So except for the coffee...
July 26, 2005
You may have noticed that culiblog has entered holiday mode. Hopefully this will all end soon. Profound apologia for the die-hards, but it's summer and all I want is homegrown. Please just go outside.
Here in Occitania, most of our food doesn't even make it the fridge before we've brushed the dirt off the roots and gobbled it up. Breakfast happens during the morning's water & weed and consists of cherry tomatoes, blackberries and baby courgettinissimi. Raw sheep's cheeses from the market, either very young or very old are our favourites and the saltiest dried ham compliment our salad at lunch. We have decided that we like all of our lettuces pure, not mixed. They're so sweet and full of flavour when you grow them yourself.
Except for the coffee, tea and peanut butter (you can take the girl out of California, but you can't take the California out of the girl), we're easily eating food grown within 5 kilometres of where we live. Yes, including the wine.
Now if we could just say that about our cosmetics. Please send black nail varnish.
images from l to r: today's harvest to be eaten at lunch, my garden (which changes every single day)
Please read more... "So except for the coffee..."
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Will weed for food (again)
July 20, 2005
This is hopefully the last gushy garden blog entry and I will try to stick to the menu from now on. But whilst weeding my allotment, I found five clumps of bean plants, rows of coreander and a few onions. It's bare but ready for some real landscaping now. I am told that there are still four months for planting, a forgiving environment.
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Why we do it
July 16, 2005
Madame Kristi and her kitchen garden.
Beer? Cigarette? Under the shade of the fig tree, El Gouche is truly the host with the most of the garden allotments. I never leave for home without at least three heads of the most delicious lettuce, handfuls of radishes and lots of arm touching.
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Terrine du terrain
July 15, 2005
This will be a recipe after the busy party days end. Mille pardons, but I find cooking for 14 and 60 still quite difficult to combine with self-actualisation in other areas of my life, yurt set-up, being a warm friend and hostess, kitchen garden ownership, and going to watch to Tour de France.
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Blackberry harvest
July 14, 2005
Je suis arriivé! This is half of the blackberry harvest of just 5 days. We ate the other half while contemplating what we should do with them. Kristi produced some blackberry sauce which we slathered on vanilla ice cream.
In a few minutes we'll go to the garden and I'll plant the ginger plants. The meyer lemon cuttings did not make it.
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Oh yes it will...
July 09, 2005
This is not a planting map. This is just an illustration showing that you can fit all of these plants into one wee kitchen garden. The plan is to plant in rounds with tall things in the middle and shorter things towards the edges. Maybe I'll even introduce verticality by planting on mounds.
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It won't fit
This last week I officially inherited a kitchen garden. My dear friend KvR facilitated the entire affair in my absence and took this photograph of the allotment overlaid with my planting wishlist. As you can see I have not been blessed with a practical mind but KvR put things into perspective for me with the illustration above.
All advice concerning cover crops and creating espalliers in tubs is welcome. Good espalliers make good neighbours! The area floods every 3 years or so and I was planning on keeping the expensive fruit trees mobile until they can hold their own against the flood waters.
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Inspiration-in-law
July 08, 2005
This graphic design jewel is the image of a kitchen garden planting scheme made by the mother of a friend of mine. At the time of it's creation, said mother was also mother-in-law of my dear friend KvR and it was the first thing I noticed when I walked into her apartment.
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Freak of nature
July 04, 2005
In the rice-maker the grains of wild rice had aligned themselves practically in the same direction. If I can repeat this action I will most surely open up a rice circus.
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Dear Dad, please get crackin'
July 02, 2005
Look what Auntie Kristi made me from the first harvest of her very own garden back in the Old Country. This raspberry/berry jam brought tears to my eyes, so delicious. None too sweet either, just the way I like it. Now there are two people in the world that make me jam that makes my heart leap with joy.
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Products without words
July 01, 2005
The kitchen line, KLOP by freshly graduated product designer, Sharon Geschiere from Arnhem. Klop in Dutch means to beat or whip (as in whipping cream). These products instruct the user in how to use them. Plus they're black. And white.
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