Eggplants, powdery mildew and figs

David has been busy in the yard, playing with power tools.  We have one final stretch of morning glories to get rid of.  Yes, they’re beautiful.  I’m sure that anyone not in California would be happy to have these plants.  But here, they live year after year, stacking on top of each other until…

It creates a tangled mess probably full of toxic mold and dust.  To be fair, it could be healthy to breathe in the dust that flies out when we touch the dead vines, but we’re both very cautious.  We’ve also decided it’s time to clear out the morning glories from the fence completely.  This process will take a long time.  David has perfected the method, as he originally cleared our garden space this past January.

For now, David used the string trimmer to cut a border along the bottom of the vines. Many of the vines have begun to die, which made me sad to see this morning, even though I thought I had come to terms with their death.  The hummingbirds have been more active recently; I even saw one hovering in front of the kitchen window and it looked at me.

The morning glories were cut at the roots to make space for our new irrigation in the backyard.  Because our house has weird plumping, we decided to run a 100ft hose down the side of the driveway, and then lay soaker hose in the garden. We’ll then have it on a timer and watering can happen with ease.

The tomato, tomatillo and cucumber plants in the former-morning-glory-filled-back-garden are looking really healthy!

The delicata squash (left) and cucumber (little leaf on right) recently got powdery mildew, like most of our back yard squashes.  The straight 8 cucumber (larger leaves on tripod) is much healthier.  We’re still picking cucumbers and David recently mixed up a milk, Dr. Bronners, baking soda and apple cider vinegar spray to help with the powdery mildew.  Ask if you want to know more about it, as I know he did research into ratios and rationale.

In the back left, you’ll see the basil.  After the pictures I cut back all of our basil and made about two and a half dozen pesto ice cubes to use later.  We added parsley to this batch of pesto, which helps cut the strong flavor as well as keep it more green for future use.
We have a small zinnia patch, and we’re loving it.

The eggplants are finally starting to do something!  Most of our pots have stunted peppers and eggplants.  After the fertilizing, and then a fish emulsion treatment, they have finally started to grow!  Again, we’re lucky to be in Los Angeles as our hottest months can be August and September.

In the backyard, the rosa bianca has a cage around it to protect it from Rosie’s trampling.  Rosie follows us around the garden while we’re working.  She doesn’t notice if there are plants in the way, as she just wants us to throw her ball.

The above picture has two rosa bianca and two japanese eggplants.

And the japanese eggplant is starting to grow!

We cheated a little with the poblano peppers in the front yard pots.  When we were at the farmers market last week, the plant guy had beautiful plants and we decided to buy two since ours were stunted.  

Our tomatoes, for the most part, are doing great!  There aren’t as many flowers as I’d like.  The black krim that we planted late is finally starting to flower, if you can see it there next to the giant bushy San Marzano.

The San Marzano is laden with green tomatoes, and we’re getting our sauce pot and salsa recipes in order while waiting.

Next to the San Marzano, I planted arugula, a couple of green onions and a celery plant. The celery is in the foreground, if you can see it without being distracted by Rosie or the giant pepper! We were waiting for it to turn red, but decided today that it was time to pick it.

Lastly, our neighbors have a fig tree that borders the fence.

Last year I cut back their tree, because it smelled like cat pee.  I love figs.  I think legally even though they’re on our side of the fence, the figs belong to them.  We’re thinking about picking a few.  We could ask our neighbors first.

Mardi doesn’t want me to mention it, but being the dominant cat in our territory, it’s possible that the figs could smell like cat pee again this season.

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Critters

These days we have had many wildlife spottings in our urban oasis.  As a child, our garden was home to snakes, deer, rabbits, turtles, chipmunks and even the occasional gopher or mole. We have a different ball game in our Los Angeles garden.  We’ve spotted raccoons and opossum, but most of our visitors are insects and birds, with an occasional lizard.

Remember that moment in spring when everyone and everything is searching for a mate?  I am reminded often these days, because I’m spotting parents teaching their newborn babies how to behave.

For the past few days, we’ve been watching a pair of black phoebe’s hanging out in our garden.   

When I’ve gone outside to photograph them, they’ve moved away a little bit.  They are always together, or one is calling to the other.

I wish you could see the little tuxedos that black phoebes where- they’re one of my favorite birds!  I’m sure the little fledgling will move on soon.  Until then, it’s fun to spot them perched on our tomato cages; David and I hope they eat the bad bugs not the good.

Last week I attended a training on an urban ecology curriculum at the Center for Urban Resilience where I had the pleasure to meet an animal behavior professor who specializes in crow behavior.  We learned about how crows can live for over 30 years in the same area, and are the second most intelligent animal on the planet.

This is the palm in front of our house.  If you look closely, you’ll see there are two crows here.  These two have been noisy recently. The day I came home from learning about crows, I noticed they were squawking at each other.  So, I asked about it the next day and was told that the parents are reprimanding the baby crows this time of year. I’m not sure, but my guess is the baby is the one on the right.

I pulled some long grasses and weeds from the front bed.  I plan to re-pot the succulents soon so I prepared the area around them.

I found one of our baby praying mantises after pulling weeds!  It was camera shy, starting to run when I pointed the camera at it.

So I grabbed it.  The mantid lept from my fingers, I scooped it up again and pointed the camera at my hand.

It’s alien-like face cracks me up.  This little guy seemed curious why I was holding it. After snapping my photo, I dropped it again and then grabbed it to place it on the nasturtiums.  Slippery little one.

We have more critters, and evidence of them, in the back yard.

There are squirrels that visit the avocado trees.  Sometimes we we spot them; Rosie usually sees them first.  Usually we find signs that they have come around because they leave their leftovers on the ground for us to compost.

The avocados are growing and our October harvest looks promising.

The Bacon avocado tree will have it’s larger crop this fall, while the Zutano will have its smaller one.

Both trees are going to have a much smaller harvest, because they were pruned… probably for the first time ever.  

Pruned is a gentle word for what was done.

There used to be a large branch practically resting on David’s red SUV. Now we will need our neighbor’s roofing ladder to pick any of the avocadoes that mature.  Sometimes the squirrels help us out by nibbling on a corner, and then knocking them down.  It’s probably not the best practice, but I just cut off their corner and eat my side of the fruit.

While our avocado harvest will be smaller, our mint harvest is not in jeopardy.

The mint is flowering and the flies love it!  It’s kinda gross to see so many flies swarming around the flowers.  I just try to remember that it’s important to have all sorts of critters and pollinators in the garden.  We’ll be pruning the mint that is growing over the sidewalk, so I just brought a huge bunch into the house as a bouquet.

In the backyard garden, we also have flies on the borage.

The borage with the ants and aphids will get pulled out this week. This is the other borage flower, near the eggplants and squash. I love the colors on this fly!

I try to snap insect pictures when I can. (Sometimes I catch the insect in the process.)  The last picture to share today is from over a week ago.  I just finished posting a blog, and went outside to pick tomatoes.  And I found this guy:

As it was so large, we considered keeping it to watch it pupate.  Then I read that the cocoons are buried in the soil.  We haven’t had a hornworm problem (this is the only one I’ve ever seen in three years) so we let it be.  Hopefully this isn’t a sign of what’s to come.

 

Trellised melons, squashes and our first okra

With summer in full swing, we’ve noticed more growth and vibrancy in the garden.  Our neighbors have a pool on one of the adjacent walls, and we often hear children splashing and smell grilled meat in the air.  It’s quite odd to be working in the garden and hear the sounds of play in the city.

The vines on the back fence are growing well, but they still aren’t cutting it with covering the fence.  I just transplanted two more scarlet runner beans, and may toss in a few more pole beans.  The morning glories did a much more through job of hiding our neighbors from us.

When I was next to the fence, I looked at the section in between the garage and the fence, and found Mardi sleeping away!  I ran inside to get David (and the camera) and he still didn’t wake, as we were quiet.  Once us humans continued to poke around the garden, the needy cat awoke and started meowing at us.

The two squash trellises are holding up. The melons and squashes are each climbing on their own. On the left is buttercup (big leaves), Kazakh melon (small) and Malali watermelon (on cattle panel by wall, but hard to see).  There’s a sugar baby watermelon on the far right side of the A-frame, by the window.  Next year we’ll move the A-frame; I plan to put a window box under the window.

The right hand side is mostly part of the Kazakh melon!  It’s quite a climber, has three large melons and tons of small ones.  I’ve been making sure the plant gets plenty of water, as I think it suffered a little from our vacation.

The Kazakh melon has a visitor.

The Sugar Baby watermelons are starting!  There are a few of them, and each has hooked itself over the wire, preparing to grow on the trellis. These little guys are so fuzzy; it was a little surprising for me.

We’re getting more buttercup squash, and have two that are nearly ready to pick.

I planted a small parsley patch (and two spinach plants) under the squash A-frame.  We hope that it is shady enough to grow these without them bolting.

Rosie, as always, enjoys hanging out in the garden with us.  She finds the best shady spots to relax.  I think she’s just as happy with the new arch as we are!

Our delicata squash has five new squashes coming!  Five!  That’s great, especially because these are the only ones on the entire plant.

Our string beans are sad.  I planted new ones in the nursery and plan to transplant them in.  Gardening in a new bed, I think this area dried out too quickly after watering.  When the new ones are ready to transplant, I’d like to dig in compost and worm castings to prepare the area. I planted two salvia here to spruce up the area in the meantime.

Our tomatillos are starting to take over. The ant/aphid covered borage hasn’t flowered in a long time. It looks like it has buds forming.  Near the wall are three tomato plants that David staked using the Florida weave technique, more or less.  We’re happy with the support technique and may use it more in future.

We picked our first two okra!  I’m hoping that it stays hot enough for them.  I just planted a Santa Fe Grande pepper behind them.

There will be more cucumbers in a couple of days.  Looks like I’ll be making pickles again this weekend, and have just selected a fermented pickle recipe.  It’s almost time to play with lacto-fermentation!

This week I’m hoping to get the last of the transplanting done (for now) and play in the kitchen a little.  I’m at a training for work during the day, so I don’t have hours to spend canning.  Although, David says he’ll make the peach-jalepeno jam that still needs to get made.

The peaches are telling us it’s time!

 

Kumquats, relish, rose petals and more

The past few days have been spent with large chunks of time in the kitchen.  We picked more tomatoes from our neighbor, many of which are still sitting on our counter.  I’d love to make a fire roasted salsa, if anyone has a favorite recipe.  We’ve also been enjoying them with olive oil, balsamic and fresh mozzarella.  (David and I have amassed a fun selection of oils and vinegars during our travels.)

Looking at our harvest, I figured it was time to get a little creative.

The banana peppers became pickled banana peppers.  The jalepenos may become peach jalepeno jam later today, or tomorrow.  And the cayennes are getting tossed into all sorts of things.

Since making roasted tomatoes and swapping them, I’ve been wanting to have some for us.

Our Jaune Flamme has the perfect size roasting tomatoes, so we were in luck!  I roasted the orange tomatoes, along with a handful of San Marzanos, packed them in olive oil and then froze them.  The frozen jar is now in our freezer, where it should keep for a year (but why would we keep them around that long?)

Thanks to the food swap, we had a pound of kumquats kicking around.  We also had oranges, which I juiced.  David and I marinated the sliced kumquats in some of the orange juice overnight.  We then drank the extra fresh squeezed orange juice.

The sliced kumquats were then cooked into a Spicy-Sticky Kumquat chutney.  We can’t wait to use it on pork or chicken! I cut the recipe in half, and this is one that I’ll be making again.

As the kumquats had to marinate overnight, I figured it was the perfect time to make Rose Petal Jam, which also had to macerate in sugar overnight.

Our roses are mostly yellowish orange, and not that fragrant.  I tried to find freshly opened ones, and was able to pick  a bowl full of petals.  The recipe confused me a little- I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to pack the petals down, and when to measure.  I could have emailed her to ask, but I figured I’d go with it.  If you use the recipe, I cut the pectin to 5 tbl and had about 2-4 cups petals, and it gelled perfectly and tastes devine!

The petals and kumquats both had to cook for about the same time, which made for convenient canning.

While they were cooking, I seeded and chopped a large cucumber that we had laying around.  I grabbed a red pepper, a couple small green peppers and an onion and chopped those to make a sweet relish (used sweet pickle relish from Blue Book).

I followed the recipe pretty closely, and was surprised to find it was quite liquidy.  I had about 2 cups of liquid left, and made 5 half pints instead of the 8 it said.  We’re excited to find a reason to use the relish.  I was reminded that my grandma used to make and love piccalilli, and that may happen later this summer. I’ve found a lot of good relish recipes so far, including one that uses summer squash.

Our cucumber plants were picked clean, and it’ll be at least a week before we get more.

I decided to make whole dill pickles with this lot.  A friend gave me a recipe (which we have yet to use), and suggested soaking them overnight in pickling lime.  We’ve yet to pick that up from the store, but it would be nice to have crisp pickles.

This is our third batch of dill pickles and each has been different.  This batch made two large jars and one small.

Today I also harvested enough long beans to make pickled long beans.

The long beans are just taking off, and the bunch I picked fit perfectly into a pint jar.  This will be a fun treat, especially since the brine had star anise in it!

All in all, here’s the pickling and canning that we’ve been doing since last Thursday.  David’s been a great sport and helped out during the canning itself, when I call him into the kitchen to pour and stuff jars.

Did I mention that we did all of the canning without a funnel?  I was so excited to get canning tools earlier this year, that I took out the funnel to use it for something, and then it disappeared!  We’ll get one soon, but finding canning supplies in our part of Los Angeles has been a little bit of an effort.  We now know which stores carry quart jars, widemouth jars, half pint jars and lids.  We have yet to find the 4oz jelly jars, but I know they’re out there!

One last picture of one of our cat’s helping with laundry.  Roxy won’t make any of the outside garden pictures because she’s too scared to go outside.

Beginning of July tour

The past week has been spent more in the kitchen than outside.  Finally the heat wave broke and it’s back to the 70s outside!  David and I took advantage of the cool weather and spent a couple hours outside tidying up and working on projects.  I figured it was time to show what’s been happening in the garden.

The roses are in full bloom again.  I’ve been searching for ways to preserve the blooms and am thinking about everything from rose water to rose petal preserves.  I found a decadent recipe for coconut rose petal semifreddo, which may be an option also.  I’d love suggestions if you’ve done anything with your roses before.

Notice the tomatos in the raised bed are getting larger.  David and I staked them up the other day and we can finally see the fruits.  I also spotted two finches taking advantage of the perch.

This is Rosie’s obedient look. She just is wandering around the yard, hasn’t found her ball yet and may be getting a little impatient with my photographs.  I asked her to stop by our Abe Lincoln and Purple Prudence tomatoes.  They are both (finally) just starting to flower.  Notice the stunted peppers on the right.  I believe they are serrano or poblano and hope that they get the message to grow soon.

Behind Rosie is the mystery garden area.  There are now two mystery tomato plants as well as prolific nasturtiums.  These nasturtiums are the current source of seed pods for our pickled nasturtium pods.

We decided that it was time to fertilize the potted plants and cucumber vines.  I recently watched a video about fertilizing cucumbers and noticed that mine were starting to get a little yellow around the edges, as he described.  So, I grabbed a box of Epsom salt from under the fish tank (I bought it for the fish water years ago, and never used it) and the organic fertilizer from the garage.  I mixed the two together, applied the side dressing and then watered.  Hopefully the little guys will enjoy it!

The front herb bed finally got cleaned up.  There’s still more to do, but I started with cutting back the bulbs.  The chasmanthe had become too large for the space, so in addition to cutting them back, I dug out a couple dozen corms to bring to school this fall.

I felt like I was pulling potatoes while digging them out.  Some were large, others were tiny.  Often there was a large one with little ones clinging to it.  We will probably pull out a few more to make space in the front of the house.  I didn’t want to take out too many, because it was so wonderful watching the hummingbirds flit by this winter.

I finally pulled out our giant coriander/ cilantro plant.  We had planned to harvest the coriander, possibly in it’s green stage, but ran out of time.  At this point it is full of powdery mildew, and I’m not sure that we should harvest the coriander.  I brought the plant back to our compost bin, because it was full of lady bugs. Some of them were even spotted making new ladybugs.

Our garden in the back, near the compost bin, is full of aphids.

The borage has had ants and aphids living on it for a month now.  David and I decided to sprinkle cornmeal around the plant, hearing that it could help get rid of the ants.  It seems to have worked well so far; we have noticed significantly less ants, more ladybugs and other insects.  There are still ants, as you can see by the is two poking the ladybug in this picture. The ladybugs seem much more brazen these days.  David told me that he spotted a ladybug being chased by ants while carrying an aphid in it’s mouth!

The tomato next to the borage has it’s own ant situation.  When we returned home from vacation, we noticed that our tomato plants in the back have ants frozen in place along the stems.  They are dead and it’s an odd and gruesome scene.  We have no idea how it happened and would love to know any theories that you have.

While I played with the bulbs in the front yard, David raked up avocado leaves and added them to the side yard.  This is the last stretch of dirt with nothing in it.  We recently mulched it and then added grass clippings.  David put down avocado leaves.  Next we’ll spread a few bags of composted manure, then mulch it again.  This area has to be hand watered, and the hose is not convenient.  Our succulent pots have been hanging out here recently.  This fall we plan to plant sages, lavenders and possibly native grasses.

The backyard area is starting to fill in.  We’ve been needing to finish the A-frame squash support, but the squashes don’t seem to notice that we are slow.

The cucumbers and delicata are attempting to climb the bamboo tripod (front left).  I snagged an unplanted little leaf cucumber from the school greenhouse the other day, and planted it to fill in the front of the support.  Two baby delicata squash were flowering when I took this picture. Behind the cucumbers are the overzealous tomatillos.  We’ve been checking their paper husks, and we’re hoping to start making salsa verde in a couple of weeks.

The buttercup and red kuri squash climbing up the cattle panel trellis are doing great!  We’ve started to guide the squash back down the same side that it came up.  The supported squashes are maturing and the small arbor provides shade for us to rest on a hot day.

This is taken from underneath the trellis where a new red kuri squash is growing.  It seems to be supported by the fence and we’re debating giving it a little hammock.  While watching our squashes grow, I’ve been trying to figure out how to tell when they’re ready to pick.  A lot of what I read is not helpful for Southern California gardening.  For example, I learned that I should harvest winter squash before the first frost, but it’s ok to leave it on the vine if it’s not a heavy frost.  We don’t get frost.  Ever.  (Year-round gardening is wonderful, and our bugs are huge to prove it.)

So from what I gather, I look for mature fruit color and size, as well as the stem starts to turn brown and my fingernail can not pierce the skin.  I’d love confirmation on this from the people who know.

Our sweet dumpling squashes are just starting to grow.  I put straw underneath them, and now I notice they are covered in tiny black bugs.  Looking at the pictures, I notice that the straw is as well.  This is new to me. I wonder if it’s from the straw and hope that the squash are healthy.

We’re watching our Pinnacle spaghetti squash and I wonder why I thought smaller squash was better to order than larger squash.  The compact vines have three fruits right now, and we’re hoping for more.  The plants are getting a bit hidden by their prolific neighbor, a buttercup vine, and we’re working on fixing that problem.  The A-frame trellis got a bit held up, and we’re rethinking the support system.  I’ll write more on that as we resolve the issue.

Our Kazakh melons are taking over.  There are three fruits right now, the largest is about the size of  a softball.

The vine, however, has taken up four feet of the 8×8 bed.  You can see the thai basil poking through by the bamboo pole.  This melon has many branches, and I’m trying to get them to grow up the fence, or up the start of the trellis, but they are resistant to being tamed and keep making more vines.  This variety is supposed to be a good climber, so perhaps if I give it more attention, it will climb.  We’ll see how the melons taste before deciding if we’ll grow this again next year.  Our space is small, and we both really want squash but this year is more of a test year for the vines. Most likely we will still save seeds from this rare heirloom, even if we don’t plan to grow it ourselves.

We have a chocolate sunflower! Besides sounding delicious, we picked these because of their size.  We are enjoying it in the garden while it’s flowering.

Our yarrow has opened and the color is so bright, it’s almost florescent.  We made our first three cuts of apricot branches to allow this plant to grow up straight.  The yarrow had been reaching into the garden aisle because there was a tree branch over it’s head.  We haven’t wanted to cut our baby apricot tree, but it was time to take a few snips and help it branch out.

While we were in Florida, we picked up a friend to keep the tree and yarrow company.  This is our new giant fly, and it will hopefully protect our garden from bad bugs and welcome in the good.

We planted our sweet peas too late.  All spring we watched them climb up the fence.  Currently they are covered in powdery mildew and will be torn out this week.  So now they start to flower.  And they are beautiful.  Each of the two blooming flowers is beautiful.

Further down the fence, our yard long beans are starting to grow beans.  They are filling in the fence, flowering and climbing away.  David loves long beans.  I haven’t quite acquired a taste for them.  I’m excited to see what he does with them.

We’re also starting to get scarlet runner beans.  This is our first year with these plants and I’m in love with their luscious red flowers.  I’ve found a few recipes for them, and think we’re going to let the seed pods dry on the vine.  I must chat with people who grow these regularly to find out what they do with the beans and how they enjoy eating them.

Our zucchini that fell over during vacation is back up and fruiting!  We look forward to grilled zucchini and more zucchini pickles.

And finally, we have our first eggplant flower.  This is an oriental eggplant (unknown variety).  We are also growing rosa bianca, hansel, gretel and fairy tale.  We had grand plans for perfecting our baba ganoush this summer.  We were hoping to have so much eggplant that it was coming out of our ears.

We are thankful to have a flower.

David and I also decided that we haven’t been watering our garden enough.  We read an article that suggested when you water, dig in the soil a couple of inches down to see how deep the water percolates through the top layer. It flat out said that soil lies.  The next time we watered, with a sprinkler for 15 minutes, I barely scratched the surface and saw that it was bone dry underneath.  Having a new garden, our soil is still breaking down and we are learning what it needs.  As we don’t get rain in the summer, we must learn how to properly water our garden.

Today it is cool and overcast.  Often the marine layer burns off and it warms up.  I plan to get the tomatoes in the dehydrator started soon, and start some seeds in our nursery.  It’s time to replant green beans and plant another crop of lettuce, carrots and radishes.  Hope you’re enjoying your long weekend!

Busy in the kitchen

We’ve had a few tomatoes from our garden, but not nearly enough to start cooking with or preserving.  David and I decided that we’d roast or dehydrate a few at a time when we have time.  We figured with the way the tomatos are ripening, we wouldn’t start our saucing operations until the end of July or beginning of August.

There are a few red San Marzanos, but most of them are still quite green.

The Indigo Rose are ripening, and thanks to a suggestion from a reader, we’re leaving them on the vine until they feel soft.  These will be for salads and roasting.

The Jaune Flamme are going to be great for drying and roasting.  There are bunches of ripe ones, but there are not many at the same time.  I did get out the dehydrator though, and figured this was enough to do our first batch.

Our last tomato that is producing fruit right now is the Isis Candy.  These are great to eat in salads.  As you can see though, we’re far from peak tomato season.

Then David chatted with our neighbor across the street.

He told us that he was headed out of town and we should pick all of his tomatoes.

David and I went across the street, dug around for a little while, and proudly came home with two overflowing bowls of fruit.  There should be more later in the week, but we cleared out everything we could find.

And decided that we’d make our first batch of salsa!

I set aside the largest for slicing (every dinner comes with a caprese salads or tomatoes drizzled with vinegar and olive oil), the smallest for dehydrating and chopped up 7lbs for salsa.  We were going to stick to the Blue Book, but I found a salsa recipe that we’re trying instead.  When our neighbor gets back in town, he’ll get a couple jars of salsa and pickles.

Yes, he gave us cucumbers too.

He has some gorgeous salad cucumbers, which David made into an Israeli cucumber and tomato salad.  The ones that weren’t too seedy, were quartered and turned into dill pickles. We picked up some pickling spice at Penzy’s earlier this spring, and have been itching to try it.

Our vines had cucumbers growing on them also.  We’ve been pleased with the shape, size and yield of our little leaf cucumber plants.  I’ve been trying to move away from hybrids, but this one is making me think about that decision.

We have two vines on the ladder.  The vines are full of flowers and have over a dozen cucumbers in the midst of growing right now.

I picked these off our two ladder vines and the one in the backyard.  I snagged a few cayenne peppers and a handful of dill and it was time to make dill pickles.

At that point, I put my camera down and focused on cooking.

Our end tally was:

2 pint and half jars (1 chips, 1 spears)

5 pint jars (2 spears, 1 spicy spears, 1 spicy chips, 1 zucchini chips)

And then there were the apricots.

David bought apricots at Costco for canning, as our new tree isn’t producing this year. We had enough for a half batch of jam.  We decided on something savory, and chose Apricot-Ginger-Rosemary jam.  The amount we had filled two half pint jars and gave us a little bit left over.  The leftover jam was later cooked with caramelized onions and used to top pork chops.

We will savor this jam, and I highly recommend the recipe.  There’s just enough crystalized ginger and rosemary to make it interesting but not overpower it.

We just may be picking up more apricots to make more.

 

Our first food swap

Sunday we took the food from our harvest to our first food swap in downtown Los Angeles.

We registered for the swap about a month ago, and I’ve been eagerly waiting for it. When I found out about food swapping, through poking around on the internet, it was a new idea to me so I’m guessing it’s probably new to many of you also. The idea is that people bring food that is homemade, homegrown or foraged and trade with other people. The Food Swap Network is a great resource to find a swap in your area.

As I mentioned in my last post, our strategy was to bring a little bit of a lot of things and hopefully come back with items that we are unable or unwilling to make. We hoped that there would be a variety to pick from and that we’d come home with fun things to eat and cook.

David stood high on a ladder and picked a dozen avocados from the tree. We’ve used all of the lower ones, and the next ones that we pick will require an 8ft ladder plus the 8ft fruit picker (and David’s 6ft tall body). We’re getting to the end of our reserves on the tree. The new ones won’t be ready until fall; they are about two inches big right now (on both trees).

I printed out a bunch of cute labels I found online, grabbed some rafia from the closet, and packaged up our jars and cakes. I enjoy being crafty, and David is glad that I do because it made everything look much more attractive.

Being the type of person I am, I also included on the label the ingredients.

We only had enough fresh nasturtium pods to make one jar. These would be a precious commodity in our trading.

We also only had one jar of dilly beans. Most of our bean plants are not doing so well right now. The plan is to replant beans soon and hope for the best.

David and I packed our food into a cooler and large tupperware and headed to the store in downtown Los Angeles. We live about 15-20 minutes from most places, even downtown, although we’ve yet to explore much of it. We headed down the road they are building the new mixed zoning metro station, and into the Arts District.

City murals fascinate me and the area we were in had many. I would have loved to know the story behind this one, and the others in the area. After the swap we saw four men being filmed in front of this one, but couldn’t tell what was going on.

The LA food swap was at Poketo in the back of the store. The store had some fun items that I would have loved to buy, but I averted my eyes because I was at the swap to trade food and not spend money.

We arrived on time (impressive for not being sure of the LA traffic) and set up our table.

The way the swap works is that you have the first half hour to set up your display and greet each other.  The next hour is spent looking around.

People fill out slips of paper, expressing interest in swapping. We were delighted to find a variety of baked goods, drinks, oils, jellys, salsas and more.
David and I eagerly filled out papers, weighed our decisions, tasted samples and chit chatted with people. I wish we had more time (and the space for swapping was a little bigger) so we could have asked questions about how people made their goods. Perhaps there was enough time; we didn’t even think to ask about most of the items because we were a bit overwhelmed.

We were relieved to see that people filled out our papers.  The dill pickles had an overflow item on the back: bacon.  Yes, we took that trade.
The next half hour was the trading portion. We had a big selection and thankfully people came to us with what they wanted to trade.
The nasturtium pickles were the first to be traded for homemade kahlua! Then avocados for homemade honey (bees in residential areas of Los Angeles has been a long fought battle that is still going on) . The kombucha lady was excited to trade and dill pickles were more popular than we had thought!

This is what we came home with!  We did bring home two small chocolate zucchini breads and one large one, which we gave to our neighbors on the way out of the car.  I’ll go through the “harvest” in smaller pictures.

We traded for plum jam (short ball jar), smoked feta dip (short ball jar), “Heinz” style baked beans (tall ball jar) roasted red pepper ketchup (tall ball jar), kahlua, apricot-amaretto jam, grapefruit brulee jam with coconut honey and ginger.  The cayenne pepper was also brought with us as decoration.

We also got two bags of cheddar crackers, chili oil, two salsas, a dozen oranges and lots of Ball Jar rings and lids. We had just stocked up on jar rings and lids, but we can always use more lids. I have a busy summer planned in the kitchen.

Oh yes, there’s more to list!  We traded for  a jar of aprium- orange conserve with rum, walnuts and cardamom, two jars of honey, two packages of kumquats, granola, Garden Dew flavored kombucha (a bit vinegary, but good for us), two hummuses, chocolate cinnamon olive oil cookies, fresh mint and lavender bundle, fresh juice (beet, celery and apple), banana bread (with nuts) and a half dozen eggs. Some of these were last minute trades to get rid of the zucchini bread, which was great for us because all of it is better than zucchini bread.

I love zucchini bread, but still have shredded zucchini in the fridge and I’d prefer to make more than keep what we made.

And of course, there is the homecured and homesmoked bacon.  She had samples too.

We look forward to enjoying each and every item.  For dinner after the food swap we had hummus, salsa, feta dip and we’re researching recipes for kumquats and oranges. I highly recommend food swapping and bet you can find one, or set one up, near you!

Here’s a write up about the food swap from Poketo, if you want to see more pictures of the swap.