I really like the bike path I take to the library. It's shady, it's beautiful, it's protected from the wind, and it's full of fruit:

Okay, 'full of fruit' might be a slight exaggeration. I picked a third of a cup of ripe black raspberries last week, and that took quite a bit of hunting (don't worry, there are still lots of berries left on the bushes that have yet to ripen). As I biked by the entrance of the library, I caught a whiff of berry-flavoured Kool-Aid or similar, and I thought to myself how strange it is that what a lot of people think of as 'strawberry' or 'grape' has nothing to do with fruit and everything to do with chemical combinations. Weird.

I went back home, washed off my black raspberries, and tasted a few. They didn't taste like the berries you buy in the store; they didn't even taste like the berries we used to grow in our yard. What was it? Yes! They tasted just like blue-raspberry slushies and candy! Isn't that bizarre? That I had never even had the real fruit that the artificial flavour is based on. I had sort of thought they just made up blue-raspberry to correspond with neon blue food. So there you go.

I'm so into kale right now. I'm pretty sure the variety in my garden is called 'Dwarf Blue Curled' (ah ha, see here), and I strongly recommend it. I cook it in a pan with a lid on for a few minutes, and it's substantial without being chewy, and it's not at all bitter. I plan to keep sowing it as far into the autumn as I can, particularly if I get around to building a cold frame.

I've been sauteing it with onion and jalapeno from the garden and eating it with brown rice. You know, before having some homemade yogurt with jam I made from wild-growing mulberries. For the record, I sometimes braid my hair, but I have yet to wear any long, gauzy skirts. The tofu in that photo was really good, by the way. It boggles my mind that there are people in the world who don't like tofu.

I picked two cucumbers today, so I'm planning on making a small batch of refrigerator pickles tomorrow, using my own dill and onions. And I've got a craving for coleslaw, so cabbage is on the to-buy list. I might also get fresh mozzarella, which I will slice and arrange attractively on a plate with leaves of basil. Then I will hold the plate underneath my ripening Cherokee Purple tomato and will it to be ready to eat.

Whew, coming in right under the wire for the eighth week of One Local Summer. The amount of local (that is, from-the-garden) food I eat has been going up and up, but I've been paying less attention to creating all-local meals.

A big part of that is down to protein. I don't want to eat too many eggs, and I don't plan meals far enough in advance to deal with dried beans. Yeah, I know, I should just soak them ahead of time and freeze them -- but I don't.

So my meal this week was small and simple -- shredded potato and zucchini hashbrowns and green beans from the garden. Adding zucchini to hashbrowns was something I came up with last summer to use up the bumper crop; just make sure you reeeeally squeeze out all the water after you shred them, or they'll just sit in a soggy pile and steam.

Over and out for this week's edition of OLS.

Ooh, boy. Ooooh, boy. Can you just about taste it? My first tomato is so close to being ripe!

It's a Cherokee Purple, and you can kind of tell how dark it is near the top, on the far side. I have to say, it felt like it would be ages before I had ripe tomatoes in the garden, and now that day is nearly here! Lots more garden photos and descriptions if you click the link.

A bit of this-and-that today:

-- It's Tuesday again! Or it was Tuesday; I guess it's wrapping up now. Tuesday is 25% off day at the thrift store, which makes it my one day of browsing-type shopping each week. Today I found a jewelry cabinet which will be much less gross and dusty and much more white when I've finished with it. It was two dollars and fit in my bike basket, so I obviously had to have it.

-- I'm getting my cholesterol checked tomorrow. (I find it very unfair that I inherited high cholesterol, because by all rights, I should have super-star levels with the lifestyle I lead.) I scheduled a very early appointment, since you're not allowed to eat beforehand, but I didn't realize until this evening that that meant I had to STOP eating that much earlier too.

-- Looking at pictures of scones won't make you any less hungry. Nope.

--This evening, I was sitting on the edge of the bathtub, which had a few inches of water in it (I was trying to do something about my Summer Feet). Beany was verrrry interested. You can imagine what happened: she eventually decided to check it out, realized she was standing in water, slipped and splashed around, and then managed to jump out and dashed around the house. There was a lot of glaring at me, even while I wiped up the water SHE had tracked everywhere. I swear I had no part in it. But I may have laughed.

-- A couple of cucumbers have survived to grow larger:

-- I've spotted the first female blossoms on my cantaloupe plant; it's really loving its super-sunny, side-of-the-house location (as is the Striped Cavern tomato -- will have to plant more edibles there next year). I won't count my melons before they ripen, but the thought of having homegrown cantaloupe makes my heart speed up.

-- I didn't come up with this on my own, but my top-top tip to you: put a rubber (washing up) glove on your hand and use it to wipe cat hair off your furniture. You will spit on those lint rollers afterwards. My furniture hasn't had this little cat hair on it since I brought it home!

The thread that holds this post together is 'pretty things' -- or, to be more precise, 'pretty things I've made'. . . or planted, maybe. Like this bachelor button:

Aren't blue flowers great? I remember wondering, as a kid, why there weren't more blue flowers. Thank goodness for bachelor buttons. They can stay next year -- well, be planted again. I've got to admit that I'm also loving my few poppy plants that made it to adulthood. I check on them every morning, and it's like having a new flower garden each day, since the previous blooms will have withered away and are replaced by new ones.

I've got this amazing johnny jump-up in a bud vase:

Why so amazing? I picked it almost a month ago now! Its original flowers fell off after a few days, but the leaves were healthy and alive, so I kept it in the water -- and the other day, this teensy, tiny flower opened up! It hasn't put out roots that I can see, but the stem seems to be as happy sucking up water from the vase as it was outdoors. Amazing.

Apologies for posting another photo of my zucchini bread, but I DO think it counts as pretty, and I DID make it.

Nothing really to say about that, except that you should try that recipe (of course, I can vouch only for my variation), and that I discovered my mom had been hiding my second loaf pan in her cupboard. I knew I had a matching pair!

So, one of the items I found at the estate sale last weekend was a picnic basket. I didn't get any good 'before' shots, aside from the one in that link, which I took after I'd cleaned it. I used an old toothbrush, soapy water, and a bit of Murphy's Oil Soap to get a lot of the dirt and dust out of the cracks and polish it up. I replaced the latches and covered the handles, and it now looks like this:

Not too shabby, eh? But that's not all! I wanted to use it to carry around crochet and small sewing projects, so I made a nice lining for it, like so:

You can see a closer shot of the inside of the lid here. It's got a couple layers of cotton batting behind it, so I can stick things in with pins, and there's a pocket in the main basket part for pens and crochet hooks.

I sewed the lining pieces and used hot-melt glue to attach them to the basket, and it was pretty straightforward. There was a slight emergency in the middle of making the top's lining, when I opened up the ironing board and managed to gouge out a chunk of my big toe. Right at the tip, and here's a tip for you: don't cut your toes -- they bleed a lot! But don't worry about me; I bandaged it up and finished the project, if a bit more hobbly than when I started.

I really love this basket now (I keep closing and opening the lid to admire the lining), and I feel like I should make the point that I manage to impress (and surprise) myself whenever I do something like this. It more or less went off without a hitch (never minding toes), and it's not because of some great, innate talent of mine; it's down to practice. It's amazing to realize how we can train our brains to approach problems in useful ways ('How can I fix up this basket with what I already have?' [I used hair-binders wrapped in bias tape to replace the latches]; 'What do I need to do to make the lining?') and that we can come to understand how things 'work', whether it's the seams you need to sew or the ingredients you cook with.

It's One Local Summer time! And I didn't have just a salad! I had this for dinner last night:

I made cheddar mash with Yukon Golds from the farmers market and cheese from the co-op. You'll be happy to hear that my new-old potato masher did its job well! The great big pile of veg is from my garden -- broccoli, kale, grean beans, snow peas, and onion. (The flowers are from the garden, too.)

It's fun to think that in a month or two, when I dig up my own potatoes, I'll be able to recreate this meal entirely from what I've grown myself (sans cheese, obviously). In my heat-fueled delirium yesterday, I found it easy to imagine lying in the garden (maybe in the shade of the tomato plants), reaching out and eating whatever I found when I got hungry.

Speaking of tomato plants, look at this. Do you see it? In the middle of the photo? There's only one person who will 'get' this, but, 'Augh! Something NOT-green!' This is the Cherokee Purple plant. Ripen, my pretties.

It's official. It's really, really summer -- not just 'hey, it's kinda warm out'-summer, but true, 'it's too hot, stop touching me'-summer. As if the sweat on my brow weren't a clear enough clue, I was tipped off by the fact that I baked my first loaves of zucchini bread today:

They're exceptionally pretty loaves, I feel. I used this recipe, with the following changes to measurements: 1 cup chopped walnuts, the zest of one lemon, 1/4 cup poppy seeds, 1/4 cup crystalized ginger. I used all-purpose flour and skipped the cinnamon and curry powder completely.

I had gone on the hunt for a new recipe to try, because I'm tired of the taste of cinnamon in quick breads, especially when it's paired with nutmeg and/or cloves. Yawn. Not summery, sorry. Even with the reduced amounts for some ingredients, I still think my loaves are very flavourful (my mom concurs). I could see upping the zest or the ginger to the original amount, but I wouldn't want any more poppy seeds -- I thought a quarter cup was perfect.

I was going to take a picture of my zucchini loaves next to the loaf of white bread I made today and title it 'Carb Overload', as that's what I thought when I saw them all sitting on the counter. I figured since I had to make the regular bread, I'd do the other stuff while the oven was on -- not my oven, of course! No, it's hot enough in my little house without cranking that up. Instead, I went over to my parents' air-conditioned abode. My mom took over the oven after me and made pies. Mini blueberry pies. Would you believe she didn't even know that blueberry pie is my favourite before she started? Along with pumpkin and pecan and apple and rhubarb and sour cream raisin. . . I like pie.

The heat has made me verbose.

I feel that this is the year that I've come to truly love zucchini. Last year, I baked with it a lot and made zucchini fritters, but I've been really enjoying it sliced up, sprinkled with salt, and cooked in a bit of olive oil in my cast iron pan:

The medium-sized zucchini are exactly perfect right now -- soft and buttery and bursting with as much flavour as you could ever expect from a zucchini. I cooked one last night with baby bok choy, peas, tempeh, and brown rice. I tend to forget how much I like brown rice, but I made up a batch yesterday, and it turned out just right.

One last seemingly unrelated photo. I'd only been getting white poppies from the packet of seeds that had shown various pastel-coloured flowers on its front. Well, one of those pastel ones finally showed up:

Sweet, isn't it? Looking at the flower garden this morning, I thought it almost passed as acceptable. See here. I actually managed to make it look a bit fuller in that photo that it really is -- don't you like how the spaghetti squash vine is taking over? One of my zinnias is going to bloom any day now. Oh, the excitement.

I have a gardening question, and then I will return to proof-reading in the only semi-cool room in the house. Do most cucumber plants (I have bush pickle) self-pollinate? Or do they need 'help', like some squashes? A lot of the little cucumbers that had started are now shriveling up, and I'm not sure if it's just due to the heat, or if they haven't been properly pollinated. Oh, plants. Getting the 'most highly evolved' species to do your dirty work for you. Very clever.

So, I don't know about you, but there are a lot of tools and items I often wish I had, but then I think, 'Meh, I can just use a [blank] instead.' Every time an opportunity to use the nonexistent item comes up, I think it would be so much easier if I'd just bought one, but no -- but yes!

No more fearing that I'm going to bend a spoon when scooping out ice cream. I can stop using the mesh strainer to sift flour. And I can mash to my heart's content. Three completely un-extraordinary (uh, that would be. . . ordinary) kitchen tools, but ones I've overlooked time and again -- and I got them all for pennies at the thrift store and an estate sale. Satisfying.

My mom and I found an estate sale during its last day, when one was allowed to fill a brown paper bag for only $3. It was in the woman's house; her things were spread out on tables and counters, and those sorts of sales always make me a bit sad. Glad that I can take care of the things I take home with me, but I wind up missing a person I've never met.

Along with the gadgets above, I also found an old picnic basket that I've cleaned up and need to fix (the latches; the rest is fairly sturdy) and line with fabric; I'll keep my crochet projects in there once I've spruced it up. I also found two bowls:

Nothing out of the ordinary, except they're the perfect sizes. The larger is great for a small bowl of cereal, and the little one is just the right size for ice cream. I had to test it to make sure, of course.

It's already week six of the One Local Summer challenge! I feel a little bit like a local summer let-down, not because I can't come up with a local meal each week, but because they all tend to look alike. I can't help it! I get into something for a while and am totally happy eating variations on the same few meals over and over. Like I've mentioned before, I'm digging salads right now, so at least I made this one extra pretty for you:

Mmm, vegetables. The egg, tomato, and balsamic vinegar (combined with olive oil, salt, and pepper for a super easy vinaigrette) were store-bought and local. Everything else was from the garden -- lettuce, chard, onion, snow peas, broccoli, and green beans. Well, green and yellow bush beans. The first ones I picked! Is there anything better than lunch that's fresh from the garden?

No, there's not. Unless it's making mulberry jam from wild mulberries. Two jars in the freezer and one in the fridge, all for $1.44 (the cost of the no-cook pectin packet). I did have to tediously snip off all the little stemlets from the berries -- they're attached to the fruit and don't pull out, they way raspberry stems do. But you can save either your time or your money, right? Or just make jam from a wild fruit that doesn't have little stems.

Which reminds me, I spotted some wild grapes. I'll be keeping my eye on those.

Hey, get this. A few months ago I put this tiny seed in some dirt, right? And I watered it and let it sit on the windowsill above my sink for a while, and then I thought, 'Hey, it's warmer outside now; I will stick this little plant into the ground.' It got bigger and had some flowers, and you'll never guess what happened next.

It made a tomato. Get out of town! From an itty bitty seed? I think I might be on to something here.

Honestly, I don't know how you people with actual human babies ever manage to get anything done. How is your time not entirely filled with pointing and saying, 'Look! Look what I did! Me!' But then, I guess tomato plants never keep you up all night or throw tantrums in stores. You never have to whistle, look the other way, and pretend you've never met your tomato plant. Everything has its ups and downs.

But, hey! That seed thing works with flowers too:

Cute, no? Only two have opened so far, along with a few crappy white poppies. They're flimsy and not attractive. The bachelor buttons are nice, though.

Back to tomatoes -- they all seem pretty happy at the moment. Mr Stripy is the biggest right now, although the Cherokee Purple has roughly the same number of fruit. My Striped Cavern, a late purchase which is planted in the side yard, has blossoms, as does my second Brandywine, which is growing in a pot.

Also in a pot is my Bush Pickle plant, now sporting the littlest cucumbers:

I think I bought the Bush Pickle at the same time as the Striped Cavern tomato, because the veggies were on sale, and I've been wanting to try making refrigerator pickles. I've been really surprised at how it's taken off; I want to make a little trellis out of chicken wire for it to climb, so it doesn't take over the back path.

Speaking of chicken wire, I had some in the garage (which I WAS planning on using for the cucumber plant) that I used to make cages for the eggplant and two of the pepper plants. When I did my morning inspection of the garden yesterday, I noticed that a squirrel had torn leaves off a broccoli plant, but it wasn't until the evening that I realized I was missing an eggplant fruit and two or three poblano peppers (both plants still have many more blossoms, but that was the total of their actual fruit at the time).

Now I keep noticing nibbled zucchini blossoms and missing pea shoots. I'm going to make a garlic/cayenne spray, but maybe I should also put out some corn cobs to distract them. . . or would that just invite more of 'em to the buffet? As I told S, if they touch my tomatoes, they're taking their life in their little furry hands.

Today was an exciting day. The post arrived, and although I was hoping one of my swap packages might show up -- it didn't -- there was still something excellent in with the junk mail. A twelve dollar rebate/gift certificate to Menard's! No relation to tricksy foxes -- Menard's is a hardware store somewhere between Fleet Farm and the Home Depot. My mom bought something there a while back and had her rebate sent to my house. Twelve whole dollars! My first thought was 'PLANTS!' but I resisted.

See, one of the tabs in my binder says 'wishlist'. Doesn't that sound greedy? Like I have a running list in case anybody ever wants to give me a gift? It's a bit more mundane than that. Now that I don't go shopping the same way I used to (ie, buying whatever I need/want as soon as I think of it), I find it difficult to remember exactly what it is that I wanted in the first place. That must mean I don't really need those things, yeah?

Well, kind of. I need a new pen, because I use it every day to keep my journal (and I have to use that one specific kind of pen! -- 01, black, in case you were desperate to know). The nib wears down over time, and mine is reaching its end, but it's not quite there. So putting it on my list reminds me to get one the next time I'm at, say, Mill End Fabrics (which just happens to sell them) and have some extra cash.

Like I said, my first thought when the Menard's rebate came was that I wanted more plants, because I know their perennials are dirt-cheap right now. But then I thought I should look at my wishlist and see if anything on there could be bought at Menard's. New kitchen sink plug, yes; new shower curtain liner, yes; frosty window cling film, also yes. It came to just under $12, and I'm particularly excited about the new plug. Seems the rubber on those loses some of its oomph after a decade or four. Who'd have thought?

Maybe that's not really very interesting, but I feel like keeping a wishlist really paid off for the first time, so I thought I would share. I did get some plants in the end -- not from the store, but from cuttings that my mom made of some of her house plants. I'm hoping Beany doesn't take a sudden interest in them, like the squirrels did with my eggplant and pepper plants. Grumble, curse, groan.

Hey guys! Guess what! I will tell you -- I had to return a library book today. It's pretty hot and muggy out there, so I really wasn't feeling the desire to get on my bike. But I remembered that there's a bike path I've been meaning to explore, one that cuts along a creek and is more of a straight shot from my house to the library. I headed out, and then I found these:

I saw a bunch of them on the path as I zipped by. Were they blackberries? Since my destination was the library, I was conveniently able to find a book about wild edibles, and I looked blackberries up, to see if there were any deadly look-alikes. Nope. Excellent.

When I got back to the berries, I realized they were growing on tall trees (though there were branches within reach) -- not blackberries. I grabbed the book out of my bag and looked up mulberries. The berries matched; the leaves matched. I tasted one ripe berry -- nicely sweet. Luckily, I always stuff a few of my (oft reused) plastic bags in my canvas tote, so I pulled one out and started picking. I'd guess I got about a pint this time -- I want to go back in a few days' time and try to pick a quart (there are multiple trees at various points along the path) to make juice, possibly for jam-making.

How exciting! In other DIY-food news, I made a loaf of half-rye/half-white bread yesterday. The dough was a bit stiff, although not dry, so I was really happy when it rose well. In fact, it's pretty much the perfect size, and the texture is really nice -- too bad the bottom stuck to the pan!

I can't remember ever having bread stick before. It should be pretty easy to prevent, now that I know it can be a problem with the pan I like to use (a deep Corelle loaf pan). At least it's just a cosmetic issue -- the bread tastes pretty fantastic!

I also made soy ice cream yesterday (I used a regular ice cream recipe but subbed in soy milk and Silk creamer), since S doesn't get on with lactose. Don't get me wrong: I think it's great that most (all?) commercial soy ice creams are vegan, but it's sort of a shame that there's not a conventionally prepared (ie, custard-based) non-dairy ice cream on the market. It tastes so good! And the quart I made cost roughly four dollars (that's including the cost of the ice for the machine, as well as the egg yolks, although I don't think I should include those, because they were in the freezer, leftover from an angelfood cake). Much better than the $3-$6 you usually have to pay for a pint!

Oh! I've already forgotten to post this for a few days in a row, so I'm going to do it before the entire week goes by. My fifth One Local Summer meal:

New potatoes and strawberries from the farmers market. I boiled the potatoes and tossed them with a bit of olive oil and herbs from the garden. Broccoli and kale from the garden. I added some onion from the garden to the kale, and it was really, really good. I had my local meal while reading the local neighbourhood newspaper.

I paid about six dollars for locally-grown hot house tomatoes today. Three of them. Yikes. Am I ever glad to see more and more tomatoes appearing on my plants outside!

Sometimes I get something in my head and can't let go until I've carried through with it. Actually, not sometimes -- most of the time. Really rather a lot. It happens with baking, cooking, crafts. . . pretty much anything, but food more often than not. Like croissants.

I think somebody on flickr must have posted a photo of a croissant or mentioned croissants or used a word that I mistook for 'croissant' for half a second. And after several days of having croissants on the brain, there was nothing to do but hop on my bike yesterday morning and get one from Wuollet's. I really like Wuollet Bakery, a local chain. They make me think of the Minnesota of yesteryear -- and they're a bakery, so that marks them pretty high in my book.

I had my croissant (I'm sick of that word now, how about you?) with homemade quark and fig jam. Very nice!

And now I have to admit that I had never had a coconut date roll before today. Based on their omnipresence in co-ops, I've come to the conclusion that they are a staple in the Modern Hippy's diet (along with sesame sticks and kombucha, naturally). I couldn't tell you how many times I've nearly bought myself a package of date rolls -- the girl at Fresh and Natural even offered to package a single one up for me (evidence to my theory that everybody is nicer when you're carrying a bike helmet).

Today I finally buckled and brought some home from the co-op*. I was surprised by how mushy they are, but once I got used to the texture, I really enjoyed it. Four out of five stars. The final star could be achieved if there were more coconut in the roll -- and if it were dipped in chocolate. Can you imagine? Yum.

* In case you're interested, I do almost all my food shopping at either the farmers market, the Eastside Co-op, and Fresh and Natural. The co-op stocks the local ice cream I buy; F+N sells the right kind of almond milk and the granola I like. Luckily, I can bike to both, although they're in opposite directions.

I'm afraid that the porch's peak season has passed. I still have my breakfast out there, but it's just too hot by the time lunch rolls around. I need heavy drapes to block out the sun -- but then, that would sort of cancel out the purpose of being out there. Ah well. It's like asparagus or rhubarb: enjoy it early and often (and stick it in the freezer for later?). Now I have the rest of my meals back at the kitchen table:

My mom made some delicious oatmeal-coconut-chocolate-chip cookies the other day, which I've been enjoying with my afternoon tea. I gave two of them to S, and now I'm regretting it, as my own two didn't seem to last long enough. Okay, I don't really regret it. But they were good.

I'm going to make that macadamia cake for the 4th of July. Except I'll use ground almonds instead of macadamias. Mainly, it's just a vehicle for the lime syrup -- I've been hankering for some lime-flavoured treats. And an excuse to try out my new (thrifted for, like, sixty cents) little bundt pan. I was going to use the cake as a bribe to get people to hang out with me on the fourth, but now it seems that S won't be as busy as he thought. Funny that his schedule freed up after I told him about the cake.

I don't know about you, but I really have a habit of settling into food routines. I'll have a couple of go-to meals that stay in rotation for a few weeks or a month, and then I move on to the next thing. Right now it's salads with falafel:

This was a particularly good one, as I had left over pickled vegetables from the Holy Land buffet I got the other day. Do you know what I want to do? Pickle my broccoli stalks at the end of the summer. There were a few pieces of cauliflower stalk in the veggies from Holy Land, and I think broccoli would work well too. I should also make broccoli slaw.

I could go for some broccoli slaw right now. Mmm. I've got to stop posting about food at night!