31 May 2010 by pat.

OK, before you get upset at my lousy diet, I had a great big green salad with tomatoes and cucumbers and asparagus, ‘kay?

But tonight was meant for leftovers! Actually, I deliberately made leftover potatoes this morning: I peeled and cut up two potatoes and cooked them so I could use them for dinner. I only used one potato: the other one will be used later in the week.

Friday night I did a slooooooow braise of a Boston Butt pork roast. I put in a Dutch oven:

• 5lb pork roast salted and peppered, then browned on all sides
• 8 cloves garlic, smashed
• 1 onion, chopped
• 2 stalks of celery, cut into 2″ lengths(those vegetable ingredients I sautéed in the pot after I removed the browned roast)

Then I added:

• 1 can of Guinness beer
• 2 peeled and chopped carrots
• 2 peeled and chopped parsnips
• 2 bay leaves
• and about 750ml of water, until the roast was almost submerged.

Bring to a boil on the stove, transfer to slow oven for 5 hours. So I fork-separated and had some pulled pork off the roast tonight together with the potatoes, and that yummy cheese.

First the potatoes in the cast-iron frying pan with a drizzle of olive oil and a knob of butter. Eventually add the pork (it just needs to warm up). Shortly after, some cheese. Don’t try to grate the cheese like I did: just crumble it in your fingers.

Yummy one-pan meal. Hash browns and pulled pork with apple-cinnamon cheese.

That’s a cheese with potential. I can see doing a bunch of things with it. Like a grilled cheese sandwich!

Posted in Food, recipes, Food | No Comments »

24 May 2010 by pat.

I’ve got

• 3 blue sea holly, which I’m going to plant in among my roses in the front garden for contrast,
• 2 bleeding hearts for the back garden,

and the following ferns:

• Hay scented - can grow up to 24 or 36″ high, and will take any amount of light. They recommend putting it near a pathway so its fronds can be bruised and crushed, releasing the scent.
• Ostrich hardy - 24-60″. Might be aggressive. Might be what I already have in the back yard!
• Christmas - 24-36″ high, does well in full to partial shade.
• Maidenhair - 12-24″, black stems, medium shade
• Sensitive - 12-18″, sunshine or shade.
• Lady — 24-36″, partial shade
• Cinnamon - 24-36″, can go from wet, swampy to dry shade.
• Toothed wood - 12-24″, really lacy, semi evergreen!
• Leatherwood - 24-36″ semi evergreen, often used by florists, they say.
• Royal fern - 36-48″ — this is a tall one! I will probably place it between some of the hostas to add some height.

Tonight I’ll use my indelible marker on popsicle sticks so I know what is planted where, and tomorrow I will plant and water. Have only had about a millimeter of water in the last week.

Posted in Home gardens, Gardening | 1 Comment »

24 May 2010 by pat.

Here it is! Silk screened on both sides with the shop’s logo.I like the orange reverse on the stitched handles. And the fact that the handles are long enough to sling it over my shoulder.

Lots of space in it for things. Two bottle-shaped pockets and a central divider. I shopped at the Market yesterday, and it held a basket of potatoes, one of carrots, one of parsnips, three bunches of asparagus, a bottle of olive oil, two of wine, 5 heads of garlic, 3 hunks of ginger, a pound of mushrooms from Phil’s, and some more of that wonderful cheese that I bought last week.The bags are only $5.00, and very roomy.

Posted in Food - farmers' market, Food | 5 Comments »

19 May 2010 by pat.

I’m a sucker for a good cheese! I was looking for one last week, before having Oliver and Melissa over for dinner. I went to Chris’ Cheesemongers: actually, it was funny how I ended up there. I was next door, at the organic Golden Orchard, buying some zucchini and cucumbers, and told the cashier how much I love using my LCBO partitioned bag for shopping. One of the cheesemongers was right behind me, and promptly told me that if I liked that bag, I’d like the ones they sell at Chris’ Cheesemongers even better: longer straps, better compartments, larger size!

Nothing would do but I had to have one of those bags, so I went next door with him, and told him that, in addition to the bag, I wanted a mild cheese to serve at the start of dinner. We started with a pretty uninspired camembert (I think that was my suggestion) and by the third cheese, he had talked me into this, which I had a runny taste of.

Let it come to room temperature, and enjoy the delicate flavour. I served it with some rosemary and sesame flatbreads and some almonds.

It’s made of a combination of goat, sheep and cow milk. I’m eating the last of it as I write this. The taste of goat and sheep is there slightly, giving it more character than a straight cow’s milk cheese frequently has. It’s imported from Tuscany, $19.95.

Posted in Food - farmers' market, Food, processed, Food | 1 Comment »

19 May 2010 by pat.

I used to have a number of these parrot tulips — oh, gosh, probably 10 years ago. This is the last one that blooms. I love the streaks, I love the colors, I love the edges.

I may have to buy some more, even though it’s difficult to keep them safe from the squirrels.

The forget-me-nots in the background are gone now. They’re seeding into my garden from another garden in the neighbourhood, and not something I planted.

Posted in Home gardens, Gardening | No Comments »

19 May 2010 by pat.

While I was weeding my front garden on Sunday, I noticed what seemed to be a patch of pollen caught in a spider web at the front corner of the porch. I looked closer.

Look at it full size. It’s baby spiders! I left them there. I hope they’ll migrate to the garden, not the house!

Posted in Urban nature, Home gardens, Gardening | No Comments »

19 May 2010 by pat.

Along with sunny days come migratory birds! My backyard is certainly attracting them.They like to have places to perch. In addition to the fence, they’ve got the sand cherry standard and the elderberry.They like to scratch the soil for insects. They’ve got a garden free of pesticides for that. They like to have baths and drinks of water. My water cascade definitely provides that! I had three species of warblers at the same time in it on the weekend: it looked like a bird convention (hmm… a parliament of fowls?).I was very glad to have the long lens to take their pictures. I did have to raise the ISO to 800, which resulted in somewhat grainy images, due to the shade in my yard from surrounding trees and the speed at which these birds move. If they were slower seed eaters, I could have gotten by with an ISO of 200; as it was, 800 wasn’t enough to stop the motion of the black-throated blue warbler, who is rather blurry in my shots.Lots of pictures over in my Backyard Birds folder on Flickr.

Posted in Urban nature, Home gardens, Gardening, Photography - documentary, Photography | No Comments »

14 May 2010 by pat.

So into the ground went the 10 hostas (oooh, some of them were looking long and white: I hope they’ll be OK) and the 10 astilbe roots. All of them labelled, sprinkled with blood & bone meal, and watered. I did that work in the afternoon, when birds usually make themselves scarce. It means that, with my recharged battery on my camera, I’m good to go again. It was a very birdy morning. I’ll be updating my Flickr account tonight with the results.

Posted in Home gardens, Gardening | No Comments »

12 May 2010 by pat.

I won tickets to Monday night’s chefs duel over crab.Dang, I wish I was one of the judges, because those of us who were not judges ate tasty appetizers, but no crab!Here are some pictures I took.I apologize for the quality: I need to (a)check that my battery is charged before leaving home and (b)check the settings on the point and shoot camera before pointing and shooting! Don’t bother enlarging. The pictures look best small

This one is a look down the bar at all the trays of food that had been set out, cleaned, ready to use, depending on what the chef wanted for the competition.

Radicchio, peppers, basil, thyme, green onions, and a lovely hunk of ginger.

Fingerling potatoes! Red baby potatoes! Yukon Golds! Are you hungry yet?

Several types of tomatoes, some dill, apples, cucumbers, and peppers. Oh yeah, some pears, too!

Aromatics: leeks, yellow and red onions, and a whole whack of a tubfull of peeled garlic cloves.

Here we have some plantain, yellow squash, zucchini, red bell peppers, and some mammoth carrots. These aincho baby carrots.

Screams guacamole, doesn’t it? A couple of avocados, some limes, lemons, and oranges.

Fresh greenery.

Slab of awesome bacon, the package not yet opened, and some chorizo sausage.

Dairy products! Dang, I missed a shot of the $450 hunk of Parmesan. Just relax and imagine the richness these ingredients brought to the dishes.

Not the secret ingredient! But Ingredients I would have gladly munched, raw, because they looked so fresh.

Aw shucks.(You didn’t think I was going to pass on that, did you?)Some nice freshly shucked Malpeques.

Cheeeeze, pleeeeeze.Some boccancino on a skewer with a basil leaf and teeny tomato, plus some maple cheddar from Black River Dairy in Prince Edward county, and some heart-stoppingly wonderful marbelized carmelized onion cheddar, and I don’t know the name of the dairy: send it to me and I’ll fix this.

Awesome steaks.Some were used to create a Steak Diane using some mashed potatoes, grated Parmesan cheese and (yum yum) secret ingredient, crab, all mixed together, placed on top of the steak. Me wants. Damn, me not judge, so me didn’t get.

Obligatory crowd scene. Actually, it was more crowded looking the other direction.

Master of ceremonies, Dick Snyder, announcing the winner! Chef Gordon Mackie of Far Niente. Chef Bruce Woods of Brassaii put up an admirable fight.

Posted in Food, dining out, Food | No Comments »

9 May 2010 by pat.

Yet another food recall is happening, this time around some Italian-style processed meats and cheese.

The larger the plant, the greater the chance that one machine’s lack of cleanliness is going to impact a whole bunch of food, because everything from that line (or perhaps the plant) gets recalled.

It just freaks me out how much food is being recalled these days: worse in the USA, where food poisoning can result in millions of pounds of meat being recalled and destroyed.

Posted in Food, processed, Food | No Comments »

9 May 2010 by pat.

My image of the golden pear will be appearing in an iPad app in the near future. I’ve sold its non-exclusive use to Grocio.com.I should take advantage of the crummy weather today and update my website.

Posted in Photography - Art, Photography sales and marketing, Photography | 2 Comments »

9 May 2010 by pat.

Ugh! Didn’t get the hostas in the ground, and that may be a good thing. It rained Thursday afternoon, Friday, and yesterday, and there’s a frost warning for tonight. I hope the roots will be OK in their little plastic bags in the dark. Maybe tomorrow will be a planting day: it’s supposed to be sunny and 13. 

The one good thing is that all this rain should have pushed some of the nutrients from the compost down into the soil.

Posted in Home gardens, Gardening | No Comments »

7 May 2010 by pat.

Today started with a trip to Home Depot to get some hardware cloth. 1/4 inch square galvanized hardware cloth, to be exact.

I needed the hardware cloth to sift the compost that has been sitting at the bottom of my composter for a few years. It had lots of time to decompose, and it did it quite well. There were still some pieces of eggshell, some big hunks of bark, a few pebbles (must have come from previous garden waste, or the detritus at the bottom of flower pots) and the like. So in order to have just the good stuff, I needed to sift it through the hardware cloth.

Dump a few trowels’ worth on the hardware cloth (positioned above a bucket), and move it around with my gloved hands or the edge of the trowel until only the big bits are left on top. Discard big bits; repeat. Repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat. I would have worn my iPod, except I wanted to be listening for migrators while I was doing it. Didn’t see any new birds.

Have a nice even layer of compost over everything in the big north bed in the back yard. Need to sift some more for the south bed, the triangle bed, and the front garden.

The north and south beds are the priorities, because I need to get the hostas in the ground tomorrow, so I’ve been doing prepwork. Yesterday I pulled daffodils and bluebells. I would have raked them out, but discovered that the elderberry has very shallow roots! I’m afraid I broke a couple of them. So I’ve got a few daffodil bulbs left in the ground, but I pulled their leaves off and I’m not sure if they’ll even sprout next year.

I’m almost all set for tomorrow. I found my permanent aluminum plant markers, and have written the names on them, and have drawn up a cheat sheet on a filing card so I remember where to plant things. I need to go to East End Gardens before I plant, though, and buy some blood meal to sprinkle around each hosta after planting, with the hopes that the squirrels won’t dig up the hostas because they smell like wet dog. Give them a chance to get established and for the squirrels to forget that the soil had been dug up.

On another note, when I was cleaning leaf and flower junk out of the water thingie, I discovered that a young European sparrow drowned today. The corners of its mouth were still quite yellow. I was surprised: I didn’t realize that sparrow families were that far along this year.

I’ll have to see if I can rig something up so a bird that falls in the pond can recover and fly off.

Posted in Home gardens, Gardening | 1 Comment »

4 May 2010 by pat.

It contains 10 hosta roots!

• Medio variegata
• Aureomarginata
• Albomarginata
• Hyacinthina
• Sieboldiana Elegans

(oooh! Had to get out my Lee Valley credit card magnifier to read the labels)

So what does this mean?

I need to come up with an arrangement and decide which ones are going in which bed.

Most of them will go in the right-handed bed, and a few in the left. The triangle I’m going to leave for herbs.

What are their colors and sizes?

Medio variegata: medium green leaf with a white flame down the centre. Can get up to 36″ around, about 18″ high.

Aureomarginata: heart-shaped glossy medium green leaves with yellow edges. Height of 18-28″, spread 36-48″.

Albomarginata: how’s your Latin? This one’s got white edges on deep green leaves, and can eventually spread to 36″ or more (about 18″ high).

Hyacinthina: Loosely grouped, heavily quilted non-lustrous bluish-green leaves. Really textural. It can grow up to 24″ tall and about 36″ in diameter.

Sieboldiana Elegans: Now this one can get big! up to 30″ tall and 48″ in diameter. Large, heart shaped thick bluish-grey leaves, heavily quilted. Slow grower. (Thank goodness. I’d hate to have to divide that every couple of years!)

I need to remove my daffodils and put down a good layer of compost, and scratch that into the soil a little. They recommend Sieboldiana Elegans as a background plant, so I’ll probably put one by the back of the water thingie, and the other near the north fence, about 4 feet from the elderberry — its chartreuse leaves should set off the blue-grey nicely.

In the north bed, I want to put two albomarginatas and one aureomarginata near the Sieboldiana, and one aureomarginata next to the one by the water thingie. I’ll combine the Medio variegata with one Hyacinthina where the scentimental rose is (dead looking), and that leaves me one Hyacinthina to put somewhere, which I’ll figure out once I get the others in the ground. I have to leave room for ferns, astilbe and bleeding hearts!

Ooooh, I’m really going to have to watch out for slugs now. I think it was Martin Galloway who called hostas a salad for slugs!

Posted in Home gardens, Gardening | No Comments »