Port Potager

Another kinda lame Flower Friday , but I am on vacation. Instead of vases of flowers that will definitely be dead by the time we get back, here's what the cutting garden looks like in its current, pre-cut state: Here you can see short marigolds in the front, tall orange cosmos in the back, and some pink zinnias mixed in. This is from another angle: The cosmos are on the right, with zinnias in the middle and black-eyed Susans to the left. Not much going on here in the way of perennials lately, although I do have some echinacea, salvia, and veronica trying to make a go at a second flowering. I hope so — I don't think there will be much left for September and October unless I pick up some new annuals to round out the fall.

We're making our way down the shore for the holiday weekend, and I have packed a lot of garden road food for the trip: Roughly clockwise from the top, we have cherry tomatoes, cantaloupe slices, strawberries and a few early-ripening grapes, green beans and carrots, peaches and apples, a box of salsa, and more green beans.  Also, I made sandwiches for the road — we're not a picket-line crossing kind of family (it's Labor Day weekend, y'all), so road food is going to be homemade today: Cucumber and dill sandwiches and caprese sandwiches with Ukrainian yellow tomatoes. And plain butter bread for Jonas, who inexplicably does not like sandwiches. But with all the snacks above, we should be in good shape!

The kids had their first day of school today —  before  Labor Day, which is an unfathomable act of cruelty in my book. Since I don't start until next week, I have a couple days to myself this week. I'm trying to wrap up the projects I didn't get to this summer, but I also needed to get through some piles of vegetables to preserve them. After freezing some extra eggplant and okra, I decided to do something with our early apples:  These are Snow (an heirloom variety on our 4-in-1 tree) and some windfall Galas that are ready early. They are pretty tiny, and some have blemishes (organic growing and all), so I decided just to sauce these up. I only had 1 1/4 pounds of apples, so this is a nice, manageable batch to work with. First, quarter (or halve, if you have teeny-weeny apples like some of these) apples and remove the stems, and cut out any blemishes if necessary.  Next, put the apples in a saucepan and add just enough water to keep them from stickin...

It occurs to me that I never wrote about how our brined kosher dills turned out. Since I started those back in mid-July, we have made a bunch more fermented pickles. First, a look at how the original batch turned out: This is what they look like after three weeks of fermenting in the crock. I pulled them out of the crock and gave them a quick rinse, then strained the brine into a pot to boil it.  (Now, I know that boiling it kills all the good bacteria from the fermentation process, making this no longer a "living food" and blah blah blah . But we don't have enough room in our refrigerator for 10 gallons of pickles chilling in their living brine. Gotta can them, and that means boiling it all up. It doesn't really change the flavor, which is my main purpose here.) Anyway, after boiling the strained brine, you pack the pickles in hot jars, pour the brine over them, and process in a boiling water bath canner for 15 minutes.  As you can see, t...

I have to admit that this week's flower post is seriously lame. The kids are away at camp, and we used the time to finish the walls of our renovation. That is a dirty, dusty, terrible job, and it didn't leave me with much energy for flower arranging.  And where would I put them? The house is a construction-zone disaster, and I can't even blame the kids. Anyway, yesterday I went out and cut a handful of snapdragons and some matching zinnias for our bedroom (a safe haven from the dust). By next week the house should be back in our control, with running water and working appliances and everything — including flowers. Snapdragons and zinnia.

We busted our asses today to finish the walls of our renovation so that we can have our kitchen back as soon as possible. We should be able to clean everything up by tomorrow night and be back in business for pickling and otherwise preserving all the food that is currently just sitting on the dining room table. This is not to say that our project is done — ha! — but at least we'll be able to use the kitchen while we finish. In the meantime, though: no cooking. To get any food at all requires peeling back a bunch of dropcloths and digging around to find things we moved to another room. It's not that fun. Still, we managed a pretty great dinner anyway. It's simple but delicious, because it allows some fresh garden ingredients to shine without much preparation: Our first cantaloupe was ready today (you can tell they are ripe because they slip from the vine without any resistance), so we picked up some proscuitto to wrap around it — salty-sweet perfection! We ...

The kids are off to camp and the kitchen is closed for business for the next few days while we try to finish the lion's share of our renovation before they get home. Right now everything but the fridge is covered with a drop cloth, and the doors are sealed off in plastic while we finish with joint compound hell on the seams of the drywall. It makes a lot of dust when you sand it, so we'll be eating out for the next couple of days. We did enjoy a last, easy garden dinner before the shut down, though. Two new veggie tarts: We've made these on puff pastry before , and they are delicious in all seasons. The tart on the left is heirloom tomato (Moskvich and Ukrainian Yellow) with hard mozzarella beneath and basil on top. The tart on the right is Swiss chard with peaches, garlic, and goat cheese. This one is savory despite the bits of sweet peaches, which was a nice change from all of the peach desserts we've had recently.  These are so good I almost wis...