May and June

It's been so long since I last wrote that I thought I'd break things up into months to let you know what we've been up to!

May was all about the end of the school year for Daniel and me working on commissions, some of which I can't show yet. 

However, Lola growing up was a big part of our summer. We all graduated from puppy school (and by now have forgotten much of what we learned). Lola is such a good dog - she loves to play with her toys, she doesn't chew on anything she isn't supposed to and she is the snuggliest dog we've ever had.

By now, she and Winslow are best buddies and love to hang out together. We have to make sure she doesn't get too wild with old Winslow, but other than that they get along wonderfully!

Other than that, May was all about the garden being at its most beautiful! 

Our fruit trees were coming along nicely as well. The kumquat tree has been blooming all summer and is full of fruit that will be ripe in the winter. 

Our quince tree, which had two quince last year, is full of slowly ripening fruit. We are looking forward to the winter when we can hopefully make a good bit of quince jam.

Which brings me to our fig tree and the month of June. 

In June, the figs started to ripen and we picked several pounds of figs every day, which had to be processed immediately. Luckily, they don't all get ripe at once!

We dried many pounds of them and made jam to last all year. My favorite jam from this batch was with added orange blossom water. So good! The dried figs we use in Muesli and a rye sourdough bread I make that is amazing!

We also gave many figs to friends and I baked a few of these gorgeous fig frangipani tarts. By the end of the month - and about 90 pounds of figs later - we were glad it would be a whole year before the next harvest!

And of course, there has to be some art in my post. These were two commissioned paintings I finished and sent off to France at the end of June.

I'm working on one more large one for this client, which should be done in the next few days. 

I hope you have all been well this summer and have enjoyed a slower pace, the joys of longer days and maybe a vacation. I visited Germany in July and will tell you all about that in my next post!

❧ Silke

Figs

Our June and part of July was definitely dominated by our fig harvest. Our little tree was producing like never before! When we planted it 11 years ago, it was a merely a little stick, maybe a foot tall.

Every day for a few weeks we picked a couple of bowls of figs. Luckly they don't all ripen at the same time.

I bought a food dehydrator and dried what I thought where huge amounts of figs.

We indeed had a couple of big containers filled with dried figs and then Daniel discovered a recipe for a rye sourdough bread with dried figs, which is excellent and freezes really well. So, we've already used most of the dried figs and have decided that next year, we'll dry even more of them. 

Of course, we also made a lot of fig jam, some with lavender, another batch with thyme and also a few jars with orange blossom water.

All of them delicious! 

We made a rustic fig tart, 

fig pizza with goat cheese, caramelized onion and pine nuts, 

but the best recipe that Daniel found this year is for Roasted Fig Agrodolce. We made several batches for the freezer and it is delicious just on crackers or - like in the photo below - as an appetizer on toasted baguette with goat cheese or cream cheese. Next year, I'll definitely make more of that to freeze!

To be honest, I was glad when the fig season was finally over, but I'm happy we get to enjoy the jams, the dried figs and agrodolce in the freezer yet for some time to come.

❧ Silke