I don’t have a lot of time today, but I wanted to put up a quick post memoralizing a great meal at a wonderful restaurant, Flea Street Café, which embodies just about everything that seems important as a goal in food:

The best part of the meal, no kidding, was a tiny plate that was a bonus, “taste of the season”: lightly cooked green beans with lemon, salt and chives.  The flavor was way too good to have just been beans!

Good Stuff indeed.

This also explains absence of posts as I was away on work-related travel to Palo Alto.

Everyone knows that praying mantises are good news in the garden eating all manner of bad bugs.  I happened to catch this guy hanging out just outside of our back door.

Less commonly known is the ladybug larva, shown below as a black and orange smudge, due to focusing issues. ( )

There were a whole bunch of them munching on the aphids that were covering and dessicating the dying leaves.  It’s striking to me that both the aphids and larva seemed to show up out of nowhere to find some random dying melon leaves.  I was happy to let the leaves stay awhile in order to fatten up and become healthy ladybugs.

Originally uploaded by chris brandow

This is the first big batch of “compostables” that I had (I mean besides my children!).  It was worth a picture because they were the detritus from preparing a batch of homemade applesauce based on her grandma’s recipe (secret ingredients: apples, water & sugar).  Of couse, my children still vastly prefer the jarred stuff, despite the incredible taste of the fresh stuff.  Also interesting is the economics of applesauce.  I haven’t worked out the precise prices & volumes, but it seems clear that despite getting most of the apples at 50 cents/pound, jarred applesauce is still cheaper.  That sucks!

Originally uploaded by chris brandow

I just found out about this and time is short, but this is the spark perhaps to get the veggie beds done pronto and get some love for the front yard garden.

It’s time to rumble

send me your suggestions, the rules are here

You might think that since I blog about front-yard kitchen gardening and because, you know, I actually have a kitchen garden in my front yard, that I am an accomplished composter and that it would be second nature to me. Well, the fact of the matter is that this is not the case. I have fooled around with composting a good bit, but I have never consistently dumped all my scraps and made lots of compost-y goodness. I’ll explain the reasons later, but basically, I have always made it too much work.

Well, things are about to change!

We just got this composter from the City of Pasadena for $40:

I just don’t understand why anyone would think that we are overboard about composting!

and just to be clear, we are not planning on composting in the living room.

Lest I appear too earnest, this made me laugh:

h/t: terrapass blog

To the folks that have been working for TWO YEARS to get the New York City schools to take the seemingly obvious and simple step of getting carrots served in the school from New York, instead of California.  Sometimes local eating and sourcing doesn’t make sense, but this is not one of those cases.  It is amazing how difficult it is to get institutions to move.

Bravo!

I am not sure if this fits in with the “philosophy” of front yard gardening, but a pumpkin 5 times the weight of my entire family.  Cool:

Originally uploaded by chris brandow

This is a shot of my seed garlic being prepared for planting.  I just broke the cloves out from the heads.  It’s hard to tell from the picture but there are three types in this pile: the pink, “rose du lautrec”; purple creole; and a porcelain type.  I am hoping to get the garlic planted this week.