My Director of Pest Management is not Happy

The director of Pest Management is mad.  She wants to have a "sit down".  She wants to know why she has to wear a black uniform when it’s 99˚ and extremely humid.  She’d like something in white, hell, she’d settle for gray.  After all, the Garden Supervisor gets to wear stripes.  

Daring Bakers Challenge: Dobos Torte

I joined an online baking group called the Daring Bakers.  Each month one of the members of the group chooses a challenging recipe and everyone bakes it and then posts their finished product on their blog.

The August 2009 Daring Bakers' Challenge was hosted by Angela of A Spoonful of Sugar and Lorraine of Not Quite Nigella.  They chose the spectacular Dobos Torte based on a recipe from Rick Rodgers' cookbook Kaffeehaus: Exquisite Desserts from the Classic Caffes of Vienna, Budapest, and Prague.

Growing My Own Onion Seed

This spring I has some green onions that wintered over and grew impressively large.  You don’t really get a very good perspective from this picture but the stems on these onions were about 4 feet tall.  They developed beautiful flowering heads.  I was very impressed with their showy desire to reproduce themselves, so I let a few of them stay to watch what would happen.  The flower buds began to open and then the bees showed up.

Mocha Tart

Mr Recession Kitchen doesn’t really like cake.  When asked what dessert he wanted for his birthday, he said “I don’t know, but not cake”.  Knowing that two of his most favorite foods are chocolate and coffee, I made him a mocha tart.

Roasted Vegetables on Creamy Polenta

Roasting veggies brings out the best in them.  They get crispy around the edges like you fried them but there’s almost no oil involved.  You can use almost any type of summer squash, eggplant, peppers, tomatoes and onions.  It’s like a roasted ratatouille.   Here’s a picture of the veggies I used.  Eggplant and peppers would have been good but I’m allergic to them.

Dumpster Diving for Plants

Dumpster diving is the practice of going through commercial dumpsters to find items that have been thrown away, but more often than not, are still useful.  It can also be called urban foraging, curb shopping, alley surfing, or just recycling.  Due to the economic times, this practice is becoming a nationwide phenomenon.  

My First Tomato of the Season

Finally, a ripe tomato!  It’s been a long wait.  This has been a bad tomato year for me.  First, none of my Roma or Early Girl starts survived.  Then my cherry tomato plant got some sort of bugs and almost died.  I cured that with a soapy water and garlic spray, but it’s taken awhile for the plant to recover.  it still has only a handful of green tomatoes.

Then, there was also the hornworm incident.  The nasty creature that ate my only semi ripe tomato.

Raw Broccoli Salad

I have to admit that I was never a big fan of raw broccoli.  Whenever raw veggies are offered at a party, I would always avoid the broccoli, and eat the carrots, celery or cucumbers.  It has a raw taste I just didn’t like. 

Broccoli is such a power house vegetable.  Rich in vitamins A and C.  It also contains a significant amount of calcium, fiber and other nutrients with anti-cancer properties.  This is a vegetable that one shouldn’t ignore.

Blackberry Crisp Pie

My blackberries are ripening at a rapid rate.  I picked a quart of them today, and there’s more out there that need to be picked.  I’m eating them for breakfast on my oats, for lunch on my salad and I’m freezing a cookie sheet of blackberries a day.  I figured I might as well go for 3 out of 3 so I asked Mr Recession Kitchen what sort of blackberry dessert he would like, but I knew the answer already, blackberry crisp.  Fruit crisps are his “go to” dessert, that’s assuming chocolate is not an option.  I was leaning towards a pie, so to compromise, I made a crisp pie.   

August Full Moon

The August full moon is in Aquarius.  It’s a time for global change, a time for involvement in something larger than yourself.  Get involved, have an impact.  Even if it’s as simple as remembering to bring a shopping bag with you when you go to the store or buying locally made goods. 

This full moon is one of abundance, agriculture, and marriage.  It’s time to harvest and preserve food and herbs for the winter, time to can and pickle. 

Smoky Pinto Beans with Peach Salsa

I usually cook beans in a pressure cooker and I think it’s a good method to use for unseasoned beans.  It’s fast and it saves a lot of energy.  However, when you want to make a full flavored bean dish, slow cooking is the way to go.  It gives the ingredients time to mingle and blend together.

I cooked these beans for 3 hours in a large enameled cast iron pot, cast iron pots, enameled or not, do an excellent job of distributing the heat slowly and evenly.  They’re the perfect choice for a slow cooked meal.