Catching up

Yee Ha! I FINALLY got my gardens planted. I'm not sure why it took so long, but it has. So I made sure to buy larger seedlings and got them all planted. I have tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, squash and herbs. I also managed to plant some containers to make some colorful additions to the front of the house.

I just love the feeling when you get something done that you've procrastinated to the point of getting a bit freaked out by it. I've been meaning to do yard work, but there's just so much that needs to be done that I get overwhelmed and I don't do anything. But I'm on a roll now and I'd really like to get my yard into better shape. I have a bunch of plants and bulbs I've been collecting for projects, so I should have some cool things happening around here pretty soon.

We also met for bookclub last week. Our bookclub is nothing like the just-cancelled "Tuesday Night Bookclub," which featured a bunch of Scottsdale, Ariz., women who were freaky in their "hotness." After all, there are no groups of women where no one is over a size 2. And no one has that much time to spend on her appearance. Hell, it's a good day when I remember deodorant AND eyeliner ("Mommy, that lady doesn't; have any eyes!!!"

We read "What's the Matter With Kansas?" as the book of the month, which I highly recommend. I was enlisted to use a chocolate fountain my friend Kim have me. I bought all kinds of goodies, macaroons, biscotti, pound cake, strawberries, pineapple, to dip in the chocolate. I use Ghirardelli dark chocolate chunks. It was messy and a lot of fun. A chocolate fountain is one of those things you would never buy for yourself. But it's a lot of fun to have around.

  

I've been eating better and trying to exercise more this summer. I've always enjoyed seafood salads and I love avocados. Living in Ventura County, we get great avocados grown locally. I bought a couple at the Ojai farmers market on Sunday, along with some fresh dill, salad greens and arugula. I also snatched up a couple of lemons.
This made a great dish after a day of digging around outside.

Crab and avocado salad

1 6-ounce can lump white crab meat
1/2 cup chopped celery
lemon
3 tablespoons chopped fresh dill
3/4 cup mayonnaise
2 avocados

Mix crab meat, celery, juice of one-half lemon, dill and mayonnaise. Slice two avocados in half. Remove pit and sprinkle with lemon juice. Divide the crab salad into fourths and put in the center of the avocado. Serve nestled on a bed of lettuce.

Hot! Hot! Hot!

You know how I said it never gets hot here? Well, as these things have a tendency of happening, I was proved a liar and we were struck by seriously hot weather. In fact, this past Friday I called my husband in a panic. "It's an emergency. WeatherBug says it's 95 degrees at DeAnza and I can't find the fan."

Translated that means that the Web Site, Weatherbug, which give live temperature reading from all kinds of places around the country that aren't covered by the National Weather Service. DeAnza is a local Junior High School about four blocks from our house, which is important here because there are so many microclimates here in Ventura and we live in a very specific and Unusual one. Many schools have weather stations that track the temperatures because they work together with WeatherBug to make weather interesting to students.

After I called Rob, I went for a swim in our pool. It's really turning out to be quite handy this year. Rob came home and he had bought about every fan they had at Wal-Mart. Not exactly, but he DID buy four fans: two small desk models; one larger desk model and one fan on a pedestal with a remote control (God forbid we should have to get off our lazy butts and turn the fan off.)


I also had no intention of doing any serious cooking. So I decided to make BLTs along with gazpacho for dinner. These are two of my all-time favorite summertime favorites. Rob and I both love BLTs, they're just so light and just the right mixture of salty and crunchy and tomato-y sweetness. And I add basil leaves to mine to give it that little extra something.

I was introduced to gazpacho when I was a girl by my grandmother. She would whip up a batch and we would have it for lunch. My grandmother was always on a diet and we would eat very sparsely during the day when I would come for my summer visits. At the time I was thin as a rail and I would just be starving. I used to raid their pantry every night looking for food. I still love to eat. But the thin as a rail thing? Not so much.

True gazpacho calls for bread, but this is more of a puree of vegetables that's served cold with a healthy dollop of sour cream. And I can call it gazpacho if I want to. So I do.

Gazpacho for a hot day

4 roma tomatoes, coarsely chopped, with seeds and liquid strained
1/2 bell pepper (I used a yellow one)
1 cored cucumber, coarsely chopped
1 cup V8 vegetable juice
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon red wine vinegar

Blend together using a hand blender, as I did (I just LOVE those things) or a regular blender. You can add basil for a nice touch or any other herb(dill would be good) if you like. Serve cold with a dollop of sour cream.

For BLTs, I always use whole grain toasted bread -- in fact I eat whole grains as much as possible. I use thick sliced bacon that I cook in a George Foreman grill. A local radio personality tipped me to this and it makes great bacon that comes out pressed straight and perfect for sandwiches. Slice the tomatoes, add fresh basil leaves, romaine lettuce and some mayonnaise and welcome to a little slice to summer time.

OTHER NOTES:

My youngest daughter Lindsay graduated from the University of California at Santa Barbara today with a degree in political science. She's been working on her degree for seven years, but she has taken some time off and she managed to backpack across Europe one summer. She also worked as a manager at Aaron Brothers framing and at other stores.

Her dad and his wife came into town with their son and Lindsay's aunt came to visit. It was really kind of nice to see my little girl get her college degree. And there is no small amount of pride at having both of my girls have college degrees. It took me a while and a lot of angst before I got mine, which proved to be a lot easier than I thought it would. We went up to UCSB for the morning graduation, along with a friend of ours, who knew an interen who was graduating. It was drizzling and crowded but still nice set by the lagoon, which is right nect to the Pacific Ocan.

Parenthood has some really ugly moments, or at least that's been my experience. It's great to be able to savor the victories.

The farmers market

 
  
Every Sunday morning I roll out of bed around 8:30-9:30 a.m. While this isn't exceptionally early by most standards, considering the fact that I stay up late and usually don't get to bed until around 3:30 a.m. or so.

But Sundays are when I have to go to Ojai for the farmers market that runs there from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. What started as just a fun thing to do has turned into an obsession. I could go to the farmers market here in Ventura, but it's more expensive.

I have to get to Ojai -- it takes about 25 minutes up Hwy 33 from my house -- as close to opening hour as possible so I an grab all the good flowers.

I've become a bit obsessive about my flowers. I love to have scads of flowers all around the house all the time. As time goes on, I'm looking for more and more of a bang for new and colorful blooms. There's one lady there who sells bouquets during the summer. I totally love her stuff. It's very feminine, while being unusual and fun.

Then there's the Dutch guy, who, as one woman put it, is a "rock star" at the market. He sells flowers a loves to go on and on about them. I usually don't reciprocate too much because it's early and I usually haven't formed cogent enough thoughts to be able to express even the most basic sentence. So I grab flowers and wander around looking for fun stuff to cook.

It's late spring in California. This is a good time for lettuce and cold weather crops. I got some flowering broccoli and bok choy, along with my weekly lettuce. We can get cherries from a select few area orchards. The onions and garlic are looking delicious and the herbs are great.

I bought some squash blossoms this Sunday. I love to stuff them with cheese and fry them. I tried a little experiment this time. I stuffed half with a feta cheese/Mediterranean mixture and the other half with a double creme cheese from Trader Joe's. I then just fried some right up in olive oil and I dipped the others in milk and then a light coating of flour and fried those.

I learned this: the ones that weren't dipped in milk and flour kind of fell apart and became a nondescript mess. The ones dipped in flour held together quite well. I didn't salt any of them because cheese is salty. That proved to be wise, especially with the feta.

With food like this, I like to keep seasonings to a minimum and let the food taste come through. Squash blossoms have a fairly delicate flavor, so I just wanted to taste them, cheese and olive oil. The ones with the Trader Joe's cheese were the best, but the feta ones weren't so bad.

Stuffed squash blossoms
10 to 12 squash blossoms
cheese (use your favorite cheese to make these -- I prefer chevre when I'm not experimenting)
milk
flour
extra virgin olive oil
pepper

Carefully stuff blossoms with cheese. The squash blossoms are delicate so you will want to use them as soon after buying them as possible. Dip blossoms in milk and dredge (roll) them in flour.

Heat olive oil in a skillet. Fry squash blossom on medium high heat for about 2 minutes a side or until browned. If you have little squashes attacked to the blossoms, don't dredge them, just fry them until they begin to brown. Season with freshly ground pepper.

It's time to 'cue up the grill

  
While it's still officially spring, unofficially it's summer and it sure has felt like summer during the past few days.

Here, in Ventura, it rarely gets really hot because we're next to the ocean and there's almost always a sea breeze. Occasionally, we get Santa Ana winds, which can be very dry and hot and can last for a few uncomfortable days of high, gusty backwards winds blowing all kinds of dust and ... stuff, from the mountains. But these usually happen at the end of the summer, rather than the beginning.

As the result of having few hot days, most Venturans don't have air conditioning. And because it always, always cools down at night, we can tough it up and get through the days when the temperatures actually rise into ... gasp! ... the 80s. Oh yeah, the pets are panting, I'm sweating and the plants are wilting. Our vet said that pets from Ventura tend to exhibit signs of heat stress way before animals living elsewhere. He kind of gets a kick out of it, noting that we've all become acclimated to comfortable temperatures, or wimps I believe was the actual term.

My buddy Kaia came over today and it was one of the few days it was warm enough to go swimming in our pool. When we bought this house, it came with an above-ground pool. It's a pretty nice pool, nothing fancy, but it's a full-size backyard pool. It costs us a small fortune to keep it running and to keep the water clean enough not to alarm the dudes who fly over our house with helicopters looking for dirty pools. Rob acted as though I was paranoid for saying this until there was one of those channel 7 or KCAL 9 or some other TV station that did a big story on dirty pools -- with pictures from helicopters -- and how they're breeding places for West Nile disease.

We've discussed getting rid of it because it's usually in the low 70s around here and too cool to swim. It's getting old too and the liner looks as though it will burst any moment. But it's a big hassle to take it down because we live so close to the ocean and you have to let all the chlorine get out of the pool before you can dump the water. Then we have to hire someone to take the whole thing away. We can probably resell the filter and pump. We've decided that we'd like to replace the pool with a hot tub, which would be a lot of fun on our chilly nights.

But today Kaia and I spent some time swimming around the pool, which was really pleasant. Then I barbecued. One of the other cool things we got with our house was a really nice brick barbecue near the back covered patio area. The barbecue has a tray that lowers and raises on which you place the coals. Unfortunately said tray has completely rusted through over the years. We've taken to using heavy duty aluminum foil to hold the coals.

A few weeks ago, I got a charcoal chimney. These are fabulous devices that allow you to light the coals without using lighter fluid. They consist of two chambers, top and bottom. The charcoal is placed in the top chamber and the bottom chamber is filled with crunched up newspaper. The metal dividing the chambers is filled with holes and there are holes on the side to fuel the flames. It's a ingenious little device.

The first time I used it, I kept the coals in until they were grey. Unfortunately the resulting heat concentrated at the bottom of the chimney actually melted the aluminum foil. I've replaced the foil with a cookie sheet, which holds the coals and can stand getting hotter than the foil can. And the cool part about using a chimney is there is no lighter fluid flavor. It's best to dump the coals out when the fire seems well established in the coals, but the top ones are still black.

Because I can adjust the height of the fire, I can create a two-level fire with no problem. This comes in handy for steaks, which should be seared on both with a high flame and then cooked with a lower flame.

We experimented with rubs today; using three different Penzey's concoctions on the meat. I also made hamburgers, which were flavored with Penzey's English Rib rub.

Cooking hamburgers on the grill is one of the most difficult things for a cook to do well, especially now when all hamburgers have to be overdone to kill any bacteria that may be lurking in our meat. It's a sad commentary that we live in a world where the can poison our meat with bacteria in filthy packing plants, and rather than solving the problem, we are all condemned to eating gray hockey pucks.

But as ridiculous as it is, we still have to do it to be safe. There is an exception. If you go to a old fashioned butcher, who grinds his/her own meat, you can be a lot more sure that the ground meat you get is safe. It may cost more and require a special trip, but it is so worth it to be able to have a medium rare hamburger again.

There are a few cardinal rules to cooking hamburger. If you follow these, you will stand a much better chance of getting heaven on a bun, or my very favorite summer food -- a grilled hamburger.

Hamburger rules
* Never, ever press down on a hamburger when you are cooking it. You are pushing out the juices and making the meat tough.
* If you want the sides of your burger to be flat, indent the burger in the middle a little bit when you form the patties. The natural tendency of the meat is to ball up as it cooks, and this combats that.
* Speaking of forming patties, form them quickly, and handle them long enough for the meat to stick together, but don't overhandle the meat or it will become tough. And always wash your hand with antibacterial soap after handling raw meat. Make sure to wash or wipe every surface you touched or the raw meat touched. And never, ever use the plate you used for the raw meat for cooked meat.
* Try to flip the burgers as few times as possible. You can see the meat cooking on the first side to get a feel for when to flip them the first time. You can judge how done they are in part by looking at the juices that come out of the burgers. If they're bloody, the meat still isn't done. A well-done burger will shrink significantly and become quite firm.
* If you notice blood on the plate, you may want to microwave the burgers for about a minute. Some people recommend doing this as a matter of course with burgers and I will do it with supermarket meat.