gingerbread

I ran across this cute gadget a few days ago. Click on the link below to find out what kind of holiday treat you are...

You Are a Gingerbread House

A little spicy and a little sweet, anyone would like to be lost in the woods with you.

What Holiday Food Are You?

Serendipity: Herb is a gingerbread house too! We could be a little village...

As long as I'm talking about gingerbread click here for a low cal version of the holiday treat! Fun, eh?

The Good Pie Gene

Yes, there is a pie gene. What is so difficult about a flaky crust, people?
Here's the secret - it isn't the recipe, it's the technique. A heavy hand, a bad attitude, inattention to the 'now' of the dough... if you aren't committed to the pie, it won't be good. (She said in her Mr. Miyagi voice.)

The pie gene can be transmitted to others. Then they can help you in the kitchen. Especially useful on those bad attitude days. I've passed the gene to Herb and Herb Jr. so we're covered.

What is truly amazing is that Pat and Tony are just now beginning to sound like they are becoming interested in cooking - THANK YOU FOOD CHANNEL!

After a lifetime of pie making, it really does make pie making more fun when one does the filling and the other does the pastry. And having passed the baton to Herb for the pastry end of the project, I'm happy to do fillings when needed.

What brings on this pie reverie? We just finished our third pumpkin pie in two weeks. The first, to adjust the recipe for the 2007 pumpkin filling (every year the pumpkin filling is slightly different.) The second, for company on the holiday itself (along with a Northern Spy apple and a Detroit blueberry). And the third we just made to have another pumpkin pie to go with leftover turkey - it was so good this year.
I'd better quit now, I feel an emoticon coming on:)

So why am I talking about the pie gene? I thought last year I'd lost it! My pumpkin pie filling last year was overspiced and heavy. (No one said so, but a cook doesn't need folks to tell you when something isn't up to par.) Looking back I figure my fresh spices were stronger than I'd been used to... I'm usually heavy on the spice, and I'd purchased some really nice strong ground cinnamon from Frontier where you select from cinnamons determined by country of origin and percent of oil. So this year I measured more carefully, adjusting for the strong cinnamon.
But the heaviness was the question. I like a light but still creamy pumpkin filling. This year what worked was to make sure I beat the eggs before stirring in the rest of the ingredients, and then making sure to whisk the filling one last time before filling the crust and immediately slipping it into the 425 degree oven to start before turning it down to 350 to finish.
Technique, paying attention, what did I say.

People who sit there and tell you about the great deal they got on a five dollar pumpkin pie at the grocery store have no taste buds, you might as well give them a Mickey Dee and call it a day.
Along the same vein, I hear paint by number paintings from the 60's are collectible now.

Anyway I though I'd share my tips for flavoring pumpkin pie filling. Do the regular recipe whichever way you make it - my mom used evaporated milk and I use Eagle Brand, either way is good. Use two eggs and add a swig of vanilla extract. And finally, add a solid dollop of molasses, which gives the cooked pumpkin a deeper flavor.

Always looking for a new technique is what keeps cooking fun, so next year when I go to roast my pumpkins, I'm thinking I'll drizzle them with a bit of molasses at that stage, just to see what the difference will be.

I'm one of those old school people who loves Thanksgiving - family, food and peace. The stores were shoving aside the garden merch for the Christmas merch back in September, so I'm yearly becoming more curmudgeonly about The Halloween-Christmas convergence. Thanksgiving is the non-commercial holiday. A last look at the past year. Tomorrow, December first turns the page and for me that means a turn of season. Please don't be sucked in with the commercialization of a meaningful passage of time. It's all about your time, folks, and how you spend it.

A Break from Holiday Music - with more Holiday Music

If you can only hear the classics like Frosty the Snowman or Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree once or twice before becoming tired of them, here's a change of pace: today I'm listening to some interesting streaming Christmas albums from Sufjan Stevens here. I particularly like the original work ... but you have to look for them, they're mixed in with traditional music in the 5 albums. Check these out: We're Going to the Country, It's Christmas Be Glad!, Put the Lights on the Tree, Come On Let's Boogie to the Elf, That Was the Worst Christmas Ever, Hey Guys It's Christmas Time, Did I Make You Cry on Christmas Day? (Well You Deserved It), and Christmas in July, and Sister Winter.

If you look around you can find a link to more Sufjan info ... (Sufjan family photo courtesy of asthmatickitty.com)

Worried About the Toys?

Consumers Union has an updated page on product recalls: NOT IN MY CART

turkey'd out - with a heritage turkey

Yep, three nights of eating leftover turkey does the trick. I'm turkeyed out.
The holiday was good, most of our local family made it, and Patrick's absence will only serve to remind us all to press him more insistently to come home next year.
The mashed potatoes just weren't the same.
Ah well, he already has his plane ticket to come home for Christmas.

But I did want to tell you about our turkey this year. We inadvertently had a Barbara Kingsolver Thanksgiving, a la her fine book, Animal Vegetable, Miracle, which I read this summer, at the time never thinking I'd have the chance to buy a heritage turkey for our table.

But a few weeks ago I was at a centennial farm in the neighborhood, buying some straw bales to use in my garden, and the subject of turkeys came up. I saw some turkeys in a wire pen in a side yard, and some more 'pet' turkeys running around in the backyard, and asked the owner if turkeys were as dumb as people say (no)... and we got into a conversation.

The family had been tossing around some ideas, CSA farming for one, and my enthusiasm got me on their call list in case they decided to harvest their birds. So I got the call!

Bring a cooler and a check, and the fresh homegrown and local turkey was mine:)
(I'm sorry about that happy face emoticon, I do them in e-mail, and it somehow just fits, although I know they are a dumb substitute for what I should be doing here, words.)

These turkeys were raised by this farm family from eggs, and kept in a large moveable pen to give them the nutrition, cleanliness, and mental health of free birds. (I know, 'sing Free Bird', hehe.)

Weeds, as every herbie knows, are chock full of nutrition. Mixed weeds have the goodness of deep green, and their diversity brings each weed's uniquely healthful qualities to the turkey that consumes it, and by that path, to our plates.
Same for the little bugs that the turkeys consume in their pecking. The ground that the pen laid on the previous week is pecked clean and naturally fertilized. And the birds are protected with fencing from the devestation of fox, coyote, and running into the road.
The moveable pen idea is a good one - I think it's called a "tractor" in some circles, as in 'chicken tractors', you can google it.

The farmer, Ginny, was quite interested in cooking methods; she suspected that these birds might be too different from what we are used to eating, and the preparation might be an issue. As with most animals who get exercise, the muscles are darker and more flavorful. She'd done some research and gave me a printed out recipe I can, through the wonders of the internet, share with you now:
http://heritageturkeyfoundation.org/articles/Turkey%20Article%2005.htm

Now Ginny can rest assured, our turkey was delicious! But it was a little different from the butcher shop Amish fresh turkey that I usually buy.

The shape - it was long, pointy and svelte! I was expecting to feed 10 adults, and the turkey was only 12.3 pounds, so I bought a back up turkey breast (see above). But we never had to even slice into the backup bird. I sent sandwich material home with Skip and Tree.
I had to roast the birds in the oven, not the roaster I had planned on and the legs hung over the side of the pan. When I was making stock later, I noticed the leg bones and breast bone were noticeably longer than any turkey bones I'd ever seen!

RECIPE: Roasted Heritage Turkey

My roasting method was to put the unstuffed bird on a rack over a pan, breast side down, and start it in the oven at 475 degrees, turning it down to 260 degrees after a half an hour. Altogether the roasting time was 4 hours for our 12 lb. bird.
Before roasting, I crammed the cavity with handfuls of freshly cut parsley, sage and rosemary, and an onion, and "larded" the top with four large strips of good bacon, and never had to do another thing.
The pan-drippings made great gravy and the stock was excellent.

Anyway, I read a nice quotation a few days before Thanksgiving that I'd like to underline here:

"The company makes the meal."

The turkey was good and worth remembering, but the family, going out of their way to be together, is the best part of Thanksgiving.

My Lady Bug

 

Holiday Spirit, part 2

If you missed the Ladies Night Out evening at Crossroads Village on Monday, you oughta plan to do it next year!
The Master Gardeners had a spectacular table that I know they worked on for weeks, and there was a community project having to do with making afgans, but I'm really not crafty. I did, however sign a strip of the quilt the ladies of the Village will be piecing together to show next year. I wrote Merry Christmas & Peace on Earth and signed the names of all of my girls - hopefully next year we can all see it together.

I had a nice chat with a lady who raised alpacas - she spins their fiber and had felted some very nice bags and hats and things. There was plenty to look at and sample in the Village - food, decorations, music, and the weather was still not so darn cold that we couldn't spend time walking around and drinking it all in. I want to thank Milli (even though, yes I know, she doesn't use computers and won't be reading this) for a nice walk around the Village - I'm keeping her in my thoughts.

Back in the Warehouse, the ladies of the GCHS did our part, with a couple of complementary "make and take" projects for the visitors: lavender buds in a bit of tuille, tied with ribbon for drawer sachets, and bath tea bags: scented epsom salts in heat-sealable teabags. So many of the guests had questions about herbs and the Herb Society, it made a good outreach event for our group.

I did have enough sense to bring my camera at the last minute, and even with the low lighting in the Eldridge house, got a few photos to share with you. Our dear old Eldridge House looks pretty good, doesn't it, like something out of another, simpler time...

Getting in the spirit

I had a great day Saturday at Crossroads Village, working with the ladies of the Genesee County Herb Society. While one team worked in the Eldridge House, decorating that mid-1880's family home for the Christmas season with historically appropriate, natural and mostly herbal decorations; ourdoors we gardeners cleaned and put to bed the culinary herb garden, the fragrance and cutting garden, and the doctor's medicinal garden at the Doctor's office next door.
There's Norma, our president.
The kitchen smells like cinnamon and herbs when you walk in from the cold.


(Hi Milli, Sharon and Joanne!)
Here's the doctor's office, from the backyard:

And the doctor's garden (there's Diane):

I must say, Michigan can have some glorious, memorable autumn days.

(A note to the ladies of the Genesee County Herb Society: if you'd like to see more photos of our doings, double click on the orange Flickr badge on the right side of the screen... for the 'friends only' viewing permission to see more GCHS photos, write to me and I'll pop an invite in the e-mail.)

My latest caper(s)

Sounds like a spy novel, eh? No such luck, just more garden trivia.

Well, a heavy frost has hit the nasturtiums and they are history. I did enjoy their reliable perky brightness this year, although why I planted the common mix instead of one of the really pretty varieties is a question for later.
Here's a photo:

The l-o-n-g hot summer of 2007 encouraged the annuals around here to bloom prolifically and lots of flowers means lots of seeds, if'n you don't go and kill off all the local pollinators with chemicals...

I'd always read and heard in herbie circles that you can make a pretty good substitute caper with the "buds" of nasturtiums but it took me this long to try it. For one thing I didn't cook with capers, being the chief cook and bottle washer for a gang of three hungry boys and their dad. Capers were always a tad la-te-da and I was busy and HAVE YOU SEEN THE PRICE of a bottle of capers?

For another thing I never knew what was meant by 'buds', I always considered buds to be immature flowers. NO, folks, the part you make nasturtium capers with is the unripened seeds.



Care for the recipe? It's really easy and a great payback on the price of a packet of seeds. that, and I got to enjoy the flowers all summer, right up until October.

Nasturtium Capers

First dissolve 1 Tbls. kosher salt in 1/2 cup water. (Boiling in the microwave does it fast.) Allow to cool to room temperature. While the salt water is cooling, gather about a half a cup of unripe nasturtium seeds (anything from indian bead size to fully expanded but still green), and wash if needed and remove any stems.
Add the seeds to the salt water and allow to soak for 24 hours.
The next day, drain the seeds, place them in the jar you want to save them in, and cover with 1/4 cup boiling vinegar. Cap and refrigerate.

This recipe makes a small jar. These measurements are all approximate, I don't know how it could be easier. The vinegar can be flavored with herbs if you like, or try different kinds of vinegar.
The color isn't as green as capers, but maybe adding some ascorbic acid to the salt water might remedy that. I notice the caper jar's list of ingredients includes ascorbic acid.
They are a bit crispier than real capers which may disappear in time, and there is a slightly different peppery nasturtium-ish flavor, but they are a pretty close approximation to capers. On the other hand, you made them. You know how they were grown and how they were processed, and they are from your backyard. Cool.

Here's what they look like, my nice crispy nasturtium capers (on the right) and the store bought real capers for comparison:

Farm Bill

The Farm Bill is up for debate in the Senate this week. Please take a look at my cranky blog to see what's at stake and what you can do. The model is there for an easy phone call you can make.

This is a bipartisan issue: the solution is conservative in the best sense, and progressive in the best sense. For family farms, for wise use of resources, for nutrition programs, for our shared values, call.

Autumn

abscission
ab·scis·sion [ ab sí sh'n ]
noun
Definition:
1. cutting off: the act of suddenly cutting something off
2. detachment of parts from plants: the natural process by which leaves or other parts are shed from a plant
[Early 17th century. < Latin abscission-< abscindere "cut off" < scindere "cut up, divide"]

My tree of life has lost a branch, damn canker.
All we can do is hope for the spring.
Root, sap, the reemergence of green leaves, flowers and fruit.
Meantime, I will miss you, Kevin.

"A tree is known by its fruit; a man by his deeds.
A good deed is never lost;
he who sows courtesy
reaps friendship,
and he who plants kindness
gathers love."
Basil (329-379 A.D.)

dusting off some old files

Busy busy busy. Helped the veggie plotters clean up the beautiful veggie garden yesterday and spread 12 yards of compost over the beds, and then a friendly little ladybug...


and a tiny sweet pea...


... showed up at the door last night for tricks and treats, so I was pretty well tuckered out by ten o'clock.
(Nice, wasn't it, how the little ones ended up with a gardeny theme in their costumes:)

But the paperwork for the herb garden project is due, so today I had to spend time indoors getting organized. My least favorite part of anything, paperwork, record keeping, whateverrrr.
Anyhow, while I was looking in my old files, I ran across a powerpoint presentation that I'd made after the garden tour back in June.
I'd like to share it, but I can't figure out how to send these powerpoint things in e-mail. I did figure out how to turn one into a slide show without too much difficulty. So here it is, without the nice transitions and it isn't much different in visuals from the earlier Herb Garden Tour movie, but the story focus is slightly different, and I found another catchy folk tune to accompany... and the Henry Beston quotation says so much in favor of herbs, it's one of my favorites.

Roasted Roots

Earlier this fall I took the grandbabies out to my friend Ulrike's place for pumpkins and a hug, and she gave me some of her husband's turnips that he raises to feed the deer that show up in their back forty. (They are both wonderful craftspeople, she with her pressed flower creations and he makes the most beautiful collector quality bows for hunters.)
Wow! You should see her herb garden! A huge garden with sturdy picket fences surrounding it, the herbs she loves mixed with the flowers she presses, and all in raised beds to keep it German neat and tidy.
But I'm always wandering off... back to the turnips. What to do with turnips? I'm used to roasting potatoes but I got a couple of new vegetable-based cookbooks this summer and Pat has been supplying recipes with the CSA veggies... so somewhere along the line I got the idea to roast a mixture of other root veggies along with the potatoes, a roasted root veggie melange so to speak. The mixture of sweet and pungent roots, roasted together, is delicious!
Here's the general recipe:

ROASTED ROOTS
Wash and dry veggies (and trim if needed): I used turnips, Jerusalem artichokes, potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots. Parsnips would be nice too. Dice the veggie roots into cubes.
Place veggies in oiled pan (half sunflower and half olive is nice), sprinkle with good salt and fresh ground black pepper, and your choice of herbs (rosemary, thyme, oregano, savory) and toss to coat lightly.
Roast at 400 degrees, tossing every 15 minutes or so, until golden browned. (At least an hour, depending on the size of your dices.) Do twice what you need and the next day you can quickly reheat the leftovers in a non-stick pan. The leftovers could easily go into a soup or stew as well.
Easy and good for you!

UPDATE:
I went back and read this recipe again for some reason, and Yikes! I forgot the garlic! Add about 5 fresh crushed and chopped cloves of garlic to the veggies and toss them in the oiled pan. How could I have forgotten one of my very favorite veggies? Sorry.

The Grand Blanc Farmer's Market

Closed for the season yesterday, hope to see you all back again next year!

Farmer's markets are pretty, aren't they? And small markets like this one are great because the people are so darn friendly. I took these pictures back in August, but every Sunday was just as lovely.
I bought farm-raised chickens from Hampshire Farms this summer - they taste more chicken-y than the insipid boneless skinless blobs of flesh from the grocery store. I know they were raised humanely and fed well with organic feed grown right there on the farm. Nice to think about. And the leftovers made outstanding stock.

This little block long street in Grand Blanc goes directly from the City Hall to the Physician's Park. It's a nice place for outdoor events. The city planners want to put up stores there to generate revenue, but this useage as an event venue is great in the meantime. We need walkable places where the cars aren't zooming past!

The free acoustic music and the presence of the Heritage Museum folks were homey touches (and I bought a nice handmade rug) and on the last day the vendors on the end with the grill looked like they were having a good time. I should have taken a picture of my friends staffing the Master Gardener information and outreach table, another friendly touch. We spent some nice times kibitzing. Next year I'll have to bring my camera and get some more pics.

I especially appreciated the Sunday market in Grand Blanc because the vendors were all selling their own products and their own local produce. They didn't drive to Detroit's Eastern Market to pick it up early in the morning and resell it to me in the afternoon.

My friend Pat was selling her certified organically grown veggies, so lucky for us, we were able to pick up our CSA half share at the local market here in Grand Blanc every week instead of the farther drive to the Flint Market or the even farther drive to her farm.

I didn't have to spend time in the produce department at the grocery store at all this summer. Between what we grew in our small yard (tomatoes, peppers, lettuce and herbs, sour cherries, rhubarb and strawberries) and the 1/2 share of the CSA we had nearly everything I wanted.

We pick our own blueberries and raspberries at our favorite local berry farms, and get our apples and cider at Porter's Orchard in Goodrich. But on visiting the market on Sunday I had the chance to pick up the necessary odds and ends that Pat didn't grow - pumpkins, plums, sweet cherries, real apple cider vinegar (the organic kind with mother) from Al-Mar Orchard, and local organic eggplant and onions from Lawrence Farms.

Next week is the last official week of our 20 week CSA agreement, but Pat has bonus food still to harvest because the weather has been so darn good, and we'll get to go to the Flint Farmer's Market to pick it up there.
I think I posted this before, but here's Pat again... a happy memory for the winter.

sell one loaf and buy hyacinths

How did that ancient Persian saying go ... to paraphrase, if you are fortunate enough to have two loaves of bread, sell one and buy hyacinths to feed your soul. Something to think about.
Persia, isn't that Iran?
I was just thinking yesterday while I was yanking out the tall purple verbena (bonariensis) about what I had written about my various plant collecting manias.
I had simply forgotten the grasses. I've grown over thirty ornamental grasses, most before they became popular. By the time Art Cameron was giving his grass talks I was winding down.
Not that I could ever afford to do it (collecting) right, but I used to hit every plant sale, plant exchange, wild plant rescue, plant clearance, and seed exchange I ran across.
I was the quintessential coupon clutching mom who finagled the food budget to cover the annuals and the bulbs.
Adding a bag or two of scilla or crocus to the shopping cart every week while doing the food shopping adds up when you figure the spring bulbs start showing up in the bins in late August. This week I finally broke down (they were half off) (I'd just been exposed last week to another mad bulb planter's powerpoint at our Master Gardener meeting) (it's tradition, TRADITION! - she said in her Fiddler on the Roof voice) and added two bags of pink hyacinths to my grocery cart. Life goes on.

Oh, back to the grasses ... a little pointer to folks who are just beginning and may recognise yourself in what I've described: if your budget is tight and you need to buy small good plants just to get the start of a collection, try Bluestone Perennials Nursery mail order catalogue.
And promise me you'll recycle the packing peanuts.

Sunflower Soup Casserole

Remember the sunflower soup I wrote about? Well, I was out in the herb garden trying to get a handle on the maintenance while the weather is still good, and upon yanking the Jerusalem artichokes that grew under the fence I was surprised by how big they are this year. So 2007 was a banner year for Jerusalem artichokes, who knew?


I got a bucket full in no time at all and brought them indoors, trimmed and washed them, and popped the smaller ones unpeeled into the pot of chicken stock I had simmering on the stove.
(Do you make chicken broth? Store broth is Nothing like homemade. Mine is herbed and so rich it gels when cooled. And now we are getting our chickens from the farmer's market and I am not going back to factory farmed chicken, there is that much difference in chickens too.)

Kayla ate a few with her pasta that night. Without tasting them Herb thought they were new potatoes and that she'd choke, but they were soft and easy for her to swallow whole (that child does not chew!) but the texture when boiled is really too soft for adult enjoyment. We are not fans of soft boiled vegetables.
So what to do?
Then I remembered the Sunflower Soup recipe and tried it.
It turned out pretty good with the distinctive flavor of Jerusalem artichoke, but it was smooth and bland and frankly, beige, like eating chicken gravy.
Well I say, when you have gravy, make noodles!

My recipe
I added leftover cooked 'whole wheat' linguine to the Sunflower Soup, added some leftover chicken and some frozen peas, and it was delicious.
When I began to think about it, it is healthy as well. There is no fat (as in the fat in gravy) because I cooked the onion in the broth, and the thickening was all done by the blenderizing of the J. artichokes.



J. artichokes, by the way, have some amazing health benefits having to do with their chemical makeup not reacting with the insulin our bodies produce. I remember reading about native Americans, who as a group have a high risk for diabetes, when put on a diet of indigenous foods, suddenly experiencing weight loss and blood sugar corrections. (You can Google it.) The Jerusalem artichoke is a North American native plant.

If you are interested and want to try to grow a few Jerusalem artichokes, find a friend who has a patch - they seem to be one of those enthusiastic plants that produce enough progeny to be readily shared... or do what I did when I didn't know anyone who grew them. Go to the veggie department of your grocery store and pick up a package when they show up, and plant them in a sunny spot with room to grow (up - they are about 8 feet tall). You will have enough to share in no time at all.

And if you don't like the J. artichokes, healthy food or not, their native sunflower blossoms will be good for your soul.

And speaking of good for your soul, here is another shot of one of Pat's Brandywine tomatoes, probably the last fresh tomato of the year for us... ain't she a beauty?

facing the autumn with grace

The ginkgos are yellow, the serviceberries are orange, the maples are a little dry and crispy leaves are flying everywhere. The unusually nice weather has given me time to do a good job of gathering and 'putting by' my garden's harvest. Not that there isn't a lot more to be done, in putting the yard to bed. You'd think I had forty acres (and a mule) by the way I talk, but it is only a small suburban lot.

I'd love to have some 'real land' (she said in her lumberjack voice) to work with, but I have borrowed views to enjoy, and I know my familiar soil, and it is all already so ever much to do, and the older I get the more I understand that someday it will all have to come to an end. Toward this, ahem, end, I'm severely limiting my plant collecting impulse and consciously not replacing things that I lose. The lost years of the fragrant dianthus collection, the colorful irises, the tropicals and the spring bulbs, the daylilies, the old garden roses, the varieties of daisies and veronicas and achilleas and campanulas and agastaches (I used to get the little catalogue from J.L.Hudson, Seedman, if that tells you anything) and especially the seed starting mania will have to be beautiful memories to entertain my mind when I can't garden any more.
And the herbs. Don't let me forget the herbs.

And the critters. There is such joy in the strangeness of other species of animals. I've seen animals in books and on film, and in 3-d reality in zoos, but there is something above wonderful about seeing mother nature's other children out in the open, living and surviving on their own. (Yes, Marion, Nature does too exist.)

On that note, I was out in the garden yesterday picking more peppers (almost finished for the year) for cooking and freezing and dehydrating when a literal crashing through the brush behind the shed brought me up from my task and there manifested three young deer, standing right there in a clearing among the scrubby shrubs with their bright eyes and huge ears and lovely velvety noses at attention.
I understand it's bow hunting season, and they move in response to the hunters' disturbing of their domain but I've never actually seen a deer in my yard before.
I have seen tracks and found some damage (blueberry), but the rabbits are the real culprits around here with their shrub girdling winter hunger. What a treat though, to see these three deer up close and personal.
They stood as mesmerized as I was for a few moments and took off leaping right back into the field. In one fortunate moment of grace I had collected a memory for the winter, undeserved, appreciated.

how could anyone object

... to the yearning for peace?
The Quakers sent me this link. The most charming and hopeful thing I have seen in a long time.
(And Bush needed to tap the AFSC phones without a warrant?)

The Little People's Green Acres

I'm posting this one for Kayla, and Pa, too.

We couldn't have asked for a better day

Our October landscape clean-up day at the grounds of the county Extension was lovely - that kind of crisp Autumn day in Michigan with sunny primary colors of blue and green, with beginnings of red and yellow that we all can imagine from calendar photos ...
But the companionship of nice people working together gave me a real boost ... better than a flu shot for the upcoming winter!

Carol and her daughter Mindy brought a cauldron of homemade chicken soup to warm on the grill and Vickie's Junior Master Gardeners added their cleaned and chopped freshly dug vegetables from their garden to the pot, and by noon or so we had a Harvest Soup feast. Delicious!

I brought home the cooking tip of adding Jerusalem artichokes to soups and stews, and to reciprocate, here is my recipe for the boursin-style herbed cheese spread that we ate on rosemary foccacia bread:

Herbed Boursin Cheese Spread

2 packages Philadelphia cream cheese
1 pound unsalted butter
1 clove garlic, crushed and minced
and a variety of fresh herbs, stems removed and leaves chopped:
baby chives, oregano, thyme, basil, 1 large sage leaf, 1 stem of rosemary
freshly ground black pepper

Beat the butter and cheese together until creamy, and stir in the herbs. Refrigerate overnight to meld flavors, and allow to come to room temperature before serving.

(By the way, for those of you with "inquiring minds", this is NOT a recipe I have ever served at home... it is what I call a "refreshment table" recipe, due to the cholesterol content. I figure adults can make choices even in buffet lines. You can make this cheese spread with low fat ingredients, but it just won't be the same.)

Finally, a note of public thanks to all the great volunteers who worked in the Backyard Herb Garden - you are all wonderful to contribute your time to this project and please know it is much appreciated. Thank you!