Black pumpkins?

These are really a Japanese squash. The name is kobachi or something like that. They are supposed to taste delicious, although I didn't get a chance to try. These are among the many exciting things my son-in-law grows and then sells at local farmers markets.

What's for Dinner? Ravioli di Verdura

Here is my quilt, "Ravioli de Verdura," which will be part of the What's for Dinner special exhibit. It debuts at Quilt Festival in Houston in October (not sure of dates yet). Yippee! Glad to be part of it. I stenciled the knive, fork and spoon.

Detail of the ravioli, with "tomato sauce" (made from hand-dyed burnout velvet), and artichoke heart wedges. Glass of chardonnay on the side. Yum! This is my favorite thing to order in an Italian restaurant.

sushi for lunch

My husband played hooky for most of today, so we got to go to lunch at Sota's Sushi on PCH in Corona Del Mar. Sota is an old friend who used to make sushi for us in Laguna Beach, and for a while he worked up in LA at Nobu Sushi. Now he has his own place, and it is beautiful. The sushi is great, too!

Visions, Jelly & Mariachis

I went to Oceanside with friends last week, to see the Quilt Visions exhibit at the Oceanside Museum of Art. My favorite one was Velda Newman's enormous flowery quilt. Afterwards we went to the harbor for lunch.

I made strawberry guava jelly a couple weeks ago. I have just one tree, with guavas that ripened in small groups over the past few months. They sat bagged up in the freezer until I was ready to process them. I tried to make it last year and it was a big failure - this time it was a success. The trick is not to squeeze the guavas when you are straining them, or else the jelly will be bitter.

Here I am on the left, at a wedding for the son of old family friends. Linda in the middle is the mother of the groom; Elaine on the right used to live next door to Linda in Orange. I remember the three of us baking cookies in Linda's kitchen decades ago. Fun wedding - loud mariachi band!

food at the farm

Since I took so many photos during my last visit at the farm, I'm going to group them loosely according to themes. The pictures in this post are about food.

Here is one view of their garden. You can see corn in the front, plus peppers and tomatoes. It's a big difference from our last visit in April, when it was mostly dirt.

Rhubarb's growing in the back.  Peas on the left, I forget what's on the right.

One night I baked a rhubarb pie, with rhubarb cut fresh from the garden. It had been a while since I'd baked a fruit pie, and I'd never done a rhubarb pie. Martine helped with chopping and ingredient guessing. Here it is about to be baked.

It was delish. Just the right amount of tangy flavor.

Tomatoes in the front, salad greens, chard, onions, radishes in the back row. We picked salad greens for dinner almost every night. A couple of times we had the chard - it's especially yummy in lasagna.

Another view of the salad patch.

One afternoon we went off to look for berries. Martine found a few ripe raspberries here.

She found a handful of wild strawberries, too. They are tiny but have an intense strawberry flavor.

This potato patch is located behind the pond. No potatoes ready yet, just lots of pretty green vines.