And the livin' is easy

Is it Monday already? I'm definitely looking forward to the short holiday work week this week. This time of year I hate being holed up inside - I'd rather battle the humidity in order to be outside walking, weeding, lounging. I need a hammock. Ugh, wouldn't that be a dream? Oh, and a gorgeous backyard garden to enjoy it in with a big cherry tree (oh wait, didn't my backyard neighbors cut one of those down) for some shade. Well, a girl can dream.

I do have two little zucchinis just starting in my garden. The eggplant isn't so hopeful right now. I'm still battling those darn flea beetles. I hope they don't keep away the eggplant babies.

My summertime bag-carrying has commenced. This week I'm going with the big green floral oilcloth bag with cool square silver handles. (Not too comfortable to carry in the crook of your elbow, but one must suffer to look stylish I suppose.) It just makes me feel happy. That and I can now live in cute skirts, tank tops, and flip-flops without getting stares on the streets. Ah, I love summertime (well, I could leave the mosquitoes).

Mouse traps and artichokes

The mouse was caught. That's my biggest news. I put that little green house down with a snippet of cracker in the built-in cracker compartment and *pow* the next morning the little mouse was waiting for me. I set him free in the woods far, far away. Fingers crossed he didn't grow too attached to me and my filing cabinets.

This week I steamed and then baked artichokes stuffed with herby breadcrumbs. A whole lotta work for not a whole lotta artichoke meat, if you ask me. But it was fun! I've been using my How to Cook Everything Vegetarian to delve into new ways to do things or ways to do new things. (Does that even make sense?) In my kitchen this week I have the following to tackle: potatoes, tomatoes, lettuce, beets, kohlrabi, white turnips, peas, snap peas, daylily bulbs (?), squash, and mushrooms. Any ideas for me?

Tonight my friend Elizabeth is spending the night and we're having farmers' market pizzas. I've roasted some garlic, broccoli, and (purple!) cauliflower and she brought some mushrooms along for our toppings. I'm really hoping that purple cauliflower stays purple. Not enough foods in the world are naturally purple (right T and Einat?!).

Friday

I'm up bright and early this morning for some reason. It's been happening a lot lately. I wake up at 4:30 or 5ish and just want to get up. Strange. I think my days of "sleeping in" until 9 may be behind me. Or maybe it's just the summer. Brighter in the morning + birds singing = good morning!

In other news, well, the mouse is still AWOL. But my cosmos seedlings are sprouting and my hydrangea now has four clusters of blooms. A girl's gotta count her blessings, right?

This week I played tennis one night with my coworker Laura, but our other planned night got *shock & surprise* rained out. I am happy for these evening thunderstorms. First of all, they're just cool looking - all rumbling and rolling and dark. Second, they are Mother Nature's way of watering my garden beds. Thank you for giving me the night off, Mother Nature. Tonight it is supposed to rain again and I have to run errands and make banana muffins in preparation for heading to my parents' house this weekend for a little Father's Day celebrating.

I'm ruminating right now on an eBay bid in the next few days. The 1930s restaurant ware I collect is really hard to find, but there are some pieces coming up for bid. I already have some of the little bowls being offered, but I guess I can just use more in order to get the cutest little condiment pot ever! Now I need to find the perfect little spoon...

Cute little mouse

At work I am battling with a cute little brown mouse who has decided to set up shop behind my filing cabinets. He's not doing anything inappropriate that I can see so far (like chewing on museum collections), but I would like him to vacate the premises as soon as possible. Our reliable Havahart cage trap just doesn't seem to be so reliable when it comes to this little mouse. He hops through with nary a care in the world while I watch. Wheeee!

Well, I just ordered the "smart" mouse trap that PETA and other humane organizations recommend. Let's see you jump through this little green plastic house, cute little mouse!

Fingers crossed this works - I really don't want to take *ahem* extreme measures.

Image from skirt at etsy.com

Eating local: mulberries

The Fredericksburg farmers' market was busy this weekend, full of people happy about the dry, sunny morning and looking to stock up on what fresh produce hadn't been washed away after a week of crazy rainstorms. When I picked up my CSA bag this Saturday, it included a new-to-me offering this time around: mulberries. Fresh-picked, plump, and purple. Mulberries, I've learned, come in red, black, and white varieties and are native to temperate North America and Asia. Nowadays, mulberry trees actually have become a bit common in residential neighborhoods. You may have seen them - they're the ones that drop the messy berries that stain sidewalks and get tracked everywhere.

Once you track down mulberries in the wild or at the market, keep in mind that mulberries spoil quickly. Use them immediately (or refrigerate for a couple of days) - make sure you pick or cut off the stems first. If keeping them longer, freeze them. To freeze, wash and pick over, dry gently, and place on cookie sheet in freezer until hard. Then pack loosely in container for later use (note that the berries may be mushy when thawed).

I just ate a whole bunch raw and found them mild in taste and a little sweet-bitter. They are really fragile and picking off the stems led to red fingertips very quickly. I took to them with my kitchen shears, but honestly I don't think the stems really get in the way too much if you happen to eat them. I also added a few to a glass of vinho verde along with a sprig of fresh mint (also from my CSA bag). The rest are on a cookie sheet in the freezer getting ready for another use...

Other ideas for mulberries:
• Toss them into muffin batter for tasty, seasonal muffins
• Use them in place of blackberries or raspberries in your favorite cobbler or pie recipe
• Mash them with a sprinkling of sugar to add some sweetness and use this syrup on ice cream or as a topping for pound cake or yogurt
• Toss fresh berries into sangria, vodka tonic, or lemonade for a seasonal pick-me-up (great use for frozen berries - it'll keep the drink cool while it adds flavor)
• Or mash them with some fresh herbs (rosemary would be good) into a chutney to serve with local cheese and fresh bread for a summertime appetizer

Putting on my museum curator hat: Mulberry trees were cultivated in the American South in the 18th century in an attempt to establish a silkworm industry (silkworms adore mulberry trees). Colonists were trying to find new money-making ventures that would prove successful in the warm, humid climate of the South. Silkworms, used to harvest silk threads, would have been a major cash crop for the colonists, but sadly the industry was never very successful and the elite had to continue to import expensive Asian and European silks for their clothing and furnishing textiles.

Cleaning out the freezer

Yesterday I got it into my mind to do something about that truckload of frozen bananas in my freezer. For some reason I can never finish fresh ripe bananas before they get to that brown stage and so, pop!, in they go to the freezer for future banana bread. Well, when you have an entire full-length door shelf full of them, I think that's a little overkill. So I decided to take out half of them, plop them in the sink to thaw, and then mash up about a dozen overripe bananas. It made approximately five cups of mashed banana, four of which went into little containers and back in the freezer and one of which went into this recipe:

Adapted from Muffins, Infinite Ways in How to Cook Everything Vegetarian

3 T neutral oil
1 cup all purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/4 cup honey
1/2 t salt
3 t baking powder
1 egg
1 cup very ripe mashed banana
1/4 cup (or as needed) milk
1/2 chopped pecans

*Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
*Mix the dry ingredients together in a large bowl. Mix the wet ingredients together in another bowl. Make a well in the middle of the dry ingredients and pour in the wet ingredients. Gently fold ingredients together until just mixed. Add more milk as needed; the batter should be lumpy and thick but quite moist.
*Scoop into greased muffin tin. Bake for 20 minutes or until tester/toothpick comes out clean.
Makes 12 regular muffins. Feel free to use sugar or molasses instead of honey, add chocolate chips instead of nuts, use all regular flour, etc. (hence the "infinite ways").

The muffins that result aren't super-greasy or sweet. Perfect for breakfast or a snack. I should have listened more carefully, Theresa, when you extolled the virtues of easy muffin recipes! Now that I know how simple this is (and now that I have four more cups of mashed bananas ready and waiting), I think these muffins will be a staple in the house. After baking and cooling, I put them on a cookie sheet, froze them, and stored them in a ziploc bag in the freezer so I can pull a couple out in the morning to thaw while I fix coffee.

Raindrops

Yet another fantastic rain storm hit us last night. As I was driving home we started getting the amazing, swirling, light-fantastic sky. Since moving down to this spot at the confluence of lots of waterways, I've been amazed at the storms. I like to believe it has something to do with all the water and humidity - it makes for some pretty light-shows (some tornadoes and hurricanes too).

I have been neglecting my weeding duties and some massive dandelions have made their way into my backyard plot. Must attend to that one evening when it isn't raining. My dill plant is going hog-wild, though, with all the rain. I'm thinking that egg salad sandwiches or deviled eggs with the fresh dill must be on the agenda for the weekend - I have a picnic to attend so it might be perfect.

Otherwise, I haven't been doing much cooking. Once it gets hot the last thing I want to do is turn on the oven. I did bite the bullet last night, though, to make a pizza with whole wheat crust (Trader Joe's dough), young yellow squash from the farmers' market that I had roasted with olive oil and sea salt, and a sprinkling of feta that I had languishing in the fridge. It was pretty good (thanks for the inspiration, Almostima). I wanted to add some fresh basil on top, but was too lazy to strap on my rain gear and get out in my garden. Maybe next time.

Big plans

This weekend was a busy one. I worked an event at the museum where I work; I went grocery shopping; I did laundry; I spent some time with my grandmother. I did not, however, get around to the big project that is facing me:

I'm on a mission. A mission to take back my guest room and actually turn it into a guest room. Not a storage room full of books and magazines and tools and shoes and bags. That's the goal at least. I have the new floor to almost-ceiling bookcases from IKEA. I have started going through papers and magazines, saving things that I find useful and recycling the rest. I have a pile of books to take to the used bookstore. I have a plan to get rid of the big desk (which I never use) and replace it with an enamel-top table I already have and will take up less space.

In July my mother is coming to visit and will be bringing with her the twin bed from my childhood room - I'm going to turn it into a daybed of sorts, sitting it against a wall with extra pillows along the back. I can use the new, clean office when working from home. And that way one guest can even have a private room instead of being stuck in my living room on the sofabed. I have big plans and hope it all works out!

Green peas and hard rain

On Thursday I broke into the fantastic, fresh English green peas picked up last week at the farmers' market. I tried to make a springtime potato, asparagus, and pea "meatloaf" (from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian) but it went sadly downhill when I, in lieu of a potato masher, decided to try my immersion blender. Green paste, anyone?

I was so looking forward to the start of my CSA bag program today. But this message came across e-mail yesterday:

Hello people, sorry I will not be at the market this week. I will see you on the 13th with your goodies.
Thank you Cub Creek Farms

How sad am I? Maybe it was all the hard rain we got this week. I still made my way to the market this morning, but the two large organic farm booths were not there (one being Cub Creek) and the smaller organic growers with their limited offerings really had nothing I needed (I already have lettuce and eggs). So I bit the bullet and bought some non-organic English peas figuring that you shell them anyway, right? Well, I'm definitely looking forward to the start of my organic CSA next week.

I need to make my way to Border's this weekend to pick up this book on preserving all of these good fruits and vegetables available at the market.

Some recipes I'm thinking of using:

• pea soup
• lettuce risotto
• a version of this spaghetti recipe
• dilled peas (since I'm growing dill in my herb garden)

How about you? How do you like to eat your peas?

On our toes

Well, it's all the rage in the Fredericksburg blogs (see here and here) to talk about a pretty kooky event that happened here last night - a hail storm. While we've been having some impressive lightning/thunder storms, the addition of hail was just Mother Nature laughing and keeping us on our toes.

In my little neck of the woods, my garden appears to have weathered it all pretty well. The netting over the strawberries acted as a bit of a shield thankfully. My borage, however, does seem to need some staking up after the past few nights of hard rain/hail.

First hint

I'm just bursting with pride and excitement. Last summer I planted two hydrangeas in my front beds. After a rousing lightning and rain storm last night I surveyed my yard at lunch and found the first hint of blue blooms. I just want to stare and stare. Sigh.

Warm weather chic

Now that the weather is warming I am constantly on the lookout for easy summer dressing options. I live in jersey crops/shorts/skirts, tank tops, and flip-flops when not at work, but what to do about my more public appearance? I tend to fall to dresses and skirts in breezy fabrics when the Virginia humidity starts to soar. My new love is a great linen crinkle dress from Boden. My parents had given me a gift certificate for my birthday back in March and I tried to pick selections that would be useful for work and play.

Just wore this dress to work yesterday (with 90+ degree temperature and sweltering humidity) and am definitely in love.

Scape bouquet

Leek scapes. My CSA had garlic scapes last year, which I used chopped into mock chicken salad and other dishes, but this is the first year for leek scapes. One dollar a bunch at the farmers' market. Meant for the plate but I put them in a vase for now. I keep them in the fridge when not at home and will chop some for cooking when the mood strikes. In the meantime, I love that I have a natural, funky bouquet from the local market for two bucks.