Category Archives: garden

White Chocolate – Raspberry Pie

I had two really busy weeks and didn’t have 5 minutes to go out and check up on the yard. When I finally went out there Friday morning it was madness. All kinds of weeds and tall grass. There were flowers tangled everywhere. Some of my garden stuff had bolted. The peas were finished.

I picked about 2 pounds of raspberries and there was at least another pound that was overripe and no good. Raspberries are a part-time job.

But I finally had the time and the berries to do my first invented pie.

Ingredients:

Your favorite 2 crust pie dough.

5 cups raspberries
3/4 to 1 cup sugar
1 T orange zest
1 T lemon zest
2 tsp. lemon juice
8 oz. white chocolate chips (I suspect a dark chocolate would work great, too. I’m going to try that next.)

Combine everything except the white chocolate chips together. Don’t skip the citrus zest, that’s what makes the flavor extraordinary. I was worried that the raspberries would be tart and I used the full cup of sugar. The white chocolate provides plenty of sweetness. Next time I would use less sugar.

I baked the bottom crust for about 10 minutes at 400 degrees and then spread the white chocolate chips in an even layer. Initially I thought I was going to let them melt a bit and try to spread the melted chocolate but I ditched that step.

I kept forgetting that I was documenting my baking process so there aren’t many photos.

Gently scrape your raspberry mix into your pie plate and cover with top crust. This makes a very juicy pie so you’d be wise to set the pie plate on a cookie sheet before putting into oven.

Bake at 400 for 20-25 minutes then reduce heat to 350 and bake another 30-40. If you’re not lazy you might brush a little milk on the top crust before baking to help it brown. I sometimes use foil on the edges of my pie but I didn’t this time and had no problems. Use your judgment.

Those white-bits don’t look especially pretty but the pie is delicious.

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Attack of the Peas

If you’re looking at your current pea crop and sad that it isn’t frightening you with its productivity, let me tell you about the seeds I used: Veseys. I can’t remember which one I bought but they all look good. There were so many seeds I split them with co-worker and he’s been harvesting crates of peas, too.

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Berries!

This was yesterday’s pickings. This is about twice what I picked on Friday. Tons more out there. The raspberries like to hide. Every time I looked back at the part I just picked I’d see another handful.

The first post-4th of July summer nice day commute was only 6 minutes short of my all time record of 82 minutes. (11 miles). This is not a record I’m seeking to break.

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Sprouts!

I keep calling these pea sprouts but they are cucumber sprouts. I planted them on Saturday.

This is what they looked like on Tuesday morning.

This is what they looked like on Tuesday evening.

This is what they look like this morning.

* * *
Yesterday after work I was waiting for the bus. A woman I know from the bus arrived at the bus stop and came up to me and asked if the bus had come yet.

I didn’t even know what to say.

“Yes, but I decided to wait here so I could tell you that it had already come by.”

There are two buses that go to the park-n-ride. One takes a different, slightly longer route. I usually take the first bus that arrives.

The longer route bus arrived first and this same lady asked the driver about the other bus. “Is it coming? In a few minutes? Did you see it?”

Lady, he’s driving a farking bus, how does he know where the other bus is?

But the funny thing is, he answered all her questions very confidently: yes.

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They Might Be Giants

I saw this yesterday in the front yard as I was racing off to the park-n-ride. It was all I could do to not pull over right that second and fawn over it. But I always leave for the bus about two minutes later than I should so I had to wait until I got home. It looks like there will be bunch more this weekend.

Check out this tomato peeking out of the walls of water. I’ve never had great luck with the walls of water so I’m often too lazy to even put them out. This year they are doing their job. I’m going to leave them a bit longer and haul out the big, tall, shiny, new tomato cages I bought. All four of my tomato plants look great and have flowers. Even the one that I grew from a seed and then knocked all the leaves off when I planted it.

This is the main garden plot. Most of that is volunteer sunflowers. I need to get in there and yank a bunch out. In normal life I’m freakishly organized but I like to let my garden do what it wants. Last year I had way too many sunflowers and it got a little crazy with cucumber vines crawling up them plus they made it tough to move around in there.

I’ve got a lot of greens. Is there turnip blight this year? I haven’t seen one baby turnip at any farmer’s market and the ones I grew myself make huge giant greens but there’s no turnip. I’m so sad because one of my favorite spring moments is the first bite of a baby turnip. I think I’ve got a potato plant out there which must be from compost. I just started the pumpkins and lemon cucumbers in the house.

In the back that giant bush is my raspberries. I’m going to have a huge raspberry crop this year. I can’t wait to have fresh raspberries for breakfast.

This isn’t my garden. This is the hedge between our house and the rental next door. I’ve mentioned to the last two tenants that they might want to talk to the homeowner about the hedge. It hasn’t been whacked back on their side in years and it’s out of control. It doesn’t ruin our lives and we’re not the most up-to-date whackers ourselves but it seems like a pretty basic homeowner issue that someone should give a crap about. Meanwhile, we’ve talked to the homeowner on the other side of the rental and she also has overgrown hedge issues. She’s much more motivated on this than we are. Now the rental is empty again and rumor has it that the homeowner lives overseas so we’ve teamed up to try to get some action on this.

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Fast Boring Update

This afternoon I wanted to send a friend a photo of Fonzie jumping the shark in response to the last episode of a show we both watch. When I did an image search, among the many Fonzie photos, it brought up a photo of the two stars of the show I was refering to. HA!

This morning I drove across town to pick up my mixer. It’s all fixed. Yay. And I already put it to work. Then I ran by Lowe’s to get garden stuff. There was a major accident on the freeway north of my off ramp. I didn’t realize what was going on until it was too late and it took a half hour to get off the freeway at my exit, the whole time watching all the cars and trucks smart enough to get off early.

I spent all afternoon in the yard. I still haven’t got the raspberry trellis fixed up. I couldn’t find what I wanted at Lowe’s and thought I could ad lib with something we already had at home but I couldn’t find that either. If I can get motivated I have another idea to try tomorrow.

I’ve got the entire easy side of the yard all put together. The tomatoes in the walls-of-water are doing fantastic. I found a cheeky snail in one of them gorging on the buffet. I put a stop to that. I’ve got peas coming up and lots of other sprouts.

The not-easy side of the yard is a complete disaster. I’ll chip away at it tomorrow.

I just updated my Flickr set with all the Timbers home games so far. Just in case you were missing that.

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Baby Pam

Look what came in the mail today.

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Cure for Grinding

Downtown Portland on Snow Day. We’re on Fifth looking south towards Morrison.

The weather people were all in a lather last night about this late winter snow sweeping in from the north today and tomorrow. They said we might get up to four (4!) inches maybe more the two days put together. One forecast I read said, “This is 100% happening, people.”

When we walked back from lunch this afternoon I said, “I’d like to point out that not only is it not snowing. It’s not even raining.” A few seconds later it started raining and it was suggested that I shut up.

*Now* they’re saying the snow is going to start after we go to bed but we probably won’t get more than two inches of accumulations. And it would help if your house is on a hill.

I understand that because of the various mountain ranges and the ocean and the gorge that it’s tough to predict weather with any sort of accuracy around here but I also think that commerce thrives when people are worked up about something.

We’ll see. I brought some work that I can do at home if the morning commute is farked up but I expect to be at my station tomorrow.

Lunch at Karam. After they brought the food we remembered that we ordered this last time and thought it was too much. Plus this time we ordered extra falafels. No problem. That’s what leftover boxes are for.

I spent a few minutes trying to artfully take a photo of my new mouthpiece. Now that I’m ancient I finally have a retainer. But it looks gross so I’m not posting a photo.

I got it for a teeth grinding issue and I already think it’s great. I talked about it for a long time with my old dentist but I kept putting it off. I really like my new dentist so I finally went for it. Plus I think I got the impression that this was going to be a magic mouthpiece that would rejuvenate my entire head. I might end up disappointed further down the road.

I haven’t even worn it two weeks yet and already I’ve had two dreams where the mouthpiece was crumbling and I had to spit out the pieces and put them on the nightstand. Then I wake up and it’s fine.

Tomato sproutlets keep growing. I’m going to have to thin down to one sprout per container. I never thought they’d all do so well.

I’ve been putting off my garden stuff. Last weekend we had some clear but cold weather. I kept thinking I should get out and do something but now I have the excuse of the coming freezing weather. That stuff has to wait until after all the freezing is past.

I can’t remember if I already posted this but last fall I learned about a kind of pumpkin called a Baby Pam which obviously I am growing this year. I’ve been thinking of trying some other news things, too. I’m always so ambitious until the work starts and then my attention span shrinks.

This weekend is supposed to stay cold so I have a little more time with excuses.

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Sprouts

Last year I did something I’ve never done before. I saved seeds from one of my tomatoes. But I can’t remember which tomato I saved from.

As I recall, last summer was total doodoo for tomato growing. I had four plants but only one did much, probably an early girl or stupice. I’m guessing that’s the one. But I had a Roma, too, and I like to make sauce from those. The heirloom tomatoes look pretty and taste good but I’ve never had one that produced more than a few lumpy tomatoes.

I thought I’d throw them in some potting soil and see what happened and look. Lots of sproutage. I hate thinning sprouts (poor little seedlings, just want a chance) but I don’t see how it’s going to work otherwise. Plus, I don’t need 20 of the same plant. I don’t even need 3 of the same plant but I’ve got them now.

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Typed with Shaky Hands

The window project is finally finished. I don’t remember if I ever explained that the blinds were broken, too. They’ve been sorta broken for probably a couple of years but I rigged something so I could still open them and then that thing broke, too. So then I had to leave them closed for about 6 months. It just seemed like too much trouble to figure out how to take them down.

But in order to paint the windowsill I had to take them down anyway and I found a guy a couple of neighborhoods over who repairs blinds. I picked them up this morning and wrestled them back up this afternoon.

I’m now sated on home improvement for another five years.

New dahlia blooming this week.

I drank a different tea blend than I normally drink this afternoon and now I feel like I’m having a heart attack. Not in a good way. I’m worried this means I won’t be able to fall asleep tonight.

Luckily I’m about 4 episodes behind on Being Human so I can catch up on that instead of staring at the ceiling.

I can see 6 pumpkins from the window at the kitchen sink. I should have taken the photo from that angle instead of this one but now I don’t want to go back out there. Besides those six there are two that are already orange plus about 3 more yellow ones. I’m sure there will be at least another 25 posts about it before harvest.

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