Started with Sweetpea Baking Company (check the sidebar for weekly brunch updates)
and ended with an evening of babysitting a really sweet boy, after which I did some test knitting for Krafti-Kit an exciting new company two friends of mine have started, opening it's e-commerce doors on October 15th!
The most important thing I did this summer outside the house was to create vegetable gardens. I made two beds in the backyard and one in the side yard. The fact that this area used to be riverbeds makes prepping very difficult. There were many many stones to remove, and the earth is mostly sand, requiring a lot of compost. Also, these weeds in the "before" photo had bulb-based roots, and I had to sift through the topsoil to remove all of them as they had dried by the time I removed the plants.
Our plan is to add raised beds with cedar boxes in the back and also along another part of the side yard that gets a lot of morning sun. It's too late for this year but we'll have them in place by next year to start planting in March or April, rather than July!
Here is the garden area before before: grass, weeds, and lillies.
And here it is now: heirloom tomatoes, red peppers, kale, lemon cucumber, and chard, with lettuce, collards, and marigolds just coming up.
This is a small area next to a large oak tree in our side yard, that had been populated by weeds and bluebells.
Here it has been transformed into the second bed: a variety of herbs surrounded by Red Romaine lettuce and Shiraz Beets. These were initially planted in the back yard but were doing very poorly. They are much happier in the sun here, with lots of compost and worm castings.
Yesterday, my friend Kim and I went to Sauvie Island for the day.
First we went to Sauvie Island Farms and picked cabbages
and peaches.
and raspberries and marionberries. (Kim has the photo of the whole spread.)
Then we went to the beach along the river and relaxed and had a picnic, watching the ships and barges go by.
What a great day! This morning I had cereal and almond milk with a fresh peach sliced on top.
It's pouring here today at Chez VK, so I am working on finishing up the first part of a certain mystery present and starting the second part. While you wait for update photos, here are some pictures from our yard, which is very large.
Our house is currently on the market, and I will be sad to leave the yard when we sell it and move. We have a third of an acre and I don't know that we will ever have such a large yard again. We have a succulent garden, three veggie plots, two walnut trees, three apple trees, three plum trees, a hundreds-year old oak, and lots of areas with native plants. Plus the blackberry that's been mentioned before.
Just thought I'd share a few photos from the lagoon and beach where I live. The top photo is the lagoon in the morning when there is mist rising up from the bottom since the tide is out, and there are some Double-Crested Cormorants fishing in one of the channels. The bottom two are the beach. It's gorgeous!
We started this Halloween morning with another wonderful batch of pumpkin muffins that I made last night and stored away for the morning.
Before I went to work, I read "Play with your Pumpkins", another wonderful and amusing book by Joost Elffers and Saxton Freymann, the writers of "Play with your Food". This book not only shows wonderful pumpkin creatures made by playing on the pumpkins' natural features and using some simple food additives like bean eyes, it also contains a world of scientific, folkloric, and recipic information! On that note, here are some facts about the pumpkin:
The pumpkin family is known as Cucurbitaceae, which includes a host of gourds and other similar fruits like the cucumber and the squash. The pumpkin is from the New World, which means that it is indiginous to the Americas and any pumpkin recipes that are now included in national dishes from anywhere in the Old World were created after the Americas were explored. Although the word pumpkin was used to describe dishes eaten long before this time, it actually referred to another gourd that is different.
Pumpkins are easy to grow yourself but they do best if you start them up under a glass bowl or jar and then transplant them when hardy. They aren't bothered by weeds and love compost.
Pumpkins are now eaten all over the world, prepared in a wide variety of methods. Some prefer them savory, and some prefer them sweet. Here in the US, most people are just familiar with the pumpkin in the form of desserts and have never tried it in what I consider to be it's best form, savory. For a great savory pumpkin recipe, please visit Albion Cooks for a wonderful autumn soup.
My favorite pumpkin dishes have been Indian curried pumpkin soup, Afghani stewed pumpkin with eggplant and rice, and Thai pumpkin curry.
