Wedding Catering

This past weekend I had the pleasure of doing the desserts for a friend's wedding.  Held at the Frog Pond in Skaneateles, on the most perfect day of the season it was probably the most beautiful wedding I've had the privilege of attending.  The bride's 'do-it-yourself' aesthetic was executed superbly, like a hip-picnic colliding with Martha Stewart and a burlap sack.  Here's the desserts.

Some Farm Photography

Rain All Week and an important Public Service Announcement

With rain on the forecast for much of the week we've sidelined some of our scheduled plantings affording me a true day off.  Chard, Tomatoes, Peppers, Eggplants, Melons, Squash, Cucumbers, Artichokes, and some herbs will have to hang on just a bit longer in their tiny, inch by inch cells.

So, today, while Tamara works, I'm baking and cooking up a nice dinner of Braised Rabbit atop homemade Pappardelle with a salad of spicy arugula and a crusty loaf of bread.  For dessert, rhubarb pie with a mint-infused crust will have to do.

I can't help but feel guilty that I'm not outside preparing the beds, but really working the soil in this weather would probably lead to a good deal of detrimental compaction, so I suppose I can rest easy.  Still I could be picking slugs off the mushroom logs or weeding.  Which leads me to the ultimate conclusion that I can never rest easy this time of year.  Alas, I hope to manage a little self-appeasement this evening through outrageous acts of gluttony.  Who knows?

All that being said - the Skaneateles Farmer's Market starts this Thursday, May 19th back at the old hockey rink on the corner of Jordan and Austin.  So get out and support your community and your health.  We'll be joining the Market on Saturdays when it goes to its twice weekly schedule June 11th.
In the meantime, we'll be trying to help things grow so we don't look like fools on our first day.  I think we'll be alright.  I will be baking a few loaves of bread and hamburger and hot dog rolls to help fill out our stand and we got a really cool stamp in the mail today, so ...

Here are some pictures of recent meals we've enjoyed and some other daily happenings.  If you visit this blog to enjoy my typical biting wit, you'll have to wait for another day.  I'm too busy enjoying a much needed, relaxing day in the kitchen.

ALL WE ARE SAYING ... IS GIVE PEAS A CHANCE

BEES busy collecting pollen

Salad with a nice edible flower

Fried DUCK egg with asparagus, truffled cornbread, and some cheese from the Northland Sheep Diary

Homemade Veggie Burgers with black beans and ramps topped with kimchi 

Plum Blossoms

Tamara watering our young blueberries

Pork Steak with grilled Ramps (thanks the Pig)

Soft Boiled Egg wrapped in bacon and fried (thanks Dan Barber and the Pig and some chicken)

Again

and again

and again, but back in time

Too Busy To Blog

So, it turns out that blogging is an activity better suited for the long cold winter.  With spring here I find myself barely having time to change into clean clothes before work, let alone blog about the minutia of our day to day activities.  With this in mind here is a series of pictures I compiled to explain to the interested minority what exactly we've been up to around here.  Stay tuned for more in depth coverage sometime soon.

raking in some seed for our super-flavorful spicy salad mix

march wasn't great for getting the garden going, but it was nice for sugaring

seed packets of saved heirloom vegetables Tamara packaged up for Olives and Grace

Mali moved into the barn!

I moved into the barn!

aw, dang, Tamara moved into the BARN!

one of our (Tamara's) top-bar hives didn't survive winter, which is sad, but also means we get to steal all the HONEY!

Tamara breaking off comb

some of our finer comb nicely jarred

the extraction device from hell!  next time I'm just crushing the comb with my hands

Mali and Tamara straining the wax from the honey

Damn Ethel you taste good!  Many delicious accidents and a pork chop we raised come together on the plate - a crostini of roasted and pureed overwintered parsnip with dried figs, maple syrup and truffle oil topped with self-seeded, gone wild garlic greens and our very own pork chop from Ethel (the spotted pig) ... so good! 

fortune cookies, boxed up and ready to roll

our growing army of raised beds

rhubarb, that early fruit that acts like a vegetable, or early vegetable that acts like a fruit?

up comes the garlic!