Potato Surprise

Malin and I had a surprise while turning over the garden. I guess I missed harvesting some potatoes last fall.

The peas I planted last month are finally sprouting.

Arugula and lettuce is taking off up on the porch.

And on top of the beehive, we've placed spinach, Swiss chard and tomato seedlings.

Sugar Snap Peas and Beekeeper Meet Up

The unseasonably warm weather continued with a 72 degree sunny day yesterday, and there were scores of honeybees flying around the hive all day. Karl keeps feeding them their own honey from an inverted mason jar with little holes pricked in the lid. They don't seem to be eating it very quickly so I assume -- at least I hope -- they are getting what they need from the few plants that are flowering.

Karl went to a meeting of local beekeepers tonight, and I'll be interested to know what the collective wisdom is about taking care of bees during this last month of this weird, warm winter.

The other rather banal new is that Aksel and I planted Sugar Snap Peas in the back alley garden and I re-potted a bunch of arugula seedlings into bigger pots. Swiss chard and spinach seedlings will probably have to be repotted in the next few days. I wasn't expecting all the seeds I planted to sprout and I know that it's dumb, but it pains me to thin those little plants.

Peas Planted

Aksel and I planted peas in the back garden yesterday. We also started spinach, Swiss chard and arugula up on the porch last week. The arugula and chard has sprouted and is already growing well. With its southern exposure, it must be 75 degrees out there during the day.

Crocus in Bloom

Our neighbor's crocus are always among the very first crocus I see in bloom every early spring. By early February his garden is full of them. I was surprised today, out on a walk in the sunny afternoon, to see clusters of crocus in full bloom. We really have had a warm December, but it's still only December 30th!

I stood around and waited a few moments, and sure enough, a couple honeybees stopped by to collect pollen. While the honeybee was visiting some sort of fly was also hanging out on a flower.

Vanilla Pear Jam

After the family ate their fill of pears, I still had several sitting on the counter from a recent Costco run getting riper and riper by the hour. A little too soft to slice and eat out of hand, they were fine for jam. I followed the recipe on the Food in Jars blog .

The last time I had made jam, I used the requisite amount of pectin and cooked it at a hard boil for a bit too long, resulting in a tasty jam, but with a consistency that was way too hard. This time, I didn't use quite as much pectin and the result is a pretty thin jam. I was hoping to serve this pear jam with cheese and crackers, but I think it's more suited to peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and pancake topping.

The ingredients: pears, sugar, vanilla beans. Vanilla beans are super expensive. I think a little bottle holding two beans are about $12 at the local Harris Teeter. I bought a package of 30 beans on eBay for about that same price. They aren't quite as plump as the ones in the store, but they are absolutely fine and the price is right.

Mashing everything up...

The finished product...

Crafty Bastards Arts and Crafts Fair

A couple of weeks ago on a whim, I entered a contest for the Crafty Bastards Arts and Crafts Fair. As I understand it, this is a festival of all sorts of crafts vendors from up and down the east coast. This year, they have expanded to a market of culinary crafters with free lessons and tastings and there is a Crafty Food Award competition for home crafted pickles, beer and preserves. I decided to enter Drunken Fig Jam and Spiced Peach Jam into the preserves contest. Much to my surprise, the Spiced Peach Jam made the finals so on October 1st I'll be squaring off against Oaxaca Chutney and Blueberry-Lime Preserves! The fair is in Adams Morgan at the Marie Reed Learning Center at 18th and Wyoming Ave., NW from 10 - 5. The Crafty Food Awards will be at 3 pm. I'll be there!

Tomatoes, Potatoes, Pumpkins and Figs

We've been eating about a pint of cherry tomatoes a day -- plain right off the vine, with mozzarella cheese, with feta cheese, in pasta salad, in potato salad and in pasta sauce. And, of course, lots are given to friends and neighbors. It really is remarkable just how many tomatoes have grown in two small plots. Last week it finally got to the point that we just couldn't keep up with the bounty so I canned three pints and have now filled a pint jar with sun (actually oven) dried tomatoes.

Some of the potatoes were boiled for a Nicoise salad. These were starter potatoes that were on clearance at Frager's for 10 cents a package in June. They've done remarkably well and taste delicious.

This pumpkin vine is a volunteer taken from the compost pile.

Finally, figs. The fig tree down at the community garden is dripping with giant, ripe figs. They started ripening about 10 days ago and since then, I've probably picked 35 cups of them. I've made three batches of Drunken Fig Jam, a recipe I found on Epicurious, and each recipe calls for 9 cups of them. The jam has figs, brandy, sugar and the zest and juice of two lemons. It's unbelievably good on crackers with goat cheese.

I feel like I'm the only one really picking the figs down there. Every time I go, there are dozens of easily reached ripe figs that are on the verge of being too ripe. I hate to see them go bad on the vine, so I've picked dozens that I've dried. I need to let it go.