Saturday, August 28, 2010

Shared Garden


Our neighbors/friends up the street have a long sloping hill behind their house.  Early this spring it was covered in California poppies.  Quite a beautiful site.  They haven’t done much with it in past years so I convinced them that we should plant some veggies up there.  The things that need lots of sun and space to grow, like corn, melons, squashes and pumpkins.  

Friday, August 27, 2010

Daring Bakers' Challenge: Ice Cream Petit Fours


The August 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Elissa of 17 and Baking.  For the first time, The Daring Bakers partnered with Sugar High Fridays for a co-event and Elissa was the gracious hostess of both.  Using the theme of beurre noisette, or browned butter, Elissa chose to challenge the Daring Bakers to make a pound cake to be used in either a Baked Alaska or in Ice Cream Petit Fours. The sources for Elissa’s challenge were Gourmet magazine and David Lebovitz’s “The Perfect Scoop”.

Friday, August 20, 2010

Tamale Pie


It’s a family tradition at our house that you get to choose whatever you want for your birthday dinner.  Mr. RK had a birthday a few days ago and he chose Tamale Pie.  He always chooses tamale pie, so that was no surprise.  He’s loved this dish since the first time I made it many years ago.  It really is delicious so I’m not sure why I don’t make it more often.  I make it a cast iron frying pan, less clean up that way.

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Braised Green Beans with Onion, Garlic & Basil


We have a bumper crop of green beans this year.  Aside from the usual bush beans that I grow, I also planted these beauties.  (Read more about them in The Garden section of my blog)  They’re very prolific and I grew board with just eating them steamed.  Braising is my new favorite way to cook beans.  It’s simple and quick, and produces a very tasty side dish.  Some days, I turn this into a main dish by adding cut up soy sausage and a little crumbled feta.

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Rattlesnake Beans


A neighbor gave me some beans in the spring and told me to plant them.  He said that they came from his father.  That’s all that he said, so I planted them and they grew, so much so that we had to put bamboo extensions on the wire cages so they would have something to grow on, and still they grew.  Then, they started to produce flowers, dark purple flowers, that turned into long, broad, purple mottled green beans.   Beautiful beans that I couldn’t identify, so I turned to the internet to tell me what I was growing.  Turns out, they’re rattlesnake beans.

Saturday, August 7, 2010

Peach Breakfast Tarts


We planted a peach tree two years ago and this year we probably picked 30 peaches.  It’s still a relatively small tree so I was surprised by the number of peaches we got this year.  We did pick off the smaller ones in the spring (like they tell you to) to encourage the others to grow bigger.  We’ve been eating peaches morning, noon and night.  We can’t get enough of these sweet, juicy, tree ripened beauties.