Saturday, August 23, 2008

One Local Summer, Week 12

Even with my limited picture-taking ability, aren't those just beautiful?! More basil from our plants in the pot, but now we also FINALLY have some tomatoes ready to go. So far, only the cherry tomatoes are ripe, but the others are working on it. So, at least a couple of our local meals this week involved pesto and tomatoes.

My cousin, Carol, from Virginia and her friend were in town visiting this week. Since it was her first trip to the Pacific Northwest, I thought we needed to show them what we can do with local foods in Portland. I made pasta with pesto, Italian chicken sauage and cherry tomatoes plus a green salad. Later in the week, I made another batch of it to take to a potluck party.
pesto - basil from our garden (parmesan, pine nuts, and olive oil not local)
Chicken Italian sausage - made at New Seasons
Cherry tomatoes - backyard
Lettuce - backyard and CSA
Tomatoes - backyard
Scallions, red onion and carrots- CSA
pasta - bought in bulk at New Seasons, but I don't know its origin

Meanwhile, back in the garden - in addition to the arrival of the tomatoes, here are a couple of other recent appearances:


Pears
on our espaliered pear tree


and peppers

And, in the preservation department, today, I froze some green beans from our CSA and a bunch of rhubarb brought to us by a friend.

3 comments:

ckw said...

oh my gosh that pear tree is amazing- just think you will be having fun in the backyard ...
while the rest of go back to WORK!!!! tomorrow-
envious-but oh so glad you are enjoying so much
keep us posted
crole

Anonymous said...

So jealous of your pear tree. Want to come make one at my house too?

Joan said...

Laura, I would love to take credit for creating the espalier. But, most everything in our yard and garden is the work of my husband. He started his career as a landscape architect and also came from a long line of gardeners. I come from a long line of people who are good at singing, putting on parties and having spirited arguments, but who would have difficulty differentiating between an espalier and an exotic. My job is harvesting and doing something with the produce.
We actually have two espaliers in our yard- pear and an apple. It's what you need to do when you have a 50x100 lot rather than the nice spread you have.