One of the things I love most from the Whole Foods bakery is their “Seeduction” bread. It’s dark, hearty, super sweet, moist and has hints of crunch.

It’s also nearly $5 a loaf, and the closest Whole Foods is clear across town. We only go near it when we’re picking up our CSA once a week (Hey, like those red okra in the background?!), so it’s not especially convenient, either. For that reason I decided to try my hand at coming up with something that would be a close approximation.

Until now, it seemed like just about everyone was using a recipe that had been posted by Robin Damstra Salant of Caviar and Codfish. While I’m sure her bread is quite tasty, I wanted to stick to the grains that Whole Foods lists in their video. I also wanted to start with a wild yeast (sourdough) starter rather than instant yeast, if only because I realized the jar I have is old and didn’t want to kill a bread with this many ingredients. This was especially true after having had to make two stops to find millet.

What I came up with is not as sweet as the Whole Foods version. If you want a sweeter bread, use more honey and adjust your liquids accordingly. My version also uses whole wheat instead of white flour for a healthier bread.

Ingredients

Starter:

• 9oz elaborated whole wheat starter (126g white whole wheat, 126g water)

Soaker:

• 100g King Arthur Whole White Wheat Flour
• 2g salt
• 60g water

Biga:

Day 1

Mix all of the soaker ingredients. Allow to sit at room temperature 2-4 hours (longer if time allows), loosely covered. Refrigerate overnight.

In a separate bowl, mix all biga ingredients. Allow to sit at room temperature 2-4 hours (longer if time allows), loosely covered. Refrigerate overnight.

Feed 3 oz of unelaborated starter 3oz of white wheat flour and 3oz of water. Allow to sit, covered, until ripe (About 4-8 hours, depending on room temperature.) I fed my starter last thing, just before going to bed.

Day 2

Remove all components from the refrigerator at least 1-2 hours prior to making final dough. Chop into small pieces to facilitate warming.

Place starter and soaker into the bowl of a stand mixer. Using the dough hook, begin mixing on the lowest setting. Begin adding small bits of the biga and mix until incorporated. Turn mixer to “2″ (On a Kitchenaid) and knead dough for about 10 minutes, adding more flour or water as needed to reach  the proper consistency. Dough should be somewhat tacky but not overly sticky and have enough gluten to almost pass the windowpane test. A windowpane test will be difficult on this dough due to the amount of seeds wanting to shred the dough when it is pulled. Do not over knead.

Transfer to an oiled bowl and turn the dough to coat. Allow dough to ferment for about 3-4 hours at room temperature until it has doubled. Divide dough in half and shape into boules or batards. I shaped mine into batards and let them rise in a floured banneton, thus the grooves and dusting of flour on my bread. They will take about 3-4 hours to double a second time.

When your dough is close to having doubled, preheat your oven to 400F and place a baking stone on the center rack. Bake loaves one at a time (unless you have a very big stone) for about 30 minutes, until the bread reaches an internal temperature of 200F.

While it’s a bit late, hopefully this will go into next week’s Yeast Spotting over at Wild Yeast.

I’ve been doing a lot of reading about what goes into our food lately and, to be honest, a lot of what I’ve read has either outright scared me, or just made me go EW!!!” Have you ever noticed the light “dust” on pre-shredded cheese? How would you feel if you learned that the “cellulose” used in shredded cheese and many other packaged foods such as salad dressing and ice cream is actually highly processed wood pulp? Perhaps even more disturbing than foods that are unhealthy for the consumer are foods that harm the very people making them while their companies try to sweep it under the rug. Workers in certain areas butchering division of Hormel (the makers of SPAM), for example, have come down with autoimmune disorders leading to neuropathy due to the working conditions.

For me, and to actually get onto the topic of kombucha, the real eye opener was a report put out by the University of Texas Health Science Center about the effects of aspartame in diet sodas. Apparently the self-same diet sodas we’ve been drinking to avoid extra sugar, calories and weight gain can, in fact, not only make you fat but can impair the beta cell function of the pancreas and result in elevated blood glucose levels. That report was a real eye opener for me. With a history of diabetes in my family going back two generations, I grew up on diet soda. How ironic would it be if the very soda my mother had been buying to help stave off diabetes from too much sugar had been a contributor to my developing it?

I was quite interested, then, when I ran across an article about kombucha while surfing through FoodRenegade.com. I’d actually ended up there while looking for a homemade mayonnaise recipe since, at the time, my options were to make my own or go out into the 105 degree heat just to buy a jar.

It's not the prettiest of ingredients, but it makes great fermented tea. The dark spots are just where it has oxidized or taken up more color from the tea.

So, what is kombucha then? Kombucha is just regular tea (you can use black or green tea) that has undergone fermentation.  Wikipedia actually has a very good entry about the stuff. FoodRenegade has an article on its health benefits as well as instructions for growing your own SCOBY if you can’t get one from someone else, or just don’t want to pay for one. If you have friends that brew kombucha tea they’ll more than likely be happy to share a SCOBY with you as these collection of living organisms are self-propigating and split off into pancake-like layers. I got my SCOBY from a local member of the Weston A. Price Foundation who had recently done a demo on kombucha tea.

Now, how does this all relate to my wanting to get away from diet sodas? Well, while kombucha starts off as sweet tea that would make a Southerner happy, the end product is almost completely sugar free. Just how sugar free it is depends upon how long you ferment it for. It’s also naturally effervescent. Once fermented it’s nothing like the original product. There’s no tea flavor left and much of the caffeine and sugar are gone. If you ferment too long you actually end up with a vinegar. I’d suggest trying out some of GT’s Raw Kombucha just to see if you like it. A bottle of GT’s Raw is also an ingredient you’ll need if you want to grow your own SCOBY, if you’ve got enough time (about 3-5 weeks) and patience and don’t want to order one.

Here is a fresh batch of kombucha brewing away in a secluded corner of my kitchen. The corner is out of direct light and far enough back that the kombucha won't be disturbed while it brews for a week.

Once you have a SCOBY, making kombucha is almost effortless. Some people say to use organic tea while others say plain old Lipton is just fine. I made a big  jug of tea using two family sized tea bags, just under a gallon of water, and one cup of sugar.  Be sure to use a non-reactive pot such as glass, enameled cast iron, or stainless steal for brewing your tea. When your tea is cooled to room temperature, put most of it into your fermenting jar, add the liquid your SCOBY is in (the starter liquid) and gently deposit your SCOBY on top. Cover it with a loose-weave cloth or paper towel and set it in a shaded corner where it won’t be disturbed for 7-10 days. It is important that you DO NOT MOVE your jar around or else your SCOBY won’t properly form its next layer and you’ll end up with bits of it sinking and floating around. Also, if you are using a jar with a spigot for fermenting make sure that it has no metal parts.

If you look closely you can see the SCOBY floating at the top of the tea in the fermenting jar.

After about seven days, open your jar and draw off a little bit of kombucha. Again, do not use metal. A straw with your finger over one end to make a vacuum works perfectly for this. Of course, if you are using a jar with a spigot that makes it even easier. If your tea is still rather sweet it’s not done. Put it back and leave it alone for another day or two, then test again. Keep in mind that kombucha will ferment faster in warmer temperatures so the length of time needed will vary from one season to the next. When ready it will be tangy and mildly fizzy. You can either bottle it and put it in the fridge as-is, or you can double ferment it to add different flavors and more natural carbonation.

Here I've placed bits of peeled, sliced ginger in the bottom of clean, recycled jars before filling the bottles with kombucha that has brewed for about a week.

To double ferment your kombucha just draw it off into bottles. Be sure to keep a cup (or more, more is never a bad thing!) of your batch of booch to help start your next batch. After washing your hands (do NOT use anti-bacterial soap – remember, a SCOBY is a beneficial bacteria!), reach in and take out your SCOBY. Put it in a glass dish and ladle your reserved kombucha over it.

Take your prepared bottles and flavor them as you wish. You can pour an ounce or two of 100% fruit juice into the bottom and then top off with kombucha, or you can put bits of cut up fruit, herbs, edible flowers or ginger root.

My second-ferment ginger-flavored kombucha, off to nap for a few days in a dark place.

Fill the bottles the rest of the way and then cap them and store them in a dark place to ferment for another 1-3 days. DO NOT over-ferment during this second fermentation. Pressure will build up in the bottle and it is possible to either blow the lid off or for the bottle to explode. I’ve placed my bottles in this nifty recycled 6-pack wine carrier from my local grocery to make it easy to move around as well as to help protect the kombucha from direct light and to protect my laundry room from any exploding bottles.

When your kombucha reaches your desired level of fermentation, flavor and carbonation just put them in the fridge. This will slow the process to a crawl and keep the pressure from increasing. Let it chill, then pop the top and enjoy!

OTHER RESOURCES:

 ”Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats” by Sally Fallon and Mary Enig

Kombucha Kamp has a very detailed blog as well as a YouTube channel with a lot of information and tips.

Matt Hodgson has a great series of YouTube videos as well.

If you don’t want to wait 3-5 weeks to grow your own SCOBY, and don’t know anyone who is brewing kombucha, you can order one right from Amazon. You do NOT need to buy an expensive “kit” though, which many people who sell starters will try to get you to buy. Even a recycled gallon sized pickle jar will work just fine for brewing your kombucha.

I have links both to “Nourishing Traditions” and the above SCOBY in my A-store, or you can just click on the images to check them out!

Let me introduce you to the Progressive Cherry-It Pitter. It’s a huge improvement over the single-cherry pitter such as the one seen right.

The old style pitter does ONE cherry at a time. It has a single dull-tipped pusher. The cherry sits in the little divot, and then you squeeze down on the handle, rather like one of those hand-grip exercisers, and pitted one single cherry. Juice is guaranteed to splatter everywhere, and there are chances of flying pits, as well, as they leave the pitter at high velocity. Well, I was in the middle of making homemade cherry preserves when mine broke. The little pusher broke right off and stayed planted in a cherry. I pulled it out and hammered it back in, but it kept coming out. It was time to retire the pitter.

In looking for a new one, I found the Progressive Cherry-It Pitter. Four cherries at once? And for only a couple of dollars more for the old hand-cramper? Well, sign me up!

The blades on the Cherry-It pitter are SUPER sharp. Far, far sharper than the ones on an OXO brand pitter, so be CAREFUL. That said, they’re also fully retracted behind the little panel there, so you should be just fine unless you stick your finger in and press, or aren’t careful while washing.

The Cherry-It also holds four cherries at once. The tray is reversible and has four big spots and four small. I just used the big size as my cherries varied in size. The small side is also reportedly good for olives. If you look closely, you’ll notice I stuck my cherries in stems and all, and you can see them in the bottom of the clear tray. Most of my cherries had very short stems, some less than half an inch which were hard to get ahold of, so I decided to see if the Cherry-It would eject the stems, too. It did!

To operate, you just place four cherries in the slots, then press down. Voila – four cherries, done! The pits (and in my case, the stems) get left in the clear collection tray at the bottom. Because the lid closes securely over the cherries, there’s no splattering of juice all over your counters, either. When the bottom gets full, just lift the tray the cherries sit out, dump out the pits, and continue.

The pitter breaks down into 3 parts. The tray lifts out and then the top portion pulls up off the hinge. All three parts are top-rack dishwasher safe for easy cleanup.

Just how fast and efficient is it, though? Well, you see that bowl of cherries up there? How about a closer look, hmmm?

That’s right. That’s a 12 cup bowl. That’s 4.25 pounds of cherries and I pitted them all in 30 minutes – and that was even with stopping to take pictures when I realized that I really had to share this product. Once cherries are pitted you can make them into cherry preserves, cherry pies, or just lay them out on a baking sheet and freeze them before putting them in a plastic freezer bag or container to save for when fresh cherries are out of season.

Some of these eggs really are green!

Indian Cucumbers

Today was our second week of picking up our CSA from the lovely folks at Koch Ranches. After last week’s monster cantaloupe that weighed in at 6 pounds, I thought I was ready for anything. I have to say, however, that when I got my eggs home and opened them up I just sort of stared blankly at them for a moment. The photo above is pretty darn accurate. There’s two eggs in the dozen that are a pretty pastel mint green. I’ve had farm fresh eggs before – my cousins own a ranch and I used to spend summers there, so I’m used to the intensely bright yellow yolks. They even had one chicken that regularly laid double yolk eggs. But green? That’s a new one on me. I’m still waiting to hear from Cheryl as to what kind of chicken they are, but I suspect they’ll fall under the “Easter Egger” label. Green eggs, who knew?
We also got some Indian Cucumbers that are a brilliant gold color. I have no idea what they’ll taste like, but they sure are pretty. I’ve never been a huge fan of cucumbers but I have to admit, it’s different enough to tempt me to do something other than make it into pickles.

Oh, and those round things in the back left corner? Those are zucchini. “What? Zucchini are long, not round!” You say? Au contraire! These are 8-ball Zucchini. This is news to me, although it seems they’ve been for awhile. I can tell you that these are NOT the “tennis ball size” that I keep seeing references too. Once again, welcome to Texas – even our squash is bigger here. You can see them better on the left side of the photo below.

CSA Produce for 7/16/2011

We got lots in our package this week! We got a package of pork chops and a coil of Alsatian sausage (which I’ve never heard of, but is reportedly like a Polish sausage with coriander in it) and of course, those farm fresh eggs. The photo above is, again, just SOME of our produce. We got a bag of onions, a bag of okra, and a bag of jalapeños. Those jalapeños are out on the grill smoking to become chipotles right now, along with some smoked almonds. There was, of course, more crookneck, though this week it’s all smaller, and more pattypan. No eggplant or watermelon this week. There’s also baby beets, fresh basil and vine-ripe tomatoes (one of which is bright orange rather than your usual red). I smell marinara!

We did get another cantaloupe, too. This one actually came from one of the Koch’s friends over at My Father’s Farm in Seguin. I have to admit, this place sounds really cool! They’re part of a program that “focused on building orphanages equipped with schools and organic self-sufficient farms in Latin America” – so I get an extra bit of feel-good with my produce this week.

We signed up with Koch Ranches which operates out Yancey, Texas, which is 12 miles south of Hondo. They’re a family that’s been farming for a long time. We got to meet Tony and his grandson, Kyle, this weekend. Kyle’s quite the budding business and very professional for his age! According to their listing on the Quarry Farmer’s Market, Kyle will be the seventh generation of farmers in their family. They specialize in grass-fed meats; beef, wild boar, venison, lamb and goat. They also have their own orchards and they plant vegetables between the trees, which I suspects help shade the young plants from the direct sun and reduce water use – but that’s just a guess.

So what comes in a CSA Box? How about...

Now, this is just SOME of the produce from our CSA this week. When we were deciding if we should go with a full or half share, I asked Cheryl about how much would be included. She gave me a list that included 1-2 pattypan squashes and 5-6 crookneck squashes, 1 “large” cantaloupe, and so on. What Cheryl didn’t mention is that this is Texas-sized farm-grown produce! That cantaloupe in the back right corner weighed in at about 6 pounds, and some of those crooknecks tipped the kitchen scale at nearly a pound a quarter each. Not shown in the above photo are the eggplant, pattypan squash and three crooknecks that we gave to my mother-in-law, as well as the onions that just kept wanting to roll around. In addition to the produce, we also got a very lovely T-bone steak, a chuck roast, and some ground beef – all naturally raised, grass fed, and animal welfare/humane certified.

The real kicker is that a trip to Whole Foods would break the bank, but this? Sure, there’s an upfront investment. There’s the $50 one-time membership fee and the the 10 week period runs at $550 for a full, mixed share of both meat and produce. Every other week one of my meats will be replaced with a dozen farm-fresh eggs. But that means that the majority of my in-season, locally-grown, farm fresh produce and meat is going to run me what works out to $55 a week. There will be very little that I’ll actually need at the grocery aside of dairy, drinks and things like trash bags and soap. We’ll be eating healthier, eating local, and saving a bundle while helping supporting local agriculture. I’ve gotten to talk to Cheryl via email, and she’s been great about answering all my questions. That’s the other part of a CSA – developing a direct relationship with the very people who are growing the food that ends up on your plate. It’s a winning deal all the way around.

If you’re interested in finding a CSA in your area, check out the link for Local Harvest on the sidebar to the left. If you’re in the SanAntonio area and you’re interested in Koch Ranches, you can find their CSA information here.

My desire to make homemade bacon was sparked by a fellow food blogger, and much, much more experienced chef. I actually stumbled across Gareth Mark’s bacon post when I was looking for his entry for Xocolatl Sorbet. Suffice to say, I was intrigued. And like many foodies, the idea sat there in my head, and it niggled at me until I sucked it up and decided to do it. I started digging deeper and now I’ve really become interested in the whole art of charcuterie. The fact that I’ve learned that the temperature is just about right in winter to hang a prosciutto off of my back porch has nothing to do with it. Of course it doesn’t! Ahem. Anyway… bacon.

If you want to see pretty bacon pictures, I’d highly suggest going over and checking Gareth’s post at StumptownSavory.com. Michael Ruhlman, author of “Charcuterie”, and sometimes judge on Iron Chef America also has a bacon entry at Ruhlman.com.

I will tell you this, it’s easier than you’d possibly believe. The bacon does most of the work itself. Finding curing salt is perhaps the hardest part, and likely you’ll have to order it online unless you’re lucky enough to have a butcher shop in your town. I just happen to be ever so lucky. The curing salt itself is cheap – I got it for $3 for a pound at Rodriguez Butcher Supply, so you may end up paying more for shipping than for your product unless you manage to bundle it into an Amazon.com order. There’s certainly no reason to pay nearly $8 for a 3.6oz jar from Williams-Sonoma though. Curing salt comes under many names, the most common of which is “Insta-Cure #1″. Do NOT buy Insta-Cure #2. This is a different formulation for dried meats such as salami.

Pink salt is 6.25% Sodium Nitrate and the rest is regular salt. It is colored pink to prevent it from being confused with table salt. In SMALL AMOUNTS it has been determined safe to use for curing meat. The small amount of risk associated with sodium nitrate (which has replaced saltpeter) far, far outweighs the risks of botulism. Using it as table salt, however, would be bad. Consider that 4 ounces of Insta-Cure #1 is enough to process 100 pounds of fresh sausage (Roughly 1 teaspoon per 5 pounds of meat), and you’ll quickly figure out that putting it into your salt shaker would be bad news. Curing salt can be found under different names, too, such as Morton’s Tender Quick and also LEM Cure, which you can buy at Bass Pro Shop. It sounds like an odd source, but all that venison sausage hunters make needs curing salt, too!

My next obstacle was finding pork belly. I had to call around, but if your local grocery doesn’t carry it a dedicated butcher shop will. It will also likely be much cheaper at a dedicated butcher. Central Market was very proud of theirs at $3.28 a pound while Culebra Meat Market wants a mere $1.49 a pound. That said, I haven’t really vetted the latter store, and safety over cheap, always!

I did a twist on the recipe that Gareth used. For one, I don’t keep sugar around the house. I had quite a bit of brown sugar, though. I decided to go all the way towards sweet and used regular molasses instead of blackstrap, which is much somewhat bitter compared to regular molasses. For my bacon I ended up using:

1/2C brown sugar
1 T Molasses
2 T kosher salt
1 t Insta-Cure #1
2 t freshly ground black pepper.

I trimmed my pork belly up until it was roughly square and rubbed it on all sides. Unlike Gareth’s, mine came skin on, and that’s just one of the things I ended up writing to him about. Leave the skin on, then go ahead and peel it off once it’s smoked. It may make the curing take an extra day or so since the cure has a harder time getting through the skin, but having it on is going to make life easier in the long run, and Gareth says he thinks it makes for a better flavor. I, myself, found it makes for a good bit of structural integrity which makes handling the meat easier. Once the bacon is smoked, the skin is tightened up and easily peels off.

Once my pork belly was rubbed I put it in a 2 gallon ziplock and pushed out all the air I could. I flipped it each day, sometimes twice just in case I forgot, but let it spend most of its time meat-sized down, skin-side up since the cure was going to have an easier time getting in that way. I left it in there for about 6 days, and, I’ve decided now that it probably could have gone longer, but scheduling was being a bit iffy with the fact that I needed to smoke a pastrami as well and that was going to be an all-day project.

I waffled for a bit, especially after seeing the picture in Ruhlman’s post about the forgiveness of cured meat. His looked much more leathery and darker than mine, so again I talked to Gareth. Many of the posts say to pull it when it’s “firm” and “not squishy.” Gareth further elaborated that it should feel like poking your forearm rather than poking yourself in the cheek. This made it clear that if my bacon wasn’t ready, it was -darn- close, and it was so much more helpful than “firm.”

Out of the bag that bacon came to be rinsed and patted dry. I could already smell the sweetness of the brown sugar that had cured into the meat and darkened it up. Just for good measure I decided to give it another dusting of freshly cracked black pepper as I’ve always been a fan of peppered bacon. With that done it went out onto an honest-to-goodness smoker where it cooked over a combination of charcoal and hickory wood for about 3 hours until the a thermometer stuck in the thickest part read right about 160F.

I will say that that bacon didn’t make it off the smoker unmolested. There was this little piece hanging off, so of course, I had to try it while it was still hot. It was a bite of heaven. Juicy, smokey, salty pork.

On the topic of salty, homemade bacon is much less salty than store bought bacon. Store bought bacon is brined – which means it’s soaked in a saltwater solution. This draws both water and salt into the meat. This is also why store bought bacon shrinks by a good bit when you cook it.

This stuff? It doesn’t shrink. It doesn’t taste like a pork-flavored salt lick. It tastes like smoked pork with a hint of sweetness, pepper and salt. It’s a totally different experience than store bought bacon, and it’s so easy that I may never go back again.

My interests have changed, and took off for awhile in other directions. They still are, so you’ll be seeing some new additions to the blog. We just bought a big smoker/grill over Memorial Day and I’m planning to put it through its paces. There’s definitely ideas for grilled pizza, for example!
The bigger change, though, is that with a smoker my ideas have turned towards meat – specifically bacon, sausages, pastrami. And there’s definitely plans for smoking the Thanksgiving Turkey this year. My first project, however, is going to be bacon!

Don't let their pretty metallic good looks fool you...

It’s been slow in coming this year, but the first glimmer of the itch to begin my Christmas baking has finally hit. I’d gone to Williams-Sonoma several days ago and purchased a set of very pretty snowflake cookie cutters. In my mind I saw them iced with pure white icing and glistening with a combination of clear dusting sugar and metallic dragees.

Some of you may well be wondering, “What in the world is a dragee?” While the name might ring any bells you’re sure to remember them – those hard, silver balls so popular in Christmas cookie decoration, be they for the buttons of snowmen or the ringers of bells, or simply glistening tips on snowflakes and stars. I was confounded when I tried to find them, having opted not to purchase them at Williams-Sonoma. I found a single brand at my local grocery store and the jar was on the very top shelf, nestled between the boxes of specialty extracts and colored dusting sugars. The price alone nearly blew me out of the water at $10.99 a jar, but I was determined that I was going to make beautiful, magazine-picture worthy cookies and coupled with how hard we’d looked for them I just went ahead and bought them.

One can certainly imagine my confusion when I got home and turned the jar around to find a label warning “FOR DECORATION ONLY.” Of course they’re for decoration! What else is one going to do? Snort them? Shoot them out of pellet guns? The other side read “India Tree Silver Dragees add an elegant touch to cakes and cookies.” Well, duh. That’s why I bought them!

In a moment of naughty, nostalgic self-indulgence I cracked the jar open and pried out one of the precious metal balls (at this price, they’ve got to be made with real silver, right?!) and slid it between my teeth. A quiet crack, that first blush of sugary bliss and then…

Unlike a Tootsie pop, not a chewy, chocolate center...

. . .

. . . PLASTIC?

That’s right, folks. These “FOR DECORATION ONLY” dragees, the only I’ve been able to find on the shelf, which were stuck right-smack in the middle of the other edible decorations and ingredients are, literally, for decoration ONLY. While I’d assume that consuming one or two wouldn’t kill someone, I can’t imagine that they’ll do wonders for anyone’s teeth and the texture of hard plastic pellets does leave something to be desired. What in the world is one really to do with these things – decorate their cookies and then warn the recipients to remove them? Should my cookies be given wrapped in a brass spittoon? It is a general rule, last I checked, that anything non-edible on a plate should be clearly unmistakable as such. It’s why chefs go to such great pains to make sure that they don’t serve whole chunks of cinnamon bark, bay leaves, or star anise in their food!

Thankfully the local grocery manager was just as shocked as I was to learn that these things aren’t edible. She said she was going to look at some as soon as she hung up with me, and I have a feeling that they will be moved over with the candles and other inedible baking decor. She also stated that despite having opened my jar, I am free to return them for a full refund. While I may be out of pretty-as-a-magazine sparkle, at least I won’t be out $11.

So wrong... but so darn funny.

My husband found an article about these cookie cutters while roving about the intertubes the other day. I can’t remember where – most likely boingboing.net or neatorama.com knowing him. I got a peek at them over his shoulder and burst out laughing. They’re so, so, terribly wrong – and yet so very right! While some might be appalled, I know I have many friends who would split a wide grin upon seeing these cookies. Like almost everything else, it turns out that they’re available on Amazon and I just had to add them to my Amazon aStore.

Just as my baking fell off during my medical hiatus so, too, did anything resembling gardening. Somehow, though, despite my previous black thumb (and forefinger, and other fingers… you get the picture here) it looks like almost everything has survived a month or more of near neglect. In truth, some things seem to have taken off and made my back patio look like a wild jungle while I wasn’t paying it any mind.

I did lose my citronella plant, my sage, my thyme and a few fronds on my black elephant ears, though the latter is already forcing up new shoots. My chives and oregano have nearly exploded out of their pot and can no longer stand upright and the sweet potato vine was reaching for the neighbor’s patio. The dwarf plumbago and the chocolate chip ajuga are both planted in the ground and have apparently put in very deep roots and spread out of their neatly tended rows and clumps. With lots of rain as of late, they’re happy as clams. There’s no real way to bring them in from the freeze so I’m going to have to see about covering them up somehow, or let them go and start fresh in a few months.

When I say “in a few months” I really do mean just that. The planting season here starts in late March and folks have been known to plant a second crop of tomatoes as late as August. My potted rosebush is being left to weather the storm as it’s nearly doubled in size and is far too large to bring in, though I’ll probably go pull it up by the door and consider covering it as well. It’s a hearty wild sort of rose, and in fact it’s still blooming even now! I’m going to call the Rose Emporium tomorrow to see what they advise. Maybe we’ll drag it inside after all and hang the Christmas tree ornaments from it and the rosemary bush that has grown like a weed and leave the big plastic monstrosity in its box.