Last year's persimmon crop

Gone but not forgotten!
We had an incredible persimmon crop this year and got to share bags and bags with neighbors and friends.  Since our persimmons have multiple seeds, it was too much of a task to dry them. I like to peel the fruit, and slice them horizontally a gigantic effort what with the many seeds of ours. The year I dried the fruit, I was drying our neighbor's persimmons.  While they have the flat bottomed fairly seedless Fuyu, this year they had a short crop.
Not to worry, I froze persimmon pulp and have enough to occasionally bake persimmon date-nut bars.
Signing off from Albuquerque, New Mexico 

    

Pioneer Plaza, Dallas

DALLAS PIONEER PLAZA CATTLE DRIVE
Pioneer Plaza is located by the Dallas Convention Center at the intersection of South Griffin and Young Street. Pioneer Plaza honors Dallas’ cowboy past by celebrating the trails that brought settlers to Dallas. Pioneer Plaza features native landscaping with a flowing stream and waterfall with a re-creation of a cattle drive in the form of bronze statues of longhorns being driven by three horse riding cowboys.

Each sculpture was created by Robert Summers of Glen Rose, Texas. The sculptures are believed to be the largest bronze sculptures of their type in the world.

Pioneer Plaza is the largest public open space in the central Dallas business district.  Pioneer Plaza is second only to Dealey Plaza as the most-visited landmark in downtown Dallas. Pioneer Cemetery connects to Pioneer Plaza and interesting to walk through. There is a very large Civil War Memorial in Pioneer Cemetery featuring Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson and Jefferson Davis.

Needless to say I was so impressed with these sculptures.  My photographs of the cowboys who were bringing the cattle on the drive were too dark.  As I walked among the cattle I felt as if they would butt me out of the way. Chills and Thrills!

Summer 2012 Garden

We have enjoyed making pizza sauce using the produce from the garden.  

The Zucchini are plentiful and I hope to add green beans to the harvest. Our weather has been mostly cold and so the tomato harvest is smaller in size and quantity. So far only 2 medium sized egg plants but I see two more growing so there is hope for a ratatouille in a week or so.

Newest appliance used in cooking has been my Benriner Mandolin to slice zucchini paper thin (great on pizzas)

Thank you Alexandra's Kitchen for the video on how to use a mandolin safely and for writing about the book Artisan Pizza and Flatbread in Five Minutes a Day by Jeff Hertzberg, M.D., and Zoe François

¡OLE!

Surfing at Manhattan Beach

Just had to share these pictures of the quick trip we took to Southern California with our grandsons. The two objectives were to give the boys a day at The California Great Adventure and body surf at Manhattan Beach and at Huntington Beach. Should say that our objective was to have time with the boys. Was a great trip!

Apricots, cobbler & stewed

Yesterday we headed to Winters to try to find fresh apricots. We were battling a heavy wind and found the first fruit stand closed because the wind had destroyed it.  We had been talking about Lake Berryessa, so when the second stand we passed was also closed we headed for the lake.  It may have been windy, which kept the temperature down, but it was a perfect day to be driving in the hills.

Finally on the return trip, the 2nd fruit stand was open and we bought some glorious apricots.  I was almost too late to get a picture of the apricot cobbler.

Fruit Cobbler -  I adapted the original recipe from an old Better Homes & Garden Cookbook.
I used an 8x8 pan for this recipe but I often double the recipe and use a 9x12 pan.
400 degree oven 

Prepare fruit:
I have good luck with spraying the pan and then filling it at least half full with fresh fruit + 1/2 cup sugar or to taste.  Leave room for the dough.   I have had excellent results with fresh apricots, plums and peaches.  I think I have also used rhubarb and berries.
Put the fruit-filled pan in a 400 degree oven while you prepare the dough.  I like the fruit to be bubbling hot when I add the dough.


1 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon sugar
3 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup shortening
1/2 cup milk, 1 egg
2 tablespoons sugar for topping

For topping;
Mix flour, sugar, baking powder and salt.  Cut in the 1/3 cup shortening till mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Combine egg and milk.  Add to flour mixture, stirring just to moisten. Drop the dough as evenly as you want on top of the bubbling (hot) fruit.  Sprinkle the 2 tablespoons of sugar over the dough. Bake for about 20 to 25 minutes.

Wedding in Albuquerque!

2012 Persimmon blossoms & tree

In rereading notes I was reminded that I hadn't posted the Persimmon Date-nut Bar's recipe.  Our tree in the front yard has many persimmon blossoms which bodes well for a crop this year. I think I have used the last bag of pulp so I may have to just post the recipe with out a picture of the bar cookies.
More to come.

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.

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

Front Yard Gardening 2010

We had a rainy & cold April and May and because of the rain I don't think the bees were able to polinate the persimmon flowers. So the persimmon tree has been dropping a lot of fruit which makes me wonder if we will have any persimmons to dry this year. Also I couldn't plant the garden until later than usual because my farmer friends said the ground was still too cold. So here are pictures of my late garden.
With extreme pleasure I go out and tend the garden in the early morning. I think my talking to the plants encourages them to grow. Or maybe they keep me smiling at their green and vibrant beauty.
I haven't shown you pictures of the Japanese eggplants because they got planted really late this year. They are still small. Last year my friends gifted me with good starts and we had abundant eggplants late into the Fall.
Since this is all front yard gardening in areas where the sun shines on the plants all day, I couldn't plant everything I wanted to. I didn't show my herb garden but I have already made one batch of pesto that we ate on tagliarini.

Long time between postings

We have been spending a lot of time cheering our grandkids on in track and it has been fun. Now we are arriving at the end of baseball season cheering on a team that only lost one game this season. (The last game too) Also, we have gone to a lot of band & Blues Band concerts. So enjoyable!
Besides the events we are working through our garage to square it away. Read on. Today is an overcast one and one of us is in the garage reading through Great grandpa's box of memorabilia. Grandpa corresponded with so many people and he saved most of the letters. I'm going to pass on some special letters that our children wrote. More later.

Pineapple Upside-down cake

In February we spent 10 days mainly in Maui, Hawaii and ate some incredible food. One of the memorable meals was eaten at Hailemaile General Store which is one of the best restaurants on the island. Their pineapple upside-down cake was so delicious that I took a picture of it and decided to come home and try my hand at it.

After a couple of tries, I made this one with fresh pineapple using a modified recipe from Bittman's How to Cook Everything. I had used a cast iron skillet for the first two but I should have used a bigger skillet because the cake part was too high and you got the taste of the cake and not of the brown sugar and pineapple.
The cake in the picture was baked in a round cake pan. I buttered two pans, poured a melted stick of butter into each pan, sprinkled 1 cup of brown sugar over the melted butter in each pan. Then I added the fresh pineapple until it covered the pan.Then I put the pans in a 350 degree F. oven while I prepared the cake batter.

I better list ingredients:
2- 8 in. round cake pans
16 Tblsps. butter (2 sticks)
2 cups of brown sugar
one fresh pineapple, cut in thick slices about 1/2 inches, enough to fill the 2 pans.
Or 1 can of sliced pineapple
Cake batter ingredients:
4 Tblsps. melted butter for cake batter
1 cup buttermilk or sour milk
2 eggs
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 cups flour
1 tsp. baking soda, 1/2 tsp salt

Combine and beat the melted butter, buttermilk or sour milk - (I used sour milk) eggs and granulated sugar until mixed. Measure out the flour, baking soda and salt in another bowl and gradually add to the liquid mixture until it looks mixed.

Try to divide the mixture over the two pans you've pulled from the oven. You may have to spread it to cover the pineapple. Put in the 350 degree F. oven for about 20 minutes. Because the pineapple sugar mixture is hot, it bakes a little faster. Also the thinness of the pans compared to the cast iron skillet makes it bake faster. Keep an eye on the cakes -

Write me if I haven't been clear enough. I made the cakes with canned pineapple and fresh pineapple. We liked it both ways. By putting the pineapple/brown sugar mixture in pans in the oven while I mixed the batter, the cake cooked evenly. I do that now with all my fruit cobblers.

I used both buttermilk and sour milk. Couldn't tell the difference. I had sour milk but in the past I have made sour milk by adding 1/2 tsp. vinegar to 1 cup of fresh milk.

Well, not having a lot of luck managing this blog. But if you wonder what I've been doing, I've been doing lots of things with grand-kids or let's say watching them participate in concerts, track meets and Japanese school graduation days.
Also, The Albuquerque grandkids came in and today we went to San Francisco to be real tourists. Last night was a family gathering at a restaurant and then Vic's Ice Cream parlor to celebrate a son's birthday. We take off tomorrow to visit a famous aquarium and castle so I'll post more next week. Ciao!