Art in the Park

This morning was pleasantly cool. Buddy and I took our usual park walk. The art installation is still running. Erin Wade used invasive plants to create site-specific sculptures in Lower Bidwell Park.

This is the first one we came upon.

The canes seem to be biting or attacking the tree.

This one looked a little like a prickly fish with spines down its back.

This wasn't part of the installation, but the shape of the branches seemed to echo Erin's work.

This little stick-henge seemed to be enclosing a shaft of sunlight.

This ball appeared to have been moved. We chatted with a couple of other art lovers about it, and I postulated that the work was moved due to the kinetic nature of interactive art. So for this shot, I had to interact a bit and insert myself in the image.

For more on this installation and the artist: http://www.friendsofbidwellpark.org/erin_wade.html.

Playing With Blocks

After the jam making on Friday, we went to the farm. We had flavor bombs...

And more zucchini relish and cream cheese with fig jam and plum jam.

And more flavor bombs. Melinda's friend Treo said they looked like sushi for vegetarians.

Saturday was hot and humid (44% humidity and 90+ degrees!). But we played croquet anyway.

At least we had plenty of shade. Buddy, Rick, and Bill did their best but...

And yeah, it's way past time to repaint my ball.

But Sunday was block day. Delina brought her trusty truck Waza, and we got a (partial) ton of blocks.

Rick cleverly opened up the fence, and we had a "bucket brigade" to hand them through. Rick C. was in the truck handing to Delina who handed to me who handed to Melinda. We got all 32 blocks stacked.

And the guys got to work. Bill loads up some mortar to start fitting them together.

And the first race goes down.

Fortunately we had plenty of supervision.

Rick and Bill put down fully two races and started on the third. Now we can do a bit at a time and finish up. We just needed to get a good push to get started.

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What We're Cooking

After being in the heat all morning, we went home to "relax." I finished making the zucchini relish, noting what I did this time. I hope it tastes as good as the first one! Then I roasted all the serranos and jalapenos, peeled and seeded the tomatoes and made sauce. Then, I sliced up a dehydrator's worth of tomatoes. Even though I'd been cooking for hours, I still needed dinner, so I made half of the tomato sauce into a nice meaty spaghetti sauce with homegrown onion, garlic, oregano, and basil, and served it over pasta. 

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More Food Processing

Food, food everywhere! I'm trying hard to keep up. Yesterday morning I made pesto. I was only able to process two of the three plants in my backyard, and I haven't even started on the ones in the farm.

Then in the afternoon, Delina came over and we made fig jam. She has white figs, which are beautiful. They look sort of like watermelon. Notice the big jar of sugar in the back. Jam making takes lots of sugar, even for the low-sugar recipes.

Here are the figs simmering in the pot. 

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What We're Eating

Last night for Rock Band practice, we had spiced cream cheese with the fig jam and my zucchini relish. Well not all together, but cream cheese and zucchini relish is wonderful together on a cracker. So is fig jam and cream cheese. I think Keith was the only one brave enough to try all three together.

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So today I tried to get caught up on tomatoes. I picked from the backyard and have more than I can fit in the dehydrator. And I still need to pick at the farm. 

Summer Bounty

We continue to harvest daily. We got the first peach last Friday.

We also drank this Red Robin Ale. I'm sure we had things to say about it, but I didn't blog soon enough and now I've forgotten. We had it pretty late in the day...

I had finished curing the onions, and cut off their tops, so I needed a storage solution. Rick had a great idea of using milk crates with slats to keep the onions separated.

You can stack quite a few in there, and still have plenty of airspace, not to mention handy carrying handles.

So we packed them all up and put them in the basement where it stays cool.

Life is just a bowl of cherries... I took these to Tom and Nancy's party Saturday night.

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What We're Eating
Besides tomatoes??? Well, I have perfected the BLTA: Cosmonaut Volkov tomato, peppered bacon from the Meat Locker, organic hearts of romaine, organic avocado, and plenty of mayo. The zucchini relish I made last week has been well-received, with people asking me to give them some! Mwahahaha.... But for the party, we ate quesalera. I made them with sharp provolone or havarti or bleu, and smoked brautwurst from the Meat Locker, my homegrown sundried tomatoes, and fresh basil from the garden, and zucchini relish (in all different configurations). People just lapped them up! I used both my dish and Nancy's, and just made them over and over till folks finally slowed down on eating them. Laura shows proper accessorizing for a quesalera party.

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Of course there was lots of great music. Marya sang with her great uncle.

And with the rest of the band. Tom Blodgett also showed up and played.

Sunday, it was back to work. I had these huge cabbage plants to set in. These are the ones I planted on 6-20, so they were 4 weeks old.

I got them arranged in rows of three across. The first 9 are Tenderheart, and the front 3 are Soloist.

Rick helped me by laying down a nice layer of compost, then we got the irrigation going. We also put shadecloth on the west side of the row to shade it from the hot afternoon sun.

That night the moon was almost full, and peeking through the hawk tree.

Monday I got some more seeds started. I did a flat of broccoli, with three rows each of organic Fiesta, organic Thompson, and Hallmark hybrid, with the last row in Veronica romanesco.

Monday I transplanted the biggest broccolis as well. These were also planted on 6-20, and I could have let them go another week or two because these were all in cups. That filled up 6A. From back to front there are 9 Packman, 8 Belstar, and 5 Decicco. I think I planted them even farther apart than necessary, but it should give them lots of room to get big.

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Weather Note
Monday was overcast, and Tuesday was downright cloudy, with chance of thunderstorms. It still got pretty hot but I took advantage of the overcast to transplant. The clouds gave us a pretty sunset on Tuesday afternoon.

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Meanwhile, back at the ranch... yikes! My kitchen is full again! So yesterday got to work. First I roasted up those serranos, added lemon cubes from last year's lemon harvest, homegrown onions, and a dash of cumin and salt. Delish! I froze that up in ice cube trays. Then I made the tomatoes into sauce. I had another set that I'd gotten as far as roasting, so I added those in also. As before, I boiled down the juice for a long time until it was really concentrated before adding the tomatoes back in. The resultant sauce was perfect for pasta sauce, but a little thin still for pizza sauce, so I tried a new technique. I put some in my big glass lasagna pan, and put it in the oven on convection setting at 200 degrees. Then we went to the farm. When we came back, it was perfect! Super thick and super tomatoey. So I froze up the thinner sauce in tubs, and the thick stuff in muffin tins. Now I just have to clean out my freezer to make room for it all!

I also bagged up the next round of sundrieds. Yes sir, yes sir, three bags full! (That's the total so far, not one run.)

Yesterday afternoon I went to visit Pearl again, and noticed these wonderful gourd baskets. The top part is done with pine needles.

Here's another.

And sadly, this isn't the best shot, but the baskets were magnificent.

Last night was Buddy's birthday, but we'd decided that Tom and Nancy's party counted as his BD party too, so the day was low key. Cindy came over and brought him cupcakes, which was sweet. We also drank this beer, which was very surprising. You would think from the label that this would be a big hoppy IPA. But it wasn't at all. It tasted of chocolate and mint. It was delicious and unusual, but I'd never have called it an IPA. I'm sure it had a fair amount of hops, but the malt predominated.

And... I just love these ornamental gourds. Such fun!

Food Processing

We harvested more tomatoes on Tues. This giant was probably three grown together, but it's impressive anyway. It's a Volkov.

This was the haul. I've already got this all processed, except for a few Volkovs kept out for eating fresh. I dried the cherries and roasted the Better Boys and Tangies.

We've continued our beer-a-day quest. Tuesday's offering was Midnight Expression Lager from Port Brewing Company. It was a black lager, very roasty and chocolatey tasting. The brewing company is in San Diego.

They had a bit of blat about surfing on the side.

Also on Tuesday, Tom and Nancy's niece, Marya, sang at open mic at Cafe Flo. She was great! We got there just in time. We caught the tail end of the second song, and all of the third one. While we enjoyed the music, I enjoyed this awesome IPA. Mark says it's hard to get, but it was fantastic. Probably the best IPA I've ever had.

Cool car!

On our Wednesday walk, we saw Mr. Turtle again. He was splay-legged over his log, looking quite warm and comfy.

Nancy walked with us again on Wed. and she caught this image of the damselfly perched on my head.

That afternoon I put up 5 quarts of zucchini relish. Well, 4 and a half. I processed up 4 and kept the half in the fridge. It turned out pretty good, after I kicked the sugar way down and the spices way up. I just kept tasting the brine until it was spicy enough. It has our zucchs, onions, and padron peppers in it, plus store-bought bell pepper and carrots. It also has mustard, dill, and fenugreek seeds, tumeric, curry powder, and soy.

I finally got some more seeds planted yesterday. Rows D1-4 are Apollo broccoli , D5-8 are Summer Purple broccoli, and D9-10 are Tenderheart Chinese cabbage.

Thursday's beer was this IPA, Freestone Union Jack. We thought it was too malty and not hoppy enough for a proper IPA. Although, I might just have been spoiled after that Tower 10. It was also 7.5% so we sipped it sparingly. Notice the white scallops in the background. I picked 4 nice ones yesterday.