Recipe's from Alexandra's Kitchen & Marcella Hazen

Spent a furious afternoon in the kitchen baking Ernie's birthday request. It was fun and the end result was perfect as it always is when I use recipes from Alexandra's kitchen. She had suggested Marcella Hazen's tomato sauce recipe on Pizza Margherita with delicious results.
For me it was two new recipes but regretfully the kitchen sink showed that I have not perfected the execution of it. Notwithstanding that the results were great.
My section of the Pizza Margherita had anchovies and Ernie's pizza and a half had the Lepori Italian Sausage. We were both happy! The Nectarine pizza was also the best dessert I have eaten and it only had 2 tsp. of sugar in the bread dough. If you follow the Alexandra's kitchen link you can find the recipes. I didn't have time to make the home--made ricotta so I used mozzarella for both pizzas. You can make the tomato sauce while you are making the dough. I picked the basil from my garden and the tomatoes also from the garden. I used the "freeze the tomatoes" suggestion to peel the tomatoes. It was a breeze in this hot Sacramento summer. Have fun cooking.

Just a quick note - just about as quick as this summer is passing. The last few weeks have been full of reunions and short trips. Our H.S. classmates who live in Texas and who we spent a week with in Jan. of this year came and spent a week with us. It was a fun time!
Then E. & I & grandaughter took a few days to go to Gold Beach, Oregon to take the Rogue River Jet boat trip up the Rogue River for 80 miles. Our grand daughter loved the ride. From there we went to Ashland and saw the Pirates of Penzance in the Elizabethan Theater. We ended the visit by seeing a colleague of mine from the teaching days.
The telephone booth pictured at the right is in the Columbia Hotel, a great place to stay while going to the plays in Ashland. Couldn't resist taking a look at a place we stayed at 10 yrs. running.

Coming up for air!

Summer is beginning for me. The weather is finally cooperating, the garden is showing signs of vegetables, classes are finalizing and I'm feeling very light. We took off for a 3 day get-away to Fort Bragg/ Mendocino a couple of weeks ago and it was wonderful. I love the ride to the coast. Our little car(stick shift) is like driving a sports car (which it isn't) and it took the curves so well. The mountain country was lush, drove through some coast redwoods, saw vineyards in the rain on the way back. The weather on the coast was perfect. I walked the headlands and took beaucoup pictures of wildflowers. I only know the name of one of them and hope to research the names of the others. Maybe I'll get around to posting them & someone will recognize them.
I'm finishing up a knitting project, reading a new blog, following up on 2 favorite food blogs and even cooking some new dishes.

Hurray for summer!


What is my name?

Persimmons 2010

Hi,
It's persimmon time again and we had a wealth of persimmons this year. Last year I dried our neighbor's persimmons but this year she had none and we were loaded. Both of us have the Fuyu variety but she has the small, flat bottomed ones that are my favorite. I have dried about four batches of them and will put on another as soon as I finish this posting. When my fuyus get soft, I make date-nut persimmon bars with lemon frosting to give as presents or take to a potluck. When I run out of time or energy I try to give the rest away. Neighbors don't walk by our house at persimmon time because I'm known to put sacks into their arms after a chat. One year I used the kid's wagon loaded up with persimmons & then walked the neighborhood. How to win friends, right?

Incredible trip to Japan 10/19/2010

We landed in Narita and flew to Chitose, Hokkaido. Were bussed to Sapporo to this hotel. Very pleasent - first breakfast was a treat - Will put it up just so that I will have written at least one thing every month. The pictures to follow. Incredible tour - we saw arts and crafts that I never expected.

This & That for Sept. 2010

Well, here it is Sept. already and I didn't post anything in August! August was a vacation month in that there were no classes, no knitting only the garden in which I harvested green beans, tomatoes and crook-neck squash every day.
We have had our fill of Bruchetta as the basil has grown like a weed and the tomatoes that our neighbor planted have been plentiful for the last month.
We've had several parties under the persimmon tree out in front. It's been like a hidden garden with the brick half-walls and the persimmon tree. I've been complaining because so much of the persimmon crop has fallen, little by little. I'll let you know in Oct. if we have a crop to harvest.
But it was as if we were in another country ( Italy comes to mind) as we ate and drank outside under the beautiful, spreading persimmon tree.
A couple of things have come up. One, is that my neighbor and I are going on an Art's and Craft's tour of Hokkaido and Northern Honshu at the beginning of Oct. Of course that occasioned rethinking the travel clothes - so after research, I bought a travel vest from Scottevest. Look at the travel vest for women, black in color. Don't really like to carry a purse, but even less do I like to wear something with pockets on the outside. This vest is perfect and I have made several trips into S.F. wearing the vest with no purse in sight. I have memorized the pockets I put things in and it works! Have to admit that I don't fill all of the 22 pockets.
I have the vouchers to visit the Ghibli Museum - My neighbor Totoro has absolutely won my heart. When our youngest grandson from Japan was left in my care the time the rest of the family went on an outing, the little guy cried himself silly until I put on the video of Totoro. The sounds of Japan soothed him and he got caught up in the story. I still remember the feeling of this little child completely relaxing as he watched the movie (in Japanese). The Ghibli Studio has created wonderful movies. My daughter wants me to buy a black cat from the movie "Kiki's Delivery Service" which I will do of course.
In April, I left the Shodo and entered in the Pen shuji portion of our clase. I've included the July class assignment where we get judged as to the level we should be in. If you understand Japanese, you'll see that I moved up a level. I was in the 5th and now am in the 4th.

I have been studying Kanji at Sakura Gakuen for the past couple of years but am changing to another class as the Pen Shuji is teaching me more in a more relaxed fashion. Besides I love the teacher and all my classmates. So at Sakura Gakuen, I'll be focusing on conversation. (I hope)
Well in an abbreviated form that brings you up to date on a few things. I'm not doing the cooking that I have done in the past. These days we go to two tennis matches a week and one football game. All at High School level but our grandkids are so involved we just have to root them on.
My other past-time is playing scrabble with my neighbor through an app on iPod Touch. That is soooooo much fun.
Cheers to you all. Write if you have a mind.

Summer vegetables & meals

Well the garden is not growing as well as last year. The successes are the green beans, cucumbers, some of the tomato plants, one large eggplant and crookneck squash. Of the 4 squash plants only one has been producing much to my chagrin.
But I should complain as we have had the best bruschetta using the tomatoes and basil from the garden. Ah! the taste of summer.

Another taste of summer is this salad. I couldn't resist adding the anchovies. The salad along with sour dough French bread and a glass of red wine is a feast incomparable.

We traveled to Tamales Bay Oyster Company recently to have a fun day at the bay picknicking with friends who also love oysters!!! I tried to upload a video of our day but will need another lesson at Apple. I did upload this video to youtube though after much editing.

My girlfriend and I ate the raw oysters as fast as the fellows could shuck them. But mainly we sauteed them. A salad and French bread completed our meal. On the way home we stopped at the Marin French Cheese Company (Rouge et Noir brand) An artery clogger of a day but delightful! I posted the web adddress of the video. My video is very amateurish - don't laugh!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfmiW7QG3i8