It’s time for the annual Bull City Foodraiser, to provide a bag of groceries to each of over 5000 schoolchildren to help keep them fed over winter break. There are really generous per-donor matches pledged this year, so a $5 donation made by 11/14 at 11:59 pm PST will turn into over $100 of food!

I’m going to be so sad to pull my butterbeans on Monday. A 6-foot row yielded about a pound of dried beans over the season, and they are still flowering like gangbusters. I just don’t think I can keep them going through a multi-night freeze. 🌱

In retrospect, I probably shouldn’t have lost my temper and ripped out all the carrots in one of the garden beds, but I was working by flashlight ahead of a freeze and had run out of tarps.

I am so grateful to Past Me for putting those frozen chicken thighs in a secondary container when I put them in the fridge to thaw. That would have been a lengthy and unpleasant cleanup.

I will be sad when tomato season truly ends because I don’t think the Parisian gnocchi will be the same with frozen tomatoes. The cherry tomatoes and a few other plants are still hanging in there, but I think we are going to get a freeze soon.

I get so many compliments when I wear one of my shinies!

@juliethecranky.bsky.social So, he is DONE with them done with them.

So much of the daylight saving time/standard time discourse seems like it depends on how far east you are in your time zone. For me, year-round standard time would mean 4:30 am sunrises in the summer. I am admittedly a night person, but I think that only the larkiest of larks would not hate that.

I took a day off specifically to catch up on rest, yet I am still up watching the game. Why yes, I am totally a responsible adult who is making reasonable choices.

I thought it might be nice to have some more crocuses in front of the house and then somehow there were 95 bulbs in my shopping cart. If I go through with this, I’m going to be reenacting the sowing/reaping meme, aren’t I?

That feeling when you know a migraine is barreling up the coast at you and you’re trying to time the meds just right.

So, the bottom of cabinet above the microwave probably shouldn’t be 140 degrees F, huh? I really hope I can still find an over-the-range model that isn’t smart and doesn’t want to constantly phone home.

The “Dancing in the Dark” sequence from The Band Wagon may be one of the most gorgeous things ever committed to film.

I really need to start listening to my instincts in the kitchen. The gayalet bandora recipe from Serious Eats is mostly delicious, but I really regret not peeling the tomatoes (the recipe doesn’t call for it and the texture with my homegrown tomatoes is very…pointy).

Probably time to log off; I blocked the Katyn denier and moved on like a grownup, but I was dangerously tempted to reply with a picture of the Katyn Memorial in Jersey City instead (know that it is a very upsetting statue if you are thinking of looking it up).

Day 2 of this migraine (we really need the rain, but being able to predict storms with my central nervous system is a lousy superpower). Time to try to apply the healing power of a baked potato to the situation.

I’m making the fresh tomato sauce with onion from Marcella’s Italian Kitchen to try out my first Polish Linguisa tomatoes because the thought of peeling enough San Marzanos for a recipe with a vegetable peeler did not spark joy. I hope I like them because they are way less work than San Marzano.

I recently learned that dried butterbean (Lima bean) pods will ka-sproing themselves open, probably to fling the seeds farther from the plant. This discovery would have been much less alarming had I not been harvesting into my pockets because I didn’t bring a container out to the garden with me.

Trying to recall in which very safe place I stashed the citric acid after last year’s canning. I’m aiming for 3 quarts of passata for soup (simmering with a halved onion and butter like the Marcella Hazan recipe turns slicer tomatoes into delicious cream of tomato soup).

Farewell to a true legend, both in life and family lore.

hashtag killdeer mode

I have never seen a memoir that has been so scientifically targeted to my mother.

Probably too little, too late, but giving this a try while I’m still testing negative. I’m a supertaster, so it’s highly unpleasant. I hope it will give me a bump in protection.

The “fun” thing about taking all these COVID tests is that it’s a nostalgic little reminder of how embarrassingly bad I was at chromatography. There is a reason I am not still a practicing chemist.

Both parents now have COVID, as expected. I figure it’s just a matter of time before I test positive and am frantically trying to figure out what I can let drop so I can rest. It’s petty, but I am angry that I will have to let my garden rot. It’s taken so much work.

I realize that posting through it is always a smart and wise choice, but I also am so upset that all of the sacrifices and hard choices we made over the last 5 and a half years have been rendered completely meaningless and worthless. It was all for nothing.

I am incandescent with rage that our healthcare system forces us to risk our lives and our health to access care.

Mom brought home a memento of last week’s hospital stay. Godfuckingdamnit.

I have some doubts about the drop biscuit topping on this cobbler, but it’s got 2.5 pounds of figs in it, and I will try just about anything to keep up with these trees (I am nowhere near keeping up with my fig trees).

I said “yes” to growing speckled butterbeans because of @billhookunion.beanyear.com with the intention of trying them as fresh shelling beans, but life is life-ing very hard at me right now. Can I just leave them on the plant for dried beans? This is my first time venturing beyond string beans. 🌱

I pick figs at 3 stages of ripeness: 1) Sun-ripened, jammy perfection 2) Would benefit from another day on the tree, but I would be annoyed to find a single squirrel bite in it tomorrow 3) I am so far inside this bush that the tick check will require an endoscope; no way I’m leaving empty-handed

A little bit of stress-baking. The base is the Almondy Plum Cake from Snacking Cakes by Yossy Arefi with figs substituted for the plums. Cake is a horizontal surface, and every horizontal surface is covered with figs or tomatoes right now.

I have reached the point in August where every horizontal surface in the kitchen is covered with figs and/or tomatoes.

Expanding the vegetable garden has been great for helping keep me more firmly tethered to this mortal coil and providing loads of healthful exercise and fresh air, but the way the heat makes me completely lose my appetite just when I have a lot of time-sensitive food coming in is not ideal.

Ted Leo and the Physicians

Fresh leaf Japanese indigo dyeing is a lot of fast, cold work, but that dark, robin’s-egg-blue color is so, so worth it. I also tried my first itajime shibori and it is a lot of fun to clamp things onto silk scarves and see what unfolds. 🧶

The first homegrown tomato sandwich of the year (on toast, with Boursin cheese) is one of life’s true pleasures.

OK, the heirloom tromboncino squash are no joke. I picked this one at 25” long because another vine’s tendrils ripped the blossom off. I wasn’t sure how well it was pollinated and I didn’t want to risk losing it entirely. 🌱

97 years is an amazing run, but this is still a loss that stings.

Before the heat got to me this morning, I had a very pleasant time watching some digger bees hard at work. My ID skills are weak, but they might be Anthophora? They look like smallish bumblebees without the pollen pants. I have video, but need to check a bigger screen to see if it’s worth posting.

Jack’s pendants are so lovely and so well made. I have several and I adore them all.

With the effort we’ve put in to attract pollinators to the yard, it is gratifying to see a sweat bee hanging around on the patio tomatoes.

My dad shared this photo with me, and horseshoe crabs really are the Roombas of the ocean. I just adore them. (Crab and clams were returned safely to the bay.)

It's Day 2 of the United States of Science Challenge! Time for a map update 😎 Two of the "Big 5" crossed the finish line overnight!! Great work, California and Pennsylvania! The entire West Coast is now 4 bubbles from DONE! $10 donations fill bubbles Fill some bubbles here givebutter.com/USS2025

When my grandfather’s family came to visit him in the States, they were mildly scandalized by the sheer amount of grass everywhere without any cows on it. Setting aside all the other nonsense in this schematic, I think I now understand exactly how they must have felt.

Everything feels terrible right now, but at least there are some lightning bugs snoozing in my garden today.

I had a whole bunch of plans for the day to finish getting ready for the really bad part of the heat wave this week; a morning thunderstorm-induced migraine was definitely not on the to-do list.

Now that we’re having a string of days in the high 80s, it’s time to harvest some greens before I lose even harder at Brassica Roulette (some are already bolting). I hope this doesn’t set my snow peas back too badly; the purple ones are only just beginning to bloom.

Saw a man in full desert camouflage wheeling his cart of fishing poles out to the beach. I guess that’s one way to really sneak up on those striped bass.

Just dispatched my first spotted lanternfly of the season. I can only marvel at how well camouflaged the nymphs are for a bug that looks like a Kate Spade purse.