Late night adventures in the kitchen

Inspired by Mark Bittman's article on Mexican popsicles in Wednesday's New York Times, we decided to make our own variation on Thursday night. We had three limes in need of juicing, as well as a pint of strawberries from the Wallingford farmers market that were super ripe and ready to eat, so we settled on...

Strawberry-lime paletas

1. Clean and hull a pint of strawberries and juice 1-2 limes, depending on size. Set the juice aside.


2. Pop the strawberries in the blender and puree
Before...


...and after.


3. Add one cup of milk and blend.


Sea Breeze Farm on Vashon Island sells real, raw milk at the local farmers markets, and it's the only white milk I've ever willingly drank straight up. So, so delicious and perfect for our paletas. You don't have to use raw milk for these, but I recommend using whole milk.


4. Add 1/4 cup sugar and blend again.


5. Add lime juice to taste - 3 tablespoons was perfect for us.


6. Get your popsicle mold ready, along with something to pour the puree.


7. Pour it in and you're ready to freeze.


8. Find some room in your freezer and freeze the popsicles overnight.


9. Enjoy, either traditionally like me or in your own special way like Larry.

Grow your own...

Vegetables, of course. What did you think I meant?

We went a little crazy this year at the Seattle Tilth Plant Sale and brought home what we thought were about 60 plant starts, but discovered yesterday that several start containers actually held 4 starts. More spinach for us! Our usual combination of store-bought planters and recycled kitty litter buckets was no match for all the plants we had, so we built a raised vegetable bed in the backyard. It took a few days, but it's all planted now and I can't wait to eat fresh salads and veggies all summer long. I just hope the squirrels and rabbits don't get them first!


This picture skips ahead a few steps in the process. Before we started, Larry sketched out the design and then we went to Home Depot for the wood. They'll cut it for you there so you can make the bed any size you like. We chose 5 x 5 - in hindsight we could have gone larger but that would have required even more soil, and this is a good manageable size.



We needed at least 25 cubic feet of soil and wound up with 27: 18 feet of organic top soil, 6 feet of organic compost, and 3 feet of organic steer-gro manure. We layered it in - 3 bags of soil, one bag of compost, one bag of manure. (Yes, the flies did hang around for a while.)



After we put in each set of layers, we raked it to mix. We also put in some fish bone fertilizer after the first round, just to make the soil extra rich.



Once the soil is in and mixed, you're ready to plant! We started with lettuces, since we have a ton. Here you can see we've planted arugula, buttercrunch, merlot, romaine, radicchio, and summer spinach.


Here's the finished bed. On the other half we planted bok choy, napa cabbage, broccoli and brussels sprouts.



Here's the rest of the garden - like those classy kitty litter buckets? Hey, this is Seattle and we like to recycle. Just drill yourself 7 or so holes in the bottom, rinse it thoroughly and you have a great container for tomatoes, peppers or chard (which is what you see below). There are also some kale, onions and endive that we started from seed in the winter - they're just now starting to thrive.



And the back porch. In the back, broccoli and brussels sprouts started from seed - they take forever to mature, it seems. Then we have sorrel (the tall leafy one), kale, and more peppers, and strawberries on the left.



With all those flowers blooming, maybe we'll actually get to eat some strawberries this summer!