First Tomato of the Season - Grafted Green Zebra

Well, it's June 22, 2013, and I have just eaten the first ripe tomato from the garden, and I must say, it was delicious and very much worth waiting for.  I don't know about you, but I can't bring myself to buy $4-5 /lb organic tomatoes from the farmers market. I just can't do it. Especially knowing, if I can be a little more patient, I will have my own home grown.  

This year, we planted 5 different types of grafted tomatoes. Green Zebra was the first one that produced a ripe tomato. I think it's about time we did a nice fertilization of the tomatoes with some worm castings. I want to make sure we get a very high yield so I can do a lot of canning later this summer. By the way, Happy Summer!

Turk One-Piece Forged Iron Fry Pan - Can you love a pan?

I think I may just love my new pan from Turk. Made in Germany and purchased from Kaufmann Mercantile. I bought the smallest one to try it out, and I may just have to get the next size up. We've already seasoned it so it doesn't stick, it makes "to die for" potatoes, with the crunchy bits, you just can't get with non-stick pans. My goal is to replace all of my non-stick pans forever, so I splurged on the one-piece instead of the riveted pans that are a bit less expensive.  I also recommend the flax seed oil method of seasoning pans. I used it on my new Turk pan, and I added a few coats to my wok. There is some chemistry behind the type of oil you use to season the pan, and it works great.

Healdsburg Shed and Deborah Madison's Book Vegetable Literacy

Dave had volunteered with Niki Ford in the Kitchen Garden at Montalvo, so when we found out she was at the Shed in Healdsburg as the Culinary Director, we kept a close watch on the opening, and since we like the wine country anyway, we thought it was worth it to take a short trip up from Cupertino to see it.

We were there to see what the Shed was all about and to attend  A Conversation with Author Deborah Madison led by local food and radio personality, Michele Anna Jordan. Deborah has a new book out called "Vegetable Literacy" and the conversation was centered around that.  The room was quite full, the conversation was interesting and lively. Afterwards, Niki Ford prepared some of the recipes from the book for sampling, and there was a book signing.  Michele Anna Jordan also had her book there called " Vinaigrettes-Other-Dressings-Sensational-recipes"

Solar Dehydrating

I started researching solar dehydrators because my electric one is noisy, and of course uses electricity. I can't wait to try out the solar dehydrator that Dave made. After looking at several different types,  including the "Appalachian box" we settled on one that uses a theory of the "hot tin roof".  We found so much excellent information here, and paid for the downloaded book called "Feeding Ourselves" to get more detailed information.  We ended up with a 2' x 4' single layer dehydrator, that gives us about 8 sq.ft of drying space.  Dave has lots of pictures and will explain in detail how he made it. I'll be showing what I dehydrate in a future post.