I halved the above sauce recipe. The fresh pasta takes about a minute to cook. If you have the tomatoes and basil and garlic and parsley chopped, the sauce comes together in a flash.

I wish I would have made a loaf of bread to sop up the leftover sauce. That would have been great! I'll have to get my bread baking back in gear.

I served this with Janine's Bean Salad. I'll post the recipe for that later this week.

Pelicans, and harbor seals, and tide pools, oh my!

I don't know who this guy is but I love the flags lining the walkway to the lighthouse at Pigeon Point.

Wonderful day on the San Mateo Coast: more than 20 brown pelicans working or playing the waters of Whaler's Cove and harbor seals cavorting in groups of threes and fives. Then, we were off to Bean Hollow State Beach and more inquisitive-seeming harbor seals and tide pools. Sunny but breezy.

The view from "my" lane

These are the waning days of summer and this is the big oak at the end of lane 1 on the shady side of the pool.

Farallon Islands

Here's Rick getting ready to board the Salty Lady on Sunday morning. We were about to venture out to the Farallon Islands with Robin and Paul on an Oceanic Society expedition.

Don't you get the idea from this picture that it is going to be a perfect day to see whales and puffins? Let me just say that the trip was so exciting (and eventful) that this is the last picture that I took on the entire trip.

As we left San Francisco harbor we saw over 20 harbor porpoises and 3 miles out, we saw our first whales, humpbacks, a cow and her calf. As we approached North Island, we found ourselves in a "garden" of whales: 5 humpbacks diving for food and 9 humpbacks spouting, diving, breaching, and showing their flukes. We saw one humpback spyhopping: lifting its head about 6 feet out of the water.

We also saw California sea lions, northern sea lions, harbor seals and a variety of sea birds: western grebes, elegant terns, Forsters' terns, northern fulmars, pink-footed shearwaters, sooty shearwaters, western gulls, brown pelicans, red-necked phalaropes, double-crested cormorants, pelagic cormorants, Brandt's cormorants, pigeon guillemots, common murres, Cassins' auklets, and tufted puffins.

It was a never to be forgotten experience.

My new favorite

I'm really excited about this set. I must decide whether to cook or dye.

And now for the semi-neutrals

More pretty colors

Today would have been a perfect day for dyeing. It was hot, hot, hot! Instead I prepared some fabric for my next set and tried to sort out my results.

These are the pieces from using fuchsia, lemon yellow, and turquoise as primaries (I think). I'm not certain because the red doesn't seem right. I didn't repeat the red-orange, orange, or yellow samples because I already had them from the first set. It probably would have been a good idea to at least have swatches of those dyes (the darkest, if not the mediums and lights) from this run. And I messed up on the yellow-greens.

I was trying to get more solid (flat) colors (less "crystallization" of the colors) and I think my results are pretty good. Still, lots to learn.

I used Dharma print cloth (mercerized).

Julie & Julia: Croutons or Toasts?

I loved the movie. I would see it again. I am not trying to quibble, but this, a crouton (or is it a toast?) is in the book.

This is not.



It looks delicious and you can almost taste it in the movie.
It seems okay to have it in there because Julia did live in the south of France. But it's not in Vol. 1 nor is it in Vol. 2. In fact, neither book has much at all on tomatoes. So if you go to see the movie and it's a matinee, you will be walking out and everyone will be wondering what's for dinner. And somehow boning a duck will not seem very do-able. And that roast chicken looks excellent, too! But...

This seemed much easier. I couldn't resist trying Julia's method. You will need to clarify some butter. Then slice some 1/4-inch thick rounds from a nice rustic loaf of bread. We used a Semifreddi sour batard but a baguette would have been better. Heat the clarified butter and saute the rounds on each side until very lightly browned. Then, to be authentic, just eat it or treat it as a canape and top it with some diced garden tomatoes, a little fresh basil. Now go see the movie!

Pretty colors

The G6 (or some of us) had a dye day last weekend. I've been bitten by the dyeing bug. I'm dyeing color wheels (plus some values) using primaries. This one is with Dharma dyes: Lemon Yellow, Sky Blue, and Fuchsia. I'm working on a new one today.

Blackberry Jam and Bread

Preserving

It's blackberry season hereabouts. I found these cute jars that just wanted to be filled with blackberry jam. I have a loaf of bread in the oven. I'll open the first jar this afternoon and check it out. Someone has to sacrifice herself for the good of the pantry.

Pickled Green Beans

The July issue of Sunset magazine has a great feature on canning. Pictures of sparkling jars of preserved food always get to me. My friend Alice had a surfeit of green beans and she alerted me to their recipe for Pickled Green Beans with Dill, Tarragon, Garlic and Peppercorns. She also gifted me with about 3 pounds of beans. I modified their recipe slightly to make these.

I also liked this recipe at Downstairs Recipes.

I used Three Monks vinegar and more salt than the Sunset recipe. I made some of the jars with these jalapenos from our garden, omitting the tarragon in those jars.


It is all experimental. The bigger jars are 1-1/2 pt. which is a nice size for long beans. I processed the jars at 180-185 degrees for 30 minutes (rather than 5 minutes at boiling) because the Sunset recipe promised a crunchy bean. Of course I will have to wait about a month to check out my bean stash. Makes me think I should plant a crop of beans of my own

First Potato

Picked our first potato. We planted them late. Found some old ones in the pantry and figured they were ready for composting so, why not?

The weather has turned hot--it got up to 94 degrees today. I watered the things in pots but there remain lots of things to do in the garden. Best to wait until it cools off again.

Pool closed early this AM because of you-know-what...

Things bike; Things Italia

And now the driveway is done...

Perhaps boring but quite exciting for us.

It took more than two weeks to complete. I was able to avoid most of the noise and the dust because I was in OHIO.


It is a wonderful, smooth ride up the hill.

Definitely worth it!

Emily Richardson at EBHQ

This is a WIP from cloth I painted in a workshop with Emily Richardson. She was the speaker for our June meeting at my guild, East Bay Heritage Quilters . The picture looks a little wonky. I got a new camera that I am trying to figure out. This is one of the first pictures. More soon if I ever figure it out.

I was first attracted to the layers of color in Richardson's work. I experience an exquisite ethereality in many of her pieces. We saw her work, Until the Day, last week in Athens, Ohio at Quilt National. It was so exciting that she was scheduled to speak and teach this week for our guild. Doing the EBHQ workshop afforded the opportunity for close inspection of her work. I was enchanted by the lines she creates both in her applique technique and her quilting line.

My friend Chris at Reap As You Sew posted some great pictures of cloth she made during a class. She also briefly describes the materials we used.

Planned Destruction

We share a long driveway with a neighbor. This is the view from our house looking down after we started the demolition in preparation for new paving.

Here's the pile of paving from the section from our house to the neighbor's house.

Troy gets to have all of the concrete in front of his garage.

And on his auxiliary parking pad. I hope the apple trees survive.

It was pretty noisey and exciting. We have our cars parked on the street as we will not be able to drive up or down for the duration.

It will take at least a week. Harrison is very excited (he's in grade 4). He was climbing all over the piles with his brother and his followers after the workers left.

Weird weather

We've been having unusual weather. It has been cool, cloudy, and rain has been predicted off and on. We've actually had some sprinkles--not enough to do any good but enough to get me to dash out to retrieve equipment that had been left out. We seldom get precipitation from May through September.

It seems as if it has been unseasonably cool. Since the beginning of June, we have recorded only 2 highs in the 70s (71 and 73). On several days it never got over 64. Our lows have consistently been in the mid-50s. The lettuce is doing fine. The tomatoes are growing.

I'm posting these pictures from April and May to remind myself that the garden went from an abundance of bloom to scraps. I need to work on that. A garden friend would always remark that Mother Nature makes the spring garden and we have to do the work for the rest of the year. I need to visit gardens after the spring flush. I need dahlias, sunflowers, and more lilies. I guess have been focusing on food crops of late.


What do you love that is in bloom in your garden now?

Oh, and we went to the beach

Rick really isn't that into sweet peas so he packed his bike for our Sebastopol trip. He biked down to Bodega Bay where I picked him up after I recovered from smelling the flowers.


It was a perfect day on the Sonoma coast--one beautiful beach after another.



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Sweet Peas

For several years I have wanted to visit the Enchanting Sweet Peas Open House. I have grown sweet peas off and on for twenty years and my love affair with their fragrance hasn't abated.




This event is a one day affair in Sebastopol, CA and in my imagination I would wander endlessly, intoxicated by both the scent and the sights. In fact, the garden is a small lot where Glenys Johnson shows plants grown from her seed. If you get there early you can buy seed only available there. You can see varieties that she is trialing, for which she might offer seed in the future. You might win a bouquet of freshly picked stems. You can also order seed to be shipped to you in the fall, but you can always do that on her website.




This year I went, I saw, I smelled, I ordered, and I took some pictures. I have no IDs for these pictures (although it looks like this one is Jayne Amanda) but I probably bought seed for some of them so my fantasies persist. Who knows, I might have some flowers of my own this time next year.

Here is what I bought:
Anniversary - rose-edged on pale pink
April in Paris - cream-edged with lilac
Blue Ripple - white with blue flecks
Oban Bay - silvery blue
Charlie's Angel - periwinkle blue
Percy Thrower - lilac flush on white
Sylvia Mary - sunset pink

My plan for the 2010 growing season: Soak overnight when seed arrives in October. Seeds should swell. Those that don't swell should be chipped. Plant in individual cells. Grow outdoors in flats, in a protected area that gets good light. Transplant about 5 weeks later. I have had wonderful results in the past growing the Knee-Hi's, sowing them directly. These Spencer hybrids grow tall and want something sturdy to grow on. I have a year to figure that out!

Here are my notes of what I liked on my walk-through: Albutt Blue, Blue Danube, Jayne Amanda, Anniversary, Blue Ripple, Oban Bay, Comet, Noel Sutton, Percy Thrower, Lilac Ripple, Gwendolyn, Southbourne, and April in Paris.

Sunday Pizza

I'm actually starting to make round pizzas! This is our all allium, all the time: green garlic, young leeks, and spring onions (plus some mushrooms, mozzarella fresca, tomato sauce, and fresh oregano).

Blogging, Clementine 1, and Birkat HaChama

Clementine 1

I have been avoiding reading the quiltart posts about whether or not blogging is still personally compelling. I have been questioning what to do with my blog. I initially started it in January 2005 because I couldn't figure out any other way to post comments on other blogs. Am I having fun? I love being able to look back and find recipes or planting dates but my inconsistency is frustrating.

I had thought that the blog would be a kind of journal for my interests but I struggle with writing. I struggle with all kinds of self-expression. I am posting this photo because there has been so little quilt content of late. This is a scan of a piece that is about 10" x 10".

Even so, this piece has been finished for months. I showed it at the G6 in January, I think. This was back when I had a temporary mania for needle felting but couldn't rationalize buying another machine.

I sketched out a series of additional clementine pieces and got stalled, again. The blog doesn't just write itself, nor does the work get done just wishing it would.

I missed the sunrise today because it was raining--wonderful rain that is soaking the soil. I am not Jewish but I am blessing the sun today and celebrating Birkat HaChama. According to the Talmud, today marks the completion of the 28 year solar cycle. Who will be around for 28 years from now on April 8 for the next Birkat HaChama? I am also celebrating spring and marking the Passover by making Rose Levy Beranbaum's Mediterranean matzoh (not exactly kosher with olive oil and rosemary) but delicious somewhat of a ritual.

I'm in the garden with Boronia

Boronia megastigma 'Jack Maguire's Red'

Alice and I went to Berkeley Hort today and found this wonderful Australian native by its fragrance. I stuck it in my front porch garden for which my goal is to have fragrance year-round. My Daphne odora is just finishing up. I have Parma violets in bloom in that bed and now the Boronia. This is a plant that is not supposed to be long-lived and Eric Lux indicates that it needs perfect drainage, of which I am incapable. We will see. It is worth the risk. The bonus was turning the pot upside down to plant it and discovering the "secret" golden interior of the small, bell-like flowers. As Lux notes, it probably should have been planted in a pot. Oh, well...According to San Marcos Growers it makes a good cut flower!

Worth Listening To

For all of my girlfriends:
My dear friend Robin sent this to me. She is right--it's worth listening to.
Love,
Joan

Dog show

I know, I know. Not much of interest here of late. And I haven't even been writing about my blog dog. But this might be interesting: a puli won best of group in the herding dog competition at the Westminster Kennel Club dog show. Are you paying attention, Casey? Finals tonite. I'll be cheering for Cordmaker Field of Dreams, aka Conrad, the puli.

Yum!

I made a fabulous lunch today that was so easy. After a trip to the Berkeley Bowl, I was famished. What I needed was something quick. One of my favorite food blogs is Orangette. I had read about her cabbage with hot sauce and had picked up some sambal oelek at the Bowl. My plan was that it would be a quick vegetable dish for supper. This is all that was left when I remembered to take a picture.

A quick stir-fry of sliced cabbage, fennel, sambal oelek to taste (I started with 1/2 teaspoon) and soy sauce...

ART!

This is how I feel about art.

Gentleness, 2009 and Winter WIP

I have toyed with the idea of goals for 2009 but have had no real desire to blog about them. I am embracing GENTLENESS as my word for the year (a la Christine Kane). Last year I found that to be very useful. My word for 2008 was Focus and I actually remembered the word, re-evaluated it, and re-interpreted it throughout the year.

I am really unhappy with the pictures I make for my blog. I have repeatedly told myself that I would do something about this and 2009 will be the year that this happens. I am reading a

Photoshop Elements book and I birthday-gifted myself with a copy of Gloria Hansen's book, Digital Essentials. So I guess I'm blogging about goals after all. I have been impressed that putting something down in black and white makes it more of a commitment and that is a good thing.

After reading Christine Thresh's most recent post, I decided that I really had to post something about my work.

The G6 theme for our next meeting later this month is Winter. We are still challenging ourselves to respond to a theme but it is optional. And I think that the 12 x 12 format is becoming optional. I like the idea of working in a smaller format if that's what happens. I have been playing with bits of wool and yarn discovered in my massive "studio cleanup." I had some hand felting needles and I made a postcard-sized view from my kitchen. Winter in my No. California garden is very green but not in a sunny way.

I cut the small piece into thirds and "applied" it to a piece of wool felt. I am contemplating purchasing needle felting machine. Yesterday, I test-drove the Pfaff 350P embellisher, and I brought this along to see how it would work and this is the result, unfinished. Only the center section was felted by machine. Much quicker. It was fun. This WIP is a scan which is also much quicker than taking a photograph.