It was rainy here…finally. What a dry winter we’ve had up until now.

Scott ran around throwing out cover crop seeds down before the rain started (an old post about cover crops). The crimson clover and purple vetch are already sprouting.

The favas I planted earlier are thriving.

While I’ve been forcing roses into dormancy…

…Scott’s been on the other side of the yard taming raspberries into neat and tidy rows.

Six new bare root fruit trees await planting. Two cherries, one plum, one persimmon, and two more figs.

The seedlings are coming along well. Now that we have a place to grow inside with warm southern sun, we can start our seeds earlier than before.

All this winter weather has had us in the kitchen cooking with spices. Scott’s been making lentils and curried winter squash soup. Last night I made our favorite Beef in Berbere Sauce (taming the heat by paring the 1T of cayenne down to 1/4t.) with…

…injera. Reminding me of my high school and college days when we used to adventure into Berkeley to the Blue Nile for Ethiopian food. So sad to hear they are closed.

Hope these winter days are going well in your part of the woods.

p.s. As often as I can remember, I thought I’d post back to previous years around the same date. January 26, 2009 More Edible Weeds

We finally started getting a few eggs after the New Year, just a few though.

And we continue to enjoy our homemade bacon. Now that it has sat in the freezer for a while the flavors have mellowed out and it tastes just perfect. At first it tasted almost too sweet, but now that flavor receeded into the background and it couldn’t be tastier. Scott’s Christmas present of a meat slicer makes nice uniform pieces. Baking it in the oven it totally the way to go.

: :  If you live in Sonoma, my friend Jacqueline, who directs the Hearth Foundation, is holding meditation and tea sessions every Thursday from 6:30pm-8:30pm in her art studio. Anyone is welcome who would like to either learn how or continue their practice of meditation with other folks. I’ll be there tonight. Join us if you can: 19201 Twin Oaks Lane, Sonoma. $10 donation appreciated

: :  Yesterday as I was starting work on a design project I searched around for a new podcast to listen to I stumbled upon Garden Fork. Have you discovered this site yet? I haven’t listened to the radio shows yet, just played a whole bunch of videos in the background while I worked. Totally entertaining and educational. Do you have any podcasts you listen to?

The other recipe I got from the back of some Bob’s Red Mill package and again I’ve adapted it too over the years. But this recipe is our very favorite. It is the kind of bread recipe you can use everyday. Partly because it works great both as toast and for sandwiches but also because it’s so flexible. I substitute out things in it all the time and it always turns out great. I don’t know about you, but we always have all sorts of strange types of flours in our pantry. Rye, spelt, graham, wheat bran, wheat germ etc. from various projects. Lately in place of the 1 c. of whole wheat flour I’ve been mixing a third of a cup of various flour like substances to use up those odds and ends and the results have been fantastic! The bread picture at the top there is what I made the other day using wheat bran and Bob’s Red Mill 10 Grain Cereal instead of the whole wheat flour.

In most cases, when I bake bread I try and take an extra minute before I stick it in the oven to brush a little milk over the top and sprinkle oatmeal on if it seems appropriate. It’s a tad fussy, but half of eating is with your eyes, right? And us, being bread lovers, always look so forward to cutting into a beautiful loaf of bread.

A note about the recipes, these are notes for folks who have bread machines. If you don’t have a bread machine and you bake by hand, I think you’ll easily be able to figure out how to adjust the recipe accordingly. I’ve even doubled both recipes before and mixed and ‘kneaded’ them in my kitchenaid successfully.

Gingery Wholewheat Bread (without the ginger)
put into bread machine in this order:
1/4 c. water
1 c. milk
1/4 c. molasses
1/4 stick room temperature butter (1/8 c.)
1 T. brown sugar
3 c. unbleached flour
1 c. whole wheat flour
1 1/2 t. salt
(1/2 t. ginger – optional)
2 1/2 t. yeast

Set on dough setting. When finished take out and form. Put into a greased loaf pan and let rise 40-ish minutes. Brush top with milk, slice top with serrated knife. Bake for 35 minutes at 350 degrees.

Everyday Oat Bread
put into bread machine:
1 1/4 c. water
1 1/2 T. sugar (either white, brown, turbinado even honey has worked)
1 1/2 t. salt
1 1/2 T. vegetable oil or butter
1/4 c. oatmeal
2 c. unbleached white flour
1 c. whole wheat flour (or various other flours that you find at the back of your pantry)
2 t. vital gluten (or if you don’t have use flour instead)
2 1/2 t. yeast
Set on dough setting. Take out and form. Put into greased bread pan. Let rise 40-ish minutes, brush top with milk and sprinkle with oatmeal. Slice top with serrated knife. Bake for 25 minutes at 425 degrees.

Happy Baking!

The tractor works, the field got mowed.

Unfortunately the tractor does not differentiate between grass and mustard and it all got plowed down. At least our field is too big to mow in one sitting and a patch got saved.

She’s growing too. Walking and toppling all over the place.

The felco’s were sharpened and all the fruit trees have been pruned.

What a job!

Ever since we first got serious about this property the word ‘tractor’ has come up often between us and with friends and family. ‘When are you getting a tractor?’ is what everyone wants to know. Much like when you first get married and everyone wants to know when you are going to have a baby, people wanted to know when the tractor was coming. I hemmed and hawed. Geez, we have a neighbor that is happy to mow when we need it with his tractor. And what’s wrong with a shovel and a little hard work anyway? But who am I to stand in the way of a man and his tractor. Isn’t that half the fun of having some property having the excuse to get a tractor? Scott has been researching for months now and finally the right one appeared just a few miles north of us. This is a nice little one, with a front blade, mower, rototiller and a dump cart, perfect for our needs.

We dropped off the kids this morning, filled up the coffee mug and headed north to pick up a truck and trailer to haul it in. The truck had country music already playing on it when we got in, a song about a tractor none-the-less, and we headed back down beautiful highway 12 down into Glen Ellen. The place we picked it up from was a 3.5 acre farm tucked into a small valley surrounded by olive trees, fruit trees, and a greenhouse getting filled with flats to start kale seeds. It took some tricky driving and some muscle but between four of us we got her loaded and brought her home.

I still remained a little skeptical about it until I sat down in the tractor seat…. You know, I think this might just be quite fun! Get ready to see some serious growing this year!

How were your holidays? Ours were very nice. It’s hard to believe that they are gone. That whole Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years flew by like a storm! But this week, it’s back to school and back to work. The mornings are a little rough. Good thing for homemade bread, salted caramel pear butter, and handmade mugs to get us started.

Happy 2012 to you!

Teacher gifts. Every single year I fret to the very last minute about pulling these homemade gifts together, never knowing if my random bits of homemade nonsense will really pan out into some sort of thing resembling a unified gift. This year, at least visually, it came together at the eleventh hour.

Gosh darn it, I lost the link to this chai recipe I found on pinterest. From a woman who went to India and learned how to make it there herself. Anyway it’s divine! 2T. black tea + 2 1/2 T. sugar + 1 t. each: ginger, cardamom, cinnamon, whole peppercorns, whole cloves. Boil on and off for a handful of minutes in 1-1/2 c. milk + 1-1/2 c. water. Then strain into a mug and enjoy! Really. So good!

I’m picky about my fudge. There tends to be a gritty texture in a lot of the fudge world and I don’t much like it. This recipe I learned as a wee adolescent from my mom and it’s perfect. And super simple. (3/4 bag each: semi sweet + milk chocolate chips melted slowly with one can of sweetened condensed milk. Take off heat and add 1/2t. salt and 1t. vanilla. Spread into 8″ pan lined with parchment. Take out and cut with a pizza cutter. Store at room temperature.)

I’m go forward with reassurance that I’m not the only one making a mess of the kitchen this week! Happy Baking!

The past couple of weeks, this is a common sight. The red wing blackbird chatter is almost deafening. Then it goes silent.

And a few take off….

…then a bunch more….

…then they all fly off, over the house to the surrounding trees where they land and the bird chatter begins once again. Until a dog barks or a truck passes and it’s off to flight once more.