It's Very Domestic Around Here...

Many of you will recall my jubilant posts from around this time last year when Tom and I found the Mint House. We were giddy with anticipation of a yard for homer, a guest room and lack of loud neighbors sharing walls or ceilings with us. We have also found that our little urban spread has provided us plenty of space to indulge the dormant "Little House on the Prairie" aspects of our personalities. For instance, we have been...

Gardening. I know this isn't news to most of you, but the garden plays a central role in our lives now. We must water it daily due to the lack of rain fall and scorching triple digit heat that has beset the region. There is also the weeding, the trellising and staking. But all that work is so worth it. We picked 3 eggplants last week, several handfuls of green beans and our first watermelon! Nothing is better than celebrating Independence Day with a watermelon from your own garden.

Composting. Tom and I fill our one-gallon counter top compost bin, and that gets dumped into our large composter outside on a weekly basis. Not only do we prevent a good deal of our food scraps from going into the landfill, but the amazing soil we produce goes straight back into the garden to feed our plants.

Canning and Preserving. The lack of rain, and amount of time and energy we spend on the garden has inspired us to try and make sure none of goods coming out of the garden go to waste.  While Tom is charged with making pesto and preserving our herbs, I have been canning nearly every weekend. The summer preserving started with a batch of spiced beets (which are so amazing on a salad with goat cheese that we are planning a special winter crop of beets so I can put up more jars.) I have also been trying my hand at pickling, with some escabeche-style spicy carrots and a batch of garlic dill cucumber pickles. Last weekend, with several pounds of ripe figs on the trees in our front yard, I took some time to cook up some fig, port and rosemary jam. The rosemary was also from the garden, of course. It tasted amazing, and is going to make a yummy addition to a future cheese tray. I think I will be doing some balsamic pickled figs in the weeks to come, and am contemplating pickled watermelon rind.

Cheese Making. Okay, we haven't actually done this yet, but last week I purchased the book Home Cheese Making, along with a starter cheese making kit. I am going to start with a basic mozzarella soon, but am hoping to experiment with other cheeses as I gain my confidence. You all wouldn't believe how easy cheese making actually is... at least that is what I am telling myself.

What I Learned v3

1. To pickle beets.  Things have gotten pretty domestic in my life since moving to Austin, and as a byproduct of that, I have become quite proficient at preserving foods. Pickles, fruit butters or marmalades, I just love "putting stuff up." So naturally, when Tom and I pulled up our small crop of beets last week, I decided to make spiced pickled beets. We ended up with four jars filled with the bright red roots, preserved in a mix of vinegar, sugar, allspice, clove and cinnamon. I cant wait to crack a jar open, but for best flavor, I think we will wait until we get back from our vacation.

2. The Blanton is awesome! Despite my reservations of it being crazy on campus for graduation weekend, Tom convinced me to go with him to the Blanton Museum of Art last Saturday.  It was a great way to spend a hot afternoon, and as a bonus, Staff and Students get into the museum for free every day (I could write a whole blog post about why I LOVE my UT ID card.)  The museum is much bigger than I realized, so we didn't get a chance to see everything before our legs got tired, and our brains were overloaded with all the cool stuff to look at. Needless to say, I am really looking forward to our next visit, so we can see what we missed.

3. I heart SYTYCD even more than I remembered.  My favorite reality show is back, ladies and gents! I think it surprises people that "So You Think You Can Dance" is such a favorite of mine. Do I like it more than Top Chef? Yes. More than Project Runway? Yes, again. SYTYCD is the only place I can think of where you can regularly see transcendent art created and performed on the TV. And I like the absence of silly challenges that other reality shows employ, which seem more and more like they are created solely to mess up the contestants. Don't get me wrong, I do love those other shows too, but Top Chef is not about making the contestants better chefs. SYTYCD gives dancers and choreographers space to discover, to grow and to create beautiful things. Yes, sometimes a contestant has to go outside of their comfort zone (sometimes way outside...Russian Folk Dancing, anyone?) to perform in a style they are unfamiliar and uncomfortable with. But more often than not, in those situations we often get a moment that is more than the sum of it's parts. Do any of you watch SYTYCD? What are your favorite reality shows?

4. Homemade arugula pesto is AMAZING! Tom and I have a beautiful and very prolific arugula plant in the old garden.  For the past few months, we have been picking leaves here and there to add to salads, pizzas and sandwiches, but this week Tom got the inspired idea to sub out the basil for arugula in his pesto recipe. The result was really stunning.  The mix of olive oil and pine nuts really mellowed out the sharp bite of the arugula. We made panini the other night with turkey, smoked muenster, garden tomatoes and the arugula pesto. Oh my word. So yummy!! Are the pesto possibilities endless? I mean, what isnt improved by the addition of olive oil and pine nuts?

We Grew This

Day: 584
High Temp: 82F

Check it out. Isn't it beautiful? I poached this one, and a few like it in some salted butter to eat as a side dish one night for dinner last week. It was divine.

So I realize that this blog may be turning into a gardening blog. It's kind of funny, because I am not sure I would ever call myself a gardener. But truth be told, it is the one thing in Austin right now that is most worth writing about/photographing. The green beans have sprouted, and its freaking beautiful. The arugula looks like it might flower- I didn't know arugula flowered. The garden is this ever changing, constant source of new, fascinating information. With my inevitable return to the city one day, I realize this garden could be the defining element of my time in Austin. I promise it won't ALL be gardening from here on out, but you've been warned.

You know what this is?

Day: 580
High Temp: 83F

It's a celebration, bitches!

Okay, so most of you did not expect to click on this post to find me quoting Kanye. But the truth is, this is sort of a celebration. More commonly, one might refer to it as a baby peach. Or perhaps a peachito (okay, melocotonito), or a peachling.

Tom and I have this really sad, scraggly looking tree in the back. When we first saw the Mint House, our landlady told us it was a peach tree, but said she wasn't sure if it had given fruit in the past few years. No surprise, looking at the poor thing. It's only a foot taller than I am, has cracks in the main trunk, and is leaning precariously at a 45 degree angle.

So we weren't sure what we had back there, but we did want to coax it back to life, if possible. It was green and leafy at the end of last summer, and so we watered it when it was active, hoping that would do it some good. Then once we saw buds starting to appear this spring, Tom began feeding it with this great organic seaweed juice. A few weeks later, we had a riot of blossoms, and soon after that, these little almond shaped fuzzy guys were everywhere. Celebration!!

And, do you know what this is....

It's a surprisingly big bowl of culled baby peaches. Apparently culling the tree when the peaches are about this size is good to ensure you have a nice crop of large and sweet fruit, as opposed to a plethora of tiny, hard and bland fruit. So, I did the deed this afternoon. It's hard to say bye to those little guys, but I swear, for each one I pulled off, there were 2-3 other on the tree. And fear not, these little guys will play an important role as compost for the fall garden!

If things continue on this positive path you might just find a jar of homemade Texas peach butter in your stocking next Christmas! Fingers crossed.