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!

Six on Saturday: Views, Tarts, and Garden

On these wonderful warmer summer days, I've been walking earlier than usual to avoid the intense sun. This week I climbed up Christmas Hill for a wonderful view over the Strait of Juan de Fuca. The mountains in the distance are on the Olympic Peninsula of the USA. The band of fog lies where the land meets the sea and is a typical feature of high summer weather. 

While up on the hill I watched a hummingbird whirring from blossom to blossom. She stopped for a few seconds and I was able to get this not-so-great photo. 

Some years I like to try growing different things in the vegetable garden. This year it was onions. They took little work. A week or more ago the tops fell over, all of them, overnight, it seemed - a sign that they were done growing and could be harvested. I pulled them up and laid them on a table to dry for a week. Yesterday I braided them and hung them for further drying in the barbecue shelter. I'm rather tickled with the effect. This amount of onions should last us for a few months, at least. 

Using garden produce is the theme of meals around here. I made a zucchini tart - pastry with goat cheese spread on top (mixed with herbs and lemon zest), then thinly sliced zucchini that had been salted and left to drain for an hour. Brush the top with olive oil and bake for 50 minutes or so. Sprinkle with more fresh herbs. Lovely for a light meal. 

The figs are ripe! We don't harvest huge amounts of them - but we're learning how to prune to increase the first harvest and hope for more in the future. We will get a couple dozen this year. Mary, from A Breath of Fresh Air posted a recipe for these lovely fig tarts yesterday and I immediately pulled out some frozen puff pastry to thaw. Crispy, not-too-sweet, and a perfect dessert. 

We enjoyed them with a daughter, son-in-law, and granddaughter last night. They signed up for Disney Plus over the summer and invited us to watch the musical Hamilton after the 8-year-old went to bed. We enjoyed it very much, but I've been doing some research about the historical accuracy, just to keep things straight in my head. 

A work colleague invited me for an outdoor visit this week. She clipped a beautiful rose for me as I was leaving. Orange and blue make a striking pair. And I leave you with the words of our Provincial Health Officer, who closes each update with "Be kind, be calm, be safe. 

Days of Zucchini and Roses

"What a lovely thing a rose is!"

Arthur Conan Doyle

Outside my window clouds cover the sun and a light breeze stirs the leaves and ripples through the garden. A couple of cooler days are here before the temperatures warm up to summer weather on the weekend. The first flush of rose blooms is over, but some, like Boscobel, are producing more beautiful blossoms the second time round. This soft pink colour is such a delight and the scent simply amazing. 

From my garden I pick a several slender, dark green zucchini two or three times a week. I spent a couple of mellow hours one morning making ratatouille. Each vegetable is sauteed separately, then combined at the end with fresh basil and a bit of lemon juice. We enjoyed it with a grating of Parmesan as part of our dinner. I froze three containers of it for a quick hit of summer when it's raining and cold outside in a few months. 

When we were in Wales four years ago, we enjoyed a delicious Courgette, Garlic and Stilton Soup in the tea room at Newton House. I found the recipe on the National Trust website and made it exactly as it reads for a simple tasty meal. I hope we'll be able to return to the UK one day. For now, I'm finding contentment in reading my travel journals and reliving some of the wonderful trips we've taken. I'm enjoying this quieter summer and have been spending more time in the garden. 

To serve alongside the soup I made a sourdough focaccia bread that turned out well. There is really nothing like fresh bread and soup for satisfying the tummy. 

"...it's a blessed thing to love, and to feel loved in return."

E. A. Buchhianeri

Who are these kids? They thought they were all grown up 43 years ago. I'm so thankful to God for my husband and for the life we've spent together. We're venturing out to a restaurant to celebrate this anniversary. 

Last year we celebrated in Leonding (Linz), Austria. How the world has changed for all of us since then. Still we live and love, and try to make the most of each day. 

The days pass, a mixture of the sublime and the mundane. Beauty exists in both. 

Five on Friday

Here we are again. September 1. Whoosh! That summer went by in a blur. I'm happy to be joining in on Amy's Five on Friday link up again. She's had a tough summer and would appreciate kind thoughts and prayers. 

Last summer I made a spicy tomato jam that was so delicious on cheese and crackers, cold meats, with roast chicken, etc. I had a glut of plums given to me and decided to adapt the tomato jam recipe using plums, not tomatoes. A bit more acid and less sugar resulted in a wonderfully sweet-tart spicy condiment that we're enjoying.

In the spring we planted some new blueberry bushes in compost from our bins. All kinds of squash and tomato volunteers appeared. I thinned them out, excited about the butternut, acorn and delicata squash that I was going to harvest. After returning from our trip to Europe, I saw strange looking squashes forming and wondered if they had somehow cross bred themselves. 
Alas, my daughter burst my bubble. "Do you think they might be gourds?" she asked.
She was right. I have a wonderful gourd harvest! There will be a big bucket of gourds on my porch when I get the fall decor done. And they will NOT go into the compost bin afterwards. I did get 2 acorn squash, however, as small consolation. 

These poppy seed heads are so sculptural. I'm planning to cut them and arrange them indoors. They are full of poppy seeds that pour out when the pods are tipped. So many plant potentials there. 

My parents visited last week and one evening we walked along the beach as the sun slipped down the horizon. The sky glowed pink, transforming even a container ship into a thing of beauty. The chill in the air warned us of the season that's coming no matter how tightly we hang onto summer. 

Maggie, of Normandy Life, hosts Mosaic Monday. This week she posted a link to her "What to do with Courgettes?" Pinterest page. While perusing the page I ran across a Tian of Courgettes (aka zucchini) with Ham and Cheese. The recipe was in French, and I adapted it a little, and oh, my was it ever tasty. And simple to make. I posted the recipe here.

School began for teachers this week. I work with a great group of educators and am happy to be back, if a bit overwhelmed just now. Things will settle as the students arrive next week, and we get into a routine. 

Thank you, Amy, for hosting Five on Friday.  

Garden Gone Wild

Last night after dinner I asked Tim's help with the tomatoes. They are a tangled mass of stems and green tomatoes. I can't tell which branch belongs to which plant. The cages have fallen over with the weight of the growth and the tomatoes. So we spent some time tying everything up. 

This morning I went out to cut a bouquet for the house. Several years ago I moved the phlox from the front to the back, but it's a persistent perennial and there are several stalks growing where they shouldn't. I cut them down this morning and added some hydrangea to the vase.
 

Three years ago we planted an apricot tree. In our climate it needs full rain cover, so it shares a roof with the lemon tree. This is the first year we are enjoying apricots and are they ever good. It's the height of luxury to pick a perfectly ripened apricot and bite into its juicy, sweet warmth right there in the garden.

The backyard, transplanted phlox is blooming madly. I love the bright white against the cedar hedge behind it.  

I've spoken sternly to the squashes, pumpkins, beans, cucumbers and tomatoes but, like an unruly class, they are not listening at all. The Butternut and Hubbard squashes are spilling out either side of their bed and are heading towards the bean trellis. The Princess Pumpkin is really acting like a princess and invading the tomato bed. Cucumbers spill into the walkway. The quinoa (a new plant for me) is threatening to overtake the bean tower in height.

But here's the real culprit - the zucchini. I'm positive she's the ringleader of this whole rebellion. I go out every day to inspect and pick zucchini. How do they grow so quickly? I try to catch them when they are a reasonable size, but they lurk under leaves and hide from me. Yesterday I found this whopper - 6.2 pounds of zucchini. (The top photo shows 5.14 pounds, but the zucchini was resting on the counter a little.) 

I showed it to my daughter via Skype, then set it on the coffee table, where it rolled off onto my foot. It hurt! A zucchini weapon. 
  

 I could be cutting and trimming and weeding, instead, I'm ignoring it all. I read an article that growth is extra-luxuriant this year because of the heat. Instead, I clipped a few herbs and arranged them in a crystal vase for my kitchen windowsill. The white blur at the top - that's the phlox. 

But the zucchini isn't going away on its own. What would you do with a 6.2 pound zucchini? And its smaller relatives?