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.

Arugula beside eggplants

Bee in arugula blosson

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!

Reinventing the front garden: Red Penstemon in foreground, with Gaillardia, Alyssum Royal Carpet, and Orange Kalanchoe behind. Heavenly Bamboo rises above the Alyssum. The Penstemon, Gaillardia, and Kalanchoe are new since last year.

In this month’s blog:

Reopening? Or Reinvention?

Reinventing the Garden: New Plants and Reasons Why

May 2020 Fruit and Veggie Update

Reinventing in the Kitchen: Bread, Mother’s Day, and Beyond

May 2020 Gallery

Chris:

As of today, the cases of COVID-19 keep rising in the US by 15,000 or more per day–over 1.7 million in total–and the deaths have skyrocketed to more than 100,000–300% worse than in any other country. Nevertheless, every state is being pushed by the White House to “reopen,” almost as if the pandemic didn’t exist, and all states are relaxing restrictions. However, these relaxations include safety recommendations that vary with state and local governments.

Meanwhile, Jean and I have been working within the partial restrictions recommended by national health experts and still recommended here in California for seniors. (All but a few California counties have now been allowed to reopen most types of businesses, including retail, restaurants for sit-down dining, hair salons, etc., as part of Phases II and III of the reopening, but partial restrictions remain in all those counties.)

“Reinvention,” Not “Reopening”

I’d like to propose a different term than “reopening” for what will happen as the restrictions are lifted.

I propose “reinvention.” “Reopening” implies trying to go back to the way things were. “Reinvention” implies learning from the pandemic and making needed changes. Here are just four examples:

(1) The pandemic has alerted people to facts of health and well-being that won’t just disappear.  Because so many COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths have been hastened by such pre-existing conditions as high blood pressure, diabetes II, and compromised breathing, all of us should have even greater incentive to adopt

• better eating habits (and access to more healthful food options for low-income communities)
  
• regular exercise, and
• reduced carbon emissions.

Moreover, we must push politicians to create affordable health insurance for all Americans, since so many of us have suffered the double whammy of reduced income and endangered health.

(2) The pandemic has disproportionately impacted the poor, immigrants, persons of color, and elderly persons in nursing homes. In other words, this virus brings needed attention to the least powerful and most voiceless in our country: people whom it has been all too easy for the privileged to ignore and keep powerless. BUT, ironically, those who have been labeled during this crisis as “essential” workers are also disproportionately poor and of color: home health aides, hospital personnel, transit and sanitation workers, grocery workers, farmworkers, meat packers, etc.  We must address this awful inequality, which undermines our entire nation. We must invest in these essential movers of our economy.

(3) Beyond personal health and financial inequality, the huge move to

• online work
• online schooling
• online socializing with family and friends
• online shopping and
• online travel

will have a massive effect on reinventing the national and world economy.  Of course, this shift was already happening well before the coronavirus came along; but now billions of people are realizing multiple benefits of the technologies; more important, we are seeing how humans can adapt to new ways of doing things. Sure, there have been lots of glitches in the transition, and many millions still need much better access to the tools, but, hey, even old people like us are now Zooming and FaceTiming all over the place! As a result, we’re actually having more contact with our family and friends around the country than we ever did.

(4) The focus of countries around the world on trying to stop the spread of the virus, coupled with greater and greater respect for the work of scientists and health care professionals, should signal a huge infusion of public and private investment into epidemiological research and governmental preparedness (horribly lacking at the federal level in this crisis). We can only hope!

Reinventing the Garden: New Plants and Reasons Why

The restrictions have helped me focus on ways that the garden helps us make it through this crisis. See our posts for March and April. The restrictions also have given us time to think of ways to “reinvent” the garden through improvements.

So far in the past two months, I’ve added 14 plants new to the garden, with both of us providing the ideas:

Delphinium                                                             Blackberry

Cambridge Geranium                                        Campanula

Two forms of Lavender

French Lavender

Munstead Lavender

Milkweed                                                       Lemon Cucumbers

Bottle Brush                                                   Columbine

Ancho Chilis                                                      Diascia

Carmello Tomatoes                                                     “Blueberry” Mini Tomatoes

In some cases, the new plants replace other varieties. For example, the Carmello tomatoes replace the T-67 and Ace varieties that had not done as well as I’d hoped the previous two years. So far, there are 50 fruit growing on the 2 plants after 7 weeks in the ground.

Others, like the bottle brush seedling, the delphinium, the campanula, the diascia, and the Cambridge geranium, are meant to add color, variety, and bee friendliness in empty spots of the garden.

Still others, like the blackberry and the lavenders, add edible, pollinator-friendly varieties where purely decorative plants had been.

The milkweed, known for attracting butterflies, particularly monarchs, is a risky addition, because it is also known for taking over gardens, through its puffy, wind-blown seed balls. Jean and I routinely uproot the shoots of milkweed throughout the garden, the seeds having come from a three-block planting of milkweed along a nearby road. But I decided that one small display this season (study the Milkweed photo above) in our garden might attract a few butterflies, add a dash of purple, and be easily controlled. I’m hoping for the butterflies as the summer goes on.

All in all, we have at least 20 new plants in the garden over the past 7 months. Note the photo (top) that leads off this month’s post to see a few more of those new plants.

May 2020 Fruit and Veggie Update

Back panorama: Carmello tomatoes, huge chard, milkweeds, red roses in foreground

Tomatoes

Besides the two new Carmellos described earlier, we have another SunGold grape variety (already 90 green fruit on 1 plant), 2 first time “Blueberry” mini tomato plants (18 green fruit total after 5 weeks), and one Husky Cherry Red (10 fruit after 5 weeks). All are looking good so far, especially the 2 Carmellos and the 1 SunGold.

Peppers

2 mild green peppers, 1 mild yellow, and 1 Ancho Chili (shown earlier). White flowers on all 4, but only 2 growing fruit as yet. 5 weeks in the ground.

Lemon Cucumbers

2 plants. Growing well, 5 weeks in the ground. Flowers. No fruit as yet.

Rosa Bianca Eggplants

2 plants in the ground, 5 weeks, 10 inches high. No fruit expected for 2 more months.

Zucchini

1 thriving plant (below), multiple flowers, 2 fruit growing. In ground 5 weeks.

Apricots and Cherry Plums

Both trees are heavily laden with fruit (see below), but the cool weather has pushed harvest until June, which is usual for the cherry plums, but not usual for the apricots, who usually harvest in late May. But temps over 100 this week are speeding up the apricots!

Early AM: laden cherry plum branches, with fruit-heavy apricot branches in background

Peaches

Unlike last year, when we had a bumper crop, this year there are no more than a few tiny fruit growing. Very similar to 2017, when we had a total of one peach for the summer. See July 2019: Hot, Dry–So What’s New? for a comparison to 2019.

Oranges and Lemons

This winter-spring citrus season was excellent, including our best year yet for meyer lemons (over 150). So far, the orange tree is on track for a moderate year in 2020-21, with small green fruit over 100 total. The meyer lemon looks ready for another banner year. But we’re so early in the process.

meyer lemon tiny fruits and bud

orange green fruit cluster

Mild yellow pepper and Ancho chili in pots, left; two peppers and two cherry tomatoes in square raised bed; Arugula thicket beyond raised bed

Reinventing in the Kitchen: Bread, Mother’s Day, and Beyond

Jean: 

Baking Breads: The Joy of Flours

Oatmeal bread, with some whole wheat and semolina flours, plus some golden raisins chopped in

When the stay-at-home began, I had about a bag and a half of all-purpose flour, a half bag of bread flour, and some rye flour, whole wheat flour, and semolina flour.  (I don’t think I bought the semolina; our daughters bought it and used it when they were in a pasta-making phase.)  I wasn’t worried yet about my flour supplies; I assumed most people did not know how to make homemade bread any more, or didn’t care to do it.  Not long after I learned that toilet paper was disappearing from the stores, however, I realized the flours of nearly all types were also gone!  That led me to research how to use whatever I had on hand, including the semolina as a bread flour.

I didn’t adequately take into account that I, like so many other people, would find that baking bread was a comforting way to get through the boredom and discomfort of being stuck at home.   It’s not like there weren’t any ready-made loaves of bread to be found in the store; I’ve had no trouble finding those.  But at least for me, there were a lot of childhood memories around homemade bread.  Bread was literally my mother’s favorite food, and she baked it sublimely.  For holidays, she made fancy or sweet breads like Swedish tea rings and Sally Lunn.  She taught me and my siblings, but I was perhaps her most apt pupil.  We worked particularly hard on perfect loaves of white bread to enter in the county or state fairs.  I remember my brother winning one time.  He could really knead!

(As an aside, my older sister, who doesn’t really like to cook but is always asking for other people’s recipes, some years ago started requesting a recipe for a bread I had made once.  I thought she would like that recipe because it did not require kneading, but when I kept trying to tell her “you don’t knead it,” she kept replying, “yes, I do; I really need it.”  We finally sorted out our communication problem.)

By the way, one of the most delightful bread preparation methods I have played with during this stay-at-home has been a slow-rising no-knead bread baked in a Dutch oven.  I have also resurrected my electric bread machine, essentially for the same reason.  I don’t really have to do much, and it confines any mess to one pan.

It is also satisfying and fun, however, to make a hand-shaped loaf or batard, like the one in the photo below with Chris’s pasta sauce.  That loaf was an experiment with using the semolina flour in place of bread flour, once I learned that semolina is similarly high in protein and gluten.  We have also particularly enjoyed my rye breads, and the oatmeal bread I made (see photo above; it tasted better than it looks, having collapsed a little during baking) after my thoughtful daughter found some bread flour somewhere on the Internet and replenished my supply for Mother’s Day.  My mother would have been proud of both of us.

Chris:

 For Mother’s Day: Halibut in Creamy Lemon, Garlic, White Wine Sauce

Really going out on a limb this month, I cooked for Mother’s Day Weekend. Jean always assures me that I’m a good cook, but I don’t trust her faith in me. But nothing ventured, nothing gained, so I ruled the stove Friday through Sunday.  My largest ambitions were for dinner on Friday, for which I made poached halibut in a creamy lemon, butter, garlic, white wine sauce. For color and veggie flavors, I added onion, roasted red peppers, and garden chard to the sauce, with salt and pepper to taste. I then added a tablespoon of  flour for thickening and 1/2 cup of veggie broth.

The trick for this dish was cooking the sauce in a large skillet until the ingredients were cooked down to pleasing flavor and texture, and then adding in the halibut steaks, which cooked quickly in the sauce on low heat (about 9 minutes). If I’d put the fish in earlier and cooked it longer, I’d have had a mushy mess.

I accompanied the fish dish with easy baked potatoes covered with cottage cheese and frozen mixed veggies cooked al dente. All in all, the meal was a lot easier to make than I’d expected. And Jean said she loved it.

Pasta with Arrabbiata Sauce and Sausage

For Sunday dinner on Mother’s Day Weekend, I made a dish I was more comfortable with, since I’m so used to tomato sauces after all these years of tomato growing and jarring. Since I love all spicy tomato-based sauces, I looked forward to making this arrabbiata version.

It actually was an arrabbiata-puttanesca sauce, because my other favorite pasta sauce features green and/or kalamata olives. So what could be better (to me) than a spicy puttanesca?  And I knew Jean would be game for whatever I came up with.

Since we had no fresh tomatoes yet, I used one large jar of marinara from the pantry, plus a can of diced tomatoes with basil. The spice came from some spicy lean Italian sausage that I browned in the skillet beforehand, with a chopped quarter of a large onion and two minced garlic cloves, all cooked in a tablespoon of olive oil and the sausage drippings.

Then came the fun, adding in the tomatoes and tomato sauce, about a dozen chopped green olives, 1/4 cup of kalamata olive juice, 1/4 cup of red wine, and a bunch of chopped herbs from the garden:  thyme, marjoram, culinary sage, Greek oregano (spicy), and savory (also spicy).

Since I still thought the mix wasn’t spicy enough, I chopped into the sauce a super hot tiny Thai pepper from last year (in the freezer) and sprinkled in some super hot Asian chili powder.  I cooked all of this down for about an hour on low heat, and it was ready.

Because I was tinkering with the sauce the entire hour, I knew it would be exactly to my taste: a bit more of this, a bit more of that, etc. I don’t think I could cook any other way. Bottom line–Jean liked this dish, too, and we each had two (small?) helpings.

Pasta with arrabbiata sauce and Jean’s fresh-baked semolina bread

Jean:

Beyond the Usual: Lemon “Ricotta” Pancakes

In the imaginative spirit of isolation cooking, I found two interesting uses for some cream that had started to curdle.  I often use sour milk for buttermilk, but this time I actually had some fresh buttermilk, and the cream was getting too thick to be used as a liquid.  An easy switch was to use the curdled cream in place of ricotta in a lemon ricotta pancake recipe that also called for buttermilk.  Now, I have never understood the big deal about lemon ricotta pancakes because I can’t really taste the lemon or the ricotta, but this combination did make for rich and creamy pancakes. And how about those tangy blueberries?

Lemon “Ricotta” Pancakes, with Blueberries

Punjabi-Style Red Beans with Paneer

The second use was more unusual.  I was making Tejal Rao’s Punjabi-style red beans (rajma). https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/28/magazine/punjabi-red-beans-recipe.html

The recipe calls for cream to be poured over the top, which sounded strange.  In reading the comments, though, I learned that this dish is often made with paneer.  A little more research revealed that paneer is a fresh homemade cheese, actually little more than clotted cream.  Although paneer is usually cut in cubes like tofu, I simply poured my curdled cream on the top of the spicy tomato sauce in blobs like drop biscuits.  It cooked in the sauce, and we liked the texture.  Voila!  Cream problem solved.

Punjabi-style red beans with paneer (Rajma)

Now to Spain: Patatas Bravas

A frequent item on a tapas menu, patatas bravas are easy to make.  I cut baby yellow gold potatoes in quarters and baked them at high heat in olive oil.  They need to go past the stage where they are just sufficiently cooked through.  You need them to start to harden and crisp up, creating a lovely brown crust on the skin and cut edges.  A simple garlic aioli and/or a spicy pimenton sauce are great for dipping.  This sauce was merely garlic and pimento (both sweet and smoky) softened in olive oil and thickened with a little flour, then expanded with some broth.

Patatas bravas and pimenton sauce

May 2020 Gallery

Chris:

This month’s gallery continues the theme of reinvention. Whereas my photos usually strive for technical accuracy and clarity of presentation, I’m including here a few that try for something a little less representational, something that plays with light, color, focus. Maybe something a bit more painterly, a bit impressionistic. I’ve always been intrigued by the STEAM movement, that fruitful blending of the scientific and the artistic, the technical and the more imaginative. Anyway, I hope you enjoy these.

Peace buds

Nopales blossom

Baby nopales

Ladybeetle on blooming zucchini

Pomegranate honeybee

Fennel tapestry

Dragonfly sculpts

New Zealand flax flowers

Rainstorm, 5/19, after Giverny

And on to June, with hope for the bees and bumble bees, who always must reinvent in a changing world.

In this month’s blog:

• Social Distance, Yes; Plant Distance, No
• Sheltered in the Kitchen! A Great Place to Be
• Some Garden Gifts of April 2020
• Friends in the Garden
• A Note on Composting

Chris:

Read last year’s April entry, for contrast.

We are now in the fourth month of the COVID-19 pandemic, but only just beginning the second month of the statewide “shutdown” safety measures our governor put in place March 19–the first state to do so. These measures have had great success in limiting the number of cases and deaths in this most-populous of all the states. If every state had the same rate of infection and deaths as California, the US would have in total only 1/3 of the current number of cases and only 1/4 of the current number of deaths.

Meanwhile, Jean and I follow the safety measures, and try to stay creative and hopeful in our home and garden. Our children and grandchildren around the US struggle with this new reality in various ways. Each of them and their families are suffering the pain of narrowed or lost incomes and fear of what the future may hold. But when we speak with them and often see them via digital miracles, we also feel their hope and admire their strength and creativity, just as we admire how they, too, are honoring the safety measures to keep themselves and their fellow citizens disease-free.

Get Your Hands Dirty, Then Wash Them Well

I wrote last month about how our garden provides solace, hope, food, and the opportunity for creativity in a deeply troubled time. It seems that many Americans over this past century have felt as I do, because people have turned to gardening in times of national crisis, such as World Wars I and II, when millions grew “victory gardens.”

Side garden, with sages, lavender, callalilies, fuchsia, roses, and alstroemeria

While a small garden like ours can only partially make up for food shortages brought about by such crises, the apricots, peaches, oranges, lemons, strawberries, cherry plums, tomatoes, chard, lettuce, arugula, peppers, cucumbers, zucchini, eggplants, and many kinds of herbs do make a small contribution.  Maybe more important, the gardener comes to realize that personal, patient effort–when carried out in collaboration with nature–can produce something living, healthful, and almost unbearably beautiful.

Even the smallest garden–say in a few pots on a ledge outside an apartment window–can have these same benefits.

Purple chard, white kalanchoe, and green chard outside our kitchen window

Just from the standpoint of how a person can spend the hours at home, the work of a garden can make that time pass fruitfully and with fun. You basically just have to be willing to get your hands dirty–or wear gardening gloves!

Also, read!

You also need to read. But this is also easy, because if you have internet access, you have an open avenue to 1000s of sites (like this one, for example) that give clear advice on do’s and don’ts.  I guarantee it: you can Google or Yahoo any plant you want to grow, and you’ll find good sites for it.

Be patient and have fun!

Remember, planting a seed or a seedling (tiny plant) isn’t like buying food at the grocery. You need to wait for the plant to grow. Follow the instructions on your favorite site, study your plant every day, and be fascinated as it slowly appears and changes.

Some April plantings: two Carmello tomatoes in front, a lemon cucumber in the cage, and a SunGold tomato to its right; two mild peppers and two cherry tomatoes in the square raised bed; two pepper plants, one mild and one Ancho spicy, in the two pots to the left in the picture.

Sheltered in the Kitchen! A Great Place to Be

Jean:

Carrot Cake

This recipe makes 3 9-inch or 4 8-inch layers, but I cut the recipe in half for the two of us, and it made two nice 8-inch layers.

Here is the full version of the recipe, but I think it is pretty simple and standard:

Butter and flour your pans, or line them.

Sift or whisk the following dry ingredients together in a small bowl and set aside:

• 2 c. flour (you can use some portion of gluten-free flour if you like)
• 2 tsp. baking powder
• 2 tsp. baking soda
• 2 tsp. ground cinnamon
• 1 tsp. ginger or 1 T. chopped candied ginger
• 3/4 tsp. salt

Next, grate, chop, and/or grind the following chunky ingredients in the food processor until desired consistencies and set the combined ingredients aside for the final stage:

• 2 1/2 to 3 c. grated carrots
• 1 c. shredded coconut
• 1 c. chopped walnuts or pecans
• 1/2 c. moist dried raisins (plump them in rum or whiskey for a while if too dry)
• 1/2 c. canned pineapple tidbits

Beat the following ingredients in a large bowl until very smooth:

• 1 1/2 c. sugar (can be part brown sugar)
• 1 c. oil (I used a mixture of vegetable oil, very light olive oil, melted coconut oil for half, and then the other half was cinnamon applesauce)
• 4 large eggs, added one at a time, beating after each addition.  (I’ve also used a recipe that required beating the egg whites separately for a fluffier cake, but I don’t think that’s necessary.)

When all three sets of components are ready, gently stir the dry ingredients into the wet ones with a rubber spatula.  When the flour is no longer visible, add the chunky ingredients.

Bake at 325 degrees for 30-40 minutes, depending on how many and what size pans you use.  They are done when they smell great, look slightly brown at edges and on top, and are not gooey in the middle.

Where I really had fun was with the frosting.

The caveats were that I didn’t have a block of cream cheese, and I didn’t want the frosting too sweet.  So I had to cobble the frosting together with what I had, which happened to include some sour cream, white chocolate chips, and some leftover canned cream cheese frosting (which is both too sweet and not all that creamy to use by itself).

First I melted about 1/2 cup white chocolate chips with about 2 T. coconut oil.  You could add some vanilla or coconut extract to the warm mixture to help keep it from seizing up.

Meanwhile, beat a stick of unsalted butter (1/2 c.) until creamy.  Then you can throw in about a cup of powdered sugar, but keep stirring until you get the right consistency.  A little lemon juice can balance out the sweetness if needed.

At this stage I also added about 1/4 c. sour cream and 1/4 c. leftover canned cream cheese frosting (obviously not required).  The point is that I kept beating and tasting it at each stage, and it somehow came out just right.  I can’t even recreate this myself, but the point is to have fun and be creative.  It just might work!

After removing the cakes from the oven, I threw a little pan of coconut and pecans into the oven to toast for a few minutes.  (They’ll toast well enough and have less chance of burning if you put them in just after you turn the oven off.  Stir them around after a few minutes to make sure they toast evenly.)  These look beautiful on top of the frosted cake and add even more crunch.

I love the texture of a carrot cake with all these add-ins. And we’re loving the taste of this one.

Stay-at-Home Spicy Beef Veggie Soup

This soup was an amalgam of sources perfect for sheltering in our comfy home.

The inspiration was a couple of cans of Progresso beef and barley soup I had in the pantry. Then I started adding other ingredients to “beef” it up….

• I had some quick-cooking barley, some beef broth, and some yellow potatoes, peas, and carrots.
• I also found in the freezer a couple of servings of beef stew I had made a couple of months ago.
• Chris contributed some herbs from the garden, plus several large leaves of chard.
• The spice came from a gift sent by one of our kids who is a master griller: homemade hot sauce.

We kept tinkering with the soup until we both agreed it was highly agreeable! After all the additions, we had enough for several days.

Some Garden Gifts of April 2020

Chris:

Irises

This is their month. Enjoy them while they last! They’ll then be back in bloom next spring. We’ve had them five years, and each display has been larger than the previous one. We always look forward to them.

Roses

They all started budding in our unseasonably warm February. But March was cool, and so has been April. They are now busting out all over, and will keep on keeping on as the temps warm.

Red-yellow rose, side garden

Four white roses, back garden

Lavender roses, back garden

Pink-red roses amid the nopales, back garden

Buds, yellow roses, front garden

Rock roses, front garden

Peace rose pair, back garden

Peace rose with shadows

Red roses, back fence

Lemons and Oranges

Our meyer lemons persisted through five months, from December through April, giving us delicious lemonade and lemon juice for baking and sauces. This was our best crop ever (in nine years), both in volume and quality. And as the last 30 lemons hung on the tree this month, the new buds and flowers, magnificently profuse, were a bee magnet.

Bees come to the lemon blossoms as ripe lemons still wait for picking.

The last oranges were harvested in March. The new buds bloomed in mid April, drew the bees and butterflies, and quickly became tiny, tiny fruit. The new crop will be distinctly smaller than this season’s, as indicated by the relatively few buds and blooms. But see the visitors below…

Painted lady butterfly and honeybee on orange blossoms, back garden

Apricots

Whereas the 2019 crop was one of our smallest in several years, the new crop appears to be by far our largest in the 8 years of the tree. We’re on track for a May harvest, but the cool March and April may push it back to June. We still have a few jars of the jam we’ve made from the previous four years!

Baby apricots ripening toward May-June harvest

Cherry Plums

Last year’s astounding crop will maybe not be matched this year, but already the tree is laden with tiny, hard plums that promise an abundant June harvest.

Find the many small cherry plums ripening toward June in the side garden.

Strawberries

We’ve had 6-10 plants in a small patch in the back garden for a good five years. The crop–and the plants–have never been large in our alkaline soil, but augmenting with acid in the watering helps. Spring is our best time for producing fruit.

Herbs

Most of our herbs are perennials, so we can use them year-round. Some are in pots, so I can move them to keep them out of the hottest summer sun (see below). Others are in ground, like the rosemary, fennel, lavender, and the floral garlic with its surprisingly pungent and useful leaves. A few are annuals, such as the basil. All make the air fragrant and brighten Jean’s soups, stews, and sauces.

A few of our herbs, mostly potted: L-R, chives, marjoram, thyme, savory, mint

More herbs: on left, from top to bottom, culinary sage, Italian basil, Greek oregano, Russian sage

Friends in the Garden

No, not human friends, though we do invite fellow humans into the garden these days via this blog and FaceTime. These are other welcome friends:

Green lacewing on purple iris, back garden

Anna’s hummingbird on Mexican sage, front garden

White-crowned sparrow on back fence

Our very territorial pair of scrub jays on our side fence

Another view of the painted lady butterfly and honeybee in the orange blossoms

A Note on Composting

Recently, a follower of this blog, having noticed our compost bin in a few of the photos, asked me to describe how I compost. Here’s my response:

I don’t have an entry specifically about composting, and I’m no expert. (There are lots of good sites online.) But I’ve had the bin (the one you saw) about 10 years, and we put plant trimmings, exhausted plants, dead leaves, rotted oranges, lemons, and peaches from our trees, veggie and fruit waste from the kitchen (but not cooked), and coffee grounds in it. I add in some of the extra soil left after I plant new plants. So it’s an organic plants catch-all.

But I don’t put in stuff like tree branches that will take a really long time to degrade. Those go into the garden/yard waste toter that the town picks up.

The bin stays covered most of the time to build up humidity and encourage the fruit flies. Whenever it rains, I leave the bin uncovered so the water can get in to soak the contents. In the hot, dry months, I water the contents about once a week for a minute to keep the biodegrading going. The water is important to the process.

I know the bin is working whenever I take off the lid, because the cloud of fruit flies hits me in the face!

Don’t expect quick biodegrading into soil. That takes months, especially because we have such a long dry season. As biodegrading occurs, the pile of debris sinks down. Eventually the stuff stops looking like plants and looks more like wet dirt. At this point, you can pull away the bin and start turning over the mushy contents so the most degraded, now actual dirt, appears. Now you can use it to nourish new plants.

Bin contents after bin is pulled away

Bin contents after being turned over so most degraded are on top

Every other year, I shift the bin to another corner of the garden and begin the process again.

The bin in its new location to start the process anew

When I lived in the East, where it rained a lot, was more humid, and I had lots and lots of fallen leaves from our oaks and maples pile up in the yard, I just raked the leaves into corners of the property and let them sit–no bin. In a year or less, I could push away the top layer of leaves and there was rich humus to use for new plantings.

It’s more work here because of the dryness, but it’s still satisfying, because I know the debris is going to be used to nourish new plants. Nothing is lost.

And on to May!

In this entry:

I. Creativity in the Kitchen

II. Garden Love

III.  This Month’s Gallery

Chris:

Jean and I are sheltering-in-place: trying to stay well and stay creative as we respond to the March 19 order by the governor of California for all 40 million in the state. We are staying in touch with our children and grandchildren around California and the U.S. through our smart phones and our computers–using the various amazing technologies that we have at our hands to erase the miles and bring joy to our hearts.

We also stay in touch with our friends and our colleagues, and they stay in touch with us. We say “in touch,” even though a handshake or hug is what we dare not do in this climate of extreme caution. But by talk and writing and staying attentive to messages, we perhaps are more “in touch” than mere touch implies.

How fortunate we are!

We do not think for a moment that we are alone, and we hope that all our loved ones and friends know that we are thinking of them throughout this health crisis, unprecedented in our lifetimes.

I. Creativity in the Kitchen

Ramen noodles with fish and chili sauce, pees, spinach, fennel garnish

Jean:

These circumstances are challenging my creativity.  We actually had a fair amount of pantry supplies because we always keep some things on hand for emergencies like fire, flood, or earthquake, when we might have to hang out in a damaged home for a period of time, so I figure this is as good a time as any to dig up and use all those things.

I also had bought extra food for a surprise birthday party for Chris early in the month (well before the sheltering-in-place directive), and fewer than half the guests showed up, probably due to coronavirus worries.  I don’t blame them.  I worried about it as well, but then put the extra food in the freezer.  Some of it, including the birthday cupcakes, we have been munching on for two weeks.  I actually can’t wait for these to be gone so I can make a fresh batch of chocolate chip cookies.  Thank goodness I have plenty of butter, chocolate chips and nuts.

Birthday Chocolate Cupcake with mint “candle” and mint cookie on top–last of the batch!

Part of the trick to getting through this, I think, is allowing yourself to anticipate a dish you want to make next, but only after you finish something you have started.  Zero waste allowed.

Canned fish:

One of the food types I have mentioned in earlier posts is canned fish.  Sardines, anchovies, tuna, kippers, whatever.  These are good for you.  They pack a punch (too much for some people).  However, there are several different ways you can go with them, and a little can goes a long way to making several different dishes.  They can go into

• a tomato-based seafood soup like San Francisco cioppino
• a pasta dish with lemon, capers, bread crumbs and parsley
• a ramen dish with Asian–flavored broth.

For example, as you see in the photo above, I built a ramen dish using a ramen packet that I had on hand with a very strong flavored chili sauce, so I saved some of the sauce to flavor other sauces after using a little of it in this dish, tempered with fish sauce, soy sauce and packaged miso soup.

Using the Fruits and Veggies You Have in the Fridge and the Garden:

This ramen dish doesn’t come from a recipe; it’s just about pulling out what you have and thinking about it a little bit.  This is a great time to dig out those spice packets and things you’ve thrown into the pantry or bottom of the drawers in your refrigerator.  I also used the last wilted and some frozen vegetables I found while digging around in there, and I thought about what dishes I could use my old spices in.  I know, spices supposedly don’t hold their potency forever, but a little flavor is better than none.

Of course, this is also a great time to use whatever vegetables may be growing in the garden in this transitional period between winter and the spring planting. See the garnish of fennel in the ramen dish?

Here’s another dish–with South Asian flair–that I made using chard from our winter garden, plus spices and veggies on hand:

Aloo Palak

1. I sauteed in coconut oil (you could also use clarified butter) some chopped onions and garlic, plus South Asian spices including cumin, garam masala, and ginger.

2. When the onions were softened, I added diced potatoes and veggie broth and cooked the potatoes down for about ten minutes.

3. Then I added chopped greens–including kale, spinach (both of which I had on hand), and the star of this dish, our beautiful chard from the garden, and cooked those down for another ten minutes.

4.  Next I threw in a small can of chick peas (AKA garbanzo beans), some jarred chopped jalapenos (for extra punch) and a small can of diced tomatoes (fresh tomatoes in season are equally great).  I let all that simmer another 5-10 minutes.

5.  Finally, I served up and topped the colorful mixture with plain yogurt and a garnish of sliced radishes.

6. This dish was perfect over white rice.

Here’s another example: my own version of Waldorf Salad

Yesterday I grabbed some lettuce, arugula, baby chard and parsley from the garden to make a little salad of greens.  Then I topped it off with a Waldorf salad made from one Granny Smith apple I had, plus some raisins and walnuts, dressed with plain yogurt and mayonnaise.  As a side dish to balance the sweet of the Waldorf ingredients, I found some of last season’s vinegar and salt pickles, still crunchy. Oh, yes, and I garnished the salad with garden fennel and some kiwi fruit from the fridge. The lunch was yummy, fresh tasting, and packed with complementary flavors:

Jean’s Waldorf and mixed greens salad, with vinegar and salt pickles

What about Eggs When There Are Shortages?

Speaking of fresh ingredients, we were running low on eggs and couldn’t find any on the one trip we made to the store so far since starting to “shelter in place.”  I did manage to grab a container of egg whites that day, however, so I decided to make an egg white frittata, using mostly egg whites plus a couple of precious whole eggs.  I added frozen peppers, canned chopped jalapenos, and plenty of cheese, so I threw together something that cooked up quickly, looked pretty and tasted delicious.  It made enough for more than one breakfast for both of us.  Remember, eating some of your best leftovers is also a treat to look forward to!

Frittata with whole eggs and eggwhites, plus frozen peppers, canned chopped jalapenos, and cheeses

The bottom line:

• Be inventive
• Use what you can find
• Appreciate what you have, including your health, and
• Stay positive!

II. Garden Love

Part of our good fortune dwells in our garden, where love abounds.

Back garden panorama looking toward north, with yellow broccoli flowers and coreopsis across center

Chris:

It seems reasonable to claim that a gardener loves the garden, when we think of the daily work, even when minimal, that goes into gardening. But not only work, which can sound like drudgery. Care is a better word, the tenderness of which embodies that time each day when the gardener studies each plant, tends here and there–or just looks at and admires the garden, every plant in it, every one.

And not only the plants, but the animals that live within it or visit from time to time, and who gloriously use what the plants provide, and in turn pollinate other plants. Right now, in March, bees glory in the flowers of so many plants, and hum their music;

bee on alum root

bee om alum root, too

Carpenter bee in the wisteria, side garden

Bumble bee in the Western lilac (ceanothus)

while the birds, some of them our year-round citizens and some returning from migration, sing more beautifully than the best orchestra, play in the birdbath, or at least talk articulately among themselves in many languages. Listen for the bees humming and birds chirping in this video of one of our visiting sparrows:

But can we say that the garden also loves the gardener? What I know for sure is that as I garden I am feeling wonderfully “in touch” with the plants, and have a kind of regular conversation with the birds and bees and fruit flies and worms: a conversation that hovers between peaceful coexistence (with the bees and worms), banter (with the jays and hummingbirds), mutual but affectionate annoyance (with the fruit flies), or my being just an appreciative audience (for the mockingbirds, warblers, and doves).

White-crowned sparrow in the broccoli blooms

Northern Mockingbird in the new-leaved sycamore

I don’t know if this is love, but what would you call it? Last summer I transplanted a fennel that was growing tired in its pot, and now it rewards me with a magnificent deep green, feathery fragrance that goes to my head. Last summer I also transplanted arugula that was weary of its pot along the front walk, then flourished through the fall, turned dry and brown in winter, and now is sending up from the ground thousands of new green shoots that are just as peppery and aromatic as ever.

Spring fennel in the back garden

New arugula in its second year

What is this if not love?  And what about the apricot tree, who is bursting with tiny green fruit just now beginning to turn toward red and orange?

Tiny fruit cover the apricot tree with the cherry plum tree in background

Will you let me call it love, if that is what this gardener feels?

The garden surrounds our home like a sanctuary. It makes sheltering-in-place anything but isolation.

III. This Month’s Gallery

Tiny, hard cherry plums, little bigger than peppercorns, growing toward June

Strawberry with blooms and green fruit

Alstroemeria buds about to bloom, side garden

Yellow rose amid dark green foliage, front garden

Agapanthus, new leaves, front garden

Mexican sage, front garden, first blooms of season

African daisies and Erysimum, back garden

Buds on orange tree

Breath of heaven, front garden

Calla lily, 6 years old, back garden

New leaves and first buds, Dwarf pomegranate, back garden

Peach blossoms and new leaves, back garden

Crape myrtle, first new leaves, side garden

Roses amid nopales, wisteria, Western lilac

Ripe meyer lemons, last of this year’s crop, with buds ready for next season

In foreground, L-R, in back garden: oregano, Russian sage, leaf lettuce, new cucumber plant, and Swiss chard on a rainy March 24

Northern Mockingbird on back fence, ready to sing

And on to April, in hope….

In this month’s blog:

1. Heading for the Driest on Record

2. The First Month of Spring

3. More February Bloomers

4. February in the Kitchen

Chris:

1. Heading for the Driest on Record

Don’t be alarmed. This isn’t a photo (above) of an approaching wildfire. It’s just a beautiful February sunset seen from our back garden. But you’ll have to excuse me for thinking of fires when, yet again, in what is usually one of our wettest months, the weather news is depressingly the same from day to day: sunny and dry, with temps from the 40s to the 60s, and even into the 70s, warmer than average. (Today’s predicted high of 77 by the National Weather Service would be a record for this date.)

Please understand: I’m trying not to take for granted the magnificent weather in California, but the gardener in me always wants there to be that magnificent natural balance between sun and rain. Between late October and mid May, the climate usually blesses us with enough rain (and mountain snow) to tide us over during the intensely blue skies and high temps of June through mid-October. See, balance.

So you’ll forgive me if I share the alarm of many fellow Golden Staters when it looks as if Northern CA will have for the first time in recorded history no rain in February–not even a trace or a smidgen or a drop.

Meteorologists blame the infamous “high pressure ridge” over the Pacific, the same condition that gave us the 5-year drought that ended in 2016, before the way-above-average rain seasons of 2016-17 and 2018-19. So Californians are used to these climatic waves, and as I wrote in “W Is for Water,” we have done many things to prepare for them and to see them through.

So I’m not horribly anxious about this go-round. Yet it does come as a bit of a shock to my sense of well-being when I must reactivate the irrigation system and unwind the hose three months early. Not to mention a shock to our finances because of the rising cost of water.

Oh well, the snowpack in the Sierra still has 50% of normal, and the reservoirs around the region are still mighty deep, so we’ll forge ahead.

2. The First Month of Spring

Meanwhile, it’s February! Which means in our part of the world the first month of spring, the time of first blooms and return of the warm weather birds.

And so…

Panorama of the SW corner of the late February back garden, with a warbler on the fence

There are new blooms all across the garden, and rarely does a day go by in late February when one or more of our plants isn’t beginning to flower–or even bursting into full bloom. Here is this month’s gallery, with a few comments:

Apricots

Ten days ago, I took the video (above) of the bees hard at work in the just opened blooms of this harbinger of our fruit trees. Now, most of the blooms have fallen to carpet the ground and the tree is beginning to bud it first leaves:

Arugula

With last year’s stems dried out early this month, here come this year’s peppery new stems and leaves from the ground:

Broccoli

This season’s amazing crop just keeps proliferating (see below). The five plants have moved headlong into the blooming phase, and the bees couldn’t be happier. Every time I clip off a bunch for either cooking or decoration (imagine–broccoli as decorative flower!) another green shoot emerges. For cooking, the flowery shoots remain tasty, even with the yellow blooms, because the stems within each floret are thin and tender.

See the following site for more on the joys of cooking and eating broccoli flowers:

https://www.gardenguides.com/90097-flowers-broccoli-sprouts.html

Bees on largest blooming broccoli head

Broccoli plants with fennel, rosemary, and calla lily

Cajun Red Pepper

Now in its 11th month, this wonder just keeps producing ripe, spicy fruit. I’ll grab its space for new plants in April (or will I?)

Cajun red pepper, still thriving, with Swiss chard and periwinkle in background

Cherry Plum

The white and deep burgundy blossoms of the cherry plum (below) come just after those of the apricot. Last year’s tiny plums were the most prolific ever, over a thousand; what will happen this year?

Lemons and Oranges

While ripe fruit still awaits us on the orange tree and the meyer lemon bush, new shoots and even a few buds proclaim that the next crop is coming…

New buds on the lemon, while ripe fruit hide.

New shoots share space with the ripe oranges.

…and I just keep making juice:

3. More February Bloomers

Lenten Rose

Dianthus

First blooms on the Ceanothus (Western Lilac)

Bacopa

Erysimum

Strawberries

Loro Petulam beneath New Zealand flax fronds

Periwinkle (Vinca)

Snapdragon

Gaillardia

Coreopsis (Euryops)

And getting ready to bloom in March…

…are the roses, all trimmed back in January and now rich in new shoots and leaves:

Salmon and white tea roses

Red roses on back fence

While all this goes on outside, inside it’s also cookin’…

4. February in the Kitchen

Jean:

Ginger Pear Apricot Upside Down Cake

Jean’s ginger pear apricot upside down cake

This is an upside down fruit cake, which is always popular.  To make the cake itself, you can use your favorite gingerbread recipe or cake mix.  I used a simple homemade spice cake recipe, below.

1. First, prepare the topping in the bottom of your cake pan.  Using a 9-inch square pan, combine 2 tablespoons hot melted butter with 1/4 c. brown sugar and 1/4 c. dark corn syrup or molasses.  Make sure those are well blended and spread over the bottom of the pan.

I also put down a layer of our homemade apricot jam (from last year’s crop), for an additional layer of flavor.

2. Then arrange 9 showy half-nuts like walnuts or pecans equidistant apart and place 9 canned pear halves, cavities down, on top of the nuts.  You can add more nuts, maybe broken ones, and/or candied ginger, in between the pears.  Set aside while you prepare the cake and preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

3. For the cake itself, sift together 2 cups flour, 3-1/2 tsp. baking powder, 1-1/4 c. sugar, 1 teaspoon salt, and 2 tsp. spices.  You can either use a gingerbread spice mix, or 1 tsp. cinnamon, 1/2 tsp. nutmeg, and 1/2 tsp. ginger.  Throw in a little allspice and cloves if you have them.  It’s all good.

4. Next, beat in 1 cup milk, 1/2 cup shortening, and 1 tsp. vanilla.  (I used coconut milk for half of the milk and shortening because I had some left over, but that’s up to you.)

5. Beat for a couple of minutes, then add 2 large eggs and beat another couple of minutes.  Pour into the prepared cake pan until 3/4 full.  If you have too much batter, as you probably will, bake the rest as cupcakes.  (I tried using half a recipe of the cake batter, but it didn’t sufficiently fill the pan.)

6. Bake the cake for 40 minutes and cupcakes for 20 minutes.  Let the cake stand just a minute before inverting onto a cake plate.  You don’t want the sugary topping to seize up before you try to release it from the pan, but try not to break the cake.  You might need to go around the edges with a knife first, to make sure the cake can come free in one piece.

7. We served this upside down cake to guests, and they loved it!

Lemon Almond Tart

Our meyer lemons are so abundant and so juicy that I wanted to use them in a special way. We also had on hand a lot of delicious sliced almonds, another Sacramento Valley staple, so this is what I came up with to use them together.

Jean’s Lemon Almond Tart (A quarter already disappeared before Chris could even get the photo!)

FOR THE CRUST:

• 1 ½ cups/192 grams all-purpose flour OR substitute some of the flour with almond meal
• ⅔ cup/82 grams confectioners’ sugar
• 1 ½ teaspoons kosher salt
• ¾ cup/170 grams (1 ½ sticks) unsalted butter, melted

FOR THE FILLING:

• 1 cup/240 milliliters fresh lemon juice
• 1 ¼ cup/250 grams granulated sugar
• 3 large eggs
• ¼ cup/32 grams all-purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon freshly grated ginger
• ½ teaspoon ground turmeric
• ¼ teaspoon kosher salt
• ½ lemon, thinly sliced, seeds removed (optional)
• sliced almonds

1. Make the crust: Heat the oven to 350 degrees.
2. Whisk together flour, sugar, and salt in a medium bowl. Drizzle in melted butter and, using a spatula, mix until well combined. Press this into the bottom and up the sides of a 9-inch tart pan or square pan, using the flat bottom of a glass or cup to even it.
3. Bake the tart shell until it’s a pale golden brown on the edges and baked through on the bottom, 15 to 20 minutes.
4. In a medium bowl, whisk together lemon juice, sugar, eggs, flour, ginger, turmeric and salt. Make sure no lumps remain, but don’t overmix. Pass the mixture through a fine mesh strainer to make sure no bits of flour or egg are left behind. (I actually cooked this on a double boiler and then strained it, to get out lumps of white.)
5. Transfer filling to the crust (depending on the depth of your pan, you may have a little yummy lemon curd left over). Lay reserved lemon slices and/or sliced almonds across the top. Bake until the edges are set, 15 minutes. Let cool completely before slicing.

And on to March!

Mockingbird singing to me

Full moon in sycamore mid-month

Anna’s hummingbird

Dove peeking through the sycamore

Jay hiding in the sycamore

Oranges in foreground shade, with hibiscus, spicy oregano, geraniums, pomegranate, and coreopsis sunlit

In this entry:

• January Surprises
• Fruits and Veggies
• January Garden Friends
• The January Kitchen: Party Time!

Chris:

The opening month of the new decade–the 2020s!–brought us our typical chilly grey mornings of dew and fog, followed by afternoons of wintry sun, deep blue skies with puffy clouds, and temps in the 50s. Days of rain? Some, but fewer than usual, and as the month draws toward a close we’ve received less than 2 inches, more than 2″ below average.  But our rainy December–almost 9 inches–gave us a surplus gift for the new year, so the soil is dark and moist, perfect for a bit of transplanting and perfect for growth of the hearty winter veggies, fruits, and flowering plants.

By now, I should have grown to expect color in the January garden, but my deeply ingrained expectations for bleak Januaries from all my years in the East always make our Northern California Januaries an exquisite surprise.

Front garden: Agapanthus in front, with (l-r) flowering garlic, New Zealand flax, breath of heaven, yellow gaillardia, and penstemon in background

For example, the palette of the photo just above isn’t as intense as it will be come March, but it’s still rich and varied.

And we love the January brilliance of some of our perennials in the back garden…

Erysimum

African daisies

Blooming rosemary

Geranium

Coreopsis

…not to mention the hearty annual petunias that keep going this January after having bloomed all spring, summer, and fall…

Purple petunias with parsley (left) and marjoram (upper right)

Fruits and Veggies

Oranges and Lemons

Oranges. No surprises here. Just the colorful, supple, and juicy fruit. We’ve had a steady supply of sweet and tangy juice from the navel oranges, of which we’ve consumed or given away about 65 so far this month, about 155 total used so far this season. I’d estimate about 100 still on the tree, all in all somewhat less than last year’s more than 300 total for the season.

The birds love them, too, especially those fruit higher up in the tree, where the birds feel safer. But there are plenty for us humans.

Mostly, the oranges are much larger than what you’d find in the grocery store; ours are typically 4 to 6 inches in diameter. Those in the clusters below are in this size range, as are the two in the photo at the top of this post.

Meyer lemons. When I make juice, I like to blend about 3 oranges for each lemon–so about 15 oranges to 5 lemons for a full pitcher, which lasts us around a week. The fruit is so intense that we like to dilute the juice with water–and I’ll also add a small packet or two of stevia natural sweetener and a bit of baker’s sugar to balance the tang of the lemons.

The lemons this season are above average in size and in clarity of the skins: in size about 2-3 inches in diameter, or smaller than the more common Eureka lemons. In all, we’ll have about 125 meyer lemons this season, about average for the mature bush.

While the orange tree was here when we moved in 13 years ago (though much smaller than the present tree, which we need to cut back every other year or so), I planted the meyer lemon 11 years ago (about a foot high then). It stayed tiny and unproductive for three years, but in 2011 it started to take off; it grew steadily and produced more each year for the next five years (by 2016), when it reached almost its current size and productivity.

Unlike the sweet oranges, which draw the hungry birds, the sour lemons are almost untouched by our garden friends. But wait for the spring buds and blooms, which the bees love.

Swiss Chard

Jean seems to be using our chard even more often this year in her cooking than in the three previous years in which we’ve grown it (see January in the Kitchen: Party Time!, below in this post). Perhaps because when I planted the six seedlings in October, the garden critters quickly devoured two plants and damaged the others–until I moved the remaining four into pots and moved them close to the house on the veranda. So we appreciate their preciousness–as well as the deliciousness of the gorgeous leaves.

In November, I transplanted one of the four into the large raised bed and surrounded it by chicken wire. It has grown and thrived since, even in the cold weather. Then, a week ago, I transplanted another into ground near the strawberries, and did not protect it in any way. So far, so good. I’ll see what happens.

In previous years, such as last spring, 2019, the chard has never needed protection, even as the weather warms significantly, and it has grown prodigiously. So I have my fingers crossed for this new transplant. I have often found that fall and winter veggies that were eaten by insects in October thrive once the coolness of November and the cold of December come along. That’s true of the chard this year.

Two chard plants in pots near house, January

Chard transplanted from pot, January

The Champion Cajun Red Pepper

We keep getting ripe spicy red peppers  from this sturdy plant.

This hearty plant continues to be fruitful even in January. Planted in April and bountiful each month since May, this Cajun Red is the champion pepper in the history of this garden. I keep wanting to replace it in the raised bed with something new, but I’ll continue to give it space until it gives up the ghost.

Broccoli

In this third year of growing broccoli in the garden, these five 2019-2020 plants are the best so far. All five have flourished this month, and we have used florets in a range of dishes thus far, with no real diminution of the stock. We may soon be cutting off florets to freeze for the coming months, as the heads are just beginning to show their tiny yellow flowers. See last month’s blog entry, December 2019, for a description of the two ways I’ve tended to these five plants, as reflected in the photos below.

Two lush broccoli heads with many florets, late January

The plant with the largest head. Note the few yellow flowers starting to appear, late January.

Bordered by fennel and calla lily, these two thriving broccolis feature the broccolini shoots that rise up once the central shoot is cut off.

Alum Root

I’ve never written in this blog about this hearty perennial that loves the fall, winter, and spring (when it flowers), and survives despite deep stress in the summer heat. I tend to ignore photographing it because it doesn’t produce edible fruit and it doesn’t have showy flowers–and in summer it browns out in the intense sunlight, unless I give it extra water, which I do. But it deserves better appreciation than I’ve given it. It’s now lasted a dozen years and has tripled in size since its early years. In many parts of the world, alum root is appreciated for its medicinal properties and has been used for many centuries by people much more considerate and savvy than I. See, for example, https://www.medicinalherbs-4u.com/alum-root.html

The venerable alum root, back garden

Even strawberries?

See the strawberry at the lower right edge? January surprise.

I always expect that my eleven modest strawberry plants in the back garden are happily keeping their roots warm underground in the cold weather, just waiting for spring to blossom and fruit. But two of the plants have put out a few fruit this January. A very pleasant surprise! We’ll see what this bodes for spring 2020.

January Garden Friends

We share the garden with the Western scrub jays (AKA rock jays), who don’t mind me too much, and who like to cavort around productively in my presence. They are as territorial as I am, but have come to realize that I am not a threat. Not so for other birds who visit, whom the jays can’t abide (especially the mockingbirds!–oh how they squabble!). So other visitors flit around, hope for a bit of food here and there, and rarely perch for more than a few seconds before flitting to another branch or tree or to someone else’s yard.

So getting good photos is not easy (except for the jays!). Here are a few recent ones…

Scrub jay in the peach tree, a favorite perch

Scrub jay by the broccoli, late January

Scrub jay in the peach tree again, looking for intruders.

Warbler in the peach tree, when the jays are elsewhere

Ruby-crowned kinglet (I think) in the peach tree, just for a few seconds

Yellow-rumped warbler in the neighbor’s sycamore. Very lucky to get this shot!

White-crowned sparrow by the coreopsis (euryops)

Oh, and if you are wondering where the Anna’s hummingbirds are, they are around. I heard one whirring close by my head last week, but it disappeared before I could get a look. They are not happy that I’ve cut back the now-dormant Mexican bush sage to await new growth, but the hummers will be showing their iridescence once again, when spring flowers begin to surge.

Ooh, wait a minute! After writing the above, I was out in the garden a few minutes ago and heard the distinctive chirp. I was lucky to get this pic…

Anna’s hummingbird amid the wisteria branches

Bees

It’s never cold enough around here to chase away the bees, though they lie low on chilly mornings. Thankfully, no matter how foggy and wet a morning might be, the bees reappear as soon as the sun comes out. See this blurry honeybee I snapped three  afternoons ago on the blooming rosemary…

The January Kitchen: Party Time!

Jean:

Chris and I have special fondness for the winter months, as they contain our anniversary,  our birthdays, and so many holidays, from Thanksgiving through Christmas, Hanukkah, and New Year’s, and on to Martin Luther King Day, the Super Bowl, Washington-Lincoln Day, the Asian Lunar New Year, Valentine’s Day, Mardi Gras, St. Patrick’s Day…. You get the picture.

And special foods seem to be part of them all, so what better time to exercise your cooking muscles and try different dishes?

This month we co-hosted a multi-occasion, food-focused party for friends. The party aimed to celebrate a bunch of these holidays in one big event. We’re calling it the Super Party! Why not? I cooked several dishes, and each couple also contributed a dish of their choice.

The rest of this entry will be a photo parade of some of the dishes at the party, with a comment about each.  Here goes:

Chard about to be mixed into Jean’s West African veggie stew

Albondigas soup garnished with parsley and red pepper

Jean’s Vegetarian shepherd’s pie before potato topping

…and with the topping!

Aparna’s Salmon with dill cream sauce

Brenda’s Broccoli, radish, and peapod salad

Mardi Gras cupcakes

Soba noodle, tofu, radish, sprouts, green onion medley

May all your holiday celebrations be as joyful as ours!

On to February…

Chris:

A year ago, December 2018, our blog entry reported on the devastating Camp Fire in Butte County that destroyed the town of Paradise and cost 86 lives and thousands of homes. The mood this December feels very different, even though the threat of wildfires is never far from our minds.

As I described last month, this year’s fire season was far less severe, and now with the plentiful rains thus far in December our region is breathing a collective sigh of relief. The holiday season is upon us, and we are preparing in comparatively high spirits.

Indeed, we are hosting family for Christmas week (see the stockings in the photo above?). And the garden is doing its part (see the oranges and peppers?) to enrich our joy.

In this post, we begin with Jean’s description of her dishes for our holiday guests. Then we’ll move on to my garden comments–and compare this year’s December garden with that of 2018.

Finally, we’ll close with our gallery for the month.

Our (International) Holiday Kitchen in December

Jean:

(December 28)

In keeping with our theme of an international Christmas, I made the three dishes I describe here, as well as others.

Pozole verde soup: First, on Christmas Eve, and the day before that (when our guests arrived), I wanted a Mexican theme.  We had tamales, chili, and this pozole verde soup, which was a particular hit.  I boiled a couple of bone-in chicken breasts with onions and garlic to make a good broth, then cooled them and pulled the cooked meat off the bones.  Finally, I reheated it with hominy, some chard from the garden, and a green tomatillo sauce before adding back the chicken.  You can top it with sour cream and/or cilantro.

For some history on pozole, I suggest the following: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pozole

My pozole with chard, hominy, chicken, and a dollop of sour cream

Pfeffernusse: I love making Christmas cookies.  There are so many different types.  I tried some new ones this year, including red velvet crinkle cookies, matcha shortbread, and pfeffernusse.   I can see from this Wikipedia article that pfeffernusse should be smaller and not rolled in powdered sugar, but we’re partial to anything rolled in powdered sugar.  Because I didn’t get around to making Mexican wedding cookies (AKA Russian teacakes or snowball cookies) this year, so the pfeffernusse got the powdered sugar that these other types would usually get from me. And we and our guests enjoyed them.

I had to ask what the name pfeffernusse means; I could guess the pepper part, but the “nusse” or nuts may refer to the cloves, or the nutmeg.  Anyway, I love anything that uses most of my spice rack.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pfeffern%c3%bcsse

My pfeffernusse rolled in powdered sugar

Shakshouka: I wanted something warm and hearty plus colorful for Christmas breakfast, although we also had sweet breads available like stollen and my pumpkin bread.  This shakshouka met all of those wishes.  It contains many of Chris’s favorite flavors.  (He wanted to add the manzanilla olives, but basically it is just a tomato, sweet pepper, and spice dish.) I also added in a chopped-up Cajun red pepper from the garden for an extra kick.  While shakshouka is red and green, it is not per se a Christmas dish–it is a Middle Eastern dish loved by Israelis and Arabs alike.  Italians, however, know it as “eggs in purgatory.”  You poach eggs in the sauce, but you can’t see those well, so I added hard-boiled eggs on top for visual effect and to give choices of egg styles.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakshouka

My shakshouka with hard-boiled eggs and artichoke hearts added

Comparing the Gardens, 2018 and 2019

2019 top, 2018 bottom

Chris:

The main reason I started one year ago doing blog entries named month to month was so I could compare one year with the next. These two December photos are taken from opposite vantage points:

• the 2019 photo is taken from behind the orange tree and toward the deck to the north;
• the 2018 photo was taken from behind the sweetgum (liquidambar) trees and south toward the meyer lemon bush.

Both photos are taken in the rain, and you’d have to say the garden looks pretty much the same in both–in its deep greenness, its carpet of brown mulch, and its decorative stone borders. But the photos do highlight different features of the back garden:

• the 2018 shot shows the French breakfast radishes in the nearest raised bed, the broccoli plants in the square raised bed, and the chard in the pot between the beds, as well as the ripe meyer lemons in the background;
• the 2019 shot shows the strawberry plants in the near foreground, the African daisy in the pot to the near left, and the potted hibiscus, Greek oregano, and geranium in the near right, as well as the dwarf pomegranate bush beside them. It also shows the fennel just beyond the African daisy, the broccoli plants in the ground beside the fennel, and the feathery arugula to the right of the broccoli. In the background is the wire-protected chard in front of our black compost bin.

Both photos feature the fountain, the striking Euryops with its yellow blooms, the white rose bush, and the rosemary and calla lily beside the white rose.

What else stands out for you in the photos?

More comparisons

Oranges: The production of the orange tree in December 2018 and in December 2019 is about the same for each year. In 2018, the tree produced roughly 350 oranges. The tree this year looks as if production will be similar (about 90 oranges have been used for juice or for giving away to the local food bank thus far:

Cluster of 25 oranges, Dec. 2019

The cluster boxed for the local food bank

About 15 navel oranges and 5 meyer lemons, plus water to limit the intensity, make a full pitcher of orange-lemonade. We like ours with some pulp.

For years, our orange production varied between a huge crop (300 or more) one year and a small crop (under 100) the next (keep in mind that an orange will grow in the same spot on the tree only every other year). That the last two crops have been about even shows that the tree is now pretty balanced in where the fruit grows from year to year. We’ll see if that keeps up!

Orange tree December 2019, about 90 already picked

 Meyer Lemons: We’ve used about 20 of the lemons already this season for our juice (see photo below), so this year’s total production is about the same as last year’s (about 125). But this year’s crop ripened just a bit earlier and is freer of the blemishes that marked the 2018 crop.

Meyer lemon bush December 2019, about 20 lemons picked so far

Broccoli: In this third consecutive year of growing broccoli in the winter garden, I’m mixing the techniques I used in the previous two years. In 2017, I allowed each plant to produce one large head (multiple florets) in the center. In 2018, I trimmed off the central head in each plant when the head reached about 1.5 inches across, so that multiple much smaller heads (broccolini) would spring up outside the center. So what I lost in the volume of the central head was compensated for by the number of heads. (See the post “February 2019: Cold, Rainy,  but Warm in the Kitchen” for a photo of the proliferating heads last winter.)

This year, I have five thriving plants:

• two of these I’m treating like the 2018 plants, with the central heads cut off and the smaller heads growing around the centers (see below)

Notice the four small heads growing around the lopped off central shoot in this 2019 plant.

• the other three I’m treating like the 2017 plants, with the central head of each becoming lush and with multiple florets:

Notice the multiple florets in the rich central shoot of this 2019 plant.

The advantage of the 2017 technique is the lushness of the central shoots, which most broccoli eaters will recognize. The advantage of the 2018 method is that as the smaller side shoots are cut off for eating, other small shoots will continue to grow. However, none of these will have the volume and lushness of the central heads.

In all three years, the broccoli plants have thrived, especially in the cold weather of late November through January and even into February.

Fennel: I can’t compare the 2019 fennel with that from 2018, because this is the first year I planted fennel in the garden. I should have done so years ago, because fennel is a perennial that has thrived in the garden since the spring–and is particularly lush and green now. I started the fennel off in a pot in April, and it took off. I transplanted it into the ground in the summer and it just kept growing taller. I tied it to a stake in August, so it would continue to rise and not fall over. In October, I trimmed off the tallest branches, which appeared worn out. Now in December it is proliferating deep green feathery shoots that are oh so fragrant and beautiful.

These feathery fronds of fennel have appeared in the last couple of weeks of this December.

A Small December Gallery

African daisy, back garden

The amazing Cajun red pepper plant, still producing ripening hot peppers in the occasionally frosty December mornings. A champion.

A white rose, back garden–never a month without new roses in this garden

Salmon roses–of course

The calla lily front left is the star in this shot, but just look at the broccoli, the feathery arugula, the blooming rosemary, and the feathery fennel!

Erysimum, green in summer and fall, blooming now in winter.

Just as in December 2018, a few of our petunias still bloom even as frost appears some mornings–and look at the hearty aloe and kalanchoe (white blooms) in the foreground of this photo.

On to the New Year!