[Becca] Yellow!

Hello again! It's been a year since I last contributed anything, so I decided it was time to share. It's not that I haven't been making anything beautiful/delicious, it's more that I never remember to take pictures. So, when Elise came over so we could make cookies (about which she will most likely be posting soon), I used the opportunity to take pictures of my preserved lemons.

I hadn't realized that there was such a thing as preserved lemons until recently, though I guess if I'd ever put much thought into it I would have assumed they existed in some fashion, but I'd just never thought to think about it before. That is until my friend started raving about the preserved lemons she made, and how delicious they were, and how easy they were to make. So I asked her for the recipe and she sent me this blog post.

I stuck close to the recipe, using larger lemons, because that's what I found, and skipping the embellishments, mostly because I took too long making up my mind as to which ones I wanted, and then forgot all together at what would have been the appropriate time to have made a decision. The jar I used didn't have an opening quite wide enough, so I struggled a bit getting the lemons in, but figured I was going to squash them anyway, so it wasn't a problem that they got squashed on their way in. Then when I went to squish them down the second day I decided there was enough space to add another lemon, and really, if they are going to sit for a month, will one day fewer make that much of a difference?

So now I am waiting. And dreaming of couscous and lemon ice cream.

Usually the lemons sit above the sink, adding cheery color to the kitchen. But for the purpose of my lemon photo shoot, I decided to move them to the mantel in the living room. Next to the yellow flowers picked at my uncle's farm and put into the yellow vase that my dad made.

[Inez] Things maybe only Elise cares about

You know we love you, gentle readers, but this was originally a blog for Elise and I to share with each other, so I'm going to use this post to show Elise some of the home/garden improvements we've done since she moved back to Minnesota. Elise, I think you'd be proud of us. I'm going to start in the front and work my way back.

Yesterday I went to Ginkgo Gardens with Colin so he could get some mulch and pepper plants, and I ended up getting stuff to line the front sidewalk.

I got Cheddar Pinks (the pink flowery things), Stonecrop (the low spready thing, which will apparently have flowers later in the summer, too), and these orange and red things that I absolutely love and whose name I don't know. These:

We also planted along the front walk with bulbs (which sort of did okay), and with wildflowers. Right now it just looks kind of weedy, but there are these little white things that have started blooming within the past couple days:

The flowers are probably .5-1 cm across, and low to the ground (6 in high or so). These are from the low wildflower mix you left.

Along the back of the front yard (against the front porch), we planted two little rose bushes from Home Depot, and the yellow sunflowers you left. I also planted two canna lily bulbs I got from Fragers, and in front of all that we planted some of your tall wildflower mix.

This is the left side of the porch. We've got a potted rosemary, a bitty rose bush, some thriving sunflowers, and if you look closely on the lower right you'll see my bitty canna lily (hiding between the sunflowers), doing quite well in spite of its large neighbors. I thinned the sunflowers out around the lilies so that they will still get light.

The rose bush on the right (by the stairs) is doing really well, and already has buds! (We were worried they wouldn't bloom at all this year.)

Look, I worked something beautiful and yellow into this post!

For inside we got a new hanging plant for the other living room doorway, and a little begonia which lives next to the TV, where it has a chance of getting some light. It goes really nicely with the curtains (that sounds dumb, but it really does).

Last Saturday was the big Brookland yard sale day, and I got this pretty photograph.

I hung it on the little bit of wall above my vintage blue chair (looking from the living room to the dining room).

In the back, the boys planted 8 (!) tomato plants, and four little strawberry plants in a big pot. Also some lettuce. The tomato plants are doing really well and getting quite big! I guess we should get some cages...

The lettuce looks like an alien life form right now, to me.

And the strawberries are doing so well that I think we might need to build them a trough so they have room to spread out.

[Elise] Wild Rice Curry

This is a yellow curry with wild rice and onions, topped with pan fried sweet potatoes. Yum.

 I love sweet potatoes. If I could put them in every single entrée I make without everyone I cook for being absolutely sick of them, I would. For a change of pace I got some yellow fleshed sweet potatoes. They're a little starchier but still sweet, providing a nice crunch to contrast the soup.

The recipe I got a few years ago from La Fuji Mama  and when it's done it is the most vivid yellow. It was this yellow that stuck in my mind while I took off for the grocery store without a list and not having looking at the recipe since the night before.

I went to the store knowing I had all but three things; a can of coconut milk, yellow curry (right? I mean, the soup is so yellow, how could it not be yellow curry), and... something else. What was that something else?
I went to a few different grocery stores which all had the same selection of "Thai Ktichen" curry pastes: one red, one green, a chili paste, and a satay peanut sauce. Finally I went to a Vietnamese market, where I finally found yellow curry, and big cheap tub of it instead of a little expensive jar. I need to remember to go here more often. I'm also going to need to make a lot more yellow curries.

Finally I got home and started cooking only to realize that the recipe actually calls for red curry. Go figure.

I did find that the yellow curry tasted wonderful in the recipe. It had a very warm spice that was more than I had expected without being overpowering.

Also, I got a round about compliment from my dad, when asked if the two week old bread tasted any good, or if it just tasted like stale bread with good soup on it. 

May is Yellow!

Inez and I are trying a new theme. COLORS! Each month we will pick a new color, and this month the color is yellow!

[Elise] Budapest, April, 2009