Category Archives: food and drink

Dark Red and Orange

By | | , ,
3 Comments

These are lovely. The dark ones are very unusual, perhaps. They are Purple Russians, usually thought of alongside the Black Russian varieties that I think are usually more round. There’s a whole black tomato category in the tomato-growing world, and this is one of many. (Click for a larger view.) These were the second of the clusters of handsome green tomatoes in a previous post.

The garden continues to produce a variety of tasty things. These were from a little over a week ago. The downside is that one part of the garden is under attack from […] Click to continue reading this post →

Orange on the Table

By | | , , ,
1 Comment

One day a few days ago I decided to make a quick meal from some things I’d find in the garden: Two orange food items were available – some crookneck squash and a few small orange tomatoes. Excellent.

How did the meal take shape? Quickly, simply, and tastily.

I chopped an onion, diced the squashes, crushed a few cloves of garlic, and chopped a red tomato into small pieces too (the three tiny orange cherry toms were not enough). I also finely chopped a small piece of ginger. I heated a tablespoon or two of olive oil in my large deep (high-sided) frying pan (another All-Clad treasure), and […] Click to continue reading this post →

Little Green Courgette

By | | , , ,
7 Comments

(I think that perhaps Prince ought to write a song with this as the title. Hmmm…)

So to accompany the other types of squash that have begun to appear (see previous post), I’ve some courgettes (or zucchini) coming along nicely. It seems I have two plants of these this year (with a bit of leaf mould infection that I ought to see to), and so in the next few weeks I should have some nice additions to various meals…

Still to be unveiled are some Mystery Squash plants that I put into the soil a bit late. I grew them from some seeds that […] Click to continue reading this post →

Gourdy Goodness

By | | , , ,
2 Comments

Ok… So that was a bit unexpected. I was not expecting these when I planted them. Crookneck Summer squash.

I’ve got several of them coming along in three clusters… They look very much like tough, inedible gourds, and I imagine that they can be like that if picked at the wrong time. So I’ve picked a few small ones and the bigger one in the second photograph (below) and will see how they deal with being tossed into a stir-fry.

* * *

[…] Click to continue reading this post →

Picnicking

By | | , ,
7 Comments

picnic_packing_1I love packing picnics. It has been a while since I’ve done it**, and so this morning, upon seeing sunshine behind my bedroom curtains, I decided to take the visitors off for a picnic. After breakfast I set about giving them a time to get ready to leave, and busied myself in the kitchen. I made sandwiches (mustard, pastrami, tomato), cut slices of the delicious Christmas fruit cake my mum made two days earlier, put in some fruit (grapes and satsumas/clementines/tangerines/Idontremember), and picnic_packing_2made two thermos flasks of tea (mint and honey, and ordinary black tea with milk and sugar), and a couple of kitkats for emergencies.

My smaller Sainsbury’s shopping bag (imported) is just perfect for carrying all this, I discovered.

Our destination? Santa Monica beach and pier! It was a perfect […] Click to continue reading this post →

Waiting, Planning

By | | , , ,
1 Comment

20101207-134312.jpgWhile waiting on a phone call and various other things in my errand-run over to the West side in Santa Monica, I find myself sitting in one of my favourite places for coffee or lunch, eating my favourite thing on their menu. It is a branch of Le Pain Quotidien, and it is their ricotta, fig and honey open faced sandwich. Food of the Gods.

I have a few hours of interlude on this away mission, and so I’ve brought a bit of work with me since I don’t know exactly how long things will take. I’ve made some decent progress on The Project in the last few days, and although I need to do a lot more, I’ve been planning another stage of it, sketching out ideas and expanding on them. Some of this process was begun some time back on the iPad, and I’m now adding to the ideas on actual real paper, and pushing one of them to a slightly more refined level. It is a fun process, and certainly nice to be able to call up old scribblings wherever I am, since I now try to have everything on the pad. (see my earlier posts here and here for more on how I use this excellent tool for work, and I’ll be saying a bit more soon in relation to The Project.)

The teaching part of the semester is over. At least, the classroom […] Click to continue reading this post →

Thanksgiving Offering

By | | , ,
5 Comments

… and then I assembled it all together with more ingredients:

Round Three (continuing the work of the night before… (click images for larger view.))

thanksgiving_dish_1

So here is another group of ingredients. These are largely the vegetables that will accompany the polenta and the salsa roja I made the night before. Notice that the polenta has been sliced into 24 triangles, ready for the next step. Those are red bell pepper choppings in front, along with majoram and cilantro. Mushrooms being suatéed in olive oil- what a lovely smell that always produces! After some minutes, half of the garlic is added, and then after another 5 minutes or so I put everything aside in a bowl. Then on to the zucchini (or “courgette” – I used half a yellow and half a green, for variety), suatéing again for about five minutes with the remaining garlic […] Click to continue reading this post →