Now we can swim any day in November

Water taxi approaches the West Seattle dock

Well, truth to tell, it's not November yet so I'm not absolutely sure if The Postal Service had that right, but I can say that we can still buy fresh raspberries at the Farmers Market in mid-October and while on the one hand that's a little worrying, it does mean I can work off some impending mid-terms nerves by experimenting with a new raspberry tart recipe. 

 I wasn't entirely happy with my last crust (though we managed to polish that pie off readily enough) so I wasn't eager to make my usual raspberry pie, but it just seemed wrong not get raspberries when Big Brother Farms had boxes of berries for sale this morning. I bought the berries (okay, Scott bought the berries) and figured I'd come up with something. Once we got home I googled a bit and was pretty much sold on this recipe until I realized it called for six eggs which would clean us out of eggs for the week and also, that's just a lot of egg. I nosed around a bit longer and eventually landed on this summer fresh raspberry pie recipe since it seems like it's just never not going to be summer in Seattle again. (Nor, it seems, is it ever going to rain again. I tell myself I'll look back longingly on these dry days come February, but I don't believe it. I know I won't miss the smoke and haze from the Bolt Creek Fire, assuming it does go away eventually.)

I realized that I probably didn't really have enough berries to fill a normal pie pan and, since this pie isn't cooked I didn't think I could supplement the fruit with nectarine without Scott noticing. Instead, I broke out his cute little tart pans, which don't get much use, sadly, and filled them with the pate brisée sucré from Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Let me just me just say that is a dough that is a joy to work. It's one of the few items I've made from Ms Child's classic, but those books are worth having in the house, if only for that recipe. 

The several pages of how to make the dough are in a much earlier section

My blind baking technique needs a lot of work and it wouldn't have hurt if I'd reread the entire recipe a little more closely (oh; I'm supposed to prick the crust before the first nine minutes of baking as well as after I remove the beans that are supposed to stop them from puffing), but I insist they have a certain rustic charm. I also tell myself that the glaze thickened enough and that it will set up properly given some time to chill. Which is what is happening now:

Don't wake me; I plan on sleeping in.

Ruby at West Seattle Farmers Market

(And, I think, Ruby's webpage which seems to be a pile of other links: https://linktr.ee/westseattlebusker?fbclid=IwAR0UiAoNona5uhIX0BJm2VtT-3ERh5cZv247ULeEDAhTtqdhbZeK8Z3dFEo)

Photo Update for Posterity

The Greenman with his new fall hairdo

 

 

Bessie's mileage as of late September (288 miles to go to hit my goal)

 

These are some of my favorite things (in no particular order as I clear off my phone and camera):

Grace in the living room in the late summer morning light

Scott (and Bessie) overlooking Puget Sound in the late summer setting sun

Scone-making in progress (late summer fruit)

What I call "Grace being Grace"

Slice o' Smoky Saturday update

 Seattle has been pretty lucky all summer in not getting hit by the wildfire smoke that has plagued BC, Oregon, and Idaho, but all streaks must come to an end and today was the day for Seattle, though it's still just borderline unhealthy for everyone.

Airnow.gov Seattle graphic as of 12:54 p.m.

Realizing the air and the heat were likely to become issues later in the day, Scott and I uncharacteristically got up early and set out for Fresh Flours at about 9:30 this morning (because, yes, anything before ten on a Saturday morning is early in our world). The graphic then showed the needle at the high end of the green segment, so pretty decent. I was fairly gasping on the first hill, but I'm always gasping there; sadly, it has nothing to do with the air quality. 

We have serious doubts about the accuracy of the elevation gain number, but it looks impressive, doesn't it?

 I don't know if they're new, but we hadn't noticed them before: several of the road signs along the route (in the Riverview/Highland Park neighborhoods, to get ultra-local) had large colorful art on their backs. Naturally, I stopped to photograph a few:

We think the subsequent ones are subsections of this one, which was a lot larger than the others.

West Seattle's Fresh Flours, when we reached it, was hopping, but there was no shortage of pastry and plenty of seating on the patio. I don't know why it is but every time we sit on the Fresh Flours' patio, it feels like we're on vacation. It's magical, I tell you. There were a lot of house sparrows, looking to fill up on empty calories.

As it happens, I had seen that Paper Boat Booksellers was celebrating its three-year anniversary this weekend with 10 percent off pretty much everything, as well as a bit of a sidewalk sale so, since that can be on our route home (if you figure a mile or two out of the way is, in its own way, "on the way"), we stopped by there and did some shopping before finishing our ride in the deepening haze. (Does haze "deepen"? I'm not sure. I do know that I'm feeling a bit lightheaded.)

The day's haul / Local economy boosted / Essential supplies laid in

Another brief post for posterity

Labor Day Weekend Harvest*

 

This (late) morning's activity: a quick harvest.

 This afternoon's activity: figuring out what to do with plums this year when we don't want more plum jam, don't eat that many fresh plums, and can't get to the food bank to make a donation any time soon. I sense some plum torte--maybe enlivened with fresh fennel seeds?--in the near future. 

*Not pictured because not picked: the basil that is likely to figure in tonight's dinner.

 And, a few hours later:

NYT plum torte (with experimental fennel)**

**And with apologies to Julia Child and Paul Hollywood for being too lazy to add their mandatory apricot glaze. Maybe later.

Drive-by post, that has suddenly grown to include more photos than planned

It's been a weird summer, with a long, cold June followed by some intensely hot days in July and August but, somehow, it's never felt properly like summer. The garden seems to share my ambivalence with the harvest, as of August 27, being pretty light. These aren't the first beans, cucumbers, or tomatoes I've picked, but it's not exactly like we've been overwhelmed by abundance either.

Plum positioned in such a way as to hide the bite either Squirrelicus or Ratticus has taken out of it

Though, on reflection, it has been a phenomenally good year for bees, who have been very happy with the California poppies that have been allowed to range all over the beds intended for vegetables, 

  and there has been clear evidence of leafcutters gathering their cocoon supplies from the neighboring roses. So I guess I just need to shift my perspective a bit. I'll look to that.

Leafcutter house with new residents moving in daily

Note the half circles clipped from the rose leaves
by leafcutters. (And also the flower from the gardenia
we've had for years that is blooming
for the first time ever.)

 

 

We've also been working on this sweet little corner of the backyard this summer:

Apricot Jam, 2022 edition

 

About step 4, I think: second half of apricots added to pots.
(Pay no attention to that finger in the corner of the shot.)

  I confess that I'm writing this post mostly because it was so very helpful to find my plainly titled 2015 post about making apricot preserves a few hours ago; that post mentioned--and pictured--the old envelope on which the apricot preserves recipe lives which I'd forgotten about entirely so when the lab book in which we record some notes about jamming from various years contained some details on quantities but nothing else, I was at a loss as to the actual recipe. But a few minutes on blah de blah and I was reminded of the envelope and all was well.

 Of course, in 2015 we got started at about 8:00 a.m. and it was pushing noon by the time we had our fruit, jars, and cook pots gathered together today. Scott noted that it was 73 degrees F in the shade by then too. It would have been death to attempt to make preserves last weekend when we actually bought the fruit, but after the earlier heatwave, standing over pots of boiling, spitting apricot in an 80-degree kitchen wasn't bad at all. (This year's production run was particularly lively; I don't think I've had it spit onto my feet before. Ow.)

I can't believe that for years we did this without a funnel.

 I've been doing my best to keep the fruit in decent condition by storing it in a cooler in the basement, but even the most assiduous changing out of cold packs could only do so much; some of the fruit had turned pretty spotty and some of it had downright molded. (There's a reason there are no photos of the unprocessed fruit.) Overall, though, it worked out okay and we had a bit more than ten pounds of pitted fruit, with a dozen or so still viable-for-snacking apricots left over. 

I wish I'd snapped a photo after Scott divided the juice into beakers but, sadly, I did not.

 The real issue was the fruit itself. Perfection apricots are just not perfect for making preserves; the flavor is definitely on the meh end of the scale. But it's what we could get at the market and it's what we had today so, bravely, we persevered. And we went to our usual solution: lemon! The recipe always includes lemon juice but this year we added lemon zest as well and the results, I declare, are pretty damned fine. Oh, it's not our most flavorful batch ever, but it's darned pretty in the jars and I'm sure we'll be pleased to have it come the dark days of winter.

 For posterity, total time was about 3.5 hours which includes everything from cleaning, spot-peeling, and stoning the fruit before weighing to removing the jars from their post-canning water bath and getting them ready for their close-up. We also did a cold-plate test this year, since the fruit had mostly cooked down. (Say, I should get that third plate out of the freezer.)

This year's production run yielded 16 full-size jars so we'll have extra!