Hello, springtime!

I guess I’ve sort of had an unintentional hiatus here! I’ve still been baking and cooking, but more cooking than baking, and lots of old favorites instead of getting really experimental. There’s always a certain point of the winter (even a non-winter like the one we just had) that I get a bit stagnant, but now, with the arrival of spring, I am rejuvenated! 

If you follow me on Facebook, you know that I tried out one of those “artisan bread in five minutes a day” recipes. It was amazing, and probably one of the most successful bread attempts I’ve ever had. Posting about that is on my to-do list, and I bought a big jar of fresh yeast and I’ll hopefully come up with some great variations. 

I also am happy to report that I planted some vegetables today! I was considering not gardening at all this year because I’m scheduled for shoulder surgery next month. I’m going to be in a sling for quite a while, and I won’t be able to haul around my containers or sacks of soil or do anything really strenuous. But, I planted some small, manageable containers that I’ll be able to water with a watering can instead of a hose that I need to coil. 

I almost exclusively used seeds from the Hudson Valley Seed Library. I planted kale, a couple kinds of lettuce, the same peas & carrots as last year, spinach, green onions, and I started my sugar baby watermelons indoors. My littlest brother also told me that he suspects that the place he’s been growing pumpkins for the last few years is depleted in nutrients because they haven’t done crop rotation (they only grow pumpkins, and this revelation is undoubtedly because I bought him a copy of The Omnivore’s Dilemma for Kids), so we’re talking about planting some stuff over there to replenish the soil. 

I’ll be sure to post some pictures when my seedlings are up! 

Frosting for the Cause

 

Today, one of my recipes is being featured on Frosting for the Cause. I heard about this story months ago and got involved because I do know women who have died from cancer, and in my post there, I told the story of a lady who was really important to me.

I also posted a recipe for Pumpkin Cupcakes with Cinnamon Ginger Buttercream with a great packaging suggestion if you want to hand them out individually. My cupcakes are being donated to a local hospice that visits people in their homes.

I also made a donation to the National Breast Cancer Coalition. I picked this organization because they have put out a call to action to end breast cancer by 2020. They tell us that the numbers of women dying of breast cancer are nearly the same in 2011 as they were in 1991. Basically, they are saying that we can’t put an end to cancer with hope and pink products. We need people to take action.

It sounds impossible, but here are some other things we did in less than 10 years.

You can help this action by donating now like I did.

There are also a list of other ways to give here.

And most importantly, here is how you can take action yourself to really support breast cancer. Not by posting a Facebook status. Not by buying pink candies in October. But by doing something.

Thanks for reading today. There are lots of people with stories to tell and delicious recipes to share over on Frosting for the Cause, so check it out!

Happy Thanksgiving

My friend Bo and I had what we called a rogue Thanksgiving this year. We didn’t want to celebrate colonialism or massively slaughter turkeys or sit down at a table to be “grateful for our food” when societally, we don’t show a lot of thanks to farmers. We didn’t want family drama. We wanted to celebrate slow food and friendship, so we broke off from all the other obligatory celebrations that were happening, and we stayed home, listened to music, and cooked delicious things all day. It was leisurely and unpressured. We used almost exclusively local ingredients: stuffing made from local bread from Balthazar; Hudson River Valley apples (some were in the stuffing and some will be made into a magical dessert tomorrow); roasting veggies like swedes, beets, potatoes, and parsnips from a New Jersey farmer’s market, grown in NY and NJ, and red sweet potatoes that were actually an incredible purple color from the same market; and Jersey fresh cranberries.

Our menu included…

a wheat-meat roast
stuffing
butternut squash lasagna
roasting veggies mentioned above plus carrots and a TON of brussels sprouts
red sweet potato pie
steamed green beans
steamed asparagus
mashed potatoes
cranberry sauce
pumpkin pie

We adapted some of these recipes, which I’ll mention in another post with a bunch of pictures! But some of the pictures are on Bo’s camera and he’s tucked into bed, so I won’t disturb him for now. We also have a super awesome surprise dessert coming from the apples that we’ll make tomorrow. We didn’t get to it today, and since there wasn’t pressure from anyone, there wasn’t guilt, there wasn’t disappointment… we’ll just make it tomorrow instead.

We are grateful for the farmers who work so hard to grow us food, especially the ones struggling to maintain small family farms under ethical conditions. We’re grateful that we have access to farmers’ markets and community supported agriculture and co-ops, and that our access includes geographical location, transportation to the sites, and funds that we may choose to spend there. We’re grateful to have been been privileged enough to have met some of the farmers who have grown our vegetables, raised the chickens that laid our eggs, and started seedlings that we could grow in gardens of our own.

We’re grateful for friends, chosen family, and the people we love. We’re grateful for the ones we shared with today and will share with in upcoming days, and we’re grateful to those who understood why we wanted to do something different today, even if it meant breaking with tradition.

Why are you celebrating? How can you make your celebration even more positive? Is there something you can do to make your thanks more genuine with a small change? Remember, you don’t have to wait til next year!

Late August Garden Update

We’re about to get hit with a hurricane, which is kind of unusual for these parts. This morning, I went out and bought bottled water, and then immediately after that, I went to the garden. I took down my container plants from high ledges and set them in protected alcoves and under the eaves of the house, hoping that they wouldn’t be trashed from the storm.

There’s some great stuff happening out in the garden. The accidental tomatillos are growing wildly out of control. There are so many that the fruit just falls to the ground if we don’t go out to collect it often enough, and we’ve already given some away to multiple neighbors. This morning I went and picked as many of the ripe and nearly ripe fruits as I could, realizing that the strong winds of the storm would likely knock them off the plant.

My second sowing of broccoli is up and a few inches tall, but the small green cabbage caterpillars have been hard at work eating the leaves away. I thought I’d brushed away all the eggs that had been laid by the evil cabbage moth, but I must have missed some, as a fat caterpillar sat on a holey broccoli leaf today.

The second sowing of peas is up, too. Only a few of the very first ones that I planted came up, so I resowed a week or two after that. The very first ones have some peas forming on them already, and the others are a few inches tall and will flower soon. After their predecessors drowned so terribly in the spring, I’ve tried very hard to keep them under cover during heavy storms. The lettuce planted around the same time is also coming up nicely, though it seems that one variety is beating out the others.

I’ve got about three of these little sugar baby watermelons growing…

And we harvested a handful of ears of corn! (Before the squirrels got to it, unlike last year!)

Look how yellow it is on the inside!

I also have a burgundy bean plant climbing right up in this container…

And apparently, one of them that I planted in the yard did survive! Check out these awesome beans!

They’re this deep purple on the outside, and bright green on the inside, just like some of the peppers that we get from Farmer Rich.

Speaking of peppers from Farmer Rich, we got one pepper plant from him, and it’s fruiting now, too. If I recall, it’s supposed to turn to an orange-ish color, so they’re not quite ready to pick yet.

And finally, the pumpkins. The only variety that is really thriving is the Jack-Be-Little variety, both in the container and in the ground, and I’m attributing this to the fact that I started all of them in a container and then transplanted them. The ones in the container are much too large for the container but seem to be doing ok.

There’s that little pumpkin starting!

Sweet relief for fall planting…

It has been damn hot in the NYC area this past week (well, from what I hear, it’s been hot in a lot of places), and it actually reached triple digits this past weekend. We had to shuffle locations around for the birthday party that I made Aunt Sassy Cake for so that we could be at a house with air conditioning in the common areas, not wanting our friends to wilt away in the backyard heat. (This worked out splendidly as the change of venue meant we got to play one of my favorite board games, Scattergories!)

Anyway, Tuesday, the heat broke, and it went from being 103*F on Friday to a practically chilly in comparison 82*F. I was up early Tuesday morning, too, due to the aforementioned trouble sleeping Monday night. I was out of bed at 8 a.m., which is fairly unusual for me unless I have someplace to be, but that meant that it was downright nice outside. I quickly got a chore or two out of the way so I could head out to the garden.

Most varieties of pumpkins (except for the reeeeallly huge ones) need 90-100 days til maturity, but that means that they need to be planted between July 23rd and August 2nd to be perfect for Halloween, and between July 23rd and August 2nd, it is damn hot. It’s been so hot, in fact, that I wondered if I’d even be able to get my pumpkins planted, besides the container of Jack-Be-Littles that I planted one cooled off evening.

This morning, however, was glorious. I even perhaps went a bit overboard. I planted Luminas, which have a ghostly white skin. I planted Long Island Cheese Pumpkins (which are really cool looking, google them if you’ve never seen one!). I transplanted some of the Jack-Be-Littles from the container to the ground because I had a higher germination rate than I’d expected. And, finally, just for hahahs, I planted Giant pumpkins. Last year I also planted multiple varieties of pumpkins (Giant, Sugar, and Lumina), but our pesky groundhog frenemy ate so much of them that there was absolutely no success. This year, we’ve barely seen him, so I’m hoping that he’s found someone else’s yard to enjoy and that I’ll get a whole mess of pumpkins.

After the furious pumpkin planting was complete, I started another round of broccoli and one little burgundy bean container. The burgundy and soy beans that I started earlier this year fell victim to another member of the household not looking at the markers carefully enough. I’ve been seeing the burgundy beans at farmers markets, and I’d just love to have some, even just a few! As for the broccoli, this will be my third try. Last time was almost successful, but still not quite. Perhaps this time I’ll get lucky!

Lettuce was re-sown on the 18th, and carrots were harvested and re-sown on the 20th. Look how beautiful they were! They’re a variety called Parisian carrots, which are a short variety very well suited for container growing, so yes, they’re meant to be that size/shape!

Next up: get some more containers prepared so I can get some kale started for the fall. Anyone else doing a fall garden?

This is probably the last chance I’ll have to remind you that you should enter to win a gift certificate to Measuring Spoons on Etsy, which has neat stuff like baking-related handmade cards and soon, some pretty delicious baking mixes. So, check it out!

Made it out to the garden this evening…

Just a quick post to say that I did, indeed, make it out to the garden this evening once everything had cooled off a bit. I sowed Jack-Be-Little pumpkins in a container with a trellis (this could be awesome or a total fail). I also re-sowed peas and lettuce, trying to get things going again for the fall. Still more to do with that, but I’ve got to set up another container…

In Solidarity with Julie, because Oak Park Hates Veggies

I’ve been meaning to post about my garden for several days now, but first, I want to talk about something important.

In my life, I’ve been pretty active in social justice, but this blog isn’t so much about that. Sure, there’s no way to completely separate “Life” and “Activist,” but for the most part, I don’t get super political on here.

Yesterday, though, I heard about something that really pissed me off, and I thought it was important enough to share with you all.

In Michigan, in a place called Oak Park, there’s a woman called Julie who has a lovely family and a lovely vegetable garden that she started with her husband and kids in her front yard after a tree (planted by the city, mind you) broke a sewer pipe and did a lot of damage to their yard. Instead of just planting grass, they decided to make the space useful, and planted veggies in some tidy raised beds.

The problem -gasp- is that this all transpired in the front yard!

Now, Julie and her family have been through all kinds of drama with the city, where a vague ordinance was cited… and, [SHAME ON YOU, OAK PARK!], the city is actually taking her to court over this matter.

That’s right. Instead of fighting violent crime or theft or spending the money on budgets that have already been cut (I know around here, and in many places around the country, libraries and education and sports programs and art&music programs are suffering, just to name a few), they are taking Julie to court, and she is facing 93 days in jail. OVER VEGETABLES IN HER FRONT YARD.

Now, historically, we know that in times of economic depression, the Grow-Your-Own Movement rises again. And, in the present, we know that kids and adults alike don’t get enough exercise, time outdoors, or vegetables. So why the hell is this such a big deal?

You can read more about it on Julie’s blog, Oak Park Hates Veggies, and I really encourage you to take a minute to write to the City of Oak Park Planner, Kevin Rulkowski, [Here's the contact info - go ahead and CC the Mayor, who is on that page, too]. If you only have two seconds, there’s a petition to sign, and if you happen to be flush, you can contribute to her Legal Defense Fund. Stand with me in solidarity of Julie and in defense of the Grow-Your-Own Movement.

———————————————————————

Onto news of my garden. I was going to go out today to plant my pumpkins, but dang, it’s hot! 98* today. Perhaps this evening it will be tolerable, but now, at 1pm, there’s no way I’m heading out there.

Our brussels sprouts are getting bigger by the day (they’ve even grown since this photo):

Our Tom Thumb Lettuce came up and was delicious! Some of it’s coming back, but I need to resow, also, since all lettuce bolts eventually.

We thought for a little while that our broccoli was going to work out, as it turned into broccoli:

…but then it flowered (which was pretty cool, though). What can I say? No luck with broccoli so far. I’m going to resow that, too, for the fall.

The carrots are turning into carrots…

They’re bigger than this now, much wider around… now they just need to grow longer.

Our corn is coming up, though it’s in a different place this year and I think it’s less sunny there, as it’s not quite as tall as it was last year and it’s tasseling already. Hopefully it still works out. Our eggplants and peppers are flowering, with one or two eggplants trying to start, but no serious fruit yet.

And did I mention about our surprise plants?

We had three tomato-like plants growing up where I’d spread the compost and was trying to grow kale. The tomato-like plants totally took over the kale, and although I wasn’t planning to grow tomatoes, they looked so darn healthy, that I figured, why not? I’ll grow tomatoes, or whatever.

Well, whatever, it was, because…

…they started fruiting this week, and they are clearly tomatillos! That means the seeds were from our CSA. I’m just tickled. Two out of the three are tomatillos, and one is a tomato of undetermined origin, so we’re just going to have to wait a little longer for that.

Anyone have a fabulous salsa recipe? I’m going to have a LOT of tomatillos.

Gorgeous weather for gardening.

The weather in the tri-state area has been just gorgeous lately. We spent most of the weekend sitting outside on the back deck, enjoying the greenery that has finally decided to appear on the trees (as well as getting a nosefull of pollen!).

The container garden that I’ve started is mostly doing quite well. The kohlrabi can’t decide whether it wants to live or die. The lettuce and spinach did die while I was in New Orleans, but I resowed it and hopefully we’ll have that come up. All of the tiny tiny seedlings that were in the trays inside didn’t make it (due, it would seem, to someone in the house, I won’t name names, wanting to be helpful and watering a bit too much). But, just about everything did ok outside, so I haven’t had to replace much. The only thing I really had a hard time with was the peppers, and I’ve started them outside again this week.

The carrots are doing wonderfully. And take a look at the broccoli and peas! Can you believe it?

Also, in the short week that I was in New Orleans, my apple tree (that looked little more than a skinny stick in a bucket of dirt when I left) grew a whole bunch of leaves! Check it out!

It’s warming up enough here to start sowing some stuff directly into the ground. We’re still not sure what our plans are for moving, but since we live with my partner’s mom, who also likes gardening, we can always just leave her a yummy harvest if we find a great apartment mid-summer. So, Sunday, I put in a short row of soy beans and a short row of royal burgundy bush beans.

We started talking about plans for a triangular trellis for the sugar baby watermelons, which I started inside today. Another summer treat we’ll have is corn. Today, I sowed about a 3.5′x3.5′ patch (I know that Charlie is going to tell me that I’m way off in my estimate, since I’m terrible at them) of corn. I have space on either side of the patch to do more corn, too. One of the sections needs to be cleared of forget-me-nots and weeds, and the other is ready to go. I’m planning to plant the corn in succession so that we don’t have a glut all at once. So, in two or three weeks, I should be ready to plant the next patch of corn. I may also plant my pumpkins over there, both because there would be room for them to vine and because they give important nutrients to the corn. We’ll see – it’s early for that.

I actually planted a handful of flowers, too. Usually I stick to veggies, but I had a wildflower mix that I decided to toss in a window box, and I’d gotten some painted daisy seeds from the seed library. I was planning to plant them in a pair of old polka-dotted rain boots, but they’re MIA at the moment, so I started them in pots that would set just about properly in the boots, and I’ll look a little harder for the boots in the next few weeks.

One last funny note about the garden. As you might have read, we had some hoop houses to keep the kale warm when it was very chilly. Well, I uncovered the hoops when I got home from NOLA, and the kale was doing ok, but I had some really healthy looking tomato plants, perfectly spaced out! It was pretty funny. I used compost to get that area going, so there must have been a few seeds that snuck in that our wormies didn’t process. They look so healthy that I think I’ll let them grow! With any luck, they’re seeds from the heirloom tomatoes we get in our CSA share.

A container apple tree!

Did you know that you can grow apple trees in containers? I found this out in a book sometime during the last year, and ever since then, I have been dead set on getting one. They have to be planted on a certain rootstock so that they don’t accidentally get to be 15 feet tall or something, but if you buy the right variety, and it’s planted on a rootstock that is fairly small (these are called “dwarf” trees), you can get a fair amount of fruit from a container apple tree.

I’ve been doing a lot of research on it, and I’ve gone back and forth on what variety to buy. Apples that are best for eating, or for cooking? What about their storage qualities? It should be a tree that’s fairly disease resistant, and one that’s partially self-fertile, since otherwise, I’d need to have multiple trees in order to get it pollinated. Maybe I was asking too much…

And then, it struck me. When I lived in England, I used to go to a fruit stand in Borough Market in Southeast London, and there, I had the best apples I have ever tasted in my life. They were a beautiful russeted color, with a sandy skin like a pear instead of a shiny skin, and the taste was unlike any grocery store apple I’d ever had in the USA. In fact, I’d never seen an apple like that in a store in the USA.

Here’s a photo of them that I took when I was living in London.

I wanted to grow those apples.

Problem was, I wasn’t quite sure what those apples were.

I knew the name of the farm in Kent, a place that folks like to call the Garden of England. They have an email form on their website, but I couldn’t get it to work!

“Would it be ridiculous if I were to call England to try to find out about this apple tree?” I asked Charlie one day.

“Yes,” he said.

“But I have Skype credit,” I told him.

“Ok,” he shrugged.

And so I called and left a voicemail with my email address, and a very sweet person called Joyce emailed me. “Lovely of you to think of our juice when you are so far away!” she wrote.

She told me that they grow Egremont Russets, which they find to be lovely for both juice and eating, and I must agree.

I then began my hunt for an Egremont Russet tree, but as I mentioned, Russeted apples aren’t very popular in the USA. While I did find a place or two that carried them, they were not only sold out for this season, but they only had them on a larger rootstock, meaning a tree much larger than I could manage in a container.

I sent an email to Orange Pippen Trees, asking if they might have it on a smaller rootstock next year. [Due to when you're supposed to plant apple trees, they generally ship in springtime only.] I got another kind email back, this time from Richard, who told me that they only did the Egremont Russets on the larger rootstocks, but he recommended a St. Edmund’s Russet, which will be available on a B9 rootstock. It’s another English Russet variety, he told me, that is very similar. He offered to set up a reservation for me for next year.

The St. Edmund’s Russet is partially self-fertile, but apple trees that are partially self-fertile tend to produce more if they have another tree around. This left me wondering… should I get a second tree?

I’d been considering the really, really small apple trees that only grow to be a few feet tall. Check out this video from Gurney’s…

A tree that tiny would be manageable (it’s barely the size of some houseplants!) and it would help me get a better crop on the Russet, which is what I really, really want. These dwarf trees tend to be a little more expensive (I’ve shopped around quite a bit), but Gurney’s is having a sale for $25 off a $50 order, so last night, I took the plunge and bought one. I figured it would also be good for me to get acquainted with caring for an apple tree in a container before the one that I’m really jonesin’ for arrives.

I ordered the Honeycrisp Apple Lil’ Big Tree Deluxe. (I got a pack of Jack-Be-Little Pumpkin Seeds to push the order over $50 to qualify for the coupon.) I love getting honeycrisp apples from the grocery store, and I can’t wait to taste them from my own backyard (even though it will be a long wait until I can taste them!). Orange Pippen’s site has a great feature that lets you make sure that the trees you’re getting are good pollinators for each other, and that helped me choose Honeycrisp as a variety.

The tree should arrive in April or May, and I’ll be sure to post pictures when it gets here! I’ll have to wait til next year for the St. Edmund’s Russet, but that should give my little guy a bit of time to get settled, grow, and get strong.

How exciting is this??

Getting excited for gardening.

I know that there’s approximately two feet of snow on the ground, but I’m getting excited for gardening already. And, quite honestly, if you’re in my area (zone 6) and you’re planning to grow some veggies that enjoy cooler weather, like kale, cabbage, broccoli, and brussels sprouts, it’s time to start ordering seeds! If you’ll be doing indoor starts like I am, it’s actually going to be time to begin those for the cool weather veggies very soon.

One thing that’s going to be different about the way I garden this year is that I’ll primarily be doing container gardening instead of planting things directly in the ground. This is because we’ll likely be moving sometime during the growing season, and I don’t want to give up gardening entirely. I’m not sure when we’ll be moving, or if the space we’ll be moving to will have a garden, or access to a community garden, or if I’ll just be able to have some containers, but having containers will be my bare minimum, so I figure I’ll be able to take them along.

Last year some of my big problems with my garden were timing (I started much too late) and pests, particularly a groundhog, and I think that will be alleviated a bit by planting in containers and keeping them in areas where he’s not comfortable going, like our deck. I need to get my hands on some containers, so if any of my buddies who read this have some that they’re not planning to use, I’d love it!

Here’s the design I came up with for my containers. (Yeah, I made a cute little sketch… sometimes I miss art school, ok?)

In case that’s illegible, or you’re a person with a visual impairment, it’s a picture of a rubbermaid container. I’ll be drilling holes in the bottom (or taking someone’s that they don’t want anymore because it has a crack in the bottom) so that it has drainage. The back side of it has chickenwire that is supported with simple wood poles on either end, and that will be my trellis for things like peas and beans! I’ll also have a thin pipe that will go to the bottom of the container that I’ll water the plants through, since from what I’ve read, if you water from the bottom, the roots are more likely to grow down instead of spreading out, which is really ideal for small spaces like container plants. Pretty neat, right? Is there anything I’m forgetting or that you can think of to improve about it?

I got my seeds this year from a really incredible local source. I joined the Hudson Valley Seed Library, and when you join, you get 10 free packs of seeds. I chose almost all things that can go in containers in case we move (one or two things can’t really, but I couldn’t resist).

Here’s a picture of all my seed packets laid out. Some of them are “garden packs” from responsible wholesalers, “art packs” that have beautiful designs by New York artists, and “library packs,” which have seeds grown right here in the Hudson Valley by small, sustainable farms. I can even send some seeds back that I’ve saved after my harvest this year!

Here’s what I got:

• Royal Burgandy Bush Beans

• Shirofumi Edamame Soybeans

• Di Ciccio Broccoli

• Parisian Carrots

• Forest Green Parsley

• Vates Blue Curled Kale

• Dinokale

• Tom Thumb Lettuce

• Sugar Ann Snap Pea

• Doe Hill Peppers

• Sugar Baby Watermelon

• Long Island Cheese Pumpkin (Google a picture of these, they’re cute)

I also have Bloomsdale Spinach and Purple Vienna Kohlrabi, and a Painted Daisy Art Pack that I already ordered from them, as well as the a beautiful variety Radish Art Pack that they sent to people who signed up for membership. :)

Cool weather growing starts sooner than you’d think! I’m also thinking of buying a fruit tree, like an apple tree, to keep in a container, but I’m working on finding the right orchard and the right variety (dwarf, self-pollinating, with apples that are versatile and/or store well). So, lots of research is going into that. I know that I won’t get fruit from it right away, but it’s a long-term investment that I’m happy to make. And if, for some reason, I were to move someplace that apples didn’t do well, or I absolutely couldn’t live someplace where I had space for a dwarf container tree on a balcony, it’s the type of thing that I’d be happy giving to a good home… I mean, wouldn’t you be delighted to get a tiny apple tree in a pot as a gift?

Anyone else thinking about gardening yet? What zone are you in? What are you going to grow?

Traditional Pumpkin Pie

I should have posted this around Thanksgiving, but of course, it was a busy time. I know that some folks like to have pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving, too, so hopefully this will be a handy recipe to have around. It is super easy and really delicious. Not too sweet, as usual, great texture, and lots of flavor. This one is based off the King Arthur Flour Guaranteed Pumpkin Pie recipe with a handful of changes.

Ingredients

1 graham cracker crust (I used the store bought kind)
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
2 tablespoons ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
3 large eggs, beaten
2 cups (or one 15-ounce can) pumpkin purée.
1 can evaporated milk

Instructions

In a large bowl, combine the brown sugar, flour, salt, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves. Whisk them together.

In a separate bowl, beat together the eggs, pumpkin purée, and evaporated milk.

Slowly add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients, mixing thoroughly. (King Arthur actually suggests covering this mixture and refrigerating overnight for better flavor, but I didn’t have time for that.)

Preheat the oven to 400*F.

Pour the mixture into your graham cracker crust.

Bake for 40-50 minutes. Most recipes call for you to take the pie out a bit wobbly in the center, but that has never worked for me. This time, we left it in until it wasn’t wobbly, and it was perfect.

Season Wrap Up

I’ve pretty much thrown in the towel in terms of my garden for the fall. I got a lot busier than expected (which is great! I’m taking an art class and a yoga class!) and the weather has been really weird. It’s hot, then it’s cold, it’s dry, then it rains buckets. Sure, these are things that farmers have to contend with, but even the farmers I know have said that it’s been a rough season in some ways.

A few weeks ago it seemed like our groundhog friend was gone for the year. They tend to have a summer home (under our shed) and a winter home, and in September, ours wasn’t appearing in our yard multiple times a day. I thought again about planting some greens like spinach and kale, but being busy, then the weather, and then having a flare of my fibromyalgia decided for me that it would not be so.

Due to the groundhog’s frantic eating of everything, our pumpkins never really got anywhere. They’re still flowering (we’re thinking about eating the squash blossoms) but it’s obviously too late for them to make pumpkins.

Let me run down the other things I’ve planted and whether or not it was successful.

Broccoli: Total fail. I planted it in a spot that I thought would be sunny enough, and it was not sunny enough. They looked a bit like frankenstein broccoli because of all the twisting and turning they did to try to get to the sun.

Peas: Died in the ridiculous temperatures.

Honeydew: Made several melons, though we had a hard time figuring out what the right time to harvest them was.

Container Kale: Bolted.

Watermelon: SUCESS! We ate one of them on a camping trip. I couldn’t believe it.

(That’s my partner, Charlie, by the way… I’m not sure if he’s ever appeared in photos on here!)

Corn: It was majestic. But the squirrels ate most of it before we did. It was a sight to see.

Kohlrabi: Another winner. Tasted great! I already bought some seeds to try purple kohlrabi early next year.

Eggplant: As you might remember, these were not from seed, they were seedlings from Farmer Rich. They were awesome! They produced all summer (we might even get another one or two small ones out of it) and we’ve had some delicious dinners from them. I’ve got more in the freezer, too.

Carrots: The jury is still out on these. Not sure if they’re really doing what they’re supposed to underground. We’ll try them again next year if they don’t work out.

Herb garden: It was awesome! I’ve been drying bits of the herbs to save for the winter.

Scallions: Better late than never. They are beautiful – not quite as big as the ones Farmer Rich sends us, but still delicious.

And one final surprise…

I planted that winter squash a while back, and then we had a heat wave, and it was really dry, and it just looked dead. It was only about six inches tall, and it was just totally flopped over and looked un-saveable. I ignored it, thinking it was dead.

Last week, I looked out the window, and lo and behold… it was flowering!

I raced outside and not only was it flowering, but it was fruiting!!!

So, we’ll see how that turns out. Hopefully we’ll get some squash out of it!

Autumn Bars (with Maple, Pumpkin, & Apple)

Edit: Hi, and welcome to all you folks who found me from the Earth Balance Facebook page or tweet! I try to explain in most of my recipes where substitutions can be made, and I’ve got a bunch of recipes that are simply vegan on their own… click the vegan tag on the right to see more. :) Thanks for stopping by!

I’m trying to go backwards and work forwards with the posts that I “owe,” but this one had to be shared, and as quickly as damn possible.

Last weekend, we were headed up to a potluck in Massachusetts. It was the second annual Friendsgiving – a way to kick off the holiday season with our chosen families. Part of me wanted to make something incredible and savory, and part of me knew that others would be disappointed if I didn’t bring something sweet.

I’ve been wanting for a while to adapt my Pumpkin Cupcakes with Maple Cream Cheese Frosting to be vegan. Yes, there is vegan “cream cheese” and yes, there is vegan “cream cheese frosting,” though I figured I’d take it one step at a time. I’ve made plenty of wonderful vegan pumpkin sweet breads before, since pumpkin is a wonderful component of vegan baking. I wanted to really get more of a cake going, though, something lighter. I knew there would be at least one vegan person at the potluck, if not several more, so this was my chance to develop the vegan pumpkin cake recipe.

But not as cupcakes. No, something far more brilliant. You see, recently, there was a really amazing looking Peaches & Cream Bars recipe from Sydney at The Crepes of Wrath. Sydney was wrapping up summer with a beautiful layered bar of cake, thinly sliced peaches, a bit more cake to hold it all together, but little enough so that the peaches showed through, and it was all topped off with a glaze.

I wanted to make this recipe. I still want to make this recipe. But, in our house, the seasonal food trend has long turned from peaches or nectarines on to apples, so I figured I’d try to make this lovely thing with apples or pears. Then, I had my own stroke of genius, and I decided to keep Sydney’s structure and switch it to a completely fall adaptation: pumpkin cake, sliced apples… and a maple sugar glaze. My friend Katrina helped me with the baking and assembly, and at the last minute, I decided to swirl some Overflow Apple Butter into the cake batter before putting the apple slices down. It was an awesome autumny spice addition.

To answer a few questions I had when I was first gazing at this recipe, mine came out kind of like a cakey brownie consistency… It could have been eaten with a fork, but most certainly was picked up and eaten with fingers, as well! Yum. My brother met us at the potluck, and he loves my pumpkin anything, so he dug in as soon as I opened the container.

Sydney, you wait for it… I may try this again with your cake (no pumpkin), cardamom, cinnamon, and pears.

Ingredients

1/2 cup earth balance
1/2 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
3 tablespoons natural sugar
3 tablespoons flax + 6 tbsp warm water
1 cup cake flour
1 cup all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoons baking soda
2 tablespoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
2 teaspoons ground nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup soy milk
1 1/4 cups pumpkin puree
1/2 teaspoon vanilla paste
3 small apples, sliced thin
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1/4 cup apple butter (optional)

Maple Glaze

1 tablespoon earth balance, melted
1/3 cup confectioners sugar, sifted
1/4 cup maple sugar
2 tablespoons maple syrup
1 teaspoon cinnamon

Directions

Float your sliced apples in some water & lemon juice while you wait. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a 13×9 pan with parchment paper (Sydney uses a jelly roll pan/cookie sheet, so hers are a bit thinner).

In your stand mixer (or a large bowl with your bad ass muscles), cream together the Earth Balance, brown sugar, and natural sugar until fluffy. In a separate small bowl, combine the milled flax seed and warm water. Stir together until it thickens, then mix into the sugar. Add the vanilla paste and the pumpkin. Stir well.

In a separate bowl, stir the cake flour, all purpose flour, baking powder, baking soda, ginger, nutmeg, cloves, and salt together. Add this to the pumpkin mixture, alternating with the soy milk, until both are fully mixed in.

Spread 3/4 of the batters into the prepared pan. Swirl the apple butter into batter.

Drain the apples. If desired, coat with an additional bit of maple sugar. Line up the apples in rows along the top of the batter.

Drop the remaining batter in globs over the apples and bake for about 25-30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean and the bars are firm.

Let the bars cool. Stir together the ingredients for the glaze (Earth Balance, confectioners sugar, maple sugar, maple syrup, and cinnamon). Drizzle over the bars and let harden before cutting.

Fruiting summer crops while planning for fall.

Let me start this post by saying that it was recently my birthday, and my awesome partner bought me a new set of bamboo gardening gloves. They’re so great. I love them because the arthritis in my hands makes a lot of gloves feel uncomfortable, and I already have limited dexterity at times, so really bulky gloves make movement very difficult. These gloves are thin and the fabric is soft, which makes my fibromyalgia happy, since my overactive nervous system is very sensitive to rough things.

These are the nifty gloves…

Now, onto the garden. My knee is definitely not healed, and while I’m off crutches, I’m still hobbling around on a cane most of the time unless it’s a really short distance. I just couldn’t stand to not plant my sugar pumpkins, though, so I decided that I’d go outside today to get them in the ground. I can’t bend my knee very well and I definitely can’t kneel, so I brought a beach blanket type thing outside and set it up next to the area where I was going to work. Then, even more slowly than usual, I dragged all my supplies over to where I’d be working. Instead of standing to till the soil like I usually do, I used a short cultivator and was able to still get the work done fairly quickly. There were awkward moments, sure, and I definitely was in a bit more pain than I would have liked, but I’m thrilled that I got some planting done.

Here’s a tour around the garden. Nearly everything is either flowering or fruiting, and it’s pretty awesome.

The eggplants, as I’ve mentioned before, were seedlings from our CSA. They’ve been doing wonderfully and at least six eggplants have started to take shape, with more flowers closing and looking like they’re going to be eggplants. I’m hoping to serve grilled eggplant at a BBQ this weekend and impress our guests!

This kohlrabi might be one of our most successful plants so far. It’s just about ready to harvest, and we started it from seed!

I really thought my shelling peas were a lost cause. They weren’t doing well, they weren’t climbing up in the three sisters plot, and they just looked kind of ratty. Lo and behold, however, I straightened this guy out and tried to help him back onto a stake, and he was flowering! I may try peas again for the fall, but in containers so that I have a bit more control over them.

These crazy vines are all are all a result of only two honeydew plants. (They end about halfway down the row, and that’s where the kohlrabi begins.)

It looks like this flower has closed up and is trying to start a honeydew!

This next one I just can’t get over. Our watermelon vines are growing all over, though they don’t have nearly as many flowers as the honeydews. This is so freakin’ adorable, though, and you can totally tell that it is a tiny, tiny watermelon!

And finally, my pride and joy: my corn. It got pretty trashed in a terrible thunderstorm we had the other night with winds up to 60mph, and I didn’t think any of it was going to survive. We watched out the window as stalks just got smashed down. We picked the stalks back up a few days ago, though, and a few of them didn’t get wrecked to begin with… and it’s starting to get somewhere! I believe “tassling” is the correct term.

It is so incredible watching all this stuff grow.

I got started on my plans for my fall garden today, too. Sugar pumpkins have been a high priority, since, well… they were the first thing I tried to grow, and that was a year ago! I planted late last year, though, and we had an early frost, so I wasn’t successful. I’m actually a bit late again this year with them because of my knee injury, but our vining plants have been growing like crazy because of the heat, so with any luck, they’ll catch up just fine.

I got the sugar pumpkins in the ground today, and I evaluated the seeds that I had available for what would be good to plant for a fall harvest. Some crops, like kale, are even more delicious in the fall, since the cold weather makes them a bit sweeter.

Kale is definitely on my list of things to plant, and I’ve been looking forward to planting it (and Charlie’s been looking forward to eating it!). I think I’ll also try to do some lettuce, though I don’t remember exactly what variety I have seeds for. I’m going to put that in where the kohlrabi is now, as that is just about ready to be harvested. I have plans for a small area of cabbage (maybe 3 plants) and a small area of winter squash.

The winter squash that I have is a bit of an experiment, really. It’s called Butterbush, and it’s a space-saving variety. It’s a vining plant, but it’s compact and will take up about a quarter of the space of regular vining squash. I’m particularly interested to see how this goes because, as you can see, our vining plants got really out of control this year, so I might be interested to try some of the compact varieties of melons next year. As I may have mentioned, though, the seeds that I have were seeds that I bought when a Cost Cutters was going out of business, and the seed packets were 20 packs for $1! I just bought whatever varieties they had that I knew we would eat, and that’s what I’ve been growing.

Spinach! It just occurred to me. Spinach is what I’m missing. I don’t think I have any seeds. Perhaps I’ll go out and buy some. I have one row of unplanned space (plus whatever frees up when these monstrous melons finish), so I’ll be able to stick some in there.

Next on my list? Figuring out how to get that pesky groundhog that’s been eating everything to leave my veggies alone!

My knee injury is ruining my gardening time!

I haven’t posted in a bit, particularly about the garden, and that’s because I had a pretty terrible fall about ten days ago. I tripped outside of Charlie’s house and, if you’ll excuse the expression, ate shit. Pretty much my entire weight went on my [already arthritic, twice operated on] left knee, so Charlie has been holding down the fort with the garden and we’ve been eating miscellaneous take out and quick meals. (In case you’re wondering, I’m currently in physical therapy for a subluxation of my patella, and they’re going to decide if I need surgery for my meniscus tear in a few weeks.)

The good news is that the garden is at the point where it mostly just needs watering. The plants are big enough that they’re battling it out against the weeds (I’m sure there’s some weeding to be done, but it’s not as concerning as when the seedlings were tiny). Charlie’s been checking to make sure that the white cabbage moths leave our broccoli and kohlrabi alone, and those are doing much better.

Here’s the word of mouth report, passed on from Charlie, and based on what I can see through the window! (I’m on crutches and can’t really make it down to the garden.) Our pumpkins are growing like crazy already, which is awesome. Both our honeydew and our watermelons are spreading out and have flowers on them!

Our corn is getting very tall. Last night we had our volunteer shift for our CSA, and our farmer was there. We had a nice chat about what we were growing and how we were doing with it (I loved it when he said it sounded like we have our own little farm going on!). He said that the saying is that corn should be “Knee high by the fourth of July” and ours is definitely that tall, so it seems like that is right on track!

Are you ready for the most exciting part?

We have an eggplant!

The first actual crop of the season is here and growing besides the blueberries. This photo was taken on the first day that Charlie noticed it, which was taken a few days ago, so it may be even bigger by now, assuming that some greedy animal didn’t steal it. The eggplants are a bit ahead of the game because when we got them, they were giant seedlings from Farmer Rich, but hopefully any day now, we’ll have fruit developing on the things we started from seed!