New Garden Pictures

This is an italian sweet red pepper... Here is my newest garden box. Del built it for my fall crop. Behind it you can see my giant rosemary, chard, green beans, zucchini, and cucumbers.
Sugar pumpkin vine...
Zucchini and cukes...

Sunflower Pictures

Looking up into a giant sunflower... Lovely red sunflowers...

Even More Garden Pictures

Here are some cherry tomatoes ripening on their vine... Below is a shot of a gorgeous plot in the garden (not mine!). Those are beans in the foreground and the low dark leaves in the background are probably kale.
Here is my pride and joy, my first head of broccoli. These little plants struggled so badly at first that I didn't expect any to survive at all.
And here is another shot of one of my neighbor's plots (same one as before). His corn is so great!
Here are 4 heads of lettuce grown by yours truly. The red lettuce tasted the best.

Homemade Tahini

I never even thought about making homemade tahini until I needed it for a recipe and the brand I usually buy was in the middle of a recall (salmonella! Fun!). So I found this recipe on http://www.about.com/ and it took 15 minutes and tastes EXACTLY the same and for a lot less money. The store bought brand is between $3.50 and $5 a jar...mine cost about $1.50 to make. For anyone out there who doesn't know what the hell tahini is, it is a sesame seed paste (comparable to peanut butter) used in lots of middle eastern dishes. I use it in hummus, falafel, and the yummy tofu burgers that I'm going to be making tomorrow. Here is the recipe, for anyone who is interested...(I promised I'd start including recipes, didn't I?)


INGREDIENTS:
5 cups sesame seeds
1 1/2 cups olive oil or vegetable oil

PREPARATION:
Preheat oven to 350. Toast sesame seeds for 5-10 minutes, shaking the seeds frequently with a spatula. Do not allow to brown. Cool for 20 minutes. Pour sesame seeds into food processor and add oil.
Blend for 2 minutes. Check for consistency. The goal is a thick, yet pourable texture. Add more oil and blend until desired consistency. Yield: 4 cups

Storing Tahini: Tahini should be stored in the refrigerator in a tightly closed container. It will keep for up to 3 months.

Gotta love poetry class...

A Feminist Looks At Baking

The sweet yeasty aroma
has been singing their song
long before I pull the loaves
from my oven.
A simple process to create
something so sublime.

First wake the yeast
with sugar and warm water.
Then tumble in flour and salt.
Dough blooms joyfully
under deliberate hands,
becoming soft and smooth.

After the first and second rise,
the dough is stretched and shaped
and placed into the hot oven
where the yeast will take one last valiant breath
before finally succumbing to the heat.

Baking is a lost art.
If not lost than losing.
Knowledge swept away to an undisclosed location.
Strangled in the night
along with homemade pickles and
the family farm.

Kitchen bound women in the forties and fifties
may have seen their
very freedom presenting itself
with the advent of sliced, white bread.
And I can't blame them.
I would have skipped right alongside them
to the nearest Piggly-Wiggly,
tossed my apron string oppression into the air
and sang

"Hallelujah!"

The simple act of baking
is so weighted with meaning.
The bread, a fragrant melody,
a creation of crumb and crust
with the taste of a thousand harvests.

No one knew what they might give up by forgetting.