thanksgiving aftermath

Tonight we’ll (hopefully) be finishing off the Thanksgiving leftovers. I seem to have inherited the make-way-too-much-food gene from my mom. On the upside, it was a delicious day of good company, cooking, and conversation. I thought my menu was fairly simple, but what with the breaks we needed between courses, the meal managed to fill up about 8 hours of the day. Hey, it sure beat being at work.

I was delighted that the weather was warm and sunny enough to cook my maple-glazed tempeh outside on the grill. Jasper was delighted that he received a constant stream of treats in attempt to keep him distracted (because as it turns out, not everyone wants flying-leap hugs from 130 pounds of puppy). Justin was pretty delighted by his own constant stream of treats. Elliot, Syann and Maya were delighted to have such a fine selection of laps. Puck and Finn hid.

meal prep

sous chef

chocolate-pecan tart = heaven

potatoes, onion, and mushrooms with balsamic-wine reduction; chile-rubbed baked pumpkin

those pumpkin seeds were GOOD—what else do they have in there?

maple-glazed grilled tempeh

sleeping it off

only in California…

November harvest

The golden state is not so great with money, but it can sure make food. Today’s harvest included 7 eggplants, a handful of green beans, cherry tomatoes, and serrano peppers. The eggplants are still flowering, so I may get more from them yet, and I still have loads of green serranos on the plants. I was skeptical when I heard that people can get a winter harvest of green beans here, but I planted some green bush beans in September to give it a try, and if the snails don’t get them all I think they’ll be pretty productive. Yay, time to put on my coat and mittens and go fire up the grill for some eggplant.

thanksgiving

I’m very excited to be cooking a vegan Thanksgiving for eight this year, and I’ve finally decided the main components of my menu:
hors d’oeuvres:
Walnut-mushroom pate with baguette rounds
flash-fried green beans
something with the last garden eggplants

First course: Phil’s vegetable soup
Helena & Jeff’s salad

Main course:
Spicy roasted sugar pumpkin (from my garden)
Maple-glazed grilled tempeh
Chanterelle and pear dressing
Balsamic roasted mushrooms, onions, and fingerling potatoes

Dessert:
Helena’s most amazing rum cake
maybe a pecan and chocolate tart

Like I said, I’m so excited.
I’ll take pictures while I’m cooking.

not cold-hardy

My “little garden that could” is still pumping out the zucchini and eggplants, and even a smattering of tomatoes and a few peppers and cucumbers. I have to admire its stamina. Meanwhile, Justin and I broke down and fired up the furnace last week…I guess we’re less cold-hardy than the plants. The garden is in a pretty undemanding phase now that I don’t have to water as constantly, so I’m tackling lots of little house projects. I took out the built-in ironing board that folded into my kitchen wall (oh no, what will I do when I get the urge to iron something?), and turned it into open shelving for spices and oils and such. I’ve also been on a furniture rearranging kick, and I think Justin was surprised to come home from school one night and find that his baby grand had been spirited across the living room. I suspect it says something bad about my character that I think of it as easier to move a piano by myself than to wait a day and ask for help…then again, it also says something good about my muscles.

 

the new "dining room," where the piano used to be

Today I decided the beans weren’t producing enough anymore to be worth watering, so I tore them out (along with two still-producing zucchini plants that were starting to succumb to powdery mildew–but never fear, the other three zucchini plants are still going strong) and prepped the bed for the next planting, peas and lettuce, which I hope to get in tomorrow. I’m looking forward to the change in diet, though I still have plenty of zucchini and eggplant stockpiled for this week.

girl and hoe

the dark side

I got Justin a projector for his birthday, and now we’ve been sucked into the dark side—spending far too much time sitting around watching dvds, which are generally much more engaging on the projector than they would be on the 12-inch laptop screen. We’re just getting into “Battlestar Gallactica,” which is highly addictive but gives me really trippy dreams.

In other news, my Master Gardening class is going well, and I adore getting to ditch work every Wednesday to go to school, in spite of the willful obtuseness of some of the lecturers. (Really, how can you talk for an entire morning about watershed health but be unwilling to say anything more about greywater than “It’s kind of controversial.”?) My garden is winding down for the season (probably more because I got tired of watering it through the heat-wave than because the season has actually changed), but I have three new beds of fall crops that just sprouted this week. They’re in that cute two-leaf stage where I kind of want to cuddle them and tuck them in at night.

I found a fabulous old gas grill on the Craigslist free ads, and after a very intense scrub-down, it is grilling up fantastic Portobellos and avocados. Now we’re eating meals on the patio a lot, soaking in the last of the evening light while we watch the chickens get ready for bed.

Hedges & things

Inspired by some beautiful Feijoa bushes at the hardware store, Justin and I spent last weekend ripping out our last remaining hedge-o-ugliness (some sort of suckering bushes that were mostly choked out by ivy) and replacing it with another fruit hedge. We used the Feijoa (pineapple guava) and some strawberry guava, interplanted with blueberries. Then I added three dwarf citrus trees (2 Meyer lemon and 1 lime) in front of the hedge to fill the little strip of land between our driveway and the property line. Eventually, I’ll probably toss in some strawberry crowns as ground cover, but I think first we’ll have a few years of battling the ivy which will inevitably re-emerge in spite of our vengeful pulaski attacks on its root system. It was a fun weekend in spite of the hard labor. When the neighbors saw that we were finally clearing away the ugly hedge, they decided to spruce up their side of the fence too, so we worked alongside each other and got to know each other a bit better as we laughed at the strange little artifacts we dug up. My neighbors are great—a big clan with three generations sharing the house. Unfortunately, my Spanish is embarrassingly limited, and their oldest generation has almost as limited English, so we speak to each other like toddlers (me: “Son bonitas. Me gusta las flores.” neighbor: “When tree gets big, I pick the fruit.”)…once my Master Gardening class finishes, I’m taking Spanish classes.

Saturday night both households had parties, and whenever this happens you can’t help but notice the cultural juxtaposition (and probably all my guests were wishing they were at the other party). At their house, four generations of people were grilling, dancing, hitting a pinata, and I even heard someone shout without a trace of irony “Let’s do a Conga line!” On the other side of the fence, four or five twenty-somethings sat subdued on our patio, chiefly entertained by the antics of the dog. Oh well, at least we had homemade peanut butter fudge.

I got my new avocado trees planted…they probably won’t fruit much for 4 or 5 years, but they give me something to daydream about (yes, it’s really that boring inside my head).

Pinkerton avocado

How do you know if your planting hole is big enough? If it holds the dog, it will hold the tree.

Justin’s birthday was on Tuesday, a gluttonous affair involving sweet-and-spicy walnut tofu and three layer vanilla-agave cake with caramel filling and coffee buttercream icing.

My patio wok has 60,000 BTUs of deliciousness and holds enough food for eight people...or for Justin and me

happy birthday

Justin with card from Malachi

like most toddlers, Jasper thinks the boxes are just as good as the presents

Today was more gardening—we planted green beans, soup beans, chives, and spinach. Meanwhile, the eggplants and basil are flourishing, the onions have been dried and braided, and the zucchini continue their takeover. Now it’s time for me to go grab that last piece of birthday cake…

eggplant

fall planting

A busy weekend awaits…Fall planting season is upon me, and I’m realizing that one of the quirks of our climate is that everything I planted last spring is still going strong, so I don’t have as much space for fall planting as I thought I would.  I’m still determined to make room for some lettuce, since I can only grow that in fall and winter here, as well as chard, kale, beets, garlic, onions, and leeks.  I’ll be interplanting pea seeds with my still-flourishing beans to keep the trellis full.  And I have some artichoke seedlings that I’ll scatter around the front yard, or maybe use as a border for the asparagus bed (I love edible perennials).  Finally, I’ll be tossing carrot seeds in all the bare patches of the front yard…and hopefully remembering to harvest them this time.

Whew! At least Jasper has saved me the trouble of harvesting my spaghetti squash: I came home last week to find every last of them on the ground and full of teeth marks.  They weren’t ripe enough to cook with or to smash into cat food (which sounds odd I guess, but pureed squash is great for preventing hairballs),  so the chickens get to feast on them.  Sadie gets fiendish when she sees me coming with the squash. (Maybe Jasper and the chickens are in cahoots?).

We Have a Winner!

Congratulations to Bank of America for winning the Biggest Time-Suck Challenge.  Your boundless incompetence and unparalleled dishonesty have successfully wasted hundreds of hours of my family’s time, spanning five horrific months. Let’s hear it for predatory lending, inefficient bureaucracy, and good old-fashioned corporate lies.

montage

Alright, this post will pretty much be a photo dump.

Elliot has been pretty sick, with a near-constant, painful-sounding cough.  The vet thinks he has some sort of allergy-induced bronchitis, and gave him a big shot of steroids, which seems to have worked for now.  He’s still the sweetest snuggle-bug around.

I planted a bunch of carrots last winter thinking they might help break up my heavy clay soil.  I pretty much forgot about them, but they kept growing anyway.I never planted any dill in my garden, but it doesn’t seem to know that.  I think it’s pretty, so I hang the seed-heads in random spots around the house.

I generally find it annoying and misguided when people try to pass off consumerism as environmentalism.  So I’ll admit, yes I did have a washer already, which worked perfectly.  But with a fat rebate from my power company and the proceeds from selling the old one, my new washer only cost $150.  It uses about 12 gallons of water per load, as compared to 45+ gallons for the old one.  I collect all the greywater in buckets and use it to water my trees, so my back thanks me for the reduced work-load.

Justin likes to lurk in the doorway and watch in awe while I’m cooking, and he often wants to take pictures of the food.  You wouldn’t think someone who loves food so much would be so thin, but there you have it.

We discovered a new hiking spot last week, Wunderlich Park, in nearby Woodside.  There is a lovely little 5-mile loop that weaves in and out of rolling fields and redwood forest.

nemesis

It’s getting to that point in the summer when I start to feel really antagonistic towards my zucchini plants, sigh afflicted sighs whenever I have to pick the beasts (constantly), and glare at them out of the corner of my eye while I’m working in the garden.  I have a few of them waiting for me on the kitchen table, beside the 4 lbs of beans I picked last night…at least I don’t have to think about what’s for dinner for the next month.

On the upside, the kitties didn’t manage to dig up all the basil this year and I’m actually starting to harvest some.

I planted two trees this week that I’ve had sitting in barrels on my patio (a peach and an apricot), and also ordered another avocado tree (guacamole tree?) that I plan to plant in the corner to give the chickens more shade.

I have a bunch of pictures on the camera waiting to go up on my blog, haven’t yet mustered the energy to upload them…soon.