Category Archives: my garden

While I was at the fair…

food and cooking, my garden, ,

Last weekend was the giant and truly wonder-full food festival my parish puts on every year. I was on my feet for the better part of 12 hours both days, in church or selling books and T-shirts, or just walking around. I listened to the band and watched the Balkan and Eritrean dancers, but my legs and feet were too tired to dance. I talked to friends I hadn’t seen in 15 or 20 years, trying to stretch out of my introverted self. It all wore me plumb out.

In the week previous I had baked some cakes to sell in the bakery, alongside some of the goodies I told you about last month as we were preparing some of them in advance.

At that time I posted a recipe for Pumpkin Banitsa, which had been stashed in the freezer until the morning of the event, to be baked and served freshly out of the oven and ready to sink teeth into. It’s to the right of the baklava in the photo above.

This is one of the three liqueur cakes I contributed to the bakery. My favorite was the mocha cake that I didn’t take a picture of, and which I have made many times. They were all variations on its recipe, starting with a devil’s food cake mix, adding butter, eggs, cocoa and (in the case of the mocha cake) coffee, and coffee liqueur.

The glaze is made from powdered sugar and whichever liqueur is appropriate. I used coffee, chocolate, or orange liqueur in these recent cakes. In the one pictured, I glazed it before freezing, and again the morning it was to be served, with a little food coloring in the second glaze. Then some coarse “natural” sugar went on last.

Monday morning I felt as though I had been away from home on a long trip. I went to the back yard to visit the garden and pick vegetables. I trimmed some spent flowers on my amazing zinnia, and stretched a measuring tape next to it to see just how tall it is – just an inch short of five feet high. Our summery September is predicted to give more 80° days, so I will keep track of the flower that was certainly a good investment of the $4 I paid for a 4″ pot. It’s been one of the constant joys of this summer.

I’m picking Rainbows.

food and cooking, my garden,
Persimmon tomato on placemat with Italian scene

This is the first year that I received a tomato plant for my birthday, and I was very happy about it. My friend grew it from her volunteers, from her favorite variety of the previous summer, and handed it to me in a 4″ pot. I got it into the ground within a few weeks, and it grew like crazy. Some of our first fruits came from that bushy plant – and they were huge!

But we Glad farmers like our tomatoes to be more smoothly globe-shaped, not with the big shoulders and deep grooves of these Rainbows, or Big Rainbows as they are called on the nursery websites. I have mostly dipped them in boiling water so that I could easily peel them and cut them into chunks for the freezer, but when I took 15# of them to church last week they were scooped up fast.

Big Rainbows

Our Persimmons have also been like that this year; previously they were like other gardeners’ photos on the Web. Maybe it is a feature of heirloom tomatoes that there is variation in the shape? Does any of my readers know what causes this? The Rainbows are smoothing out, now that they are past the peak of production and smaller. (I should slice up a few for dinner tonight.) But not the Persimmons.

Well, we haven’t been able to keep up with eating them fresh anyway. I have been freezing quarts and quarts. Even on the morning of my departure for the mountains I quickly scalded some Early Girls, and when I ran out of time I stashed them in the freezer whole with skins on. I figure the skins will come off just as easily when I defrost them again. I hope I’m right.

flesh of Rainbow tomato

So as not to let tomatoes take over my blog the way they have taken over the kitchen, I’ll consolidate tomato stories here, and show you my latest pot of Cherry Tomato Soup. This batch I cooked down a bit more than usual – so that I will have a better chance of fitting it into the freezer that is getting maxed-out.

After stewing the tomatoes and basil for a couple of hours, I added a little cream and chicken broth and puréed some of it before serving it with a meatloaf dinner. So yummy.

 

What’d life be without ’em?

my garden

My title is a line from Guy Clark’s “Homegrown Tomatoes,” a song that’s running through my mind these days when our tomato harvest is nearing its peak. I’ve never weighed one day’s pickings before yesterday’s harvest, pictured below, which came it at about 13 pounds. I’m sure everyone has had quite enough of my tomato reports, so I’m including a little music to reward your patience.