Apricots to cheese and onion, spiderwebs

Yesterday's reading in Apricots on the Nile led, of courses, to the kitchen. The memoir is lovely, old family photographs and anecdotes about relatives, staff, and with inserted recipes. 

This one was definitely for me. Sambusaks, pockets of pastry filled with a cheese mixture. I adapted, making a cheese and onion and garlic filling, all minced together, using the last of the feta crumbles and the parmesan, and a bit of  the cheddar, and an egg 

In the course of making the filling, a random chunk of onion ended up on the page, the first evidence that this is a cookbook.

The resulting dough is enough for twenty, but I froze half of it for a future fruit filling, probably apricot and cranberry or blueberry. Maybe even apple.

Home grown basil, fancy touch 

The pastry is lovely, light and crisp, flaky. That's because it's equal parts butter, avocado oil and hot water. The pastry with various fillings, is a keeper. Could be fruit tarts, too 

This book will be slow going, if this keeps happening. Delicious interludes expected.

And this morning's patio prowl, after a day of torrential rain, showed spider activity

And the zinnias are coming along

*Also the spider wort out front, growing where nothing else will.

*correction, thanks to Ellen's greater knowledge, it's dayflower, commelina communis. Corrected also on spoutible, to thanks from followers there, too.

I expect our local frog and toad population are happy today. Certainly the birds are, after the rain. There was a gang of house sparrows pecking busily all over the path.

Happy day everyone, I hope you get rain if needed. And relief from it if needed. Quite a bit of flooding around here. But thanks to a good power company, no loss of power.

Foreign and domestic

Like daylilies, either buy them on purpose or just notice them growing wild all over the neighborhood. Out walking earlier, I was reminded of this by the down the street  neighbors, who have a cultivated variety of spiderwort, bought at a nursery, and given tender care

And the wild sort is running happily all over my ground cover

The flowers have closed shop for the night, brilliant tiny blue jewels. Which I sometimes yank out if it starts crossing the path.

I seem to be drawn to America's test kitchen again, this time I was the person running to read the label on my Parmigiano!

Interesting findings with good tips on what to look for in supermarket precut and wrapped Parmigiano: dry, crumbly, marks of enough aging, and lovely nutty flavor, not too salty.

Here's the cheese shop version

And here's the panel favorite. $20 a pound.

But this is the chef's choice, from Wisconsin, made by Italian immigrants who know their onions. And their cheese. $18 a pound

And here's this blogger's current supply, obviously getting used. It's got all the good things crumbly, dry, lovely nutty flavor. House wrapped, who knows the origin.  $13 a pound, and I think it will do me fine.

I used it along with blue cheese, to make that Alfredo sauce on the butterfly pasta, a while back, and it's fiiiiine.

The thing is that you never get the real lovely cheese flavor you get in Europe because the US will not allow raw milk, either produced in the US or imported in products. It has to be pasteurized. Which does kill a lot of undesirable bacteria, also a lot of the flavor. 

I remember talking about this with a tetchy old Fox News-watching lady I used to play music with, and she looked at me in horror, then screamed I DON'T BELIEVE YOU. 

Moral: don't tell people stuff they don't want to know! 

Handsome Son is coming tomorrow evening to help eat roasted cauliflower chunks with a dipping sauce I'm making, ketchup, mayo, Worcestershire sauce. 

And pasties stuffed with yellow potatoes, hot turkey sausage, broccoli, onions, carrots and mushrooms. And a lightly toasted kitchen sink, unless someone restrains me.

Lemonade and suntea. Yogurt and farm fruit. I think it will go well.

The cleaners are coming tomorrow morning, which is when some of the shopping will happen for this extravaganza. At least that's the plan.

Winnowing, jamming, baking, botanizing

Here's a wild spiderwort, tradescantia virginiana, named for John Tradescant, Elizabethan plantsman to the stars, along with his son.  Tradescant swiped a lot of American continent plants for European propagation for his wealthy bosses, including the queen.

This one's started by my path. See that tiny blue flower?

Then there's a cultivated variety growing down the street.

This is a handy illustration of the term "common or garden". Mine's the common,  wild one, my neighbor's is the garden, cultivated one. It refers to plants seen both wild and cultivated. Around here the daylily is another, both common and garden growing all over.

Then to the serious business of the day.

Lunch. Which consisted of heating up frozen carrot cashew red lentil soup. And it occurred to me that the seven minutes it took in the microwave could be employed to do a kitchen job that's been annoying me for ages. 

Namely the cabinet where I keep, well, stuff, bags for freezing. Far too many, and many too small anyway. So I thought I'd pull the lot out, sort, recycle and put back.

No before picture, too depressing, one of those doors with bags sticking out on all sides. 

I recycled a large number of small bags, retrieved pieces of foil and parchment paper which I reuse, restored order, and, bonus, found the container of  tools and caulking compound I thought I'd lost. That's it on the shelf.

I can find everything now, and it literally took only as long as the time to heat the soup. Very smug about this.

 Then came cornbread. I needed some breadesque item and had just enough cornmeal and sugar available to do this.

I used my new Polish tool and it's great. Mixes fine, doesn't just shove the batter around, great buy. It's a lovely piece of engineering.

But your overachiever was not done yet.

Then I thought I'd cook the Misfits potatoes ready to use. Microwave for another seven minutes, that seems to be today's unit of time, then cool, peel, freeze. 

In the background you will see an added reason for this activity. A sink packed to the gunwales with dirty dishes. Postponement. It amazes me how one person can generate so many dishes.

And then the next featured performance.

Canteloupe and ginger jam happened. This involved a bit of pectin because I wasn't sure about the natural pectins, if any, in canteloupe. 

I added in ginger chunks because I like ginger with fresh canteloupe, so why not. And the recipe I (sort of)  used, involved seasalt, so I thought fine, I'll go for that.

I just squeaked out enough sugar for this. And I boiled it for quite a while before it seemed to gel. At one point I thought the chunks were a bit big, so I used the stick blender for just a few seconds to reduce them. 

Blending boiling jam is not for the faint of heart, but it seemed to work. I'll remember this for future reference.

We'll see how this comes out when it's cool.

Meanwhile I'm going to read and snack.

I've earned a bit of repose.