The Ladies (And Other Stuff)

Little by little, I have been collecting daylilies. But in a decisively unlikely way (for me). As a keeper of lists, manager of inventories, collector of data - I haven't a clue of the varieties. And so, I just appreciate them. For the simple shows they put on every day. I feel so lucky that I have the space and the sun to continue my collecting. Inventoried or not.

File under random:

I am starting acupuncture today.

I have been making big batches of jasmine refrigerator iced tea. You should, too.

I just joined Barefoot Bucha. Our local Community-Supported-Kombucha share with flavors like Elderflower, Mint and Ginger.

I've been pulled into The Hunger Games series for additional summer reading.

I am babysitting a pig, a brood of chickens, a cat named Licorice, a dog named Desi and a fish named Louis this weekend.

My quest to get away from chemicals, plastics and paper products continues - Re-Nest has a very thorough list on homemade house cleaners. I have to admit, I balked at vinegar for kitchen cleaning, but tried it a while back during a spring cleaning frenzy. I just filled up the sink with hot water and added 1 cup of vinegar and I swear, it removed dirt and grease better than my old standby Method all-purpose cleaner. I use it all over the house now and sometimes add essential oils like lemongrass and lavender (combined), tea tree or peppermint.

And I am trying to expand friendlier practices in the laundry room right now. I hope to sew some dryer sachets with Sugar Hollow-grown lavender and want to make some wool dryer balls from my wool stash. And adding vinegar to particularly challenging wash loads is a great disinfectant, de-stinker and detergent booster.

My next item on the wish-list is a good laundry drying line. I described my ultimate one to Corey - based on what people used in my childhood neighborhood on Long Island. It was a pulley line - so you could stand on your back stoop, hang some laundry and zip it out further over the back lawn and repeat. The summer sound of those squeaking laundry lines is a time capsule of nostalgia for me. He kind of laughed at this particular vision for a clothes line, though. So I will continue to pursue it until I become mildly annoying. Or just do it myself.

Making Stuff, Eating Stuff

Garlic scapes from our vegetable patch (top photo) - sauteed in a little butter with Red Russian Kale.

Sun tea, made with Barry's Irish Tea and lemon balm from the garden. Brewed for about four hours in the blazing Virginia sun. A satisfying way to harness solar energy during those heat advisory days!

Almond oil facial moisturizer with chamomile and roses (also from the garden). I covered the just-picked buds with sweet almond oil and a few capsules of vitamin E. Then, I covered the mason jar with muslin and will let it sit for a week or so, stirring every day.

A sweet friend, Sylvia (age 7/almost 8!), has been making us the most delicious botanical lotions. Willa and I have been fighting over the newest one - jasmine and coconut oil.

Not pictured - but my new go-to recipe for chocolate chip cookies, from David Lebovitz.

I have been dreaming about lobster rolls lately and want to find this truck next time we are in NYC.

Radish Butter

Sometimes, if I can't fall asleep, I set the iPod up and listen to podcasts of The Splendid Table. And just before drifting off one winter night, I listened to The Lee Brothers talk about radish butter.

This sent me back out to the cold frame in early February to sprinkle down some radish seeds. And yesterday, I harvested the first one.

I have always been meh about radishes. But radish butter is another animal. Peppery and savory. On toasty bread. Whoa. I didn't push it further when Corey declined a taste. Without any hesitation, I just turned back around and polished off the serving myself.

Here's the recipe. If you are lucky enough to have access to fresh, local butter, make the investment!

Toss or Be Tossed

Just a few photos from life as of late. Although, I have to admit, these are highly selective - other life stuff tossed us around earlier in the week. There's the way I handle stress and the way I would like to handle stress. Grrrrr. Any increments in between make me hopeful for future challenges. Chocolate seems to help sustain those small moments of clarity, too. But all is well and I (literally) now know that I have my health.

Too tired to really cook dinner last night, I knew I could at least chop some vegetables and roast them (top photo). The butternut squash went with pasta, the beets will become a salad and the okra. Gah! Well, the okra never made it to a plate - I snacked on it all while cleaning the kitchen. Yes - it was that good. I just tossed everything with olive oil, salt and pepper. 400 degrees for 35 minutes.

The Heritage Harvest Festival at Monticello (middle photos). Tomato tastings and TJ's vegetable garden. My trusty, adorable and curious side-kick, Willa, and I went last Saturday. I am writing more about it over at Virginia Living Magazine.

Our tomato patch seems to like September as much as I do. The bottom photo is of Cherokee Purples. The Sungolds are going gangbusters with a second harvest, too.

P.S. A comfort meal for the tired soul - Alisa's Basil BLT. With a basil-mayonnaise. My husband hates bread (one of life's great mysteries) and mayonnaise (more understandable) and loved this sammich.

A Little Labor : A Little Rest : A Drummer Fantasy

Some weekends it is a struggle for me to get rest, sit down or take a break - because I finally have the free time away from work to do all of the things I really want to be doing. In between the chores, I'll hang a photo, stitch a line of embroidery, sprinkle down some seeds, pull some weeds. Yes, progress really is that incremental and glacial. Not sure whether to be appreciative or frustrated on that one, so I'll just let it sit.

But this past long weekend, for some reason, I got in a terrific pattern of rest smattered with moments of productivity. Perfection, in my rambling brain, for sure:

We went to the Staunton Farmers Market on Saturday morning (top photo) . We bought some sausages from Heartland Harvest and I made one of our all-time favorite meals - the sausage-potato packet. Have I written about that here? So simple and perfect for the hungry masses that snarf it up in minutes and then mutter an appreciative thank you.

Willa and I have been doing a lot of baking. She is fully committed to her role as mixer. And when it is something extra-doughy like scones, she takes her role of rolling it, patting it and marking it with a B (her sweet words, not mine) very seriously. Thumbprint cookies with jam (we used fig jam, my strawberry freezer jam and a friend's raspberry preserves) are a present favorite.

So are the Corniest Corn Muffins. Grab the last of the sweet corn harvest and bake these.

A friend had me over to make tomato preserves. They reminded me of preserves that Corey had brought back from Haiti years ago. Sweet and savory. And good on pretty much anything.

I'm getting ready to buy a few more things for the garden - for fall perennial and shrub and tree plantings. More echinacea, some rosa rugosas, a pink dogwood, a weigela . . . and that fig tree I keep whinging on about.

I have Hoosier cabinet lust since two friends introduced me to them. Unfortunately, I don't have the funding for one, so I lust aimlessly (for now).

I'm drawn to the blog, The Age of Uncertainty, for so many reasons - including the journals of Derek and the glimpses of ephemera that spill out of books that cross the author's path. The writing alone leaves me wishing for sharper wit and observations in my own writing.

The Black Keys are coming to town on Thursday. I predict I will leave the show with a new facet added to my male drummer fantasy (about my being one, not chasing after one).

The (Second) Time of the Year for Beginnings (And Other Stuff)

Leni - teacher-cook-gardener-historian-awesomeness.

New beginnings for an old stand-by.

Late summer walk/evening light self portrait.

Garden harvests.

Late-August into September is the second time of renewal in both my personal world and my gardening world. My inner-dweeb picks up on the new school-year jolt of life and it tends to be the real beginning of the year for me. So there are fresh plans and kinda-sorta resolutions.

I would like to clean and de-clutter the house to make way for all of the crisp activities autumn brings.

I would like to hit up the local nurseries (and their sales) and plant perennials, shrubs and trees through early November.

I am planning a fall balcony vegetable garden outside of Willa's room. My first thoughts on this project are here at Virginia Living.

I am thinking about knitting and sewing again.

I am trying to increase my exercise during the week to four days and have been loving Zumba at the Old Crozet School Arts (and plan to take ballet there in the fall). I also took a yoga class yesterday at the university that, sadly, left me with a kink in my neck. Which also left me confused.

The change in weather usually releases us back outside for more evening walks (photo from one above). We were chased inside earlier in the month by the chigger-tick-tiger mosquito trinity that left us all looking rather pocky and pathetic. But I need (fresh) air and sun. (I am secretly looking forward to that first frost, too.)

Under "Other":

The bold colors from our gardens are something else (photo above of Sungold tomatoes and zinnias). It really is amazing that they are still productive, after the summer we had.

Dutch baby pancakes. They cook up easily and they taste like those eggy Swedish pancakes - especially if you don't skimp on the lemon and powdered sugar. Big thanks to the friend who recently made these for me and Willa.

Cold-brewed iced coffee from Smitten Kitchen.

The $1 vintage tricycle find. Would you believe that I sit at my work post and daydream about the satisfaction I will get from sanding rust off of chrome later that night? Photos of the fixed-up tricycle coming soon. (Also, it didn't hurt that I married a bicycle mechanic.) Next: Restoring a Chevy Nova.

I learned how to make Mexican tamales with Leni last weekend (photo above of Leni with her zinnias). She encouraged getting together with friends to make vast quantities that can be frozen. A Tamale Party! With sipping tequila, I envision. I already hit up a local Mexican grocery for the corn husks and masa. And a curious purchase of dried hibiscus flowers that I needed to have, but haven't the slightest idea how to use.

Scattershot II

Red, white and blue potatoes are being harvested right now from our gardens! I am writing a round up of my favorite summer recipes over at Virginia Living Magazine - and it includes a grilled potatoes recipe that is a staple go-to. I made potatoes with paprika and rosemary (from our herb garden) for dinner last night. We'll be eating a lot of potatoes - so please send favorite recipes.

Loving evening walks after a good rain storm in which Otis and Willa wear each other out in the best of ways. Post-drizzle, galosh-wearing walks (top photo) were also very welcome this weekend. We had rain and cloud cover and appreciated every minute of it. Everything smelled like life instead of the crispy, singed-to-death landscape of the past month-and-a-half.

Meet Yer Eats Farm Tour! Cool!

I'm just a wee bit excited about Rob Sheffield's new book. If you didn't read Love is a Mixed Tape, drop everything you are doing to fetch yourself a copy. And if the title Talking to Girls About Duran Duran and the Quest for a Cool Haircut doesn't speak to you in some way, it must mean that you weren't knee-deep in high school angst in the 1980s?

I made the Peperonata in saor last week. Wow. Yum. Especially good with grilled salmon on top of it. Next from the Adventures with Ruth recipes to try? The strawberry jam tarts. I don't have elderberry flowers, but I have the freezer jam from this past spring. And I'm sure I can track down some creme fraiche. (Because I have a nose for that sort of thing.) This weekend I also quick-preserved some lemons to use in a future attempt at the tagine recipe from her Moroccan episode.

Also - while writing about cooking. We don't have cable out our way, so my discovery of shows (through Netflix) can actually be something that started airing in, let's say, 2005. Like Anthony Bourdain. I have now traveled with him to Iceland, China, New Jersey, Vietnam, Las Vegas and Paris. I could do without the scenes in which he eats cow stomach or fermented shark, but can't seem to get enough of watching him smoke and drink and stuff his skinny self alongside self-deprecating humor and a super-sharp, super-fast take on things. I hear he has a new book. Perhaps I'll experience his latest endeavor in real-er time.

Scattershot

Sultry and hazy in the dell.

Small moments from our July . . .

Lodi apples. New to me this year. Tart applesauce in mid-summer from these small, pale green overlooked gems is fun. It is also a nice surprise and a reminder about upcoming autumn tastes.

As our Sugar Baby watermelons get ready for picking, I wonder about cocktails I can make with watermelon. Don't people inject melons with liquor and drink from that? Wait, is that something I saw in a moment of weakness on Jersey Shore? Whoops. There must be something more classy out there. A martini, perhaps? Or maybe I can do the injected watermelon thing in the privacy of my own home and nobody needs to know that I got the idea from Snooki.

An update on our Shared Backyards experience is over at Virginia Living Magazine's blog.

Learn how to can your summer haul with Leni. She is also offering classes on bread making and tamales. (Maybe I'll see you at the tamale class?)

My friend Sarah, who is also a rock star vegan, got me into Bento box lunches!

I'm a green mama, according to C-ville Weekly. Sweet.

I want to make this tomato cage lantern for my bedroom balcony.

When I am a little bored at work, I like to plug in dates on Expedia.com for a trip to Ireland. Just to see how much that would cost. Because I have all that money lying around and I love flying so much. But, I mean, Ireland. Right? I have this vision that the moment I land there, I am welcomed with open arms because I look like them. I am one of them. It can't be denied. My hair and fair skin no longer stand out. I easily assimilate into the folds of Ireland - the gardens, the countryside, the tea houses. It should be so.

Coming up in the garden: The garden goes off the ground for fall vegetable crops in the way of balcony and window box gardening. I hope.

Design Elements :: Stone and Brick

As things slowly start to heat up here in the South, I am reminded of shade and the respite one can find from the heat in finding cool rocks and flat stones to walk upon. Maybe with some trickling water, bubbling over more and ever more stones. I have been swooning over photos of spiral rock gardens, too (more on that soon).

I have also found myself taking lots of photos this year of bricks and herbs. I mean, they were meant to be together, yes? My day job involves organizing numbers and data - so something about the grid work and star designs get right to me.

I am going to summon the image of the Egyptians building the pyramids and start collecting rocks from around our land. Building small structures and accent points one at a time. I may consider this my resistance training component of my exercise routine, as well. The rustic-ness of the stones will work with our present landscape - bricks may be a-ways away.

Also ::

Speaking of summer fun and water and rocks - I must get back to Goshen Pass this year with Willa and Corey.

I am a late-comer to The Black Keys party, but am glad I arrived. Attack and Release is where I am starting and I already bought a ticket to their September Charlottesville show.

This is the veranda I want for our house. Corey and I have been talking about a screened-in porch and this is what I envision, complete with a pale blue ceiling. I'm pretty sure this is no-where close to what Corey envisions.

I made rhubarb turnovers this weekend with the rhubarb left over from making syrup. I got the idea here and they are, I mean were, super yummy. Even Willa was all, like, "Gimme!"

February Foiled

A friend once told me to never make any major life decisions during the month of February - when cabin fever makes you (irrationally) think about changing pretty much everything in your life (like hair styles and color, living room arrangements, job situations). Instead, he said to hold tight 'till spring, when things (almost) always look better, brighter and more manageable.

A few distractions to bring us 'round to spring then? Yes!

I spent time during yesterday's lunch hour buying seed starting stuff - for our cold frame experiment - greens and lettuce. I'll just be setting the flats in our south facing windows. I found the perfect spray bottle, too - so Willa can help with the watering.

A Hoya plant. I cleaned out a few very tired, beat-up, defeated houseplants over the past few weeks and have room for a new tenant.

Forced bulbs. The more, the merrier. The sooner, the better.

Innisfree is selling plants this year! My checklist includes borage for our herb garden, Green Envy zinnias, chocolate mint, hollyhocks, elderberry, woodland phlox and tomatoes - Brandywine, Cherokee Purple, German Johnson and Mortgage Lifter. It was difficult not checking off *every* offering.

I'm talking about container veggie gardens, seed bombs and (next week) figs over at Virginia Living Magazine's blog.

Not really related to gardening, but making February a little brighter:

I'm making a ragdoll for Willa's birthday. She pretty much always has some soft little creature in her arms lately. I'm especially excited about all the clothing I can make for the doll and how I can embroider the face.

Have I mentioned The Snowman here, yet? We have been watching it a lot during our snow days - though our copy is VHS and it is starting to give up the ghost. It is all music, no dialogue. It's magic.

I'm getting ready to start my first Edna O'Brien book. I'm actually not sure this will be so uplifting as probably more moody and Irish.

This chicken and biscuits recipe is a nice stout meal for winter days. I've been making it for years now and was happy to see Willa loving it, too, this season. Ina tends to have a heavy hand with the butter and cream - so I cut the butter in half and replace it with olive oil and it totally works.

This baby silhouette tutorial is so quick and easy. After capturing Willa's, I'm thinking of lining up the three hounds for their own personal sessions.

End-of-CSA Soup

I fell behind on my CSA veggie consumption for one week and needed something warm, and filled with vitamins, that could include every veggie that was on the precipice of becoming compost. This recipe is a variation on Jacques Pepin's Instant Vegetable Soup, from a favorite cookbook - Fast Food My Way.

5 cups of water
1 zucchini - shredded
2 leeks - thinly sliced
1 cup carrots - shredded
1/2 cup of celery - thinly sliced
2 cups greens - cut into ribbons (I had tat soi on hand, but you can use spinach or kale)
3 tblsps steel cut oats (you can also use grits)
Salt and pepper to taste

Throw it all into a stock pot and simmer for 10-15 minutes. When ready, serve in bowls with a pat (or two) of butter and lots of Swiss or Gruyere cheese. Don't skip the cheese. I repeat, Don't skip the cheese. Also, a big hunk of cornbread is a nice side bit to this soup. I wish I had a tempting photo for this post, but how it looks just doesn't do the actual taste any justice. Just visualize melty cheese atop a yummy broth. Magic.

I am such a fan of Jacques and I stalk his website. Every time I visit, I scheme about renting his condo in Mexico. 'Cause it is so unrealistic, but dreamy just the same.

Sweet September Salad

(Nasturtiums)

+

(Container-grown lettuce)

=

A September flower petal salad. What a treat!

Taking My Annual Cue From August

Watching the garden, blackberry picking, sitting next to my container petunias with a cup of tea - taking in their heady scent, cutting garden goodies, county fairs, live music enjoyed outside, long walks with Willa, farmers' market visits, sweet corn, tomato sandwiches, Willa's turtle float at Sherando Lake, a pile of books meant for August-summer reading and trying to figure out what to do with the peck of peaches I bought this morning from Henley's Orchard. Ice cream and a cobbler and a Brown Betty? Anyone out there have a favorite recipe?

I am finding this Mint-Berry Iced Tea goes with all of these activities. Including a hardy serving of what-ever peach recipe I decide upon, I imagine.

Make a nice big batch of mint tea.

Make a simple sweet berry syrup from your favorite berries (blackberries and/or raspberries work really well).

Add the syrup to your mint tea to taste! Chill and serve over ice.

This Was Kinda Awesome (And Other CSA-Inspired Meals)

The Onion Tart from Alice Waters (photo above). Sweet Jesus, it was yummy. And rich.

Glazed baby turnips and carrots. Steam the sliced veggies and toss them in a little butter/brown sugar sauce. My mom used to make this and it is like a visit to her kitchen.

Bittman's cucumber salad (#3 on his list of 101 Salads). Normally when I spy the pile of CSA cucumbers, my eyes gloss over in a bored haze. No more! This went really well with last night's lemon-thyme chicken and satay dipping sauce dinner.

Beet and goat cheese salad with fresh Buttercrunch lettuce. I never get sick of goat cheese and beets. Maybe some day, but not this year.

Garlic scapes, onions and fresh oregano in Cuban Black Beans. Then, wilted swiss chard and Cuban Black Bean quesadillas.

Cauliflower disguised in a roux, wrapped in a gratin.

Sauteed Red Russian kale and onions with toasted pine nuts (our new favorite greens recipe).

Carrot and yogurt cole slaw with red cabbage. The Moosewood Cookbook recipe.

Also - it is peach season and we have several orchards near our house. I have been loving super-sweet donut peaches drizzled with blackberry sauce.

Lest this post mislead you, this is a compilation over several weeks. There are plenty of nights where we are doing scrambled eggs on-the-fly or take-out for dinner. Because I am a working mama, not a super mama.

Fun with Calendula :: A Salve and A Scrub

Calendula, calendula. Nature's answer for my fickle, fair skin. The herb garden is offering up a ton of these golden flowers as-of-late. So I am steeping them in olive oil to make the simple calendula salve. One mason jar for me and another for a friend.

I am going to make a little extra calendula oil to add to my homemade facial scrub. This recipe is The Stuff and has saved me the pretty penny that I used to drop on Kiehl's products. It really exfoliates, but the honey and the oil moisturize, too.

Here's the recipe:

Mix the following:

1/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 tblsp. calendula olive oil
1 tblsp. honey

Scrub gently into skin and leave on a few minutes. Rinse.

A Berry Season Must Have :: Sweet Almond Cake

A while back, I posted a quick note on an old-fashioned Sweet Almond Cake recipe that I topped with rhubarb.

I received a flurry of responses and requests for the recipe (it is originally out of The Fannie Farmer Cookbook - my go-to resource for baking lately). I have finally found a copy of it on-line here.

It is meant, I believe, to be drizzled with your favorite July berries or berry sauces. So I'm hoping my delay in getting this out to you-all worked out in the best kind of way!

The CSA and Our Garden :: Week One

Chives from our garden were nice additions to CSA salad greens.

Last week, we picked up our first CSA package. My only worry about joining a CSA was that there would be wasteful behavior involved. I have taken a silent oath these days to use up everything we already have in the house (garden supplies, crafting supplies, pantry stock, etc.) in the constant pursuit of zero-dollar days and I wanted to carry that thrifty behavior through to our CSA. I also wanted to make sure I was pulling goodies from our garden and using them up, as well.

What we received from the CSA:

Salad mix
Red Russian Kale
Spinach
One dozen eggs

How it was put to use (with additions from our plot):

Salad Mix - Lots of dinner salads with toasted sunflower seeds, cranberries, dried blueberries, shredded carrots. One night, we had enough strawberries from our garden to put on top of a salad (Due props to Gradually Greener for the idea). I also took a salad for lunch with leftover salmon. Chopped up chives from our herb garden were also a nice addition to the salads.

Red Russian Kale - This was used immediately. My new favorite type of kale. I made the Hot and Sour Greens mentioned here.

Spinach and seven eggs became a spinach fritatta. Recipe out of the Sundays at Moosewood Cookbook.

Three more eggs were used in a Sweet Almond Cake from The Fannie Farmer Cookbook. I topped it with stewed rhubarb (from our garden). It is the closest thing to homemade marzipan that I have yet to experience.

This is both a good and a bad thing. I found I had to say out loud, "Step away from the Sweet Almond Cake" more than once this past weekend. Half the time I did, the other half, not so much.

Now if I could just summon that attitude with our insane bounty of salad greens.

The Pinks and Reds of Memorial Day

Our Memorial Day celebrations were caught in bits and pieces.
In between naps and fret-filled calls to the pediatrician, house and garden projects and tired parents trying to catch a break here and there.

Living in Sugar Hollow doesn't leave us with much of an urge for going. Staying put more often than not is what makes us happiest.

From the top:
Rhubarb soda. Recipe here. And if you are lucky enough to have liquor in the house, you can make the Rhubarb Cosmopolitan.

Strawberries from Chiles Orchard in Crozet. They make and sell strawberry donuts, too. Just sayin'.

Peonies from a neighbor's garden.

And Sweet William from our cutting flower patch. Patch is a stretch. But garden would be even more of a stretch.

In Another Galaxy, These Would Be Considered Breakfast

With strawberry and rhubarb season already here and peach-blackberry-blueberry-raspberry season on the horizon, I bring you Rustic Fruit Desserts : Crumbles, Buckles, Cobblers, Pandowdies and More by-way-of angrychicken.

I have no idea what a buckle or a pandowdy is, but I have a good feeling that I will wonder how I ever lived before without them. And I'll be spending more time hiking our foothills to negate this new-found love affair.

For a little balance to the butter-flour-sugar trinity, here's an awesome recipe for your spring greens. I swear, even the biggest scoffers will become converts.

And once they have finished their greens, they can be rewarded with a honkin' buckle. Or pandowdy. Or what-ever.

Happy Long Weekend! May it be filled with some gardening, fortified by some baking, followed by some napping.

Recipe :: Wild Persimmon Bread!

Willa and I went out early Saturday morning to pick some of the last of the wild persimmons around our land. I wanted to bake two loaves of bread - one for us and one for the lovely women who care for Willa during my work days.

My friend Trisha sent me an awesome recipe and I found an online version of it here.

I skipped the nuts and added a dash of nutmeg and cinnamon. Annnnnnd, I made a cream cheese icing - because it seemed to call for it. And because there isn't enough fat involved in this concoction already. 'Tis the season!