Golden Bear in Port of Sacramento

It is a beautiful day in Sacramento and an important arrival came in this afternoon. The Golden Bear, a ship stationed in Vallejo that is the training ship of the California Maritime Academy came up the channel to the Port of Sacramento. 

Why was I interested? One of our grandchildren got accepted to the Maritime Academy for Fall 2012.  It is an impressive vessel and I just had to go see it.  Wasn't necessary to climb aboard (which I don't know if it was possible today)but just had to be up close.  A lot of Sacramentens had the same idea.

Spring time in Sacramento

GREETING FRIENDS! I Have been working on winter vegetables for months. You can just about see the collard greens going to flower in the earth boxes. The snow peas are yielding a nice batch every day for snacking. Sometimes they never make the house. The arrugula started going to flower weeks ago but I can still get a few leaves for sandwiches. I picked the last of the red chard yesterday and put it in a vegetable soup. We got the olive trees manicured like cousins of ours did to their trees. We also pulled up the evergreens and put in casks for vegetables. Makes gardening more manageable.


Today I took a short walk today to the library and the post office. It is cherry blossom time and the trees are beautiful! The weather has turned cold and rain is in the offing so any plans for a picnic under the trees was canceled.
As I walked home from the P.O. I saw this painting on the curb stone. Most of us just have our address painted on the curb but this family was very original. I'm thinking of asking the artist in our family to work something up for us.

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.