Life is in the Details

Starting another starter

You don't even want to know how gross my neglected sourdough starter had become sitting in the back of my refrigerator for too many months. The start date on it was 2-10-11 and i remember baking a bunch of loaves with it but what's missing the "neglected since..." date. I'll spare you the details and any photos. But there was mold. Ewww! Ick!

Suffice to say, I'm starting a new starter this morning using the Tartine method. If all goes well, in two weeks I'll have a good sourdough culture from which I'll bake.

The bowl on the right is the rosemary no-knead dough that I'll bake off this morning in a cast-iron pot for a nice, crusty loaf to serve alongside my famous black bean soup tonight. Although I'm sad that baseball practice will likely be cancelled tonight due to the rain, I'm delighted that the four of us will be gathered around the dinner table together instead of what normally happens when baseball and dance fall on the same night (2 of us eat early and go off to the game; 2 of us eat late after dance, a tag-team sort of affair that I'm content to break with tonight). I'm ready for our summer schedule already!

Another advantage to the rain: the seeds & seedlings (sunburst and Peter Pan pattypan squash, Zephyr and other summer squashes, cucumbers, hearts of gold cantaloupe, lavender, jalapeños) that we planted over the weekend need to be watered as well. Let it rain, let it rain, let it rain!

Happy Monday!

Look at how my babies have grown

I planted seeds in this garden flat the exact morning just an hour or two before I herniated a disc in my back. These seedlings are the fruits (and vegetables and flowers) of my labor.

These have grown very well so far and now it's time to transition them to larger containers (okay, a little past due) filled with nutrient rich soil and in a few weeks they will be planted out in the garden.

Happy Friday everyone! Wishing you a fun-filled weekend!

Heirloom tomatoes... I miss you already. I will be thinking of you often until we meet again next summer!

Random bits of life (in garden and at table)

I've had some photos that I wanted to post so here are a few that I had been hanging onto. They are random and not at all connected, except that they are a part of documenting the everyday stuff of life.

I slow-roasted a bunch of San Marzano tomatoes from the garden with olive oil, thyme, salt, and pepper and after they cooled I froze them so that I have to add to pizzas, soups, and bruschetta when the cold weather comes.

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Our rose bush was a constant source of awe.

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Triple chocolate chunk cookies were a fun dessert and one that we ended up having on Rosh Hashanah too. Once we had to cancell our plans of hosting friends over at our place for dinner because I was sick, I knew I was abandoning plans of making an apple or honey cake (as is traditional for this holiday) because my family would much prefer chocolate cookies (or brownies)! LOL! I happened to have some frozen triple chocolate chunk cookie dough in the freezer for a time just like this when I had no time and only felt like laying in bed! 

 

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A delicious use of some leftovers. Tacos are my favorite for that. Here is Tlayuda (black bean paste made with black beans, onions, garlic, cumin), guacamole, grilled corn, and sauteed green beans (the latter two from a previous summer dinner). 

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Daily bread. Still trying to come up with a healthy recipe that isn't challah but so far no luck. The family much prefers the ~75% whole wheat challah that I make. But you know me... I'll keep trying!!

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One of the true wonders of my summer is that for the first time I grew beans. Not green fillet, purple string, or yellow wax beans but bean beans. The kind that you buy in the store as dried beans. Those little European Soldier beans to the left of the cookbook are my bean babies!! I haven't cooked them up yet as I just want to look at them a bit longer. 

I haven't cooked from this cookbook much but it's a delightful read with lovely notes on gardening as well as ideas on using the garden harvest and a good amount of photos.

August Break: 8-15

This bounty awaited me in the garden when we arrived home from vacation.

(Not pictured are lots of tomatoes that were way past their prime.)

Today: food shopping and lunch at Indian buffet (because it's Monday, of course!!), and I've already schedule physicals for the kids and myself and also the 90,000 mile (!!!) maintenance for my car.

 

Garlic Harvest

From the garden:

After rubbing off the dirt. Ready to go:

These photos are a part of August Break. Read more and feel free to join in.

Small Garden Harvest

This photo is a part of August Break. Read more and feel free to join in.

Our weekend in the PA mountains

These photos are from the weekend trip we made to visit Mike's parents the first weekend in July. The views were breathtaking.

The paddle boating on the lake was fun as was catching up with my in-laws and watching the kids play in the sand and water. Jessi even got to go horseback riding (M, R, and I are very allergic and so spent time at the pool instead).

The theme of the trip was "going around in circles" and getting "lost" and Mike's iPod reminded us of it one day after dinner with the songs it chose to play (right after we got lost again because we thought we saw a truck that looked just like Mater from Cars Movie which made all of us crack up and miss yet another turn).

Deer were all about grazing for food starting at about 4 or 5 in the evening. 

It's hard to see but that's a wild turkey (and there's one in the background too)!

Thanks Grammy and Grampy for inviting us up for a visit.

A found treasure (this small house with delightful front-yard garden) right before breakfast on our last day there.

The best breakfast ever!!! Five out of six of us chose the brunch special: Strawberry French toast with ricotta and amaretto sauce. Un.bel.iev.able! Truly! And the bite I had of my mother-in-law's onion and mushroom omelet was the best omelet I've ever tasted. WOW! This place makes food of love. I highly recommend going there if you're ever in or near Hazelton, PA.

TODAY: Ryan has tennis camp for 3 hours this morning so I'm going to use the time he is there to get moving! I already have a plan for what I'm going to do. I'm also hoping to have some time to try cooking up something new for lunch. We'll see how it goes!

My little munchkin has been on a gingersnap granola binge and we're almost all out so I'm sure that I'll need to run to the store to restock at some point today or tomorrow even though we were just there on Friday. Bah.

Photos from life: In the garden

Yellow, green, and purple string beans.... love these!!

Echinacea/Purple Coneflower and Daylillies

Swiss chard and spinach.

Tomatoes, overgrown arugula, kale, spinach, chard, green beans, cilantro, and basil... all happy together.

Hello bell pepper.

How We Spend Our Days

We've been spending our mornings making paper airplanes. I'm becoming quite proficient at this. Today I made the best one yet. It had 6 pages of instructions but it glided like a dream. Ryan is off decorating it right now.

I've had the pleasure of going to lunch with two of my girlfriends this week on different days (both at my favorite Indian restaurant).

We've been spending our afternoons munching on peas from the garden (playing guess-how-many-are-in-this-pod) and at swim practice. I've even managed to swim a little during Ryan's swim practice (and before the lifeguards turn the last lap lane into a lane for the year-round swim team effectively bumping me from the water. Boo!) 

 

It had been a while since I checked on the seedlings that are still out on the deck but I was pleasantly surprised to see that the purslane is thriving. I didn't even know what purslane was but I saw it here and there in recipes that I had read (in books like Local Flavors and others of its ilk) so I thought I'd try to grow some in the garden. I am also growing salad burnet for the same reason. I haven't tried either of them yet but I hope to in the near future. The purslane is the tall one below. To the left is some Mrs. Burns lemon basil, and the teeny ones on the far left are Red Rubin basil which are more purple-y than red.

We will not be eating any tatsoi because someone else likes it too much... not sure what animal is eating it. All I have noticed is chewed off tops!

Today I'm going to make some toasted nori but I'm going to use olive oil instead of sesame so that Ryan can try it to see if he likes it.

I also have an eye doctor appointment to check my prescription (and likely to see if progressive lenses make sense at this point. I find myself holding things far away so that I can read them or taking my glasses off entirely to see things close up.) I also need more contact lenses if I'm going to try to swim this summer while the kids have their swim practice (and learn how to correctly do a flip turn).

One of the decluttering items of the week: my old eBook Reader (there were also a few summer bridge workbooks from last year, used spiral notebooks from when J was in 3rd grade, Hannah Montana pencils and erasers since those are frowned upon here now, and I made a new drawer for the kids' dry erase stuff since they weren't putting it away since they didn't know where to put it. We had an extra drawer so it made perfect sense.)

This weekend bring the elementary school end-of-year party, swimming time trials for the kids (where I am volunteering as a timer), the last t-ball game and the end-of-season party at Fuddrucker's, no babysitter (again), and then Sunday is an open day and we are hoping to chill out at home all morning and then head to the pool in the afternoon if the weather cooperates.