A Rainy Sunday

The garden is still yielding food for body and soul. The swiss chard and pak choy went into a cheese tortellini soup. Some time back, Spike and Nora gave us a bag of dried portabello mushrooms. They were a real gourmet addition to the soup. The fragrance of the nasturtiums is as welcome as their vivid, exuberant colors.

La Leche League

This old connection has taken on a new meaning for Madelyn. She has found a very local source for milk. Sustainability has many "faces."

Neptune Smiles On Us

The King of the Sea once again blessed us with the second meal from the black rock fish of last week. Els referred to her Julia Child manual, and made this luscious chowder. The rich yellow color came from curry powder. I was able to go cut fresh parsley out the back door. Is there anything as wonderful as fresh herbs to spike good food? I had chives for the coleslaw and basil still for the tomatoes and cukes.

Imagine, corn from Kerby and it is almost October! The garden is still burgeoning with tomatoes. There are still some lemon cukes, but my favorite variety is done now. The cabbage is a welcome change from the lettuce we have been feasting on. Here is a simple slaw recipe from the net.

Sweet and Sour Coleslaw

Half head of red or green cabbage---about 1 and 1/2 #

1 large carrot, peeled and grated

1/2 c sugar

2 teaspoons kosher salt

1/4 teaspoon celery seed

3 tablespoons vegetable oil

2 tablespoons rice wine vinegar

ground black pepper

It almost seemed a shame to harvest this beautiful savoy cabbage. The next crop of red cabbage and late flat Dutch is now in the ground. As the autumnal equinox is now behind us, I have to realize the days of cold and dark need to come now.

Read the Label.....

Our Locavore quest was certainly in question on this day! Just 99 cents for a mix of peppercorns(including PINK ones) in a grinder...real fresh pepper! Imagine our surprise when Robert read the label on the roasted garlic and sea salt grinder.............packed in France. FRANCE????? Oh my......... Instead of going to the garden for Roma tomatoes and garlic, I had opened a jar of store salsa to add to our roasted pepper and Hugo fresh egg and our own red potato frittata special Sunday breakfast. The salsa jar label told us it came from Rochester New York. hhhmmm.....

Well, as we eat what we can grow and find within 100 miles, we have fewer and fewer labels to read. Robert is doing his part to keep us eating ethically.

Dinner........

This Black Fish was approximately only four hours from swimming in the ocean, when it reached our table. AND....we had no license, no boat, and did not need to get sea sick! Els is our designated "fisherwoman." She did not hesitate to reach right in and haul our our "catch."

Going over the Coast Range, and to the ocean, is like leaving one planet and arriving on another. The geology and geography certainly produce a very different flora and fauna from the Siskiyous where we live.

Seems like I remember reading years ago, that the art and mythology of the coast tribes was highly developed because the land and waters provided bountiful resources to feed, clothe, and house, the people.

With the fish we reaped, and blackberries we picked we are right on track. I was too late I guess for salmon berries. Els had chantrelle mushrooms from Florence on Thursday. Shirley says she picked a gallon of ripe huckleberries near South Slough this week.

Stopping at the fish cleaning station at the port just to see what sorts of fish live in these waters, ended up getting us a lovely dinner. I mentioned that I would sure like to have the scraps going into the throw away bucket for my garden. The fisherman was glad to see us take them. We gave him a bunch of fresh tomatoes.

We were able to get a very plentiful meal from more careful trimming and still have lots to cook down for fish stock. Els has a way of poaching the "catch" of the day in wine................ooooohhh so good. I had brought over rice and salad makin's. We had Asian pears and Satsuma plums for desert. Except for the rice......we were righteous locavores! Nothing traveled more than 100 miles to our table.

The Sunbeam Man......

Oh why did I not snap a picture of him?? An auto parts city boy who now has Murphy acreage and lots of trees, is magnanimous of spirit. He drags 4 inch irrigation pipe around the fields for Applegate River water, has a well for house use, and a year round spring up on the hill. His 1862 water rights guarantee that as long as there is water to be had.........his fields and orchards will be green. The "Free Apples and Pears" sign on the road offers all the bounty he and the deer, and wild turkeys, cannot consume-- to anyone passing by. Thank you Bill.

We were able to pass plums and tomatoes to his outstretched hands. He was seen to be heading for the house, grinning and talking bacon, bacon, bacon.

When he is not "farming," he is busy working on making two pristine Sunbeam cars out of the five that he has now.

Tomato Day

A bonanza in the "Love Apple" patch, has me searching the net for recipes beyond salsa.....512 varieties on one site alone. The nick name came from the French....."pomme d'amour." Tomatoes are really botanically speaking....a fruit. There are over 10,000 kinds of tomatoes. Tomatoes are more popular than apples or bannanas!

Fecundity Festival

People far and wide love our Satsuma plum tree. It's bounty has gone to friends, neighbors, thrift stores, laundramats, nursing homes, fiddle camps, coffee stands, families with lots of children, people met picking blackberries, etc. etc. Sometimes, as many as five bags...weighing as much as 20 pounds each, left our little half acre on a daily basis for the last couple of weeks. What joy to have such abundance to share!

The old raft oars are no longer needed to prop up the laden limbs of our tree. We have spent many a pleasant hour looking out at the rich world of our flower garden from this leafy bower. The tree surgeon was called some years back when it actually split in half with the heavy load it carried. He put a huge bolt through it's trunk, and cabled the upper limbs together. Many thousands of pounds of fruit later, we still reap it's yearly offerings.

We take our meals here regularly. Today was no exception to that ritual.

Think I almost prefer plain zuke bread..........but for a special treat....the chocolate was a nice change.

There are four varieties of lettuce in this patch. Last winter, we had lush salad til frost, and then the plants started to grow again as soon as the days began to lengthen and warm in spring. New seeds go in every fall. In our climate, we are lucky to be able to grow and have fresh food mostly year round, with study and good planning.

The winter garden seeds are up and ready for permanent homes. Marilyn and Dennis came out to get some for themselves and some to share with Diana.

Kale is a nutritional giant we need to use much more in our diets. Thanks to Mary, we were able to dress appropriately for this celebration.

Harvest Commences

Thousands of pounds of fruit return to the earth every year without being cycled through the animal kingdom. It appears our mission is to re-route some of that bounty. Our town opened an 80 acre pear orchard for gleaning this year for the first time. When the farmers found it no longer financially productive to grow pears, they sold this prime river bottom loam.

The land had at one time grown hops. Gladiola bulbs were also grown on this soil.The town has it on the docket for a park in some future year????? An 80 acre park would be quite an expensive project. Let us hope that our town does not sell this beautiful land for yet another housing tract.

The two varieties of pears to be picked are Comice and Bosc. Both require a period of cold storage of at least 4 weeks to ripen properly. So, we make room in our refrigerators, and look for an old used frig to hold enough to last the winter. The fruit has not been sprayed, as the orchard has been "abandoned" for all purposes. It also has not traveled the average 1,500 miles, nor changed hands at least 6 times as has most of the food that comes to American tables.

As we try to assume "Locavore" status, we pick for ourselves, families, friends, and the hungry stranger we all know.