I don't like your tweed, sir!

That rapscallion Mr. B had better look out, Professor Elemental is on to his machinations

saw it first on boing boing

Best of animal hilarity

Penny and Zinc vs a bouncy ball

vs a lazer pointer

Kitty vs his first mouse

Cereal Milk Dessert

 

Oh my! This dessert is an ooey milk crispy texture delight. Peter brought home a NY gourmet restaurant cookbook and we have officially fallen in love with a few recipes. Here is the link to Momofuku if you are interested finding out more about him and his restaurant. Some amazing stories about him fill the book in addition to the recipes (FYI lots of meat recipes mixed with some standout vegetarian ones).
So what you are looking at is a cereal milk custard, guacamole puree, a chocolate hazelnut caramel with caramelized cornflakes sprinkles. It was a crazy delicious. Takes some time to make because you have to soak corn flakes in a milk mixture for about 45 minutes but worth it. Wish that taste technology would advance enough to send a sample for this one.

Welcome pt II: The Gardening

So, it is now August and summer has finally, really, for the most part graced us with it's presence on a full-time basis, and the green things in the ground have responded heartily.  Here are the peas, both snap and shelling, with some beans mixed in for good measure.

  

The tomatoes are getting nice and bushy with lots of fruit.  We have a chocolate cherry, a Japanese tripple-black truffle, and a storage tomato in this bed. And marigolds :)

The squash have really taken off in the big bed!  The plant in the front on the right is Lovage.  It is sort of like celery but spicy, and you can use the seeds for pickling.  The stalks also supposedly make a great Bloody Mary straw.

Here are the artichokes again, but we have already harvested them for this year.  They are small artichokes, and super tasty.  You can srape almost 75% of the meat off of the leaves, and don't get us started on the hearts, yummmmmm!

A curant tomato, lemon verbina, basil, and cherry tomato in the cold frame

Corn!

We also made a video to take you on a tour of the garden in person.      

That's it for now, see you soon!

Welcome

Hello all, its Peter and Prema and this is an attempt on our part to keep everyone up to date on our happenings.  If this sounds like the sort of thing that would appeal to you, we will be posting here (hopefully) somewhat frequently with all manner of posts pertaining to all manner of our interests, so please check back occasionally to see what has been happening with us lately, and to see another...   ...Tale from a basement apartment!!!  

We wanted to start with a tour through the garden so that you can all see what has been taking up so much of our time, energy, sweat and love.  Back in March or April we started to get the ground ready and the soil amended and the raised beds built (including our strawberry tower).  A lot of the wood for the beds we found on craigslist or just from driving around and seeing pallets or old dressers being given away.  We got a total score one night with a free futon frame, we were sawing it into pieces in an alley at 11:30 on a friday night.  It felt sort of awesome.

   

You can see here where Prema started to create an herb spiral.  We ended up taking it out later to give the squash more room, but it is a great way to create extra growing space in a limited area and have all of your herbs in one central place.  You can also see the two blueberry bushes at the top of the big dirt patch near the grassline.

Leeks surrounding the Anise Hyssop (in the pot) a lovely beneficial-bug attracting flowering plant

SHALLOTS!!!!   ONIONS!!!!!

Prema planting in the strawberry tower.  We didn't end up with enough strawberry plants for all four sides, so we planted mint on the shady side and it took off. 

Prema had plant starts going inside under lights in April/May, and in May those started to go outside.  We had to cover the garden every night (and most days) because Seattle had such a lousy spring this year.  However, when June came and summer finally hit...   

...we had to cover the plants every night (and most days).  

Artichokes! (in the raised bed)