Of Food and Flowers and Pie Crust Success

 

In my garden today the Rudbeckias shine their bright faces, oblivious to all that is going on in the world. 

A fat pumpkin is growing more golden each day, maturing with a few scars and bumps as all of us do. This one has escaped the bed and sits fatly in the path between the raised beds. It will make some delicious pies and soups in a month or so. 

Zucchini is prolific, and so versatile. This week I made a Cheesy Savoury Zucchini Bread and it is delicious. I made two loaves and froze one. It's a quick bread, great with soup, or sliced and toasted and covered with cream cheese or chopped tomatoes. 

On the same site JustCrumbs, I found these zucchini tots - also delicious. I know that some people complain about too much zucchini, but I love it in almost every form, although I don't bake sweets with it. 

Dahlias are such amazing flowers, so symmetrical yet in such variety of form. This is an unknown dinner plate variety that stays in the ground year round and comes up faithfully each spring. 

Since returning from our little trip to the west coast of the Island, I've been puttering in the kitchen. With the fallen apples from our trees I canned 4 pints of applesauce. Green beans are frozen for vegetable soups. Today I'm cooking beets. Late summer is such an abundant time of year. I'm happy to report that I've had a few ripe tomatoes at long last, but the squirrels seem to like taking bites from them. Grrrr! 

Pie crust has been my nemesis for years. I've tried all the tricks - ice cold butter, grated - lard - shortening - ice water - you name it, I've tried it. My pie crusts were tough and almost inedible no matter how lightly I tried to treat the dough. A couple of months ago I watched one of Canada's premier bakers offer her take on successful pastry. It's revolutionary. Anna Olsen is a genius! She mixes a small amount of vegetable oil into the flour before cutting in the butter. I was skeptical given my past attempts at pastry, but it works. Success! Hooray! 

My most recent pastry bake was a Peach Cherry Galette. Pastry rolled to an approximate 16 inch circle, topped with peeled and cut peaches, pitted cherries, 1/2 cup sugar and 1/4 cup flour, leaving a wide border for folding in. Brush the crust with milk and sprinkle with sugar. Bake at 375 degrees until the pastry is golden and the filling bubbly - 45-60 minutes. Towards the end of the baking I sprinkled some leftover almond praline over the fruit. 

There will be more pies in the future and I think my husband will be quite happy about that! 

Edited to add: I've lived in a few different countries and found that flour differs considerably. The quantity of ingredients that Anna provides work well in Canada. 

Have a most wonderful day!

Apples, Dahlias, and other good things

It was a lovely afternoon - such an afternoon as only September can produce when summer has
stolen back for one more day of dream and glamour. (L.M. Montgomery)

Lucy Maud Montgomery's writings remain as popular now as they have been for many years. Anne of Green Gables and Emily of New Moon remain close friends of mine and I occasionally dip into the books even at my very adult age. 

Recently, a local sculptor, Nathan Scott, collaborated with an east coast artist to create a new statue of LMM. Grace Curtis did the sketches and Nathan sculpted the bronze piece that now resides at Cavendish, PEI. I love the way LMM is captured holding her face to the sky and soaking in whatever loveliness she felt. 

"Dear old world," she murmured, "you are very lovely and I am glad to be alive in you." (L.M. Montgomery)

This morning I went out to cut a bouquet of dahlias. I think I love dahlias more and more each year. I'm already thinking of what colours and shapes I want to add to my small collection. I think I need some dark burgundy blooms, and pale yellow. I have a yellow dahlia, but it's in a pot and because of that the stems are quite short and unsuitable for cutting. Next year I'll know better. 

"If I wasn't a human girl, I think I'd like to be a bee and live among the flowers." Anne Shirley (L.M. Montgomery)

Just before my clippers snipped this blossom I noticed two bees, curled up fast asleep among the petals. At first I wondered if they were alive, but one stretched his legs out and rolled over to let me know they were okay. I tiptoed away, not wanting to disturb their slumber. 

"I believe that the nicest and sweetest of days are not those on which anything very splendid or wonderful or exciting happens, but just those that bring simple little pleasures, following one another softly, like pearls slipping off a string.
Anne Shirley (L. M. Montgomery)

The tawny shades of hydrangeas fit so well with autumn. Where the light shines directly on them, they are burgundy, pink, and green. Underneath, paler blue. 

I have noticed a LOT of spiders coming in this year. I know they like to hide out in flowers, so as soon as I brought the hydrangeas into the house I plunged them into a sink filled with water mixed with some white vinegar. The crawlies soon came to the surface. 

I've been using peppermint oil as a deterrent for the last day or two and I think that's working, too. I diluted it and put it into a spray bottle to squirt around windows and door frames. 

"Everything we had was small except our love and our happiness." Emily of New Moon (L.M. Montgomery)

We have a bumper crop of apples this year. If you lived nearby, I'd be happy to share them with you. I've made apple cake, apple crisp (5 of them for the freezer), several apple tartes, and included them in salads and savoury dishes, too. They are wonderful! 

"Kindred spirits are not so scarce as I used to think. It's splendid to find out there are so many of them in the world."
Anne Shirley (L.M. Montgomery)

This morning (I don't teach until the afternoon today), I made a Bavarian Apple Tarte, first tasted at my cousin Caroline's house and made many, many times since. It's quick and easy to make, and a great go-to recipe for a gathering. It's still in the pan here because I made it to share with friends and it needs to travel. 

What is September like for you just now?

A Week of Contrast

Unusually warm sunshine for the end of October began our week. My eldest daughter and I enjoy birthdays just two days apart and we try to go out for coffee or lunch together during this time. 
This year, we went to Butchart Gardens for a walk and then enjoyed scones and tea in the coffee shop.

I wondered if we would see any dahlias. Yes, indeed. They were still their in all their glowing colour. We were just in time, though, for I noted a wheelbarrow filled with cut plants and tubers. The lifting out has begun. 

Dahlias are so varied. It's almost the end of the fall flowers now and we watched gardeners planting bucket fulls of spring bulbs. One gardener threw them over the beds, letting them fall where they may, while others followed and dug the bulbs in with long-handled tools.

I planted bulbs in my own garden last Saturday. What a hopeful thing it is to place dry brown bits into the ground, and cover them up, trusting that they will transform into beautiful flowers in a few months. First, however, they, and we, must pass the winter season.  

  
We had an unexpectedly early taste of winter this week, too. The temperature dropped to below freezing and the snow began to fall. I was glad to spend time drinking tea while toasting myself by the fire. 

Today the sun returned, but the temperature continues low. A good day to bake a cake and use the copper beating bowl Tim gave me for my birthday. In an odd bit of happy coincidence, my youngest daughter gave me a set of copper measuring spoons. The two givers didn't consult each other, nor had I mentioned a desire for copper items.

I baked a pumpkin chiffon cake and it turned out well, light and airy with a delicate pumpkin flavour. I put the recipe on my other blog. Here's a link. Copper is supposed to give egg whites an edge on beating up. 

Sunshine to snow to rain and back to sunshine. What will this week hold? 

Linking with Mosaic Monday, hosted by Maggie of Normandy Life.   

Just Before Thanksgiving

Sometimes, weeks don't turn out as planned. Each year, on the two school days before Canadian Thanksgiving, our school gives the students time off while the teachers go to a conference. It's a great time of learning (for the teachers) and having fun together. 

On Monday night, I came down with a sore throat that turned into a cold. So, no conference for me. I stayed home. By Friday I was feeling much better and rather wished I had gone. My colleagues were happy for me to NOT share my germs, however. 

I rescued some flowers from the garden from an impending rain and windstorm. Those white roses, Winchester Cathedral, have wicked thorns and I plunked them down onto the table without much fuss. 

I gingerly separated this one bloom from the bunch and posed it for its portrait. Such a pretty, fragrant flower. 

This basket of tomatoes and squash were also rescued. We've been eating the little Millionaire tomatoes like candy, for they are so sweet. The bigger tomatoes were cut in half, sprinkled with chopped onion, fresh thyme and oregano, drizzled with olive oil, and roasted until the house smelled like an Italian restaurant, redolent with flavour. 

Our Vancouver kids arrived last night for the holiday weekend, and I made the effort to prepare a special breakfast. A fresh corn tortilla, lightly crisped, topped with sauteed onions and sweet peppers, topped with guacamole, one of those luscious roasted tomatoes, and a fried egg. A few sprinkles of Cheddar cheese finished it all off. Very filling and very delicious (patting myself on the back just a little).  

On the mantel a cheery vase of hydrangeas and sunflowers seem apropos to the season. 

Dinner preparations are what's happening around here today - turkey, savoury stuffing, crumb-topped sweet potatoes, and more. We'll gather tomorrow with our children and grandchildren. Truly, we have much to be thankful for. 

Bright September

The morrow was a bright September morn,
The earth was beautiful as if new born;
There was a nameless splendor everywhere,
A wild exhilaration in the air.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

A day of mist and drizzle last weekend was the exception, not the norm for September thus far. Bright days and cool evenings mark the gradual tilt of the earth away from the sun. 
In the garden, the sky blue hydrangeas have turned to lime green. I cut long stems and plunked them into a tall, copper-ringed French flower bucket. They greet me in the hallway when I return home each afternoon. 

On the breakfast table, a mason jar filled with late summer blooms in vivid and muted colours preserves the illusion that summer days are not yet over. 

Regular readers of this blog might remember our trip to France and the UK last summer where we visited a cousin of mine. Teresa and her family made a visit to Canada this summer, seeing family and friends. We enjoyed a short tea-time together on the back deck. It was a good opportunity to bring out a variety of tea cups.

In June I made a long list of tasks and projects I hoped to accomplish during the summer. Most of them remain undone, but I'm still whittling away on a few. One was to use some of the bits of embroidery I've done and tucked away into drawers. 

I did manage to re-organize my sewing room in hopes of using it more. Just a few things left to do there - I'm putting the embroidery pieces into hoops and will put a grouping of them on the wall above the single bed in the room. The bed is great place to lounge, and it's where grandchildren nap and sleep. I have a strong awareness that we live in an earthquake zone and I won't have anything heavy hanging over a bed. These hoops will be a great solution. 

Most of my embroidery is of the free-hand sort. I get an idea in my head of what I'd like it to look like and just begin plying needle and thread. In the stitching above there are still leaves to add and some french knots to scatter among the foliage.

What creative or other projects are you doing these days? Is September bright in your corner? 
 

Home and Garden

I awoke early this morning and quietly dressed and slipped outside to potter in the garden for a few minutes before breakfast. I pulled up the sweet peas that were so pretty and fragrant for so long, but are now a tangled mass of brown vines. Later in the day, I took my camera out and watched a pair of white butterflies flit among the lavender.

A friend gave us a pot of Balloon Flowers (platycodon) that put out bloom after bloom. I'm hoping to do some moving of plants in a week or two and am thinking about where I will place this one. 

Dahlia bloom in perfect symmetry. My dahlias didn't survive our cold and prolonged winter (I didn't lift the tubers), but there was a bag of free tubers in the staff room at school one day, so I took a few, not knowing what would result. These make me very happy. I'm glad they aren't orange!

And another luck-of-the-draw dahlia. They are tall, with spindly stems, but seem strong and aren't drooping at all.

Cosmos growing alongside bright white phlox. This year, the white seems whiter, or perhaps I'm just noticing it more. The blooms stand out so well against our green cedar hedge. 

Faded blue hydrangea blossoms are just as pretty now as when they were bright blue. Each bush is changing in different ways, but all the colours are becoming mellow as they absorb the waning summer sun.

A dozen or so figs found their way into the kitchen this morning. I'm trying to use up supplies just now, before going grocery shopping, so I tried to think what I could make with them. I remembered a fig flatbread that Mary of A Breath of Fresh Air had mentioned, so I looked up some recipes on line. There was some pizza dough in the freezer; I pulled it out and put it on the sunny front porch to thaw. 

I used this recipe as a base. There were enough figs and dough for two flatbreads; both have figs and caramelized onions. One has blue cheese and was drizzled with balsamic reduction and sprinkled with basil leaves.

The second flatbread was topped with cranberry goat cheese. They were both good, but I preferred the blue cheese and Tim preferred the cranberry goat cheese. 

Did you notice the cutting board in the above photo? It's shaped like a book and the title is "Romeo and Julienne." A fun gift.

It's hard to believe we're heading into the last half of August. This has been a different sort of summer, with several shorter trips that make it seem as though I'm always packing or unpacking. The garden has not received as much attention, nor have I accomplished nearly what I'd hoped in terms of house projects. Ah well, there's still a bit of time before school begins. I'll only be teaching afternoons this year, which will free me up considerably. 

"Summer afternoon - summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language." Henry James 

Late September Doings

Do you watch The Great British Bake Off? We don't have cable television, but I discovered that the show is available on Youtube. It's become my "have to watch." There are some amazingly creative bakers in England! It's such a great show, partly because of the civility of the participants and judges. No insulting putdowns, no angry rivalry, just bakers being evaluated on what they produce. 

One of our sons-in-law had a birthday party this past weekend. I volunteered to bring a cheesecake (raspberry swirl), but when I put it on the plate, it looked singularly unattractive. A little thought, some quickly picked raspberries, white chocolate shards, and voila! A cake that didn't look too shabby. I think the Great British Bake Off is inspiring me. My daughter baked a chocolate cheesecake that was so delicious, and looked great as well.

Although temperatures are cooling down, this week is a sunny one. A good thing. Tim has been slaving away on our side driveway for a couple of months in preparation for concrete. It's where we park the boat and there is also a small patio outside the suite entrance that was heaved and cracked. He's broken it all out, took out a very overgrown cedar hedge, hauled piles of stuff away, smoothed and packed it all, put up forms, and now we're just waiting for the concrete company to come and pour it. The construction industry is so busy in Victoria that we've had trouble even getting contractors to come and look at this job. Hopefully, it will be poured tomorrow. 

Dahlias, tomatoes, kale, zucchini, lettuce and raspberries are still being harvested from our garden. I pulled up several tomato plants in order to begin the garden clean up, but there are more ripening every day on the remaining plants. They taste so very sweet.

How's autumn looking around your place?

Golden Days

In the mornings, a slight haze obscures the distant view across the strait. I can no longer catch a glimpse of the Olympic Mountains. Later, the sun burns through the clouds. By evening the garden is infused with a warm glow - bittersweet, for I know it heralds the end of summer.

How can this be? It seems that summer is barely begun. Each morning I've had fruit topped with yogurt and nuts for breakfast - I started in June with raspberries and blueberries, now it's peaches, dripping sweet. 

Last week I spent some time with the grands. Miss A is learning to sew! For the first attempt she drew a picture with fabric markers (a fish race with mermaid cheerleaders) and she sat on my knee so that I could work the foot pedal. She created a pillow. 

For the next attempt, I set the machine on a little table and gave her some paper to practice using the foot pedal. Then she made a pin cushion for her mother, and a small bag to put it in (along with corners clipped from sewing the pin cushion, because she thought they were pretty). 

I'm tickled pink with the sewing success. 

Three horses, made by my eldest daughter for the three cousins, also came for a visit. Pinkerton, Serena, and Neigh pranced up and down the garden sloped before being tossed aside in favour of the splash pool.

I picked a bunch of Queen Anne's Lace while walking one day. Such a delicate looking flower, yet so sturdy - growing, it seems, from the hardest, driest patches of dirt. 

And a nodding dahlia, perfect in symmetry, part of a bouquet clipped for my neighbour who recently turned 70 and had a small party on Saturday evening.

I've finally painted the master bedroom. I talked about doing it last spring break, but it didn't get done. Since the curtains had to come down anyway, they were washed, too. I still need to rehang the pictures, and that will likely happen later today. 

How are you spending these August days? Are they golden for you? 

Light and Dark

The sun shone last weekend and the temperatures had us looking at the calendar wondering what month it really was. 
I cut these glowing dahlias and brought them indoors.
 

They grace my mantel, a reminder of the last golden October weekend.

On Monday I took a walk around the Bog. Clouds rolled in and a few fat raindrops fell, a portent of things to come. I arrived home to listen to the news of an attack on two soldiers in Montreal.  One of them died.

The wind howled around the corners of the house last night and rain drove hard against the window panes. I dropped Tim off for a flight to Vancouver in the early morning darkness then turned on the radio as I drove home. News of the shooting of another soldier. Captain Nathan Cirillo, part of the honour guard at the National War Memorial, father of one little boy, dead. It's his name I want to remember, not that of his murderer. 

May God keep our land glorious and free.