HARVEST BASKET CHALLENGE

23 Tuesday Jul 2013

Posted by backyardnotes in Cooking & Eating, Food, Harvest, Summer!, Vegetable garden

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Arugula, cooking, garlic scapes, harvest, herbs, sage, string beans, Summer squash, Walla Walla Onions, winter savory, zucchini

Golden sage, winter savory, Walla Walla sweet onions, string bean mix, French breakfast radishes, arugula, zucchini costata, and a yellow summer squash (under the beans).

WHAT’S READY TO HAVEST IN YOUR GARDEN TODAY?

STRING BEAN, RADISH & WALLA WALLA ONION SALAD: BLANCH the beans until tender crisp, plunge into ice water, drain and pat dry; combine with sliced Walla Walla onion and quartered radishes and toss with a vinaigrette of white wine vinegar, mustard, chopped savory, a chiffonade of golden sage leaves and olive oil. Serve over lettuce if desired.

The dressed salad

CUT YELLOW SQUASH OR ZUCCHINI INTO THIN STRIPS. Coarsely chop the arugula. Choose a long, spaghetti type pasta. Heat up some olive oil in a large skillet. Flavor the oil with sliced garlic scapes, then remove them. Cook pasta to al dente; heat the olive oil over medium high heat and toss in the summer squash and a pinch of red pepper flakes and salt to taste. Cook until just tender. Drain the pasta (leave it a bit on the wet side and reserve a little of the cooking water) and transfer to a large bowl, top with the summer squash, add the arugula and toss gently to combine; add a little of the reserved water if desired to make the dish a little saucy. Add some grated peccorino romano over the top and you have a quick dinner!

Arugula, stringozzi and yellow summer squash.

ZUCCHINI CARPACCIO. THINLY (paper thin) slice the zucchini lengthwise with a mandoline; arrange slices on a large plate, slightly overlapping the slices. Sprinkle with coarse salt, a few grinds of pepper and drizzle with olive oil. Garnish with a little chopped arugula or whole leaves and some shavings of parmesan cheese. This makes a great first course. Who would think zucchini could be so good?

SEVEN WEEKS – 5 DAYS – 9,720 MILES

08 Wednesday Aug 2012

Posted by backyardnotes in Camping, Summer!, Travel

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Acadia National Park, Badlands National Park, black hills south dakota, camping, lobsters, Mt Rushmore, Niagra Falls, Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, vacation

Quoddy Point, Maine–the first place in the U.S. to see the sun rise

WE DID IT. WE LEFT SEATTLE ON JUNE 1st BOUND FOR MAINE. We finished our trip in Winthrop, Washington at the 25th Annual Winthrop Blues Festival and returned home on July 23rd. We traveled east through Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and into Maine. On the return trip we tracked south through Maine to Massachusetts, turning back west into New York and along the southern shores of Lakes Erie and Huron then into Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and North Dakota. We camped along four of the five Great Lakes; two National Parks, one National Lakeshore, state parks, and National Forests. We saw well known attractions and some not so well known–at least not to us! We hiked in the Black Hills of South Dakota, the Adirondacks (and kayaked), and the White Mountains of New Hampshire; we biked some carriage roads in Acadia National Park and kayaked on Lake Superior. An amazing, great trip.

A few highlights below. (photos for first leg of the trip at Flickr. I’ll update in a few days with more photos.)

Zoomed in on the Bear’s Tooth, seen from 10,000 ft along the Beartooth Highway, Wyoming

Mt. Rushomore National Monument, Black Hills, South Dakota

Badlands National Park, South Dakota

Niagra Falls, New York

A swallowtail at Seventh Lake in the Adirondak Mtns. in New York

I tried out my new Sony A57 with my old Minolta lenses and caught this butterfly. I shot over 1200 photos with the new Sony, a Nikon Coolpix S9100 point and shoot and an iPhone – I’m a shooting fool! I’ve whittled that number down to less than half. It was fun to shoot with the phone camera and share in real time with family and friends.

A quirky roadside invitation to dine

The church where the signal was given for ‘One if by land, two if by sea’ in Boston. We followed the history of the American Revolution along the freedom trail through Boston, beginning at Boston Common.

Foggy morning on Cobscook Sound, Downeast Maine

Dinner on Mt. Desert Island, Maine. Now that’s some kind of great camping! We bought fresh lobsters direct from the fisherman on two occasions. Turns out lobsters are in plentiful supply this year.

A small segment of the 48 miles of carriage roads built by John Rockefeller, Jr. on Mount Desert Island, Maine, now part of Acadia NP.

Two residents of the park

Grand Marais dune, Lake Superior, Michigan

We paddled through this arch on Lake Superior, Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, Michigan. The water is crystal clear and surprisingly warm.

The supposed geographic center of North America (not really).

The spectacular raging water of the Kootenai River at Kootenai Falls, east of Libby, Montana. Awesome!

Big thunderstorm about to move through on the first day of the Winthrop Blues Festival. Weather cleared before the first act went on that evening. But tents and awnings were flying! Home three days later. Then back to the business of canning and gardening. (More on that in a few days.)

CHASING SUMMER’S END

09 Thursday Sep 2010

Posted by backyardnotes in Canning & Preserving, Peppers, Summer!, Tomatoes, Vegetable garden

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BY LATE AUGUST IT ALWAYS FEELS LIKE I AM CHASING SUMMER’S END, wishing for the prolonged hours of summer daylight and mourning the darkening dawns as we move towards falls’ shorter days. There are still bright spots of color in the garden, the canning of summer fruit, anticipating the bounties from my vegetable garden, and the joys of more travel to look forward to.

Seems like I barely settled in from our return from Glacier NP and September has arrived! We returned home from GNP on August 27th and the days after our return were spent canning peaches with one of my daughters and then preparing for our 19th Annual Farewell to Summer party that happens the day before Labor Day.

On our way home from Montana we stopped at two fruit stands at Thorp, just west of Ellensburg (WA) where I bought twenty-four pounds of peaches for $7.50! (Last year I bought very large nectarines for the same price.) Noel and I canned seventeen pints of peaches and I put up another five pints of brandied peaches and four saucy half-pints of what I am calling ice cream peaches. I also bought some Ginger Gold apples (a happy result of hurricane Camille). To me they taste like the best Golden Delicious I could imagine. Very tart, refreshing taste and a good bite.

Time for a little celebration of what is happening in the garden now. Most of the showiest flowers in the garden have shed their pretty petals and the vegetable garden and changing leaves get to shine.

How about celebrating the first bowl of tomatoes picked yesterday?

New Mexico/Anaheim type chile peppers.

The heavily fruited espaliered apple; Akane and Spartan varieties. They are ripening nicely and ready to pick. Unfortunately many of the top tier apples (Akane) are infested with the apple maggots. They are crisp and tart with a sweet note. Last year the apples were few in number, mostly due, I think to the weather at bloom time, which was cold and rainy–and bees aren’t in the mood to do their job the rain and cold. This year we had lovely weather for more than a week when the apple tree blossomed-hurray!

The Spartan apples, larger than the Akane variety.

A buttercup squash from seed that was probably ten years old. I ended up with two plants that are roaming freely through the garden.

I picked this head of Umpqua broccoli last week.

The blossom of eggplant Orient Express and the long, slender fruit below.

Perfect and near perfect Golden Ball turnips. Sweet and tasty!

I think this sunflower (helianthus annus) is Red Sun.

The savoy cabbage is growing nicely with a head of chicory ‘Galia’ peeking out from behind. Last summer I let a head of ‘Galia’ go to seed and this past spring and summer volunteers have sprouted and I have replanted them throughout the vegetable garden. Lazy gardening.

I love this tangle of squash vines. (Little chicory starts in the background.)

Nothing gives a sunny farewell to the end of summer like a sunflower.

MIDSUMMER’S BLESSINGS WITH HEAT!

15 Sunday Aug 2010

Posted by backyardnotes in Summer flowers, Summer!, Vegetable garden

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Lillium ‘Nippon’

AS OF TODAY, SUMMER’S PROMISE IS HERE with scorching temperatures, a good north breeze to make the heat bearable, loads of blooming lilies, ripening tomatoes and squash aplenty. The down side is the high probability of forest fires; we can see voluble smoke from the Mt. Hopper fire in the Olympic mountains.

I snapped some pretty nice photos over the last few days to share before we take off to Glacier NP in Montana.

This is ‘Rio Samba’. We first saw it in a beautiful rose garden at the foot of some steps leading to/from Coit Tower in San Francisco about twelve years ago. It has such an incredible range of color as it blooms and fades.

Pink sedum

The ‘flowers’ of eryngium yuccafolium with he dark red sedum telephium atropurpureum in the background.

About another six weeks before these Akane apples will be ready to pick–if they are spared the apple maggots!

Frilly leaves of a to-be- harvested-in-winter savoy cabbage.

A sunny and summer long blooming Sella d’Oro daylily.

Abuitilon ‘Red Tiger’ that I purchased at Chocolate Flower Farm in June. Isn’t it striking?

This turned out to be a nice color combination of begonia and echeverias.

Echinacea ‘Magnus’ just beginning to bloom. I bought seeds from Johnny’s about three years ago; they are easy to start and last for years.

Also from seed, a black colored hollyhock.

And, lastly, what could be sweeter than honeybees doing their job in your garden?

EASTSIDE, WESTSIDE

12 Thursday Aug 2010

Posted by backyardnotes in Canning & Preserving, Jams, Jellies & Preserves, Summer!, The beach, Washington travels

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apples, cherries, clouds

The view east, after crossing Washington Pass.

WE LEFT THE COOL, CLOUDY WEST SIDE OF THE CASCADES BEHIND at the end of July and were greeted with warmth and mostly clear skies as we drove across the North Cascades Highway. We spent our first night below Washington Pass at Lone Fir (USFS) campground along Early Winters Creek.

A very unusual pink sunset made for striking silhouttes overhead.

Next morning we took two hikes, a three mile from the campground and another three mile one farther east off of Hwy 20 to Cedar Creek Falls. The second hike was too close to noon and hot, hot, hot. The saving grace was the ability to refresh ourselves in a pool above the falls.

After our hike to Cedar Falls we headed toward Bridgeport State Park on the Columbia River; nice park but full up in the middle of summer. Same story at Alta Lake so we headed for our friend’s place on Lake Chelan a day early. HOT! 98° at 5:00 p.m. Automatic dive-in-the-lake temperature!

We saw fantastic cloud formations that evening and over the next few days, along with plenty of smoke blowing down lake from the Rainbow Bridge fire just above Stehekin at the north end of the lake. Very colorful sunsets, blood-red moon and sunrises, too.

This cloud was a precursor to a wild three hour lightning and thunderstorm on Saturday afternoon that dumped plenty of rain and cleared the air of smoke for the rest of the day and into Sunday. The rain also helped to slow down the fire, thankfully. (Here is a useful fire tracking site for western states: inciweb.org)

Before leaving Chelan for home on Monday morning, we stopped and bought some beautiful local Lodi apples (10# box), melons, tomatoes, and bing cherries (4#).

The apples became Apple-Maple Preserves (from the Jamlady Cookbook); quite delicious spooned over plain yogurt.

Cherries in Wine (from Well Preserved).

After a few days at home we headed west to Ocean Park at the edge of the Pacific Ocean to visit Renée and friends; cool, cloudy, and drizzly weather. Talk about contrasts in temperature! Sunday turned out to be lovely and warm.

Always carry the camera—you never know what you will find. Pristine gull feathers, a necklace of orange seaweed or a pair of Bald Eagles perched above the beach.