October | 2021 | From Sacramento to Potomac: Tales of Two Valleys

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First soaking rain of 2021, October 24

In this month’s blog:

Denting the Drought

A Kitchen for Pumpkin Season

October Garden Update

October Gallery

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Raindrops on our ripening lemons, October 24

Denting the Drought

Chris:

As I write on October 24, a full day and night of soaking rain, already over 5 inches, has sounded outside our windows and gladdened my parched mind. Yet, the killing drought is still with us, to be sure. We had had no measurable rain since March, and only 2 inches for 2021 before this date. It will take about four times today’s “bomb cyclone,” as the weather people call it, to enable a serious rise in the deeply depleted reservoirs—-even though the “bomb” has set historic records for a single day in this region. And the two feet of snow this “atmospheric river” (another meteorologists’ metaphor) has brought to the Sierra will need to be multiplied by five to achieve the snowpack for a typical year. Still, today’s record precip is a good, dramatic start. Hurray!

If we get many more soaking days of rain and a renewed snowpack over several years, we may also begin to undo the damage to the unseen aquifer below. The aquifer has sustained for a century and more the California agriculture that so much of the world depends on. Reckless overuse of the aquifer for many years during drought conditions has put its future in grave danger. And this troubling forecast does not even account for the increasing impact of human-caused climate change. In short, there is much work for us to do–and much damage to resist doing–to help nature restore the balance of rain, snow, and sun that has allowed the West to thrive.

For more background, hear this week’s interview on NPR affiliate KALW with authors describing the aquifer and water accessibility crisis in California.

I’m hoping, too, that today’s rain will not dump so much in one deluge that it forces mudslides across the thousands of square miles of the West denuded and scarred by this summer’s record wildfires. The mudslide news so far is not terrible. I’d like our collective joy in this needed rainfall to last a while.

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Water level in Lake Berryessa reservoir, Napa County; 40 feet below normal, October 23, the day before the storm (my photo)

Hoover Dam and Lake Mead on the Colorado River, Arizona-Nevada border; 30 feet below normal, March 2021 (my photo)

Pumpkin Season in the Kitchen

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Buckwheat pumpkin pancakes with garden fruit, bananas, syrup, and Greek yogurt

Jean:

With rains finally upon us, it’s a great time to hunker down in the kitchen and enjoy making (and eating) some of those pumpkin treats that the month of Halloween inspires. For breakfast one morning, I griddled pumpkin pancakes (see the photo above), partially using buckwheat flour. I topped them with a blueberry syrup, plus some blackberries and strawberries from the garden, sliced bananas, and a dollop or two of tangy Greek yogurt. I made enough to last us two days.

I also couldn’t resist (who’d want to?) baking a couple dozen pumpkin chocolate chip cookies…

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… which are tasty any time for snacks or an easy dessert. You may not usually think of chocolate and pumpkin going together, but, c’mon, is there anything that chocolate can’t go with? Even Chris, who always tells me he’s not a “chocolate person,” had no trouble downing these.

Pumpkin Parmesan Pasta

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Jean’s pumpkin parmesan pasta with garnish of rosemary, sage, and basil

A first for me this October was a vegetarian pasta dish with a pumpkin and parmesan sauce, instead of the usual tomato marinara. I read Alex Guarnaschelli’s recipe for Food Network, and also found helpful Marisa Moore’s blog post on her pumpkin pasta with walnuts and spinach. As always, I added my own wrinkles. I used spinach pasta, as well as the chickpea pasta Moore suggests, plus some creamy elements (light cream and goat cheese), and also pumpkin seeds for crunch, rather than nuts. Like most things, there are various ways you can personalize this idea. I was a bit afraid that the chickpea pasta might be tough or strange tasting, but it was neither of those. Now pumpkin parmesan pasta will be one of our October favorites!

Some Other Spicy, Hearty Treats for a Cool, Rainy Fall

Jean’s chilaquiles with guacamole, tomatoes, and fresno chilis

Jean’s pork chili with chilaquiles and guac

October Garden Update

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October garden produce: mild green, yellow, and purple peppers; pomegranates, Fresno chilis

Chris:

With no measurable rain before October 24, I honored my promise of last month not to plant any fall or winter vegetables, for the first time in the life of this garden. I did transplant a petunia, two irises that I separated from the parent plant, and a butter lettuce. But no seedlings of onions, radishes, beets, broccoli, chards, and lettuce varieties that I usually plant in October.

Until and unless we get enough rain to promise an average water year (which we last had in 2018), I won’t use the extra water that these veggies would require.

What fruits and veggies remain in the garden from the summer are 1 mild yellow pepper, 1 Fresno chili, the perennial arugula (now returning for its third year), 3 strawberry plants, 1 blackberry plant, 1 Swiss chard, and, of course, the magnificent fruit trees. Two of these, the navel orange and the meyer lemon, will bear ripe fruit in December. I’m hopeful that none of these plants will require any water other than that which falls from the rainy-season sky. We’ll see.