WOW! What an amazing trip.

Here are just a few pictures from our trip up the coast. We stayed about four hours drive North from the Bay Area just outside of the town of Mendocino. These shots were taken at the mouth of Big River where it empties in to the ocean at Casper Beach. The boys have on wet suits as they went body surfing in the ocean. This river is beautiful and has a sandy bottom where these pictures were taken . It's banks are studded with majestic red woods and salmon and steel head run its' length.

We couldn't fish for salmon but we did fish off the rocks and off a boat and caught so many fish we couldn't eat them all so we were forced to freeze many of them. All the fish we caught were various types rock fish and ling cod, the largest of which was a gorgeous 10 pound carnelian cod. The trip was amazing. We did everything from building a fire on the private beach outside our rental house where we made s'mores to soaking in the hot tub overlooking the pounding waves below the cliff on which it was perched. We wanted to stay longer but alas, we needed to come back to the reality of day to day life in the Bay Area. Mauricio and I have decided that we really want to buy some property up this way. It's such a beatiful stretch of coastline with some of the largest and most majestic redwoods in the world.

Is It Too Early?

Well, my garden doesn't think so... We have pumpkins of all shapes, sizes and colors in all stages of maturity on vines in the back an front gardens. In fact, I'm beginning to wonder why we planted so many damned pumpkins, I mean there's only so much one can do with pumpkins, right?

We are about to leave for our coastal vacation. I cannot tell you how stoked I am to be going. It's a three hour jaunt up the coast by car yet world's away in feel. The sleepy town of Mendocino is a quaint artists playground perched high atop a bluff overlooking the most beautiful coastline in the state, in my opinion. There are amazing places to eat fresh caught sea food as well as sustainable organic foods. The majestic redwoods are a five minute drive and so are a myriad of beautiful rivers. There's everything to do from horseback riding to abalone diving to fly fishing. We'll also be taking a ride on the scenic Skunk Train out of Fort Bragg a mere 10 minutes from where we're staying. *sigh*

Impending Fall Harvest

Outside of the long season vegetables such as corn, eggplants, basil, peppers and tomatoes my garden is now cleaned, prepped, freshly composted and already beginning to sprout the myriad of Fall and Winter vegetables that I've seeded there. There's broccoli, cauliflower, beans, kale, collard greens, turnips, lettuce, cabbage, brussel sprouts, spinach, swiss chard and more that I can't think of right now. I was relatively happy with how my garden preformed this year, the first in this newly reconstructed bed. It fed us through the summer and I purchased very little in the way of vegetables at all. There are many changes I will be making such as raising the soil level another 4 inches or so to meet the edge of the bed, adding more compost, even more bat guano and paying closer attention to symbiotic plant groups which benefit each other by being placed in close proximity.

Milly & Lexi

And they say cats and dogs can't get along... Milly is my friend's 9 week old walker hound pointer mix and just about the cutest thing around. Lexi kitty is approximately 2.5 months old. They absolutely love each other. The proof of this is how they play with toys together and follow each other around constantly. I apologize that the video clip below is so short but it's the best I can do with my new video camera as I'm still learning the ropes.

White Babcock Peach Jam

I made 12 jars of White Babcock Peach jam last night. I started by boiling and shocking 7 pounds of peaches to get the skins off. I was reluctant to skin them because I knew their skins would add a delicate, beautiful blush to the jam but peach jam made with skin on peaches has hairy chewy bits to deal with.

Anyhow, I think it tastes marvelous! The peaches came from my parent's trees. They have three fruiting peach trees with branches so loaded with fruit, they're actually breaking off.

Tonight is bread baking night. I'll be baking a few loaves for us to eat over the next week or so. I usually do a honey whole wheat and then a savory loaf with cheese and herbs. Bread is stupid expensive and loaded with unnecessary ingredients. Baking my own loaves costs around $1.50 per loaf give or take a few cents, using the highest quality natural ingredients I can get my hands on.

And Then...

Here's the creme fraiche hanging to drain at room temperature for 8 hours. This hanging process naturally thickens it and also develops the tang and slightly nutty flavor associated with French creme fraiche. In the middle picture I am showing the thickness of the creme fraiche after it's initial 12 hour ripening period. The culture has set the heavy cream and it now has the consistency of a thick whipped cream. Pictured last is the extra thick organic yogurt I made. And let me tell you, I will never buy yogurt again. This yogurt was so good it made me suspicious. It was so damn creamy and thick. When I compared it to some of the more "top of the line" yogurts out there, it won hands down. Best of all, it's organic and it's ingredient list is only two words long.

So you want to know what I did with all this dairy heaven? Well, first off I need to ask you if you've ever heard of PinkBerry? If not I'll just tell you they're the latest craze in frozen dairy goodness. I've had their stuff and it's good but what I made with this yogurt was great. After allowing the yogurt's tartness to mature, I added it to my ice cream maker. When it was just about frozen, I added about 2 cups worth of a mixture of blueberries cooked down with honey. This super sweet mixture swirled in to the yogurt and balanced beautifully with the creamy tartness. Needless to say, my kids went bananas for the stuff and the two quarts were finished over the weekend. So my total ingredient list went like this: Organic Whole Milk, Organic blueberries, Wild Honey. PinkBerry, eat your heart out. Now on to the fate of the quart of creme friache. We had company for dinner last night and I made a Nectarine Upside Down Cake with lightly Sweetened Whipped Creme Fraiche. It was rather delectable and consumed within seconds so there's no picture unfortunately.

The Wonderful World of Natrually Fermented Dairy Products

Hello all, sorry I've been too busy to post here lately but here's a snap shot of one of my many cheese/fermented dairy related projects. Both of these will sit for 12 hours. The yogurt at 116 F. and the Creme Fraiche at ambient room temperature.

In the bowl pictured at top, is a quart of organic Creme Fraiche fermenting at 87.1 F after having added the bacterial starter. Creme fraiche is an amazingly decadent treat not unlike sour cream except twice as rich and creamy with about half the tang/acid. It's super versatile and can used in many applications both savory and sweet, especially where French desserts are concerned. For a measly 8 oz. container of non-organic creme fraiche, you can expect to pay around $3.50-$4.00 at the supermarket. This batch is 24 oz. which breaks down to a cost of a little over $1.50 per 8 oz. portion or at total of $4.50 for the quart.

I'm also making two quarts of homemade, organic, extra thick, tangy Bulgarian style yogurt in my yogurt maker. Making yogurt in this fashion costs less approximately $1.15 per quart for a product that is FAR superior in flavor and composition to any store bought yogurt product you can find. Plus, the starter culter I'm using as Lactobacillus casei and Bifidus along with acidphillous which are all extremely beneficial probiotics.

A Natural Progression

As we move through Summer more of the late season crops are beginning to make their appearance. In order from top to bottom are baby White Ghost Pumpkins, California Wonder Bell Peppers, Red Bliss and Yukon GOld potatoes in blossom, and Jason half asleep holding an armful of squash I picked yesterday. My squash plants which include Eight Ball, Italian Zucchini, and Yellow Crook Neck are totally out of control. I cannot even shove enough squash down my neighbor's throats to get rid of it all. In my never ending search for recipes to utilize this over abundance, I found a nice casserole, not unlike a lasagna that uses long, wide, thin strips of zucchini in place of noodles. I think I'll give it a shot and hopefully my family won't run screaming in horror from the table at the sight of yet another zucchini dish for dinner.