This year I only had one hanging cherry tomato plant -- yep, just one. I almost killed it twice this summer, with um, inadvertent dry farming experiments (aka vacations). I did find out that poking holes in the bottom of a water bottle and jamming it into the pot does work, I probably just needed one bottle for every day we were gone since that little Tumbler tomato was sucking down the water. Even still, it gave one big push in mid-July and then ramped up for a second push in September, and then the weather cooled off just after Labor Day.
. I can already tell this book will get a place of honor in the kitchen and that some other is going to get kicked down to our bookcases downstairs.
About 10 years ago there was a PBS reality show, Frontier House, where a bunch of modern day Americans were taken out to Montana to live as frontiers-people did in the 1880s. And other than the guy who built a house from the ground up for his bride, the woman I remember best was a baker. If there's a skill that's valuable and will keep an early settlement going (other than building shelter!), it's being able to grind wheat into flour and bake loaves of bread by feel, by memory. I'm not a baker by instinct, I'm a baker by following instructions, particularly when it comes to breads. Wolf has always been the baker around our house. I've found myself better at biscuits, my patience suited to a quick knead and cutting out biscuits.
, I immediately thought, I'll just start at page one and cook my way through...but then I caught sight of the coffee-chipotle brisket...which bakes in the oven for 6 hours and then is slathered in coffee-chipotle barbecue sauce. I mean, does it get better than that? I'll go back to the beginning another time.
The last couple of weeks, I've hardly been home, what with work taking me to the Bay Area for several days and then I was in Denver for my friend Lara's baby shower. So there's been a lot of eating and tweeting, but not much new posting!
There is a ton of good food happening in Denver, here's a quick look at a few of the spots we hit over the weekend.
I brought Seattle weather to Denver on Saturday, but as we all know, neither clouds, nor rain, nor chilly temps will stop a Seattleite from enjoying ice cream. Little Man Ice Cream serves up ice cream, gelato and sorbet and over the weekend flavors included chocolate malt, caramel popcorn, strawberry, and whopper malt (ice cream); chocolate-hazelnut, pistachio (gelato) and brandied peach (sorbet). One of their best inventions is the little dip, a mini scoop on a cone for 99c, for those times when you just want a couple of bites of ice cream. Unfortunately, I have no photos of the little dips, because both hands were full, one with chocolate malt, the other with brandied peach sorbet. :-)