Provencal Tomato Tart

Gropius and I visited the Farmers Market this morning (you can see pictures of the farmers market here).

We came home with quite a haul, including a variety of delicious heirloom tomatoes. So, tonight for dinner, we made a tomato tart that our friend Miriam first made for us last spring when she and Andy invited us over for breakfast. She was kind enough to share the recipe with me and it was TASTY! It's an interesting recipe in that it uses dijon mustard and herbs de Provence, in addition to cheese and an egg/cream custard. We used the cheese we had on hand (a Piave we bought in Berkeley back when we bought ice cream) and I didn't have as much cream as the recipe called for, but the results were still outstanding.

We also made an indian-spiced okra dish and fresh corn. Pictures are below:

First Harvest!

We had our first harvest from the garden today--okra! Okay, okay, it was only ONE okra, but still--a plant we have been tending has flowered, borne fruit, and that fruit has matured and ripened! Okra grows pretty fast and you want to pick it while it's still relatively short because once it gets longer, it gets tougher. So, here she is:







And, our neighbor's apricot tree is finally ripened and we got a whole BOX of fruit this morning:





Wow--talk about an embarrassment of riches!

Farmers Market Bounty

Gropius and I went to the farmers market this morning. For those of you not from Sacramento, hearing about a farmers market that takes place UNDER a freeway sounds more like ministering to the homeless. But, every Sunday morning, the largest farmers market does indeed take place in a large parking lot underneath the I-80 freeway south of downtown. You can buy all sorts of fruits and vegetables, plants, honey, breads, cheeses, and even pork and fresh fish! And all for prices MUCH cheaper than at Whole Paycheck...

Gropius decided to buy a skin-on pork shoulder from the pork man, we bought some bread from the Bavarian bread woman, and we loaded up on fruits and vegetables. We bought...

Pears


Peaches & Nectarines


Cherries




Apricots


Bavarian Seed and Grain Bread (heavy as a brick!)






This afternoon, Gropius worked on repairing Derellek's turntable. Apparently, a capacitor (sp?) was blown and he had to replace it and then torture me with Evergreen Zum Tausen records. Not quite strings, not quite jazz, not quite swing band. Not good!

While he did that, I experimented with another exterior paint color. This makes paint color #4: crushed oregano. I painted a splotch over paints #2 & 3 (tate olive on the left and mossy rock/diaper green on the right) to compare all three





and then painted a different section of the house to get a better sense of how it would look overall. Opinions, anyone??

Fruits of our Labor (so to speak)...

This afternoon, Gropius & I harvested our plums from the plum tree in our backyard. It's a pretty ubiquitous tree here in NorCal--you see them planted everywhere, esp. as shade in parking lots at malls, big box stores, etc. So, we were excited to discover that it actually fruits! The plums themselves are small--like Italian stone plums (the ones they make prunes out of). In the strainer, they almost resemble bing cherries (which are just starting to come into season here):







Here's a picture of the backyard with the plum tree in the background:


The garden continues growing, too. Hellen gave me some tips when she came over last night, so I've gently thumped all the tomato flowers this afternoon and pinched off several flowers from the peppers so that the plants will get bushier before putting out peppers. Gropius warned me that I might have to do something about the marigolds since they are starting to take over the garden.



My okra plant is finally coming into its own and starting to put out fruit.




And our hillbilly 'mater from West Virginny is getting bigger, too!


And in the who knows? category is the amaryllis which decided to start blooming for some reason although all the other amarylli (see the above picture of the backyard) have decided to go into dormancy.

Berkeley Ice Cream Adventures

So, Gropius and I drove to Berkeley this weekend with the express purpose of having ice cream and getting a book signed. Now, I'm sure that there are those of you who are wondering, "Why would they drive ALL the way to Berkeley to buy ice cream and who could be THAT important?"

There are certain blogs that I read obsessively and one of them is David Lebovitz's. He used to be the pastry chef at Chez Panisse for 12 years and now lives full time in Paris and blogs about his (sometimes food) related adventures there. I get jealous everytime I read his blog, remembering my own food-related adventures in Paris. Well, David has published a new dessert cookbook, A Perfect Scoop, and was autographing copies at Ici Ice Cream in Berkeley this weekend. Since Paris is a little too far to travel, Gropius was willing to make the drive down to Berkeley for me to meet someone I've come to regard as a close acquaintance.

We were able to find our way around Berkeley with vaguely scribbled directions because when we drove down the street and saw this line:



we figured we were in the right place!



And, sure enough, there was David! Of course, when I finally got to meet the guy, I stuttered and sounded like an idiot--kind of like when I got to meet Prez Clinton. Sigh.



When we got our book signed, we also got a free scoop of ice cream, and since apricots are coming into season here, I HAD to get that flavor. Mine tasted exactly like ripe sunshine should taste and one scoop was just enough.



Gropius went ahead and bought a scoop so he could try the honey chamomile ice cream, too.



The apricot reminded me of the homemade peach ice cream that my parents used to make when I was little. They reliably made two ice cream flavors--peach and malt chocolate. Both recipes from my Great-Uncle Bobby Presnall (who was quite the cook and also responsible for our family hushpuppy recipe!). The honey chamomile was great, too. The first flavor you taste is honey but then the chamomile takes over for a very nice herbal aftertaste. I think we may have to break-out our own chamomile ice milk recipe sometime soon!

On our way back to the car, we passed by a HUUUUUUGE tree. The house in the picture is NOT a small house either--the tree is *just* that massive, people.



And, for a final surprise from our trip, we passed by this car on the causeway on our way home:



Gropius said he thought it was a car from the '20s. I honestly couldn't tell you different.

When we got home, we made the cover recipe from this month's Sunset Magazine: chicken marinated with pimenton (spanish paprika) served with saffron couscous. Walter has been hungry for a salad, so we compromised with a wilted spinach salad from Saveur's salad issue earlier this spring:



A close-up picture of the chicken with the romesco sauce that also went with the chicken:

Champagne Sing-A-Long

Gropius and I had a nice dinner of take-out Mexican food at Derellek's house last night after he and Derek got through having a round (or two?) at the Rubicon, otherwise known as Gropius's home-away-from-home. We all headed back to Derellek's place since Hellen couldn't join us (that would involve leaving Emmeline behind and Home Alone).

And the perfect accompaniment to take-out Mexican food is champagne of course:



Stephan, you are right--Korbel Natural is a VERY nice champagne! And it went great with my pollo asado taco, rice, and beans. Although, honestly, is there anything champagne *doesn't* go well with?? If so, then I don't want to eat it!

Through dinner, Gropius regaled Derellek with horror stories from Dido's kittenhood. Hellen was not appreciative of Walter's Method of Raising Cats (tm).



After dinner, we retired to the living room for more conversation and to finish off the bottle of champagne. Somehow, Derek's guitar came out and he and Gropius entertained Hellen, Emmeline, and me with their own rendition of some Led Zepplin song (I don't know which). Gropius ably filled in as bass air guitar.





I think Led Zepplin is music which requires a certain level of maturity to fully enjoy it. Emmeline isn't there yet:

Ginger Muffins

So, this morning, I decided to riff on one of my favorite recipes from my Cooking Light cookbook: Fresh Ginger Lemon Muffins. I decided to skip the ginger, add some toasted walnuts and gingerbread-y spices instead. I also sub'd some dark corn syrup for the tablespoon of oil and used brown sugar instead of white. Here is a picture of the dry ingredients before I added the chopped walnuts and the wet ingredients.



Here's the approximate size of the ginger piece I used (the measuring spoon on the left is a tablespoon for reference).



I think toasting the walnuts is a must since toasting brings out those tasty-smelling oils. I hand-chopped them, too, even though I could've thrown them in the food processor, but I didn't want them to be obliterated into walnut dust (I can't seem to NOT over-chop something with the food processor). Here are a few pictures of the finished product:





After a couple of those and some Costa Rican coffee (Mmm....), Gropius and I got started on our respective projects. He was replacing the shocks and bushings in the Jetta today (still at it as I type as a matter of fact). Meanwhile, I decided to get started with one of our next house renovation projects--re-doing the kitchen cabinets. Yay.

Before he got started on his stuff, Gropius set up a workstation for me on the back porch with a couple of his saw horses and the painting tarp. He was also concerned about the concrete, so he spread out several cardboard boxes on the ground underneath.



I got some absolutely heinous acid-type stuff from Home Depot that I sprayed over the cabinet doors. And I mean, heinous stuff--I had one jeans and a long-sleeved shirt on a day when the temps were in the upper 80s (which is a nice break from the triple digits earlier this week).




If I didn't know what I was looking at, that cabinet door almost looks like a topo of the Alps or Sierras or something!

Anyway, after much elbow grease and scrubbing/scraping with two different tools AND steel wool, this is what the finished product looks like:



I did one drawer, just to see how hard they'll be and then I did cabinet doors until I ran out of paint stripper (I got the small container, so the number of the counting shall be 4--for those Monty Python fans out there). I think this particular project is one that will take place in *several* stages, starting with cabinet doors and drawers before attempting the stuff that can't be easily carried outside (not looking forward to that step btw).





Still, I think the kitchen cabinets will clean up pretty nicely once we've got some stain on them. Gropius and I were thinking initially of a walnut stain, but now that I see the raw wood, we're wondering if perhaps cherry wouldn't be a better choice?