an apple (and a plum) a day

Name that fruit! I was surprised to find my plum tree bore bright tiny, red fruit with an amber flesh. Word on the street says that it's been a bad year for plums, and they are all small, so I'm not sure about the regular size. The poor little apple tree is suffering from peach leaf curl, I think, and it bore a bunch of fruit on exactly ONE branch. I'm not sure what to do about that. I think the apples may be Granny Smiths. They aren't quite ripe yet, and it's surprisingly early for them to be ripe at all, so I just have no clue. Anyone have any ideas on what kinds of plums or apples these might be?

EDITED TO ADD: Turns out the crops that need pollination, such as apples, didn't set well this year because it was so cold and the bees amscrayed. Only the sunniest branches of many fruit trees were visited by bees, hence the weird fruit set patterns.

The weeding project is going pretty well. The ground cover sucks eggs, man.

wish you were here...

...to help me weed! I'm tackling the front beds, which, according to the neighbor, haven't been touched as long as he can remember. That means over 10 years! Yay! Projects include digging out layers of root-running grass roots, removing heinous ground cover, murdering vinca vine shoots, disentangling grape vine, resetting the ugly brick border, laying out soaker hoses, and worrying over shubbery that was mangled with a chain saw.

The only nice thing is working under the gloriously magenta fronds of my flowering butterfly bush tree. And you, of course, since you're coming over to help. Thanks and see you soon!

Love,
me

fortification fridays - gyro-stuffed mushrooms

Mr. Reluctant is a big fan of stuffed mushrooms, but I find them bland. In my new zest for chopping up things that normally make classic dishes and reassembling them in new vessels, I invented a new stuffing. It's based on the Greek pita sandwich gyros, and it is made of ground lamb, garlic, pine nuts and other good things. To add a bit of summery cool tang, you should top these off with a dollop of tzatziki, a garlicky yogurt cucumber sauce. They keep for a few hours at room temperature, but add the sauce just before serving.

This recipe is a bit more complex than my usual style, but it's worth it. Martha Stewart provided the technique for pre-cooking the mushroom vessels (I believe her recipe is called "Golden Mushroom Caps" in her hors d'oeuvres book.) Removing as much liquid as possible is crucial, and her method makes for dripless mushrooms. I'm also indebted to Cook's Illustrated for the recent recipe for making gyros at home, which provided me with the inspiration to make the stuffing.

Gyro-Stuffed Mushrooms with Dollops of Tzatziki

Kitchen needs: broiler or oven to brown tops of mushrooms, range to brown meat, food processor
Serves: 8-10 as an appetizer

24 large white mushrooms
olive oil
1 piece pita bread
1/4 cup milk
5-6 cloves garlic
1 cup plain whole milk Greek yogurt (if you use the American kind, you'll need to drain it overnight because it must be thick like sour cream)
1/4 firm cucumber, grated
1 lb. ground lamb (don't use hamburger, you need the flavor)
2 shallots or a few tablespoons of red onion
1/4 cup toasted pine nuts
juice from 1/2 lemon
fresh oregano
fresh mint
fresh parsley
salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Tear pita bread into pieces and soak in a small bowl with milk to cover.

For Dollops of Tzatziki: grate cucumber using a box grater. Squeeze out as much liquid as possible, place in small bowl, then salt with about 1/2 t. salt and let sit to remove more water. After 15 minutes or so, squeeze again and blot with paper towels. Mix together salted cucumber bits, yogurt, a few tablespoons of chopped mint, and a large clove of garlic, pressed in a press. Refrigerate until immediately prior to serving.


Scoop out stems from mushrooms with a small spoon make pretty vessels. Be careful not to break the sides. Chop mushroom stems and set aside in bowl. Rub baking sheet and mushrooms with olive oil (you could use a brush, but I just use my hands). Bake, cap-side up, for 7-10 minutes. (But I messed up and did cap-side down, to no great harm). Mushrooms will turn golden and will exude liquid when they are ready.

While you are baking the mushroom caps, brown ground lamb in olive oil on medium high heat . Add chopped mushroom stems, 4-5 cloves chopped garlic and a couple of chopped shallots after cooking meat for a few minutes. When nice and brown, remove from heat and add salt and pepper.

In a large food processor, pulse the soaked bread and the meat mixture to combine. Don't turn it into a paste; you just want it smushed together so it will hold. Return to saute pan and add a handful of chopped parsley, a few tablespoons of chopped oregano, lemon juice, and pine nuts.

Remove mushrooms from baking sheet, drain and blot dry as much as possible with paper towels. Return to baking sheet for stuffing.

Preheat oven to broil on high.

Stuff mushroom caps and broil close to the heat source for a few minutes, or until browned and crusty on top. Watch carefully, since they can burn easily.

Serve on a white platter with dollops of tzatziki sauce on top. These hold well, since you've been diligent about liquid removal, so it's ok to let them sit, but add chilled tzatziki only immediately prior to serving. If you're fancy, garnish each mushroom with an oregano leaf.

I'd imagine this stuffing would also be good stuffed in tomatoes or peppers.

a must-have

If you don't have one of these upright sweeper sets, you must drop that drywall sander and run out to the store to purchase one. What with all the dirt you're making, you'll need it. I've spent my whole life bending down and sticking my face into little clouds of dust to sweep into a traditional dustpan. This set eliminates the need to bend. Hurrah!

The image above is a Casabella Duck Upright Sweep Set, which seems to be available everywhere from The Container Store to Cost Plus to amazon.com. It's the one I have (but mine is blue), and I recommend it. But if you find another one you like better, snag it.

Mr. Reluctant is off for several weeks, so I've decided that to stay on track and unlonely, I'm going to make myself do house projects and work projects each day, even though I'd rather mope around looking at LOLcats all day and eating potato chips. So far, I've already planted grass seed on the bare spots in the lawn (see picture), gouged my arm disentangling grape vines from the butterfly bush tree, and pinched my upper arm hard when the camera lens retracted suddenly (don't ask). So far, so good. The picture is notable because it represents the first time Mr. Reluctant has ever voluntarily weeded anything on his own. Hence, the bare spots in the lawn that needed seeding. Yes, I know it's the middle of summer, and I don't care. I'm very proud of him.

My projects will include stuff I can manage on my own:

- finish painting the kitchen;
- organize the shed;
- organize the painting materials and the increasingly messy back room;
- paint the laundry room;
- start planning exterior painting (paint the shed as a sample?);
- trim the back hedge (aucuba japonica);
- weed the front area around the house (gulp);
- chop down the wisteria and begin the painful process of removing the underground suckers;
- replace the crappy broken trim on the counter.

there goes the neighborhood?

The little turquoise cottage I mentioned in my blog entry about mid-century vernacular architecture in Eugene is on the market. Two bed, one bath. Only about 950 square feet, but the real estate agent/owner is trying to claim that the "finished" (i.e., not a dirt floor) basement ups the square footage to almost 2000. Um, no. The yard is actually quite nice in the back, with a dramatic terrace effect and mature roses and some overgrown hedges and fruit trees. A gardener could make it really lovely. The kitchen has original cabinetry, first growth Doug fir floors, and it's very, very cute but small. The floors have some condition problems but could be refinished easily (although the kitchen is Doug fir, the rest of the house is in short slat red and white oak, like our floors). The house was built in 1938 (if I remember correctly) and it's a true WWII cottage, with wrap-around windows, a compact footprint, low ceilings, and small rooms. The house itself is adorable but really small, unless you are a couple with no kids and no need for a study. The major down side is that the house is next to the neighborhood convenience store market and restaurant, and the yard abuts the garbage dumpsters for the restaurant. Sure, there are privacy fences, but still. The convenience store is situated on a busy corner of two thoroughfares, and the house doesn't have much of a front yard (see picture). The neighbor on the other side is a house of about the same era that was built too close to the cottage, so the houses look like they're huddling together next to the restaurant parking lot. In short, the location is a dealbreaker.

So how much would you pay for this little gem? If you're not singing to the tune of $325K, you'd be left out in the cold.

Crazy, huh? All I can say is I hope it sells for that, because then my house will be as valuable as the Hope Diamond.

garden update

I'm currently planning my attack on the garden. I gave myself a full year since moving in to see what plants we have and how the sun travels through the yard, and I'm itching to change everything. A neighbor lent us a copy of Ann Lovejoy's Organic Garden Design School, which I'm reading with relish. Ann Lovejoy writes a garden column in a Seattle newspaper and teaches classes on organic gardening in the Pacific Northwest. I'd particularly recommend her books to people who live in the colder parts of the West Coast.

In other garden news, I discovered (sadly) that our butterfly bush tree has purple blooms. What a surprise. The transplanted yucca is doing well on the strip, but I was rather disgusted by the ones I've seen in full bloom. Could that be an uglier flower? Several red and white dahlia (Yokokobe) are growing well in the front yard bed. Being away intermittently for several weeks, however, has taken a toll on my weeding, and I have much work to do in both the front and back. I'm getting better at just pulling out plants without thinking there might be a hope for them, once I've identified them.

The vegetable garden is doing well. The soil really does need work. I kind of regret not putting in raised beds, but I installed a very rudimentary soaker hose irrigation system, and everything looks good. You can see the hoses, the tomatoes, the cucumber hills, the brussells sprouts, and the tiny beans (Maxibel bush and Liana yard-long pole) starting to grow. Ignore the fence. I try to.