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Garlic Pickles

When the garden decides to throw a metric ton of cucumbers at you, there isn't much you can do other than make pickles. A few years ago, we made a couple of jars of fridge pickles -- but they need to be kept cold and they take up a fair bit of room. This year, we tried cooked pickles.

Garlic Pickles


I didn't have one perfect recipe, so I mixed a few lists together. I didn't realize it was critical to have alum stored in the spice cabinet, so the pickles weren't as crunchy as they could have been, but they were garlicky and briny and good.
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JFK Rose

This is the JFK rose that I planted from Jackson & Perkins this year. I've been buying plants for my Dad from J & P for years and they have a reputation for excellent quality.

JFK Rose


The rose plant blossomed nicely with three pure white blooms, and I'm glad I took this photo when I did. The montrous storm we had battered them to pieces just a few days later.
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Localvore Dinner

I went hunting in the garden in the rain and managed to find a few edible items, even though we've seen mostly cloudy days (if not hurricanes). Everything was from our garden, except for a couple of items.

Roasted CSA potatoes with chives.

Localvore Dinner - Roasted Potatoes with chives


Squash blossoms stuffed with ricotta and parmesean.

Localvore Dinner - Ricotta-stuffed squash blossoms


Balsamic salad with lettuce, tomatoes, CSA peppers and baby onions.

Localvore Dinner - Tomato, lettuce, pepper and baby onion salad


Sauteed baby carrots and baby leeks. (Hooray for thinning!)

Localvore Dinner - Baby carrots and baby leeks


Cupcakes with strawberry-cream cheese icing (strawberries from our neighbor's garden) and iced tea with mint.

Localvore Dinner - Strawberry Cream Cheese Cupcakes


Localvore Dinner - Iced Tea with mint
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Grass and the things that hide in it.

We've given up on mowing the field this year and it's getting tall enough to hide a boy.

Trevor Hiding


The cats like to play hide and seek with each other in the hay. They often come trotting out of the high grass with a frog dangling from their mouth by one leg. I've seen Miley stun a grasshopper, at which point a chicken ran over and grabbed it then skittered away. Sometimes it's like wild kingdom around here.
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Medieval Feast

Trevor and I have been learning about medieval times this summer. Last week, he and a friend prepared a feast for their parents at our house with authentic medieval dishes.

There were a lot of things to be cooked, so I prepped anything that needed chopping, boiling, or other prep work before the kids arrived. Each plate held the ingredients for one recipe. It's amazing how similar a glass of honey (right) looks to a glass of beef stock (left).

Clockwise from the top left:
Tart of Ryce (rice pudding) - orange juice, butter, egg yolks, sugar, rice, cinnamon, ginger
Meat Pyes (meat hand pies) - raisins, dates, prunes, vinegar, salt, pepper
Pyneade (pine nut candy) - honey, pine nuts, spices
Ember Day Tart (quiche) - grated mozarella, sage leaves, onion, raisins, eggs, spices
Almondegas (meatballs in soup) - beef broth, butter, spices, egg yolk, wheat flour, green onions

Medieval Prep


It took two hours for me to prep everything and the kids and I finished cooking 30 minutes before the parents were due. All in all, the decision to do a little mise en place was a good one.

Medieval Food


The Ember Day Tart was good, a sweet and savory mix of raisins and onions. The pyneade, though it reached hard crack stage, didn't stay solid at room temperature. The meatballs in sauce were good, but most other things were overcooked, even though we followed the directions to a tee. And the kids had fun making fruits and vegetables out of marzipan.
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Storm Aftermath

July 08 Storm


A roof is more effective when placed on top of a barn, but this location has merits too. Modern art installation. Deterring 4-wheelers in the field. Sadistic children's playground.

The sky behind the twisted metal is still dark from the passing storm -- the one that took down trees all along our shoreline and left the southern half of the island with power for days.

A rare photo of an evergreen grabbing a quick nap:

July 08 Storm


If a pair of sneakers hanging from a power line indicates a crack house, a window screen folded neatly over the line means a house where the owners will try to sneak zucchini into your car while you're inside talking.

July 08 Storm
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Trapper Trevor

Alburgh Independence Day Parade


Trevor was a trapper again in this year's Alburgh Independence Day Parade. Unlike last year, he wasn't sitting in the main canoe on the trailer, instead he carried a cardboard canoe with a friend. That wool hat looks hot, but I bet the boots were comfortable.
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Coconut Batidos

Trev and I found a few batido recipes in his Delicious Drinks cookbook the other day. Batidos are sweet, cold Cuban milkshakes made with condensed milk -- which keeps indefinitely in a can in hot weather.

We tried mango and coconut -- the latter was the favorite. By the way, canned mangoes are quickly surpassing their fresh counterparts in my estimation. They're guaranteed ripe, they taste identical to fresh, and they keep for months on the shelf. Any time you want a mango, pop open a can and fish out a half. Not fresh or local, but so gratifying when you need an instant hit of the tropics in a recipe.
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Carrot Love

Sliced Carrot


Remember my post in April expressing inappropriate love for my mandoline? Now I think I love it even more.

I entered the photo above in the 7 Nights foodie photo contest -- and I'm one of the finalists! Go vote:

http://www.7dvt.com/hotshots-finalists

You know which photo is mine...
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Pick-Up Sticks

Pick Up SticksTrevor and I played a rousing game of extreme pick-up sticks the other day. In extreme pick-up sticks, you're allowed to attempt to startle the other player with yells or make them laugh and shake the sticks.

The set was from the dollar store and the instructions on the package didn't match the set. It said that green sticks were worth ten points, but there were no green sticks. Red sticks were worth three points, but every stick had a red stripe on it. We made up our own scoring and proceeded to scream and laugh through three games. Then it got out of hand and the sticks became poking devices, which is when we were shut down by the feds.
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Norrin, the amazing transgendered cat.

Norrin
Photo by Bryan Christopher


When we picked up baby Norrin from a nearby farm, we asked for a male cat (having heard that two females will fight). The farm owner took a cursory look at Norrin's rear end and pronounced him a male, and for the six months since then, we've been calling Norrin "him."

We started to get suspicious around the time that Miley went into heat. Norrin copied all of her wailing and writhing -- albeit less enthusiastically. And when we brought them to get fixed last month, the verdict was clear: two girls.

Now that we've been calling Norrin by male pronouns for several months, it's hard to think of him as female. So we've continued to say "him." I asked Norrin and he doesn't mind.
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From the Garden

Garden ProduceThis is one day's harvest from the garden. Who can eat this much lettuce in a day? We're trying.

The blueberries and raspberries were part of a fruit salad for the Isle La Motte Annual Flotilla picnic. The cucumbers turned out to be fairly bitter. This is apparently a well-known problem and especially common in Burpee Picklers, the variety we planted. The bitterness can be peeled off with the skin or pickled out. I hear that Dave has a pickling recipe all picked out.

Today, the zucchini (plus others from subsequent days) is going to make it into a zucchini pie.
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