summer.

An entirely homegrown salad: Alissa's escarole, cucumber and baby summer squash with my nasturtiums. A perfectly bitter early summer salad: the sharp escarole was offset by the sweetness of raw squash and cucumbers while the nasturtiums' sweetness pairs with escarole's bite and its pepperyness goes well with a spicy mustard vinaigrette.

And then cauliflower (from the CSA), tossed with nutmeg and olive oil and grilled. Simple; very, very good:

And mackerel, one of my favorite fish, stuffed with thyme, preserved lemons and garlic, grilled:

And the last of my many strawberries, all tarted up.

soon

Have my seeds started, some compost bought and now I just need it to be surely warm for good. (And to convince my landlord that leeks and tomatoes will look just fine in the yard). There are herbs from borage to thyme (that's parsley coming up in the first photo), leeks, "Purple Peacock" Broccoli, "Violet Queen" Cauliflower (the purple cauliflower that I got at the market last year was incredible), cucumbers for pickling and eating, some tomatoes. It'll be modest patch -- got a CSA share the month before last. (N.B.[17:59]: my landlord has given me the go-go for vegetables where I'd like).

kimchi or pickle?

So I started with this:

And ended up with this:

Part pickle, part kimchi: I had some daikon left over from the last batch of kimchi, and a handful of Japanese cucumbers, so I thought to do a summery kimchi. Opps -- the cucumbers had gone off, and I was all prepared. I gathered a half dozen ripe lemon cukes from the garden. And there you have it. It's very tangy, I think from the sweetness of the cucumbers, and it has a nice bite. It does have pepper, a good handful of Thai peppers, but those won't turn it red. (I got some Korean pepper at Kim's Market in Hadley for a more traditional batch of kimchi with napa cabbage).


And then a few days ago I made spaghetti squash with parsley and kale from the garden and kale. That with some vegetarian bratwurst that weren't too bad. It was quite good, but even better the next next mixed with ricotta. Mnnnn.


Lastly, I've decided that natto and brown rice is even more satisfying than off-brand Cheerio's and raw milk for breakfast.

day 10

A hardboiled egg, a tomato and a pickle for dinner.

It's day 10, and last night the pickles were half-sour dills, and quite good. I'm going to keep on going for a few more days and see how they continue as we go along.



Sorrel + ricotta + pine nuts + paramsean = this.

Throw it in the food processor, add it to fresh pasta, top it with parsley, and that's it.

(And there's wild purslane growing in the garden!)

day 5.

Pickles, day 5: some cloudiness, CO₂ bubbles come up when it's tapped, smells like pickles. Thinking I'll taste next week?

(and some fresh cucumbers, the first from the garden)

my garden.

borage, cabbage, parsley

cucumber plants, nasturtium, lemon cucumber

basil, pickling cucumber, borage [2]