One of the signs that summer is ending and fall has taken over, is when we have to cut down our basil. Neil always makes a huge batch of pesto that we freeze and enjoy all winter. On Sunday, we had friends over and made a batch of pesto pasta, from some of the last of the pesto. I also harvested the first greens in my garden for a salad. I planted the mache lettuce in the fall and covered the planters with a plastic tarp. There they sat all winter under snow and in the cold. It is amazing to me that anything could grow at all. But grow they did and the salad was delicious. I adore mache greens and have taken to growing them because they are so difficult to find in the store. I have found them at Trader Joes in my neighborhood.
Mache salad with pear and walnuts
Toast about 1/3 c. walnuts. Peel and thinly slice a bosc pear. Thinly slice a shallot. Use a vegetable peeler and shave about 1/3c. parmesan cheese. Add everything to the salad.
Dressing: Mix 1T dijon mustard with 2T sherry vinegar and 1/4c. olive oil. I put them into an empty jam jar and shake it until it emulsifies.
Our sweet girl turned 6 today. We used to count her age in days, then weeks, then months and now it’s hard to believe that she’s already six. She looks like a big girl with her skinny jeans. She acts like a teenager as she sings along with Lady Gaga and Beyoncé and begs for me to paint her nails. She is a graceful ballerina and a fierce warrior in Tae Kwon Do. She has an opinion on everything and is not afraid to share it with you. She’s smart, a gourmand (we’re going for sushi tonight on her request) and has a wicked sense of humor.
We joke that she was born with a top hat and a cane, but it’s pretty much true. It will continue to be an amazing journey seeing her grow up.
This beautiful card and package came from her godparents in Rhode Island, who are amazing artists and make beautiful metal kitchenware.
Here’s a great video of Patti Moreno, the Garden Girl, showing how easy it is to build a raised bed garden and hoop house. She doesn’t get into it in depth, but she keeps chickens and rabbits in cages over the gardens to help fertilize the soil.
It’s finally starting to get cold here and I wanted to save some edibles from my garden. On the left is lemon verbena and on the right is flat-leaf or Italian parsley. I washed all the leaves and they are on this wire rack to dry. I put the parsley in the freezer to use it in sauces. I dried the lemon verbena to use as tea. It makes a wonderful tea mixed with mint leaves. You can also chop up the leaves and put them into baked goods.
Here’s a nice video showing a man and his son building a coop out of a lot of re-purposed materials. I can’t tell from the video, but my only suggestion would be to make sure the whole thing is sealed. It looks as though the back wall has an opening under the roof, which could allow raccoons in.
Neil is in our yard right now trying to figure out how to secure our coop to keep marauding raccoon claws out.
My chickens are in the final stages of their molt. At least all signs point to that. Chickens begin the molt on their heads and kind of work their way down to their tail and wing feathers. Edie looks gorgeous and fluffy instead of mangey like she did after her bout with mites. I’m not walking into their coop to find loads of feathers these days. I think they should be well insulated for winter with all their new feathers.
However, when I check their nest box all I find are little fluffy feathers. No eggs. It’s been about 2 months with NO EGGS. I have to buy eggs from the store, which doesn’t suit me at all anymore. So instead of staring at an empty egg holder, I have decided to fill it with the gorgeous grape tomatoes that are still coming out of my garden. They are getting smaller and smaller as the days get shorter and cooler, but they are still coming. Winter is a mourning time for me when I don’t have tomatoes that taste like tomatoes, so I’m enjoying each and every one of these little treasures.
This past friday was my birthday. I woke up to flowers and a card that Lindsay made me. Our friends picked Lindsay up from school and she slept over at their house.
Neil and I had a leisurely day having brunch and wandering around Central Park. The day was perfect and the park was lovely. Reminded me why I live in this crazy city! Definitely walk along the mall by the Bethesda terrace to see the American Elm trees. They are so pretty in how they curve and bend toward the sky. Read here about the park fighting another round of Dutch elm disease.
Friends joined us for dinner at Frankies and we sat around a little fire outside while we waited for a table. Definitely not a typical New York experience, but a good one. And then we had drinks and dessert at our house afterwards without worrying about what time we were going to have to get up in the morning. A perfect day!
It’s been about 2 weeks since I’ve gotten an egg from my girls. No, they aren’t all eggbound either! They are molting. Instead of eggs in the nest box there are loads of feathers. There are feathers in their run, there are feathers in the yard, there are feathers in their poop tray. Amazingly enough, there are even feathers on the girls. Sort of. Well they look a little scruffy.
But I’m happy to see feathers growing back on Edie’s neck. She lost most of her beard from scratching at mites. She started to get little porcupine-like quills sticking out of her face. Kind of a 5 o’clock stubble. But now they are fluffing out and she has gotten her hilarious mustache and beard back.
Take a peek at the old, bare neck with the feather quills just starting to peek out and the new fuzzy neck. Doesn’t she look hilariously in her attempt at dignity?
