From the monthly archives:

January 2010

Fine Dining at the Mall

Today’s RGB garden photo: stocks, one of my favorite winter flowers. We found a whole flat full at Home Depot yesterday that were just beginning to flower. Winter Stocks   My dad worked a lot when I was a kid. So much so that his nickname in our family was “Mr. O.T.,” (short for Mr. [...]

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Flintstone Vitamins for Britta

Welcome back, sunshine! First real sun since Monday – view out the backyard towards Shady Canyon in Irvine, CA.   First real post since Monday, too. We’ve been holed up in the house cooking, baking and reading. Laundry barely made the cut-off. Gardening didn’t happen at all. On the RGB iTunes shuffle: Sway, Michael Bublé. [...]

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Chukar Au Vin Works, Too

Today looks about how we feel… gloomy and doomy. Winter dormancy beneath the storm.   It was so wet I opted for dried thyme so I wouldn’t have to step outside. Even the dog refused to do her business (we’ll see how long that lasts). Another good day for experimenting in the kitchen with chukar. [...]

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With Assistance from Britta

How did 2009 treat ya? For the most part, we were glad to kick 2009 to the curb at the stroke of midnight, but we do acknowledge that a lot of good things happened, too. Among them, Britta. Yup, a dog changed our lives. This post is dedicated to Britta, because without her, we wouldn’t [...]

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Candy-Bar Breakfast

Ever wondered what the underside of a Mandarin tree looks like in the middle of January?       Note: We eat these puppies like candy; peel off the orange wrapper and pop the sugar sweetness. There were so many on the tree this week that I stood in one place to collect a whole [...]

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A Place for Winter Lentils

It’s another cloudy day at the RGB; perfect for a bowl of soup. Morning rain on the bronze fennel.     Droplets on the kale.   We also have some stuff lying around that need to be used: bag of lentils (purchased last week) chard from the garden (they’re overgrown) lemon # 30 (70 to [...]

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The Best of Both Worlds (and Lemons # 26-29)

The only times I eat sugar and butter for breakfast is when we’re goin’ on a road trip. Since we haven’t had one in awhile, I’ve been missing out on my sugar-butter doses. So much so that there’s a couple blocks of cream cheese in refrigerator # 2 just waiting to be used. Our road [...]

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Lemons # 23, 24 and 25

We’re still working through our two lemon trees (est. 100 lemons), so in the last two weeks, we’ve made lemon roasted chicken (2), lemon-marinated chicken (2), lemon cake (10), lemon curd (4), lemon-herb butter (2), and lemon risotto (2). That’s 100 lemons minus 22; 78 more to go… Lucky for us, we stumbled on Diane [...]

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Food Foray # 3.2

This is the follow-up post to Food Foray # 3.1. The “Oregon Duck Game Day” food theme to cheer on the Oregon Ducks in the Rose Bowl today turned into an experiment with roasting a duck; no pun intended. I’ll play with a “green and yellow-themed meal” another time. (Note to self for future reference: [...]

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Like Potato Chips, Without the Starch

I’ve been searching high and low for some sort of baked chard recipe (way too much chard in the vegetable box right now), just to see if anyone’s done it. Since nobody (that I know of) has, I decided to take a chance and just do it. Who’d a thunk, it actually turned out really [...]

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Smashed Roots

Some basic rules to smashed roots: Don’t cube them too small. You don’t want the roots to absorb too much water and come watery. And, cube them all the same size, so they cook at the same rate. To steam all the liquid off, put the pot back on the burner after draining. Unless you [...]

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