baking

It has been a week of pies. We made a discovery- Mulberries. You know, like in the song All around the mulberry bush, the monkey chased the weasel? I'd seen these bushes all around the neighborhood and never paid much attention to them. Then we saw a guy at the park eating the berries with his kids and asked him about them. Mulberries. Perfectly edible. They look like blackberries but smaller.

My daughter insisted on picking enough for a pie. So we did.

This pie looks particularly dark because I was out of white flour and made all all-wheat flour crust. It has a surprising flavor once the berries are sugared- kind of like grapes! And once cooked they have an interesting chewy texture. It's good, though. And nutritious!

I also made more bread this weekend- with the recipe I photocopied out of Jenna's book Made from Scratch. I made a loaf and a braid, but my braid cooked out flat so you can't even tell that's what it was. I kneaded the dough a lot longer this time and the bread had a very nice texture, but still doesn't rise as much as I want. O well. At least the kids were happy having it for sandwiches and spread warm with honey.

more honey

I've been trying out more "special honeys". Went to a different farm stand and I saw some varieties that aren't available at the other farm stand we usually frequent, so I picked them up. Got a wildflower honey, a blueberry honey and a buckwheat honey.

You can see the different colors here. The wildflower honey is light but kinda reddish, the blueberry honey a bit darker and more red, the buckwheat honey quite dark.

The blueberry honey is popular with my daughter- it definitely has a fruity flavor with hint of blueberries. The wildflower honey is sweet but with a sharp astringent aftertaste. People tell me it's good to eat local wildflower honey if you suffer from seasonal allergies. The buckwheat honey is dark and rich in flavor like the avocado honey; it is sweet but a little bitter by itself. However it's great on waffles or pancakes (I've been using it exclusively instead of maple syrup!) and this jar is already half gone because I used some to make my own barbecue sauce for pulled pork- the first time my kid liked and ate my pulled pork. Yum!

(I might not buy honey from that particular market again though because I was annoyed that after just a little time the ink on the labels started to rub off. The back label had lots of suggestions for how to use the distinct flavors of each honey in cooking but now I can't read it.)

pie!!

This is my first ever Rhubarb-Strawberry pie all from the garden. Picked so many Strawberries we all had some for breakfast, then I sorted the rest and cut some up for pie

with this bowl overflowing for fresh eating.

Here's the Rubarb older daughter helped me pick. The stems are kinda skinny, so I took one fat one off a plant that already got enough picked for the season...

Here's the pie shell filled and ready to have the top crust put on.

Oooh, it was so good! as you can see we ate most of it before I got a chance to photo the finished product.

pink ferny

My flowering-fern plants are already starting to bloom! The foliage doesn't look too great, though, a little dry even though it's been raining steadily the past few days.

this one of all the others has different leaves, solid not ferny. I don't know why the aberration.

coming along

We're steadily eating Rhubarb, Peas and Strawberries. The Peas are almost done, the Rhubarb I might get two more pies out of, and the Strawberries are coming on full blast. The rest of the garden is coming along too. My little Pepper plants are flowering, and the Tomatoes. This one Cherry tomato plant has its first fruit forming!

The Broccolis looked like this about two weeks ago

now they're huge and the heads are beginning to form! No sign of budding on the Brussel Sprouts across the way, though.

I've got the most beautiful big Lettuce heads ever, but many of them are starting to bolt, too, so it's time to cut all the heads and store in the fridge for a few weeks of salads.

The Green Beans are starting to climb. I'm worried the supports I put up won't be sturdy enough.

ighy

I think my Garlics are mostly a loss. I'm disappointed, the plants were so beautiful this spring. They were turning yellow and falling over so I figured it was time to pull them, but a lot had mildew. I tried drying them in the sun but it rained intermittently so even though I brought them in the house and put back out when it was sunny, still got some moisture on them.

Today I rubbed off all the outer skins with dirt and mildew, but of the entire crop only this small handful looks salvagable and even then I'm not sure it will be okay to eat. Plus as peeled as they are I don't know if they'll cure properly either.

I think it happened because the winter was so mild they just kept growing and growing and then matured during the rainy spring, instead of maturing during the drier summer. If we keep having mild winters I might have to plant them in early spring instead, so they mature near the end of summer?

turnips!

Weeding the garden yesterday I noticed a few purple shoulders under the prickly leaves, so I pulled some Turnips. My first ever. They seem to have done well in spite of the foliage riddled with bug-holes. I proudly showed them to my husband and he was duly impressed, even though he didn't recognize what they were. We don't really eat turnips much in this house, but I tried a few recipes out on my family before planting them, and hope to find more we like!