Colors in Winter

Throughout the spring, summer, and early fall, I took pictures of flowers and plants around our neighborhood. I was gathering ideas for my own garden, but also admiring others’ arrangements with no intention of recreating them myself. In mid-January, I’m not doing much gardening – just tending to my African violets, aloe plant, and a few decidedly-not-lush-looking rosemary and thyme plants – but looking at these pictures reminds me of the bright colors that will come around again. Hat tip to Frederick (Leo Lionni).

Captions are the names and locations of plants, to the best of my ability/recollection.

Next door neighbor’s tulips

Grape hyacinth and vinca vine

Bright tulips opening, on our usual walking route

Weeds? Perhaps. But I’ve always loved violets, and their purple with the dandelions’ yellow is a beautiful combination.

Dogwood tree (I think) in blossom, in our neighborhood

Another pair of tulips in the neighborhood

Our rhododendron, before I gave it away

Some beardy irises with morning dew (or rain?)

Pallets repurposed as planters, outside Kickstand Cafe

Don’t remember what these two-toned ones are called, but the contrast is striking

My large planter, with Icelandic poppies and verbena

Clover on an overcast morning, near Mass Ave

Rose campion, successfully transplanted, with a bit of lavender sprawling in, and vinca vine (since removed)

Love this wildflower garden on Mass Ave

Same garden, another day. If we had full sun I would do exactly this.

A neighbor’s potted nasturtium

Purple balloon flowers

Don’t know the name for these, but the green and pink remind me of watermelon tourmaline.

Don’t remember the name of this one either but it reminds me of something Dr. Seuss would invent.

Someone in our neighborhood grew truly enormous sunflowers – nearly ten feet tall by the end of summer.

Daisies and coneflower/echinacea, I think. I like this combination.

Morning glory: the best way to beautify a chain link fence.

Early hydrangea

Lantana?

Later hydrangea

Blue hydrangea

A type of sedum, I think? Saw this everywhere in August and September

Cosmos

And more cosmos

Purple

Nasturtium with variegated leaves

Sweet pea

A feast for a butterfly!

Not sure. Some relation of hydrangea?

No idea.

 

In the oven (NOT A METAPHOR)

Cinnamon raisin bread

Give me a little free time in summer, and I’m in the garden; give me a little free time in winter, and suddenly the house is full of sandwich bread, cinnamon raisin bread, cream scones, oatmeal cookies, chocolate chip cookies, Swedish visiting cake, and sour cream coffee cake. (To be fair, my partner-in-kitchen made the coffee cake. And helped with the cookies.)

Sandwich bread: King Arthur Flour

Cinnamon raisin bread: America’s Test Kitchen (but the kid baffles me: “No butter on my toast!” What??)

Oatmeal cookies: Flour by Joanne Chang (I used dried apricots instead of raisins)

Chocolate chip cookies (a.k.a. “most best”): Good to the Grain by Kim Boyce

Cream scones: America’s Test Kitchen (I used raisins and candied ginger instead of currants)

Swedish visiting cake: Dorie’s Cookies by Dorie Greenspan (I’ve made this at least seven times since discovering it. It is SO EASY and SO DELICIOUS. I don’t make the topping, I just sift a little powdered sugar over it once it’s cooled a bit.)

Sour cream coffee cake: Flour

We did have salmon and kale for dinner the other night, so we’re not subsisting solely on baked goods, and both cakes were to share…but still, I should probably concentrate on vegetables for a little while.

What’s cooking

But also, here is a photo of the dog.

This used to be, as a friend once described it, a blog about food and pictures of my dog. It’s evolved a little bit away from that in the past few years, but here’s a roundup of some of the recipes I’ve made over the last few months, partly inspired by my reading and by the new cookbook club I started at the library.

Cooking

Tsimmes from Cooking for Jeffrey by Ina Garten: Fine, but not as good as the tsimmes my friend brought to Rosh Hashanah last fall; I should have used her recipe. I tried the Barefoot Contessa’s because (a) it took less time, and (b) that was the cookbook club book.

Pita chips from The Food52 Cookbook: As advertised: better than store-bought chips. I made these to bring to the first cookbook club.

Pasta with tomato sauce and cheese, with a side of Brussels sprouts in the cast iron on the stove top: first time I’d made Brussels sprouts in a while, I forgot how good they are. (Not that good left over. Get ’em while they’re hot and crispy.) This isn’t really a special recipe but it’s here as proof that I don’t use my kitchen solely to bake cookies.

“Green casserole”: I don’t particularly enjoy munching on spinach leaves and neither, it turns out, does my two-year-old, but we will both happily eat “green pasta.” 1. Cook any short/medium shape of pasta as usual. 2. Put a whole bag of spinach in the food processor with a couple tablespoons of olive oil and one clove of garlic. 3. Drain pasta, and while the empty pot is still warm, add a couple tablespoons of butter, some milk or cream, grated cheese, and salt and pepper to taste, then mix in the spinach. 4. Add the pasta back into the pot and stir to coat. 5. Optional: add more milk or cream, dump it all into a casserole dish, top with extra cheese, and bake for 20 minutes. If you do this, make sure you take the pasta out when it’s al dente, or it may get too mushy.

Winter vegetable crunch: My friend brought me some salad she’d made, a combination of Brussels sprouts and carrots, and it was delicious. I borrowed her recipe (lemon juice, garlic, salt and pepper, mustard) and used purple cabbage and rainbow carrots. Everything into the food processor! This was the first time I bought a cabbage. (It goes a long way. This would be a good salad to serve if you have a lot of people coming over.)

See also: pizza (below)

Baking

Last-minute chocolate cake from Garlic & Sapphires by Ruth Reichl: The cake didn’t rise much (not even all the way to the top of the bread tin). It was good warm, but not great leftover – definitely needed ice cream or whipped cream. Probably wouldn’t make again, but will try “Nicky’s Vanilla Cake” from the same book.

Pear clafouti from Wintersweet: This recipe called for cranberries also but was very, very good with just pear. I’ve made it both ways now. Easy and delicious.

Oatmeal raisin cookies from Flour (again, and again, and again)

Pumpkin cookies from Martha Stewart Cookies: Like all pumpkin cookies I’ve ever made, a little wet and cakey, though the flavor was good.

Pumpkin “bread” (cake) from my mom’s recipe, with the caramel icing from Faulknerian Family Spice Cake from The Food52 Cookbook (minus about a cup of confectioner’s sugar): This pumpkin bread really doesn’t need icing, but I made it in muffin tins (halve the baking time) for my daughter’s second birthday party, and, well, cupcakes should have a little icing. It was a good combination.

“Easy as pie” Apple cake from the New York Times: A friend brought this over for brunch and this was the recipe she used. I think I made it too, afterward, but I don’t remember. Apple cakes are usually pretty foolproof.

French toast: French toast seems fancy but is actually very easy. Soak bread in egg/milk/vanilla mixture, sprinkle it with cinnamon, and cook it on both sides over medium heat till golden-brown. Slice some bananas into the pan with butter too so they caramelize and put them on top, or use fresh fruit.

Guinness Brown Bread from Cooking for Jeffrey by Ina Garten: The bread fell apart when I tried to turn it out of the loaf tin. Flavor was OK but not outstanding. Rather than make this again I’d just make Boston brown bread.

Cranberry orange bread from America’s Test Kitchen: My mom brought me some fresh cranberries from the Cape and this was one of the ways I used them (see also: pear clafouti). If you only have dried cranberries, soak them in water or juice before adding them to the batter.

Banana bread from Flour (again)

Sprinkle cookies from Smitten Kitchen: A friend made these for our December book club/cookie swap and they were so much better than sprinkle cookies usually are that I made a batch a few days later. So good – and fun for kids to roll the balls of dough in the sprinkles!

ACTUAL BREAD from King Arthur Flour’s recipe for Pain de Mie. One of my goals for 2018 was to start baking sandwich bread instead of buying bread at the grocery store, and I tackled it on January 1. It came out beautifully! (For years I have been avoiding any recipe that called for active dry yeast, after being burned – not literally – too many times by less-than-active yeast. No more!)

Emboldened by my success with the sandwich bread, I made pizza dough from Smitten Kitchen tonight: her “rushed” version from the first book takes about six minutes to put together and has just a 30-minute rise, so it is actually manageable for dinner without much planning ahead. We topped it with pasta sauce, Italian herbs, shredded mozzarella,  black olives, and kale.

She quickly mastered the ancient art of putting olives on one’s fingers