Celebrating Valentines Day in the Garden

In this month’s blog:

Traveling in the Garden

VacciNation Valentine

February in the Kitchen: Virtual Victual Valentines

Garden Update for February 2021

February 2021 Gallery: Fauna on/in/with Flora

Chris:

One of the happiest features of gardening in a pandemic is that the garden keeps changing. So if you have been hunkered at home, as we have, for most of the past year, every day in the garden takes you to a different place. Traveling while almost standing still. Now I don’t just mean using your imagination to think that you are elsewhere. I mean actually confronting a slightly changed world every morning you step outside.

Some of the change is aesthetic–in what I see, hear, feel, or smell–like the very first blossoms on the apricot tree last week, or the three-note coo that I heard from the first Eurasian Collared Dove returning to the neighborhood, or the brilliantly blooming snapdragon in the front garden.

Tiny blooms of the snapdragon, front garden

Very first bloom of the season on the apricot tree, front garden

Our first Eurasian Collared Dove of the season, on the roof

But many of the changes in the garden carry with them questions about responsibilities for decision and action, no matter how small.

Here are a tiny few of the many that arose in the past two weeks:

1. Does the slight change in the greenness of a broccoli head (below) mean that it must be picked now?

Well, I did pick it (Feb. 10), and we steamed the fresh florets to go with Jean’s East Asian veggie curry and rice.

Broccoli head just beginning to turn yellow…

Back garden toward south on a sunny warm February early afternoon, before the next day’s rain

2. Should I use some of our precious water today (Feb. 10) to moisten our dry veggies and herbs, even though the forecast–notoriously unreliable in this drought–is for showers tomorrow?

In fact, the rains did come the next day (Feb. 11), giving us 1/3 of an inch, with maybe more in a couple of days.

3. Is it time (Feb. 12) to uncover the Bulls Blood beets that have now been maturing below ground for 3 months?

One of our six Bulls Blood beet plants, planted in November

I figured that this beet’s time had come, and I discovered that “it” was really 3 plants, 2 of which had mature beet roots, which Jean cooked as part of our Valentine’s dinner–along with the succulent beet leaves, tender and flavorful in their own right. I replanted the smallest of the 3 plants (Feb. 15), and am waiting to see if it takes hold.

4. Should I clear away the leaves and brush beside the lupine tree in the back garden?

This turned out to be an easy question–which a golden-crowned sparrow answered for me (Feb. 11):

No, a garden never stays put; it can never be just a pretty place to look at. We’re thankful that it’s both photogenic and an ongoing challenge, usually in manageable ways, so that our time trying to stay safe at home during the pandemic has been most often pleasantly busy. Indeed, the other focus of this blog, our kitchen, reinforces our expectation of something always to experiment with, be challenged by, and prepare.

Besides the garden and the kitchen, both of us work part time from home, read and write, watch and listen to entertainment media, walk our neighborhood, and go out to stores. Not to mention that we stay frequently in touch through FaceTime, Zoom, and the phone with friends, our children, and our grandchildren. So our days are full!

VacciNation Valentine

Although the pandemic has just reached its one-year anniversary, we have a special reason to celebrate Valentine’s Day this year. It has now been close to a month since the daily case rates have been dramatically falling across the US. So we are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. One major factor has been the steadily improving rates of vaccination with the approved vaccines (Pfizer/BioNtech and Moderna) all across the nation, as the US finally has a coordinated strategy, sparked by leadership at the federal level. So when couples across the US celebrate their Valentines love with roses, balloons, and their foods and beverages of choice, we can celebrate with a renewed feeling of hope for the future.

More Valentines celebration: Jean’s orange chiffon mini pies

February in the Kitchen: Virtual Victual Valentines

Jean’s pear cheese tart

Jean:

“Virtual Victual Valentines”? What can I say? I love V words, and these just rolled off the tongue. These “vittles” are virtual because that’s how I can tell you about them, but they were fun to make and eat.

Pear Cheese Tart

This is one of my sloppier recipes because I don’t know where I saw the original recipe (except I know the inspiration was from Mary Berry on the BBC), I didn’t follow that recipe very closely anyway, and I don’t exactly remember what I did. So the measurements are rough at best, but it doesn’t matter. This is an invitation to wing it.

I was interested in this idea when I saw the recipe, because I know it started with puff pastry, not blind baked. I get tired of dealing with regular pie crust dough, blind baked or not, so I bought some frozen puff pastry and thawed one sheet. I then cut it into portions that would roughly fit the bottom and sides of this heart-shaped pan. I wanted to prevent the crust from getting too soggy from the pears, so I sprinkled some ground almonds or almond flour I had over the bottom of the crust, letting it fill in any gaps between the pieces of pastry. Then I poured in the filling, which was more savory than sweet: I whisked 2 eggs with about a cup of half and half, 1/2 c. mascarpone or cream cheese, and 1/2 c. blue cheese crumbles. These were all items I had on hand, and I figured they’d go together well.  They did!

On the creamy filling, arrange pear halves and half walnuts or pecans in an attractive pattern. Sprinkle or spread coarse sugar, honey, or thinned jam on top to make a glaze. Done in no time!

Bake at 400 degrees F. for 30 minutes.

Green grape avocado smoothie with egg cheese guacamole toast

Blackberry avocado smoothie with soy chorizo omelet

Avocado Smoothies

You know how it’s just easier to buy some things in bulk these days because you’re trying to meet a minimum dollar amount to get free shipping or pickup? Well, I ended up with more avocados than I would usually buy, and I remembered that I had picked up at a used bookstore a cookbook that focuses on avocado recipes. In browsing through it for ideas, I discovered a lot of recipes for avocado smoothies. Who doesn’t love a green smoothie? (Don’t answer that if you think you don’t; you would be surprised how good they can be.) The avocado in these seems to take the place of banana and you don’t really taste the avocado.

If you are the sort who likes to throw spinach or other greens into a smoothie, you can certainly do that. I used a recipe that called for fresh orange slices, which of course we have plenty of, and some frozen blackberries (I cup blackberries to 1 whole orange), plus a tablespoon of blackberry honey that we had just ordered off the Internet and one avocado. This is the reddish one you see in the picture; I added a few of our red chard leaves.

Other surprising ideas in the book, however, include green grapes with kiwi and avocado, or pears and avocado with lime and fresh mint. (I had a few canned pears left from my tart experiment, plus I added key lime yogurt.) If any of these look too thick to you after blending, add more orange juice, juice from the canned pears, or apple juice. Just have fun with it. (I also threw in a litte protein powder that I bought while trying to diet, but more about my diet another time, maybe.)

Jean’s orange chiffon pie

Orange Chiffon Pie

Jean’s Sunkist Cook Book, published 1968

Garden Update for February 2021

Back garden toward north, Feb. 14, midday

Chris:

Oranges and Meyer Lemons. In December, I greatly underestimated the number of oranges we’d have this season. I estimated 150, but we’ve already used or given away almost 200, with a good 100 still on the tree. A few fall off each day, with most firm and healthy. The compost bin gets the few mushy ones, along with the peels of the many we use for juice or snacking. Though we use our meyer lemons for juicing or gifts to neighbors, we’re still barely into the bounty on the bush, so I estimate we’ll be picking lemons for at least the next three months–after the buds and blooms for next season have sprung!

Watching the meyer lemon bush from inside the orange tree

Lettuce and Swiss Chard.  The 3 leaf lettuce plants in their mesh cages are still thriving, while the 6 Swiss chard plants are also doing well, growing larger as the temps slowly climb, with highs in the low 60s. This week, I transplanted into the ground the two chards that had been in small pots close to the house on the veranda, as these had become root bound. Let’s see how they do, and if the birds love them or leave them alone.

The largest so far of the 6 chard plants, back garden.

Green Onions and Bulls Blood Beets. All plants doing well, with the green onions being picked as we want them for salads, sandwiches, and mild spice for main dishes. See the story (above) about the only one of the 5 beets we’ve picked so far.  We’ll be  using the rest over the next few weeks.

The plentiful green onions and thriving Bulls Blood beets in the large raised bed

Broccoli. Three of the 6 Green Magic broccoli plants produced full heads this month. These heads have been harvested, and on all of these 3 plants secondary florets are growing. Since I planted the broccoli this season in November, a month later than last season because of the persistent high heat in October 2020, I’ll be interested to see how the current plants do as spring heat arrives.

Secondary heads growing on harvested Green Magic broccoli, back garden

February 2021 Gallery: Fauna on/in/with Flora

Honeybees on the blooming erysimum

Geranium in front of bee magnet Erysimum

Two honeybees on rosemary

Ruby-crowned kinglet with persimmon tree

Golden-crowned sparrow, peeking

White-crowned sparrow in peach tree

Northern mockingbird in sycamore

Anna’s hummingbird in cherry plum tree

Viewing the back garden from inside the orange tree

Aftermath of the Jan. 26-27 storm: the back garden

Chris:

Rain finally came to our region at the end of January. Too bad it came with 50 mph winds, which uprooted trees throughout the Valley, including Sacramento. But when all of 2020 had given us only about 2 inches of rain–16 inches below normal!–we were still thankful for the almost 3 inches we’ve received over that past three days. Meanwhile, the storm produced blizzard conditions in the Sierra, with an accumulation so far of more than 5 feet of snow–and more in the forecast for the next week.

In our microscopic smidge of the Valley, the storm tore off small branches from the sycamore and brought down about a third of our remaining oranges (see below). But though all of the trees, bushes, and plantings were whipped around, and some wound up off kilter, all stayed in the ground or in their pots sheltered near the house. Best of all, the new fencing I’d had put up after the 2017 storms held firm and helped buffer the back garden.

So I’m basking in the psychological sunshine of this temporary reprieve from the drought–and we may even get some more rain soon.

Here’s how the winter fruits and veggies are doing:

Lettuce and Chard. This year’s crop of leaf lettuce has been our best, with three of the plants in chicken wire cages to keep back the birds. A fourth plant is in a small pot near the house. Swiss chard has done well in the cool temps (below 60 F.), but is primed to take off once temps rise in February. Four healthy plants are in pots on the veranda, and two more are doing well in ground.

Leaf lettuce in chicken-wire cage in back garden

Swiss chard in ground, back gerden

Green onions and Bulls Blood beets. I missed not having these around for the past couple of seasons, and I’m glad I’ve brought them back. Six plants of each are in the large raised bed (see above, top) or in pots. All were planted in early November–a month later than my typical fall planting because of the persistence of hot weather through October. But all are on pace for harvest in February, with my having clipped off some of the onion sprouts for our salads already.

Green onions in red pot, back garden

Bulls blood beet plant in raised bed

Broccoli. All six of the plants, which were started in November, have sprouted heads, though these are much less mature in January than those in previous seasons, which were planted in October. Most notable about this year’s crop, which are all planted in the ground, are that all six have stayed alive despite some having been damaged by the birds and by the cabbage leaf butterflies. I’m interested to see what happens now that we’ve gotten more rain and when the temps start to rise back to the 60s.

The largest (18 in. in diameter) of the six Green Magic broccoli plants.

Oranges and Meyer Lemons. We’ve used about 60 of the oranges so far for juice, some of them gleaned from the ground after having fallen.  Then, when the storm hit on January 26-27, 50 more oranges fell, all of them firm and healthy! Because the overall orange crop is smaller this year, the size of each fruit is greater, with some as large as grapefruit. The skins are not overly thick and all the fruit are very juicy. About 150 more remain on the tree–and I hope they stay put for a while. The longer they stay on the tree, the sweeter they become.

Two of the many clusters of navel oranges before the late January storm

Oranges and meyer lemons being made into orange-and-lemonadee

As noted in last month’s blog, the meyer lemon crop is our largest ever (about 150), as the bush has enlarged over the summer by 25% and the lemons are thickly clustered. And, because the fruit are small, very few fell off in the wind.

Meyer lemon clusters, our best crop, in January

As a result of the strength of both types of fruit, we’ll have juice for a few months to come. We’ll probably also be freezing some juice for the summer. We’ve already begun giving away some of the oranges and lemons to neighbors and to the local food bank–especially some of the 50 large, firm oranges that fell in the storm.

Some of the oranges that fell in the storm

The January 2021 Gallery

Two members of our neighborhood flock of “wild” turkeys

Honeybee on the coreopsis, back garden

Dianthus and snapdragon, front garden

Ladybeetle on the Tradescantia, front garden

Wallflower (Erysimum) about to bloom

Fiery agapanthus, front garden

Anna’s hummingbird in the peach tree on a foggy morning

Honeybee in the heart of a white rose, back garden

Visiting Oregon junco on the deck, back garden

Honeybee on the rosemary, back garden

Aloe mom and pups, veranda, with oranges in background

White-crowned sparrow hides in the lupine, back garden

Scrub jay at home on the back fence, with red rosebud

All the birds, bees, and plants are loving the rain, and can’t wait for more.

If you haven’t read Part 1 of this January blog, try it out.

Happy Birthday, 2021! Now on to February!

Chris:

In our extended family, January is a month of birthdays: on New Year’s Eve ( yes, that counts!), Jan. 5, 15, 18, 27, and 30. Pretty fitting, wouldn’t you say, for the birth month of the new year?

This January, especially, we’re hoping to celebrate a rebirth of hope, as we try to move forward from a monumentally challenging 2020. Sadly, early this month, on the 6th, we suffered in our Nation’s Capital a terrifying example of what the moving-backward culture is still capable of. But, amazingly, the hopes for the new year prevailed that night and into the early hours of the morning, as a brave Congress showed the power of the American spirit of democracy. And then, on the 20th, only 2 weeks later, the new year really began for the nation by affirming one of our best features: a peaceful transfer to a new administration, as elected by a record number of voters.

In this month’s blog, which we’ll publish in two parts, we celebrate the birth, and birthdays, of this hopeful new year, first in our kitchen (Part 1) and then in our garden (Part 2). Celebrate with us!

Our Kitchen: Birthday Cakes and More

Jean’s whipped cream Black Forest cake

Jean:

January is my birthday month, and also my older sister’s.  She passed away last month, about five weeks before her birthday.  My sister and I were great friends, although she and I were very different.  She did not have children or enjoy domestic pursuits.  She was a very quiet type and had more of a scientific mind than mine, earning master’s degrees in medical technology and pharmacy.  She spent two years in the Peace Corps in Kenya working with tropical diseases, a number of years working in hospitals, and finally in the state diagnostic laboratory.  The most painful disease I was aware of her catching as a result of her profession was salmonella.  By the time COVID came around, she was too far gone with Parkinson’s and other ailments to have much of a conversation with me about what it all meant.  Ironically, she might have caught it in the nursing home where she lived the last few years of her life, but she remained COVID free, finally dying of a cancer we didn’t even know she had.

German Chocolate Cake

My sister’s favorite cake, and the last thing I cooked for her, was German chocolate cake.  I made one of those this month to celebrate her birthday.  (I must confess I used a mix this time.  I figured she wouldn’t mind.)

Jean’s German chocolate cake, in honor of her sister’s birthday

Chocolate and Orange Spice Cake

I followed that cake with a chocolate and orange spice.  I wanted to start using our garden oranges in a new way.  I had also been streaming old episodes of the Great British Baking Show and ran across Mary Berry’s “Whole Orange Spice Cake” and thought I’d try it.

Forgive the British terminology and metrics if you are not familiar with them.  I’ve gradually been learning.  This is a type of British sponge cake, but it is somewhat unusual in using whole eggs with no separate beating.  It makes a rather heavy cake but it stays quite moist, and we enjoyed every slice.

The following recipe is mostly Mary Berry’s, but also includes my changes, which are noted.

Ingredients for the Cake

Get all the ingredients below ready because this is one of Mary’s “all in one” recipes, where she dumps almost everything in at once, rather than starting by beating the butter and sugar first.

Start with 1 small thin-skinned orange

• 275g (10 oz) self-raising flour
• 3 level teaspoons baking powder
• 275g (10 oz) caster (fine) sugar
• 225g (8 oz) butter, softened
• 4 eggs
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon mixed spice

For the Filling

• 50g (2 oz) butter, softened
• 175g (6 oz) icing sugar, sifted, plus a little extra for dusting
• 2 level tablespoons orange pulp, reserved from the cake

For the Ganache

• 150g dark chocolate (2/3 c.)
• 150ml double cream (heavy cream) (2/3 c.)
• 3 tbsp apricot jam

Instructions for the Cake

Preheat the oven to 180oC/Fan 160oC/Gas 4 (325-350 Fahrenheit), depending on whether you use convection, which takes the lower temp. Grease two 20cm (8 in) tins with greased greaseproof paper.

Place the whole orange in a small saucepan, cover with boiling water and simmer until soft, about 20 minutes. Set aside to cool.

When the orange is ready, cut in half and remove any pips/seeds. (I also cut out excess pith.)  Process the whole orange, including the skin, until medium chunky. Reserve 2 level tablespoons of the orange pulp for the icing and put the rest back in the processor.

Add the remaining cake ingredients and blend until smooth. Avoid overmixing.

Divide the mixture evenly between the two tins.
Bake in the preheated oven for 25–30 minutes.

Leave to cool in the tins for a few moments, then turn out, peel off the paper and finish cooling on a wire rack.

For the Filling

To make the orange filling, cream the soft butter, then add the sifted icing sugar and reserved orange pulp.  (I also stirred in some orange marmalade I had, plus some orange liqueur to intensify the orange flavor.)

Sandwich the cakes together with the icing, and sift icing sugar over the top of the cake.

For the Ganache

That’s not what I did with this cake, however, because I had a chocolate and orange Lindt bar, so I was determined to make ganache, the easiest frosting there is.  I’ve listed Mary’s ingredients, but I used marmalade instead of apricot.

Candied Orange Peel Topping

You could also decorate the top with candied orange peel. This is Mary’s recipe, but I either forgot, was too lazy, or got distracted by all the scrumptious chocolate, so these are not shown in the photo of the cake below.  You can just imagine how nice they would look.  And someone would surely find them fun to eat. After I made this cake, one of our sons, a very good cook himself, made some of these candied citrus peels for my birthday. See below.

Candied citrus peels: A gift made by one of our sons

Instructions: Pour 300ml/10fl oz water into a small pan, then add about 10 oz granulated or fine sugar and heat, stirring until the sugar has dissolved.

Cut strips of orange peel, avoiding the pith.  Add the peel to the hot syrup and simmer uncovered for 30-45 minutes, until the peel is soft and translucent.  Let dry and cool spread out on a baking sheet and sprinkle with dry granulated or fine sugar.

Jean’s chocolate and orange spice cake

Black Forest Cake

Jean’s whipped cream Black Forest cake with dark cherry filling

Then I made a Black Forest Cake to celebrate Chris’s German father, who passed away when Chris was young and whose January 18th birthday he and his sister still celebrate every year. 

I used a recipe for whipped cream cake from my old Betty Crocker cookbook, the one with the cover falling off.  Just by coincidence, one of my daughters sent me a replacement.  (It has the same traditional recipes but in the new notebook format.  I can maybe retire the old one now, although it has notes I entered from experience with the recipes.)

The new (left) and old, well-worn Betty Crocker cookbooks

Anyway, I had never made a cake where the moisture was provided mostly by whipped cream.  It seemed strange trying to fold in the flour, but it made a very yummy cake.  (I decided to forego Mary Berry’s chocolate sponge version because Chris had had enough chocolate for a while.) We’re now sold on this version.

Coffee and Cream Coffee Cake

Jean’s chocolate cream cheese coffee cake

And as if we weren’t eating enough cake this month, I wanted to make a coffee cake to bring still more cake to our breakfasts.

I saw this coffee cake on the New York Times Cooking site, and I made it as pictured because it looked like a big cup of cappuccino, which I love.  I belatedly read the comments, which should be taken into account.  I am integrating the comments with the original recipe here to give you alternatives and reasons at each step of the way.  To give you a sense, one commenter said, “This cake was delicious and very large. It will feed an army. Making it for a party of two during quarantine was a blessing and a curse.”  I would also say that this coffee cake is a challenge because you have so many gluey bowls and mixing implements going.  I felt I needed more hands as well (Chris’s), particularly when trying to assemble the final cake.

Ingredients

For the Cream Cheese Filling

•   12 ounces/340 grams cream cheese, at room temperature
• ½ cup/100 grams granulated sugar
• 1 large egg

For the Streusel

• 1 ½ cups/190 grams all-purpose flour
•  ½ cup/50 grams old-fashioned oats
• ⅓ cup/75 grams light or dark brown sugar
• 1 tablespoon espresso powder (or instant espresso)
• ¼ teaspoon baking powder
• ¼ teaspoon fine sea salt
• 10 tablespoons/140 grams cold unsalted butter (1 1/4 sticks)

For the Cake Batter

•   2 ½ cups/320 grams all-purpose flour
• 2 tablespoons espresso powder (or instant espresso)
• 1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
• ½ teaspoon fine sea salt
• ¾ cup/170 grams unsalted butter (1 1/2 sticks), at room temperature
• ¾ cup/165 grams light or dark brown sugar
• ¾ cup/150 grams granulated sugar
• 3 large eggs
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• ¾ cup/180 milliliters coffee, cooled
• ½ cup/120 milliliters sour cream

Instructions and Alternatives

Set the oven at 350 F. (or 325 convection)

Prepare the pan, either springform, Angel food, or bundt.  Commenters found it overflowed the recommended 9-inch springform, necessitating the catch pan under it; my scaled down recipe just fit a 7-inch springform pan to the hilt.

Lightly grease a 9-inch springform pan with nonstick spray. Line the edge of the pan with 2 strips of parchment paper cut to the height and diameter of the ring, then spray the ring again. Place it on a parchment-lined baking sheet.

Making the Streusel:  (Original recipe) In a medium bowl, stir the flour, oats, brown sugar, espresso powder, baking powder and salt to combine. Cut the butter into tablespoon portions and drop it into the bowl. Mix with your hands or a pastry cutter until the mixture is thoroughly combined and comes together to form large clumps; set aside.

(My changes) Commenters said there was too much streusel, and I found that to be true even though I tried to cut these ingredients down by about a third.  In other words, I used one cup flour to one cup butter and cut the white sugar to 1/3 cup.  It was still a lot.  You could probably do with ¾ cup flour to ¾ c. butter and ½ c. sugars altogether.  The oatmeal is nice; I wouldn’t cut that down much, and I also added chopped nuts and a little cinnamon.

Making the Cream Cheese Filling:

 (Original recipe) In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat together the cream cheese and granulated sugar on medium speed until well combined, about 2 minutes. Scrape the bowl well, then add the egg and mix until fully incorporated. Transfer filling to a medium bowl and clean out the mixing bowl. (My comments) You can instead beat this in a small bowl with a hand mixer so you don’t have to transfer it.

(My changes) I used one 8-oz package cream cheese with 1/3 c. sugar and half an egg, and it was still a lot.  However, it made a dramatic, cheesecake surprise in the center of the cake and did get cooked properly.  If you follow the suggestion below about splitting this into two layers, you can use the 12 ounces at least.  Some commenters said they would double it.  Up to you. 

Making the Cake Batter:

(Original Recipe) In a medium bowl, whisk the flour, espresso powder, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon and salt to combine.

(My changes) I used 1 ½ cups of flour and cut the other ingredients down commensurately.  (You do the math, or just guess at it; not that important.)

(Original) In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment (or in yet another a medium bowl using a hand mixer), cream the butter, brown sugar and granulated sugar on medium speed until light and fluffy, 4 to 5 minutes. Add the eggs one at a time, and mix, scraping the bowl well after each is incorporated. Add the vanilla and mix to combine.

(My changes) I cut this down to half a cup each of butter, brown and white sugar, and two eggs.  That’s easy math if you’re trying to cut it by a third.  And you can surely use less sugar plus some gluten-free flour to suit yourself.

(Original) Add about one-third of the flour mixture to the wet ingredients and mix on low speed to combine. With the mixer running, gradually pour the coffee into the mixture in a slow, steady stream, mixing until fully incorporated.

(My changes) ½ cup should do it, if cutting down by 1/3.

(Original) Add half of the remaining flour mixture and mix on low speed to combine. Add the sour cream and mix to combine, then add the remaining flour mixture and mix until fully incorporated. Scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl well to ensure the mixture is homogenous.

(My changes) 1/3 c. if cutting back; I used part coffee yogurt I happened to have.

Baking the Cake: (Original) Finally, pour half of the batter into the prepared pan, then sprinkle half of the streusel over the surface of the batter. Dollop the cream cheese mixture by the heaping tablespoons all over the surface of the batter, keeping it about an inch away from the sides. Spoon it over as evenly as you can, but don’t try to spread it once it’s on top of the batter. You might add chocolate chips on top. Pour the remaining batter over the cream cheese and gently spread into an even layer. Sprinkle the remaining streusel on top.

(My changes) Commenters said: Use a 10″ angel food tube pan and place on a sheet pan. Zero problems with timing or overflow. Cake should be done at 1 hour, 20 min., rotating the pan midway. 

(Original) Transfer to the oven and bake until the cake springs back slightly in the center when touched and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean or with a few moist crumbs, checking it at about 1 hour and 20 minutes, then baking another 10 minutes if necessary. If your streusel is becoming too dark before the cake is done, loosely cover it with foil.

Run a thin knife around the outside edge of the parchment paper ring to loosen it from the edge of the pan. Cool the cake for 20 to 30 minutes inside the pan, then remove the outer ring of the pan and the parchment paper and let cool completely. If desired, gently loosen the cake from the base and transfer to a platter, or simply leave it on the base to serve.

Garnish with confectioners’ sugar just before serving.

My chocolate cream cheese coffee cake, ready for serving—-great with steaming cups of coffee!

If you want to read about the triumphs and travails of our garden this month, go on to Part 2…

In this month’s blog:

Coda to a Year of Reinvention

The Garden: Growing in the Foggy Chill

Treats from the December Kitchen

December Gallery: Foggy Photos

Chris:

Dec. 24–And the Reinvention Continues. Even as the outgoing occupant of the White House keeps fantasizing that the voters didn’t oust him from the Presidency in November, most of the rest of us keep moving on in reality, reinventing helpful responses to the continuing–even increasing–strength of COVID-19. Mask wearing, social distancing, the new vaccines, and digital everything–meetings, schooling, parties, family gatherings, performances, and business–are just a few of the many reinventions that people around the world have shown the courage to make.

As I write, America is hoping that the outgoing President will stop doing his cruel imitation of Ebenezer Scrooge (except Scrooge wasn’t so bad that he spent his precious time playing golf and pardoning his convicted cronies).  Let’s hope that the outgoing President can still see straight enough to sign the latest COVID-19 relief bill, to help the Americans hardest hit by the pandemic begin to get back on their feet.  Come January 20, the new Administration–which a record number of Americans voted for–will really tackle the crisis, which the new elected leaders seem fully ready to do.

My most immediate wish this holiday season is that the bill is signed and relief can start to flow. 

Dec. 27, 6 PM–guess what? My wish was granted. He signed the relief bill. Do you think that the outgoing Prez was visited by the 3 spirits of Christmas? We’ll wait and see what he does next.

                                                                              *************

I’ve been repeating the theme of Reinvention every month in this blog since May. Some folks still cling to the notion of “getting back to normal”–a vision of a past in which many were comfortable but more were not, and which was steadily destroying our planet. Lucky for all of us, most Americans are putting their minds, hearts, and hard work into “moving forward to better”–building a stronger economy that cares about health, and into achieving more inclusive societal and environmental goals that will make the U.S. a better place to live for everyone.

We can do lots better than “normal.” But it will take

*imagination

*patience

*dedication

*cooperation*

*and the willingness to adapt.

The Garden: Growing in the Foggy Chill

On a foggy late December morning: red beets and green onions in the large raised bed, broccoli in the small raised bed, and lettuce in cages beyond, with oranges (top left corner) and meyer lemons in the background

If anyone knows the need to be patient and willing to adapt, the gardener knows. For a warm, rainless first half of November we were still in fear of new fires in Northern California, and so had to keep the irrigation systems flowing. Since November 17, the inch and a half of rain so far has made a big difference in growing conditions. With temps between 35 and 58, I was able to turn off the irrigation system, because the ground stays moist enough for the winter veggies to grow.

How are our new veggies doing? They are growing apace in the cool, damp weather. The lettuces (left) are thriving in their chicken wire cages, and we are regularly plucking the large leaves for our salads and sandwiches.

The green onions and Bulls Blood beets are also maturing in the large raised bed, for harvest in January we hope (see below). Meanwhile, the broccoli plants (also below, left) get gradually larger, though it’s still too early for the heads to begin to form.

Green onions and Bulls Blood beets in the large raised bed, with Green Magic broccoli to their left in the small raised bed and between the beds.

Oranges and Meyer Lemons. These perennial champions thrived in the hot months with twice-weekly watering, as they turned from buds to tiny green fruit and are now close to full size and ripeness. The meyer lemon bush (below) grows larger every year (it’s now eleven years old), and it is more full of lemons than ever (we had 150 last season).

The navel oranges are fewer in number than last season (about 150 vs. 250), but larger in size. Unexpectedly, a few clusters grew so heavy that we had to clip them off the tree this month so that the branches wouldn’t break, even though we knew that they’d not yet be sweet (full sweetness happens in February). See below.

But the early harvest just meant that we’d be making our orange-and-lemonade earlier–with more sugar and stevia!–as both fruits were already plenty juicy, flavorful, and piquant.

What to do with oranges having to be harvested while still more sour than sweet? Harvest some lemons, too, add sugar and water to the whole batch, and have December orange-and-lemonade!

Swiss Chard: These attractive plants are tasty to the birds (as are all the leafy veggies), so I tend to start them in pots closer to the house, and then plant in ground after they’ve grown larger. Right now, four are in pots and two in the ground, with those in the pots doing better.

After an early morning shower, the sun shines on lettuce, Swiss chard, and aloe in pots on the back veranda, with the orange tree in the background.

Treats from the December Kitchen

Jean: 

The picture immediately above is my version of focaccia just before it went into the oven.  I had recently seen Ree Drummond make a focaccia on the Food Network that I thought looked Christmasy, because she put halved pimento olives and cherry tomatoes into the divots you make in the dough. 

 I read a lot of recipes for this classic Italian bread, and I particularly enjoyed Anne Burrell’s explanation of why she uses a lot of olive oil to bake the dough in. 

Following that advice and using rosemary from our garden (doesn’t it look like Christmas tree sprigs?), Spanish olives, and sliced tomatoes on top, I came up with a festive looking bread.  I was sorry I didn’t have cherry or grape tomatoes. (We’ll have more from our garden next summer!)  I only had a vine-ripe tomato, and I saw that Jeff Mauro makes focaccia with very thin round slices of tomato on top.

So that was my “Christmas tree” version, which you’ll see fresh from the oven in the photo that heads this blog post. It was fun to make–and turned out yummy and fun to look at as well. Not only did it have a crunchy crust, but it was soft inside and had a hint of rosemary in the aroma. It toasted beautifully the next morning, too.

Talk about a Christmasy look: to the left is Chris’s tomato and green pepper omelet (made for one of our holiday breakfasts with the very last peppers from the garden this season). His omelets always turn out super fluffy–he says because of the extra portion of milk he adds to the beaten eggs and grated cheese mixture.

Just below is a bowl of a beef stew I made in the middle of the month. The return of fog, drizzle, and cold always puts me in mind of stews and soups.

Made in the slow cooker to soften the stew beef and the veggies, this aromatic and richly tasty stew included yellow gold potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, mushrooms, apple chunks, garlic cloves (2), red wine, vegetable broth, and herbs from the garden: thyme, marjoram, savory, sage, and rosemary; with the entire mixture salted and peppered to taste as the stew slowly cooked throughout the day.

Along with the stew, I made some of Kelsey Nixon’s quick rolls, pictured with the stew above, to which I added some whole wheat flour. 

Christmas Dinner: For Christmas, I decided on a classic steakhouse menu–really different from our usual simple fare! It included homemade cream of mushroom soup, green salad with blue cheese and balsamic dressing, grilled Kansas City strip steak (the original New York strip), Yorkshire pudding, twice-baked potatoes, creamed spinach, and fresh green beans, along with red wine from Sonoma. 

For Christmas dessert, we had a sort of potpourri trifle made with ginger cookies, pear butter, pear chunks, and blended mascarpone and sweetened condensed milk,  accompanied by lemon-ginger tea. It didn’t look great (no photos, sorry), but the fresh, fruity, crunchy, creamy, and gingery flavors made up for that.

The Yorkshire pudding was almost by accident.  My daughter mentioned that she was making it with a prime rib.  I went looking for a recipe, since I had been thinking of doing a spoon bread.  I learned that the recipes and methods were almost the same, and both batters had similar proportions of eggs, flour, and liquid as those in the crepe batter we had made for breakfast.  I decided to give it a try and baked the rest of the crepe batter in deep muffin tins with oil and drippings from the steak.  Voila! (or whatever else the Brits say).  The “puddings” (that’s definitely what these savory treats are called in Great Britain) puffed properly and were devilishly tasty!

Could we eat on Christmas all we had prepared? No way. The next day, the leftovers made a savory plate, with the steak and Yorkshire puddings warmed in a buttery skillet and green beans still crispy from the microwave. We even added cranberry sauce and leftover butter lettuce salad with radishes for an extra kick.

December Gallery: Foggy Photos

Clustered oranges

As this rose shouts, “Happy New Year!”, let’s keep our new year’s resolutions–or at least try to…

In this month’s post–

Thanksgiving, Reinvented

Thanksgiving Kitchen

A Bit of Rain for the Garden

November Gallery

Chris:

Thanksgiving Reinvented: On Tuesday before Thanksgiving, we drove to nearby Napa County to see how people and nature were coping in the aftermath of the Glass Fire, which began on Glass Mountain in east Napa in late September and swept west through parts of Napa wine country and over the Mayacamas Mountains into Sonoma. As I wrote in October’s blog, the Glass Fire was the final blaze in this year’s historically damaging fire season. Far from being the largest or most destructive of this year’s wildfires, it nevertheless drew nationwide attention because of its iconic location.

What we found was nature hard at work coming back from the devastation, while human workers were repairing some of the damage.

The steadfast, tireless efforts of firefighting first responders had kept flames at bay from crossing Silverado Trail. For two solid weeks, they worked to contain the fires. The result? the vineyards just west of the Trail were largely untouched by the flames, as were the Valley towns of Calistoga and St. Helena. A separate fire, north of St.Helena, devastated vineyards and several wineries, but, again, firefighters saved many acres and the towns. Throughout the valley, we saw signs, many handmade, proclaiming with heartfelt joy and relief “Thank You, First Responders!”

On Glass Mountain itself, we could see something of what their work had prevented in most of the Valley:

The damage we can less easily see, a month beyond the flames, is the effect of the smoke that spread everywhere. This smoke damage threatens the quality of this year’s harvest up and down the Valley. The air may have cleared, and the fall chardonnay golds and burgundy reds may make the Valley vivid, but the effects of the fires remain in the fruit and the vines.

But just imagine how much worse it might have been. “Thank you, first responders,” indeed.

In 2020, we have so many first responders to thank. We now consider as “first responders” so many people in so many roles that the term will never have the same meaning. This year has brought into sharp focus for all of us the vital, dangerous service of millions on the front lines whose day-to-day essential work we have all too often taken for granted–and who have often been paid inequitably:

–store employees in all types of jobs

–restaurant workers

–transit workers

–sanitation workers

–nurses and health technicians

–farm workers

–food processors

–delivery personnel

–home health aides

–teachers and school staff

–cleaners of all types

–hospital and clinic staff

–emergency and ICU staff

–food distribution volunteers and professionals

–construction and renovation workers

–home infrastructure workers of all kinds

–and the list goes on and on. (Think who else belongs on this list.)

Add to this list people whose professions have become so vital in this reinvented pandemic environment that we can’t imagine survival of our society without them:

–physicians

–epidemiologists and researchers

–communication designers and engineers

–web security personnel

–elections personnel in all roles

–mental health workers

–and the list goes on.

When we think of individuals whom we should thank this Thanksgiving, we could literally spend all day just naming them.

The bottom line: Thanksgiving has been reinvented before our eyes and with every breath we are able to take.

Thanksgiving Kitchen

Jean:

On Thanksgiving, we hosted a culinary celebration with our children, children–in-law, and grandchildren from across the country: California, Georgia, New York, and Virginia. Seven families, 22 people in all. We shared a range of Thanksgiving foods, including six pumpkin pies, lots of cranberry sauces, different potato and veggie recipes, and a few different turkey cooking ideas–the most exotic of which was “garbage can” turkey, where one of the families put a skewered turkey under a small metal garbage can outside, then covered and surrounded the can with hot coals from the grill.

How did we have this huge gathering of families in the midst of COVID? In the true spirit of Reinvented Thanksgiving, we did it all via Zoom. We all showed off our different cuisines and asked questions of each other about our ingredients, recipes, and plans for the rest of the day. There was no huge stack of dishes and pots to be washed, no spats among kids (or adults) at a communal table, no fighting over who could watch what on TV, and no having to travel after dinner with too-full stomachs (or tipsy brains).

Best of all, because we’ve gotten used to weekly Family Zooms, this wasn’t a hyper-expensive, full of drama, once-a-year gathering of the clans, but a normal family get-together, picking up on conversations already started, and catching up on the doings of the week.

Will we return to our infrequent long-distance drives and airplane flights to visit our relatives, once COVID has been contained by vaccines? Definitely! But we’ll keep Zooming to be with our family and friends much more regularly in this reinvented world.

Thanksgiving Treats: For the two of us, the Zoom let us show our pastries:

Thanksgiving leftovers, of course!

Here’s how I made Turkey green chili enchiladas:

As always, I use what I have on hand (that’s the beauty of leftovers), maybe supplemented by a few things from the garden or the store, and then put them together in a way that I hope turns out tasty. For this dish, I included the following:

corn tortillas, herb and bread stuffing, chili beans, chunks of turkey, green chili salsa, guacamole salsa, a can of green chili enchilada sauce, black olives, green onions, and grated four-cheese blend…

I baked the enchiladas at 350 degrees F. for 45 minutes, until they were golden brown on top, but you can set time and temp to whatever you think will bring you the best results.

I added green onions, red radishes, and more green chili salsa on top, and added sliced avocado and sliced tomato as a side.

We have plenty for two meals for each of us–more delicious leftovers!

And leftover pumpkin pie for dessert, of course…

A Bit of Rain for the Garden

Chris:

So we finally got a soaking inch or so of rain on November 17, helping to make the threat of more fires less likely in our region and letting gardeners cut way back on irrigation. Then this week the temps started falling into the 30s overnight (low 60s for highs), further decreasing water use.

But with no more rain in the forecast for at least the next week, we’re far from where we need to be this time of year. Still, the new fall veggies are doing nicely, with only minimal damage from the hungry birds so far.

The birds love the leaf lettuce and the Swiss chard, so I’ve used chicken wire cages to protect some of them…

Other lettuce and chard plants are in pots near the house. Once they get too big for the pots, into the ground they’ll go.

Meanwhile, the six new broccoli plants grow in the ground, without cage protection…

Oh yes, and of course the softball-size navel oranges are heading for sweet ripeness in later December. Don’t be fooled–they are still very sour in late November!

And their fellow citrus, the meyer lemons, will also be ripe–and decisively sour!–in December…

Overall, the veggie and fruit garden is progressing steadily, but we could sure use more rain!

November Gallery

On to December in this year of Reinvention…

In this month’s blog:

• Waiting for Rain

• Prepping for Winter

• The October Kitchen

• October Gallery

The yellow-rumped warblers make their annual autumn visit to our garden, including stops on our back fence.

Waiting for Rain

Chris:

This month the fires that have ravaged about 3%–an unprecedented amount–of California began to be contained. Late in September, the Glass Fire, one of the most virulent in our region of the state, began in high winds in the mountains east of Napa Valley and tore quickly into the Valley. A second branch of this fire began near the iconic town of St. Helena in the heart of Napa. It ripped up into the Mayacamas Mountains west of St. Helena, not far south from where the devastating Tubbs Fire moved in 2017. Like the Tubbs Fire, this branch of the Glass Fire spread over the bone dry ridges and into neighboring Sonoma County, threatening the famous wine country vineyards in Kenwood and along Route 12, the Sonoma Wine Country Highway.

For two weeks, fire crews worked 24/7 to limit the blazes, while thousands were evacuated and dense smoke and ash obliterated the usually bright blue skies and harvest-time vine rows. Several wineries were destroyed and others, such as the famous Castello di Amorosa in Napa, sustained major damage, as shown below.

But, thanks to the unflagging efforts of the crews, the fire area didn’t keep spreading and now, in late October, the clear skies have largely returned. Overall in California, the record fire season is now calmer than it has been anytime since the infamous lightning storms of August, as reported in that month’s blog.

Still, as long as no rain has as yet come to the state, each week brings with it new Red Flag Warnings, whenever the winds kick up. The beleaguered state power corporation, Pacific Gas & Electric, every few days announces new preventive blackouts for thousands of customers in targeted communities where new fire activity is likely to happen. So far no new conflagrations have arisen. 

But only sustained precip can really ease anyone’s mind in this unprecedented fire year, and when that rain might come is still guesswork. 

PG&E’s Scott Strenfel, head of meteorology and fire science, described the danger well (Sacramento Bee, 10/23) in explaining the latest upcoming blackout: “We’re seeing four extremes in the weather…: extremely high winds, extremely low humidity, extreme dry fuels due to the hottest average temperatures over the last six months according to records that go back 126 years, and extreme drought across the territory given lack of rainfall.”

So we all wait for the rain and prepare as best we can.

Prepping for Winter 

Honeybee dives into a morning glory that perches atop our meyer lemon bush.

Because, uncharacteristically, temps had remained in the 90s through September and most of October this year, summer veggies that were usually exhausted in September kept producing. Indeed, here in the last week of October, the mild red peppers are still coming (below).

And, as the banner photo at the top of this article shows, I could even harvest other summer produce, like mini tomatoes, Carmello tomatoes, ancho chilis, and even strawberries, up to the middle of this month.

But the daily high temps are finally beginning to come down this week–from the high 80s down to the low 70s–so I’ve made the move to pull out all but those peppers.  And I’ve prepped the raised beds with potting mix and topsoil for the winter veggies I have ready to go in:

The four varieties of tomatoes, plus the cucumbers, ancho chilis, yellow peppers, and arugula are gone, after having done great service. Only two red pepper plants, one in the square raised bed, remain.

I hope this coming week to have the beets, onions, broccoli, leaf lettuce, parsley, and chard put in:

.

…and the perennial arugula has begun popping up once again, too (below).

Meanwhile, the oranges and meyer lemons get bigger, as they slowly head toward ripeness in December:

Already softball size, this year’s navel oranges are just beginning to turn color toward December’s first harvest.

The October Kitchen

Jean:

Who doesn’t love brownies?  Well, Chris often says he can’t take too much chocolate, but when I add a little spice, he’s all in.  Here is the recipe I used for a fudgy brownie with Mexican spices.  However, like some of the reviewers, I increased the cinnamon by 50% and doubled the cayenne.  (I’m not giving exact amounts because I halved the whole recipe for us, and it still made plenty.)

Even fudgier, I think, are my vegan brownies.  Chocolate is such a wonderful ingredient that you can go vegan or gluten-free, and the chocolate just steps up and takes center stage.  Try these, and maybe put a kahlua frosting on top:

For the frosting:

4 oz. 71% or 50% semi-sweet or unsweetened baking chocolate, coarsely chopped *

5 1/2 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into small pieces

1 cup heavy cream

3/4 cup sugar (* if using unsweetened baking chocolate, increase the sugar to 1 cup)

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon Kahlua

For a cakier brownie, I don’t think you can do much better than your favorite purchased brownie mix or recipe, with just some add-ins.  I served them as shown above, with dulce de leche ice cream (to cut the sweetness, of course)!

https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/food-network-kitchen/mexican-brownies-recipe-2103541

More October kitchen goodies!

Green tomato, pepper sauce

Turkey, peppers, ancho stir fry

no-knead bread

blueberry pie

October Gallery

Check out this hummingbird pair that I was lucky enough to capture with my phone camera in the side garden. The orange fuchsia is their nectar target. It’s rare that I see this pair interact so long and so loudly!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvphLuqnI9Q&feature=youtu.be

Then check out this Northern Mockingbird that I was lucky enough to zoom in and video singing in our neighborhood almost 300 feet away. So much perfect sound coming from so far away and from such a small body!

Strawberries still ripen in the ceramic pot on the back veranda.

Painted lady butterfly rests on the back garden lantana on an early October morning.

The ever-blooming white rose bush draws bees of many varieties.

Long-blooming vinca, pomegranate blossoms, and even chive blossoms in the top left corner keep October colorful.

Honeybees swarm to the Mexican sage in the front garden in October.

Day lilies keep budding and blooming in the front garden in the unseasonably warm October.

Cluster of yellow rose buds, front garden

Caliente geranium new this year in the front garden

Every month shows new salmon roses in the back garden

This blue grey gnatcatcher (below) probing in the coreopsis in the back garden is one of a flock that visits the garden for a day on its twice-yearly migrations to the Sierras in spring and back south in October.

Chris:

Fires Live On

Since I last wrote, Oregon has seen unprecedented wildfires and mass evacuations, a situation resolved until next year by mid-September rains. But the record-breaking fire season in California marches on, with no rain expected until late October, at the earliest. As of today, 20 named fires, in various states of containment, burn, and 3.7 million acres (about 3% of the state) have been damaged. As reported in last month’s blog, very rare lightning strikes in mid-August caused many of these fires, 60% of them in national forests under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Forest Service. Most of the rest are on private land, with the state of California providing the resources to fight the blazes. Personnel from several states, plus Canada and Mexico, have been working with the more than 10,000 California fire first responders to try week upon week to quell the outbreaks and build earthen walls to contain the spread.

The tireless work of these firefighters, aided in the past two weeks by somewhat cooler and less windy weather, has halted the spread in many parts of the state. But the terrain where most of the fires live–wooded mountains, steep hills, and deep canyons–makes it unlikely, even impossible, to fully put the fires out.

So a sudden shift in the winds and windy bursts of greater intensity can cause a “contained” fire to become once again an inferno, as happened three weeks ago in Plumas National Forest in the northeast part of the state, near where the deadly Camp Fire of 2018 took the lives of 85 in Butte County. The Plumas Fire itself, now renamed the North Complex, took 15 lives of its own as it roared through the tiny town of Berry.

Meanwhile, in Southern California, the Bobcat Fire, in the rugged Angeles National Forest not far from Los Angeles, has been stubbornly resisting containment. It has brought dangerously smoky air to the population center of the state.

As long as the ground stays dry and daytime temperatures stay in the 80s or above, the threat remains. The lightning strikes in August coincided with a record heat wave–105 to 114 some days–to set the stage for the record-breaking fire season. But rather than these conditions being a freak event, experts agree that climate change is making them more frequent, creating what most here are calling a “new normal.” Indeed, the great majority of Californians find it incomprehensible that anyone (like the current President of the U.S.) could deny the steady change that we live through year by year. We can’t understand why some so-called national leaders not only ignore, but actively work against, the need to reduce carbon emissions in order to avoid this global catastrophe in the making.

As Always, Water Makes a Difference

While the areas that burn must depend completely on the hoped-for rain to douse the fires until next season, Jean and I are among the fortunate millions in California who have plentiful water to keep our plants drip-irrigated or conservatively hand-watered. Across the world, having or not having water is always a matter of political and economic choice by the powerful. So is whether or not the lucky will choose to conserve some of the water they can access. When we take our daily early-morning walks through our neighborhood, we pass house after house where the irrigation of choice is lawn sprinklers. Gallons of the precious nourishment just run off the sidewalks and driveways to disappear into the concrete storm sewers.

In the September Garden: Fall on Hold

For us, who were close to the mid-August blazes, but who now just worry about the next outbreaks before we get rain, the smoke- and ash-filled air of a month ago has been replaced by the blue skies and bright sunlight we expect this time of summer-into-fall. The days begin to shorten and the plants of summer struggle against the lessened sunlight to produce the last few among the fruits that so abounded from June through August.

September is that month which marks the transition from exhausted spring/summer veggies to the winter crops I’ll plant in October. Or at least it’s supposed to be that way. I was planning to pull out the four remaining tomato plants, the four pepper plants, and the two cucumbers–all of which have done great work from April through August. I was actually looking forward to some bare soil in the back garden and to emptying temporarily a few of the pots.

But the summer heat has persisted, with temps into the 90s and even over 100 (predicted for this weekend). So, shortened days or not, a few of the plants have refused to stop producing. And, as you know if you read this blog, I resist pulling out plants that keep thriving, even if I’m itching to move on to the next season.

September Gallery

The Carmello tomato I transplanted in June (left) has now in September produced multiple small fruit. Same with the yellow pepper (below) that I transplanted in July from one raised bed, where it got less sun, to the larger bed where it gets full sun.

The blueberry mini tomato (below) that I planted in April grew to almost six feet tall and sent shoots out well beyond the cage. This month, I chose to cut down the main stem and just leave the extensive ground cover, which continues to produce fruit and new blooms even as the days shorten.

The dwarf pomegranate (below) was self-seeded from one that I was growing in a pot on the verandah. That plant is long gone, but the current one has been growing for four years and is now four feet tall. Its fruit grow larger each year.  And even as the fruit ripen in the fall, new blooms keep coming.

The champion zucchini (below) might still be fruiting if we hadn’t had our fill of mammoth zucchinis this summer. These plants are magnificent, gorgeous and hearty, and they don’t hog water. And I can’t say enough about the versatility, taste, and resilience of the fruit.

Heading to winter, the navel oranges this year are large, even if they will not be as plentiful as this past season. Size and number usually coincide: the fewer the larger and so on.

September has become the month for eggplants in our garden. Ours don’t fruit before the end of July or early August, and the most come in September.

On to October, with hopes for good news about fires, and stories about cooking and baking!

Our vinca and chives thrive even amid the nearby wildfires and the scorching heat wave.

Chris:

February’s record low rainfall–0.0″–should have prepared us for what has happened this August. With no appreciable rain since December’s excellent 8-12 inches, we were all set up for an early, violent fire season. For Northern California, it’s never if, only when. And with the world’s climate getting slowly and steadily warmer, it’s easy to predict that the fire season will start earlier in this region of long, hot, dry summers.

Thunderstorms and High Heat. It was less easy to predict how our current fires would suddenly ignite. For the past three years, our publicly-traded power corporation, PG&E, has been largely to blame, and we have all paid dearly for their systemic lapses in oversight. (See December 2018 and November 2019.) This month, however, a record heat wave sent temps soaring to 105 or greater for a week in the middle of August. At the same time, hurricane Fausto off the coast of Mexico sent–incredibly–thunderstorms into California. Now, we never have rain in August. But this year, in addition to a smidgen of rain, we got lightning strikes, lots of them, all across the state. The result was more than 600 brush fires in a little over 3 days all up and down the state. More than 20 of these grew large and hard to contain.

The worst have been in Northern California. As I write, a cluster of such fires has more or less merged into a massive conflagration (called the LNU Lightning Complex) that in a week has swallowed up more than 350,000 acres across Sonoma, Napa, Solano, and Lake Counties–California’s fabled wine country. Thinly-spread fire corps, their numbers already depleted by various effects of COVID-19 (see May, June, and July 2020), are battling to save people, structures, and livestock across the rugged mountains, hills, and canyons. The cities of Fairfield and Vacaville have been threatened, as well as iconic towns, vineyards, and ranches of the region. Many thousands of people have been temporarily evacuated. A blanket of acrid smoke and ash dims the skies for fifty miles in all directions.

Credit: Sacramento Bee, August 21, 2020

Trying Not to Overdramatize. Still, for folks outside California who only get the lurid headlines and the even more lurid photos, it’s too easy for writers to ignore the steady, effective work of the many thousands of firefighters–including those from other states and even other countries–and all their thousands of supporting workers in keeping the damage and danger to a minimum. Yes, the current fires across the state have burned 1.3 million acres so far–or 2031 square miles (twice the size of the little state of Rhode Island). But those 2,031 square miles are only a tiny fraction (1.2%) of the 164,000 square miles of California. (That’s 104,000,000 acres.) As horrible as the fire damage is to the people and wildlife in the areas burned, we shouldn’t ignore how much doesn’t burn, and how much is saved by the collective work and courage of so many.

If you want to get some sense of the challenges facing the state and local agencies working so hard to minimize fire danger in California, see this current article in the Sacramento Bee.

Nor should we overlook the collective resilience of the 40 million Californians who carry on their work and reinventively adapt amid the danger posed by the fires, just as they have done their best to survive, reinvent, and assist throughout the now six months of the pandemic. Work of infinite kinds goes on, and most Californians every day protect and serve their fellow Californians by following state and local safety guidelines.

Staying in Place, for Yet Another Reason. Those of us who have grown accustomed to staying indoors for most of every day and for most days of the week because of the virus just shrug our shoulders when the weather folks tell us to stay indoors out of the smoke. “So what else is new?” we ask.

But when we do go out for a walk, or drive to a store, and when I go out to work in the garden, we just don our comfortable masks and go about our business, at least for a short while. I won’t undertake any strenuous garden projects while the air alert persists, but I can water my pots and can pick ripe tomatoes, zucchini, peppers, cucumbers, and herbs, all for less than an hour a day.  Any time-intensive trimming has to wait, as well as any new planting or transplanting jobs that I am itching to get into. I realize that I need to restrain my old man’s pride in my (limited) physical capabilities, lest I injure myself and limit my ability to be of service to others.

Our cucumber leaves covered in ash from the LNU wildfires

The Garden Goes On, in Typical August Fashion

The robust harvest of July is past, but the tomatoes, peppers, cukes, and zooks have kept producing in the high heat, and the herbs are as healthy as ever. The rosa bianca eggplants are just about to come into their own, with promise for September. Meanwhile, the green oranges and the green meyer lemons get bigger.  It’s August.

A few highlights:

Tomatoes: The 2 Carmello mid-size plants gave up their last ripe gems last week, after having been marvelously productive until then. Definitely on the menu for planting next spring.

Carmello plants still producing in mid August

Meanwhile, the blueberry mini tomato plant is still lush in its fourth month, with a dozen or more ripe jewels harvested most days and lots of yellow blossoms all over the plant. How long will it keep going?

Peppers: The 1 ancho chili plant and the 3 mild peppers (green, yellow, and red) have been steady producers since June, and are still fruitful.

Mild yellow pepper plant in raised bed

Zucchini: Our one magnificent plant has been producing mammoth fruit for more than 3 months and is still going strong. It’s amazing how the fruit keeps fresh in the fruit bowl for weeks, even as we chop it bit by bit for stir-frying, omelets, soups, etc.  When there’s too much for us to use or give away now, the rest can be chopped up into bags for freezing and use after the summer.

The mammoth zucchini plant, six feet across

Still fruiting and blooming in late August

Prepping huge zucchini for roasted veggie mix (see below)

Lemon Cucumbers

Lemon cucumber still blooming in August and new fruit hiding beneath the leaves

Rosa Bianca Eggplants

New blooms in late August on both plants signal that September will be their major month.

The Kitchen Goes on, Too

Jean:

Despite fires, smoke, extreme temps, and even more reason to stay inside, the kitchen always gives us a comfortable climate. There’s always something good to make, like…

Roasted Zucchini, Peppers, Ancho Chilis, Eggplant, and Potatoes, Topped with Parmesan

or something sweet that reminds me of cooking with my mother…

Blueberry Lemon Chiffon Cake

Watching reruns of the Great British Baking Show finales, I was inspired to make a chiffon cake (which was contestant John’s winning finale showstopper in Series 3).  I haven’t made one of these for years, but it reminded me of baking as a kid with my mother.  I could not find a recipe for this cake on the BBC website, but I found a classic chiffon cake recipe on the Great Canadian Show website.

2 eggs, separated

1-1/2 cups sugar (I used a cup of sugar and half a cup of sugar substitute)

2-1/4 cups cake flour

1 T. baking powder

1 tsp. salt

1/3 cup salad oil

1 cup water, milk, or juice (I used a frozen container of our own Meyer lemon juice with some water to complete the measure)

1 tsp. vanilla or other flavoring

Preheat your oven to 325 or 350 degrees.  Grease and flour two round cake pans (I found this easier than using an angel-food type pan).

For the meringue: In a small bowl, beat the egg whites until foamy; then add 1/2 cup of the sugar one tablespoon at a time, beating until the meringue is very stiff and glossy.

For the cake batter: Measure and sift or combine the remaining sugar, flour, baking powder, and salt in a large mixer bowl.  Add the oil, half the liquid, plus the vanilla or other flavoring.  Beat one minute on high, scraping the bowl constantly. Add the remaining liquid and egg yolks; beat one minute, scraping occasionally.

Fold the meringue into the batter; then pour the mixture delicately into pans.  Bake 30-35 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean.

My own wrinkle: I put some lemon curd in between the layers. A good choice! I also debated making a lemon glaze for the top.  I should have done that.

Instead, I decided to top it with a blueberry mixture that was too heavy for this delicate cake–the cake fell over a few minutes after the photo above was taken!

However, as I know about most cakes, it tasted good no matter what it looked like. Chris agrees. He loved the contrast between the blueberry and the Meyer lemon.

Besides, the crumb on this chiffon cake was so delicate–I certainly didn’t need those five more eggs that other recipes call for.

Late August Gallery

Yellow rose and always more buds, front garden

Three honeybees clamor in a white rose, back garden

Fountain grass, front garden

Latesummer pomegranate blooms, back garden

Multicolor lantana, back garden

New blackberry vine, side garden

Latesummer day lily, front garden

Latesummer alstroemeria, side garden

September awaits…

A July week’s harvest from some of our plants

In This Month’s Blog:

1. More Reinvention amid COVID-19

2. Transplanting: Reinvention on a Tiny Scale

3. July in the Kitchen: Garden Stir-fry, Sauces, Pickles

4. The Gallery: MidSummer Sampler

Chris:

1. More Reinvention amid COVID-19

While most other industrialized nations around the world have succeeded in controlling COVID-19 by maintaining effective, coordinated vigilance, the U.S. continues to struggle mightily. But there are examples of strong and effective leadership, even at the federal level.

Check out the video interview that Alice Park of Time conducted last week with Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the U.S. National Institutes of Health. If you don’t know him, Collins, an Obama appointee, is, among many other things, Anthony Fauci’s very admiring boss. (He called Fauci “a national treasure” in another interview last week.)

If you want to be inspired and heartened in this difficult time, watch how Collins describes the international coalition of scientists, including members of the World Health Organization, who are working efficiently to develop viable vaccines for COVID-19 in record time.

Collins exemplifies what’s possible when your method is to submerge your own ego and bring experts together online from around the world to meet essential goals that all nations share. That’s reinvention.

2. Transplanting: Reinvention on a Tiny Scale

Strawberry in ceramic pot

Succulent in ornamental pot

California fan palm

In May , I wrote about a number of new plants in the reinvented garden. This month I feature transplanting, a different kind of reinvention I enjoy. In a small, diverse garden like ours, with variations in sunshine, shade, and soil environment, transplanting means taking plants that have been growing in one environment and shifting them to another–in hopes that their new homes will help the plants survive and thrive. For a necessarily frugal gardener like me, I hate to think of any plant as expendable.

Why transplant? Three Reasons

Reason 1: When I transplant, it’s mostly because a plant has not done well in one place and I want to save it. The strawberry plant (above, top left) is one of these. Actually, this plant had struggled in two prior places: (1) in ground, where our alkaline soil and full sun had kept it and its fellow strawberry plants from growing as large and as fruitful as they could be, and (2) in a wide and shaded, but shallow, pot that had not given the rhizome room to spread out. A deep ceramic pot in partial shade has now been home to this formerly struggling plant for most of a year. The new environment has allowed me to build an acid-rich soil that has let it flourish.

Another transplant to save the plant was that of the delicious arugula (below), which now tries to dominate a section of our back garden, so that I continually must cut it back. (This is a good problem!) This arugula had grown from seed in a pot in the shady part of our front garden, but it was dying because it needed more sun and room to spread out. Since transplanting more than a year ago, it not only thrives with only a little water, but its constant bloom of tiny yellow flowers makes it the most consistent bee magnet in the garden.

Bee in arugula blosson

Arugula beside eggplants

Reason 2: I also transplant when a plant does well, but where it is growing keeps it from coming into its own. As I wrote last October, our California Fan Palm (two pics above, bottom) was flourishing at 2 feet tall in its large pot on our veranda for three years, but I wanted to see what it could do in ground in full sun in the front. That was eight years ago, and wow! 25 feet tall.

Reason 3: Sometimes I transplant just to spread the lively beauty around. Because cacti and other succulents can be grown from cuttings and need little water, why not plant small bits of these attractive plants around the garden and see how they do? For example: the pale green succulents I recently transplanted into the ornamental pot on our veranda (two pics above, top right) had sprung up in another part of the garden where they couldn’t be seen. Now they bring joy to our eyes each day.

An even better example is this strikingly gorgeous aloe plant:

…which has flourished for three years in our tea-cup planter on the veranda–and which has now produced four additional plants, all squeezed into the cup’s small circle. These four cute “pups,” as the growers call them, need their own space. So I carefully separated them from their mother…

…and the four pups now luxuriate (above) in their own comfy homes around the garden; while Mom…

…has the tea cup all to herself.

Transplanting doesn’t always work, of course. Sometimes plants are too far gone to be revived, or the new home proves just as inhospitable as the former one.  But give your transplants a chance (and regular water). Exercise patience, and you may be rewarded. Example: I thought a scrawny sucker from a Carmello tomato had only a small chance to succeed, and when I snipped it off and transplanted it into its own large pot in mid-June, it suffered in the 95-plus degree heat for two weeks with no improvement.  But the new roots were building and eventually took hold, so that by week 3 the sucker turned deep green and was growing. Here it is on July 16, three times as tall and about to produce its first yellow flowers:

3. July in the Kitchen: Garden Stir-fry, Sauces, Pickles

Jean:

What a great month for turning garden produce into easy, light, tasty, healthful dishes! Here are three recipes that employ that bountiful produce in versatile ways.

1. Veggie-Herb Stir-Fry

This colorful skillet stir-fry (above) features the garden veggies (below) that Chris brings in from the garden…

Stir-fry ingredients, L-R: tomatoes, ancho chilis, zucchini, grape tomatoes (top), green peppers, Swiss chard

…and combines with the herbs he also picks:

Herbs, L-R: purple Russian sage, marjoram, thyme (top), Greek oregano, chives, Italian basil, spicy oregano

Here’s the tedious part: If you use fresh herbs like these (you don’t have to, if you have the dried versions handy), you have to separate the tiny leaves from the woody stems. But once you get the hang of it (as Chris has), it’s actually quite easy.

Cooking: In no more than a tablespoon of your oil of choice (I use olive oil), fry the mixture of veggies and herbs on low to medium heat until the ingredients reach the softness you prefer.

As for spiciness, if you use spicy herbs or a spicy oil, the mix may be spicy enough, but if you like it more picante, sprinkle in hot pepper, hot sauce, or whatever else you like. Salt to taste.

The key to this dish is to stir it often enough so that the spices and herbs get mixed in, the whole melange swaps around, and the veggies soften without sticking. Paying attention to the cooking is fun, because the aromas of the veggies and the herbs just go to your head.

Use the stir fry as a side or as a meatless main dish–your choice. We’ve also used it as a pizza topping.

2. Tomato Sauces

Garden herbs for tomato sauce

Sauce cooking and onions sauteeing

Our good crops of Carmello and “blueberry mini” grape tomatoes have produced several jars of tomato-herb sauces already this summer. The sauces take more cooking time than a stir-fry does, but the prep time is about the same. All together, we spend about 2 hours prepping and cooking the tomato sauces: about 35 minutes in prep and an hour to 90 minutes in cooking.

Prep:  Wash the tomatoes. Chop off the stems. Strip the tiny leaves from the woody stems of the herbs. Chop larger-leaved herbs like basil and culinary sage into small pieces. Chop half a medium-size onion into half-inch pieces.

Cook:

• Place 12 medium-sized tomatoes into 3 cups of water in a large saucepan and bring to a boil. Boil until the skins begin to detach from the tomatoes. Use tongs to remove the skins.
• Saute chopped onions in a skillet at low heat in an oil of choice (I like to use butter or olive oil). Saute until onions are translucent.
• Continue to cook skinned tomatoes on low heat.
• Add in cooked onions and the chopped herbs.
• Add other ingredients to taste: we used red wine, green olives, spices, salt, and pepper in recent sauces, but feel free to use other ingredients you prefer.
• Tasting often, continue cooking sauce mixture on low heat for a half hour or more, or until all the tomatoes have cooked down into a sauce.  If you need to add more water before the tomatoes have completely cooked down, do so. Don’t rush this process. Take your time and enjoy the aroma.
• When the cooking is done, turn off the heat. The sauce is now ready to serve as a topping for pastas, meats, or veggies.  Let the sauce cool before saving it into jars for future use.

So far this season, we’ve made three different styles of tomato-herb-based sauces: mild, spicy (arrabiata-style), and spicy-green olive (arrabiata-putanesca style). Be inventive with your ingredients!

The great thing about both stir-fry and the sauces is that they keep well in the refrigerator and can be used in a wide variety of dishes. Enjoy!

3. Cucumber Pickles

This one is really easy. Just slice the cukes (we’re growing lemon cukes this season, as shown above, but any type will do). Then make your pickling mixture with vinegar (we’re using white vinegar this year), water, and whatever spices and herbs you prefer. This summer’s mix is really simple: salt and black pepper!

As you use up the pickles, just add more slices to the mixture in the jar. Shake up the closed jar to coat the new slices, and then just let them marinate in the refrigerator. Perfect!

4. The Gallery: MidSummer Sampler

One of our daughters created this pastel rendering of a photo from the February blog. A beautiful gift to us.

Hibiscus bloom in the early morning sun

Two new pomegranate fruit amid the blooms

Cluster of ripe “blueberry mini” tomatoes

Lemon cucumbers proliferate on the vine.

Aloe flower stalk

Our first eggplant fruit of the season, still growing.

Our scrub jays just won’t stay out of the picture. This one landed next to me, when I had the camera handy.

Two of our mighty zucchini: I picked them the same day.

One tiny lantana cluster

I can never resist snapping the salmon roses.

The green oranges and the nopales just love to confront each other.

A tisket, a tasket, a garden in a basket

In 2017, our peach tree produced one peach. This year, too. We picked it the next day, and it tasted as perfect as it looked.

This yellow swallowtail visits our garden for a few seconds every day as it tours the neighborhood. I was so lucky to get this photo.

Our two Carmello plants this season have been glorious producers. They love the full sun.

Stir-fry in the making: ancho chilis, mild peppers, tomatoes

High noon under the pergola, late July

And on to August!

In this month’s blog:

1. Gardening While Black, and Other Endangered Stories

2. The Versatile Apricot and Other June Kitchen Inventions

3. Fruit and Veggie Garden Update

4. This Month’s Gallery: Endangered Friends

Chris:

In this June of reinvention, as nations struggle with the twin pandemics of COVID-19 and racial injustice, an article from the LA Times  about Jimmy and Logan Williams really hit home to me as a gardener.  My whiteness lets me assume a level of safety that many American plant-nurturers have not been allowed to feel–even those who are among the most brilliant and successful in their calling. I hope you’ll read the article.

I wrote in April about the garden as a place of solace in troubling times. Gardening keeps me busy and focused on other creatures besides myself.  Studying life as intricate and exquisitely beautiful as this dragonfly (above) who likes to perch on a tomato cage in our garden helps me appreciate the creativity of nature, the ability of life to adapt and surprise, yet also to persevere through one change after another in the course of generations.

But if the garden teaches me about perseverance and strength, it also teaches me about fragility. This dragonfly on one of our iris stalks (below) is endangered, not only because the adult dragonfly lives only a few weeks, but because dragonfly species around the earth are declining through such human actions as pesticides and habitat destruction. All these two adults want is to find a mate and pass on their genes. But that seems less and less a possibility.

Still, despite the fragility of life, including my own as an old man in this COVID-19 world, I find so much hope in the intense lives of dragonflies, and so much hope in the tender art of fellow gardeners like the Williams family. I’ll try to use that hope for action that can nurture the hope of my fellow humans and increase the success of the creatures with whom we share this earth.

All My Loving rose, side garden

2. The Versatile Apricot and Other June Kitchen Inventions

Jean:

The picture above shows apricots three ways.  I wanted to make a simple apricot tart using some of our avalanche of apricots this year.  Instead of using my scarce flour to make a pie crust, I took out a box of ginger snaps I had bought when having a cookie craving a few weeks ago.  I figured the spicy ginger snaps would complement and stand up well to the full-flavored fruit.

Well, the ginger snaps broke down easily in the food processor, allowing me to add just a few tablespoons of melted butter and brown sugar to make a crust that could be pressed into the bottom of my tart pan.  I baked that for about ten minutes to try to reduce sogginess.

I also spread some white chocolate chips over it to allow them to melt and create a barrier.    I threw together part of a package of cream cheese and some yogurt that I had, to make a little creamy layer, and then lay halved apricots on top.

I wanted a glaze on top, but the apricot jam Chris had made was a little thick and partially obscured the pattern of the fresh apricots.

Nevertheless, the tangy fruit paired well with the sweet creamy cheese and the crispy crust –and the tart disappeared quickly!

Lemon Blackberry Cake

Lemon blackberry upside down cake

This recipe is from Karen MacNeil’s book Wine, Food & Friends.  I love upside down cakes because they are so easy — no worrying about frosting.  Just some whipped cream or ice cream on top or alongside is perfection.  Here’s all you do:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  While it’s heating up, melt 2 Tbsp. butter in a 9-inch cake pan.  Sprinkle 1/3 cup packed brown sugar over the butter, return it to the oven and let it heat 1 or 2 minutes until the sugar melts.  Pull it out, top with 1 cup blackberries and a teaspoon or two of grated lemon rind; set aside.

Now for the dry ingredients.  Combine 1-1/4 c all-purpose flour, 1-1/2 tsp. baking powder and 1/4 tsp. salt in a small bowl.

Then the wet ingredients.  Beat 2 Tbsp. softened butter with 2/3 c. granulated sugar in a large bowl until well blended and fluffy.  Add one large egg and 1 tsp. fresh lemon juice (or 1 tsp. vanilla, or both, what the heck).  Beat well.

Add the flour mixture to the egg mixture, alternating with 1/2 cup milk.  MacNeil says “fat-free,” but I don’t think so.  (Again, what the heck.)  The mixing is easiest if you begin and end with the flour mixture.

Bake at 350 degrees for 35-40 minutes.  Cool in the pan on a wire rack for 5 minutes, then invert onto a cake plate.  (Put the cake plate upside down over the hot pan first, make sure you get a good grip with trusted hot pads, and flip it fast, then ease the cake pan straight off.)  With any luck, the cake comes out easily,  and you’ll have a beautiful cake.  And you didn’t have to struggle to prepare the pan with lining and all that!

West African Stew

This meatless stew is fun to make–very hearty and nutritious. I’m going to give you the quick, non-recipe version.

Put a couple of tablespoons of oil in a pan and start to soften a handful of finely chopped onions or shallots.  Salt them, add a couple of tablespoons of tomato paste (or catsup), and let that cook down a few minutes.

Add spices:  These can include ginger (powdered or fresh), turmeric or curry powder, cayenne pepper, black pepper, garlic (fresh or other forms) — whatever you like.  The stew should be a little spicy, to your taste.

Sorry if I’m not being precise or particularly authentic in my ingredients and timing, but stay-at-home cooking during the pandemic gives you permission to be spontaneous and creative–and to use what you have on hand or can fetch from your garden.

The point is just to cook a little of the rawness out of these ingredients. The mixture is pretty thick at this point and you don’t want it to burn, so next you have to get the liquid in.  Throw in a can of tomatoes in any form you have and some water or vegetable broth, enough to cook the chopped yams or sweet potatoes you will add in next.

Let all that simmer until the potatoes are substantially softened.  Then add a can of coconut milk and some greens, like chard or kale, plus some fresh basil. Simmer the stew another ten minutes or so.

The final ingredient is peanuts.  I don’t care for cooked peanuts, so I throw roasted peanuts on top for some crunch rather than mixing them into the stew.  You can do without the peanuts, and the dish will still be tasty and healthful, but the peanuts will enhance the overall texture and flavor. You might also garnish with a few grape tomatoes, as shown in the photo above.

Sally Lunn Bread

This bread is fun and easy to bake.  (Do I sound repetitious?)  It has rich flavor and texture, with a crunchy crust.  My mother liked to make it when I was a kid, so I was excited to find recipes for it in both my Bobby Flay cookbook and my bread machine cookbook.  I had made it once in the bread machine, and it turned out well, so I decided to use Bobby Flay’s recipe to make this one.

Sally Lunn is actually a type of brioche bread.  Instead of the austere flour, salt, and water of a basic yeast bread recipe, Sally Lunn is a rich dough made with milk, egg, sugar, and butter.  You can see and taste the difference.  Sally Lunn, like brioche, makes great French bread, which is the direction Bobby takes it.

Just as great as the taste is how easy it is to make.  Bobby’s recipe has you mix the dough in the KitchenAid with a bread hook.  Then you pour it into the tube pan without kneading and let it rise in there.  I realized why this is a great idea.  The dough is so sticky that transferring it or handling it more would be difficult, but once it is in the tube pan, you’re almost home.  Just let it rise, bake it, and dig into that lovely crust after cooling and popping it out of the pan.  Make French toast with the last few pieces.  Yum.

Three Other June Treats:

Chicken breasts grilled with Apricot halves and Zucchini wedges

Zucchini bread topped with walnuts

Twin casseroles: Cauliflower Cheddar and Chicken Biscuits

3. Fruit and Veggie Garden Update

Back garden toward northeast: eggplant, arugula, fennel (foreground); 2 pepper plants and 2 tomato plants in square raised bed; chard and 2 Carmello tomatoes in farther raised bed; ancho chilis and mild yellow pepper in right background; lemon cucumbers between the raised beds.

Chris:

Apricots

Read Jean’s cooking section above. This is the month of the apricot–more than 1000, our record for a year!

Ripe apricots still cover the tree mid June, even as many have already fallen to the ground. We’ve used hundreds for drying, jam, baking, freezing, and just plain snacking.

Chard

The massive Swiss chard plant in the raised bed (see the early morning panorama photo, just below) has now been in the ground going on 7 months, all through winter and spring and now into summer. I keep trimming back the flower stalks at the top of the plant, and so this winner keeps churning out huge green and tasty leaves for soups, stews, and side dishes. How long will this marvel keep going?

L-R: lupine with white blooms ; mild pepper and ancho chili (in pots); 2 Carmello tomato plants; massive Swiss chard

Cherry Plums

Now, in late June, the cherry plums are at their peak of juicy, tangy ripeness. Normally, I’d be pitting and cooking hundreds for our Plumderful jam. But we still have several large jars remaining from last year’s bountiful harvest, plus new jars of apricot jam, so this year maybe I’ll take a break from making more of that deep burgundy delight.

Cherry plums on display, 2020

Then again, Jean said this morning that she didn’t want us to run out, which was music to my ears! So here’s (below) the small batch I made with 160 of the little beauties.

Eggplant

These 2 late bloomers have been in ground 8 weeks, and are growing steadily toward late July-early August harvest. Both Rosa Bianca varietals, they have just begun putting out lavender flowers.

One of our 2 Rosa Bianca eggplants

Lemon Cucumbers

The two plants have been in the ground 9 weeks, began flowering in week 6, and have a bunch of lemon-shaped fruit growing. This is our first year of this variety, and we have high hopes.

One of our 2 lemon cucumber plants, with several fruit just starting and many yellow blossoms

Peppers and Chilis

3 mild varieties (green, yellow, and red) have been in ground 10 weeks, and all are fruiting, but not yet ready for harvest. The pepper in a large pot (see below) is doing particularly well.  The potted ancho chili (below, right), a first-timer in our garden, is very precocious, with a bunch of full-sized fruit. Two harvested so far.

Mild red pepper in pot

Ancho chili in pot

Tomatoes

4 of our 6 tomato plants this season are new to the garden. The 2 repeats, both of whom were outstanding producers in 2019, are a husky cherry red and a SunGold grape tomato. The SunGold is our champ so far, with well over 100 fruit, and already about a half dozen new ripe ones per day. The husky cherry red got a late start, but is catching up.

Husky cherry red tomato

SunGold grape tomato

The 4 newbies have been excellent surprises so far. 2 of them are Carmello mid-size tomatoes, and both are lush and sturdy producers, with our having harvested 4 of more than 50 (!) growing and ripening on the 2 plants.

1st harvested Carmellos

Carmellos ripening

The final 2 newby tomatoes are blueberry minis, which have been in ground for 9 weeks and are fruiting in profusion. So far only a few fruit have fully ripened, but these stand out for their dark blue to black coloring. We should have a bunch of ripe ones to show in the blog in July.

Not yet ripe Blueberry mini tomato cluster

Zucchini

We’ve picked 3 foot-long+ zooks so far from our one luxurious plant, with more on the way. Delicious eating in sauces, in casseroles, grilled with chicken, and in Jean’s zucchini bread (see cooking section above).

Zucchini blossom and new fruit (center left)

4. This Month’s Gallery: Endangered Friends

Pair of cabbage leaf butterflies in periwinkle, back garden

Scrub jay fledgling in peach tree

Bumble bee in lupine, back garden

Anna’s hummingbird on pomegranate blossom, back garden

Find the bee on one of these bee balm flowers, front garden.

Cabbage leaf butterfly on wallflower (erisymum)

Bumble bee on late-blooming wisteria

Bee on red rose cluster

Cabbage leaf butterfly on eggplant beside arugula flowers

On to July in hope!