Who let the dawgs out

Clams with sausage and peppers. Clams and sausage. Heh Heh.



There's a little baby Preston at the puppy pound this week. I want.

Fired

Cro-magnum man says fire good.



Wheat bread attempt. Not looking good.



Manhattan clam chowder. Meh. I could totally make this recipe better.



Aie-ya. Bread stuck to the pan. Another failure.

Life hands you lemons

Enough with the lemons already!



Baby artichoke. I wonder if it's possible to make Cynar artichoke liqueur at home?



Baby donut peach.



Baby alberta peachs. For making peach ice cream for Meg.



Baby brown turkey figs.



Baby shinseiki pears.



Baby loquats.



Baby limes.



Baby lemons. Ah crap... I'm still harvesting tons of lemons and the next round is about to come in too.



3 wheeled Zap electric car. Why does being green have to be this dorky?

Italian tail

Sexy Italia energy drink did not make me horny. It gave me a headache instead.



Calla lilies grow like weeds around here.



And the beginnings of an oxtail ragu.



Lemon asparagus risotto with porscuitto. Best risotto ever.



And for dinner #2, bucati with barolo oxtail ragu. If Mario Batali can use pinot noir in his ragu and still call it barolo, I can too.

Wee nip of something

The first of this year's limoncello! Gallons more to follow.



Not leaking, but no fishies. Hopefully the feral attack owls don't come back and destroy the fountain.



Self explanatory.



Walking Preston on garbage days after a windstorm is always interesting. Many a broken umbrella placed curbside today.



The winds were crazy enough that we also have broken patio furniture too.



Webster's Pharmacy around the corner carries packs of teeeny tiny condoms. For those with teeny tiny penises. This may explain the plethora of Hummer SUV's around the neighborhood.

Fowl weather

Mother Nature 5, Grape Arbor 0. Damn you Mother Nature!



Damn you all to hell!



A bad day all around since fountain has developed a leak.



Feral peacocks must be harbingers of doom and destruction. Damn ye pea fowl!

Little juice

What the heck does one make to use up half a gallon of fresh squeezed lemon juice? There's only so much lemon gelato I can eat. And most recipes only call for a tablespoon or so of lemon juice. Lemon recipes doesn't upscale well to half a gallon of juice.



And I'm still knee deep in newly plucked lemons.



Excited by my sugar cane harvests, I'm attempting to make my own sugar.



And I promptly abandon the sugar making effort after two hours of peeling and chopping and grinding. I only produced a couple tablespoons of cane juice. Phooey. Why can't squeezing sugarcanes be more like squeezing lemons?

New heights

Tower of pesto.



I rock.

Beet it

It's a bit disturbing that I manage to lose a giant sequoia tree in the tangle of weeds in the back corner. Who the heck loses giant sequoia trees?



Taming the jungle that is the back corner has a side benefit of a surprise sugarcane harvest. Yay sugar.



Nothing beats beets!

Pwitty

I like using my pink and rainbow weed stick thingy. It makes me feel pretty.



Lemon meringue pie finished. I like using my Home Depot blowtorch. It makes me feel pretty too.

Baaaa humbug

Overnight, the new fountain was attacked by feral goats. Much mayhem left in their wake. Bah!



2008 tomato season starts ambitiously. Let's hope the feral sheep don't eat my baby tomato seedlings when they sprout.



Baby peach trees in bloom. Hopefully we'll get delicious peaches this year. The pink flowers are very girly. But I'm OK with that. I get to day dream about peach pies all summer long. The daydreaming will be good. The reality is that feral squirrels will take bites out of all the peaches.



Kumquats. Very sweet, but seedy this year. Not enough to make a pie. I'm bittersweet about the very last of the meyer lemons this season.



Meat sauce calls for rigatoni. It's one of those rules, like only stirring polenta clockwise. I wish those tomato seeds would grow up soon so I can have fresh tomato sauce again.



Baby artichokes sprouting from seed. Artichoke plants take over a year to form from seed to dinner plate. Which is kind of ironic since 18 months is really way beyond what I'm willing to devote to any sort of relationship.

Baker's dozen eggs

My new favorite way of preparing eggs. Plunk eggs into a 185 degree oven for about an hour. Foolproof perfectly gooey eggs. And my own bread to sop up all the eggy-ness.

And for lunch, my version of bacon sammiches that Meredith and Bruce made when I visited the other day. My raddichio was braised in chicken broth.

And the beginnings of both a lemon meringue pie and a key lime pie. Pie! Pie!



And banana bread and what will be a chocolate hazelnut mascarpone cheesecake.

And the kitchen madness doesn't stop there. Josh and the Flip are coming over for game night. So we have pesto pizza.

And salame pizza. It's been a busy cooking day.

And garlic and herb pizza. And we're still not done cooking.

And proscuitto pizza. The wiimotes may need a bit of de-greasing by the end of the night.