On Saturday morning Rob and I picked 27 ounces of peppers (a big harvest for us). They were mostly clown peppers, but there were also lots of Golden Summer Hybrids (a yellow bell pepper) and plenty of shiny habaneros and cayennes too …
On Saturday Bunny had her annual Halloween party. Everything was so festive. The old greenhouse (which Bun and Matt now use as a little outdoor sitting area) was lit up with strings of ghostly white lights. Skeletons hung in the trees over little groups of crooked tombstones …
I’ll start this most random post with a funny little story about my nephew, Jake: Today Jake stayed home sick from school and spilled a bowl of Froot Loops on his favorite blanket, B. So B had to go in the washer.
“I will put him in, Mommy!” Jake insisted. “Because I have special hands for handling B!”
Kris told me later that all the while Jake was stuffing B into the washer he was apologizing to the little scrap of blanket, saying, “B, I am sorry I can’t go in there with you, but I am a person and I really can’t get swirled around like that.”
More random news: It finally rained today. Hoorah! And the Georgia asters are blooming–pure purple. I’m crazy about them. There are Halloween lights everywhere around Quincy, and our festive neighbors on Eighth Street have their red brick house decorated like a Victorian funeral parlor. The front porch is draped in black tulle, and on every window there’s a black tulle wreath with a big purple bow. A life-size skeleton in a top hat greets visitors at the front door, and there’s an open coffin the yard, with a party of dancing ghosts nearby.
The Happy Family: Elroy, Leroy, and Francie
Friday night was Mom’s annual pumpkin-carving party. I came over after work, carrying two pumpkins, and Mom’s house seemed so inviting. There were bowls of Halloween candy on the table—orange saltwater taffies and gummy mummy pops. A big pot of sweet-potato soup was simmering on the stove, and Pillsbury crescent rolls were browning in the oven …
When I was 27 I spent a year teaching English in Taiwan, in a little town called Chang Hua. Here are some excerpts from the journals I kept then: January 31, 1994 We live in a little house, a little wood-frame cottage, attached by guy …
Vegan apple cake
On Saturday Rob and I drove to Thomasville, Georgia, to order stone so we can make paths around our pond. I always enjoy the drive to Thomasville, but it’s especially beautiful at this time of year, when the country roads are fringed with goldenrod and the cotton fields are snowy white. We got Cokes and Chick-o-Sticks to make the ride more fun, and then it was an hour and a half of pecan orchards and old farmhouses and collard patches . . . and, of course, a bunch of ugly, sad modern stuff in between.
Thomasville is a very swanky small town, with a hopping downtown full of antiques stores and gift shops and cool restaurants. After we picked out our pallets of stone, we stopped at A Different Drummer, one of our favorite stores, and since we’re supposed to be saving money we spent hundreds of dollars on extremely necessary antique bird decoys (a dove and a crow). The owner of the shop is so awesome and enthusiastic. He knows everything there is to know about sporting collectibles and had a story about every single decoy in the place: “Now this one was carved by Papa Elzey, a one-legged carver out of Crockett, Texas. . . . Y’all need to come to my house now and see my collection of flicker decoys. I’ll show you the holy grail of flickers. . . !”
When we got home Rob built stands for the decoys and I planted six Korean mums around the steps in front of the breezeway. I usually try to limit my ornamental plant choices to natives (they feed more insects, which in turn feed more birds), but I have a soft spot for these silly exotic mums. They don’t spread or try to take over, and I remember them (nostalgically) from childhood–so cheery and daisy-like. They grew in shaggy, neglected gardens in the old, charming sections of town.
It’s dry as a bone here, so I spent a lot of the day hand-watering my little trees in the backyard. Meanwhile, Rob sat by the pond and watched the goldfish, which is one of his favorite pastimes. He puts his hand in the water and all the goldfish, big and small, swim right up to it. “It makes me feel like we’re friends,” he often says a little sadly. “But I guess we’re really not. I’d love to scoop up a fish and play with it, but I won’t because the fish would probably just totally freak out. . . .” You can tell he has to work really hard to restrain himself.
I watered, and Rob sat by the pond. We found out a deer had eaten a bunch of the leaves off our sweet potato vines, but this was really more “neat” than bad–because we were planning to harvest the whole patch the next day anyhow.
We got to see a lot of Bernie, the old stray tom that roams our neighborhood and sometimes stops to rest on our steps in the company of his many ex-wives. I love Bernie, even though he doesn’t love me. He’s a tuxedo cat with a tiny body and an enormous cartoon head. He has little white markings just underneath his mouth, so he looks like he has the cutest little vampire teeth.
We made vegan apple cake that night, which turned out great even though the apples were a tad dicey. Rob was providing me with play-by-play commentary all the while he worked: “Ooh, these apples seem a little soft. . . . No, no, they’re perfectly fine! . . . Well, here’s a really big bad spot. . . . Well, maybe it’s not that big. No, no, it’s not. I can just cut that right out. . . . It’s fine. These apples are perfectly fine. Nothing wrong with them. Not a problem. . . !” (This is how Rob is–all the time.)
The apple cake recipe is from The Joy of Vegan Baking (a book I highly recommend). The cake is really moist, and it has the best topping, full of brown sugar and walnuts (packed with omega-3’s!). It was really fun baking the cake at 10:00 at night with the cats interfering. I was wearing my pink zebra-striped pajamas and fake fur slippers.
On Sunday Kris came over and we took pictures of each other in the yard, which is all golden now with the drought and fall. We were laughing the whole time and making fun of our cheesy poses. “So how nerdy am I looking?” I’d ask. “Just out of curiosity.” Kris kept checking her LCD screen and hooting. “Oh, God, I hate this one!” she cried at one point. “I look like I’m one of the Real Housewives of Gadsden County!”
More Korean mums . . . and my watering can
I need to buy another pumpkin before Mom’s pumpkin-carving party on Friday!
Last week my nine-year-old niece, Sophie, had to write an essay for school about “an interesting person.” She chose to write about my sister Bunny. Sophie said to Kris (her mother), sighing, “I thought about choosing Lez, but she works at an insurance company—and that’s not very interesting.”
Last night I came across my journal entry about Jake’s fifth birthday party in September 2008 (one of the funnest parties ever). It’s pretty funny, so I thought I’d share:
That’s one of Bunny’s awesome carrot cupcakes in the back. It’s topped with candied ginger (too cute!).
Last Sunday Rob and I made vegan pesto (with our very own basil) and some great bruschetta too.
We spent most of the day in the garden planting collards, kale, broccoli, cabbage, and Brussels sprouts, and then we picked a big basket of basil and clown nose peppers and went in and started cooking. Our basil is so pretty right now. It’s huge, and it’s covered in flowers–purple spires visited by hummingbirds. It smells delicious in the sun–kind of like a really good pizza place. We have so much of the stuff that I often pick big branches just to use in bouquets. (All my bouquets have to be edible because our cats will literally devour them.)
Anyway, we made a great oily high-calorie pesto with loads of pinenuts and homegrown garlic. We served it over whole wheat fusilli. I made the bruschetta topping with organic heirloom tomatoes I bought at New Leaf Market; they came in all sorts of funky shapes and colors. The bruschetta recipe calls for a baguette, but I used some great rosemary-olive bread that Mom bought me at the Tallahassee Downtown Market.
Vegan Pesto
Ingredients:
1 ½ cups fresh basil
1/3 cup olive oil
1 cup pine nuts
3 cloves garlic
1/3 cup nutritional yeast
¾ tsp salt
Directions:
Combine all ingredients with an immersion blender until nuts are ground and you have a smooth paste. As a cautionary note: I try not to pack the measuring cup with basil leaves–because if you add too much basil your pesto will be really bitter. I like it best when I have more pinenuts and less basil.
Basil Bruschetta
Ingredients:
4 cups cherry tomatoes, chopped
6 clown peppers, chopped
1 clove fresh garlic, minced
1 small handful basil leaves, chopped
2 Tbls balsamic vinegar
3 Tbls olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste
1 baguette
Directions:
Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Add the tomatoes, peppers, basil, garlic, vinegar, olive oil, and salt and pepper to a bowl and stir to combine. Slice the baguette, brush the top of each piece with olive oil, and arrange the pieces on a baking sheet. Toast the bread until golden brown. Using a slotted spoon, top the toasted bread with the tomato mixture and serve.