Some More Egg Pictures

You'd think I dropped off the face of the earth.  It's been 6 months since I was in here.  Well, all I can say is I'm sorry.  So, I'm picking up the reins again with some hard boiled eggs my husband, DeeDude, made today. 

He always puts a secret message on them so we can tell them apart from raw eggs.  The message is different every time.  Today's message is:  I 8 T E T S H G R H (with an arrow pointing right).  The game is to see if I can guess what the message means.  Rarely do I guess right, but that's all part of the fun.  If you click on the picture you can see a larger view of it.  Click on the "Read More" button to see the answer.  And, I am glad to be back.

Persimmon Fruit

I made a really quick sweet treat for after dinner. It involved the persimmons my landlady gave us and some sugar. That’s it. Just two ingredients. How easy is that?

So, here’s what you do. Cut the top off of the persimmon. Peel the fruit with a paring gizmo. Cut it up into a dice. Not fine, just little chunks. I haven’t figured out whether to use the core or not. When I was eating one of them like an apple I ate the whole thing (minus the skin). When I cut it up for tonight’s dish I did not use the core.

The fruit I used was as firm as an apple. My neighbor, Phil, said that his daughter-in-law likes when they get all soft and gummy. I haven’t tried them that way and like them firm. Oi Lin, my landlady, said to eat them when they were firm.

So, cut up one persimmon and put it into a sauce pan. Put two soup spoons of white sugar into the pot. I’m betting brown sugar would be interesting too. Run the sauce pan under the tap and put just a little bit of water in. Turn on the heat and bring it all to a boil. It’s not going to take very long at all. Stir it around with a spoon until the fruit is soft.

I suppose you could eat this as it is for a really sweet treat either hot or cold. You could put it on an English muffin, or a piece of toast, or a roll. Or, do like I did. I put it on top of a bowl of cottage cheese and made a barley duke. My great grandmother Neddie used to make barley dukes all the time, but she used grape jelly and cottage cheese. It’s a lovely cheesey taste with a sweet note.
The pictures I shot were from my new Canon Rebel XSi camera.

Harvesting Basil Seeds

I've had a basil plant out on the patio this season. It's been so nice to be able to step outside and pluck off basil leaves to use in spaghetti sauce and other things that I'm cooking. In California we have a pretty long growing season and the plant is just now starting to look pretty worn.

I went outside today to trim off some of the gangly branches and it occurred to me that I might look for some seeds. The picture of little dried out blossoms in the palm of my hand hold 4 seeds each.
I spent some time out in the sunny weather to extricate a number of seeds shown in the tiny dish.

My friend Barbara told me to put them into an envelope and then into the refrigerator where they will last for years. She said she's got seeds that are 20 years old that are still good.

Fig Apple Fruit Spread - Spirited Recipe

So, the guides and I made a Spirited Fig and Apple Spread this evening.

Here's how it started. Our neighbor Arnold came over the other night with a humongous bag of figs. I took some in to work because they like them there and pondered what to do with the rest of them. There were so many and I just don't eat them fast enough. These figs were ready to eat now! By the way, you can click on these pictures and they will get larger.

The guides suggested to me after dinner that I do something with the figs. I fired up my MasterCook program and put fig in the search. Out of 400 some recipes I just wasn't getting anything that made my heart sing. Also, not all of those recipes that came back from the search even had figs in them, so I don't know what was going on with that.

I settled back and one of the guides suggested I put them in a pot and cook them up. I fiddled around on the Internet looking for somebody making fig jam and came up with a recipe. Except I really didn't have all the sugar they were asking for and I didn't have the pectin and I don't have canning jars.

So, from this point on I just surrendered to Spirit and we started to cook. In go the figs into my biggest sauce pan. I rinsed them off, pinched the stems off and just squashed them into the pot. Figs exploding everywhere. On some of the smaller ones I discarded obviously thicker skins but most of the skins went into the pot.

The guides said, "One cup of sugar", which I poured around the figs. Then, they suggested an apple and I remembered that apples could be used to help firm up in the absence of pectin. I took two apples that were so soft that nobody was going to eat them. I pealed them and then grated, on the small holes in the grater, right on top of the figs and the sugar. I took a few trial stirs and set the heat to medium.

This mixture was so thick even in the beginning that bubbles popped up around the sides of the pan. I'm looking at it seeing lumpy bumps and shreds of skin and think, "Ah, the Cuisinart stick blender." Grabbed that and a minute or so later everything was nicely smoothed out. Still lots of tiny bumps from the seed parts of the figs...I'm assuming those are seeds. Anyway, think Fig Newton.

This stuff is so thick now it is bubbling like a volcano and I'm getting splashed. It's hot now too. So, I grabbed a handy dandy screen shield and that helped out with the splashing.

It really didn't cook that long. I saw it turn red which was a really cool color. Got even thicker and tasted delicious. So, maybe 5 minutes tops.

I let it sit for a minute or two and then washed out three containers, one leftover jelly jar, a nice anchor hocking glass container and a small custard dish with a lid. Nothing matched, but if this sets up and I will be sure to let you know, I've got a couple of friends I want to give some too.

Mystery Eggs

Can you guess what the eggs say? This is a secret message from DeeDude my husband.

A I C T I A O S T O E

The answer is below

The Answer:

I cooked twelve. I ate one so there's only eleven.

Our Anniversary Dinner

We celebrated our 33rd wedding anniversary at home. DeeDude fixed us a pork tenderloin. He went on the internet for inspiration and guidance. Into the middle of the tenderloin he put mozzarella, basil and garlic. Rolled it up and tied it with string. He roasted it in the oven and it was fabulous.These pictures are of him making our most delicious meal.

Hard Boiled Egg Message

Here's the hard-boiled egg message of the week from DeeDude.  Can you figure it out?  PCNDAOEL

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Answer:  Pauline cooked nine. Dennis ate one.  Eight Left.