mellow yellow

We're going to paint the horribly dull beige exterior of Raccoon Tree Acres buttery yellow, with unsalted butter trim. OK, those aren't the real color names (which are Jonquil and Morning Sun), but that's what I'm thinking. We've been very happy with the Sherman Williams line (with which we get a substantial discount thanks to a friend), so I tried to match the color to the warmest, friendliest house we found. I called the professional painters who did the house pictured with a white picket fence, and they were kind enough to give me the name of their paint (a custom blend with IGI), but unless a larger swath of the yellow I have tested in the first picture turns out too yellow, I'm going to go with SW.

Just for reference, the last picture is the ugly current color, in the ugliest part of my house next to the driveway, under the now chopped off branches of the ugliest birch tree in the world. With the birch, whose fall foliage is yellow, we also have a Douglas maple with dark yellow fall foliage and the Siberian elm, with yellow fall foliage, too. I think it will look spectacular in the autumn, a rich little yellow cottage glowing in the sun. It will also look nice in the spring, with the masses of yellow and white daffodils, and the red camellias and salmon quince flowers. And in the summer, if you put our house under your chin, it will tell you if you are in love.

Now who wants to come over and paint?

fortification fridays - korean bbq lettuce wraps

If you've never had Korean barbecue, you should feel cheated. I desperately miss the grill we used to frequent in Oakland, California, a big restaurant with high powered fans over each table and waitresses who would hurry to the tables with pans full of real, honest-to-goodness wood charcoal, weaving through the aisles and dodging customers in what surely must violate all kinds of codes. Folks would grill pieces of marinated, succulent, thin-sliced sirloin, then wrap it in lettuce leaves with a dab of miso, a jalapeno or garlic slice for the brave, and sesame-scallion salad. In Korean, it's called bulgogi. In America, it's called dee-licious.

All is not lost, though. If you have relocated from the Bay Area, you're tired of the slow cooker, or you just plain want some barbecue meat in the middle of winter, I have the perfect recipe for you.

Korean BBQ Lettuce Wraps

Serves: 2 with no abandon, or 4 more reserved people, with rice and a side dish or soup.
Kitchen Needs: working broiler or BBQ grill

A.
2 lbs. thinly sliced sirloin, rib steak, or flank steak (an Asian supermarket will stock this, or slice your own)
3-4 scallions, chopped
1 T. chopped garlic
5 T. soy sauce (I use imported Kikkoman, also worth a trip the Asian market to buy)
2 T. sesame oil
1/8 cup sugar (original recipe is 1/4 cup, but I think that's too much)
2 T. sake or Chinese cooking wine

Combine all ingredients in A. to marinate meat for 2-12 hours. To cook steak, either grill on high heat (sugars will carmelize and it will cook very quickly), or place in one layer in a roasting pan with marinade and broil on high for 5-10 minutes (again, keep an eye on it, as it will burn easily). When meat is browned and tasty-looking, remove to cutting board, chop into bite-sized pieces, and place on serving platter.

Serve with rice, a side dish such as a vegetable stirfry or a soup, a variety of kimchi if you have access to such things, and the following:

B.
a head of romaine lettuce, washed and drained well and leaves separated
3-4 green onions, sliced LENGTHWISE several times with tip of knife to create thin ribbons, then cut at 2-3 inch lengths
2 t. sesame oil
1 t. soy sauce
1 t. sesame seeds (I use the black sesame seeds with salt available in Japanese markets, but white ones are fine)

For the wraps, chop the bottom ribs off the biggest leaves of romaine, and set aside tops of leaves in pretty pile to serve. Chop the ribs finely. Place in a bowl, then add scallion ribbons and the inner leaves of the romaine, chopped. Mix sesame oil, soy sauce, and sesame seeds in small bowl for dressing. Toss salad with dressing at the last minute. DO NOT ADD DRESSING UNTIL IMMEDIATELY PRIOR TO SERVING, since it will make the lettuce limp rather quickly.

To assemble wraps, place a few pieces of meat and some of the dressed salad on a lettuce leaf. For a more authentic version, add a dab of miso or Korean bean paste, which is darker and more rustic than the standard Japanese white miso but tastes similar, a slice of raw garlic, and/or a slice of jalapeno. Koreans don't generally add kimchi to their wraps, but I've seen some Americans doing that and they seemed happy, so go for it if that appeals to you.

berries and pavers and 'chokes, oh my!

I've been busy laying out the raised bed area in the garden, and doing other gardeny projects. On a whim, I bought six raspberry canes and decided to make the southeast corner of my garden a berrea (=berry area). A friend is going to give me some blueberry bushes, and I already have one blueberry stump that may or may not survive. There is one Himalayan blackberry in the neighbor's alley behind this part of my garden, which I have already taken steps to kill. For those of you who are horrified by the thought of wilfully killing blackberries, as I was before I moved to the Pacific Northwest, Himalayan blackberries are one of our most annoying weeds. They grow everywhere, and once they get started, it's really hard to eradicate them. Sure, it's wonderful to eat wild blackberries whenever you take a walk in a park, canoe down a stream, stop by the side of the highway to dump a body, etc., but you don't want these puppies in your yard. It is MIRACULOUS that my poorly tended yard, neglected for a dozen years, doesn't have blackberries, and I intend to keep it that way. So my berrea will be filled with blue and red berries, not purple. I also saw a cranberry bush at Home Depot -- I always thought cranberries, like blueberries in Michigan where I grew up -- were planted in bogs. Not so, apparently. I might just splurge and get one to see what happens.

I've also been busy working on small drainage problems by laying little pavers and rocks in muddy and unattractive areas. Mr. Reluctant and I are having some differences in opinion about this. I want stepping stones surrounded by rocks (see picture); he wants a more mathematically sound path of pavers snuggly fitted together with cement poured between the cracks (see attempt to do so in picture). This aesthetic difference, my friends, is the major issue in our marriage. Me=freeflowing natural crumbling pretty, him=build like a brick shithouse and just as ugly. What can ya do?

I also picked up some artichokes at a place I usually wouldn't recommend (for plants or anything else): Walmart. I went in looking for a cheap dark green plastic lawn table, which suddenly has become a rare commodity because all the plastic lawn furniture is suddenly beige and sage green, and I found a rather lovely bumper crop of green globe artichokes there. They are more mature than what's on sale elsewhere, and cheap, too, so I bought a couple (see first picture). Like the raspberries, they take two years to properly fruit, so we'll have some yumminess in 2008.

branching out with team overgrown

As promised, I spent the whole day gardening, as my corned beef and cabbage simmered away on the stove. Now not only is my front yard decorated with piles of branches, my back yard is, too. I need a chipper, and stat.

Two of the projects I dealt with involved overgrown and poorly tended fruit: my plum tree and my grapes. The apple tree, which is relatively young, was sort of trained to be an espalier tree, so the pruning was easy (if not totally ugly). The plum tree is large, maybe 50 feet tall, and full of shooters, crossed branches, and the results of the chop-down-random-limbs method. It took me about an hour just to get the shooters, and I couldn't even finish without a chain saw.

The grapes, pictured above before pruning, really need to be planted on a better trellis, but that's not going to happen. Some vines were forcing between the fence boards, and others were entwined in those of the neighboring plant. The neighbor I mentioned in my last two entries actually did the upkeep for the vines, so there is a chicken wire fence enclosing each plant. Not exactly the way I'd do it, but I'm grateful that SOMEONE was watching over the yard, since it wasn't the PO. The problem is that the new growth canes get caught in the fencing and grow into it. The grape vines are at least 20 years old, and the base of the plants are a bit twisted and misshapen. I'm just going to see what happens this year and expect a poor harvest.

The second problem is that some dumb@&# m*&#^rf@&*er planted a wisteria tree next to the grapes. I hate wisteria. Not only is it gaudy, I despise lavender-colored anything (except, well, lavender) and it has got to be one of the most destructive, insidious plants in the western world. Scroll down to the bottom of this page for an example of a "well-tended" wisteria. It still has designs on the house, you see. It crouches and looms, waiting for a moment's distraction, and will wrap its lavender monster chokehold around the porch or pull down the roof or push up the foundation. They do that. I'm not joking. Here's one trying to rip down the walls of a house. Here's another house under attack. And here's one sensible person who recognizes the threat (scroll down to 9/27/06).

My wisteria is not nearly as bad as the ones you see above, still, it is on the slow and relentless attack inborn in the species. Someon (I presume, the neighbor) tried to hold it up by a small wood trellis, which it snaked around and tried to crush into matchsticks. I had to extract the pieces of the trellis from the vine, then I had to try to force the thing back to being perpedicular to the ground with a makeshift support, as it was leaning at about 75 degrees. Then, the fun began, and I started severing vines and the most horrible, evil suckers in the universe, which shoot out just under the ground for dozens of feet in every direction and root, seeking new lands to destroy. I only could elminate a small percentage of the suckers because of the makeshift concrete/chicken wire fence between my yard and the neighbors' yard. The suckers are four or five layers DEEP along with wall.

So my question is why would anyone want a plant like this? It's ridiculous. I'm going to get rid of it after it blooms in the spring. I just can't spend all my time in the garden doing battle with the lavender monster.

fortification fridays - love thy neighbor gingersnaps

These are the best gingersnaps ever. What better way to say thanks, neighbor, for the lawnmower loan!

You'll notice that they have fresh ginger, powdered ginger, and crystallized ginger. They are pretty and addictive and full of gingery goodness. I highly recommend doubling the recipe. Dough can be frozen in logs.

Love Thy Neighbor Gingersnaps

(slightly modified from recipe in Cookies Unlimited by Nick Malgieri)

Kitchen Needs: working oven
Serves: Makes about 40 small cookies, if you’re lucky.

A.
2 c. flour
2 t. baking soda
1/2 t. salt
2 t. ground ginger
1 t. ground cinnamon
1/2 t. ground cloves

B.
12 T. (1.5 sticks) unsalted butter, softened (not melted)
1 cup sugar
1 large egg
1/2 cup molasses
1 T. fresh grated ginger
1/4 c. chopped preserved ginger (optional)

C.
turbinado sugar (like Sugar in the Raw brand) for rolling dough balls in before baking

Set racks in upper and lower thirds of the oven and preheat to 350 degrees. Combine ingredients in A. In another bowl, beat together butter and sugar until light and fluffy (5 min or so). Add egg and beat until smooth.

Lower beater speed, then add half of dry ingredients, then the molasses. Scrape down bowl, then add rest of dry ingredients. Use a rubber spatula to mix if it is too difficult.

Form 1- to 2-inch diameter balls of dough and roll in a small bowl containing turbinado sugar. You can use regular sugar, but the bigger grains, blonde color, and melt-resistance of turbinado sugar makes a pretty cookie. I haven't tried muscovado sugar, but I bet that would be good, too.

Place balls on cookie sheets covered with foil or parchment, leaving about 2 inches between balls.

Bake about 15 minutes, or until cookies are crackled and darker in color and firm to the touch. (N.b. my light cookie sheet doesn’t allow them to crackle, but my dark one does, so you should not gauge doneness by crackle alone.) Cookies will crisp up as they cool.

Icon courtesy of the Portland Mercury.

first lawn mowing of the season!

And boy howdy, I'm happy it's done. The lawn fertilizer and warm, wet, warm weather cycle really made the lawn explode. It is still a mess, full of half-dead moss and broad leaf weeds, plus cyclamen and grape hyacinths, only about 75% of which Mr. Reluctant mowed down. We borrowed the neighbor's professional mower, so it was a snap. Note to self: bake neighbor cookies. The only grrrr part was that after we were done, the neighbor said that he used to mow the POs lawn for the first time each year himself, since the PO let it grow knee-high. So we could have had **him** do it if we had waited a few more weeks. Haha.

I haven't done anything around the house because I've been on deadline, but tomorrow I'm taking the day off and blissfully gardening. I've got me a grape arbor to tackle, some dolomite lime to spread, and lovely crabgrass edging that I need to attack. And we need to buy a lawn mower.

the reluctant kitchen painter

Why was I the only person on my block who wasn't gardening yesterday? We had our first sunny, over-70-degree day. But I got it in my head to scrub the kitchen floors and the lower realms (think Dante) of my cupboards in preparation for painting the rest of the kitchen. It was gross. Not quite as gross as what was behind the stove, but still pretty gross. Inspired, I moved into the laundry room and unexpectedly found the hole where our mouse entered the house (complete with droppings). How amazing, how unpleasant, what you can find when you're crawling around on your hands and knees.

But instead of taking pictures of a dirty floor, I bring you a before and after shot of the floor of my kitchen nook. It's really more for me than you, because I'm feeling particularly reluctant about remodeling right now. The kitchen needs so much work and I'm only able to paint it right now, and that's demoralizing. I KNOW that the kitchen will look nice when I'm done. I'll just keep chanting that, and maybe that will get me through. Note, if you will, my new Sengware red plates, a present from Mr. Reluctant for Valentine's Day, and the delicious meal he made me a week or so ago. Salad set and vintage Vesco aluminum bowl courtesy of Goodwill.