This was my first shot at Mark Bittman’s Almost No Work Whole Grain Bread. I rolled it in chopped up walnuts, fennel seeds, anise seeds, black caraway seeds, poppy seeds, sunflower seeds and coarse salt before I baked it. I liked the texture of the bread, but it tasted a little salty. Eventually I figured out that I like it with only teaspoon of salt in the main recipe, and I like to add a tablespoon of honey.
I was looking at the ingredient list for one of my favorite herbal teas (or tisanes), and I was thinking I bet I could make something that tastes a lot like this without having to waste all this packaging. I was right. Here’s what I’ve been doing most mornings for the last few weeks:
I get out my mortar and pestle and I put in…
dried tangerine peel from a tree in my back yard,
a cacao bean,
a couple of black peppercorns,
a clove,
some cinnamon stick,
a slice of ginger,
a pinch of anise seed,
a pinch of fennel seed,
and a pinch of cardamom.
I crush it.
I pour it in a cup and added a dash of cayenne pepper.
If you don’t want large particles in the bottom of your tea, you can use a tea strainer. Some days I do. Some days I don’t.
I steep it in boiling water.
After a few minutes, it’s ready.
If you like, you can add more boiling water and make a second glass of tea with the same set of ingredients. It will be a little milder, but it’s still good.
This is my second Cinderella pumpkin. It’s smaller and less pancake shaped than its predecessor.
I am drying the seeds from the first pumpkin and saving them for next year.
Last week I got super local, super fresh grapefruit through VeggieTrader, a website to help people to trade homegrown produce. The person offering them let us pick them from the tree ourselves.
One of the red rib dandelion-like chicories in the back yard is blooming.
The back yard tree is covered in baby avocados.
One of the Cinderella pumpkins started out growing upside down. I left it that way for a long time, and it grew flat and thin, like a pancake.
I have a Lebanese light green summer squash growing, which I should probably pick and eat . . .
. . . and one little Japanese eggplant.
This is my first year growing pumpkins. These are Rouge Vif D’Etampes Pumpkins (aka Cinderella pumpkins). They are supposed to grow up to 30 pounds. I took my kitchen scale outside to see how this one was coming along, and it was off the scale. The scale only goes up to six pounds, though. It’s about ten inches wide at its widest point.
These are creasy greens. They’re growing under the orange tree out back — under the outer edges of its canopy. They taste peppery and spicy.
I bought the seeds from Bountiful Gardens.
Tomatoes ripening (Larger image)
I planted all of my tomatoes from seed this year. I have between twenty and thirty plants growing. I thought I would remember which seeds I planted where. Next year I am going to mark them.