Farewell January 2022

 

 

There aren't enough words

Or too many words

So just farewell, January 2022

 

 

Beefeater Salad Miyako Hotel San Francisco

 This is a really old Bon Appétit recipe from a hotel that is now the Hotel Kabuki. Even in winter I make this salad when I cook a roast beef and have leftover beef the next day, but in cold weather I serve it alongside vegetable beef soup, also made from scraps of the meat. 

I serve the roast beef with its vegetable sides and drippings gravy the first night, use the gravy to make excellent soup the second night, but I also make up the salad the second day too only I save it for the third night as it needs to meld 24 hours in the fridge.

 

Mix up the vinaigrette first: whisk 1 cup olive oil, 1/4 cup red wine vinegar, 1 teaspoon each of lemon juice, salt, dry mustard, and minced fresh chives, parsley, and tarragon [I do my best with what's still alive in the herb pots moved to the barn in the winter]. Add 1/2 teaspoon of Worcestershire sauce, and 1/4 teaspoon each of black pepper and thyme. 

Cook a few potatoes until tender. 

Cut into julienne strips 1 pound of leftover cooked roast beef [or whatever amount you have]. Chop an onion [or scallions], a bell pepper [whatever color you have], a stalk [or two] of celery, and one dill pickle [I leave it out sometimes but it is good with this. Slice the cooked potatoes in their jackets and I chopped a bunch of parsley from the grocery, saving some for final garnish.]

 

Sauté sliced mushrooms until golden in [unsalted] butter and combine with the roast beef and vegetables. Pour over the vinaigrette, toss and chill for 24 hours. 

Arrange on lettuce leafs and garnish with beet slices [I use pickled beets] and quartered hard-boiled eggs, and  chopped parsley. 

[If I have good anchovies on hand I follow the recipes directions to garnish with that but not the white asparagus spears they suggest.]

My apologies to three of my vegetarian friends who faithfully visit here even when months have gone by since I last posted. 

You gotta start somewhere and this was it. And it really is delicious, even in winter when it snows.

Speaking of snow, we've had two beautiful snowfalls and several mornings when the grass has at least turned white. Snow still makes me feel 16 again, or like the mom of small children home on snow days that I once was. Although I no longer make rice krispy squares on snow days.

I wonder what beastie made these tracks in the snow on my kitchen porch?

 Surely not my tiny BreeBree with her dainty paws!

 Begosh and begorrah, it is Herself!

 

Welcome November, my favorite month of the year!

 When it comes about November I get the queerest feeling, as if the real year is beginning.

                         Nelia Gardener White

 

 

Heavenly Autumn

 

I have never been a lover of the hot days and I hope John Donne was right when he said it will always be autumn in heaven.

                                             Elizabeth Goudge in 

                                The Joy of the Snow

  

Tail End of September

 September has been lovely here at Home Hill, ending with comfortably warm days after delicious four days of chilly nights and days where the AC was off and windows open. 

I am ready for frost on the pumpkins, even though we haven't bought our pumpkins yet.

Yesterday there was a flash of orange in the garden, a monarch butterfly that tantalized me by flittering here and there but not landing long enough for a good photo snap.

 

If it were not for these late migrating beauties I would be more than ready for a good frost. The garden is dingy, no doubt about that. I'm ready to move on, ready to welcome October and praying it won't bring the record breaking heat we had in October of 2019. 

It would be nice to order up the weather we'd like, wouldn't it? Or maybe not. That's probably in better hands than mine. 

Still....

By the end of September one becomes surfeited with garden beauty...So come quickly, sharp early frost! Obliterate some of this beauty! Clear decks for the majesty of Autumn!

                                   Richardson Wright

                                   The Gardener's Bed-Book

 

One, Two, Three, Four, Five

 How could one month have gone by since my apology to yellow post? Surely it was only the other day.

 The days slip by far too quickly, don't they? I only cut one bloom to dry from the oak leaf hydrangea before they were past their peak.

But isn't it perfect? 

Two large hydrangea bushes were loaded with these blooms. I could have picked a bushel but settled for three. They dried beautifully after absorbing two inches of water. 

 

Two green ducks said "Take us home!" at the Fourth of July sale at our local antique mall. So I did. Along with five English Blue Willow saucers to serve as coasters for wet glasses. 

One dear dachshund peeks at me over the red sofa.

Did you see her?

An Apology to Yellow

Dear Yellow,

I am ashamed to admit that I have tried to keep you out of my garden. What was I thinking? 

My heart has always belonged to purples, blues, and pinks. And white. 

And by late August those favorites lose their zing, enough so that I want to look at the garden with watercolor eyes.

 

And in doing so I realize that it is Yellow that saves the day.

I am grateful for the faithful purple and white perennials that reappear every year but this year the garden needed more and the resident gardeners had less to give of themselves so on Memorial Day RH went to the 50% off sale at the family nursery that is down the road from our previous dear Valley View and came back to Home Hill with pots of blooms, all but one of which had Yellow in them. And my, how Yellow livened up the garden!

You have been gorgeous in your petunia petals!

 

And in a calla lily fountain bursting up out of a bed of something or other.

Always we have lantana but always purple. A purple pot came home with RH and an orange but this year yellow came too.

 

And for my kitchen porch a large pot of velvety purple petunias and enough little pink flowers to perfume the night air. (Dianthus?)

And a plume of a grass that is nothing like the papyrus plant in the garden (?), with a pretty Yellow canna bulb in the middle.

 

You've been my own personal Yellow "orchid" to watch for as I work in the kitchen.

 

And last but not least, all summer long on the kitchen porch, Yellow roses given me by a daughter-in-law for my birthday.

 

So, I humbly apologize to you, Lovely Yellow! I'll never be a Yellow snob again. 

This final picture was taken by my son and sums up exactly what my purple garden needed. Yellow. Because it makes purples more purple!