Worms in the Garden

Janet keeps a beautiful garden and one of her best tools is the worm pit.  She constructed it from one layer of a compost system. It is generously large, making it easy for us to add kitchen scraps and spent flowers.

And it is easy to reposition, so the tomatoes, sweet peas and other flowers that follow thrive in the worms' footprint.

How to Start a Decade

New Year's Weekend 2011 at Panamint Dunes

longitude W117.8, latitude N36.8

Step 1:  Collect a posse like this one;

Me, Carole, Bob, Norm, Min, Alison, John, Janice

Step 2: Get out to the campsite for Panamint Dunes just north of Highway 190 on Lake Hill Road.  Set up camp;

View of the hill in the lake.

Step3: "Plan" your cross-country walk from here to there;

View of the dunes from camp

Step 3: Walk the walk and spend a lovely day watching the light change on the dunes;

View from the "backside" of the Dunes, looking southeast.

AB + JB up on the Dunes

Step 4: Walk back and relax. No pictures of relaxing, but you get the idea.



Panamint Resort breakfast debris



The relaxing part is very important. Have a beer, eat a good dinner. Hit the sack early, because the next day after a yummy breakfast at the Panamint Dunes Resort (with all the bacon you can eat) . . .

You may find yourself driving through a snow storm that threatens to close the highway and the alternate routes. 
It could stress you out.



The drive home was a trial for most of us. For my part, I figured I could pull over and snuggle into my sleeping bag with plenty of snacks to keep me comfortable until morning. No need for that. The snow let up at the 3000' marker.



Happy New Year! 

Welcome to the 'twenty-teens'!

Menu Shift

• Smoked Turkey
• [New] Spiced Cranberries (ala Russ Parsons)
• Mom's Potato Salad
• Green Bean Casserole (loosely based on Cook's Illustrated's lighter recipe and a nod to the American Classics recipe)
• Stuffed Squash (ala Dorie Greenspan's Pumpkin Stuffed With Everything Good or here on Evan Kleiman's Sidedish podcast. This is similar to Ruth Reichl's stuffed pumpkin in Gourmet Today, which I made (and ate completely) last fall.) This will shift to Friday with leftovers, I think.
• [New] Smitten Kitchen's Roasted Sweet Potatoes Topped with Thanksgiving Flavors
• Homemade Crescent Rolls 
• Pumkin Pie
• Cranberry Upside Down Cake (Smitten Kitchen)
• John Sedlar's Pumpkin Infused Mezcal

The Turkey Has Landed

I'd like to say that the turkey flew in from Tyler, Texas but actually it arrived by UPS Ground. The box smelled good and it didn't take much encouragement from the folks at MTO for me to open it up.
Inside was a lightly insulated brown paper bag, inside that was a heavy plastic bag, inside that was a dark (almost black) turkey.  Nine pounds cooked weight. (I weighed it when I got home).  Greenbergs says it will serve 18 to 27.  I'm thinking that is the snack-size portion. But still it should feed our Thanksgiving Party of five with some leftovers and a smoky carcass.  Come back later for photos.

I was able to fit the bird sans box in my refrigerator.  Now every time I open the door a waft of smoky goodness hits me in the face.

A New Kind of Thanksgiving

A couple of weeks before the Thanksgiving, a story in the NY Times Dining section sparked an idea and a few days later, I ordered a nine pound smoked turkey from Greenberg Smoked Turkeys of Tyler, Texas. (Go on and click that link - if only for the sound effects.)
Because this is such an unusual Thanksgiving idea for our family, I decided to blog the experience.

Here is the menu I came up with (it's something like a Thanksgiving Picnic with sidedishes that can be made or prepped in advance):

• Smoked Turkey
• Mom's Potato Salad
• Green Bean Casserole (loosely based on Cook's Illustrated's lighter recipe and a nod to the American Classics recipe)
• Stuffed Squash (ala Dorie Greenspan's Pumpkin Stuffed With Everything Good or here on Evan Kleiman's Sidedish podcast. This is similar to Ruth Reichl's stuffed pumpkin in Gourmet Today, which I made (and ate completely) last fall.)
• Homemade Crescent Rolls 
• Pumkin Pie
• Cranberry Upside Down Cake (Smitten Kitchen)
• John Sedlar's Pumpkin Infused Mezcal

A Peachy Coincidence on a Summer Saturday

Deb over at Smitten Kitchen posted a nectarine buckle recipe that got me out of bed this morning.

I've been spending a lot of time at my Mom's house in Lindsay since the end of June waiting for her alberta peaches to ripen.  But, I had to be in Denver on the weekend. Janet and I finally got up there to collect the dregs of the harvest -- thanks to pal Ginny Wilson, who stripped the tree and saved three flats for us! ( I am comforted by the fact that so many friends and neighbors picked peaches and raved about them.)

This morning, my last four peaches went into this recipe.  

I never had much interest in the "buckle" as a recipe - it just sounds so dry. But the coincidence of the recipe, Deb's excellent photos and the ready-to-go peaches brought it all together.

Of course, I tweaked the recipe, starting with making just a half batch in an 8 inch skillet instead of a 10 inch-er, substituting peaches for nectarines and cinnamon for allspice. I also skipped the parchment paper liner and turned the cake out without any trouble. The crumb is tender and moist, the fruit is soft but not too melty-mushy. The lemon juice keeps the sugary streusel in check.  It is delicious!

New Garden in my Future

Janet and John have been scheming a new backyard garden. It includes much needed repairs to the fence and a new architectural Gate ala Albuquerque. I'm telling you this because yesterday, on Easter Eve, I was helping John, digging postholes and slinging bricks. That's me (above) preparing the holes for the Gate.

See that smile? I'm smiling because on the eve of Christmas Eve, I had surgery to fix my broken left wrist and yesterday I was handling serious tools. Besides the posthole-digger, there was a wrench to disassemble the fence, a saw to break down the old lattice, a lopper to sever old ficus roots, a masonry trowel to clean the bricks and a shovel for scooping dirt and lifting the old thatch of lawn.  No pain (beyond the typical 53-year-old arthritis in my thumbs), no blood, no cast, no brace. Three ibuprofen tablets and a nice hot shower set me up right. Easter morning I was ready to cook.
I could only achieve this recovery because of my excellent orthopedic surgeon Dr. Annette Billings and my spectacular physical therapist Sandy Canout. What a team they make!

Mom was out there observing the work, She was smiling because she wasn't digging, scraping and slinging bricks. She kept an eye on me and John to be sure we didn't lose any tools or step in the holes.
We were all remembering Dad, who worked with John to build and install the old gate (below). When he worked the posthole-digger, he pulled up a plug of dirt the size and shape of a one-pound coffee can. He turned over an awful lot of San Fernando Valley soil before they moved to Lindsay.