One of my dear next-door neighbors came over this morning to help pick the last basket of apricots off the tree. We dropped plenty for the deer, Wren, and Biko, and left plenty pecked ones on the tree for the birds. I was grateful for help with the last basket, and she was happy to take them home. I’m grateful beyond words for the joy this amazing tree brings to me and to others, for its beauty all year long, for the history we’ve shared, and for the generosity of its harvest this year.
I’m grateful that the apricot blessing is winding down! It’s been –is being– an extraordinary year for apricots at Mirador. The east side of the tree looks like it’s about given up all its fruit… but the west side still has plenty to offer! However, at this point even many fruits within reach have been pecked by birds on their tops or far sides, and so while I may still be able to harvest a few more, I’ve pretty much surrendered the season. A couple of baskets remain in the kitchen to be turned into jam or frozen, but within a couple of days I believe that apricot harvest will feel complete. It’s been a fun ride!
Though little Wren buries herself in towels or the bedding during a rainstorm, she quickly runs outside when the storm has passed, to enjoy with me the gorgeous aftermath. Note the slowly ripening peaches on the next tree up for harvest, another banner year if I can get to them before the rodents.
Meanwhile, back in the kitchen, apricot upside-down cake is brewing. I’ve never made an upside-down cake, honestly never understood the appeal until quite recently when Deb shared some homemade pineapple upside-down cake. Hmmmm, I thought, this is actually quite tasty. And so when NYT threw this recipe my way in its ‘Many Ways to Use Apricots’ feature, I saved the recipe, and baked it tonight.
While I’m immensely pleased with the outcome, I haven’t tasted it yet. The blessed rain postponed my dinner plan so I’m saving the cake to serve with coffee tomorrow. Instead tonight, I zoomed with a friend and student as we sipped cocktails together and discussed impermanence, non-attachment to outcome, and the infinitely unfolding path of mindfulness practice. I’m so grateful for every little bit of my life; even more so when I remember how fleeting and fraught with uncertainty it is. I’m grateful for gradually learning how to hold everything, just as it is, the ten thousand joys and the ten thousand sorrows. And the ten thousand apricots.
I’m grateful for another beautiful day of being alive in the neighborhood, and another Boyz Lunch. Today we enjoyed yogurt and spice roasted salmon over rice, fresh garden peas and lettuce, and three-bean salad. The marinade was simple, colorful and tasty, and the salmon cooked to perfection cut in small bites and roasted on high for ten minutes.
There was also a dessert, allegedly sour cream-raspberry brownies, but actually just pudding. I don’t know what went wrong. It was even a high altitude recipe, which I can’t recommend until I troubleshoot it. The Boyz are so agreeable, and maybe actually liked it better as pudding as they said. It was a lot of work and costly ingredients, so I packaged it up and froze portions in case of emergency, rather than dumping it.
It’s a great year for the miniature lupines that I’ve only found in one patch along the trail. I was challenged to find information online about it, but then I was grateful to remember I have a book! So I turned to Weber’s Colorado Flora, and from there was able to locate it online as Lupinus lepidus. It was years before I even noticed this little flower, and the patch just keeps growing. When the seedpods burst they can shoot up to twenty feet. I’m definitely going to collect some seeds to sow in the yarden this summer.
It’s a sad truth that the smaller, more delicate, and more sparse plants on the forest floor are the natives, and the much more prolific, prickly or gaudy plants are invasive exotics, like this weedy alyssum below. Carpets of it all going to seed! Sure, it looks like a fairy land in the right light, but drop a match or catch an ember and it’s nothing but tinder. Everyone is thrilled about all the green everywhere, and though I’m not obsessing over it, I can’t help but think often about how as soon as summer dries it out we’ll have ten times the wildfire fuel on the ground as we did last year.
I AM grateful for all the green in the garden, though. Lettuce, arugula, and orach are bountiful now. I’m so glad I made time to plant arugula and lettuce under plastic hoops in late winter, and also that I let the orach go to seed last fall and it self-sowed.
I’m grateful to have found Hook & Loom rugs a couple of years ago when I was looking for a new, environmentally friendly kitchen rug. I bought a couple of small throw rugs then, too. I’m grateful to have remembered Hook & Loom when I started shopping for a new living room rug last month. I ordered some swatches to better determine what I want for the new, streamlined aesthetic now that I don’t need all my beautiful maple flooring covered with rugs to protect my dear departed old Stellar dog from slipping and sliding. After a day with them on the floor, I’ve only eliminated two options, but here they are all together. Three are wool, one is organic cotton, and the rest are recycled cotton. Wren can’t decide her preference either, though she has certainly enjoyed skidding around on all of them. We’ll decide by the end of the week.
I’m grateful for sweet potatoes, and for a snow-day lunch today of a baked sweet potato and a bowl of garden beans. I finally shelled the rattlesnake pole beans last week, and only got a small bowl full, so I soaked them overnight, sautéed a small garden onion, and tossed in some Scotch bonnet pepper flakes from last year, and a healthy shake of Penzeys Arizona seasoning, for a hearty bowl of beans to accompany the buttery tuber. So simple, so delicious!
I didn’t grow up cherishing the ‘whoopie pie,’ in fact I’m not sure I ever ate one. But for some reason this recipe caught my attention, and I had everything I needed except the oatmeal. My Personal Shopper picked up a carton of ‘traditional old-fashioned’ oats, and neither of us was sure if that fit the bill for ‘rolled oats.’ I’m pleased to announce that it did! I searched it and found a site assuring me that there’s absolutely no difference between rolled and old-fashioned oats, and was grateful to confirm that when I opened the can to bake this evening. (I also did not grow up eating oatmeal, or I might have known this.)
The recipe calls for dried cranberries to go in the basic cinnamon oatmeal cookies, and for canned whole cranberry sauce for the filling. I guess I could have bought both of those ingredients also, but decided instead to use up the last of the dried sour cherries, handpicked by John, that were given to me a couple months ago. Was it that long ago? Time flies, whether you’re having fun or not. I’d been nibbling on them, and used them as a martini garnish, but had enough left to bake these delicious cookies. Instead of the cranberry sauce in the filling, which was otherwise just a basic cream cheese-buttercream frosting, I used a few cherries and a tablespoon of the raspberry syrup I made earlier this fall. So simple, so delicious. I’m grateful for the gift of sour cherries, grown with attention, picked with love, and given with generosity.
I’m grateful for this moment, this evening, stepping outside onto the deck to witness the aspens gloried up on Mendicant Ridge with cumulus clouds above and a light shower farther east, with junipers under my protection in the foreground. I’m grateful for Living Inside the Kaleidoscope.
I’m grateful for this moment, having stuffed two Sirenevyi sweet peppers with leftover mushroom stuffing from the other night, grateful for parchment paper which makes life easier and cleanup quicker, grateful for the source of the paper, for the growth of the peppers, the water to grow them, the time to attend to them… grateful for the nourishment of a simple vegetarian meal.
I’ve not been a fan of stuffing in turkeys, or outside of turkeys, at holidays; nor have I stuffed a lot of things. But I have been stuffing the occasional mushroom since the Colonel first introduced me to the idea of popping a little blob of bleu cheese and a dab of butter into a button mushroom and broiling it for a few minutes. What a great appetizer! So simple, so delicious. And in recent years I’ve been grateful for stuffing larger mushrooms, usually portobellos. When I was searching stuffed pepper recipes a few weeks ago I ran across one which used riced cauliflower instead of regular rice. I couldn’t find it again when I went to stuff these gorgeous portobellos for lunch today. But I riced some cauliflower, sautéed some kale, grated some Mexican cheese, chopped a Chimayo pepper, a Sirenevyi sweet pepper, and the first ripe tiny Tabasco pepper, and the last fennel bulb, and mixed them all together with one beaten egg. Oh, and some spices. I scooped some of the flesh from the center of each mushroom and stuck it in the freezer for stock later, then plunked the stuffing into the mushrooms, topped with grated mozzarella, and roasted them at 400℉ for fifteen minutes. To serve, I topped them with a roasted tomato and some crumbled bacon (the fat of which I’d used to sauté the kale). Not so simple, but not so hard either, and so delicious.
I roasted a bunch of ripe and extra-ripe tomatoes this morning, and when they cooled slipped them into a freezer bag. There are so many green tomatoes left on the vine, and I worry they won’t ripen before the first freeze. Already I’m bringing in Biko, as when the weather forecast says 46 it’s been 38 overnight, and the past two nights it’s predicted 42. Can’t take the risk of freezing the tortoise. He can stay out to about 40 degrees but can’t handle much time at anything much lower. And I wonder about the green tomatoes and peppers, whether with these abruptly cold nights they have just stopped ripening. We’ll know more later. Anyway, I’m grateful for stuffing. This one was low-cal and fulfilling.
And in other news… A friend’s sister and her family lost everything in two homes in Ft. Myers in Florida during Hurricane Ian. Storm surge to the ceilings. As climate chaos continues to fuel more destructive storms, fires, heat waves, etc., all of us will be touched from three or two degrees of separation to no separation at all. Sherry visited here a few years ago, a lovely woman and a fine artist. Her life’s work, not to mention her husband’s shop and her daughter’s home also, gone. We so often feel helpless when tragedy strikes. This feels like a good way to contribute my little bit to the herculean recovery efforts underway in Florida and the US southeast coast, donating directly to a family and knowing they will get every penny. If you feel so moved, please join me, and share this link:
My guilty pleasure. I can’t think about where it comes from. Though I do buy local ‘happy pig’ bacon when possible, and otherwise the most ethical available. Which isn’t very. This is why it’s a guilt trip for me; and an indulgence.
When I want bacon I manage to automagically separate the food from its origin as a sentient being. My mind disassociates. Today I’m grateful for the first batch of homegrown jalapeño poppers. So simple, so delicious.
I’m grateful for my tiny crop of small Fuji apples, which I rescued the other day from magpie predation. This morning I turned most of them into this Jewish apple cake for Boyz Lunch. Not simple but so delicious.