Lots to catch up on today. It's been a very busy week - I barely had time to cook, much less blog about it! This is the dahlia blooming in my garden. Usually we only get one blossom from it, but this year it looks like we'll get at least 6!

Breakfast on Wednesday was Crane Melon with yogurt and honey. The yogurt had sat out overnight, but it was still a bit runny and not too tangy, so I left it out when I went to work. I also turned on the tomato sauce again and let it cook on low for the rest of the day.

Lunch was two slices of leftover fried green tomatoes, a sliced red tomato, cheese, and basil. I could have used some carbs, but it tasted good.

After work I bought a whole bunch of garlic from the co-op. The local garlic was done, and I wanted to get as much of it as I could before it was all gone.

Dinner on Wednesday was left over potato casserole. It was even better the second day. As it was warming in the oven, I went out and picked a few apples from our tree and blackberries from a few places around our house. After dinner I made a simple batter from eggs, flour, butter, and honey. I cut the apples up and put them in a greased pan, topped them with the blackberries, and topped that with the batter. What resulted was a kind of cobbler type dessert. Still a tiny bit chaffy, but delicious with honey and a little sour cream on top. This was the first dessert I've made all month. It's totally amazing to me that I'm not really craving sugar too much!

I finally put the yogurt in the fridge after dinner. It worked really well - the perfect texture and tangyness. I also bottled the tomato sauce that had been simmering all day. It was super thick and rich. I got a quart plus a pint total. I'm not sure what I'll do with all of it, but I'm sure it'll get used.

Breakfast of Thursday was yogurt, honey, and the rest of the Crane melon. For lunch I heated up some leftover potatoes with sour cream and chives from the porch.

After work I picked up a bag of spring mix and a tomato for salad.

For dinner we baked the Kabocha squash that had been sitting on the table all week. It was huge and super dense - I had to have Johnny help me cut it. While the squash started baking I sauteed half an onion, a zucchini, and a bunch of shitake mushrooms in butter. When the veggies were relatively cooked, I pulled the squash out of the oven and stuffed the veggie mixture into the two halves. I topped it all with grated Mozzarella cheese and put it back in the oven. In about 40 minutes it was done, and we ate it with salad. It was good - the squash was amazingly creamy for being so dense - dry, but not too dry. I especially enjoyed the mushrooms. I haven't had anything mushroomy for a while!

On Friday I had to work at 6am, so I brought the rest of the apple blueberry cobbler in to work with me and heated it up in the microwave for breakfast. I went home at about 11 for a lunch of scrambled eggs with Corno di Toro peppers and cheese.

After work, I did my last weekly local co-op shopping trip. I got:

• 1 quart of milk and 1 block of Mozzarella from Ferndale
  
• 1 bottle of Merlot from Orleans (at $20.00/bottle, this was a bit of a splurge, but it's one of my favorite vineyards)
• 1 big Butternut squash, 1 small Ha-Ogen melon, and 1 small Annana melon from Willow Creek
• 1 little square of truffle goat cheese from Arcata - this was also a bit of a splurge, but I've heard really good things about this particular cheese, and I wanted to give it a try.
• 2 Humboldt Grassfed inside flank steaks
• 2lb of lamb stew meat (boneless chunks)
  
• 1 red onion and three yellow onions from Arcata
• 1 block of Fontina cheese from Lolita
  
• 3 Comice pears, 4 Bartletts, and three tomatoes from Orleans
  

We had a few errands to run in Eureka on Friday evening, and we didn't get back till around 8. We heated up the second half of the Kabocha squash and ate it simply by itself. How wonderful leftovers are!!

We had a busy day today - Johnny is vending at a local festival (if you haven't, you should check out his website www.picksandstones.com) and I was helping him set up. Breakfast was hurried - yogurt honey and the Ha-Ogen melon.

The festival was on the Arcata town square, right by the farmers market, so after our booth was set up I walked to the market and did my weekly shopping. I bought:

• 1 5lb bag of mixed potatoes from Arcata
  
• About 3 or 4 lb each of dry black beans and dry white soup beans from Arcata (this is the first time I've seen these at market - they just harvested them this week!)
• A few pounds of sugar snap peas from Blue Lake. The weather is cooled off enough now that peas are starting to show back up at market.
• 4 nice sized red shallots
• 1 big bunch of red chard
• about 1lb of shitake mushrooms

I walked home with all of this - it was heavy, but I made it. At home, I put started soaking the black beans for dinner and made myself an early lunch of boiled potatoes and sour cream. The sour cream turned out really good and thick this time. Probably because I let it culture for almost a full 48 hours. After eating, I headed back downtown to help Johnny for the afternoon.

It was hard to be at the fair and not eat any of the delicious food - There were so many kinds to choose from: African, Lao, Egyptian, Mexican.....you name it, it was there. The smells were hard to take, but I survived. It made me want to open a restaurant or food cart with nothing but local......at least there was a booth selling local wine from Petrolia!