On Friday we were due for our bi-weekly garden visitation. However, James had to travel to California; so, I drove upstate by myself. With several How Stuff Works podcasts entertaining my curious mind and with the Taconic wowing my weary eyes with foliage landscapes at every turn, it turned out to be a lovely drive.
With green rapidly fading from the scene, the garden still had a couple of green surprises for me: the last batch of green tomatoes, string beans, the relentless shishito peppers, 2 radishes and even 3 cucumbers! (Which brings the total number of cucumbers I harvested this year to 5. Ok, maybe to 10…)
I spent some time on Friday afternoon cleaning up in the garden. It gets dark around 6 now, so I didn’t have that much time. The dusk’s sudden advance interrupted my activities; I raised my eyes from wilted tomato plants I was pulling out of the ground and suddenly saw a gleaming beam of red light shooting out from the woods. It looked almost like the tail of a meteor — but, in fact, it was the tail of a rainbow. . . . CONTINUE READING → Out with the green!
It is an Omega J8005 Nutrition Center Single-Gear Commercial Masticating Juicer, and I haven’t named it yet. So, please help me welcome it to the family and if you have any naming ideas, do share.
You know who loves lemon balm? Bees. That’s why its botanical genus name is melissa — Greek for honeybee. (“Meli” means “honey” in Greek. And, of course, there’s a metamorphosis story there. Melissa was a mountain nymph who hid baby Zeus when his father, Cronus, went nuts and started devouring his own children. She took care of the future boss of the Olympic pantheon and fed him goat milk and honey — instantly turning him into a gourmand — but when Cronos found her out, he punished Melissa by turning her into an earthworm. Earthworms are highly beneficial creatures, of course, and must have an amazing karma. Zeus, however, disagreed with his dad on both the aesthetics and the semantics of his choice, and subsequently transformed his nymph nanny into a bee.)
Simultaneously, team J was working on a cocktail — a cilantro margarita, based on this recipe, with a slight modification… The recipe (for 2 drinks) involved muddling lots of cilantro leaves (1/2 cup) with sugar (4Tbs) and shaking them with lots of ice, lime juice (2 limes), triple sec (1 oz) and tequila (4 oz). James’ custom modification consisted of adding 
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