Summer Garden!

 After hours and hours of work and driving all over town to find the seedlings I wanted, I have my summer garden almost completely in.  I had to dig up all the beds, work some compost into our chunky clay soil, reset the watering system, and plant the seedlings.  Since I have four large beds and one small one, it took a good long while.  But it's almost done and it looks great!

Here's the diagram, and then I'll list the varieties with the photos below:

Top left, we have spinach (I forget the variety), peas (Progress No. 9), carrots (rainbow blend), two types of green beans (yard-long pole beans and blue lake bush beans), Beit Alpha Persian cucumber and spicy basil.  The spinach will be done soon, and then I plan to put a Juliet tomato there.

Top right is the tomato bed - last year it was top left, but I'm trying to rotate it among the two top beds, which get more sun that the two bottom ones due to neighboring trees.  Here are the heirloom varieties I'm trying this year: Evan's Purple Pear, Indigo Apple, Brad's Black Heart, Costoluto Genovese, Golden Jubilee, Porkchop, Heirloom Pineapple, Lush Queen, Sun Gold (not an heirloom), and Yellow Pear.  I've got three cherry varieties this year because they were such a big hit with the kids last year.  I couldn't find romas (!!!) for canning, so I've got 15 Healthkick and 9 Phoenix.

Bottom right, we still have a row of leeks from last summer, but they'll be coming out soon!  Then we have 18 red Better Belle II pepper plants.  In the center of this bed, a grey zucchini, one of my favorite varieties that you generally can't find at the grocery store or farmer's market.  I'll buy green and yellow ones from the market rather than growing them.  I planted two eggplants this year - should be just enough for eggplant parmesan, one of the few dishes I make with eggplant.  I picked the typical black beauty variety, plus one called Traviata.  If I find a rosa bianca variety, I may add another one, but I'm running out of space ...  Up in the corner, we have sweet basil, perfect for pesto.

In the middle, I have a small round bed with four poles that form a teepee.  I've planted the same yard-long pole beans at the base of each, with the plan to train the vines on strings that I'll tie horizontally to make "walls", leaving one side open for a door, so the kids can go hide in there.  At the moment, though, I've got lettuce growing in the middle and French breakfast radishes and two types of carrots growing around the edges.

And last, the lower left bed.  This one is a bit of a pain.  It has poor drainage, is in the lowest part of the garden, and gets the least afternoon sun, so it tends to stay damp, especially in the lower left corner of that bed.  The current tentative plan is to try growing some strawberries there (I know it's not an ideal location, but the kids picked them out, so I'm willing to give it a shot) and maybe some other less sun-friendly plants (heat-resistant lettuce?).  And on one side, I'd like to put in a sandbox for the kids.  Which will either be a lot of work, a lot of money, or both.  But it would have been SO helpful while I was busy doing all that digging and planting and watering.  I think it would still be useful as I keep caring for the garden with weeding, watering, and eventually harvesting, so I still hope to do it, and sooner rather than later (it's still more than 2 months until their birthday, so I don't know if it would be a birthday gift).  I may start trying to dig it out today!

Happy gardening!

Overrun by weeds

I'm struggling with the weeds this year, more than ever before, it seems. Bermuda grass, in particular, is a scourge I wish I could eliminate entirely from the garden. It's driving me nuts, and I don't think I'll be able to dig it out this summer for fear of damaging the roots of my tomatoes. I might settle with getting out as much as possible, then putting down a nice layer of mulch. If only I can figure out what kind of mulch to use.

I still have to plant zucchini, eggplant, winter squash, and melon. I'm hoping to do it tomorrow, after a big session of weeding and mulching.

I finally built my little tomato watering system, although I'm not sure how great it works. I did get a T-joint, found my old tubing and cut it in half, and ran a line into each channel. It seems to water a little slowly - to get a good deep watering, I think I'll have to let it run several hours, which isn't always possible. The tomato plants are looking fantastic, though - some already have some small green tomatoes! I'm busy pruning and staking and tying the vines, and Loris even said that they don't look completely out of control yet, which is always a good thing =)

Everything else is doing great:

1.We've picked most of the lettuce because of the hot temps.
2. The peas didn't produce because I planted them too late.
3. The peppers are mostly doing extremely well, except one or two that didn't pull through the heat.
4. The green beans look fantastic.
5. Radishes are almost done, and the flavor is getting too strong because of the heat.
6. Carrots are coming along well, and I'm harvesting regularly, although a few have developed hard, woody centers.
7. The leeks mostly went to seed, so I pulled them and will make do with the edible parts.
8. Spinach bolted - I have no luck with spinach.
9. The basil suffered from the heat, but is now rallying well.
10. Ditto for the cukes - I might replace one of them.
11. Onions - yum! They're still not really drying out, and a few have put up seed stalks, but we picked one and are slowly eating it fresh in salads.
12. Garlic - looks good, but I haven't dug it up yet to see. It's probably ready any day now.

One exception - shallots. I pulled a few, and the bulbs were all mushy. Not sure what's wrong, but it makes me very sad. =(

Next time: Decisions on mulch, garden update, and hopefully some pics

Summer's ... not quite here yet

Brrr, it's cold! Where did summer go? After biking to the train station last week in capris, sandals, and short sleeves, I'm back to long pants, socks, a jacket and gloves. It'll warm up again by next week (I hope!), but until then, we seem to be back to spring instead of early summer. I'm a little concerned for the seedlings I bought last weekend which need to be protected from these cold nights.

The garden has undergone a major transformation in the last week. Loris and I (but mostly Loris) put up a chicken-wire fence. We bought 3 rolls of 25-feet long, 3-feet high shicken wire and some poles and erected a somewhat flimsy fence around the garden. It didn't quite reach because the edges were so ragged that we lost about 6 inches to a foot off each end of all three segments, so I had to make up the difference with some different chicken wire and poles, which were harder to put up.

But! Now we have a garden fence. With a doorway. It's not really going to keep anyone out who really wants to get in, but hopefully it will keep out errant dogs, trash, and people who think my garden is abandoned and they can help themselves to my veggies or supplies without any guilt. Now, hopefully, they'll feel guilt.

Really, though, the important thing is the veggies. I planted most of the tomatoes yesterday, probably too close together. I put eggshells and compost in each hole, then buried the tomato plant fairly deep at the edge of the usual trough I dug in the center to hold water. Each tomato plant gets its own stake, with the exception of the romas which will be held up by string tied between stakes placed every three plants.

I didn't have enough space for all the tomatoes. I only managed to fit 24 into a space where I was hoping to fit 30, and they're still really tight. I'm reformulating my garden plan right now. It's tough. I have 12 romas, 6 brandywine, 4 super Italian pastes, one Juliet, one Cherokee purple, and 3 yellow/orange varieties. I want to get three more yellow/orange varieties (or maybe 2 plus one more purple or other heirloom), for a total of 6 more plants to find space for.

I finally pulled out all the chard(it was going to seed), turnips (Loris is thrilled), and fennel (we ate it all last week, yum). I have basil and peppers ready to plant, if not for the stupid cold weather. I also have some green beans that will get into the ground today. I need to get more, though.

This year, I'm planting two hot peppers for my sweetie - the same Anaheim pepper I planted last year, and a Cayenne pepper. Otherwise, I also have red and yellow bell peppers, and hopefully I'll find some orange ones.

And that's it! Photos and updates to come.

Fall/winter garden overload

I spent a crazy amount of hours in the garden today. I planted two rows of carrots, three rows of beets, two rows of fava beans (about 34 seeds), and 33 garlic cloves (I need to plant 3 more for 36 total.

I also planted 70 assorted onions (walla wallas, red torpedo, sonoma (sonora?) white, red burger (burgundy?), and an early yellow variety). I put them around the edges of the new seeds, the lettuce, and in front of the fava beans.

I did a bit of chores as well - took out the basil (and got a huge bag to make pesto to freeze) and the eggplants (one more little guy!), and did a bit of weeding.

In general, everything looks great!

Simple basil pesto

I haven't posted too many recipes lately, so I thought I'd put up a quick, easy recipe I'm doing a lot this time of year - pesto. Technically, pesto is any herb that is suspended in oil, but most people associate pesto with basil. Basil grows really well in Davis, so well that I always have way too much of it and end up frantically giving it away. The main problem is that there just aren't that many ways to use it. My primary ways to use basil are in pesto, liquor, or just added a bit of it to dishes such as salads, soups, risottos, etc. The only time basil is ever really the star is in pesto or liquor. (BTW, if anyone wants the exact basil liquor recipe, just request it in the comments and I'll do a post on it).

Pesto has really only a few basic ingredients - basil, salt, olive oil, and garilc are the only ingredients I use to make the basic paste. Traditional pesto, from Genoa, also calls for pine nuts and parmesan cheese.

I don't use pine nuts because they're expensive and because I use my in-laws recipe, which doesn't call for pine nuts, probably because my in-laws are not from Genoa. I've heard that you can also use walnuts.

I do use parmesan cheese, but I don't add it until I serve the pesto. I don't know why, that's just the way my husband likes it. I think I also read that it freezes better without the cheese.

OK, so the recipe - I already gave you the ingredients, and I don't measure, as you'll see. Here they are again:

Basil, garlic, olive oil, salt

You need at least a handful of basil, more is better. Put this in a blender, or chop it up very finely with a knife or mezzaluna, or crush it with a mortar and pestle. I recommend the blender, unless you want a less creamy consistency. Add some garlic - for only a handful of basil, add half a clove or less. You can always add more if you want it more pungent later. Then add some olive oil, and turn the blender on. (This would also be the time to add the pine nuts or walnuts, if you're using them.) You'll be able to tell pretty quickly if you need more oil. Keep adding it bit by bit until you get a creamy paste. Sprinkle in just a bit of salt, then taste it. Adjust the salt and garlic if you like - this is a matter of personal taste.

If you're going to freeze it, I recommend adding only the amount of oil necessary to make a paste - when you thaw it, you can add more oil to get the consistency you want. I freeze mine by packing it into ice cube trays and sticking them in the freezer. When they're frozen, I pop them out and put them in a freezer bag. And voila!

A final note on freezing basil - Last year, I blanched my basil (dunked it for about 10 seconds in boiling water), squeezed out the excess water (try using a salad spinner if you have one), and packed it into freezer bags in as flat a layer as possible. Now when I need some for soup or something, I just break off a piece, chop it up, and toss it in. It defrosts really quickly, and is very handy for cooking. But it does have a little bit of extra water content from blanching that fresh basil wouldn't have, so adjust your recipes accordingly.

Monday night

I stopped by the garden today on my way home from work. It's looking great. I accidentally picked our first tomato, which isn't quite ripe yet, but will be shortly. I also picked another zucchini, a few handfuls of green beans, basil, and parsley.

The lima beans are already up, they started poking out of the ground and uncurling their first sets of leaves on Friday. More are still coming, as I can see from where the dirt is cracking open. The two melons are getting bigger almost daily, but I still don't think we'll be eating them before we leave for Europe.

Tonight for dinner we had green beans cooked with onions, tomato sauce, and parsley, and store-bought gnocchi with freshly made pesto. And homemade bread, which is getting a bit old. And the last bits of cheese from our rafting trip yesterday. We just took a walk to our "neighborhood store" (Rite Aid) to buy milk to eat with our leftover chocolate chip cookies. It's going to be a good evening =)

Garden update - end of June

It's the last week of June, and things are looking pretty good. Here’s a rundown on the garden:

1. Cucumber – really great, we’ve had 4 cukes so far and they’re all delicious. These are pickling cukes, so I could pickle some, but I have to check and see how many jars we still have from last year. We don’t eat a whole lot of pickles normally.

2. Melon – doing fantastic for now! We have two melons about the size of a baseball. Unfortunately, they’re starting to climb the leeks that I haven’t gotten out of the ground yet. I’ll have to take care of that this weekend.

3. Basil – growing quickly. We still have frozen pesto from last year, so I’m not really sure what I’m going to do with it yet (except make liquor!).

4. Sauce tomatoes – the roma tomatoes are doing very well, we have a lot of green tomatoes so far and they’re growing nicely. I’m doing my best to keep them trained to the stakes, and it’s going decently well. I think these varieties are a bushier variety and training them to stakes may not be the way to go. Some of them are climbing the stakes pretty well, but others aren’t. I can’t help wondering if I’m accidentally limiting the harvest by pruning them or not. I have to learn more about it.

5. Heirloom tomatoes – 5 plants now have little green tomatoes! Woohoo! The last one doesn’t – it’s a beefsteak, which I’ve read don’t do that well in Sacramento because it’s slightly too hot here. We’re having a spate of slightly cooler days now, so I’m hoping it will set fruit. I’m so excited about slicing into our first heirloom tomatoes.

6. Peppers – I can’t remember if I posted that I planted 6 MORE pepper plants. I believe I now have 36 plants (plus one spicy pepper for Loris). A bunch of them have pretty good-sized peppers on them now – I’m quite happy with how it’s going.

7. Zucchini – We’ve had 5-6 good-sized zucchini so far and they keep coming. Yum!

8. Shallots – I dug up one bunch and they were delicious. It seemed like they’re still dividing. I don’t know how/if I should store them, so the others are still in the ground.

9. Beets – doing well – see previous post(s)

10. Lima beans – Just planted, June 22. Total experiment – let’s see how it goes!

11. Green beans – are doing extremely well. Most of them have grown big and bushy, and we’ve had enough to make a big green bean and potato salad, with another big batch in the fridge.

12. Yellow summer squash – this seemed to suffer after I planted it, but now it’s picked up and doing pretty well. I expect it to start producing any day now.

13. Carrots – Doing well, but they’re also sort of “unwrapping” the outside layer from the core. They’re still edible, but they look awfully funny. I didn’t do the best job of thinning them, so I’m not sure if that’s part of it or not. They do seem to be too close together.

14. Eggplant – The four original ones I planted are getting big and starting to flower. I think we’ll have some eggplant when we get back from Italy, if not before. The last one, which I just planted within the last month, had a hard time after transplanting, but seems to finally be perking up. Whew.

15. Parsley – Growing quickly into bushes. Hopefully I didn’t plant too much! We’ll be making a lot of bagnet this year, I hope.

16. Leeks – are flowering. Not good. They’re forming a woody center stalk, which makes them difficult if not impossible to eat. I have to get them out of the ground to salvage what I can. They do have beautiful flowers at least. They never got big like the ones you buy at the store. Loris says it’s because they’re too close together. Honestly, I’m not sure they’re worth the trouble. I can see lining the border of a bed with them, but dedicating a whole space to them is probably not the way to go. We just don’t need that many.

Summer garden shaping up

The weather is officially warming up, and the garden is slowly transforming from spring into summer. It's amazing how quickly everything takes off as soon as the warm weather arrives.

Here's a brief diagram of what things look like right now:

The tomatoes are growing like crazy, and I can't always catch the suckers before they get too big. Luckily, I've still got things mostly under control, and I've starting tying up the vines to their stakes. I'll write more about the tomatoes soon. Suffice to say we've got quite a few green ones.

The zucchini is also growing amazingly quickly. We have one small green one, which will probably be ready today or tomorrow. Now THAT was fast!

The green beans already have tiny, little fruits, I'm really looking forward to eating my first green beans of the season. I have at least two or three varieties planted. Green beans seem to go through a shock when they're transplanted. They always seem to wither a bit and take a few days to recover. The most recent transplants are still suffering, but the older plants are quickly turning into bushes.

The carrots are coming up just beautifully. (Reminder to self - post a picture!) Despite my thinning, they are still to close together, but I'm trying to pick the bigger ones in each group and leave some space for the smaller ones to grow some more.

The eggplants aren't doing much. I'm hoping they wake up soon, and realize that summer is almost here!

I may have planted the beets a little late, I was just trying to get something into the ground in a small patch I have available. I'm actually having weed issues in that corner of the garden. The peas are drying out, and almost not producing at all anymore, so they're coming out soon, possibly this weekend. After I harvest the beets (and carrots), I may do a serious weeding session and try to conquer them. The real issue is my garden neighbor, who lets his lot go pretty badly in the winter. The weeds just keep spreading over to my side from there.

The garlic and shallots are drying out! I turned off their sprinklers a couple weeks ago, and they're starting to turn brown. Good timing, since our garlic from last year is going bad pretty quickly. Lukcily we only have a couple heads left. I'm really looking forward to braiding the garlic this year, and also to trying our first home-grown shallots!

Everything else is doing really well. The basil plants are quickly becoming bushes, the cucumber is starting to climb it's cage, the ambrosia melon is spreading in all directions, and the leeks are ... still there. They don't seem to be getting much bigger, but they're just as delicious at the size they are now.

And that's everything! I guess my updates aren't ever really that quick!

The first spring plantings

Yesterday I went to the nursery to buy the first things I would plant for spring. I've actually already planted one zucchini plant and the green beans. It's supposed to be cold for the next few days, but start warming up by the middle of the week, so I want to start purchasing my plants in preparation for planting. I'm bringing them inside at night for the next few days, so the cold doesn't stunt their growth.

I bought an heirloom tomato - costoluto genovese. It's supposed to produce deep red, lobed fruit, although the picture looks like some of them might be tinged a bit orange. I also want to plant an orange variety, a dark red/purple variety, and then we'll see what else. I'm looking to put in 4-6 heirloom varieties. I'm considering putting in some Amish paste in place of some of the romas, as well.

I also bought the same two eggplants that I had luck with last year - black beauty and bianca rosa, one of each. I'll plant a couple more in a few weeks, when I pick more of the winter vegetables.

I'm attempting an experiment of sorts, and putting some climbing yellow wax beans in the backyard, against our back fence. I've grown some vegetables in the backyard with mixed success in the past, and green beans were one of the mild successes. This year our trees have been trimmed quite a bit, and the yard is even sunnier than it has been in the past (which isn't saying much), so I'm hoping they do well.

It's also time to put in the basil. I bought about half as much for the garden this year, since last year I was going crazy trying to use or freeze it all before I needed the space in the garden and had to pull out the plants. The frozen pesto has been a life-saver recently, when we've had less time to cook, but I still have huge bags of frozen, blanched basil leaves that I'm not sure we'll ever use. I'm putting one plant out in the backyard for when we realize that we need basil and don't have time to run to the garden.

And that's it! I've got a few other garden projects to do, like moving one of our stumps, pulling out the overgrown parsley plant, and hopefully fixing the watering system, but those shouldn't be too time-consuming. My biggest goal these days is to find six-packs of sauce tomatoes and bell peppers. Who knew it would be so hard?

Liquore di basilico 2

My basil liquor is more or less finished. It's bottled anyway. We have around 4 1/2 bottles. We unfortunately spilled some when we were bottling it, but I guess you have to make sacrifices sometimes.

I boiled a LOT of sugar and water, and then let the syrup cool. After that, we combined everything into a large bowl and used a tiny funnel to bottle it (hence the spilling). Then my hunky husband pounded some corks into the bottles (b/c I wasn't able to do it), and now they're waiting a couple weeks.

Not that we didn't taste it first, of course. Delicious!

As an afterthought, though, it doesn't seem to be as green as I expected.

Liquore di basilico

So after nagging my husband to get the recipe for liquore di basilico from his brother for weeks or probably months now, I finally looked up some recipes online. Most of them followed a similar format, although one was a bit different (it involved soaking the basil in the water rather than the liquor). Here's my take on the process so far.

The first thing I had to do was deal with the fact that you just can't get 95% grain alcohol in California. Actually, I was really grateful to find 75%, as I had heard that grain alcohol didn't exist at all here. So I did some calculations to try to take into account the dilution it already had. I used two 750 mL bottles of alcohol at 75%, which is 1500 mL, or about 1250 mL of actual alcohol. I poured it into our clear water pitcher (it's the only thing I could think of to use) and added 60 basil leaves. These immediately started turning black around the edges and getting black spots on them. Although the recipe said that the liquor would start turning green after a few hours, it didn't seem like it was happening, so I wasn't too happy.

The next morning was great, though, a lovely greenish color that's been getting more and more beautiful ever time. The leaves are really pretty black now, except a few, which are staying green for reasons that are beyond me.

The next step will be to make a simple syrup of sugar and water and use it to dilute the liquor, and then to filter out the basil leaves (or maybe vice versa), then stick this stuff in bottles and let it sit for a couple weeks. I'm hoping to have some ready for Thanksgiving. I'm very excited about this. Yay! I'll have to remember to post some photos.

Tomatoes, tomatoes and more tomatoes (and peppers!)

Just went to the garden after a weekend away, and I came away with a cloth bag 2/3 full of romas again. I counted my jars of sauce today - I think I have around 54 (they're not all pint jars, but a few are bigger and a few are smaller, so I think they balance each other out). I think that's enough tomato sauce for one year. Luckily, the last time I made sauce, after straining it through a T-shirt to try to get rid of excess water, I found that at a certain point it just wouldn't strain anymore and I ended up using a hand-held strainer to scoop out the tomato flesh and dump it into my anti-seed-and-skin machine. What I was left with looked like tomato juice, so, being the tireless kitchen taster that I am, I tried it. It tasted like tomato juice, too, except better and with a lot less salt. Yum! So that's what I'm going to do with the last of my tomatoes before I leave for Italy in something like 5 days.

A note on preserving basil. I have made TONS of pesto. More than we will ever use (well, maybe not). But anyway, I wanted to preserve some basil as just basil, and not a paste with olive oil, and salt, and garlic. So I looked up info online and in my various cook books and garden books and herb books (yes, I have books just about herbs), and consulted with my food-snob Italian husband, and decided to freeze it. I stripped the leaves from the stems, blanched them in boiling water for about 8-10 seconds, patted them as dry as possible, and packed them in a thin layer in a freezer bag and stuck them in the freezer. I haven't tried them yet (I still have way too much fresh basil), but it seems to have worked well. So today I'm doing a ton more basil, a bit of purple basil, and some parsley. I guess we'll see this winter.

And the peppers are coming! The peppers are coming! They're all turning beautiful shades of red, orange, and yellow, in spite of their burned spots. A few of them unfortunately rotted, but I am getting quite a few. Right before I leave, of course. I think we'll make peperonata today (still need to post that recipe), and at the end of the week I'll roast whatever's left and preserve them under oil or vinegar or something. I guess we'll see.

Our last two melons (out of five) came off the vine today. It's possible there are more I haven't noticed, but I'm not sure the melons were worth growing. They only cost 50 cents to a dollar to buy them, and they take up a lot of space in the garden. But they are really good. I'll have to think about it for next year.

A last note - I decided to check on one of my butternut squashes that is close to the sprinkler, to make sure it wasn't rotting from sitting in a wet spot. I lifted it up and twisted it a bit to check underneath and snap! Off it came. So it's my first experiment in curing winter squash. I think I'll stick it outside in the yard in the sunny end where the sprinklers don't reach, and see what happens in 5 days or so when I have to pick all the rest right before I leave. If I can say anything, it's that we won't starve this winter with all that tomato sauce and butternut squash!

finally Friday!

I am finished with canning, at least for this week. After 13 jars of tomato sauce, 8 quarts of giardiniera, and 6 jars of ketchup, I'm done.

Giardiniera, btw, is an Italian pickled vegetable recipe. It's basically vegetables cut up into small chunks and cooked in a mix of crushed tomatoes, vinegar, oil, salt and sugar. It's heavenly. I could probably bribe a few of my friends to do just about anything if I promised them a jar of giardiniera. As it happens, I've been promising those same friends to teach them the recipe. Which means I won't have bribing capabilities anymore.

The garden was looking good yesterday. Some of the peppers are finally getting mature. They've been turning red on only the side that faces up, while staying green underneath. Some of them have now turned partially a color closer to brown. I'm not sure if that means they're done changing colors, or if it's a step between green and red. Overall, they're disappointingly small and most of them have spots of thin papery brown skin where I believe they have burned. I'll have to chalk it up to a learning experience. Except that buying peppers is so damn expensive.

The good news is that the tomatoes are still doing well. After my huge canning spree the other day, I have brought home two more baskets of tomatoes, and I just have to decide if I want to make more ketchup or just make sauce. I also keep bringing more heirlooms, but they finally seem to be slacking off, thank goodness.

I cut back one of my areas of basil about halfway, to see what will happen. I haven't been able to keep this section pinched back enough, so I was constantly fighting the basil in an attempt to keep it from flowering. So I finally decided to just cut it all back and turn it into pesto. I'm starting to get a bit tired of making pesto. We have plenty for ourselves at this point, and the garden just keeps producing basil. I've grown it in pots before, and it never grew much, so when I decided to put it in the garden I tried to make up for what I thought was slow growth by planting a lot. Now I'm drowning in it.

I'm probably almost not going to the garden today, I need a day off. Especially after I cut my finger open trying to cut peppers off the plant. I will probably be making the pretzel recipe from the Fresh Loaf website (see link to the right), which is an excellent recipe, but requires a lot of reading to figure out which version of the recipe to make. I do the easy version and dunk the bagels in a bath of 1tbsp. baking soda to 1 cup water, and it turns out really well. Highly recommended!

The family comes for lunch

This weekend we hosted my family for lunch, after going to the Davis Farmer's Market this morning. I made focaccia and pretzels for bread. Our first course was handmade taglatelle with our own canned tomato sauce and taglerini with homemade pesto (with basil and garlic from the garden). For a second course Loris made a frittata with zucchini, and we finished with an heirloom tomato, basil, and mozzarella salad. Natalie bought some pastries from the market for dessert.

I didn't have time to visit the garden during the weekend. Today there were a lot of tomatoes, since lately I've been picking them every day. I've got several baskets ripening on the counter, but I still can't tell when they'll be ready for ketchup. Some of them seem pretty soft, but that doesn't seem like a good thing. Some of them are also getting sort of a wrinkly skin.

I got ten heirloom tomatoes from the garden, one of which is really huge. Too big for a salad for me and Loris, for sure.

One other thing I'm sorta struggling with is the basil. I've already made lots of pesto. I'll probably make a lot more. I'd really like to make basil liquor with Loris' brother's recipe, but we can't find plain liquor here in the US for a reasonable price. I'm thinking about doing it anyway, simply because I really like basil liquor and what else am I going to do with all this basil?