When the Almond Tree Blooms

A thick fog has descended over the Valley this week.  At night it swirls around the trees, houses and cars on the street, imparting an eerie stillness to the neighborhood.  For the past few mornings, the fog hasn't lifted in South Sutter County, imparting a mental fuzziness which requires that I consume ever more coffee.  The weather makes it a good time of year to bake and make some soup.  I've included a recipe below of a really tasty winter squash soup I cooked last night.  First Apple Pie I've ever baked Fall colors on 2nd Ave, Oak Park, Sacramento Fall Gardening Projects The gardening never stops in the Central Valley My roommate brought masa from LA--it made delicious tortillas Here's the recipe for the soup I made.  I adapted it from one I learned from Sandra Morales, who was the parent liason at Park Elementary School where I taught for almost four years.  We cooked the soup on a family day around 3 years ago, and ...

Aunt Nancy and Uncle Marc's Garden, Bainbridge Island WA Carrots, my dad and I learned last Monday, have the most complex flavor of any vegetables, and the third most of any food, after chocolate and coffee. This was one of many nuggets of carrot knowledge we learned from John Navazio, a PhD and seed breeder who works for the Organic Seed Alliance. That organization sponsored the event, a chance for farmers, gardeners and anyone else to learn about carrot seed breeding and trials at Nash's Produce in the Dungeness Valley of Washington's Olympic Peninsula. The seed trials were sponsored by NOVIC, a collaborative that aims to develop seeds for organic farmers in the northern tier of the US, who need to produce a yield from fields that are often too wet or too cold. It wasn't too cold or rainy that day at Nash's, but the fields peered across were muddy from previous days' rain. We stood in our mud boots gazing across acres of carrot tops and pondering this c...