Patri of the blog, Asi Son Los Cosas, was our September 2012 Daring Bakers' hostess and she decided to tempt us with one of her family's favorite recipes for Empanadas! We were given two dough recipes to choose from and encouraged to fill our Empanadas as creatively as we wished!
We went on a late summer vacation to a warm climate with palm lined beaches to take some much needed time off. Right before we left, I harvested the last of the Burbank tomatoes and most of the heirlooms. I did cook a big pot of pasta sauce, which I canned, but I ran out of time so I went the quick and easy route which was to dice and freeze the remaining tomatoes.
This is our adorable new neighbor Koa. He moved in next door about a month ago and already he's grown several inches.
Today is Mr. RK's birthday. Our family tradition is that you get the dinner and dessert of your choosing and he chose tamale pie (no surprise there, he picks that every year) and German chocolate cake. I doubled my German chocolate cupcake recipe but used shredded coconut instead of wide chip.
I saw this recipe on a blog, The Best Remedy, and thought it was a wonderful combination of flavors. Since I had all of the ingredients on hand, I felt compelled to "veganize" the it and bake up a batch. I have tons of blackberries ripening in my garden, most of which I'm freezing for use later, because there is no way we can eat them all now. I also have most of that container of Tofutti non-dairy ricotta sitting in my fridge as well as an ear of corn.
I picked our first ripe tomatoes of the season. Just a handful of cherry tomatoes and one little Roma, but still it's exciting, at least for a gardening geek like me. The first tomatoes always taste amazing, probably because you've been waiting so long for them to ripen...but more likely it's that they ripen on the vine. Last year was such a disaster, most of our plants died from some sort of mold.
This is a thieving squirrel. He wasn't always bad. Two years ago he lived across the street in an oak tree with his friends and relatives eating acorns. Then, the oak tree died and my neighbors cut it down. That's when this squirrel and his friends and relatives moved into my back yard to live in my oak tree. That's when he discovered my almond tree. That's when he decided he liked almonds better than acorns. The thieving squirrel started to eat my almonds before they were ripe. Apparently, he doesn't really like unripe almonds, so he threw them on the ground and tried another and another and another. Isn't that the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results? So, what I really have is an insane thieving squirrel.
