Duck legs on a Saturday evening

Guido and Bridgett had me over for dinner Thursday night.  Had a great time.  Guido had brought me a pressure cooker from Italy and would let me use it until I had watched him cook in his, given I had never used one.

He made pizza with a topping of olive oil, chopped fresh rosemary and course salt. Simple and very satisfying. In his pressure cooked he made broth with a beef shank, onion, celery (from my garden!) water, a Roma tomato or two, and a few mushrooms.  45 mins  and voila! A pot of fabulous broth.  It was ladled into bowls with baby farfalle pasta. So good. So good.

So today, I made a pressure cooker dinner.
I browned two duck legs and drained the fat.  In the remaining fat I sauteed onion and garlic slivers. I added very rough chop parsley and celery leaves, dried cherries, coriander seeds, whole allspice, bay leaves, thyme, port, red wine, broth, salt and pepper and attached the lid.. 45 minutes later I turned it off and waited the allotted time till the cooker could be opened.  Meantime I made polenta and a green salad salad from the garden.

Oh, it was good. Oh, so good. The only thing missing was bread to soak up the wonderful broth.

So good.

On a chilly evening

It was chilly all day yesterday and a perfect evening to try celery soup.  I love celery and last winter there were celery seedlings on sale. Of course, I had to plant them and they are growing beautifully.

I harvested a head and cut off the tops like in the market. I made this simple soup.

1 head celery - about a pound
1 medium onion
1 medium russet potato (any starchy variety)
1 small clove of garlic
1 quart chicken broth
1 or 2 c water
salt and pepper
trace of ground mace

Saute the onion, add the garlic and saute about 1 minute more.  Add the rest of the ingredients and simmer until tender.  Blend or puree the solids and voila! A delicious light soup.

Any ideas what to do with those beautiful tops? Celery broth I imagine, but they are definitely strong in flavor. 

After the rain

Rained pretty hard so I went our first thing and took these pics.

Tomato Problem?

Wonder if this is a viral problem, if the seedlings need fertilizer or all is fine? St Pierre tomato, a French heirloom. 

Plum Blossoms

The first plum blossoms have decided to grace my yard.  They will be French prune plums come summer.

Kitchen re-do

Well, the kitchen is still in torn-apart mode.  I'm going to attempt posting a couple of photos. This didn't work so well on a recent garden post for reasons only known to Google, but anyway, here goes. The last one I titled "Insides Out".

It is raining again today and the garden is loving it!  I am sure the peas have doubled in size this week.

Most of the seedlings under the lights in my "greenhouse" box are up and doing so well I have to re-pot some already.  The tomatoes look great.  The slowest to burst forth are the eggplants, Violetta's.  The long thin purple Italian variety. Luckily for me two or three plants are plenty.

The next slowest are the peppers.  I have Padrons and Italian Rossa peppers started.  The Rossa's are 2x2 or so, squat and red and can nicely.  I grew them last in my Berkeley community garden patch when I lived there. They were tasty then and I hope I have plenty to can this year.  I really want to taste the Padrons.  I have read about their fabulous taste and have testimonials from friends.  They are sauteed whole in olive oil and sprinkled with salt.  Makin' me hungry just thinking about them.

Baby parsnips

I have read and I've been told that getting parsnips started ain't easy.  Well, I don't know about that but mine are up and coming! Not the greatest of photos but they are there.

And the kitchen hangs on