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Category Archives: Food

Dieting without being hungry

Sunday, July 15, 2018

Rump roast plus some less-guilt-inducing things. Click here for high-resolution version. In eleven years of blogging here, I don’t think I’ve ever written about cooking beef before. I’m 98.6 percent vegetarian, but diets change things (for a while). During my adult life, my weight has bounced back and forth from about 147 to 157 pounds. […]

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Walnut pâté

Sunday, July 8, 2018

Raw walnut pâté in pocket bread, cucumber slaw, homemade refrigerator pickle, garden tomato. Click here for high resolution version. A good maxim for good health would be, eat more walnuts. Believe it or not, here in the Blue Ridge foothills, I can sometimes find local black walnuts for sale in late summer. You have to […]

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If you’ve got too much of it, baba ganoush it

Thursday, July 5, 2018

Are we tired of squash and okra yet? It could happen. Baba ganoush is not just for eggplant. Any vegetable that likes to be roasted can be turned into baba ganoush. This one is made from roasted yellow squash and roasted okra. Are we tired of pesto yet? I hope not, because the basil is […]

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The elusive okra bloom

Tuesday, June 19, 2018

An okra flower. Click here for high-resolution version. I have been trying to get a photo of a fully open okra flower, but I still have not succeeded. Okra is a relative of hibiscus, and its flowers are much like hibiscus flowers. The photo above, of a not-yet-fully-open flower, was taken at 9 a.m. two […]

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Two theories of gardening

Sunday, June 17, 2018

A thriving squash plant, with lots of room and some pampering. Notice how dry the soil is. I’ve already learned a lot from my experiments with this year’s garden. As I’ve mentioned in other posts, my plan this year was to plant sparsely, leaving plenty of space between things for cultivating and for weed control. […]

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Roasted okra

Saturday, June 16, 2018

Okra roasts beautifully. The seeds are tender, but with a slight crunch. They’re a bit like fresh corn kernels, or fresh peas. If seared and not overcooked, I think okra would be great in curries. I also want to experiment with using okra as a thickener in sauces for stir-fries, avoiding the dreaded cornstarch.

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Refrigerator pickles

Saturday, June 16, 2018

It takes 10 minutes or less to make a quart of refrigerator pickles — just long enough to heat some vinegar and sugar, throw in some spices, and pack the jar. Three days’ worth of cucumbers from four flourishing cucumber vines yielded enough surplus cucumbers for two quarts of refrigerator pickles. If you Google, you’ll […]

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The squash kicks in

Tuesday, June 12, 2018

Squash-tofu curry, cucumbers in sour cream I picked the first yellow squash today. I already had decided that it would go into a squash-tofu curry. The abbey’s cucumber plants are climbing high and producing excellently. Unless one has enough cucumbers to pickle, cucumbers have to be eaten fresh every day. I decided on cucumbers in […]

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First pesto of the season

Sunday, June 10, 2018

Cucumber-pasta pesto. Click here for high-resolution version. In the summer garden, the basil and cucumbers won the competition for who gets to the kitchen first. The yellow squash will be about one day behind, the first tomato about five days. It has been an excellent gardening year, at least for the summer garden. The rainfall […]

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Garden report

Tuesday, June 5, 2018

Click here for high-resolution version. I’m not the sort of gardener who does everything the same from year to year. I experiment. I try to learn from my failures. After all, gardening is an exercise in adaptability, since conditions are never exactly the same. This year’s garden strategy was to plant sparsely in such a […]

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