Oh, just a whole bunch of random shit. And photos.

Ugh. I just hate going so long without talking to you guys.

I get all, "Oh, I'm sure I'll come up with something meaningful by the weekend and then I'll write it up full of scrumptious swears and it will be like nothing happened."

Like I never all the way mixed up my life and routine and then went on acting like I was going to be able to keep all non-work related aspects of my life unchanged.

Well, we all know I'm a delusional ass, so let's not act so surprised.

But yes, I have been delinquent in my posting.

Happens, I guess.

So, the good news is that I am making this shit happen right now, but the bad news is that I have no direction, so that is when we go to the photos on instant upload to see what the fuck I've been up to that I want to tell you guys all about.

Usually this involves food or food, so let's just start with food and see where that takes us:

We resurrected one of Bubba's smoked tri-tips from Chesty and almost blew our brains out with deliciousness last night.

I pulled the first spring onions yesterday when I was pruning back the dill and discovering lots of oddly shaped radishes. Asses.

I brought some of my basil over to a friend's house the other night and she proceeded to make me a drink fit for a fancy person. Which I am most certainly not.

I had a hair appointment on Valentine's Day, so obviously I brought my hairdresser a Valentine of vegetables. Because I'm, like, 80 kinds of weird. Just not the harmful type of weird. That's an important distinction.

I made those annoyingly awesome chocolate ganache cupcakes for Bubba and it got sort of colorful in my kitchen for a hot second.

Mostly because of my new crazy ass silicone cupcake cups.

I ate so much of this frosting while I was making the cupcakes. Seriously. I didn't end up making dinner because I was so full from frosting. Way to go, me.

I redeemed myself with this badass salad. It's not particularly photogenic, so I'm not sure why I took a picture of it. Or why I'm showing you. 

Made a little Best Sauce Ever. Yep. with my cuddle-worthy wooden spatula. 

Ooh! I forgot about this, but I totally made the pumpkin mascarpone soup again and WHOA is it still just as good as I remembered. 

So, food is done. Mostly. I mean, depending on whether you count the garden as food.

Which we do. In the future beans will be here. For now, only my neighbor's gorgeous tree and a tipi.

Future beans having a day outside. They were into it.

This is my first full season with my pink lemon and it is looking pretty promising. Also, there's a big ole lemon on there, so it's going to really go into a cocktail here at some point. That's how I'll know it's a success anyway.

To sow spring seed, one must wear one's coveralls even if it's just mostly for the pockets and so that I don't tear up the running clothes I'm wearing underneath because I'm too impatient to change clothes between running and gardening. 

I liked having monster beans hatching on my grow rack so much, that I may always start my beans indoors first. It's just too hilarious. RAWWWWWWWWWWWWR! Sorry. That could not be helped.

Hi, Tallest Monster Beans. I'm sorry that I didn't lower the light right on top of you like I know I should have. That's why you're freakishly tall now and no one will want to be your friend at school. 

Sort of hard to tell from this crap phone photo and the mounds of dry leaves, but the front yard meadow is sort of looking decent right now. And it's about to look way better. And then it'll look sort of blah for a while, then haggard, then ugly and then HEY! It looks kinda good again! And we'll have gone full circle. 

I didn't even know how to hold it is how odd this radish was.

This has been a rather radishy winter. Kinda nice, actually.

I mean, how fun does that look?

Too bad I'm just eating this and thinking about how hot our summer's going to be if the garden is this warm all winter.

Especially since I'll be working in the greenhouse that today -  IN FEBRUARY MIND YOU - was 111 degrees.

IN FEBRUARY.

MIND YOU.

TODAY. 

IN THE PLACE I'LL BE WORKING COME JULY AND HELL HEAT.

Ugh. I shall perish.

First though - ship a shitload of hydroponic basil.

First actual shipment. Very goofbally selfie. Favorite hat. 

GO BE WITH PEOPLE'S MOUTHS AND KITCHENS.

ALL OF YOU.

OK - I'm done.

That was a lot of random photo barfing. Good job hanging in there. Sorry that my posts have gotten all spastic, but I'm allowing myself room to veer ever so slightly off my long trod path of strict discipline because if I don't, I'm 100% sure that my I will melt the fuck down in the brains.

But for sure YAY SPRING!

Not all about the fish this time.

So, you know what I've been doing aside from working all the live long day and then making room in the liquor cabinet for new gin?

ONLY COOKING MY FACE OFF IS WHAT.

Yeah. I've cooked some stuff recently that was rul good. 

And I baked a thing that was rul good. 

And I have a crush on a new vegetable. 

Because that's a thing a person can have - a crush on a vegetable. It's called love, people, and I encourage you to try it.

In my case, I have Bubba and Jada and life and this muther fucking parsley:

It's as big as my fork, milder than your typical parsley and, after a light frost, is just a little bit sweet so that you go, "WHATTHA YUM?" when you first try it.

Everyone, I'd like you to meet the fourth member of our love square - Giant of Italy parsley. 

And before you get all, "You can't love parsley like you love Bubba..." and other nonsensical shit, do remember that I tend to get a little overexcited about vegetables. 

I mean, right?

You know I sort of have a thing for growing vegetables. 

And I have tasted a lot of types of parsley and grown a lot of types of parsley, so it's not like I just tried it for the first time and declared it the soul-fillingest parsley of all time. 

It's totally not like that. 

Because, until I just had this parsley the other night with butternut squash ravioli I awesomely froze for myself a few months ago, I just grew parsley because it was an herb I chopped up and put in the base of every soup and meatloaf and meatballs and a billion other things I make because parsley is a standard.

If by "Standard", I mean "BITCHIN", which I do.

Or am I the only one that puts parsley in everything? Is this maybe a personal problem I have? Is it possible that I don't really want to lay down my life for this variety of parsley now that I've enjoyed its riches in my mouth which sounds really really bad?

No, none of that can be right.

Mostly because it sounds absolutely lewd.

And, while I do love this parsley, I don't want to, like, marry it or something.

I just want to eat it with every meal. 

Or whatever. I'm sort of a slut for food lately because I keep getting really good stuff from work and then from my garden and then my lovely Bubba who announced that he'd like a chocolate cake which prompted me to (accidentally) find the world's most incredible chocolate cake recipe.

So yeah, fuck vegetables for one second - chocolate cake.

That's the real story here.

Just you try to look away. IT'S AN UNDOABLE THING.

Firstly, I'll warn you that the recipe is from Cook's Illustrated, so while 100% awesome and worth it, you need to be prepared to dirty every tool in your kitchen twice and have to do dishes in between projects.

Because this recipe is a total project.

Like, I had a strategy going into it (make the frosting first, put it in the fridge to firm up, THEN bake the cake, etc)(hey, that's a strategy!)(Shut up.) and there was proprietary shopping involved and then there was lying down with a cocktail involved after I finished baking and frosting this cake. 

Sort of took it out of me, all of that mid-stream dish doing. 

But I can say that it's the best chocolate cake I've ever tasted, Bubba nearly flushed his wedding ring down the toilet when he took his first bite and declared he loved it more than anything in the world and even my not-sweets-eating boss was "stoked" on it. 

The only things I did off-recipe were to bake it in a 9x12 glass dish as a sheet cake rather than as cupcakes, not try to fill the thing awkwardly with ganache and then I put a bit of this awesome vanilla bean baker's salt on top. 

Then Bubba pledged his love to me (as long as the cake is joining us) for the rest of his life. Again. Because he did already do that once when we got married. Before I learned how to make this cake. So, like, I know he didn't just do it for the cake.

Can you imagine?

Anyway, I am also going to shill like the shilliest shiller from shilltown right now:

HOLY SHILL

Yeah. I grew that. 

And, FOR TESTING PURPOSES ONLY, I brought it home from the farm to make sure that it was, um, shelf stable - yeah, that's it - and also edible. 

"Edible" is the lamest word for this basil.

Then I felt crazy and like a seasonal cheater when I actually went into a grocery store (FRIGHT) and bought sweet red bell peppers. 

In winter. 

Like a total traitor. 

I mean, they're still organic and they're actually from our ranches in Mexico, but eating bell peppers in winter feels wrong and naughty.

So, spank me. Because my enchilada peppers are THE FUCKING MOST.

At least I put some of the cilantro from work on top. Ripped it out of the ground myself earlier in the day. 

And also some of these chives.

Gee. Hope there's enough for the harvests.

So yeah, cooking, working, eating, skiing Utah, riding and running the Santa Cruz mountains, emptying and refilling the liquor cabinet, repeating - that's what's been going on over here. 

Lest you think all we do is fuck with the fish.

Come at me, bro.

Everything I said last time except the opposite.

It's kinda sweet how I naively think I've figured out a few things in life. 

I mean, I have learned to wear proper shoes when shoveling so that I don't bruise my arches, how to light the furnace so that I don't blow my face off and how to hive a colony of bees so that they don't swarm the neighborhood.

These things I know how to do. 

And I KNOW that I know how to do them because I've done them wrong a bunch of times (or one tragic time) and then right a bunch of times (or a few triumphant times), so I feel confident when I say that YES, I know how to, like, do that kind of shit.

But the funny thing that I haven't yet learned how to do is how to NOT say I know how to do something until I've first done it successfully once and then repeated the thing successfully again.

That's what I should do.

But instead, I just go declaring victory when victory hasn't yet even been proven a single time.

I'd make a terrible scientist. All declaring YAY! I've found the cure for cancer! after just making Kool-Aid in a flask or something.

Anyway, today's lessons in Finny Doesn't Know Shit About Shit are as follows:

Dr. Fischoeder's Cleaning Lady, Consuela, doesn't clean a damn thing.

In fact, she makes more of a mess than Dr. Fischoeder and it's pissing me off.

Is that Consuela I see growing on the treasure chest? Why yes it is.

It would seem that Consuela is colonizing the fish bowl. Edging Dr. Fischoeder out perhaps or perhaps just making herself at home and commandeering items that she deems to be her own.

I take.

So all of that nonsense about the moss ball being "like a cleaning lady for the fish bowl" was complete crap. 

Not that I really announced to the world that it was The Truth And Nothing Else, but I did repeat what I'd been told by the dude at the aquarium store and that was a mistake. 

Don't always trust the stoned freak working at the aquarium store. Noted.

And then there are the paperwhites.

Damnitall if I didn't think I'd finally won the battle of These Things Fall All Over The Fucking Place just a little too close to the paperwhites so that they heard me and then rebelled.

WE WIN. AGAIN. STILL.

Yeah. If these flowers weren't so fucking beautiful and didn't smell like heaven and weren't being so hilarious, I probably would have ripped them out of their vases just for mocking me and making me a liar, but they are and they do and so I haven't.

Can't fall over in a vase this tall you say? IS THAT A FACT?

And while this has nothing to do with me being wrong, but more the seasons being off or our tree being absurd, our tree thinks it's fall.

January, November - what's the diff?

I mean, who couldn't use a little fall in their winter?

Even Jada's confused by this tree.

Yeah. Nice try out there, awesomely beautiful but crazy tree.

And then, because I I was feeling bakey, I made the best chocolate cake of my entire life last night.

Also the cutest napkins ever, courtesy of my delightful sister who knows me very well. 

Yeah, if you're looking for a chocolate cake recipe and none of your good-for-nothing cookbooks that claim to have all the recipes in the world in them (Hi. Joy of Cooking. Not as thorough as expected.) have a recipe for just plain chocolate cake, go to Cook's Illustrated and be free.

Thankfully, Bubba had the bright idea for me to scan all of my Cook's Illustrateds into my tablet and then start using that for my recipes, so I just had to search my tablet for "chocolate cake" instead of leafing through a thousand pages of magazine to find it.

He's a smart one, that guy. Which is why I let him eat cake straight from the pan with his hands like a fucking animal.

I used this recipe for chocolate cupcakes, but made a sheet cake because I'm a sunuvabitch like that.

Glad someone's growing something around here because it sure as shit isn't me. Apparently.

You know how people say shit like contractors' houses are always in the worst repair or cleaning ladies' houses are always the messiest or whatever?

Yeah, so I think I'm like that now, but for farmers.

Because WHOA does my vegetable garden suck it this year.

Um, sad.

Um, sadder.

I mean, yes, it's the end of the summer and usually shit looks like shit by now, but it's basically looked this sad since, like, June, and when we got back from our backpacking trip I hobbled out there on my peg leg and ripped the beans out of that empty bed you see there because I couldn't take it anymore.

It was depressing.

It's possible that with finishing my horticulture degree, starting a new farm job and going on a two week backpacking trip that tried to kill me, I *may* have neglected my vegetable garden, like, the tiniest bit.

I should probably be ashamed of myself, but as is my way, I'm just forgetting about it and moving on.

Enter the winter garden.

Red baron onions were so awesome last year, I'm putting in a hundred this year, which is twice as many as last year for those of you who are keeping count. Which is weird of you to do, I just want to say.

Dill and cilantro were so badass all winter last year even when the hard frost came, so that's happening again, too. En mass.

Plus, I've organized the direct sow stuff (Pacific Gold and Ruby Streaks mustard greens, Romance and Nelson carrots, Hollow Crown parsnips, Cherry Belle and French Breakfast radishes, arugula, buckwheat, Aquadulce fava beans, Rocky Top lettuce) that will go in once it stops being in the fucking nineties all the live long day FINALLY GAH.

I'm over summer, people. Specifically, the heat. It's to the point where I'm saying Fall with a capital F to see if I can't bring about the end of this molten summer. It's not working.

Thankfully, for the sake of our winter tomato eating and Other Foods of Summer Which I Failed To Grow eating, I've discovered the best perk of working on a farm and that is the peer pressure to PLEASE TAKE SOME FUCKING WHATEVER YOU WANT OUT OF THE COOLERS BECAUSE THERE'S SO MUCH.

Yes, hi, I will have 22 pounds of dry farmed tomatoes thank you.

And then PLEASE GO HARVEST WHATEVER YOU WANT FROM THE FIELD RIGHT NOW BECAUSE WHOA.

"Plant it, eat it, throw it at the neighbor kids - just take some of this garlic."

"The dry farmed tomatoes are in - let's go taste them." = favorite thing I've ever heard someone say.

"Oh, and pick as many as you want. There are lots." = second favorite thing I've ever heard someone say.

That's a lot of zucchini to leave on neighbors' porches.

These peppers were too big for retail sales, so OOPSY DARN I'll have to take a flat home.

Also I bought a pie from the farm stand because obviously.

And then I finally, after being in a total cooking/eating/dealing with only dehydrated food rut, I took all of that goodness into my kitchen and made a new thing.

Herbed cheese stuffed zucchini blossoms

Ingredients

• A few dozen squash blossoms (pick the males, which are the flowers without the little squash growing on the bottom), rinsed, dried and stamen removed (that's the pointy part in the flower with the pollen all over it)
• 8 oz plain soft farmer's cheese
• A few handfuls of fresh herbs (I used parsley, dill, cilantro, savory and basil), chopped
• 1 cup white flour
• 1T sea salt
• 1T fresh ground pepper
• 1 egg
• 1 cup vegetable oil

To make

Mix the chopped herbs, salt, pepper and cheese until the herbs are distributed evenly throughout the cheese. 

Carefully unravel the blossoms and press a tablespoon or two of the cheese mixture into the stamen-less center of each blossom and twist it closed.

Then set it up decoratively on a plate and spend way too long taking pictures of your handiwork because LOOK HOW FANCY.

Neato.

This one was the king I decided.

Then start your oil heating in a deep fry pan over medium heat until it shimmers and mix together the flour, salt and pepper in a bowl.

Crack your egg into another bowl, whisk it up and set up your conga line to the fry pan.

Then, because you're a dick and probably also because you've been drinking this whole time, take the first stuffed blossom with your handy tongs and completely bypass the conga line and stick the thing right in the hot oil without battering it. 

Then realize the error of your ways, rescue it out of the oil, send it through the conga line while hoping that the hot oil won't start cooking the egg, see that it totally does, replace the egg in the bowl, dip the semi-cooked egg battered blossom in the flour mixture, put it gently in the hot oil, move your cocktail to the bar where you won't be able to constantly sip from it, and then proceed to dip, batter and fry the rest of the blossoms without error.

When you're done frying your battered blossoms to a golden brown by just letting them slowly fry over medium heat instead of trying to speed things up by overheating and thus burning them over high heat, make a quick caprese salad with what's left of your farm haul, put out some good balsamic vinegar to dip your blossoms into and have the most indulgent dinner since the last time you made fried chicken.

Sure, fried stuffed zucchini blossoms should probably be an appetizer,  but eh. 

Eat them all in one sitting because they don't save for shit.