torley manor

I have been in the Laurel Highlands, yessir!

Here is a link to the set of photos, if you’d like the narrative of the whole 70 mile backpacking trip. It was a fantastic experience.

I hiked the whole Laurel Highlands Hiking Trail in a week, which meant short days (6.3 miles and 5 miles) on the ends, and longer (10-14 mile) days in the middle. It is hard for me to want to eat very much during a hot day, when I am sweaty and hot and my muscles are working hard. I am much more inclined to eat a lot later on when I am cooled down and relaxing at camp. So how and what do I eat?!

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Strawberry crepes! With cashew cream!

Plate-licking good.

Here’s Q’s plate:

So simple. Strawberries with a bit of sugar. Cream is just 1/2 c cashews ground up into the finest crumb you can get with your food processor, a drizzle of maple syrup, and just shy of 1 c water. Crepe recipe is from Vegan with A Vengeance: 1.5 c flour, 0.5 c chickpea flour, 1 t salt, 2 c water, 2 t oil.

Oh how I do love summer. A bowl full of home-grown strawberries makes me feel like a princess. Do I deserve this abundance???

I get a little frustrated growing tubers because you can’t tell if they’re doing well underground or not — you might have big viney bushy greenery up top, but who knows what’s happening down in the dirt?

But today I thinned the carrots a bit (didn’t need to do much, but a few were just too close for comfort) and LOOK! It’s WORKING!!!

Look at those guys!

Like a sadistic boss trying to squeeze the maximum productivity from their underlings, the city gardener tries to squeeze as much produce as possible from their tiny plot.

My organic gardening book recommends planting rows of peas 18-48″ apart. With space at a premium in our garden, our rows ended up being about 10-12″ apart. Last year we failed to trellis our pea plants and they grew upward and eventually fell over into a big mass of plantlife. This year I tried something a little different.

I had some of the metal rods that I had salvaged from old political yardsigns (thank you very much mr. peduto) — you know they are basically a steel rod bent into an upside down “U” used for giving the sign structure and planting it into the ground. I put one of these along each of the three rows of peas and then strung rows of twine across them to create small trellises for each row. This worked wonderfully during the first several stages of the process, but during the last week as the plants have developed pods, the three rows of peas have begun to grow together and slide away from the trellises, once again creating a big mass of peas. There is still some semblance of rows, but not much. A step up from last year, but it still begs some questions — is this the most efficient way to do this? Is this cramming of rows together the best way to get the most from my garden?

Regardless, the peas are looking real good and the pods are filling out nicely. Probably should begin harvesting some of these guys in the coming week.

A similar spacial dilemma may end up unfolding amongst the beans too. I have four rows of four different types of beans all in rows about 12″ between them. I’ve done this with the green and yellow string beans before without any major issues. The Scarlet Runners are along the back fence and the plan is to trellis them up that (tho’ we still need to figure out the “how” of that). Its the Tiger’s Eye soup bean that i am now concerned about — it is sandwiched between the Scarlet Runners and the string beans. Looking at the package today I see that they claim the plant size is 3-3.5′!!! For some reason I just assumed that these would grow 12-16″ tall like the string beans. This could be interesting. We will keep you updated.

I’ve posted this recipe before, but it’s worth going back to.

I just made it again last night and continue to be impressed by this cake. It holds together well, has a nice crumb (nicer if you use shorter unsweetened flakes of coconut rather than the longer, super sweet shredded kind), and isn’t too heavy or too sweet. It’s just really nice.

The only modification I made this time was to use lemon yogurt and lemon zest rather than any lemon juice. Works beautifully either way.

This meal involves a grand total of 6 ingredients:

1. quinoa
2. steamed tempeh
3. steamed kale
4. miso
5. tahini
6. water

Although to be honest, I’m pretty sure Q peppered the tempeh, bringing the total to 7.

The sauce caught my eye in the Veganomicon cookbook; it’s just 1/4 c miso, 1/4 c tahini, and enough water to thin it into a dressing. Really lovely.

Good meal for a humid thunderstormy day.

The garden is hitting its stride: Neighbors are asking what on earth the giant heaping shrubbery of asparagus could possibly be (and then are confused when I say that it’s asparagus), beans, corn, sweet potatoes, and peppers are planted, tomatillo volunteers are transplanted, and…… (more…)

Bull City HQ, Durham, NC — 5.14.09

Its been awhile since you’ve heard from me. I was occupied with the “reunion” of my band He Taught Me Lies. After Jim finished his grad school work, he returned to Pittsburgh, we practiced a handful of times and then played a series of 4 shows. Big thanks to everyone in Pittsburgh, Durham, DC and Bethlehem who came out to see us.

Of course, immediately upon returning to Pittsburgh (well, technically as I was returning) I got sick. Sunday night involved a 14 hour marathon sleep session for both Emma and I. Over the course of the week, I would feel a little better, then a little worse and then back again. Finally last night I felt like I was moving swiftly towards the ‘better’ side of things for good. Today, while still feeling a bit weak and dealing with some remaining congestion, I feel pretty damn good and took the opportunity to get out in the garden.

I ripped up the remnants of the sunflower forest that volunteered in the back part of our garden. Many of the sunflowers were almost 2 feet tall. It was sad, but I needed that land to plant the beans. And plant the beans I did — scarlet runners that’ll run up the fence, Tiger Eye’s soup beans, and then green and yellow string beans. So many beans!!! Then I planted the popcorn. So stoked!!!

Anyway, there is plenty of signs of life in the garden right now. I’ll let the photos speak for themselves.

The reddening of the berries!!

Blossoms on the peas!!

Blueberries are forming on one of our new blueberry bushes!!

Carrot tops!!

Things have been pretty quiet lately — we finished up the bedroom project: hammered the nails out of the quarter round, repainted it, repainted the baseboard, re-attached the quarter round and gave a finish coat of paint to the baseboard. You know — the little things that make you wish you were already done!

And so:

It’s so much brighter in our room now — the light bounces back up from the floor and everything glows a little bit.

I’m pretty pleased with the project — not too expensive, products made in the US, went pretty quickly and smoothly, the change in the room feels immense.

What next???

I spent a good portion of my weekend laying down the new floor in our bedroom (see previous post about ripping out the carpeting!) We ended up getting the Tundra flooring from Ikea. We went with the Antique finish.

BEFORE

Taking a break after getting things started

Progress!

AFTER!

More AFTER!

The final tricky corner –> into the closet!!

Overall the project was pretty simple. Luckily our bedroom is pretty simple. The hardest parts were working around the main doorway and the closet doorway. Normally I guess they would recommend taking off the door trim, laying the floor, cutting the trim down and re-installing, but we opted not to do that. Instead I did a little bit of fancy jigsaw work around the trim and we’ll fill that in either with some caullk or wood putty or something. Still an unresolved detail.

Tomorrow Emma will start tackling touching up the baseboard and quarter round trim which got a bit beat up when we removed the quarter round. A coat of primer and a couple coats of paint will make it look good as new.

The new floor looks great and so far this project is turning out to be one of the quickest projects we’ve ever undertaken (of course its not finished yet, so i’m sure we could make this drag out awhile longer if we really wanted to).