Pillow Road

Impossibly Perfect Tomato

Dale Dougherty — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 20:42:27 +0000

Sometimes the beauty of a simple tomato is striking — this one has just the perfect size, shape and color. I’m not kidding — it just feels good in the hand. I hope it tastes as good as it looks.

An Impossibly Perfect Garden Tomato

(I’m not sure the iPhone photo does it justice. Here a link to the original on Flickr.)

I was gathering tomatoes to do my first batch of canning. I made six quarts of tomato sauce, the first of the season. Canning is great for the far greater majority of imperfect tomatoes.

First batch of tomato sauce canned this year

Moto: molecular gastronomy

Dale Dougherty — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 12:55:31 +0000

I had the 10 course dinner at Moto in Chicago, joined by Karen, Mike and Bronwyn of the Exploratorium. The food is fun and irreverent, more art than craft, the foodie equivalent of special effects. This is my first experience of a restaurant based on the techniques of molecular gastronomy.

Artichoke Flowering

Dale Dougherty — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 03:12:00 +0000

I haven’t kept up with the artichokes. Some of them have gone to flowering, and the flowers can be beautiful. I caught this one in the evening light.

Mau Piailug | Master Navigator of Micronesia, Obit

Dale Dougherty — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 05:53:31 +0000

Sailing from Hawaii to Tahiti in a double-hulled canoe:

On that month-long trip he carried no compass, sextant or charts. He was not against modern instruments on principle. A compass could occasionally be useful in daylight; and, at least in old age, he wore a chunky watch. But Mau did not operate on latitude, longitude, angles, or mathematical calculations of any kind. He walked, and sailed, under an arching web of stars moving slowly east to west from their rising to their setting points, and knew them so well—more than 100 of them by name, and their associated stars by colour, light and habit—that he seemed to hold a whole cosmos in his head, with himself, determined, stocky and unassuming, at the nub of the celestial action.

via economist.com

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Pegboard magazine for tool organization

Dale Dougherty — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 18:08:43 +0000

via blog.makezine.com

My son Ben is working on setting up a shop in our garage. I like these hanging tool racks from Bill Gurstelle.

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Saturn Peaches and Santa Rosa Plums

Dale Dougherty — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 07:22:59 +0000

The fruit trees are coming into season. I picked a basket of Saturn peaches, which are small but very sweet with a white flesh. The Santa Rosa plums are well, particularly plump. The late rains must account for their large size. We had almost none last year. A nectarine tree is full of fruit but they are not ripe yet.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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Pam’s Metal Container Garden

Dale Dougherty — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 06:48:04 +0000

Pam’s Occidental vegetable garden uses galvanized water troughs as raised beds, which are necessary in our area to keep gophers away from the plants. I have used these metal containers for growing raspberries — mainly to keep the canes from spreading. I really like the way the containers look — the metal is clean and bright in the sunlight. Installing them is easier than digging a raised bed.

Pam’s containers are arranged on a slope, so they are propped up on one end to keep them level. Holes were punched into the bottom of the container and it was then filled with two inches of gravel before the soil was added. She has tomatoes, lettuce and lots more growing in them. The height of the bed is good for working.

Her garden also had the herb stevia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stevia), which is very sweet and used as alternative to sugar.

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Tomato Time

Dale Dougherty — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 01:51:33 +0000

The first tomatoes are ready in the garden. I have great expectations for this tomato crop. It appears that the wait that began when the plants were started in the greenhouse in March, and then put in the ground in early May, is now over. Picking the first tomatoes is wonderful, but soon there’s a flow like through a firehose of tomatoes and tomato sauce now through September. Summer is here in full.

This Roma tomato was sauteed with other vegetables and then put over polenta.

I took it with the new iPhone 4 camera, which has twice the resolution.

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Columbine on hike through Castle Creek

Dale Dougherty — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 13:52:11 +0000

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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Purple Potato Eater

Dale Dougherty — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 03:08:59 +0000

I dug about 35 pounds of purple potatoes today.

Sent from my iPhone

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