Category: food

  • Summer Harvest Carrot Cake

    Summer Harvest Carrot Cake

    One of the most rewarding vegetables to grow yourself are carrots. Like tomatoes the flavor of a grocery store carrot cannot compete with homegrown carrots. Homegrown carrots are deliciously complex while grocery store varieties tend to be bland and flavorless. Orange maybe the most common color for carrots but my favorites are the yellow and…

  • Birthday Dinner at Tucos in Davis

    For my birthday, I was treated to a great meal at my favorite restaurant in Davis, Tucos Wine Market and Cafe .   Tucos is a small, intimate space hidden behind the Amtrack station. The best seats are on the patio where you can do some prime people watching. Tucos has a wide variety of well…

  • Wordless Wednesday:First Artichokes

  • Masullo Pizza, A Piece of Naples in Sacramento

    This past Friday, Simon and I spent the day in Sacramento. We visited one of my favorite nurseries in town, bought some beer making supplies, and shared some delicious beers on the patio at Pangaea Brew Cafe. We ended a great day at Masullo Wood-Oven Neapolitan Pizza restaurant. Masullo is a gem hidden in a…

  • Making Your Own Winter Squash Puree the Easy Way

    This fall my community garden neighbor surprised me with one of his favorite vegetables: the banana squash. He proudly told me that this large cylindrical squash can grow up to 45 pounds. He also said that he uses the banana squash in place of pumpkin or butternut for his holiday baking. Normally, the task of…

  • Using the Last of The Eggplant

    The temperature dipped to 39 degrees last night. That means saying good-by to my remaining eggplants. This year I grew Black Beauty, Casper, and my new favorite the heirloom variety Rotonda Bianca Sfumata. The last three plants had at least ten eggplants on them. I was watching the weather reports cautiously since eggplant and cooler…

  • The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly of Harvesting Hops

    My ten hop plants flourished all summer long. I inherited these plants along with the community plot. They are rhizomes and started to appear in late May. After six to eight weeks they spread upward and entangled themselves into the fence. Around late July they started to form little cones which reached maturity after three…

  • Monday Harvest

    I was able to harvest my first yellow squash along with carrots, onions, and zucchini. I used them for a pasta primavera dish which was the perfect dinner after surviving the first heat wave of the summer. Harvest Monday is hosted by Daphne’s Dandelions. If you want to see what others are harvesting in their…

  • April and May CSA boxes

    I’m still receiving my CSA boxes but I’ve been spreading them out since I can grow a lot of my own produce right now. However, it’s still a treat to get farm fresh asparagus and strawberries. April’s CSA box was filled with greens. I blame the cooler the temps for the lack of the variety.…

  • Second Week of CSA from Fully Belly

    I received my second box of CSA goodies this Wednesday. I was thrilled to see that that I was getting asparagus again. The box also included spring garlic, navel oranges, swiss chard, large bag of mixed greens, asparagus, yellow potatoes, and huge carrots.