BlueDozer

Red-Black Hack Cake

This week's hack cake could be called "clean out the fridge cake." Some may call it a red velvet cake which I'm not a fan of due to the the dye. It always seemed odd that folks got excited about a cake with a slightly different hue. The red velvet cake has a somewhat muddled history with different claims as to its origin as well as the origin of its color.

The trick with natural red ingredients is the compounds that create the color are very fragile when exposed to heat. Even in plant-based dyes for textiles red is often a cold dye process and there is considerable attention payed to the mordants used to fix the colors.

My beet-based cake looks like any other dark chocolate cake. Unlike other beet cake recipes which call for shredded veg I chose to purée. This removes the texture. Think applesauce cake vs carrot cake.

Simply substituting a fruit or vegetable purée or sauce for liquid doesn't work. There are balances and our beet purée takes the place of some of the fat, sugar and liquid in the regular recipe.

Note: as I've gotten older my tendons decided "stir with a fork" was rather tedious. Now this cake uses 2 vessels: the 9 x 9 baking dish and either a stand mixer or a food processor bowl. When done all-in-one-pan the pan doesn't need to be lined or greased-and-floured.

Begin by making a shredded beet side dish, having. It with dinner then not eating all the leftovers. Roasted or steamed are also acceptable but will likely mean the recipe needs more oil.

The wine flavor will also be broken down by the heat so in this recipe the wine can be leftover from dinner a few nights ago that's just starting to turn to vinegar.

Ingredients:

2 C cooked shredded beets 1.25 C red wine .5 t salt .75 C Sugar 4T cocoa (Heaping)

1.5 C Flour 3 T salad oil 1.5 t baking soda 1C chocolate chips

Put the beets and red wine into the food processor or blender and start puréeing. Scrape down the sides with a spatula and add the next 4 ingredients. Purée some more. The flour and cocoa may also need to be scraped down. Add the salad oil and make sure the mixture is the same consistency. At this point it should be pourable, like any boxed cake onced mixed. If it is too thick add a little more liquid through the feeder. Get your 9x9 pan prepared and have the chocolate chips ready. Add the baking soda and purée to make sure it is throughly mixed. Transfer half the batter to the prepared pan, add the chips and then the rest of the batter.

 

Bake at 350° for around 35 minutes. The cake is done when a toothpick or sharp knife comes out clean. Let cool completely before serving.

 

 

 

 

Posted with Blogsy

April showers

Too many things going on, haven't done a garden update in a while. First, the weather. after a long dry Winter we've had about a week of intermittent rain. This seems rather unusual. Need to check an almanac.

Successes:

• Favas are producing nicely and still flowering.
  
• First set of sugar snap peas are done and dry. Second sowing is about a foot high. Third is around 2-3 inches.
• Planted both fava and peas in with the Ollallie Berries. The fruit seems healthier and the peas have something to climb on.
• Kale is starting to toughen and show aphids.
• Asparagus is on its second year and continuing to get bigger and spread out.

Shortfalls:

• Gophers continue to be a problem. A number of plants have been pulled under, including: Favas which were unprotected by daffs and digitalis and California poppies.
• Gophers don't appear to eat lavender and thyme but the aren't turned back by it. They dig past or around it.

Now Planting:

• Brussels Sprouts rotating in after peas.
• Bush beans, need to find a space or make more gopher baskets
• Beets
• Carrots
• Celery, radish, lettuce, spinach
• Cabbage
• Last chance for kale, leeks
• Tomato! Hunting for Visitation Valley Cultivar.
• Succulents for side yard alley
• Move volunteer foxgloves.

 

 

Posted with Blogsy

Finish the brick path

The path needs to run just outside the leaf line of the lemon tree to connect two chunks of sidewalk. It is complicated by me not being able to lift bags of rock due to an injured shoulder, some confusion about the lines of the path and the lemon trees sprouted from cut roots.

What needs to happen next:

1. Flour-line path edges
2. Buy rooting hormone for citrus starts
3. Clip and start citrus starts
4. Dig out loose excess soil
5. Buy more drain rock and sand
6. Cut and place bender board
7. Layer in drain rock and sand
8. Level sand bed for bricks. May need to be stepped due to angle of yard.
9. Lay in bricks

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October

My October garden is rather brown this year. The drought is a contributor but certainly not the only one. I didn't plant as much and the irrigation is stalled. Extensive mulching cut back on oxalis and fumeria. There are natural ends of cycles such as the cocooning of the black swallowtail butterfly caterpillars and the ripening of fennel seeds. There are also artificial ones: mistakes and lessons.

One mistake is impatience. We moved soil from the front yard to a container in the back yard. I was in a hurry and didn't sift it that day. What should have yielded purple potato, kale and squash has instead fed a crop of rolly-pollies. Gardening can't be rushed. This is a hard lesson which will likely be repeated in different forms throughout the years. I see it in a neighbor's yard, also brown, where her dependence on chemical fertilizer has toxified her soil for most annuals.

What is growing at the moment are the evergreen citrus trees, the lavenders, asparagus, and a handful of kale and chard volunteers. Lettuce and parsley are coming up along with some peas. In the non-edible realm next season's foxglove, calla, and cal poppy are growing. There are also weeds to keep after: grass, wire weed, burr clover, dandelions and more I haven't identified yet.

There is a lot to do before the rains start.

• Finish the brick path
• Pull up corn and quinoa stalks
• Harvest amaranth and pull stalks
• Sift potato planter for rollypollies and oxalis bulbs
• Prune suckers off lemon
• Scuffle main yard
• Prep back area for container
• Plant fava, peas, kale, chard, onions, garlic
• Relocate strawberries to asparagus bed and finishe mulching

Posted with Blogsy

Now planting

Following Golden Gate Gardening's planting guides for foggier microclimates the sprouting trays are now seeded with:

Brussels Sprouts
Cabbage
Cauliflower
Broccoli
Kale
Turnip

Our back porch window boxes and containers are seeded with:

Arugula
Rouge d'Hiver
Other lettuces
Chard

Spinach was not happy there, too much direct sun. It did well under the strawberries until the drought watering scheme dried both out. The slightly more shaded bed under the apple tree might be a better option but it may make sense to wait another month or so until we're through the heat of early fall.

One of the four horse troughs was seeded with purple potato eyes in early July. Those plants are all happy. It is time to add more dirt to encourage lateral roots and increase potato production. Ideally kale would've grown right along with them but sprouting conditions must not've been right for both.

Saving bolted seeds

An early hot spell caused our kale and arugula to bolt. Both plants are healthy and seed production is prolific.

http://howtosaveseeds.com/seedsavingdetails.php

http://www.highmowingseeds.com/organic-kale-and-collards-growing-and-seed-saving-info.html

Seedlings Planted

When I planted seeds I created a chart with estimated dates so I wouldn't accidentally scrap something that still needed a little more time. Quinoa, amaranth, both kinds of corn, blue lake beans, bunny tails and thyme all sprouted. Goat horn peppers, ground cherries and cumin did not.

Three of the beans haven't sent shoots up through the soil yet. The seeds are large and easy to find, allowing me to confirm that they have sprouted. Those that came up were a little later than estimated, possibly due to our sporadic weather this spring.

That same weather, while we did have warm days may not have gotten hot enough to trigger the ground cherries. They'll get a set of cloches to see if we can give them a boost.

There are 2 failures, marked in red. Those cumin seeds are at least three years old and may no longer be viable. Time to do a "rag doll" test to see if there's any chance of germination. One of the goat horn pots fell apart* as I removed one of the corn, which means we may get a volunteer out in the bed. Since this pepper needs a long germination time the other two are marked in yellow.

* Tip: When making paper pots newspaper works better than clay coated magazine paper. After a couple weeks of moist heat the coated paper sticks to the adjacent pot.

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Old Seeds

Paper Pots for Starting Seeds

In general I prefer to direct-sow seeds right in their intended location. Unfortunately there are a couple spots in the garden that have failed to sprout. To eliminate pests, micro conditions and old seeds as possible factors I decided to use the start-and-transplant approach.

After rolling a set of newsprint pots and filling them with a sphagnum and potting soil mix the seeds are set and now we wait and water.

Germination dates in the chart below make it obvious not everything will be sprouting or ready to transplant at the same time.

Patience is another factor I may have overlooked. A larger pot I planted earlier in the year appears to have spinach, carrots, squash and either an apple or peach tree all coming up. It's incriminating evidence that I either forgot what was there before and/or got tired of waiting. Grow, damnit!

Purps

I refer to these colorfuls little clusters of daisy-like flowers as the purps. People have told me the name but I didn't write it down. Anyone know what they are?

This type of plant used to be common in backyard gardens but fell out of fashion some time ago. They came with the house and have a tendancy to rearrage themselves year-to-year. The colors range from magenta to lavender to perriwinkle.

Hen and Chicks

 The Front of the house has planting areas right agaist the front wall. We didn't want to trap moisture against the stucco so we needed something that didn't require watering. Solution: succulents, surrounded by tumbled glass landscape rock for a pop of color. These Hen-and-chicks are so happy they're flowering.

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There are as many breeds of 'hen and chicks' as there are breeds of chickens.