Archives for posts with tag: seasonal eating

A Quince Experiment: Quince and Apple Pie

December 8, 2025 //
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A few weeks ago, one of the vendors at the farmers market had quinces for sale. I have heard of quinces but have never tasted one, so I bought one. I discussed with the vendor adding it to an apple pie or apple crisp. She recommended cooking it separately before adding it to a pie. She said the fragrance was wonderful.

The quince sat in the fruit bowl for a few weeks, next to a single orange and a few local apples while I looked at quince recipes on the internet. The most intriguing one involved cutting the quince in half like a squash, scooping the guts out, and baking it with spices and honey in the cavity. The day before Thanksgiving I bought a bag of Granny Smith apples at Grocery Outlet — not my favorites, but serviceable when I need cooking apples and local apples will soon be gone.

Yesterday it was time to use up two homemade pie crusts left from the holiday. I still had three local apples in the fruit bowl, plus the Granny Smiths. I pulled out my trusty 1956 Betty Crocker Picture Cookbook, my mother’s and my go-to cookbook for basic cooking, and flipped to the index for Q.

No entries for quince.

Okay. I went for my Deborah Madison cookbook collection. Madison makes tea from quince pips and candied quinces and uses quinces in filling for mince pies.

I peeled the quince, and then cut into it, which was difficult: I had to sharpen my knife three times while removing the core and seeds and cutting the fruit into pieces. Are they always like this? The fragrance was underwhelming, faintly citrus-y. Was it even ripe? (The skin was bright yellow).

In the end, I threw it in a saucepan with a third of a cup of sugar and some water and let it cook while I rolled out the bottom pie crust and stuck the crust back in the fridge to chill.

Then I received a phone call that there was a ticket available for the last matinee of The Nutcracker. I turned off the stove, kissed the cat goodbye and hurried to town.

I watched half of the performance. I was shocked to learn that there was no live orchestra (I don’t go to The Nutcracker for the dancing, but for the music). The artistic director had set the piece as a local story in a barn, the Olympic Mountains and lavender fields. It still had the Rat King and the Nutcracker and plenty of corps de ballet.

I would have stayed for the second half, but I was meeting my friend Eileen to drive out for the annual lighting of Lake Crescent Lodge, a beautiful art deco building. There was a fire blazing in the fieldstone fireplace, a decorated tree, a Santa hat on one of the resident deer heads, carols by the Sequim chapter of the Sweet Adelines, costumed elves passing trays of cookies, and Santa himself, posing for photos with infants, children, teens, and bold old folks.

We drove home in the dark. I fed the cat and ate salad, vegetables and the last of the Thanksgiving stuffing for dinner.

Time to finish the pie. I put the oven on to preheat to 400 F, retrieved the pie shell from the refrigerator, scooped out the poached quince chunks with a slotted spoon, peeled and sliced the three local apples and one gargantuan Granny Smith, added half a cup of sugar mixed with nutmeg and cinnamon, piled the fruit and sugar into the crust, dotted the filling with butter. I rolled out the top crust and crimped it in place, popped the pie in the oven and started doing dishes.

I had my first slice of pie after lunch today. The quince’s flavor still reminded me of roasted sweet potato — not unpleasant, but not special in my opinion. Sometimes there was a faint rose-like odor. I’d just as soon eat plain apple pie.

Did any of you grow up eating quinces? What do you like to do with them? They are gone for this year, but next year I can do another experiment.

P.S. This morning, a week after I made the apple and quince pie, I used the leftover quince poaching syrup as part of the liquid in a three-day batch of oatmeal — one cup poaching liquid, two cups whole milk. I added dried apricots, dried sour cherries, almonds and grated fresh ginger, thinking those flavors would go with the residual quince flavor. I was right. I made a triple batch because the poaching liquid was quite sweet and I wanted to dilute the sweetness.

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Categories Uncategorized

Seasonal Eating in Western Washington

April 27, 2025 //
2

My weekly trip to the farmers market is always an adventure: what will there be in the last week of April? After decades of farmers market shopping, farm box subscriptions and growing my own food in California, I had a pretty good idea what to expect in the markets there. I knew homegrown cherry tomatoes might be ripe on June 30, or Fourth of July and sweet corn would soon follow, but I have lived two states to the north for less than a year and do not know what to expect.

I’ll adjust, but I am not adjusted. The days have gotten long here and cavalcades of flowers are blooming: bulbs and shrubs and flowering trees: peonies, iris, tulips, lilacs, rhododendrons, cherries and plums. And yet the food crops are stubbornly behind sunny California or even foggy coastal California.

I got excited on Friday because the market newsletter had said there would be strawberries this week. I packed empty glass containers to carry them home in and got to the market just as it opened to be sure to get some.

I didn’t see any strawberries when I walked through the market. I stopped to buy radishes and spring salad mix and a loaf of whole wheat sourdough. I walked through a second time. No strawberries.

I stopped by the market booth. “The newsletter said you would have strawberries this week. Did the vendor not come?”

The woman in the booth looked at me.

“Strawberry plants,” she said, naming the vendor.

Oh.

I spotted some rhubarb. Perhaps it was dreaming of strawberries like I was.

I did not buy any rhubarb this week. Once, in an effort to try everything in a market, I bought a bunch of rhubarb and made all kinds of things with it. You can read about those experiments here. I may get so I crave rhubarb in the spring after a few years in Washington, but I am not there yet.

There are no root crops in the market except radishes. Where are the carrots, the spring beets, the new potatoes?

On my way out, I bought arugula with my last six dollars. I’ll be eating both salads and cooked greens this week: spring salad mix, arugula, radish greens, bok choy and the last of some savoy cabbage I bought some weeks back. The arugula farmer had cauliflower, but I do not like cauliflower (If I want some, I can get some next week).

Once home I cooked my last two beets: I will eat those in salads this week with walnuts, feta, various greens and a vinaigrette with pomegranate molasses (I found pomegranate molasses at the health food store this week and am delighted to have it).

I am beginning to long for fresh fruit. I have blood oranges, oranges, lemons and limes. I have frozen blueberries. I have canned sour pie cherries. I have dried cranberries and dried cherries and dates. I eat all of these things. If I were in California I would be feasting on strawberries by now. I can make wonderful cherry pie out of canned sour cherries. I can make candied orange peel and eat it in oatmeal with dates and cinnamon. I have jams and apple butter as well. I can make do.

The truth is I am tired of winter eating. I am glad of spring salads. And I wonder what we will have to eat next week in western Washington.

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Categories frugal eating, salads, seasonal recipes, Uncategorized

Frugality and Eating, Week 5-6ish

March 22, 2025 //
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I promised I would talk a little about creativity this week. Here goes: to create something you need to have a problem to solve, something you want to do. And then you have to make a decision to do it with what you have on hand. This is important: while it is nice to have a fine musical instrument or the best pigments or some other luxury (and there is something to having decent or even excellent materials), the creativity does not come from the excellence of your materials, it comes from your decision to bring something into being, which is generally because you want something.

For instance, back in 2018, I had an emotional response to the United States administration separating children from their parents at the southern border. My experience as a former MFT told me that this would be traumatic for the families and children. I wanted to say something about it. But more than that, I wanted to sing something about it because songs carry emotional weight and evoke emotional responses.

So I started imagining what a woman would say who was walking to the U.S. border. The song starts:

I walked a long way, longer than you know.
I walked a long way, carrying my pain and fear.
I walked a long way -- I had nowhere else to go.
I walked a long way to get here.

I knew I wanted to sing it in both English and Spanish to reach Spanish-speakers. Fortunately, I studied Spanish in high school and college. I found a local poet to help me put my English words into Spanish in a way that I could fit them into the tune. I hired my partner at the time, Mr. Johnny Harper, to produce both English and Spanish versions. I booked studio time. I hired back-up singers and a piano player and, through trial and error, I built the arrangement I wanted.

Then, as I have done with almost all of my recording projects I painted a watercolor album cover painting. I had to adjust the painting many times to get the color intensity I wanted. I had to photograph it and have it photographed many times to get the photos to reflect the colors of the painting. All the time I was shooting for something, aiming for something that I wanted.

The cooks among you are perhaps wondering what this has to do with frugal eating. It has everything to do with it. The ingredients I buy at the farmers market or Safeway or grocery outlet are the beginning of my creativity in the kitchen. I am guided by ingredients and by what I like to eat. For instance, I like home fries and I hate hash browns. This is an easy choice: I don’t make hash browns and avoid them in restaurants because I don’t like them — I turn potatoes into other things. If I didn’t like potatoes at all, I wouldn’t buy them.

So what did I buy this week? The farmer with the sweet potatoes comes to the market once a month, so I bought several sweet potatoes. The other vegetable vendor had savoy cabbage today — I bought some because at this time in the year it is wonderful to have a new vegetable to cook with. Then I bought a mixed bag of roasting vegetables, mostly to get carrots and Brussels sprouts, and two bags of kale because kale is still what is available for salads and I don’t mind it if I smother it in tahini, garlic and lemon juice. The sweet potatoes cost $11.50 and the other veggies cost $27.92. Big spender today.

I have another busy weekend and I needed to hurry back home quickly, so I bought myself an extravagant lunch of vegetarian focaccia and a chocolate-walnut cookie from Pane D’Amore bakery. That might just become my weekly lunch treat. Both items were excellent and I enjoyed the break from constant cooking. That set me back $7.25.

I don’t know yet what I’ll make with my ingredients, or when I’ll buy more. I still have borscht, bread, and kale salad from last week, so I won’t have to cook tonight. Saturday dinner: kale salad, leftover pasta. Snack: chocolate-covered nuts

Sunday breakfast: pumpkin polenta (polenta cooked in milk with half a cup of pumpkin puree, sweet spices and maple syrup, coffee; lunch: kale salad, dinner: sweet potato with salsa and sour cream; snack: chocolate-covered nuts

Monday breakfast: pumpkin polenta, coffee; lunch: kale salad, borscht, leftover fried potatoes, muffin; dinner: bread with cheese, roasted peppers, salami, Brussels sprouts with pesto; Snack: bread and jam

Here endeth the daily recitation of what I bought and ate last week: last Thursday, midway through this post, my laptop died. It took six days to replace it and have data transferred from the old to the new, interrupting my daily recording of what I ate and spent. I did spend $85.28 at Grocery Outlet on March 14, where I restocked on citrus, celery, bell peppers, green onions, garlic, chicken broth, whole wheat flour, pasta, pasta sauce, chicken meatballs, crackers, whole wheat tortillas, evaporated milk and sour cream. I also bought strawberries and whipping cream because it’s spring (probably should have waited longer on the strawberries, which looked good, but lacked flavor: I folded a few of them into a batch of strawberry cornmeal pancakes, which I ate with newly-purchased raspberry syrup and frozen blueberries). Total spent on food for the days covered by this post: $159.92.

Pretty soon I am going to go to the kitchen for Saturday’s breakfast of baked French toast: I made it yesterday with eggs, milk, sugar, butter, and a loaf of sliced cardamom-orange bread that I bought at Sluy’s Bakery in Poulsbo for $8.24 when I was in Poulsbo seeing to data transfer. During my day-long excursion there I bought pizza and salad for lunch for $12.02, hot chocolate and cappuccino to keep me going for $11.06, and a pecan roll for $2.20. I also brought food with me, which I ate for dinner: kale salad, salami, cheese and whole wheat crackers.

After breakfast I will go to the farmers market and start a new post covering what I buy this week. Or not: I started these frugal eating posts because I thought people would find it helpful to know how to eat well on little money, but maybe all of you already know how to do that, or maybe you all still have plenty to eat on. If you’d like me to continue the Frugal Eating posts, please leave me a comment.

P.S. “The Border Song” is still available on CD.

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Categories frugal eating, home cooking, Uncategorized

Frugality and Eating, Week 4

March 7, 2025 //
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It’s Saturday, March 1, 2025, which means it’s farmers market day. Before I left the house, I had a helping of breakfast bread pudding with frozen blueberries and my standard cup of freshly ground dark roast decaf coffee with half and half. I brought with me some water, some roasted almonds and an orange because I planned to join a march after my jaunt to the market.

On the way to the market I mailed a gift grocery check for $200.00 from a friend to my credit union and stopped at the bank to get $40.00. I still had $13.59 in cash left from last Saturday. I didn’t expect the $200 check and was grateful to get it: it means I could pay my storage charges today and still buy food to supplement what I already have in the house.

Today I bought two bags of kale for $10.00 and a mixed bag of potatoes, beets, carrots and Brussels sprouts for $16.00. I also bought a thick slab of vegetarian focaccia to eat at the demonstration for $4.00 — this turned out to be a great value, full of tomatoes, artichoke hearts and kalamata olives, Mediterranean flavors that I have missed this winter. Total spent: $30.00.

I spent two hours on the street, holding my sign, singing lustily, and walking from the downtown assembly point to the courthouse with hundreds of people who gathered in support of our National Parks Service. The best sign I saw played off the “Fire Danger” indicator: It said “Being Fired Danger” with the needle in the red for “extreme danger.”

When I got home I put my groceries away and ran a hot bath with Epsom salts: my hips and feet ached from too much standing, but I like being out in the streets with like-minded people and I will be there whenever I can.

Cooking tip of the week: on the days and times you have energy, do some food prep or cooking so that you will have food ready for when you are tired or busy. Right now I have one more serving salad, one serving of bread pudding and a bowl of cooked ziti waiting in the fridge. And Sunday morning, right after breakfast I grated carrots and one beet that will go into the next batch of carrot-tahini muffins (I really like them — can you tell?), and then I continued grating beets, carrots and Brussels sprouts that will go into a pot of borscht. And then I mixed up some whole wheat bread dough and put it in the fridge for a slow rise: when I get back into the kitchen I will coordinate making the muffins, making a pizza for lunch, baking the bread and assembling the soup.

Saturday lunch: part one, on the go: focaccia; part two: Brussels sprout salad (at 4 PM). Snack: black tea with milk, dark chocolate almond. Dinner: baked potato with sour cream and black pepper, pan-fried and steamed Italian sausage and Brussels sprouts. I finished the potato, but only half of the sausage and sprouts — I’ll recycle them as pizza toppings later this week.

Sunday cooking, part two: when I went back to the kitchen I took the bread dough out of the fridge, and began preheating the oven to 425 F while I assembled the soup: crumbled up mushrooms, chicken broth, salt, pepper, garlic, grated vegetables and water. While that simmered, I made the muffin batter. I popped the muffins into the oven and ate soup and leftover salad while they baked, plus put on a kettle for tea. When the muffins came out, I made the tea and let it steep while I put together a quick pizza. While the pizza baked I ate a muffin and drank my tea.

Reducing the oven to 400 F, I transferred the muffins from the muffin tin to a bowl and re-greased the muffin tin for clover leaf rolls. You shape them by rolling three small balls of dough for each muffin cup. I also greased a pie tin to hold a round loaf made from the remaining dough.

Next I needed something to do while the rolls rose in the pans. I grabbed a bag of kale and pulled the leaves into pieces, discarding the stems. When that was done, the rolls were ready for the oven, so I put them in, leaving the loaf to rise on top of the stove. While the rolls baked I made salad dressing out of my remaining tahini — in the tahini jar. When the rolls came out, I put the loaf in the oven and went upstairs to rest.

So, in part of one day I produced most of what I will eat this week: soup, salad, pizza, muffins, rolls, bread, salad dressing. And then I came along after dinner and made what I’m calling “Mounds bar pudding” for dessert: I combined half a can of coconut milk with vanilla and about two tablespoons of powdered sugar, whipped it to blend it and poured some over a bowl of chocolate pudding. If I had had coconut flakes, I would have sprinkled them on top.

Monday breakfast: muffin, home fries, coffee; lunch: borscht, kale salad, whole wheat roll; dinner: Brussels sprout salad, pizza, whole wheat roll, muffin; snacks: whole wheat roll, chocolate, Bengal Spice tea. Spending: $10.03 for tahini and half and half.

Tuesday breakfast: muffin, home fries, coffee; lunch: pizza, kale salad, whole wheat roll; snack: hot cocoa, whole wheat roll, chocolate-covered nuts; dinner: pasta with chicken meatballs, marinara and shredded kale.

Wednesday breakfast: muffin, home fries, homemade mocha; lunch: kale salad, pasta, whole wheat roll; snack: chocolate, shortbread, tea; dinner: borscht, whole wheat roll. Spending: $3.99 one gallon of whole milk.

Thursday breakfast: muffin, home fries, coffee; lunch: kale salad, pasta, whole wheat roll; dinner: pizza, orange segments; snacks: tea, shortbread, roasted almonds, “Mounds bar pudding.”

Friday breakfast: muffin, home fries, coffee; lunch: borscht, kale salad, whole wheat roll; snacks: black tea, chocolate, muffin; dinner: pasta with meat balls, “Mounds bar pudding” with raw almonds.

Total food spending this week: $44.02

Next week, in addition to telling you what I eat and spend on food, I’ll write a bit about creativity.

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Categories cooking, grocery shopping, home cooking, philosophy, Uncategorized

Frugality and Eating, Week 3

February 28, 2025 //
2

Saturday morning I began my day with the last of the tahini-beet muffins I made last week, a blood orange and a cup of decaf coffee with half and half. Then I walked to the bank, where I withdrew forty dollars, which I hope will be enough to cover this week’s grocery shopping.

I like having money in the bank — in fact, I feel uncomfortable if my business account falls below $200. Today it is at $65.00. I could have left the $40.00 in there, but I also like having fresh, healthy things to eat and I like supporting local farmers, especially the ones who bring vegetables to market in the winter.

I walked from the bank to the farmers market where I purchased two bags of kale for $10.00 for salads (I still have potatoes, beets, carrots, onions, garlic and a few Brussels sprouts from previous weeks). Then I stopped at the Pane d’Amore booth to look at loaves of bread. I can bake my own bread and sometimes do, but I have a busy week and did not want to commit to baking bread. I also have tortillas and ready-made pizza crusts on hand, plus a loaf of challah in the freezer.

The bread that called to me was the Oaty Oat bread. I bought a loaf for $7.25, making use of my .25 bag discount. Farmers market total: $17.25.

On my way home, I decided to stop at the health food store because they have a sale on navel oranges. I can eat them as snacks, juice them, make orange syrup or orange curd to enhance baked goods. I can make orange rolls for breakfasts or snacks or orange-cumin bread. I can add them to salads. I still have lemons, limes and blood oranges at home. I bought a four-pound bag of organic oranges for $8.99.

I have a white board in my kitchen where I list things I want to buy soon. I decided to stop by Safeway and get just those items: sour cream, red salsa and flour. I lucked out because all three of them were on sale. I bought unbleached bread flour — I had been looking just for unbleached flour, but unbleached bread flour was on sale for $3.17 for five pounds. Because I am not planning on making an angel food cake or delicate pastry this week, I bought the bread flour, saving myself more than two dollars (Regular flour ran $5.45 and was bleached). Safeway total: $9.77.

Home again, I unpacked my groceries and put them away, except for one bag of lacinato kale. I sat at my kitchen table removing the leaves from the central stems, which allowed me to rest from my load-bearing walk. When my glass bowl was full of kale I added the usual suspects: fresh-squeezed lemon juice, minced garlic, tamari and a heaping tablespoon of tahini.

By the time I had made the salad, I realized that what I wanted for lunch was a big salad and a slice of bread with jam. I dished a big bowl of kale salad and crumbled some feta into it to make it more substantial. I cut the end slice from the oat bread, cut the slice into two halves and spread one with some marionberry jam I had received as a gift and the other with lingonberry preserves from a past baking box (More on that next week).

What goes with bread and jam? Tea. I made a pot of Irish Breakfast Tea to take the chill off the afternoon. I buy loose tea from Canada — here is my tea rant for your reading pleasure.

Saturday dinner: Homemade burrito: tomato wrap, shredded greens, refried beans, sour cream, salsa (I’m trying to organize a protest about cuts to Social Security so I needed something quick); chocolate pudding.

Sunday: An early political meeting, three loads of laundry and a breakfast bread pudding made up of half a loaf of challah from the freezer, three eggs, a quart of whole milk, juice and zest of one orange, vanilla, nutmeg and a handful of sugar, baking at 350 F. Breakfast drink: mocha made from fresh coffee, leftover cocoa and half and half. Lunch: kale salad, homemade pizza. Snack: bread and jam.

Monday: Breakfast bread pudding with a handful of frozen blueberries, coffee; Lunch: kale salad with roasted almonds, homemade pizza, bread and jam, black tea with milk (hungry and cold today). Dinner: homemade burrito.

Tuesday: Breakfast bread pudding with blueberries, coffee with half and half. Lunch: kale salad, homemade pizza. Snack: toast with butter and jam. Dinner: homemade burrito

Wednesday: Breakfast bread pudding with blueberries, coffee with half and half. Lunch: roasted cashews from the bag (bad day, spent most of it in bed). Dinner: kale salad, homemade pizza

Thursday: Breakfast out: a friend treated me to breakfast to celebrate my upcoming birthday. Very frugal for me, not so much for her. Bonus: Chestnut Cottage where we ate gives you a free pastry on your birthday, so I snagged a cinnamon roll to eat tomorrow. Late lunch: kale salad because I ate a big high-calorie breakfast. Dinner: a few sections of orange and a lot of water because I was not hungry.

Friday: Breakfast cinnamon roll from Chestnut Cottage, coffee with half and half. While the cinnamon roll heated and the coffee dripped I shredded Brussels sprouts for a later salad and doused them with olive oil and lemon juice to marinate. Later I will add matchstick pieces of green apple, dried cranberries, roasted cashews and yellow mustard. Lunch: Brussels sprouts salad and oatmeal bread. Dinner: pasta with pesto and Brussels sprouts. Snack: two chocolate-covered caramelized almonds.

Note: I am not recommending skipping meals, nor am I skipping meals to save money: I am reporting to you what I actually do, what I actually spend, and what I actually eat in case it gives you some ideas about how to eat more frugally in challenging times. I promise you that I enjoy eating the food that I prepare — if I didn’t, I would switch it up and make something different.

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Categories frugal eating, grocery shopping, home cooking, teas and tisanes, Uncategorized

Frugality and Eating, Week 2

February 21, 2025 //
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I walked to the farmers market this morning, seeking salad ingredients and possibly other vegetables for the week. I still have carrots, beets, potatoes and onions at home from last week (Don’t worry, I’ll have uses for them). Today I bought a bag of curly kale and a bag of Brussels sprouts: I can turn each of them into winter salads. Total outlay: $12.00, as opposed to last week’s $32.40 on fresh vegetables. Because my costs were so low, I felt fine about purchasing a treat, a small cherry-almond danish for $4.25. The vendor gives me $.25 off because I bring my own cloth bag, so I always bring my bag: I keep it in my kitchen and grab it whenever I go shopping. Market total: $16.25.

On the way home I stop at Safeway. My list has three items: Kleenex, malted milk powder and marshmallows (for cocoa). I couldn’t find the marshmallows, so I bought tissues: $7.99 for a four-pack and malted milk powder for $6.49. Yikes! But it’s February and I like to have a variety of drinks in chilly weather. There is no waste to malted milk powder. So I buy it. Safeway total: $15.19.

When I got home, the first thing I did was start stripping curly kale from its stems, putting small pieces into a glass salad bowl. Three-quarters of my kale filled the bowl with a little room to toss it. Then I went to work on dressing. Into a small bowl I placed a generous tablespoon of tahini, the juice of three small lemons — smaller than your average lime — a dash of tamari and one finely minced clove of garlic. I tossed all of that with the kale, covered it and refrigerated it to soften in the dressing. Next I quartered a blood orange and peeled it, separating the segments. I put the peels in a baggie in the freezer: I candy my own orange rinds — all it takes is water, sugar, rinds and patience — and I like them straight up and in baked goods (bread pudding, French toast, muffins).

While my kale marinated, I spied some whole wheat sourdough that I had let age too long. While I could still get a knife through it, I sliced all of it. I selected two half slices, spread them with mustard and turned on my oven to 350 F. I sliced three pieces of cheddar, topped the bread with them and popped it into the oven to melt — the oven heat will soften the middle of the bread and turn the chewy edges crunchy. When the cheese toast was done, I put one slice of salami over the melted cheese.

Next I dished a bowl of tahini-dressed kale, added three-quarters of the orange segments and a small handful of roasted almonds and sat down to eat. One hour of prep and I’m eating salad and a hot sandwich. Plus, I have a few prepped orange segments, sliced bread and kale salad for other meals.

Sunday morning I made the beet root-tahini muffins, adding dried sour cherries and substituting two small grated beets for the carrots. They came out a beautiful rose color on top, perfect for post-Valentine’s Day weekend. Next time I might try a mixture of carrots and beets, just because, but these are fine. While they baked I cleaned up, chopped potatoes for a fresh batch of home fries and put them to boil and made my morning coffee. Sunday afternoon I varied my toasted cheese sandwich by spreading the bread with pesto and skipping the salami. I had some more kale salad, a pot of black tea and half of my danish. Sweet potato, salsa and sour cream for dinner.

Monday breakfast: muffin, home fries, coffee. I popped six of the muffins into the freezer to see if that preserves them better than leaving them out all week (They do dry out a bit, but nuking them to warm them makes them soft again). Monday lunch: kale salad with blood oranges, cheese toasts and cheese and salami toasts. Snack: homemade hot cocoa with marshmallows (marshmallows a gift from my landlady). Monday dinner: more cheese toasts.

Tuesday breakfast: muffin, home fries, coffee. Tuesday lunch: kale salad with oranges, homemade pizza with pesto, roasted peppers, mushrooms. Tuesday dinner: sweet potato with salsa and sour cream. Snacks: handful of Cheeze-Its, muffin. Spending: $4.00 for organic half and half (I drink half and half in my coffee. Straus organic tastes better and lasts longer than other brands. When I can’t get half and half or run out at a bad time, I use evaporated milk).

Wednesday breakfast: muffin, home fries, coffee. Lunch: kale salad with oranges, homemade pizza. Snack: cocoa. Dinner: Yummy homemade burrito — refried beans, shredded greens, salsa, and sour cream; carrot sticks.

Thursday breakfast: muffin, home fries, coffee. Lunch: kale salad, homemade pizza. Snack: too many Cheez-Its (I had a fuck-it-all kind of day). Very late dinner: another muffin.

Friday breakfast: muffin, home fries, coffee. Lunch: homemade burrito. Snack: homemade cocoa with marshmallows. Dinner: I’m still recovering from yesterday, so I steamed a bowl of Brussels sprouts, added a spoonful of pesto, ate the last slice of homemade pizza and finished dinner with a muffin.

Week 3 begins tomorrow with a farmers market trip.

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Categories frugal eating, home cooking, Uncategorized

Seasonal Transformation: Summer into Fall into Spring Again

April 17, 2016 //
3

Summer of 2015 was all about tomatoes for me: the forty-some volunteer tomato plants sprang from seeds of fallen tomatoes I planted last spring. They grew, blossomed, played host to myriad aphids and, in spite of that, produced more tomatoes than I have ever had to work with, mostly cherry tomatoes and a drying variety called Principe Borghese. All July and August I picked them, washed them, dried them, put up vats of pasta sauce in the freezer. I made experimental tomato sugar plums. I considered making tomato caramel. We ate them in Greek salad and BLTs. I developed two versions of a pasta using pan-roasted cherry tomatoes and fresh corn with either andouille or chicken chorizo (The Mexican version is my favorite).

The only thing I didn’t do is can them — we don’t have a dishwasher and I don’t have a canning kettle or a living grandmother to show me all of the old-fashioned tricks for canning in a simple kitchen.

The summer ended with a week-long heat wave. I watered the plants on the first day and then they were on their own because it was too hot to venture into our unshaded yard.

Last weekend I cut the abundant dry weeds from the side yard, probably twelve or sixteen grocery bags of them. Some of them were taller than I was. That felt like a fall chore. Then, yesterday, I sang at the Farmers’ Market in Berkeley. It was a fall market all of a sudden. There were strawberries, but not enough for everyone who wanted to take them home. There were a few peaches left, but more pears. And there were apples everywhere — I bought fifteen pounds of mixed varieties for ten dollars and cut down a cardboard box so that I could shove them in my refrigerator to join the bowl of Gravensteins I bought for pies a few weeks ago (It has been too hot to turn on the oven). I do not know the names of all of the apples I got, or the flavors and textures: lunch today may be a hunk of bread, pieces of cheese and slices of different apples. My new favorite, identified by the farmer who sold me the mix, is a Royal Empire, a mid-season apple: they taste exotic, spicy, and have plenty of juice and crunch.

The tomatoes are still producing fruit and blossoms. I begin to think of drying more of them, running the dehydrator at night. I also begin to think of soup, perhaps a corn chowder with the last of the sweet corn, or a butternut squash soup from last year’s squash — I still have a few in the garage. Perhaps I will cook them all and store the puree in the freezer for easy fall and winter soups. I freeze the seeds and skins, too, for stock.

I am not assured of cool weather. The weather is the wild card in California. Four years of drought. Record heat. There are clouds in the sky this morning, which means it will not get as hot as it otherwise could, but it has been a crap shoot whether to turn on the oven for months — as soon as I make pie crust, it turns too hot to bake. Make iced tea and we will have a cool day and I will get out the tea pot and drink hot tea instead. I have taken to watching the news on TV just to hear what they are saying about the weather.

It is dark later in the mornings: soon I will begin my walk to BART in the dark. It is dark when I get up now and the light fades early. I don’t remember dark mornings coming in early September, but I guess they do every year.

I do remember the food transitions. Right now I have lemons, peaches, Armenian cucumbers and red bell peppers, plus all of those apples.  I did not cook last week, living on milkshakes, smoothies, the occasional Greek salad and canned re-fried beans. Yes, I stock those for emergencies, hot weather and days when I am too tired to make my own from dried pintos. I think I should make some roasted strawberries for Johnny for the winter if I see strawberries next week.

When I was writing this post last, it was becoming fall 2015. Now it is spring 2016 and volunteer tomatoes are up in the yard, along with lots and lots of chard and kale that re-seeded themselves (I don’t mind at all — they compete with the weeds). I have three butternut squash plants — I threw a rotting squash from 2014 into a heavily mulched area and, voila, new squash plants.

We are eating fresh strawberries again and lots of fresh salads, which helps us both in our efforts to lose pounds we accumulated over 2015. I am baking sourdough bread once more. My latest quest is to eat “clean food” — i.e. food not touched by the industrial food system. For now we have given up white sugar and most white flour. We use maple syrup and dried fruit in our oats. We eat polenta. I use commercial whole wheat and rye flours in bread, with just a little bread flour, but I am on the track of a freshly-milled whole wheat flour. Although I miss cheese and pasta, I do buy some organic milk and yogurt from a dairy farmer. We eat a lot of legumes, too, and wild-caught shrimp and fish.

Eating less sugar was the big surprise. My skin improved. My gums improved. I still daydream about good desserts, but fresh fruit tastes really good when it is ripe, local and seasonal, whether it is strawberries or blood oranges. Dried fruit offers other options. Sometimes I will have yogurt with fruit and honey. Right now I am enjoying the freshness of a lot of things we eat: today my lunch was a salad of watercress, lettuce, cilantro, roasted beets, raw carrots, walnuts, feta and blood oranges in a balsamic vinaigrette.

I have had a left knee injury since December 2015, which is slowing me down and keeping me from things I like to do, but I found this draft post and thought I would send it out to all my patient readers to say that I am alive, still feeding us and growing things, still playing music, not painting much or writing much, watching the seasons turn through the plants in the yard and the food on our plates.

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Categories gardening, home cooking, seasonal recipes, Uncategorized

June Transformation: Life Takes Unexpected Turns and Summer Abundance

June 30, 2013 //
27

Villefavard Roses, 5"x7" watercolor pencil. Sharyn Dimmick.

Villefavard Roses, 5″x7″ watercolor pencil. Sharyn Dimmick.

If I do not know it from my zen and Vipassana meditation, I should know it from my habit of seasonal eating: things change all the time and not always in ways that we expect — too much rain or sun disrupts crop production, or bees mysteriously die off and the crops are lightly pollinated. I had hoped to announce a big change today, one that would affect my life every single day, but the timetable for that has been changed. I am not trying to be mysterious or withholding, promising to tell you something and then not telling you, but since the planned change involved other people I am not at liberty to speak about what was going to happen, but has not. Plans are not going according to schedule and the schedule is not going according to plan.

Yesterday I sang at the Farmers’ Market in Berkeley. It was a bright, hot day and some new crops were in. I saw fresh apples! Pink Ladies and Pink Pearls. Blueberries and blackberries and strawberries are still abundant. Suncrest peaches and apricots and now Santa Rosa plums fill the bins at Frog Hollow Farm’s stand. I drank tomato juice and two bottles of water as I stood and sang. When I was done I ate a cup of caramel ice cream,  and a raw Thai salad cone from the vegan stand. I wanted to buy peaches or maybe blackberries, but I needed to hurry to catch a bus and contented myself with picking up a basket of Sun gold cherry tomatoes and a pound and a half of fresh green beans: perhaps I will make a pasta of them or a pasta salad for the Fourth of July potluck and barbecue that I always go to.

Justine's Kitchen. 5" x 7" Ink and Watercolor Pencil. Sharyn Dimmick.

Justine’s Kitchen. 5″ x 7″ Ink and Watercolor Pencil. Sharyn Dimmick.

In other news, I have been asked to assist Natalie Goldberg at her December retreat in Taos, New Mexico. This is a great honor, and the first time I have served at a long retreat. Many of my old writing pals are slated to be there. So, having just returned from France, I need to start saving air fare for New Mexico. I went back to “the day job” on Friday, singing in the BART station for tips.

France. This year it rained a lot, so I didn’t have as much chance to paint, sketch or swim as I did last year. Nevertheless, I have chosen images from my French sketchbook to illustrate this post. I hope you enjoy them.

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Categories Uncategorized

April Transformation: Not Much Change

April 30, 2013 //
19

Not so much has changed since I wrote my March blog: I am still busking in the Berkeley BART stations twice a day five days a week, plus singing at the Farmers’ Market some Saturdays. I get up and eat breakfast, often flavored oatmeal cooked in milk, but sometimes leftover pie or scrambled eggs with cheese or vegetables, fresh cinnamon rolls, Shredded Wheat with sliced strawberries now that spring has come.

I am almost always home for lunch, which I generally eat with a pot a black tea, served with milk, English-style. Today I had tacos from some leftover poached chicken, simmered in green salsa, with sour cream, shredded cheese, romaine lettuce and cilantro. Yesterday I ate leftover rolls and Cotswold cheese, a blood orange and a sliver of leftover coconut custard pie (It was a pie-for-breakfast day).

Painting of ingredients for improvised gumbo -- Davis pepper spray incident in background.

Mumbo Jumbo Gumbo. 12″ x 12″ gouache and watercolor pencil. Sharyn Dimmick

Ever since my younger brother moved home my mother has taken over most of the cooking — she seems to think that Bryan will starve without her intervention. I sometimes cook for Johnny: Friday I cooked him an impromptu gumbo, featuring andouille sausage, leftover shrimp, chicken and fennel, not unlike the Mumbo-Jumbo Gumbo I’ve written about before. Tonight I helped prepare a simple supper of spaghetti, grated cheese, Italian sausage-flavored Prego from the jar. I ate my pasta mixed with leftover sauteed bok choy. Mom fixed a bowl of fresh blackberries with sugar and, voila, c’est tout.

I am still buying bags of “cosmetically-challenged” Moro blood oranges from the Farmers’ Market and eating them out of hand as snacks. I still buy Farmers’ Market carrots, which are sweeter than supermarket ones. I still buy fresh walnuts in the shell — not much has changed, although last week I bought a few fresh sugar snap peas to snack on.

Original ink and watercolor painting shows people around breakfast table.

Second Breakfast at Vicki’s. 12″ x 12″ ink and watercolor pencil. Sharyn Dimmick.

Tomorrow I am taking a morning off my busking day job to attend a pre-dawn Morris Dance event in Tilden Park. I will assist my friend Vicki at the grand May Day breakfast after the sun has been danced into the sky (You last heard of Vicki when I mentioned attending the Hobbits’ Second Breakfast at her house). Perhaps I will bring back some food stories or recipes for May. You never know. Anything can happen.

What I completely forgot to mention in my March post because I was running around going to Natalie Goldberg‘s readings for her new book, The True Secret of Writing, is that I am featured in the book: the chapter on Practice contains a story about me, a snippet of my writing and the words to my song “The Wallflower Waltz.” Those of you who are interested in writing or meditation practice (which is the true secret of writing) will want to read this book. Natalie, of course, is best-known for her book Writing Down the Bones.

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Categories breakfast food, gumbo, home cooking, Uncategorized