Fertile Ground

Mysterious Thursdays

2010-07-22T20:58:00.000-07:00

I am thrilled about my mystery box from Mariquita Farm, which delivers the boxes on alternate Thursday nights to the restaurants they are delivering to. You sign up ahead of time, meet the smiling and efficient Julia outside, pay $25 cash and receive your bounty. That's it.
The above photo shows what was in it--can you identify everything? (I needed the farm's cheat sheet.) The cherry tomatoes and heirloom tomatoes, carrots, beets, onions, two bunches of basil, and pickling cucumbers are the easy ones. Those knobby white roots on the left are parsley roots, the green-striped melon is a charentais, and the herb with light flowers is a bunch of savory. This is worth way more than what I paid, and not knowing what I was going to end up with only increased my delight and pleasure.
Everything is beautiful and fresh and so far is delicious (onions in the enchiladas I made tonight, carrots and cherry tomatoes in the salad). I have plans for pickling the cucumbers with a spicy Moroccan cider vinegar pickle recipe, lots of salads, pesto, and a vegetable soup. Yay for summer!

Summer Sewing Camp

2010-07-10T10:24:00.001-07:00

This summer I have enrolled again in summer sewing camp, for which I am the sole instructor and participant, which is fine with me. It's really about letting myself play with fabric and projects I've dreamed up without feeling like I should be doing something else. I do have to credit Amy Karol, the author of Bend The Rules Sewing, as instructor in absentia, since some of the projects I've wanted to make are in her book.
Such as this tote bag. Actually I've been using it as a purse, and I made two identical ones because I found this great organic cotton fabric piece at SCRAP that was big enough for two purses. Then, since the fabric is reversible, I did not make it with lining as Amy designed it but instead had to finish the inner seams with bias trim, which I made myself from beige gingham. And I made the straps two-tone so I could use a cool IKEA fabric sample. All the fabric was either from SCRAP, thrift stores, or a free sample.
But for some reason this darn project was really tough. I can't tell you how many seams I ripped out and had to do over. It's kind of embarrassing because the design is very simple--I'm not sure why I kept screwing it up. Maybe because the fabric is thick, and the seams with bias tape were quite bulky so I often went off course and found myself sewing crooked. Amy writes that sometimes sewing projects get "jinxed" and you just have to give up. It was nice to know that even a sewing goddess like her has failures. I did not give up and they turned out nice, but now I am wary of simple tote bags.
This tea cozy, on the other hand, I whipped up in an evening. I feel joy every morning when I put it on our teapot, since we have switched to drinking tea in the mornings. Before, we were wrapping dishtowels around our teapot to keep the tea warm and it did not look very elegant.
The fabric is screen-printed linen sample from SCRAP that I got a long time ago and was saving for something wonderful. The lining and piping are also from SCRAP, and the batting is from an old quilt of my son's. I found some excellent instructions online from a site called "The Rusty Bobbin." Amy also has a design for a tea cozy but Rusty Bobbin's incorporated batting and that's the kind I wanted. This kind of tea cozy makes me think of my mom since she went through a phase of making tea cozies for friends except hers had hand-batiked custom fabric on the outside. I remember the smell of the wax she used when she did the batik. I guess it's obvious where I get my crafting urges.

Right now I am engaged in hanging some textiles that necessitated purchase of a staple gun. This is a kind of scary thing. When this comes to fruition I will post about it.

New Apron

2010-06-11T14:20:00.001-07:00

I just finished this apron and gave it to my friend June. I've been wanting to make it since January but didn't get around to it during school. I love the pattern design--very flattering and slightly retro. It is the "Mango Tango" pattern from A is for Apron, designed by Joan Hand Stroh. I think her apron designs are great. She also sells her aprons at her Etsy shop. I think I will make another one with this pattern but one thing I will alter is make the ties longer. They are not long enough to tie a bow in the back!

Hike on the Hazelnut Trail

2010-05-24T20:11:00.001-07:00

We had a little difficulty finding San Pedro Valley County Park, which contains the Hazelnut Trail, but only because we got off on the wrong exit in Pacifica and had a tour of the homes on Reina del Mar before making our way to Linda Mar and San Pedro. The Hazelnut Trail zigzags up the side of Montara Mountain through thickets of ceanothus, manzanita, California huckleberry, and other more exotic shrubs, and under old coast live oaks, bay trees and, of course, California hazelnut. Occasionally you can peer over the brush at the ocean or the other side of the valley, but much of the hike is through an overgrown green tunnel (and watch out for the poison oak.) My husband picked the hike, since it was about the right distance for a hike under two hours, and also because it has a ridiculous diversity of plant life. This partial list he found online by a botanist at Stanford of 68 plant species seen on this trail helped me narrow down some of the unfamiliar plants I took photos of on the hike. And there are many more that I just didn't have time to snap since we were trying to finish within 2 hours. We saw many lovely Douglas iris, sticky monkey flower, paintbrush, ferns and manroot (also known as wild cucumber).
Here are some of the plants that were new to me:
Pitcher Sage (Lepechinia calycina)
Berries of False Solomon's Seal (Smilacine racemosa var amplexicaulis) turning from green to red. Love those stripes!
Fringe cups (Tellima grandiflora), named because those little bells are fringed like eyelashes.
Pacific starflower (Trientalis latifolia), which grow in a starry carpet in shady bowers.
Yerba santa (Eriodictyon californicum), a shrubby plant up to 4 or 5 feet tall that seems to be well-loved by hummingbirds. We noticed the sooty older leaves covered by a fungus that apparently does not harm the plant.
Along with the plant list, I relied heavily on the Native Plants of Montara Mountain website, that is organized by flower and berry color, as well as by common and Latin names. Now I want to go do the hike again and find all the plants I missed, like the rare golden chinquapin and fetid adder's tongue. Speaking of adders, we saw three garter snakes (harmless).

The Mockingbird Tale

2010-05-22T14:48:00.001-07:00

This is papa mockingbird, our very visible neighbor. He has been chasing other mockingbirds (all except his timid partner), starlings, blue jays and robins away from our ivy wall and backyard for months. We believe he regards our house and garden as his, but he tolerates us when we come out to tend our garden or feed the compost. He likes to find the highest perch around--the top of our satellite dish, the fencepost on our back wall, the top of the telephone pole in front--and cycle through his vast repertoire of songs. But his behavior changed about a month ago, when he began valiantly protecting his nest in our neighbor Henry's magnolia tree. He started hanging around the tree all the time, or within about 20 feet of it, swooping from the roof, to the back wall, to the neighbor's fence, and issuing sharp chirps, either as a warning not to get too close or a warning to his partner that potential danger was near. This tree is right up against our fence, so we were intimately aware of the mockingbird's comings and goings while building the nest, but the foliage is thick enough that we have never seen it and have not wanted to poke around too closely for fear of disturbing it. About a week ago we realized that we were hearing faint peeps from the nest, and papa's stern chirps grew more frequent. A couple of times we saw him chasing off other mockingbirds and once a crow. This was a vulnerable time for the baby bird. Then yesterday, papa's chirping and swooping raised to a fever pitch, and I heard plaintive peeps throughout the day. Even I was getting a little tired of his protective fussing and helicopter parenting. How long could this go on? But today, he's gone. There are no harsh chirps nor little peeps coming from the tree. This afternoon I went over and peered up into the tree and saw the nest, but there no signs of life. We think maybe one of those predator birds got the baby bird. Why else would they all disappear overnight? It's sad. I guess if we were so aware of the nest, others were, too.

Ready to Celebrate With...Papayas?

2010-05-19T14:59:00.001-07:00

We've been buying a lot of these Marabol papayas. The ones we've been getting are from Mexico. They look like this on the outside:
They are a different variety than the Hawaiian ones, that look like this:
The difference is, the Marabol ones are less flavorful and sweet, but much cheaper, maybe $3 each. I used to only buy the Hawaiian ones because of that--when the Hawaiian ones (the variety is Solo) are best they are bright red-pink inside and incredibly sweet and juicy and floral--but they can be $5 each and are much smaller. My husband started buying the Marabols because he liked them, but I tend to want to put them in things rather than eat them straight.
Like papaya salsa:
Or how about a smoothie?
In Latin America they make papaya smoothies with lots of milk and sugar. We add strawberries, bananas, orange juice, yogurt, or whatever else is in the fridge.
And so, what's to celebrate, beside springtime?
I took my last final today, in syntax! This was a class that took up lots and lots of notepaper drawing trees (not oaks, but sentences). Here's an example from my studying for the final, for which I used 28 notebok pages:
The final was hard, and there were no other assignments. One final, one grade. Here is a sample sentence: "It is certain to be demolished." Here's another one: "Whom will he be persuaded to visit?" Analyze those, will you?

Still Spring on Mt. Tam

2010-05-17T10:19:00.000-07:00

We went for another great hike last weekend, to Bolinas Ridge, where it's still green and flowery. While San Francisco was smothered in a blanket of fog, from the ridge we looked down on the cottony blanket. We could even see the tip of Sutro Tower poking up from the fog (not quite visible in this photo). There were lots of California poppies and blue lupine and clover (maybe owl's clover, I'm not sure which one), none of which I took a photo of because I take them for granted.
I did take a photo of two flowers I couldn't identify. I've been looking in my field guides and online at Calflora, but still have not found these. The first one was growing right alongside the trail on the sunny exposed slopes:
The other one was in a shady bower below some oak trees, near where a creek runs down the hill, although it was dry now.
Any ideas?

Note: I found out that the top flower is Bellardia trixago, a native wildflower from the Mediterranean that has naturalized here, thanks to a reply from a kind staff person from the Marin Chapter of the California Native Plant Society. They have a great website with a log of citings of different species in specific places.

Lunch at the French Laundry

2010-04-26T14:25:00.001-07:00

My husband and I had the good fortune help our friend Mark and his wife Karen celebrate his birthday at the French Laundry this weekend. Before we had even gotten out of the car, we were impressed by the restaurant's beautiful garden, and while we waited for our friends, we saw a chef in his white apron scurry across the street to get a bunch of herbs for our lunch. About our lunch, what is there to say? The food was perfect. There was absolutely nothing you could quibble with about it. Each course--all nine of them--was exquisite. The service was discreet, knowledgeable and helpful without going overboard in any way. Even afterwards, although I felt full, I did not feel that there was a crise de fois waiting for me around the corner. That evening, as we remembered our meal, I made a comment about it being inspiring for our own cooking, and we wondered whether we could achieve grilled mackerel en escabeche with orange slices, fennel, chorizo and saffron emulsion with the silky texture and mild flavor of the French Laundry's without being oily and strong-tasting.

But does a meal like that really bring inspiration to the round of breakfast-lunch-dinner cooking we do every day? Or is it just a fantasy world of tartare of Kuroge beef from Shiga Prefecture and Moulard duck fois gras en terrine that we live in for a couple of hours, until the magic stops, and we're back to the reality of burritos and spaghetti with only a faint memory of cauliflower panna cotta with oyster glaze topped with California sturgeon caviar? Honestly, it's unlikely that I will attempt to make the New Bedford sea scallop course, which involved trimming the scallop, creating a mousse with the scallop trimmings and molding it together with the scallop to cook it sous vide, then rolling the outside of the scallop in powdered hazelnuts and serving it on a puddle of black truffle sauce with a soupcon of melted leeks (my favorite dish, if I had one, and one whose preparation one of the staff described for us in detail).

And yet, I did feel a renewed interest in food upon our return. No, I did not go to the specialty shop to ask for Kuroge beef (they probably don't have it anyway), but I didn't just throw my top sirloin steak in the pan either. I trimmed the fat, rubbed it with olive oil, sprinkled it with salt and pepper, and watched it carefully to judge when it was done. I went out and bought a pineapple so we can try to somehow recreate the golden vanilla-roasted pineapple on coconut sorbet. I haven't looked for mackerel yet, but last night's red snapper I marinated in a Moroccan chermoula sauce, baked it in its sauce and spooned out the juices to sop up with bread when it was done. Maybe I would have done all those things without going to the French Laundry, but somehow I feel I did them with more attention and care. Every once in a great while, we need an immersion in savarin au citron, surrounded by citrus vierge and drizzled with Per Mio Figlio olive oil, to bring some creativity back to our table at home.

Birding on Mt. Davidson

2010-04-25T13:48:00.000-07:00

Photo by Donna Dewhurst, courtesy of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
I had a great morning birding today with a group organized by Nature in the City. There were about a dozen of us including expert birder Dominik Mosur and a couple of other highly knowledgeable birders. Normally when I bring my binoculars up there to look for birds, I see hawks and lots of hummingbirds and white-crowned sparrows, but I've been unsuccessful at seeing the smaller birds in the trees and thickets. Today I learned to concentrate on the edges of the forested areas, and watch the patches of sunlight because that's where the insects are and thus the birds. I also learned that the best time for seeing spring migrants is when the wind is from the east, blowing the migrants off course toward us. I watched Dom listening for birds and then locating them visually. I also learned that I probably need to get better binoculars.
We saw many birds, some residents and some of them migrants on their spring migration, headed north. First off, we heard a winter wren singing off the forested path. The expert birders located it and Dom set up his scope, so we all caught a glimpse of it singing, beak open. Further along we watched the fierce Anna's hummingbirds defend their elderberry bush, and then Dom found a lazuli bunting in some Scotch broom. He set up the scope again and we all gazed at it. Here's one that's a bit more blue than the one we saw:
Photo by Dave Menke, courtesy of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
We saw a red-tailed hawk like the one below, as well as red-shoudered hawk, Cooper's hawks, and sharp-shinned hawks. I can recognize the first two kinds on my own, but not the Cooper's or sharp-shinned.
Photo by Lee Karney, courtesy of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
We saw a large flock of cedar waxwings catching insects and being chased off by the hummingbirds, and a pair of band-tailed pigeons. We saw a Wilson's warbler darting around in a bush (that's the yellow one at the top of this post).
We watched an olive-sided flycatcher (one of the migrants) on a dead tree swoop off repeatedly to catch an insect, and return to his perch, for about 15 minutes. I learned that they wipe a bee's stinger off on the branch before they eat it! You don't see it in the photo below, but the feathers from the back are iridescent emerald green, which probably helps them blend in to the central American jungles where they winter. They are a threatened species, mostly because their forest habitat is being clear-cut. This photo does show its distinctive shape of the head.
No photo credit, from a Canadian government website
We also saw an orange-crowned warbler, a tiny thing with no particular markings to distinguish it, as you can see from the photo below. This is a bird that I would never ever have found with my own eyes or even my own binoculars, since I could barely see it even with my binocs. In the scope, I could even see the tiny orange patch on the back of its head, which you also can't see in this photo.
Photo by Donna Dewhurst, courtesy of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
I did not mess around trying to get any of this with my camera. But I do have a better sense now where to look when I go up to Mt. Davidson on my own.
Note: Jeff, a fellow birder on the walk, also blogged about it and found some even more gorgeous bird photos here.

The April Garden

2010-04-22T15:03:00.000-07:00

There are lots of things growing in the raised bed right now. With all the rain, interspersed with sunshine, they just can't help but grow. In the foreground, chard on the left, African Blue Basil on the right. Behind the basil are the sugar snap peas that are just starting to flower. In a row just to the right of the chard are lettuces, but they are too small to see in this photo, as are the row of carrots to the left of the peas. I think I will put in some more lettuces in a week or so right in the middle. In the way way back is a volunteer potato plant. Love those volunteers.
Below is a cymbidium flower spike that my husband coaxed out of a discarded old plant he found at Urban Ore. It took a few years, but it's the kind of gardening challenge he likes.

My Husband's Walk

2010-04-13T20:36:00.001-07:00

Last Friday I got to go on my husband's walk. He discovered this trail in the hills behind the Claremont Hotel, in the Claremont Canyon Regional Preserve. When I say "discovered," I mean he knew about it vaguely but he started going there after work to walk a couple of weeks ago. In fact, he has gone every day after work for the past few weeks. It is really putting him in shape. Parts of the trail are ridiculously steep, like the section above that seems like you are going to run right off a cliff. Once you get up over the ridge it's magical, like a hidden world far from the city. There is a famous eucalyptus tree with some famous great horned owls. You can see some great photos of the owls from a few years ago here. He hasn't seen the owl yet, but we heard it when I hiked with him. There are many songbirds and hummingbirds and hawks. When I was there I saw about a dozen butterflies that might have been Painted Ladies but none alighted long enough for me to get a good glimpse. There are also other people hiking the trail as well, but they are interesting to look at, too. On Friday there was a small group of kids and adults having a Friday night pizza picnic on a log. I'm glad my husband has an escape.

African Adventure

2010-04-08T17:55:00.001-07:00

I have been admiring our new cymbidium in the sunlight on our deck. I got it for my husband for our anniversary. It's called Arab Trader 'African Adventure.' I can't explain the name, except that marriage is an adventure and ours is a beautiful flowering.

Lots and Lots of Snow

2010-04-03T21:26:00.000-07:00

This is our car after a night of snow up in the mountains. We dug it out, drove to Sugar Bowl, and skied on 18 inches of fresh powder. Or tried to ski. I felt more like a snow removal vehicle than a skier.

Weekend Walks

2010-03-28T19:13:00.000-07:00

Photo credit: Lee Karney/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

I am loving my weekend walks with my husband. Today was a real highlight, since we explored a trail on Mt. Tam while our son was playing a soccer scrimmage in San Rafael. We hiked up to Phoenix Lake, around it, and up Fish Gulch almost to Lake Lagunitas. The Fish Gulch trail was quiet--so quiet that we saw a bobcat trotting up the trail ahead of us.
Picture Source: ddebold and Animal Photos!

The steep walls of the canyon were thick with redwoods and ferns. On our way down a Stellar's Jay made sure we knew he was there by flying across the trail and squawking at us. As in many wooded places, we heard many more birds than we saw, such as a hawk and the far-off knocking of a woodpecker. We saw only one other human in this canyon, on a bike, going down the other side. I felt like we had a glimpse of what Mt. Tam was like before humans logged it and built houses and roads on it.
When we came home I looked in my wildflower field guide to identify three of the wildflowers we saw. Here they are:
Checker Lily
Red Larkspur
Indian Warrior

Wildflower photos © Br. Alfred Brousseau, Saint Mary's College, from CalPhotos

(I forgot my camera so I had to find photos I could use online. It seems like there are more and more photos available now that can be used without securing permission. I always like to check because I want to respect photographers' wishes about how their photos are used.)

St. Patrick's Day Soda Bread

2010-03-18T17:50:00.000-07:00

I made this soda bread yesterday, for St. Patrick's Day. The recipe was from the Silver Palate Cookbook, but I made some changes like reducing the sugar and making 2/3 of the total flour whole wheat (I think this bread can take a lot of playing around with different flours). The dough is very wet like a cornbread batter, so it's the easiest of all the three I made to mix. You bake this one in a skillet so you get wedges when you cut it. My version is below. It was an excellent breakfast bread, especially with the currants. It was also a little lighter than the other two, probably because it has baking powder and baking soda and two eggs. We ate it split in half, toasted under the broiler, with lots of butter. I'm not sure which one I like best...sometimes it's nice without currants, like the first two I did. Sometimes it's nice sweet, like the first and third. Don't forget the Kerrygold butter!
Before the recipe, I wanted to mention that I discussed St. Patrick's Day in my ESL conversation group with students from an Asian country and two former Soviet republics. I tried to find out if they had anything equivalent--a holiday that celebrates another country from which many immigrated to their country--but not surprisingly, they couldn't think of any. I did hear about some other interesting holidays from their countries, and about how old holidays promoted by the USSR have given way to new holidays celebrating the now independent republics' much older holidays. There are certainly many complicated reasons that we celebrate the holidays that we do.

"Grandma Clark's Soda Bread," modified
3 Tbsp. unsalted butter
2 cups whole wheat flour (I used 1 cup graham flour and 1 cup white whole wheat)
1 cup white bread flour
1-1/2 tsp. salt
1 Tbsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 cup dried currants
1-3/4 cup buttermilk
2 eggs, well beaten
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Smear 1 tablespoon of butter around in a ten-inch cast iron skillet. Melt two tablespoons of butter separately and set aside. Mix dry ingredients together. Add currants to dry ingredients and toss to coat well. Whisk together buttermilk, eggs and melted butter. Add to the dry ingredients and mix just until blended. Do not overmix. Spoon batter into prepared skillet and smooth top with a spatula. Bake until golden brown and puffed, about 1 hour. Cool for ten minutes, remove from skillet, and cool completely on a rack. Cut into wedges to serve.

March Planting

2010-03-14T15:46:00.000-07:00

It's a beautiful day, and the garden is calling. I have been meaning to put some more seeds in the raised bed, so today was the day.
On this side I put in more sugar snap peas (you can see the ones I planted earlier at the lower righthand corner) and a row of mixed greens. The chard, at the top, are starting to get thick and leafy.
On this side I put in a few more sugar snap peas (bottom) and two rows of carrots, orange and purple.
As I was watering it all down, a small flock of cedar waxwings came by to eat the ivy berries. They were secretive and quiet, alert for the starlings and mockingbird who own the place. Something startled them and they flew together to the rose bush and waited and watched for about a minute, then decided it wasn't worth it and flew away. My husband says he's seen them in the backyard before, but that was my first sighting. They are dramatic with their pointed crests and black eye bands, and their bodies are sleek pale brown with a tinge of green. Also keeping me company in the yard were the hummingbirds and a flock of bushtits.

Blood Orange Cake All Over the Place

2010-03-06T23:05:00.001-08:00

Besides the soda bread (see previous post), this month's Bon Appetit also has a recipe for and gorgeous photo of a blood orange upside down cake with polenta. My friend Nancy made it for our book club meeting this week, and served it with creme fraiche, and it was a sensation. I decided I had to bake it, too, and I did on Friday (that's mine in the photo above). We all enjoyed it, although the boys were not quite as enthusiastic as the book club had been. Then tonight, we went out to dinner at Flour + Water (hot restaurant in the Mission featured in the NY Times a few months ago with outstanding pizzas and pastas). And what was on their dessert menu? The blood orange upside-down cake with polenta. Of course we had to try it. It was the same exact cake, except made into an individual cake with one slice of carmelized blood orange on top. The cake was just a tad lighter (maybe more egg whites? cake flour?) but still with the crunch of polenta. And I believe they went for whipped cream on the side. What I want to know is, did Flour + Water see Bon Appetit and decide they had to make this cake, too? Or did some pastry chef create it elsewhere and Bon Appetit jumped in with its own version? Or is it just one of those recipes floating out there whose time is now? (Bon Appetit is growing on me, but I still miss Gourmet.) As good as it is, I think I have had enough blood orange upside down cake for a while now.

Quest for the Best Soda Bread

2010-03-04T22:00:00.000-08:00

This March I decided I finally have to sort out the soda bread question. Maybe it's an urge to connect up with my Irish roots. Or maybe it's an excuse to use up some of the flours I keep buying.* Whatever it is, this month it's soda bread in my kitchen.
Okay, I admit it, the immediate trigger was a photo in this month's Bon Appetit of a slice of Mrs. O'Callaghan's soda bread slathered with yellow Irish butter. The loaf above is the result of Mrs. O'Callaghan's recipe. I think it's pretty gorgeous (and you should see Mrs. O'Callaghan, whose photo is also in the magazine but unfortunately not on the website), and we all liked the taste, especially slathered with Kerrygold Irish butter. The texture is slightly crumbly as opposed to the chewiness of a yeast loaf. But it's moist and hefty and rustic and the ideal vehicle for butter. Strangely, the comments on epicurious regarding this recipe all said it was too dry, many added extra buttermilk, and some people couldn't get it to come out at all. Mine was not too dry, but my only criticism is that it's a little on the sweet side, with 1/2 cup of brown sugar. Brown sugar! I suspect this is an Americanization because last time I was in the British Isles, brown sugar was not to be found. I wonder what Mrs. O'Callaghan really uses. But we ate it up in 24 hours. Four thumbs up.
Next I tried 101 Cookbooks' recipe for Irish Mum's Brown Bread. I got graham flour especially for it. Above is the result. It's a smaller loaf, with less flour and a bit wetter dough so I baked it in a loaf pan. I love the coarseness of the graham flour. The boys did not like it as much as Mrs. O'Callaghan's, probably because it has no sugar. But it has an egg, which I think makes it a bit stronger and maybe a tiny bit lighter. I can't wait to have some toasted with marmalade for breakfast tomorrow.
But I'm not done yet! There are still more recipes to try. I've been drooling over a recipe in the Silver Palate cookbook for soda bread with currants, and there's another one on epicurious with caraway seeds and another one with sunflower seeds. Sunflower seeds! Probably not too Irish but worth a try.

*I just did a flour inventory. I have unbleached white flour, unbleached white bread flour, graham flour, whole wheat pastry flour, white whole wheat pastry flour, and wheat bran. And that's just the wheat flours. I also have masa harina, cornmeal, polenta, and almond meal. Gotta use it up before it goes stale.

An Abundance of Crochet

2010-03-02T09:51:00.000-08:00

I'm sure those who read this post about my first crochet project are eager to know if I ever finished it. Well, as a matter of fact, I did. Here it is above, with my most recent project, granny squares to be made into some kind of quilt at some point in the future. You can see the squares are not all exactly the same size, a result of using different weights of yarn culled from SCRAP, and which I will have to deal with when I put them all together.
The hat was supposed to be a groovy crochet cap, and it's fine but not the most flattering style for me, I decided. My husband wears it around the house sometimes.
I have also crocheted four scarves. The two above were the easiest. The two-color one is for one of the FC Barcelona fans in the house. He has actually worn it a couple of times and claims he defended it to his friends at school ("Hey, I'd like to see you crochet a scarf sometime.") That's not so complimentary, is it?
Here are the two more difficult ones. The one on the right is single crochet alternating front and back loops. I kept forgetting which I had done and how long my row was. The one on the left also involved counting. It is supposed to have one more long row making it wavy on both sides but I ran out of yarn.
What I still enjoy about crochet is the same thing I enjoyed when I began: it is mostly about the process. I like the feeling of my hands in motion; I'm doing something but can be thinking about something else. I can do it while talking to my husband or sitting in front of the TV watching the Olympics or even at a boring parent meeting. Unlike sewing, it does not involve taking over the dining room table to lay out my fabric and taking over my desk to set up my sewing machine. And ultimately because I have not invested too much thought and agony into the product, I don't care if it's not perfect. I love making the granny squares because they involve lots of my favorite part: choosing the colors.
Here was my initial inspiration to start a granny square quilt. I know these quilts are on a whole different aesthetic and spiritual level, but I love to think about the Amish color choices when I'm choosing my colors. If you have not seen this show at the deYoung Museum, go now. It is very beautiful and moving to see the expressions of love, creativity, devotion, community and faith within a tightly circumscribed form chosen by the women themselves.

The Rainbow Dinner

2010-02-23T14:49:00.001-08:00

These are just a few of the colorful dishes we dined on last weekend when my brother-in-law came over to cook dinner with us before flying back to NY. We asked him to accompany my husband to Berkeley Bowl to buy the ingredients, and as you can see, the abundance of Berkeley Bowl produce inspired both of them.
Unfortunately the first course went unphotographed: sauteed prawns with garlic, parsley and Spanish paprika. We consumed that around 7 pm, before my son went off to play his jazz concert. While he was at the concert we sipped our wine and finished the prep on the second couse: baked petrale sole in butter, roasted purple and golden carrots and red and golden beets with dill, and frisee salad with more beets and carrots with avocados and golden tomatoes. The concert went on longer than we thought (in addition to jazz there was a classical tenor and Chinese poetry; kind of glad I didn't stay for that one), so we went and watched some of the Olympics and got inspired by sailing ski jumpers. We finally all sat down around 9:45 for the second course, and by the time I brought my son home for his dinner it was 10:30. The sole and salad and vegetables were delicious (forgot to photograph the sole, too).
Then for dessert a medley of berries with whipped cream.
I don't think there is any color found in nature that we did not have represented in that meal.

Starting the Garden Again

2010-02-15T09:20:00.000-08:00

Last weekend I got the garden going again. First I top-dressed the raised bed with a bag and a half of chicken manure. I transplanted some sweet pea volunteers and planted more sweet pea seeds in that box on the left side of this photo. I planted some chard starts (upper left-hand corner of this photo) and a lot of sugar-snap pea seeds. I left in the African basil (left-hand edge of photo), alyssum, and a healthy fringe of chervil (upper right-hand side of bed). I'm very proud of that chervil; it's all volunteers from last year's planting, which never really thrived. As usual I have all my netting and stakes up to ward off evil cats from using the raised bed as their potty. The squirrel still makes regular visits to our backyard, and I know the netting and stakes would be no match for him/her, but he/she does not seem interested in the raised bed at the moment.
Right now gardening is pretty easy since I don't have to worry about watering. Those light, gentle misty rains we've been having all last week watered my new garden just enough, and the soil is still quite damp from all those earlier harder rains. All I have to do is pop out every day to see if the peas sprouted.

Redlead Roundhead

2010-02-07T19:57:00.000-08:00

More mushrooms in our backyard, this one with a common name, Redlead Roundhead. The Latin name is Leratiomyces ceres.
It was not easy for me to identify this one. I began with my one slim mushroom guide, which has a simple key to identify fungi. It told me I had to take a spore print to discover what color the spores were. It also identified the parts of the mushroom and told me how to make a spore print. Here's my spore print:
I decided these were purplish brown. Then I had to look closely at the gills and stem to decide if the gills were waxy, free, adnate, adnexed, decurrent, or a mixture of several of these. I had to examine the stipe (stem) to see if it had an annulus or a volva (don't ask). It was very interesting to look closely at a mushroom but all this examination did not lead me to anything that looked like these mushrooms. I finally ended up online at mykoweb, clicking through all the photos of mushrooms with purplish-brown spores. Finally I ended up at Leratiomyces ceres (which likes to grow on wood chips).
One thing I learned from my mushroom research is that quite a few genera have been split into two or more genera in recent years, due to microscopic differences. So my 1971 mushroom guide is quite outdated, but I am fond of it for sentimental reasons and so I'll keep it anyway. It was published by University California Press as part of the original California Natural History Guides series. When new, it cost $1.85. I think it looks pretty good for a nearly 40-year-old paperback.
This book belonged to my in-laws. When they were cleaning out books they gave us a boxful and all the original natural history guides from this series focusing on the S.F. Bay region were in it. I nabbed them, since I really love to read natural history guides. They are a very special kind of book that reveals both what is known and what is not known about the natural world. They are written for those of us who are walking along contentedly one day and suddenly come upon an amazing butterfly, or wildflower, or rock, or mushroom, and cannot rest until we find out more about it. The original California Natural History Guide series included books on butterflies, rocks and minerals, mushrooms, seashells, early uses of plants, evolution of the landscape, a classic on weather by Harold Gilliam, and more. They are mostly under 75 pages and very clearly and succinctly written.
Now the California Natural History Guides have been reissued, mostly completely rewritten by other authors, although Harold Gilliam did the weather one. I am a big fan of the new ones and have three of them: butterflies, trees and shrubs, and spring wildflowers. (I have written about the butterfly one, which I particularly adore, in this post.) But at 300+ pages, they are a whole different undertaking. I find myself turning to the older guides if I come back from a walk and have a burning need to read about, say, seashore plants of Northern California, before I tackle the bigger, newer one.

Along the Coast

2010-02-04T20:34:00.000-08:00

We took a walk last weekend on the trail between Baker Beach and the Golden Gate and there were all these sheet webs caught in the thickets and highlighted by dew. I had to read a little about them afterward. Sheet webs are made by sheet-web weaver spiders, which are usually quite small. I didn't see any although I looked for them. They create a mass of vertical threads above the sheet web so a flying insect will become disoriented and caught in them, and then fall to the sheet below. The spider waits underneath the sheet web to seize any insects that fall on it. You can see the vertical threads very well in this photo.

The trees and thickets on this trail are full of birds and probably other creatures (like this spider) that I can't see. We saw a pair of northern flickers, jays, and many white-crowned sparrows, in addition to all the sea birds like cormorants, pelicans, gulls, and maybe some phalaropes offshore. Sometimes I can't believe I live in such a beautiful place.

Mushrooms on the Lawn

2010-02-02T20:26:00.000-08:00

It has been so wet lately that mushrooms are blooming on our lawn. These are some variety of cup mushroom, probably a species of Peziza. They can come in bright "orange peel," reddish brown, tan, and beige. One species, Peziza repanda, seems to enjoy decomposing wood chips, and since this part of our lawn has been heavily mulched, I'm guessing that's what it is. My neighbor caught me crouching down this morning taking their pictures.
"Weeds getting to you?" she asked.
I hemmed and hawed and finally admitted I'd been photographing some mushrooms. I hope she didn't think I was too weird.

The New Family Pie Baker

2010-01-22T22:24:00.000-08:00

I think I am about to cede my title as the family pie baker to my youngest son. Look what he made in the last week, with only minor consultation from me on how thin to roll out the crusts. (The first one is apple, the second pecan.) Need I add that both were delicious? And with crusts that a professional pastry chef would be proud to serve. Maybe this is what being teenage-boy hungry and no soccer practice to tire him out does.

Beach Walk

2010-01-11T16:59:00.000-08:00

Last fall, my husband and I started a pattern of taking walks every Sunday, preferably on the beach. We made a kind of pact, to take a walk rain or shine (luckily so far it has not been "rain," but shine, cloud, fog, mist, or wind). One thing I love about it is that even though most of our walks are at Ocean Beach, each time the beach is different. We went one day right after a storm when the ocean was all choppy and churned up and the tide was very high and the beach was strewn with two- to three-foot high drifts of sea foam. A family was jumping in the drifts like snow. We've also had some of those mild, sunny days in San Francisco when I can't believe it's winter and wish it were that warm in the summer here.
This Sunday we didn't get out of the house till after 3:30 pm, and it was cloudy and already the sky was darkening. As we neared the end of the beach with the Cliff House, we saw all these photographers with tripods lined up to take pictures of the ocean. Was it a class? What were they photographing? We finally realized they were waiting for the sunset, which we doubted we'd see much of since the cloud cover was heavy. Several parties were in progress with beach fires at the fire pits. We turned around back down the beach. Suddenly my husband said, "Maybe there will be a sunset." Some skinny strips of sky were beginning to turn pink and in the course of a minute went from pinkish purple to hot pink to fiery coral. The wet sand and higher clouds reflected the pinks and reds, which grew more and more intense. I had my camera, so I took a few photos, and then after another minute, sky began to fade. The whole thing had lasted about 3 minutes in all. How did those photographers know there would be a sunset worth waiting for? The beach grew dark quickly after that, so by the time we got back to our starting place we were stumbling over the sand. Another great walk, different from all the others.

Excitement at Heron's Head

2010-01-09T19:33:00.000-08:00

Brant. Photo credit: Don Becker, USGS EROS/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

The big event today out at Heron's Head Park (a small-scale wetlands restoration in the Bayview district of San Francisco) was the sighting of some Brants--not this exact one, but three that looked just like it--on some rocks. The Brants were not even on our checklist of the 100 common birds of Heron's Head Park, and it was my mom who identified them!
We were out on a birding tour with some other birdwatchers and interns from Lowell High School trained by S.F. Nature Education, and when we saw the birds, we all thought they were Canada Geese at first. Then we noticed those rings around their necks, and the fact that they were smaller than Canada Geese. They had their backs to us, so we couldn't see their heads too well, but we could see thin brown stripes on their bellies, the white puffy undertail coverts and black wings. We started tossing out some other ideas. It was Mom, flipping through her bird book, who said thoughtfully, "You know, I think they might be Brants." We gazed through our binoculars, thrilled. Yes! They must be Brants. We continued on our walk, passing on the tip about the Brants to another intern, and saw a lot of other birds: Greater Yellowlegs, Buffleheads, American Wigeons, Avocets, Greater Scaups, Western Grebes, Willets, Marbled Godwits, and more. By the time we got back to the Brants, the naturalist (Alan Hopkins) had set up his scope and was excitedly waving others over to peer at them. "Good work!" he told us happily. I felt proud to be a member of the Brant-identifying party.
My mom also identified a Say's Phoebe that was darting down from a fence cable into the grass to catch insects. She is quite the expert these days.
S.F. Nature Education is holding two more tour days this winter: February 6 and March 6. Tours leave at 10am, 10:30am, 11am and 11:30am. Maybe you'll see something even more rare and wonderful.

Happy New Year (with Duck)

2010-01-02T19:17:00.000-08:00

My plan was to cook duck for New Year's Eve. It was our turn to host our friends Mark and Karen (and their three kids) from Woodland, with whom we have celebrated New Year's Eve with a feast for nearly 20 years. We've only missed being together a few New Year's Eves, when we were in Spain and once when I was having my wisdom teeth out and maybe one or two more.
Actually the duck was originally an impulse buy a few days before Christmas, and I thought vaguely of cooking it between Christmas and New Year's. Then my husband gave me a wonderful new cookbook for Christmas, Olives and Oranges: Recipes and Flavor Secrets from Italy, Spain, Cyprus & Beyond by Sara Jenkins and Mindy Fox, with a recipe for Honey-and-Chili-Roasted Duck with Fennel and Farro, which we thought would be perfect for New Year's Eve. So I went out to buy another duck and got the last one at the store (albeit a left0ver frozen one), so we'd have enough for all nine of us.
Then I got an email from Karen. They wanted to bring us a free-range turkey from Branigan's Turkey Farm in Woodland because they had a gift certificate they wanted to use. I explained about the ducks, and Karen said, "Let's cook it all!" so, with a vision of our table groaning with poultry, I agreed. Meanwhile, my husband decided to stop by Berkeley Bowl after work and pick up several pounds of fresh sole for lunch on New Year's Day, before the duck. By the time he brought it home I was feeling slightly overwhelmed and didn't think his joke about cooking a tur-duck-duck was very funny. But it all worked out beautifully.
I decided not to try to cook both ducks and the turkey, given my limited oven space. I froze the duck I had bought fresh and pushed the duck I had already begun to defrost to the back of the fridge. Mark and Karen arrived with an 18-pound turkey on ice in the ice chest and large box of goodness from their garden (bunches of thyme and sage, winter greens and tender lettuces, butternut squashes and oranges). We enjoyed a lunch of baked sole, pasta with walnut and garlic, sauce and salad from their lettuces. After lunch, Karen and I set to unpacking the turkey and massaging it with butter and herbs for its trip into the oven. She had the great idea of roasting it breast down so we could go to the beach for a walk and not hang around basting it every 20 minutes. So we took their 2-year-old to the beach and looked at the surfers.
The turkey turned out moist and golden (at least the back--I didn't see the breast before my husband carved it) and delicious. I may cook my turkeys upside down from now on. (I was very impressed with the quality of the Branigan's bird. When we unpacked it, it smelled fresh and it had a tremendous amount of meat on it. Their website says the turkeys are available year-round at their plant in Woodland and in November and December at certain stores in the Bay Area.) I made the farro cooked in orange juice and fennel from my duck recipe. The 2-year-old had a grand time juicing the oranges in our orange juice squeezer. We steamed up the winter greens to have along side and my husband made a mahogany gravy. I was so caught up in enjoying our feast that I didn't take a single picture of it! Right after dinner we cut off a huge pile of meat and popped the carcass into our biggest stock pot to make turkey soup. We sent Mark and Karen off with a container of it on New Year's Day, after a dim sum lunch at Yank Sing.
I finally made the duck tonight, and it was succulent. We poured the pan juices over polenta and polished off the winter greens. I've got the duck carcass bubbling in the stock pot for some duck soup right now. It was satisfying to finally cook that duck.

Pinchos Morunos

2010-01-01T14:09:00.001-08:00

Didn't these come out looking good? And they tasted even better.
We discovered pinchos morunos when living in Spain. They are pork kebabs marinaded in spices--I have seen it translated as "Moorish pork kebabs" but the Moors, being Muslim, did not eat pork. I guess it's a uniquely Spanish blending of two cultures. The grumpy butcher near our house used to sell them uncooked. It was my "easy" dinner: pick up some pinchos morunos, broil them and cook up some rice, make a salad and that was it.
My older son picked pinchos morunos to make as his meal over the holidays. He did the whole thing! I only collaborated on checking if the kebabs were done (we broiled them). I really like this recipe from Joyce Goldstein's book, Tapas: Sensational Small Plates from Spain. Here it is as published in the SF Chronicle:

Pinchos Morunos
1/2 cup olive oil
1 Tbsp. pimenton dulce
2 Tbsp. toasted cumin, ground
1 tsp. pimenton picante or cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp. saffron threads, crushed and infused in 2 Tbsp. hot water
2 tsp. dried oregano
2 lbs. boneless pork shoulder or tenderloin, cut in 1-inch cubes (we used loin)
1 tsp. kosher salt
1/2 tsp. freshly ground pepper
2 Tbsp. minced garlic
Chopped flat leaf parsley
4 Tbsp. lemon juice
Lemon wedges
In a small pan over low heat, warm the dry spices in the olive oil. Transfer to a bowl and cool the mixture completely. Rub mixture on the cubed meat. Toss in salt, pepper, garlic, parsley, and lemon juice. Cover and refrigerate overnight.
Soak bamboo skewers in water for 30 minutes.
Preheat broiler or make a charcoal fire. Threat meat on skewers and broil or grill until done, about 4 minutes per side. Serve with lemon wedges.

Comfort and Joy

2009-12-27T09:51:00.000-08:00

We noticed this chair, looking out over the birds and seals in Bolinas Lagoon, on our walk around the lagoon while spending a few days with our family at Stinson Beach, our regular holiday ritual. In the car ride home, my sons were talking about their grandparents, how interesting and funny and kind they were. I loved hearing how much spending time with their grandparents means to them.
Of course there was also good eating, another holiday ritual. We had Steven's luxurious barbecued prime rib with roasted vegetables for Christmas dinner. I made fresh ginger cake and Meyer lemon ice cream for dessert.
My favorite concoction was my brother-in-law Mark's lunch plate with leftovers the next day.

The Baker Guy

2009-12-20T12:01:00.000-08:00

My younger son produced these yesterday, with minimal input from me. He has been wanting to bake these since we got our Christmas tree last week. I think gingerbread people are part of his Christmas ritual, so I'm glad he knows how to bake them now.
I told my boys that this vacation I want some more participation in meal preparation, ideally for them to choose a dish they like and cook it for dinner (with me as helper if they want). To my surprise they agreed with no complaints. The older one said he wants to cook Pinchos Morunos, a favorite from Spain that we recently found a recipe for. It's chunks of pork loin marinated in paprika and spices and broiled. The younger one wanted to know if baking TWO batches of gingerbread people would count as a meal. I said no.

More Procrastination, I Confess...

2009-12-12T16:40:00.001-08:00

Actually, I'm in pretty good shape. I wrote out all my responses to the essay questions for Second Language Acquisition and now I just have to pull out key phrases, reduce them to 6 pt. type and print them out on the 3x5 index card I'm allowed for the final on Monday. This trick is new trick to me. When I was in college, I had to hand write my index card notes, since I didn't use a computer while in college. That really dates me. As for my Chinese final, well...there seems to be a finite number of Chinese characters I can keep in my memory at any given time. Or maybe it's about access...I know the ones I learned a month ago are in there somewhere but dredging them up is the problem. Anyway, these madeleines seemed the perfect antidote to a gray, rainy day.

Since I'm Procrastinating, I Might As Well Bake!

2009-12-08T12:32:00.000-08:00

I'm supposed to be studying for my Chinese and Second Language Acquisition finals, but I was suddenly seized with a longing to bake bread. I know at least one other person who does this form of procrastination (and she managed to finish a PhD, so it can't be all bad!). My baked good of choice was whole wheat bread, specifically King Arthur Flour's No-Knead 100% Whole Wheat Bread. This is a nice website with lots of recipes; I've made their pizza dough and now this bread. The bread is very very easy to make and the only kneading you do is 3 minutes in the mixer. (I don't have a stand mixer so I used my electric mixer and it really put it to the limit. Next time I will try the food processor with the dough blade.) I love sites like this with user comments, so I can see what worked for other people and what didn't or whether to even bother. Thanks to the comments I let the dough rise a lot longer than recommended. I let it rise for 1 hour at room temperature, then 6 hours in the fridge, then another hour at room temperature. Next time I will try overnight in the fridge, which several bakers said gave it a richer flavor. I had to bake it for a total of 55 minutes, which is 10 minutes longer than recommended (since it was still cool from the fridge).
The flavor: Excellent toasted with cheese, divine toasted with butter and honey. We ate the whole loaf in less than 24 hours. My youngest son--the one who likes to cook--came into my office that night and wanted to bake another loaf right then and there! He doesn't really know about yeast bread and rising, so now's the time to teach him. We were out of white whole wheat flour (this gives the bread a lighter texture than regular whole wheat flour) so I managed to stave him off till later this week. Now I've procrastinated some more by writing my blog. Back to studying.
(Addition, Thursday Dec. 10: My son baked this bread, and we left it overnight in the fridge for about 14 hours and then 1 hour at room temp. before baking. The texture was better this time and the mixing went better with the food processor. We like the molasses sweetener best.)

I just had to add this photo of the BLT sandwich I made from our second loaf of this bread. It was really really good.

Green Soup with Ginger

2009-12-05T19:50:00.000-08:00

I got the idea for this soup from Heidi Swanson's great cooking blog, 101 Cookbooks, featuring vegetarian recipes using whole foods. I have cooked several recipes from her blog, all great! She has also written a cookbook, Super Natural Cooking, that I think I'm going to have to buy even though my cookbook shelf has already overflowed to the shelf below. I made a number of changes in her soup, which was originally from a cookbook called Love Soup by Anna Thomas. (I love how recipes travel through kitchens and mutate.) The version on her blog has sweet potato and chard, which also sounds wonderful; I just was trying to maybe please my teenagers, who interrogate me about the ingredients of any new dish and would mostly rather I cooked the same recipes the same way every time. So I made it more like a leek and potato soup, which they love, except with spinach and ginger. I loved the green spinach and fresh ginger flavor and so did my husband and one of our teens. The older one prefers my usual leek and potato soup (no surprise). Here's the soup:

Green Soup with Ginger
1 large yellow onion, chopped
2 Tbsp. olive oil
1-1/2 tsp. sea salt
1 lb. yellow potatoes (about 3 med.), peeled and diced
1 leek, washed and sliced (white and light green parts only)
1 bunch spinach, washed and chopped
3 Tbsp. fresh ginger, peeled and chopped
2 cups vegetable broth, made with Rapunzel bouillon cube (see Note)
2-4 tsp. fresh lemon juice
ground pepper to taste
1 Tbsp. heavy cream (optional)

Saute the onion in the olive oil on low heat, sprinkling with a little salt, until it is soft and starting to brown, approx. half an hour. Meanwhile, put the potato in 4 cups of cold water in a soup pot and add 1 teaspoon salt. Add leek and ginger to the pot, and bring to a boil. Add sauteed onions when they are ready. Simmer for approx. 20 minutes, then add the spinach and simmer until vegetables are tender (another 5-10 minutes). Let soup cool for a few minutes, then puree in a food processor or blender. (Can also leave chunky.) Return to the pot and add lemon juice, pepper, and more salt to taste. Reheat slowly and swirl in the cream, if desired.

Note: Usually I make soup with chicken broth, homemade when possible. But it seemed like the charm of this soup would be in the vegetable flavors, so I honored Heidi's version and used vegetable broth made with the Rapunzel cube that Heidi recommended. I have to say, the broth made from the cube was very good.

Happy Thanksgiving!

2009-11-26T21:49:00.000-08:00

Two pumpkin pies and one apple galette captured before they got eaten. We also had roast turkey, cornbread and sausage stuffing, twice-baked potatoes, green beans tossed with garlic and herbs, gravy, cranberry sauce, and good conversation and company.

The Diamond Sutra

2009-11-12T21:58:00.000-08:00

The endpapers of The Man Who Loved China, about Joseph Needham, are printed with a reproduction of the above text and illustration. I didn't realize what it was until I became fascinated with a side story in the book about the Diamond Sutra, which is what that text is. The Diamond Sutra is a Buddhist text translated from Sanskrit and made for the purpose of spreading Buddhism. The version above was printed in 868, making it the oldest printed and dated document ever found. That's about 600 years before printing appeared in Europe. It was hidden along with thousands of other Buddhist documents in a sealed up cave among many other caves in far western China, near the edge of the Taklamakan Desert, in Dunhuang, a rest stop on the Silk Route. In 1907, a European adventurer collecting for the British Museum paid a local monk 220 British pounds for the whole caveful of priceless documents, including the Diamond Sutra (which now lies in the British Library). Apparently this story still enrages people in China. The reason the story is in The Man Who Loved China is that Joseph Needham was also captivated by the Diamond Sutra, so captivated that he endured a horrific journey in 1943 to visit Dunhuang and examine the caves, many of which were painted with Buddhist scenes. What's fascinating to me is that I can actually recognize some of the characters in the text, and they look just like the printed characters in my elementary Chinese workbook (which was printed in the U.S. in 2007).

November Pumpkin

2009-11-05T19:26:00.000-08:00

Isn't it fascinating to see what things look like when they start to rot? Here's a haiku I wrote two years ago about rotting pumpkins.

The Halloween Report

2009-10-31T21:10:00.001-07:00

Around 150 trick-or-treaters.
In the creativity dept., no real stand-outs, but some very cute tiny tots: Princess Jasmine, Super Girl, and Minnie Mouse.
Pulled in our pumpkins around 9 pm, when candy was gone.
This was the first year our youngest didn't go trick-or-treating. He didn't seem to feel too sad about it. He watched a football game with my husband while I gave out the candy. Older one is off with some friends. I don't know if they are trick-or-treating or hanging out at his friend's house playing ping-pong or....what. I guess we'll find out. Or not.

The Pumpkin Bread Ritual

2009-10-28T19:04:00.000-07:00

The Pumpkin Bread Ritual is...making pumpkin bread and sharing it with friends. (Not necessarily in the month of October, although I cannot let October pass by without making pumpkin bread. I just barely squeezed it in this year.) My book club is coming over tonight and they will get pumpkin bread. I wrote a post a while ago about my mom's pumpkin bread recipe, and since I saw another blogger do a "rerun" of a past post, I think I'll do that, too! The title of this post was "Everyone's Pumpkin Bread."

I enjoy thinking about this bread almost as much as I do making it, giving it away, and eating it. The recipe is my mom's. She makes it every October and gives a loaf to her friend Liz for her birthday. I hear that Liz starts salivating for her pumpkin bread on Oct. 1. The recipe makes three loaves so I believe my mom keeps one and freezes the other. It freezes well. She used to make it a lot when we were kids and I loved having it in my lunch. I loved how it got even moister and greasier wrapped in plastic in my lunch box. I really savored every bite.

I made pumpkin bread for one of our parent coop nursery school potlucks and it was such a hit I ended up giving away the recipe to a lot of people. One friend of mine serves it for dessert with dulce de leche ice cream--a great innovation. Another now runs her own nursery school and she makes the pumpkin bread every fall and gives it away to her families. She adds chocolate chips (uck to me, but...) and her son demands it as his birthday cake every year. This fall she called me in a panic.
"We remodeled our house...I lost my recipe box...I can't find the pumpkin bread recipe!!!" she said breathlessly. I emailed it to her again. Here's the recipe. I decreased the sugar from my mom's original 4 cups because I prefer it less sweet.

Betsy’s Pumpkin Bread
Makes 3 loaves.

Ingredients
3-1/2 cups sugar
¾ tsp. baking powder
3 tsp. baking soda
2-1/4 tsp. salt
1-1/2 tsp. each ground cloves, cinnamon, and nutmeg
5 cups unbleached flour
6 eggs
1-1/2 cups canola oil
3-1/2 cups cooked, pureed pumpkin

Line 3 loaf pans with waxed paper. Combine all ingredients and mix just until blended. Bake at 300 degrees F for 1-1/2 hours. Cool for 10 minutes in pan, then turn out onto a rack to cool to room temperature. Wrap in plastic to keep fresh.

You can also make smaller gift loaves and muffins, even a round cake. How will you make yours?

Baked Quinces (Coings au Four)

2009-10-23T19:58:00.001-07:00

Quinces are not for everyone. Some quinces can be dull and woody, and they are more firm and fibrous than other fruits even when cooked. I have sometimes found good quinces at the farmer's market or a produce market with a lot of Middle Eastern wares. But home-grown quinces seem to taste the best. These quinces from Karen were particularly robust-flavored and tart. I like how the quinces' tangy, almost resinous, flavor goes with this very sweet caramel sauce. If you don't have a quince tree, or don't know someone with a quince tree, make this recipe with apples or pears.
I started with Jane Grigson's recipe for Coings au Four from Jane Grigson's Fruit Book, but I modified it a bit. Here's my Baked Quinces:
2 large quinces
Juice from 1/2 a lemon
3 Tbsp. brown sugar
2 Tbsp. unsalted butter
2 Tbsp. cream
1/8 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 cup water*
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cut the quinces in half and scrape out the core with a corer. The quinces are very hard so it will take some force to remove all the hard, pithy part at the center. Put the halves in an ovenproof dish. Sprinkle the lemon juice over the halves so they don't brown. Mix together the sugar, butter, cream and cinnamon in a small bowl until it becomes a paste. Divide the paste between the hollows of the 4 halves. Pour 1/4 cup of water around the quinces and cover with aluminum foil (or top of dish if it has one). Put in oven and bake for 1 hour. Remove when quinces are tender. Serve warm, with the caramel sauce from the bottom of the dish spooned over them.
*I actually used some of the quince-flavored syrup I had left over from poaching some other quinces, and reduced the sugar. This made the sauce richly quincey, but I don't think it's necessary. I bet apple juice would be good, too.

Quince Galette

2009-10-21T19:22:00.001-07:00

Two of those lovely quinces made it into this galette. I poached the quince slices in a simple syrup with half a vanilla bean. The delicious syrup, now quince-flavored, I will save for something. I'm still planning to make the Coings au Four...

Winter Greens

2009-10-20T11:59:00.000-07:00

I got some greens in the raised bed just before that torrential rainstorm on Monday. This photo is what they looked like before the rainstorm. I know they look a little enervated, especially the spinach on the far left, which is tender and does not at all like to be messed with. I give it a 50-50 chance of survival, but the Toscano kale and mixed lettuces are more hardy and I expect they'll be fine. After the storm they really didn't look any different than this.
My older box of greens is still luxuriant and I expect a couple more salads out of it (see below).

...and slices of quince

2009-10-19T21:20:00.001-07:00

This is what was in the surprise seasonal package I received from my friend Karen's farm. Those sensuous yellow fruits are quinces, walnuts in the background, and the mahogany fruits in front of the walnuts are jujubes. Here's what Karen says about the jujubes: "The Jujus are perhaps an acquired taste. Just pop them in your mouth--they do have a pit. They are chewy, with a date-like quality and they are ripe when slightly dry and wrinkled." I've been doing just that--popping them in my mouth--and they are like dates, a little less sweet, with a crispy dry skin.
As for the quinces, with their subtle, appley fragrance--she suggests making quince paste. She enclosed a recipe for cotognata (Italian) that refers to the nuns making it and pressing it into special ceramic dishes. I do love quinces, but not quince paste; it's just a little too medieval for me. Luckily, I have Jane Grigson's Fruit Book, which has some great quince recipes and this wonderful poem about quinces, composed by Shafur ben Utman al-Mushafi, an Arabic-Andalusian poet who died in 982:

It is yellow in color, as if it wore a daffodil
tunic, and it smells like musk, a penetrating smell.

It has the perfume of a loved woman and the same
hardness of heart, but it has the color of the
impassioned and scrawny lover.

Its pallor is borrowed from my pallor; its smell
is my sweetheart's breath.

When it stood fragrant on the bough and the leaves
had woven for it a covering of brocade,

I gently put up my hand to pluck it and to set it
like a censer in the middle of my room.

It had a cloak of ash-colored down hovering over
its smooth golden body,

and when it lay naked in my hand, with nothing more than
its daffodil-colored shift,

it made me think of her I cannot mention, and I feared
the ardor of my breath would shrivel it in my fingers.

This is the kind of thing I adore Jane Grigson for. I think I will make Quinces Baked in the French Style (sort of like baked apples) with them, after I enjoy them for a while in their glass bowl.

Goodbye Gourmet!

2009-10-07T20:17:00.000-07:00

I haven't been a Gourmet magazine subscriber for all that long. And I have complained about the ever-increasing number of ad pages. But I definitely have been inspired to cook recipes from it (often food featured on the covers, like this one), written about its recipes on my blog, fantasized about trips to Italy and South Carolina, and generally drooled through its pages. Even my teenage son reads it--the one who likes to cook. So we were sorry to hear of its demise. There was something unique about the inspiration it provided. I don't usually look at recipes online unless I know what I want to cook, and then I search somewhere like epicurious. But for pure browsing pleasure, including the ability to curl up on the sofa and slide the pages by and become enticed by a gorgeous photo of, say, some grilled salmon with yogurt sauce, there was nothing like it. Yeah, the recipe I made above is available online, but what made me think of it and search back in my past issues was the memory of the cover photo. By the way, the dish I made above shares only the fried bread crumbs and red pepper flakes and pasta with the original Gourmet recipe--I added garlic and crumbled bacon, took out the anchovies and onions, and substituted parsley for the dill. It turned out great.

Mad Plaid

2009-10-04T13:35:00.000-07:00

For the first time, I submitted an apron photo to one of Tie One On's apron themes, and all the submissions are now up for viewing. I love looking at all the ways people interpreted the theme (plaid). And I love getting all the compliments on my apron! Take a look at all the other variations--there are some amazing glamorous, retro, and nutty creations.
About the photo: When I was at SCRAP looking for plaid, I found all this cool plaids that I didn't end up using for the apron. It was as if I had never really looked at the plaids and suddenly I saw tons of them. While doing the apron, I realized that I really like the combination of plaid with flowers or plant-inspired designs. I realized I almost never wear plaid--why is that? In my closet I have one plaid shirt that I only wear camping. I think I need more plaid in my life.

When My Husband Cooks

2009-09-26T10:41:00.001-07:00

My husband is the rummage-around-the-fridge, make-something-up-on-the-spot kind of cook. I have rarely seen him cook something from a recipe, except when we used to make Pong Pang together (before kids) . I do most the cooking around the house these days, so he doesn't get that many opportunities to go rustle something up. I think he's just out of the habit. It's good when I can just lie on the couch and pretend I'm not craving a fried egg, too, so finally he goes into the kitchen and makes it. This is what he rustled up this morning, for our mid-morning snack. It's a fried egg with a bit of left0ver fried polenta on top with a dollop of tomato sauce. Hombre, it was good.

My Latest Apron

2009-09-16T07:41:00.001-07:00

Here's the apron I made for my niece. It appears on the most recent post to her blog! It was a little tricky to modify the apron to fit her, but I think it came out well.

Black Gold

2009-09-07T20:57:00.000-07:00

My husband took on a big task today: emptying out the compost bin. The reason for this was...I'm not sure. I think it was because the bottom was getting compacted with so many worm castings, and he wanted to take out some of the castings for our raised bed, since we are about to plant some winter crops. Sure enough, the bottom was packed with rich, dark castings--black gold! We sifted out 6-7 bucketfuls and piled it in our raised bed. Turning out all that compost was a lot of work (he did most of it). I sifted and spread the compost around the bed, and took pictures, like of the gobs of worms, below.
The worm population is very healthy and vigorous. I shredded newspaper and we layered that in the bottom of the compost bin and put all the still-decaying matter back in. The worms should like that.
I pulled out some old plants from the bed and found these worm-like things at the base of some of my declining bean plants. They are only about 1/2" long. I wonder if they could be millipedes? They look like the larvae of something.

Bāo Dài Fēn

2009-08-29T22:39:00.000-07:00

Photo by Gary R. Zahm/US Fish and Wildlife Service

I decided to stick with my Chinese class, even though I still don't know if I'll get the other class I wanted (which was the whole reason I took Chinese in the first place). The thing is, I'm enjoying it. It's not easy, but it's very interesting and stimulating. I am spending a lot of time in the language lab listening to all the sounds of the language because right now it's hard for me to distinguish between many of the sounds (qin and qing, for example). We are just now starting to learn about Chinese characters. If I don't try to learn too much at once, it's manageable.

The big news from last week's Chinese class: my teacher gave us all our Chinese names (if we didn't have one already). My Chinese name is Bāo Dài Fēn. It seems to mean "Fragrant Turtle." I might ask her for a different name.

New Apron!

2009-08-26T21:39:00.000-07:00

Actually it's not all that new. I finished it right before we went up to the lake, and I brought it up to use there. It got some nice compliments. I'm working on one the same style, just a little smaller, for my niece who has her own cooking blog. You can check out her blog here.
Back to my apron, it's made from an old plaid tablecloth from Thrift Town and some other fabric from SCRAP. The pattern by Joan Hand Stroh is called "Lorelei" from A is for Apron by Nathalie Mornu. I really like the design because it's simple and flattering and easy to combine different fabrics and trims. If you want to see more adorable aprons (for sale!) by Joan Hand Stroh, here's her Etsy site.
I submitted my apron to the Tie One On apron theme--plaid--this month. Go see some of the other cool past apron themes!

Boeuf Bourgignon

2009-08-24T20:43:00.000-07:00

Just like everyone else who saw the movie "Julie and Julia," I had an irresistible craving to make Boeuf Bourgignon afterward. It was so very satisfying to watch a movie about cooking and a cookbook, specifically about two women who take a ridiculous amount of time to cook amazingly decadent things to eat and each write a book about it. Meryl Streep is fun to watch and she is obviously having fun, too; I think she must be more like Julia Child than Julia Child was. And the 1950s French interiors and dresses are to die for.
I don't have Mastering the Art of French Cooking, although I did have one within hands' reach at my mother-in-law's house this weekend. (She said the recipes had too many steps.) I decided not to ask to borrow it because I didn't really need to make Julia's Boeuf Bourgignon. I was quite happy to make Mark Bittman's simplified version from his cookbook The Best Recipes in the World. It's a good recipe, with not too many steps. But no carrots! I missed the carrots.
It was delicious, but it didn't rock my world. I do like beef stew but I think I like it with more vegetables in it (especially tomatoes) and no so much, well, beef. My husband liked it and I liked it and one teenage boy liked it. The other didn't. The Boeuf Bourgignon made me remember a similar beef stew that my dad used to make that was really good. I'll have to ask him about that one.
I love it that Mastering is selling out all over the country. I wonder how many people will actually cook anything in it, besides the Boeuf Bourgignon, of course. Boeuf Bourgignon is brown food, so it doesn't photograph too well. That white sphere is a pearl onion.

Zǎo!

2009-08-20T10:08:00.000-07:00

This is the cover of my Chinese book that I have not even removed the shrink-wrapping from. I'm not sure I'm going to take the class, although I am enrolled and have gone to two classes. The teacher is great: just the right mixture of strictness and humor, very clear, smart. I like the intellectual challenge of it, and it is quite challenging. But I never really had a burning desire to learn Chinese. I'm hoping to take a course in Second Language Acquisition at SF State, and enrollment in a non-Indo-European foreign language is a requirement of that class. But I won't find out if I can get into the course until at least the first class on Aug. 31 (and maybe not until a week after that). I am taking the Chinese class at CCSF (which started this week) since it's near my house and much cheaper. The catch is, the deadline to drop the CCSF Chinese class and get a full refund is ... Aug. 31. And then there's this textbook, which cost $80. So, should I just take the class anyway, even if I don't get into the SF State class? Oh yes, and there's 2 hours a week in the language lab in addition to class hours. Am I nuts?
(zǎo = good morning)

A Week at the Lake

2009-08-17T20:36:00.000-07:00

My husband and I took a hike while we were up at the lake with our families (13 of us!). That's his boot in the left side of this photo. It was nice to escape the hubbub and be on our own. It was nice to have kids who were old enough to be responsible for themselves for several hours. We were revisiting a trail that we had hiked part of 15 years ago, with our oldest son in a backpack. We had only gotten as far as these train tracks, then headed back down the hill. This time we planned to make to to the lakes above. Only we hadn't remembered a dip in the trail where it followed a gully before reaching the train tracks. So we headed east a bit cross-country to make sure there wasn't some other branch of the trail we had missed. I grumbled a bit, since I hate to hike cross-country. We followed the leveled path of a pipeline among some ferns for a while before finally admitting we had gone too far east. We came up to the train tracks and followed them back to the first trail.
There was something fascinating to both of us about the train tracks. They were so smooth, the gravel so evenly shaped and piled up under the ties. There was a possibility of danger, of noise, of going far away. Even though the rails and the ties and the gravel had all been replaced since it was first built, still we thought of the Chinese and Irish laborers who dynamited the granite and leveled the way. Some of the holes drilled for the dynamite were still visible in rocks along the way.
We did make it to the lakes but I had a headache from getting too hot and waiting too long to eat my sandwich. I thought our excursion was a good lesson in the errors of memory.

Garden Girls

2009-08-06T17:41:00.000-07:00

My Tongues of Fire beans are starting to get...fiery? Speckled, at least. There are only a few of them on the one plant, but I'll be happy if they all mature. I think I have to plant a LOT of bean plants to get a big harvest. My Emerite beans are still producing (a few at a time). It's amazing how all my beans have had a little growth spurt in the last 4 days, due to some sunshine and warmer weather. Now is the time to start thinking ahead to the winter garden. What do I want to grow? While I'm thinking I will pull out some old stuff and add a batch of worm compost.
My brother-in-law sent me the lovely card below. It's entitled "Garden Girls," a vintage image from the "Ken Brown Collection." I like the young lady and the snail contemplating each other. Is she reclining on a pillow or a bean pod? And those bean pods the ladies are emerging from are definitely Romano beans.

Tomato Envy

2009-08-02T21:18:00.000-07:00

My Aunt Terry had a party yesterday for my granny, who is turning 90 this month. If I live to be 90, I hope I'm as sharp as my granny. She seemed to enjoy herself but didn't feel the need to enter into every conversation. That's good, because there were about 20 different conversations going on at the same time. The party was in Terry's backyard, so I had plenty of time to check out her garden, and she's growing tomatoes. I did really feel a wishful longing as I examined her tomatoes. She always grows vegetables every summer, and every year tries to give me some of those huge zucchini. I'll pass on the zucchini but say yes to the tomatoes. Here she is finding a ripe cherry tomato for me.

Crochet Summer Camp

2009-07-30T21:14:00.001-07:00

Maybe it's exaggerating to call a 3-hour workshop on how to crochet a summer camp. But ever since my kids lost interest in going to summer camp, I'm all over it--and this is probably the only "summer camp" experience I'm going to get this summer. Picture a room with lots of scrappy art projects pinned up to the wall in the corner of the large warehouse wonderland that is SCRAP. Around 15 women of many ages, sizes, and orientations seated around 3 tables are gazing at their crochet hooks, crocheting intently. There is conversation--about how to get your teenager off the couch in the summer, about someone else's wedding presents, about spouses and significant others, about raves and concerts and other tantalizing snippets I didn't quite get the gist of--but it all happens with eyes fixed firmly on the crocheting.
I felt a little sorry for the guy who wandered into the room and exclaimed cluelessly: "Oh, knitting!" There was a little silence, and then the teacher answered briskly, "Actually, it's crocheting." To make up for his gaffe he feigned interest in what we were making and leaned in to look. "You're making skullcaps," he said. "They are crocheted caps," she corrected him. "This is a workshop space." He got the message.
I won't say I'm an expert crocheter now, but I did learn the basic stitches and started following the pattern to make the cap. Except I ripped out most of what you see above and started over since it was beginning to look more like a placemat. I don't really know why I'm picking up another craft, since I hardly have time for the sewing and scrapbooking projects I've started and not finished, but crocheting is different because you can bring it with you. It only takes a ball of yarn and a crochet hook. It takes less mental attention than any other craft I can think of (I've never tried knitting) and the repetitive hand movements are pleasurable. After several hundred stitches, my hands are getting the feel of it. Maybe I'll just keep ripping out the same yarn and starting over.

Recipe for a Cold July

2009-07-29T10:56:00.000-07:00

If you've had just about all the cold, windy, foggy weather you can bear out here in the foglands of San Francisco, here's what to do:
1. Go over to Rainbow Grocery and buy 5 lbs. of Early Girl tomatoes ($2.49/lb.)
2. Make Georgeanne Brennan's recipe for roasted tomato sauce and fill your home with the smell of thick, summery tomatoes.
3. Pretend you are in the Central Valley, next to a Hunt's tomato factory. (I used to live in Davis, where the Hunt's plant made tomato sauce in the summer and the whole town was filled with the hot, thick, sweet smell of simmering tomatoes. That factory isn't there any more.)

Since I can (almost) never make a recipe without tinkering with it, here's my adaptation of her roasted tomato sauce recipe. If it sounds good to you, check out her version and a couple of other recipes for using summer tomatoes. (It's always entertaining to read the comments. People have strong opinions about tomato sauce.)

Roasted Tomato Sauce (adapted from Georgeanne Brennan)
5 lbs. Early Girl tomatoes
2 cloves of garlic, minced
4 thyme sprigs
1/2 tsp. minced fresh rosemary
1 tsp. coriander seeds
1 tsp. fennel seeds
1/4 cup + 1 Tbsp. olive oil
Juice of one lemon
1 Tbsp. balsamic vinegar
1/4 cup minced shallots
1/2 cup dry white wine
1 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. pepper
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Put the whole tomatoes in a roasting pan. Sprinkle them with the garlic, thyme, rosemary, coriander, and fennel. Drizzle with 1/4 cup olive oil, lemon juice, and balsamic vinegar. Roast until the tomatoes are collapsing, about 45 minutes. Heat the 1 Tbsp. of olive oil and saute the shallots until soft. Add the tomato mixture and the white wine. Bring to a low simmer and cook until the tomatoes are thickened, about 45 minutes. Remove from heat and let cool a bit. Then put through a food mill to remove skins and seeds (or puree and strain). Add salt and pepper to taste.
This made about 5 cups. I froze two freezer bags with portions for 1 lb. of pasta, and am using the last cup fresh.

Just One More Galette

2009-07-23T21:44:00.001-07:00

I think this is the best one of the season. I found an older man with a little boy (his grandson?) selling cartons of Blenheim apricots at the farmer's market last week. I bought a couple of pounds and instantly wished I had bought more. We enjoyed every last one.
It was really nice to come back to our garden and see everything growing. I harvested my first Romano beans, and they were delicious. The horrible thing is, after producing about 20 fat green beans, this week the plants are looking terrible. The bean pods are shriveling and falling off before maturing. The lower leaves are turning yellow and falling off, too. The upper leaves look like they need fertilizer so I gave them some fishmeal tea. The Emerite and Tongues of Fire beans don't look quite so bad but they are also a little pale so I gave them some fishmeal tea, too. It has been very very cold and foggy this week (the temperature gauge at City College said 39 degrees this morning at 9:30 am) so maybe they are in shock over the change in temperature. I read that beans really don't like cold weather. I am in agreement with the beans. I feel like my leaves are about to turn yellow and fall off, too.

Backpacking in the High Sierra

2009-07-13T22:08:00.000-07:00

We just got back from a 5-night backpacking trip in the Sierra Nevada. We hiked from Rock Creek up over Mono Pass and into Pioneer Basin, then back again. We were above 10,000 ft. nearly the entire time, so the sun and wind were intense. Some of the landscapes we passed through were barren, like the moon, such as Mono Pass above. We had to skirt the snowfields on the way in, but five days later on the way out it was much less snowy. We also hiked through beautiful mountain meadows, like this one below Ruby Lake.
Above 10,000 ft there were not so many flowers blooming since it was still early in the season. Or rather, there were many flowers blooming, but not so many of the showy ones like Indian Paintbrush and Shooting Stars that are so familiar to me. I have a divine new field guide, The Laws Field Guide to the Sierra Nevada by John Muir Laws, which I believe includes every living thing--plant and animal--living in the Sierra Nevada in gorgeously detailed watercolors. So I spent a lot of time stooped over looking at tiny alpine plants growing in the crevices of the granite and discovered a tiny world. I think I have seen many of these plants before, just never really looked at them that carefully or wondered what they were called. Like Rosewort, an early spring flower that is almost like a succulent.
Or this Oval-Leaved Buckwheat, which is magenta before it blooms and then turns white when the buds open.
Or these two rock garden flowers that I thought were the same, except now I know the first is Granite Gilia, and the second is Alpine Campion.
And this lovely White Heather (also known as Cassiope) that inspired this from John Muir:

Here too... I met Cassiope growing in fringes among the battered rocks. No evangel among all the mountain plants speaks Nature's love more plainly than Cassiope.

I did see it but didn't stop to photograph it, so here's the photo credit for this image: © Br. Alfred Brousseau, Saint Mary's College.

Yes, I love the bright purple and pink Penstemon and sunny Mule's Ears, but on this trip I began to see what John Muir meant when he compared Cassiope to an evangel--a messenger of good news, even gospel. They and the other plants growing on the rocks are the embodiment of a will to live. They are small, so it is easy to think of them as delicate or fragile but in fact they are much tougher than me. They survive in the harshest of climates: sun and wind and cold are brutal and their growing season is short. When I lie down on the granite and look closely at them--their leaves, their stems, their blooms, their seeds--I see perfection.

The High Line

2009-07-03T15:52:00.001-07:00

My mom just sent me these photos of her visit to the High Line in New York City, a brand-new park created out of an abandoned elevated train line that will be 1-1/2 miles long when fully complete. A gardener, she especially noticed the plants, which were carefully selected to look like weeds and planted in natural groupings as if they had just sprung up. With its views of the city and artful landscaping, the park was wildly successful from the moment it opened. It is so popular they have to limit how many people can go up on it. There are many stunning photos on the website.
I really love this plant selection (and the whole concept of making a destination park out of an abandoned track) and I had a sudden revelation that this is what I want to do in our front yard: plants that look like weeds, but aren't! And some old railroad tracks! I wonder if my husband will go along.

Admiring the Beans

2009-07-02T21:07:00.000-07:00

My favorite plants in my raised bed right now are my bean plants. It's partly because they are all healthy right now, no mysterious holes or pests, and growing fast. But bean plants are more interesting than, say, lettuce, which just gets bigger and bigger and then bolts. Bean twist and twine, they flower briefly and then suddenly where there used to be a flower, there's a bean. The bean grows longer and fatter and then it's ready to eat.
I have Romano beans, my favorite kind of green bean to eat, which I planted from starts in late April. They have taken their time to get established and have only grown about 18" high, but they made yellow flowers a few weeks ago and now beans are forming, some already 3" long. On hot days the Romano bean plants rotate their leaves so the top surface is perpendicular to the ground and only the thin edge of the leaf is facing the sky. I knew sunflowers turned their heads to watch the sun, but I never knew beans could rotate their leaves like that.
The photo above is the Emerite beans, a variety of French haricots verts, those thin green beans they sell for an outrageous amount at Tower Market. These are pole beans, and you can see them twining in the photo. I had to keep tying them onto the tomato cage that I'm using for their support, and it took a week or so for them to finally start twining. There are a few lovely lavender blossoms on them now. They are supposed to grow up to 8' high. I have an arch of PVC pipe for them to twine onto once they reach the top of the tomato cage.
The last start I planted just ten days ago are Tongues of Fire beans. These are shelling beans kind of like cranberry beans, with red speckled pods and a reddish bean (I think). You use them in soups or salads, cooked fresh. I can't tell if they are going to twine or not.

First Flight Lesson

2009-07-01T20:52:00.000-07:00

It is very satisfying to be able to give someone something you know they will love. My husband and I had the chance to give our son an introductory flight lesson for his 14th birthday. At least, that's what I called it. My son called it "my first flight lesson." Note what that implies.
Anyway, it was as thrilling as he thought it would be. He had a wonderful flight instructor from Oakland Flyers who was chatty and warm. He and my son did the whole pre-flight check together, while I took photos, then they walked me back to the terminal and they flew over the Bay in a tiny 152 Cessna 2-seater for an hour. My son got to handle the controls (the pilot did, too) and take photos from 2,000 feet up. After many his hours on the Flight Simulator game, my son knew pretty much what all the controls on the dashboard were. In fact, during the pre-flight check, the pilot said, "I'm not so sure you need me." But a revelation to my son was the actual physical feel of the yoke, the wind pulling on the plane, and how much force it took to hold the plane steady. He said his arms were tired after the flight (and I don't think he's ever heard of Henny Youngman). All evening he was reliving the experience, like what the fog looked like from above, what the control towers said to them, and how it was a little choppy coming in for the landing, and what a good job the pilot did bringing it down with a little plunk. My husband and I got several extra hugs that evening, and the statement, "That was the best present I have ever had and I will remember it for the rest of my life."

Galette-O-Rama!

2009-06-28T12:43:00.001-07:00

It's galette season at our house right now. These were (top to bottom) nectarine, strawberry-rhubarb, and peach. I tried to make my son a birthday cake but he requested a galette instead. I stil like pies...but actually these are easier and the crust never gets soggy. I follow the recipe exactly in Alice Waters' Chez Panisse Fruit. Whenever I have deviated from the recipe, something has not been quite right, so this is one of the few recipes I follow exactly.

Father's Day Hike

2009-06-21T22:54:00.000-07:00

We took a spectacular hike today on Tomales Point, all the way to the very end. There were lots of people on the trail: young fathers, old fathers, fathers with daughters, fathers with sons, fathers with fathers, and also people who were not with their fathers. In the air there were pelicans, cormorants, an osprey, swifts, and lots of white crowned sparrows. On land there were elk and ladybugs and a small garter snake and this caterpillar, who was going somewhere in a hurry.
I've been trying to work out what it is using the Internet, since my wonderful butterfly book doesn't cover moths. It looks most like a Ranchman's Tiger Moth (Platyprepia virginalis) caterpillar, also known as a "woolly bear" caterpillar, a name that is applied to a lot of different species.
The sites that have the most photos don't have a lot of specific information about where the species is found, what they eat, etc. So I did more searches and found an article about the interaction of Platyprepia virginalis and another species that are very common on Lupinus arboreus. Well, guess what? Our entire hike was through a sea of Lupinus arboreus (yellow bush lupine).
That was a clue that maybe I was on the right track. Then I found a photo of an adult Platyprepia virginalis taken at Point Reyes. That pretty much clinched it.
It gave all of us an ecstatic feeling to walk all the way to the very tip of Tomales Point, down to where the rocks would toss us into the ocean if we walked any further. There were seals lounging on the rock shelves and pelicans flying around the tip at our eye level. My son kept saying he couldn't believe there was a place like this so close to San Francisco. To me it felt very far away, like another world.

Inadvertent Worm Farmer

2009-06-20T14:26:00.001-07:00

(Come to think of it, worm farmer isn't really right. It implies some kind of commercial enterprise. Like the politically correct dog owners these days, I will call myself a worm guardian.)
I never really wanted a worm bin--too much responsibility, like having hundreds of pets. But our compost bin has over the past few months turned into a worm bin, and now I go and check on the little creatures every day. My invitations to my sons ("Wanna come and see some worms?") have so far met with polite declines. But my husband is my partner in worm husbandry. In fact, it is he who is responsible for our compost becoming the home of several hundred (or more?) red worms, since he confessed to occasionally tossing worms in there from the garden. I guess at least two of them* were the right kind, because there has been a population explosion and our bin is writhing with them.
They don't exactly need a lot of "care." They need fresh compost to eat, which we were doing already by feeding the compost bin our vegetable scraps and trimmings from our garden. They need moisture, which we added when the compost seemed a bit dry. We have taken to adding ripped up strips of newspaper since the worms like it--in fact, this morning I caught my husband outside with our office shredder, shredding paper for the worms. And that's about it.
I became curious the other day because I noticed that sometimes they seem to collect on the sides of the bin and even the underside of the lid, so when I pulled it off there was a mass of them. I searched through a few sites about worms, but all I could find was a description of something called "worm crawl" when all the worms decide to leave their bin together in a mass exodus. This was not happening--thank god! Sounds scary. The only thing to do was to email my farmer friend Karen, who lives on a real farm and who several years ago originally urged me to get a worm bin and showed me hers. At that time I was not hip to worms and politely declined.
Karen responded that her worms sometimes climb up to the top of the pile or the sides if it's too warm for them, or too moist. I was reassured to read this: "My worms regularly come up in a huge, roiling mass --and they often climb on the lid to my container." So, nothing to worry about.
The hardest part is separating the worms from the compost when I'm ready to use it. Specially-designed worm bins have separate sections for adding new compost so you can let all the worms migrate to the new compost before harvesting the castings. But everything gets pretty much mixed up in our bin. When we harvest our compost, we have to sift and separate out all the undecomposed stuff anyway, so I have been trying to pick out the worms and put them back in the bin. But quite a few go along with the compost back into the garden. Sounds like I'm doing pretty much what Karen does: "To remove more worms from the castings, I have tried piling up the castings in the sun to encourage the worms to move to the bottom, away from the light. It was more effort than necessary, so now I don't worry if some worms get placed into the garden."
My nieces are coming over for dinner tonight. I think I'll take them out back and show 'em my worms.

*Yes, there must be two of them, because even though worms are hermaphroditic, there must be two of them so they can rub their clitellums against segments 9-11 of their mating partner, depositing sperm in each other's bodies. For a more in-depth discussion, see the excellent description on the Backyard Nature site.

Sewing Projects

2009-06-17T08:26:00.000-07:00

Last summer I created my own one woman sewing camp and made an apron from a retro pattern. Over the past year, I've kept sewing. The smock apron above is made from an old tablecloth and other scraps of material from SCRAP. I love going to SCRAP. They have a lot of fabric and you can't beat the prices. Using odd shapes of fabric tests my creativity, since I sometimes have to piece things together instead of using one whole piece of fabric. Or I make little things, like these purses (the lining fabrics were remnants):
Last summer I also got a great stash of fabric at the Alameda Flea Market. Someone was selling interior design samples; these were extremely expensive fabrics for $1 a piece! Here are some seat cushions and sofa cushions I made from two of these samples, which happened to go beautifully together:
I have two great fabrics from SCRAP for my next projects:
I think the yellow one will be placemats and the blue and white toile a fabric cover for a photo scrapbook. I'm also going to make at least one apron this summer. One-woman sewing camp, here I come!

Mysterious Holes

2009-06-10T20:09:00.001-07:00

Something is eating holes in my beet leaves. I'm not upset about it, I just want to know what's doing it. One of the most satisfying things about my garden is trying to grasp the whole ecosystem: the soil, the worms, the fungi, the bacteria, the insects, the plants...and how they all work together. So I'm looking at this as a puzzle to solve--and not bringing out the saucers of beer (yet).
I've been examining the holes for a few days, and pretty much decided that they are not from any caterpillar-type creature, since I can't find anyone remotely resembling a caterpillar on the leaves, and caterpillars usually lounge couch-potato-like on the leaf they are eating, unable (or unwilling?) to move from their feast. Although I did see some tiny black dots on one leaf, which could be eggs or frass. Could they all have already pupated and flown away?
No signs of leaf-miners, either. I've had earwigs in the back of my mind, and I have cursed them in the past for chewing holes in my plants, but to be honest I have not really seen many of them and don't know if they can really inflict these kinds of holes anyway. (Also I recently learned that earwigs eat aphids so I am practicing kindness toward earwigs.) Sowbugs? Maybe. There are a lot of them around, but again, do they chew these kind of holes? I don't think so. Slugs or snails? Haven't seen any of those or their slime trails, either. There are a lot of ants around, but they seem more interested in the fishmeal I put around the plants than anything else.
This isn't a great photo, but I did find a clump of ants clustered around something on a leaf. But that was the only clump. There were a few isolated aphids on the lettuces but nothing major and none on the beets. Tonight I will go out with my flashlight; if there are earwigs, they'll be out. (Note: I did go out with a flashlight, but all I saw was one earwig lurking on the soil, and no one at all on the leaves. Foiled again.)

It's a "Promotion"

2009-06-05T22:10:00.001-07:00

Technically when you finish 8th grade, it's not a graduation, but a promotion. Everyone except the principal calls it a graduation, though. Whatever you call it, the ceremony is the same: "Pomp and Circumstance," speeches, handing out diplomas, leis, and lots of picture-taking. My youngest son is now officially finished with middle school. Hallelujah! I can't say I was really much in the mood for looking backward--I think we're all happy to leave middle school behind, my son included. Despite some great experiences--like hangin' with his best friend Sam (see photo above), playing in the band, playing soccer and futsal, and discovering that he is good at math--my son doesn't have much nostalgia for his middle school years.
Most of us don't. I don't actually remember much of middle school--although we called it junior high back then. Some snapshots do linger in my mind: choreographing dance routines in the gym, my perky adorable 7th grade PE teacher, my best friend Kari in 8th grade, the purple and white costumes the cheerleaders wore. My lack of cohesive memories may be due to having gone to 3 different schools in 7th, 8th, and 9th grades. I was eager to go to high school and at least have 3 years at one school.
I hope my own negative feelings about middle school didn't rub off on him too much. Now that we're done with it, I can confess something: I almost couldn't make it through his and his brother's Back-To-School-Nights each September. After sitting through two or three classes I began to feel an overwhelming urge to scribble on the walls with a permanent marker; I sometimes had to duck out of the last few classes. The nearly universal scolding tone of the teachers and something oozing out of those institutional walls unleashed in me a desire to break the rules. I'm kind of amazed he made it through all three years with only a few trips to the counselor's office.
Onward to high school!
(Okay, here's the whole photo. I don't usually post photos of my kids but ... this time I did. The lady in the flowered coat is a totally awesome social studies teacher, Ms. Lucero. Read my shout out to her.)

Hatched Already?

2009-06-02T19:17:00.001-07:00

Look who I found on the lettuce today! I wonder, could it possibly be the newly hatched ladybug from the larva I rescued last week? After some research at Everything Ladybug!, I decided that by a stretch of faith...it could be. Newly hatched ladybugs are yellow, with no spots, and assume their normal color after a few days. They usually pupate for 5-8 days. So...if the larva scrambled over to the lettuces and immediately started to pupate (wouldn't you pupate immediately if you had been stuck in a refrigerator for days?), and just hatched today, it could be the same one. Or maybe a different one. I am feeling a slight ladybug obsession coming on.

First Place

2009-05-31T11:55:00.000-07:00

When my oldest son was five or six, he used to take Acrosports near Kezar Stadium. His favorite thing to do after the class was go across the street and run a lap around the track. I think he liked this part even more than the gymnastics class. It was important that I watched him the whole time he ran, and he liked it when I cheered for him when he made it to the finish line. I remember watching his short legs pumping as he receded from me, getting smaller and smaller. It was strange and unsettling to see the little speck that was him moving way across the track when he was farthest from me, because in fact that was about the farthest he had ever been from me, by himself. But I knew he would stick to the track and round the curve to return to me, coming in first place every time. He never told me what was going through his head as he ran, but I imagined that it was a vision of crowds cheering "Go, go!"
Fast forward to ten years later. My son is competing in the All-City high school track meet at Kezar Stadium. He has the fastest frosh-soph times going into two races. He wins them both, easily. At least, he makes it look easy. But I know those grueling training runs of five and ten miles, sprints up Kirkham steps, and interval training all spring weren't easy, because when he came home from them he would grunt, drop his backpack and fall on the couch, only to wake up when dinner was ready. I missed the last race of the meet, the 4x400 relay. He was the anchor for the frosh-soph team, and I heard how they were in 2nd place after the third leg, but he pulled ahead and while the whole track team chanted his name, ran to first place. Not many of our dreams get realized so concretely, in the very spot where we first dreamed them.
He did come back to me after winning the race, and let me take his picture with his medal. He was happy about winning but didn't make his ultimate goal, to beat the meet record. He has already decided what his goal is for next year, when he runs varsity: make it to the state finals. That's what you do after you realize a dream: dream up the next dream. And go off to hang out with your friends.

Ladybug Larva

2009-05-28T20:24:00.001-07:00

I pulled a head of (organic) romaine lettuce out of its plastic bag in the fridge today and found this on it. A week ago I would have flicked it off into the sink without much thought. But today I got excited. It's a ladybug larva!
I've been thinking about ladybug larva since I read that they will eat more than a thousand aphids before they are full grown. These guys can really do some damage on an aphid colony. I began to wonder what they looked like, since these larva are obviously something I want to pamper if I find them in my garden. It was easy to find photos on the Web and I've been keeping my eyes out for them, especially since I pulled out my sugar snap peas last week and there were quite a few aphids on them.
This larva on my lettuce was still alive--even after a couple days in the fridge. I ran outside and gently placed it on some parsley, after snapping a portrait. I hope he (she?) makes it.
I wonder if the organic lettuce people have thought of using ladybug larva as a marketing tool?
"Free ladybug larva in every package!" "From our garden to yours!"
Just a note: there were some tiny ladybug larva turds in my lettuce, too, so it's a good idea to wash it, even if it is organic.

How My Parents Learned to Eat

2009-05-15T08:45:00.001-07:00

I read this book to the ESL class where I have been volunteering, and it was a hit! I was very pleased. This class is at a community organization that runs a "welfare to work" program and the students are learning English in preparation for jobs. Over the course of the semester, I have seen them get much better at speaking and listening. The idea of reading children's literature to ESL students came from my friend Lynne, who teaches ESL. The teacher said I could do a presentation on a day when she had to do testing, so I did some research and came up with this book, which works well for a number of reasons. The story is told simply, but it's a story with more levels than just the child's point of view. The author tells about how her parents met, when her mother was a Japanese schoolgirl and her father was an American sailor. Each of them is anxious about eating properly according to the other's culture (using chopsticks vs. using a knife and fork), but they practice on their own and figure out that they can do it. I see it as a metaphor for becoming comfortable with another culture. The subject matter is of interest to these students, and the book is not too sentimental for adults.

After I read it aloud, we talked about it a little, and I was impressed that one of the students pointed out that the book never says whether the characters are speaking in Japanese or English. I asked them what they thought, and they said they thought they were speaking a mixture, sometimes Japanese, sometimes English. I had assumed the characters were speaking English (shows my prejudice!). Then one student raised his hand and asked, "Teacher, can I come up and read the book?" I wasn't sure what he meant but then I figured out that he wanted to practice reading aloud. So he came up to the front of the room and read a page, and each student in turn came up in front of the class and read. One of the others said afterward, "I need to do this every day!" It was really great to see how they were proactive about their own learning.

One thing I've learned from doing this volunteering is that it is not easy to speak slowly and simply but still show respect for the students as adults and not insult their intelligence. Also I discovered that it is a skill to choose ways to say things that are simple and avoid convoluted constructions and idiomatic expressions.

The Urban Farmer

2009-05-13T16:53:00.001-07:00

This is $50 worth of drip irrigation supplies that I bought a week ago at The Urban Farmer store. I was getting tired of moving the hose around the raised bed every 20 minutes since I have been putting it on low to water deeply. Last year I used a sprinkler but I just wasn't satisfied; everything seemed to get dry after a day which meant a lot of the water was evaporating. I went to the store originally looking for a soaker hose, but they talked me out of it. In fact it took me two trips to consult with the urban farmers there, show them my sketches, decide what I wanted, assemble the supplies, and purchase them. (That might seem a little pathetic since we're just talking about a 4'x8' raised bed. Well.) In between I had to measure and consult with my husband, who suggested that we attach the pressure regulator at the raised bed, rather than at the hose bib, so we can unscrew the hose and use it for other things and not have the plastic tubing running across our patio. Good idea. But after I bought everything, I noticed that I was stalling on actually putting it all together. Could it be that I was...lacking confidence? I had drawn some diagrams based on the urban farmers' explanation of how it was all to go together, but it was seeming like one of those tinker-toy, Lego-assembly things that I usually leave to the men of the house. That meant I had to plunge in. Today.
Ta-da! Two hours later (okay, maybe a little more than two hours), it was done. I turned it on and it works. There are five emitter lines on each half of the bed so I can move them around; right now they are a little disorganized and need to be staked down. It will take some time for me to play around with it and make sure they are getting the water where they are supposed to. We (the urban farmers and me) designed it so that I can shut off one half of the system because often I plant one side and wait a while to plant the other side. I am going to plant things differently to make the best use of my new irrigation system. I did not buy a timer; I think I can manage to turn on and turn off the hose. My red oak leaf lettuces and Lollo Rosso lettuces are doing well. There are also some beets in the shady part in the back.
I picked a half pound of sugar snap peas today. The pea plants are burdened with peas and it's a pleasure to lighten their burden. The romano starts I planted are growing in their cage.

Garbanzos con Espinacas

2009-05-12T19:02:00.001-07:00

That's all the Garbanzos con Espinacas that were left after dinner tonight. It's kind of hard to photograph leftover garbanzos and make them look appetizing. But they were delicious; very Spanish flavor, with olive oil, fried bread, garlic, pimenton, saffron, and sherry vinegar. The full recipe, from Jose Andres, is in a link from the previous post about beans cooking. The only things I did differently were 1) cook the garbanzos in the oven for about 1-1/2 hours instead of on the stovetop; 2) substitute chard for spinach; and 3) grind the bread and garlic in the food processor instead of messing with the mortar and pestle (thanks, Mom, for your suggestion on that one). We ate it with sausages and bread, since the boys like meat.
Here's my fancy new RED camera. My husband is very eager for me to try the video feature so he is buying a memory card for it that will be big enough to hold video.

The Dragon's Gift: The Sacred Arts of Bhutan

2009-05-10T22:34:00.000-07:00

Today my husband and I went to see the Buddhist art and religious objects from Bhutan at the Asian Art Museum, since the exhibit was closing today. Many jewel-toned thangkas illustrated scenes from the Buddha's life; others featured bodhisattvas and other deities and Buddhist teachers, saints, and abbots. Video screens showed ritual dance that is the means of transformation of wrathful deities into benevolent beings. My favorite deity is Avalokiteshvara, the Compassionate One, whose head split into eleven pieces because he gazed upon so much human suffering. Amitabha, the Bright One, helped him create eleven new heads out of the pieces, and one thousand arms with an eye on each palm, so that he became stronger. In a thangka in the exhibit, Avalokiteshvara is depicted with a piece of fruit in each of his one thousand hands, which swarm around his head like a thousand juggling balls. I was also glad to see the fierce, warrior deities like blue Vajrabhairava (see above). Perhaps they are responsible for protecting the culture and religion of Bhutan from vanishing. I feel grateful that we could see this artwork and glimpse the spiritual expression of this remote culture.

New Things Growing

2009-05-07T22:00:00.000-07:00

A purple poppy exploded in our front yard. We've been growing these poppies for years, ever since my husband saw one in, ahem, someone else's yard and harvested one of the dried pods. There were lots of them and the plants seemed a bit abandoned, so ... I think it's ok. He sprinkled the tiny seeds on the ground in our yard and, like magic, up they came. Most years he sprinkles a few more seeds around, or sometimes not at all, and they still pop up every year. This photo is the first one I took with my new camera that I got for my birthday: a Kodak EasyShare 10 mp with a nice big 3" LCD screen. I still have a lot of playing around to do with the different modes, etc.
A few weeks ago I planted a bunch of new starts in the raised bed. I keep meaning to go out and photograph them but I haven't done it yet. There are romano beans, Lollo Rosso and Red Oak Leaf lettuces, and some new chervil. Also I sprinkled some more beet seeds around and they have sprouted already. This last week of rain was sent from above just for gardens: gentle and warm, it moistened the soil every day just at the time I was beginning to crank up the watering schedule. Looks like tomorrow the little sprouts might needs some irrigation again.

Walnut Tart

2009-05-02T08:46:00.000-07:00

This is the homeliest tart I have ever made. It was billed in Gourmet magazine as "Périgord Walnut Tart" and my son was reading the magazine and saw the recipe and said, "We have to make that!" So we did. For a walnut tart, it is a bit light on the walnuts. There is only one thin, genteel layer of nuts. And the photo in the magazine shows a darling little tartlet piled high with mahagony nuts. Hmmmm. Well, the tart is scrumptious, but needs more walnuts. And that white bomb-blast looking patch on the tart? That's white sugar, that the recipe said should be sprinkled onto the top of the tart before baking. It's certainly not for sweetness since the tart is already tooth-achingly sweet. And it does nothing to gussy it up, since carmel and walnuts need no gussying. I say, leave it off. And that's what I said in my review on the epicurious site, if you want to see the recipe for yourself. (For some reason my review hasn't posted yet--it should be the first one!)
I call my tart "Woodland Walnut Tart" since the walnuts are from trees on our friends' farm in Woodland.

Beans are Cooking

2009-04-30T12:24:00.000-07:00

I just took this pot of beans out of the oven. I love the variations in colors. I'm using my friend Karen's method, which I reproduce below (I didn't have bacon grease, so I omitted that):

I found that the best method for cooking beans is as follows: put beans in a large ceramic pot, add plenty of water, a tablespoon of bacon grease, and a bay leaf. Bring to a boil on the stove top. Cover and place in a preheated 325 or 350 degree oven and set the timer for 1hour. Check beans in an hour, stir and add water if needed. Cover and cook according to tenderness of beans to finish, usually another hour or less. Now you have beautifully cooked beans ready to be made into soup or other dishes. It is foolproof and defeats the problems I have had in the past with our hard water. No soaking and it can be done while you are doing things in the morning.

These beans were soft and meaty but not mushy after 1-1/2 hours. I am going to add this tomato and chili mixture below and cook them together for another 1/2 hour or so just to blend the flavors.
I tried her method the other day with garbanzo beans, which always seem to cook and cook for hours and without getting tender. I did soak the garbanzos overnight first, because I doubted that her method could conquer garbanzo beans. But after the soaking I followed her instructions exactly and they were soft and ready to eat after ONE HOUR in the oven. So now I am a believer and will go cold turkey with no soaking next time. My Spanish cazuela makes a good vessel for this and I like to think it adds a certain yo-no-se-que to my Spanish recipes. I made a garbanzo and vegetable soup with some of these garbanzos, and a pasta with garbanzos with the rest.

Speaking of garbanzos, on Monday I heard Spanish chef Jose Andres on NPR describing how to make his soup, Garbanzos con Espinacas (spinach). You can read this irresistible and economical recipe (part of a series of recession-busting recipes) here or, better yet, listen to his rich Spanish accent and dream of Spain. Over the years I've collected several Spanish garbanzo recipes but I always shrink from making them because of long cooking time. I'll be making Jose Andres' Garbanzos con Espinacas next, but using Karen's cooking method. Maybe a plate of good Serrano ham on the side...

Things that Bring Me Joy

2009-04-25T14:05:00.000-07:00

In the last few days I have been concentrating on things that give me joy. Maybe you could even say, things that make me glad I'm alive (see previous post).
Here are some recent ones:
-Scones
-Notes that say "I love you" from my son
-Snuggling with my husband
-Western Tiger Swallowtail butterflies on top of Mt. Davidson
-Seeing my son win both the 1600 and 800 races--easily--at a track meet
-The wondrous birdhouse/treehouse constructions of Patrick Dougherty woven out of willow trimmings on top of the trees at SF Civic Center Plaza across from City Hall
-Red worms in my compost

Car Crash

2009-04-22T16:36:00.001-07:00

This is where the front of my car hit the guardrail on Hwy 280 yesterday. Someone was merging onto the freeway and clipped my rear bumper. My car slammed into the guardrail on the right and then slid across 4 lanes of traffic to stop against the center divider, blocking the left hand lane. I'm ok, just some bruises on my arm from the seatbelt and some ambivalent feelings about driving on the freeway. But our car is considered a total loss by our insurance company, which has not yet decided what we will get for it. The strange thing is, the damage above is about the worst of it. Yes, there are scratches and dents all along the passenger side where the car scraped the guardrail, a messed up rear hatchback door, and a crunched back fender where the SUV hit it. But you wouldn't think it was "totalled."

I am very very grateful to all the people who stopped to help me, especially the sheriffs' dept. guys who stopped right behind me about 15 seconds after I did and turned on all their flashing lights to warn oncoming drivers before I had even dialed 911. They may have saved my life. Then the tow druck driver who stopped about 30 seconds after that, also shielding my car, and tried to help me get my car started again, and the highway patrolman who arrived a few minutes later and took total control of the situation, got us off the freeway, and started the police report. Also the witnesses who waited by the side of the road to make sure I was ok and told the whole story to the officers. And even the driver of the SUV, who also stopped and waited, apologized to me, and cooperated fully with the CHP. I am so glad to be alive.

April Garden Report

2009-04-17T10:14:00.000-07:00

The sugar snap peas are 4-5' high now, dominating the raised bed. (I like how it looks like the two vines above are holding hands.) Time to start picking peas! And time to plant something else. My transplanted beets are stunted little things; I think I will plant more beets, carrots, and lettuces. Over the last month a bunch of volunteers popped up, from either seeds or runners from last year's plants: camomile, mint, bee balm, tarragon, sweet peas, and sunflowers. The sweet peas need staking since they are beginning to sprawl. Here's the sweet little columbine flower, nestled with some mint:

A 5-Pound Bundle of Joy

2009-04-15T20:17:00.001-07:00

Meet the newest member of our family, baby Ireland. My 8th grader's teacher assigned everyone in the class a 5-pound bag of flour to haul around for a week and treat like a baby. You 've probably heard of this assignment, designed to give teenagers a glimpse of what having a real baby would be like. Before I knew it, I was making Ireland a sling and asking my son how baby Ireland slept last night. It was kind of spooky how easy it was to slip into the role of Grandma. My son took on fatherhood with grace. He made a little diaper for Ireland out of construction paper and a plastic bag, and wouldn't even leave the baby alone downstairs while he did his homework. On the ride home from school on Monday, he and his friend made sure Ireland had a seatbelt around him. In math class, the kids put all the flour babies on a table together for a "playdate," and they worked out a complicated genealogy for the babies among their friends. Later in the week, they were going to have to wake up at 3-hour intervals and email the teacher to verify their "feedings."

But today, my son came home without baby Ireland. His science teacher had called off the project. Apparently some mean boys got hold of the babies and destroyed 8 of them, creating a big mess in the hallway with the 40 pounds of flour. They were caught, fortunately, and had to clean it all up. My son was disappointed, but resigned, almost as if he found the boys' behavior inevitable. There has been an epidemic of egging incidents at schools so I guess he wasn't surprised. I find the idea of boys destroying the babies disturbing and discouraging, but I treated it lightly with him. For him, it was a game anyway, and he took away from it what he was supposed to: if you're not mature enough to take care of a 5-pound bag of flour, you're not mature enough to take care of a baby.

Unique New York

2009-04-13T12:04:00.001-07:00

I took a lot of photos on our one week trip to New York, but this is one of my favorites, in the East Village. The weather was wintry--cold, windy and wet--but the trees were blossoming and there were daffodils and tulips in all the little pocket parks. My sons had never been there (okay, the older one had when he was 18 months old) so the trip was really for me and my mom and her husband to show them the city. If you've spent time in New York, you have your favorite things about it that you want to show someone else. But ultimately the greatest experience in New York is to discover it for yourself. Thus the highlight of my sons' trip was the afternoon when they took off on their own with their Metrocards, cell phones and maps. I'm still not sure exactly what they did, but I know it involved criss-crossing subway rides, a walk through Central Park, running into one of their teachers in Grand Central Station, and buying knock-off sunglasses from a street vendor. The rest of their afternoon remains private to them, but I like to think that some time in the future they will get to show someone else something they discovered that day.

We were supposed to stay in a penthouse apartment in Chinatown but through some unfortunate events at the last minute we ended up in the West 50s off 10th Avenue. The new place was much less luxurious than where we were supposed to stay--and half the price--but we took advantage of our location to explore 9th Avenue, which has a ridiculous number of good restaurants for extremely modest prices. I actually spent less on meals than I had expected! Also we turned out to be a few minutes' walking distance from the U.S.S. Intrepid (which was high on my younger son's list of sight-seeing attractions), Top of the Rock at Rockefeller Center, and Times Square. So, as my younger son would say, "It's all good."

I had time to think about some of my own experiences living in New York more than 20 years ago, especially since I insisted we visit my college. It doesn't really feel like "mine" anymore, and yet I was surprised at how much I remembered about navigating the city and the subway. New York has changed, but the things that make it unique really haven't changed that much.

Painted Ladies and Blue Dicks

2009-03-31T17:43:00.001-07:00

No, my blog hasn't turned porno! Above are the Blue Dicks. They are out everywhere on Mt. Davidson. And below is the mystery yellow daisy that I believe is Narrow-Leaved Mule Ears (Wyethia angustifolia). I found it at the same site where I found the Blue Dicks: the Friends of Edgewood Natural Preserve photos.
I went up on the mountain before 9 am today and photographed these and other flowers. Here's some lupine:
There are a few others I haven't identified but none as striking as the Mule Ears.
In the last ten days I have noticed Painted Ladies everywhere--in the arboretum, on Mt. Davidson, even in my backyard. This one was sitting right next to the trail.
(Note: After a look at Art Shapiro's butterfly site, I realized I had witnessed part of the Painted Lady migration, because one day all the butterflies I saw were flying in the same direction. Next time I see that I will do a count and email it to the site--it's fun to read the "citizen-scientist" reports of migration observations.)

Mt. Davidson Wildflowers

2009-03-30T20:54:00.001-07:00

Wildflowers have burst out on Mt. Davidson, my familiar hike. The flowers bloom in successive waves. It's the time of year when I need to go several times a week, just to catch the newest wave of blooms.
In this photo (from a previous year's hike) the pink ones are Checkermallow, the yellow are violets--California Golden Violet, or Johnny Jump-Ups, I discovered thanks to this site. I see these every year, as well as the lupine and poppies, which are also blooming now. Douglas iris will bloom shortly. There were two new flowers today, at least new to me. One I quickly discovered was Blue Dicks (Dichelostemma capitatum) thanks to another websearch, and there were patches of some yellow daisy-like flowers. I have no idea what the daisy-like flowers are but they look a little like Mule Ears. I realize that I need to get a more specific field guide to SF--or Northern California coastal--wildflowers. My beloved Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Wildflowers is not cutting it! I think I am going to have to go up there tomorrow and catch some photos so I can solve this.

Why I Like to Dig in the Dirt

2009-03-18T21:40:00.000-07:00

Today I was admiring my daffodils in their pot. Then I transplanted some sweet peas to the lovely crumbly rich soil on the side of our house. Before transplanting, I had to do a lot of weeding, since grasses and fumitory and oxalis all love this rich, crumbly soil, too. Man, it felt good to dig in the dirt. I love the smell and the surprise of finding out what is below the surface. And I recently found out there is a scientific explanation for why digging in the dirt makes you feel good.
It turns out that breathing soil bacteria triggers neurons in the brain to release serotonin. I first read about this at a great website called Hooked on Nature. It's all about getting people, especially kids, to enjoy just being in nature. There are all sorts of cool activities to do, like breathing with trees. I know this sounds suspiciously treehuggerish, but if you're in the right mood, breathing with trees is a great meditation, and hugging trees makes you feel pretty good, too, especially if it's a Jeffrey pine that smells like pineapple. There are weekly thoughts on connecting with nature on their blog, 52 Ways to Love the Earth. And one of them, on Jan. 14, 2009, was about digging in the dirt, with a little factoid about how there's scientific proof that digging in the dirt really does make you feel good. And for a more scientific article on the experiments with mice that identified the soil bacteria-serotonin connection, here's a Discover magazine article about it.
Today I also checked out my sugar snap peas, which are hanging on to their sticks and the tomato tower and growing ever upward. It's pea season!

Happy Anniversary!

2009-03-16T21:21:00.001-07:00

Neighborhood Butcher

2009-03-02T21:03:00.000-08:00

Here's my five star review of our new neighborhood butcher: San Francisco Meats & Delicatessen. (Check out more rave reviews on Yelp!) My friend June, who lives on Ocean Ave. just a few blocks down from them, told me about the new shop, so I went and checked them out. Joe, the owner, used to work at a hoity-toity meat counter in Pacific Heights but always longed to open up his own meat shop in...Ingleside! We're lucky he did, and I bet we appreciate his friendliness and top quality all the more over here in lowly Ingleside. I have to say, I didn't just embrace SF Meats without subjecting the shop to a few tests.
Test #1: Did they have family-sized, home-style cuts like pot roasts, london broil, etc. that require a bit more cooking knowledge than just throwing it in a hot pan? Yes! I bought a very nice roast that Joe said he uses for their roast beef sandwiches, and another time an "Ingleside broil" (his name for it). He also has the ubiquitous steaks and chops.
Test #2: Did they have knowledge about how to cook the pieces of meat they sell? Yes! When I was drooling over their rotisserie ribs, Joe suggested that I buy a rack of ribs and cook it myself. I told him that my smoke alarms went off whenever I tried to roast ribs, and he wrote down his very own special ribs recipe in which you cover the ribs and let them braise rather than roast. It was delicious.
Test #3: (Most important) Did they know how to prepare specially ordered cuts? Yes! I called them up and asked Joe if he could make some braciole for me out of pork shoulder. There was a short silence. I asked if he knew what that was and he said no, but nicely. So I described it and he said he could do it, and he did. I may be imagining it, but I think I saw a new light of respect in Joe's eye when I came to pick up the braciole. He asked if I wanted to inspect it, and I said no, I trusted him. And I do. And here's some rare good news amidst the economic grimness all around: another customer came in when I was picking up the braciole and asked him how business was. Joe said, "Business is awesome."

Here's how to make braciole:
Ask the butcher to prepare 3 pounds of pork cutlets sliced from the shoulder and pounded approximately 1/4 inch thick. Sometimes these turn out to be squarish, around 6"x6". Joe's turned out to be long strips, about 5" by 10-12". It doesn't really matter, as long as they are thin, and not too lean or they will not be flavorful.
Other ingredients:
Salt and pepper to taste
2 Tbsp. minced garlic, plus 8 large whole peeled garlic cloves
2/3 cup minced flat-leaf parsley
2/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese, plus more for serving
2/3 cup grated aged provolone (or other semi-hard cheese; I used Manchego)
2 28-oz. cans whole peeled tomatoes, good quality
1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup canola oil

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Line cutlets up on a clean work surface. Season with salt and pepper and sprinkle with garlic, cheeses and parsley (I like to mix all these together, then sprinkle them on.) Roll a cutlet, starting at one of the shorter ends, into a tight log. Tie with twine as shown below. Repeat with all cutlets.
2. Puree the tomatoes, one can at a time, in the food processor (you can also use canned puree but sometimes the tomato quality is better in whole tomatoes). Reserve.
3. Heat a large skillet to medium-high heat and add oils. When oils are hot but not smoking, add the braciole and sear, rotating every minute or so, until browned all over. You can do this in batches if all braciole don't fit. Remove braciole to a deep-sided roasting pan. Saute whole garlic cloves for 2-3 minutes in the skillet, then add 1 cup of the pureed tomatoes and scrape up the browned bits from the bottom. Turn off heat and pour this sauce over the braciole. Add remaining pureed tomatoes to the braciole, completely covering them. Cover with foil and bake for 2-1/2 to 3 hours, until they are very tender.
4. Snip off twine, and arrange braciole whole or sliced on a warmed platter, with some sauce spooned over. The remaining sauce can be used for a pasta to accompany the braciole. Pass Parmesan at the table.
(Recipe from the New York Times, adapted from Frank Castronovo and Frank Falcinelli)

Kilo Cake

2009-03-01T21:49:00.001-08:00

My husband has been calling this "Kilo Cake," I think because he feels like he gains a kilo every time he eats a slice. But really, it's only pound cake. Actually, it's a divine cardamom and vanilla pound cake from this month's issue of Gourmet magazine. I served it with vanilla ice cream and candied kumquats to my mom and stepfather when they were over for dinner on Saturday night. It was a little over the top. I think it like it best plain, with a cup of green jasmine tea.
Normally the Gourmet magazine recipes are on the epicurious site. But this one isn't. I guess they don't put all the magazine content on the site. This is one of my favorite sites for recipes, and I love the recipe "reviews." It's astonishing how the same recipe can win one fork with a paragraph of snarking from one cook, and four forks with gushing praise from another. Most reviewers are like me: they just can't bring themselves to follow the recipe exactly as written and feel compelled make some kind of change, either because someone is allergic or doesn't like the ingredient or didn't have it on hand or just plain had to tinker with it. (In the case of the cardamom vanilla pound cake, I substituted 2 tsp. vanilla extract for 2 vanilla beans, which would have cost $10 each at my neighborhood Safeway.) Sometimes the reviewers' changes are so extensive it's a completely different recipe. I feel a kinship with these reviewers, although I have not myself written any reviews on the site. I always check the reviews before committing myself to a recipe; if there are too many bad reviews, forget it. And I like how most of the reviewers are identified by their location ("A Cook in Chevy Chase, MD") depending on how they registered at the site.

Hill of Beans

2009-02-25T20:05:00.000-08:00

For Christmas, my mom gave me 5 pounds of beans. These weren't just any beans...but Rancho Gordo beans. (Check out their website for the full range of products and great recipes.) Rancho Gordo beans are the darlings of the food blogs right now. I hadn't heard of them before I received this leguminous present, but I have since read lots of posts praising their qualities and some wonderful recipes. The photo above is of the Christmas limas, which were the most beautiful of my gift pack.

I have to say, the jury is still out. I've tried the midnight black beans, the Christmas lima beans, and the yellow-eyed pea beans. They were all very good, and I enjoyed the dishes I made with them a lot, but I'm not sure they are out of this world.
This is the French-style roast lamb and beans I made with the Christmas limas. While the beans did taste slightly of chestnut, as the blurb about them promised, I find the color of them cooked somewhat repellent. Maybe they just don't go as well with lamb as flageolet beans.
I still have the vaqueros and the pebbles to try from my gift, but I'm really still hankering for some creamy pale flageolet beans. I think I will have to try Rancho Gordo's, and then I can make my final judgement. Thanks, mom, for the excuse to cook up more beans!

The Joy of Meatloaf

2009-02-16T08:52:00.000-08:00

(Apologies to the Chronicle for using the photo; I didn't think to photograph my meatloaf. But this is Cindy's as Cindy made it.)
I've written about my copy of my mom's Joy of Cooking (1964 edition). It's not often that this cookbook makes it into the news. But today's New York Times has a short piece on a nutritional study comparing the calorie counts of servings from the original 1936 edition and the 2006 one, with a reference to lean times, both financially and gastronomically. In case you prefer not to click over to the article, the study found that there is an average of 39% more calories per serving in the current edition's recipes, due to more caloric ingredients and larger serving sizes.
I've long noticed the evolution of recipes toward more luxurious ingredients and larger serving sizes in recipes from my own cookbooks. Because I was curious whether my impression was accurate, I compared 4 meatloaf recipes, spanning approximately the same number of years as my lifetime, with an eye on the approximate calories of each (that part is not so scientific).
1964 Joy of Cooking: 1 lb. ground beef, 6 slices of bacon, 1/2 cup of cream (among other less caloric ingredients), to yield 4 servings.
(I haven't actually tried this recipe.)
1989 Silver Palate New Basics Cookbook, "Cajun Meat Loaf": 2 lb. ground beef, 1/2 lb. andouille sausage, etc., to yield 8 servings
(This is very Silver Palate--adding an extra twist to gussy up a classic. It also includes various peppers, cayenne, etc. I find I usually have to delete at least one ingredient, and sometimes several, from every Silver Palate recipe, although I haven't actually tried this recipe, either. I'm not sure I want andouille sausage in my meat loaf but to be fair they also have a recipe for meat loaf without it, although that one also calls for spinach, carrots and cumin. Uck.)
Undated, probably from the 1990s, SF Chronicle meat loaf: 2 lbs. ground beef, no bacon or sausage or cream, to yield 8 servings.
(This is the slightly boring recipe I usually make--so far the leanest.)
2009 "Cindy's Backstreet Kitchen Mighty Meat Loaf" from last week's SF Chronicle: 2 lbs. ground beef, no sausage or bacon, to yield 4-6 servings.
("Cindy" as in Cindy Pawlcyn. I just tried this one last week, but we got more like 8 servings out of it, even with 2 teenage boys eating. Serving size on this one is way bigger than the others. This recipe is a lot more interesting than my usual, with more ketchup, more herbs, more minced vegetables, and even more ketchup in a spicy sauce with horseradish poured on top as a gravy. It was a big hit. I was told, in firm tones, that this beat my usual meatloaf. In fact, here it is, along with 3 other meat loaf recipes from the Chronicle's meat loaf extravaganza, if you want to try it).

Hmmm. Maybe meatloaf wasn't the best choice for my unscientific study, since the first two seem to be more or less equivalent, and only Cindy's showed a big jump in calories. Cindy's meatloaf was adapted from a restaurant recipe, which tend to be more caloric and luxurious. Also, after an era of food excess, even a comfort food associated with frugality has to feel plentiful, hence the excessive serving size. Well, it is exceptionally good meatloaf.

More Backyard Birds

2009-02-11T15:44:00.001-08:00

(photo by Dave Menke, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service National Digital Library)
California towhees are particularly nondescript birds, and for that reason I had overlooked them for a long time in our backyard. But I've been watching them--yes, through my binoculars from the back window--and I suspect that the three of them who visit regularly are living in the no man's land thicket behind our backyard. (I found out today when I visited my neighbor Fran's house that I'm not the only one that keeps binoculars by the back door to look at birds--she does it, too!) The towhees visit often, usually scratching at the mulch we put down to control weeds. They mingle with the two blue jays that visit, and do not always fly away when we emerge into the yard. They seem pretty unconcerned with the cats that wander through our yard, even though the towhees seem like beguiling targets to me when they are pecking at things on the ground. In contrast, two mourning doves who were sitting on the ground the other day startled with a long string of whistles and coos and flutterings in the way that they do when I stepped into the yard.

Puddings

2009-02-07T12:16:00.001-08:00

This is the divine butterscotch pudding I made this week. I had a craving for butterscotch pudding in the middle of my yoga class (I have no idea why) and had to go home afterward to find a recipe. This one is from epicurious. (If for some reason the link doesn't work, scroll down to find the 2002 recipe from Bon Appetit, not the shortcut newer one in this month's issue of Gourmet.) This is real butterscotch pudding, made with a carmelized sugar syrup, egg yolks, whipping cream, butter--even scotch! It's fantastically rich and butterscotchy and worth the fussing.
I have been on somewhat of a pudding craze the last few months. Maybe it's the uncertainty about the economy, and I'm craving comfort food. I've made baked vanilla custard, rice pudding, angel pudding, a couple of types of chocolate pudding, and then this butterscotch. To be honest, pudding doesn't photograph all that well (or I haven't figured out the trick) so I haven't been photographing them. I guess this one would look a bit more dressy with a dollop of whipped cream. But in terms of taste, any additions are entirely unnecessary.

New Things Growing

2009-02-05T13:05:00.000-08:00

I planted these starts to get a "head start" on my garden. But I could have just as easily planted them right in the raised bed, since it has been warm enough for the starts to just grow outside. Now I need to get them in the ground. It is so exciting when the seeds sprout. It's a miracle every time. These are beets and sugar snap peas.
My daffodil bulbs are sprouting, too.

Snowstorm Skiing

2009-01-27T21:16:00.001-08:00

It was snowing on Sunday at Donner Ski Ranch but there wasn't any question about whether or not we would ski. We had a lot of fun, especially because we were skiing with our friends who live in Sacramento now. We first met when our kids were in nursery school together. This weekend the four boys were skiing/boarding together, while we parents went off and skied together (we can't keep up with them anyway). We just couldn't get over how cool it was that they were having fun hanging out together even though they don't live in the same town anymore and only see each other about once a year.
The weather improved on Monday and today it was much sunnier, so we could look east toward Donner Lake, and see all the other familiar landmarks like Crow's Nest and Castle Peak.

Baking Things

2009-01-23T13:52:00.000-08:00

I don't know what got into me, but yesterday I baked the orange pumpkin cloverleaf yeast rolls featured on the cover of the February Gourmet magazine, and a batch of chocolate chip cherry oatmeal cookies from my new baking book I got for Christmas, The Art and Soul of Baking by Cindy Mushet. They were both good, but not completely satisfying.
Rolls: I had trouble with the active dry yeast this time; it didn't foam. This has only happened to me once before. I know the water temperature was perfect because I used a thermometer (which I don't always do). I threw out the first batch, and tried a second envelope. It was from the same pack, so I didn't have much confidence that it would be better than the first envelope. It foamed a little, but should have foamed a lot because there was a tablespoon of sugar in the warm milk. I went ahead and used it anyway, but the rolls were a bit heavy, although with a great flavor. We ate them toasted with honey for breakfast.
I did a little research on yeast and found out that 1)too much sugar can kill yeast, and 2)dissolving it in milk can be difficult and sometimes it clumps (though I don't know why that would inhibit the yeast). It seems I have to do an experiment on this for myself to see if it was the sugar or the milk that was the problem or indeed just some dud yeast. Will publish results shortly.
Cookies: The cookies are delicious but it's a bit of a waste of the dried tart cherries, I think, since the chocolate chips kind of overwhelm them. We are really into these dried tart cherries for our morning hot cereal, and I have put them in scones, too. They are a little pricey so I will save them for places where they really shine out. I love this cookbook, though; lots of great baking information about ingredients, techniques, etc. I will try some of the other, more complex recipes since judging a baking cookbook on the basis of oatmeal cookies doesn't seem quite fair. I will be writing more about this book.

New President

2009-01-21T18:23:00.000-08:00

Photo by Damon Winter/New York Times
I listened and watched yesterday, and today, to the inauguration and to all the stories of the people who were there. I heard Obama's inaugural address when he gave it yesterday, read it in the morning paper, and listened to it again today. I looked at the galleries of photos online, and the ones in the paper. I think maybe now it's beginning to sink in that we really do have a new president, one that I can support. I'm not sure we can accomplish everything he laid out in his address, but I am hopeful. I don't think I have ever felt so hopeful about what our president can accomplish, even if it's mostly to undo the mistakes of the last eight years.

Trip to San Jose

2009-01-18T21:07:00.001-08:00

My youngest son was recommended by his band teacher for an honor band at a conference for music educators. So off we went to San Jose for a day and a half. He played music for seven hours on Friday, while I wandered around the city and brought him food at intervals. I made two trips to Bijan bakery, which I had read about online, and savored every buttery crumb of my pastry and foamy drop of my cappuccino each time. The photo above is the new San Jose city hall. There are a lot of new buildings, pedestrian walkways, and public art in San Jose. I never knew the two 1968 Olympic athletes below were from SJ State.
On Saturday my son rehearsed some more, and then played a concert Saturday afternoon. The concert was stunning and the parents and the gathered music teachers gave the student musicians a standing ovation. When my son came back to our hotel on Friday night, he was humming the themes from the pieces they played, and kept describing his favorite moments in the Mahler excerpt. He told me he had never played in an ensemble where everyone was that good. The day after we came home, he had downloaded the entire Mahler symphony that the excerpt was from onto his mp3 player. I think the best thing about the whole experience for my son was that he discovered Mahler.
For me the best part was planning what I was going to do in San Jose for a whole day by myself. I had no one else to accommodate (except meeting my son for lunch). There's not a lot to see in San Jose, but after researching the options, I chose the Hakone Gardens and the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum, both places devoted to aesthetic and spiritual contemplation.
The Hakone Gardens were completely empty at 10 am on a Friday, nothing was in bloom except one tiny pink blossom on a plum tree. The scene was wintry and austere; there's a word in Japanese to describe this quality but I don't remember what it is. It's not a big garden, but it exerts a powerful effect. It is a place that demands slowing down, looking closely, listening, smelling.
The Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum took me back thousands of years in the planetarium show about the links between astrology, astronomy, and the Mithraic religion. The collection of Egyptian artifacts in the museum is surprisingly rich, presented with a slightly more spiritual focus than a traditional museum: how people worshiped, what they believed, how the concept of the divine and of beauty evolved through different periods. I loved the items from the Amarna period of Ahknaten.
At night my son and I went to the outdoor spa at the hotel. As I leaned back into the heated water, I looked up and saw the constellations I had just seen on the planetarium ceiling: Orion, Taurus, Perseus. They are no longer central to our lives; we hardly notice them now. But I was glad to look up and be able to see them that night. And after he read the info about San Jose that our hotel room provided, my son told me why I was able to see those constellations: the city of San Jose is one of the first cities to use yellow sodium street lights to cut down on light pollution (in part because of the nearby Lick Observatory).
By the time we left on Saturday, I was beginning to get a little fond of San Jose.

New Garden

2009-01-13T13:40:00.000-08:00

This soft, inviting soil is the result of several of hours of digging yesterday. My visit to the farm and the warm spell we've been having finally drew me out into the garden to contemplate my raised bed. The last few months I've been ignoring it, ever since my last crop didn't thrive, wet weather sent me indoors, and I discovered that roots from neighboring plants had penetrated the bed. This latter item might not seem so discouraging, but there was a thick layer of matted roots like a sponge 3-4 inches below the surface of my entire bed, sucking up water and nutrients. The roots are from either the Cecile Brunner rose or our orange muscat grapes, or both. These plants were gifts when we moved into our home, so have been established for more than ten years. I have to honor their persistence and hardiness and I love they way they cover our back wall with green grape leaves and pale pink blossoms. (We have never gotten any grapes from the vines although our farming friends in Yolo County--who gave us the grave vines--have, and they are delicious.) But I was not at all happy with their invasion and conquering of my raised bed.
This is not a giant bushy caterpillar but a chunk of the root mat I dug up. Once I had dug up most of it, and severed with my shovel as many roots leading into the bed as I could find (one was bigger around than my little finger), I dug in a bag of chicken manure and added more nursery mix. In the course of my digging I came across a lot of worms. Now the bed can sit for a couple of weeks before I plant it. Now I can get excited again about what to plant. In the meantime, I am planting some seeds to transplant into the bed as starts. My garden is beginning again.

That's Commissioner Norton, to You!

2009-01-08T20:43:00.000-08:00

My sister was sworn in on Wednesday night as a commissioner of the Board of Education of the SF Unified School District. You can read all about it, see some better photos, and even see the herky jerky video I shot of her remarks, at her web page.
It was really wonderful to see her come full circle. A year ago she declared her candidacy, and began campaigning, and now she takes up the job. What a journey it has been, and it's only just beginning.
Her daughters made a big splash at the event. First her youngest chatted up Mayor Newsom and got his autograph. He made a point of mentioning her in his introduction to swearing Rachel in, saying she "has a lot of energy." Then when Rachel got up there to speak and began by thanking her husband Tim and daughters (and me!), they rushed the stage and let out a few shrieks. Tim had to corral them back to their seats, while Rachel giggled a bit and announced that once again, the Norton family had disrupted the proceedings. But all went smoothly and her speech was gracious and short.
I thought about how great it was for her daughters to see her up there being sworn in. It made me remember when my mom graduated from medical school (I was a teenager then) and how proud I was of her. Some things stick with you.