See that tomato? It’s our one and only tomato. Oh, we’ll have more later (with some 12 tomato plants in the yard, we’d better!) but right now, this is it. Our August bounty.

Hey! I think we just saved fifty cents on our grocery bill!

We really do have a great yard for gardening — good soil and decent light when the pruning gets done — it’s just that this year (The Interminable Year of Reclaiming our Lives as I’ve been tempted to call it) we kinda forgot about Summer.

Seriously. It was April and we were talking about getting some plants into the garden as soon as we could find a spare moment. Then somewhere in June we found one day to till a bit of soil and drop in a few assorted tomatoes, chiles, and herbs. Then, next thing you know, it’s August and the damn plants are just sitting out there in the jungle — barely growing — in this absurd late summer weather of sun one day and rain the next.

So now we’re crossing our fingers for a summery September, or if not for that, then at least for a harvest that doesn’t involve heavy rain and an onslaught of tomato blight.

Meantime, I’ve made a note in the Reclaiming our Lives mental file: Please try not to be completely busy and broke next planting season, and for the love of all that’s photosynthetic, remember: even if you’ve got just five spare minutes three times a week, pruning shears and chain saws are your friends!

(WHAT’S NEXT: Ahriman and Port will be hosting Weekend Cat Blogging on August 25th & 26th. Look for a Friday afternoon post where you can add your kitty links in the comments. The round-up will begin on Saturday and be updated in fits and starts over the weekend.)

Sometimes, you’ve got to just jump back into the water, even if you can’t find your swimsuit.

No, I’m not naked.¹ More likely, I’m wearing an ancient t-shirt from a show I’ve no recollection of doing, and sweats covered in house paint. It’s been that sort of past few months.²

But, even if I’m not ready, I have to get back into the water. See, I signed up for something and I’ve got to do it.

That something? One Local Summer hosted by Liz at Pocket Farm.

The goal: from now till the end of summer, once a week, eat an all-local dinner. Or a dinner as local as we can make it. 85% local still gets us an A for effort. The point is to take time once a week to think about where we get our food.

Me, I’m thinking maybe this time I’ll actually fare better than I did during the Pennywise Eat Local Challenge. What? Missed my posts on that one? That’s because there weren’t any. That’s how well I did.³

This time, I figure, hey! More crops are in season. We can do this.

I tell Chopper. He gives me an enthusiastic thumbs up… and then promptly goes out and lands a new job that puts him out of the house five nights a week.⁴ And, since this week we’re busy the other two nights, and I’ve put it off till the last minute, it comes down to me and my brilliant culinary mind (stop laughing) to produce Belly Timber’s One Local Summer dinner, week one.

And here’s how it goes:

First item of note: For reasons involving utterly chaotic schedules and tight deadlines, I am unable to make it to the farmers market. Go figure. At least this time of year the grocery store’s got more options. On the other hand, I’m in a rush and I don’t have time to do much looking around. Also, we’re between paychecks and I need to skimp. A lot. I remember our eggs at home are relatively local (Stiebr’s Farms in Yelm, Washington, about 135 miles away), and I’ve already got half a Walla Walla onion (245 miles, so sue me), so what better than to grab some local spinach and make a nice big tasty (and easy) omelet! What the hell, I think. I’ll work up to the creative meals later.

So, I get home and I am ready to wash spinach, and then all hell breaks loose.

The dog, you see, has broken a window. Not only has she broken a window, she has decided that her locally-sourced meal of the day will be the bee that is buzzing frantically between the cracked pane and the closed storm window just inches to the outside.

She dives for the bee. Repeatedly. I scold her (repeatedly) and tell her that Very Bad Things will happen to her should she actually catch this bee.

Of course she ignores me, so of course I shoo her away and grab a newspaper, thinking I can reach around the glass and give the bee a quick smackdown.

I do this. My hand slips, the bee flees, and the next thing you know, the outside base of my thumb is bleeding like Steve Nash’s nose in game one of the Western Conference Finals.⁵

Now, since I (like the NBA) lack a courtside cut man, it took a while for me to get the bleeding to stop, and once it did stop I was in no condition to wash spinach. The mere thought of sticking my heavily bandaged hand under tap water or near a stove was enough to send me running for the microwave.

That’s right. One Local Summer dinner number one: Microwaved eggs.

(Now is our lack of blogging beginning to make a little more sense?)

Oh! Wait! I almost redeemed myself. For dessert, I stepped outside and I ate fresh raspberries and blueberries from the yard and they were quite tasty!⁶ Better yet, I didn’t even snag my bandages on a raspberry cane!

footnotes

1. Shameless ploy to get more hits. Shut up, Kevin.

2. Stay tuned for details. I mean it this time. No, don’t leave. Honest. I really truly mean it.

3. My diary for the Pennywise Local Challenge went something like this:

4. Remember when we said we were going to go freelance and start our own personal chef business? We still are. We’re just starting slowly. Very very slowly. Why? Talk to the Sallie Mae corporation. Tell ‘em we said hi. On the bright side, Chopper’s got the first job he loves since I can’t remember when. Before this blog existed, I can tell you that much.

5. I would like to take this opportunity to note that we here at Casa Belly Timber are big NBA fans, and I am, more specifically, a big Steve Nash fan. I used to hate him, back when he played for the Mavs, because, well, the Mavs. Also, when he had long hair I called him “stringy,” but I was still rather secretly fond of him because he is from Canada and I am from Canada, and us stringy-haired Canucks should stick together, especially when we end up with profusely-bleeding body parts.

6. I suppose you’re wondering where the food photos are, and why I’ve posted a watercolor instead? No, it’s not because microwaved eggs are frighteningly unphotogenic and it was too gloomy outside to photograph the berries — although that does sound like a pretty reasonable excuse. Nope, it’s computer troubles. Again. Remember that lappy? The one that made us so happy back in September? Well Lappy seems to have suffered what we like to call a “surprise,” and Lappy contained my one remaining route for moving photos from camera to computer. But, hey, look on the bright side. If this continues and I keep blogging, either I’ll actually learn how to paint, or I’ll start posting pictures of Chopper at age ten wearing a powder-blue tux.

It was the event that almost wasn’t. The event that re-emerged from the abyss, from the long lost annals of Gastroblogian history, stifled by photographic traumas, by the death cries of a computer far past its prime, and by the evils of a creature known only by the minacious name Blogger BETA.

No. We refuse to believe it. And why? Because this meal was just too damned good.

It’s true, I confess it. We haven’t finished unpacking our kitchen. We’ve got reasons, many of which I’ll explain another day, but in brief, we’re still using our picnic basket plasticware, and we’ve no idea where we put our favorite can opener. Not that this will stop us.

It’s also true: Our camera is broken, my computer’s throwing tantrums (Lappy jealousy, I’m certain of it), and we’ve yet to figure out where we can set up a reasonable spot for food (or for that matter, craft) photos. Not that we’re deterred by this either, dang it all.

Nope. We’re determined. We’ve been away from our favorite food blogging event far too long. We’ve had too many months without proper kitchen access at all.

And so, Paper Chef Weekend, we took to the store, and subsequently armed with a bag of cranberries, a bottle of sweet vermouth, and a glug of cheap champagne, we embarked upon our search for something wild. And cheap. Cheap is good. We’re on a scary budget these days. And with that in mind, first stop: the freezer and that chunk of wild Alaskan salmon we snagged from the in-laws while we were house sitting.

Second stop? The yard. Yard? Wild? Come again?

Trust me on this. The yard is wild. At least we haven’t had anything to do with it for our two years away, and since then? We chopped a few branches off the fig tree so the satellite dish would (ostensibly) work, but yes, the yard is wild. Weeds gone wild, herbs gone wild, and most of all, apple tree gone wild. As in, it’s been two years plus since it met a pair of pruning shears.

Result? Rosemary, sage, and thyme to gather by the bunch, and apples, apples, everywhere. Most of our apples hit the ground before we could get to them, but even so, we managed a partial harvest — enough for several treats, including this Paper Chef’s dessert.

A note about the apples. I believe they’re Granny Smiths, but in all honesty, I haven’t a clue. All I know is this: they are green, they are sour, they are crisp and they are damn good.

Here’s our makeshift studio. It’s a tiny end table atop a coffee table, with a TV tray table to the side to hold the desk lamp. Both desk lamp and the bridge lamp above have full-spectrum daylight bulbs to help with the color balance, and behind the setup, I’ve got an old curtain rod and one of our freshly unpacked curtains, which I think might belong on a window around here somewhere. I’ll figure that one out someday soon.

After we’re settled in (ha ha, in our distant future), I’ll build my first true photo set-up. See, up on the island, we had a luxury — a luxury in summer at least — of an enormous bank of west-facing windows. We were in daylight heaven. Here, well… we’re in a bungalow, a tiny bungalow with tiny windows and tall trees. (My S.A.D. is sad, I tell you.) Photos in natural light will be a rare occurrence this time of year. Or, I should rephrase, considering the current condition of the camera: photos will be a rare occurrence this time of year.

But enough of that. On with the food!

For dinner: Butter and herb poached salmon with yellow pepper and sweet vermouth coulis, fried, beer-simmered polenta, and cranberried sugar snap peas.

For dessert: Apple champagne gelée, and cranberry gelée parfait with sweet vermouth caramel.

A few short tasting notes:

Here’s the thing about butter poached salmon: It is moist. Scrumptiously, perfectly moist. So moist, that it falls off your fork, and in the end, you’ve got a coulis-slopped plate with flaky, tender bits of salmon all over it (this after you’ve devoured everything else) and you do what makes perfect sense: You roll up the lettuce that was, at the start, intended to be more a decorative bed than a necessary dinner element, and you scoop every last scrap of salmon up, creating one mighty fine salmon salad roll in the process.

And here’s the thing about our rosemary polenta points: I can’t quite explain it, but the rosemary bush in the backyard is beyond this world. This is not your everyday rosemary. This is the most phenomenal, fragrant, tasty rosemary I’ve ever encountered. This is the beluga caviar of rosemary. To kidnap a phrase from a favorite FBI boss of mine, someday I’m going to write an epic poem about this gorgeous rosemary. (But first, I’m going to propagate it!)

And the gelée? A funny thing happened on the way back from the island. We left our crappy old juicer behind because we thought we’d never use it again. So, Chopper didn’t quite have the right tools for the job, and he wasn’t able to get quite enough of the pulp out of the apple juice for the gelée to gel. It was still refreshing, even if the overall effect was unbalanced, and Chopper more than made up for it with his garnish. Yes, what is that crazy thing, anyway?

Why, it’s a boing!

I had a small challenge tracking this puppy down. Google "boing" and "caramel" and you get all sorts of Boing Boing posts and references to "the blogosphere’s yummy, caramel-filled core." (Cool! It’s caramel-filled, like a Cadbury Egg! I never knew!) Add an "s" to the boing’s end, and ah, there it is: Caramel Boings from chef Gale Grand. No pictures though, so we’ll just have to assume that Chopper’s boing is up to boingy par.

A final note, this time having to do with wine: Somewhere around halfway through the preparation, or perhaps it was after we’d tasted the first bit of rosemary and polenta, Chopper asked about wine. Now here’s the thing. Back in early October, we took a trip up to Washington wine country (an unblogged trip, I should add, due to a misbehaving digital camera and a collection of 35mm film rolls not yet sent to the processor) and we accumulated a modest but adventurous collection of wine. Six bottles, I think, and I’d been so resistant to drinking them all up, I’d consistently say "no, maybe later" every time Chopper asked.

Not this time. How about the Pasek Passion Fruit wine, he said. Oh, hell yes. I mean, I’m a sucker for a good sweet wine anyway, but this was genius. By the way, Pasek bills this one as a delicious summer sipper, but who are they kidding? Here’s a secret: tropical wine and tart cranberries? An unexpected match made in heaven.

And as for the curse? Well, it took quite a while to get this post done – we’re down to one fully functioning computer between the two of us – and the evil Blogger BETA is still mucking with our Paper Chef founder and host’s blogging efforts, but we hope Christmas will come just a wee bit early and all will be resolved soon. And Owen, give us a holler if you need a non-Blogger hand. Viva le Chef Papier! Oh, yikes. I spoke French.

Shhh. I may look like I’m just lazing about in the garden with the daffodils, but actually, I’m on duty. Mommy’s not feeling well so I’m guarding the blog until she returns. (Feline enemies, beware! I know your hiding places. Well, most of them, anyway.)

The thing I hate about pruning is when you have to let go of a branch and it sproings back at you and slaps you in the face.

That and Platelicker’s land mines, buried so nicely in the newly-tall weeds. Aw, thanks pooch, you shouldn’t have.

Meanwhile, two small hints of things to come:

Also, soon appearing on our sidebar: an exciting two-word phrase containing the initials R.A.

(No, not Rodent Alert, you doof.)

So, I had every intention of baking referee striped gingerbread cookies on Monday and then biting their heads off, but then this freaky yellow thing appeared in the sky and I noticed equally freaky purple things in the garden and got distracted.

Oh, and because it was sunny, we had to spend half the day cleaning the car. Is it wrong of me, as a food blogger, to confess I found a green cheeto in the hatch?

Today, I am not an angry cat. Nor am I a frivolous cat, dressed in Kaga finery. Nor even a hungry cat, fending off my kibble from the evils of Platelicker.

No, today I am a sad cat.

My dear kitty friend Kiri’s owner Clare has been injured due to an attack by an evil canine creature and some people think it’s Kiri’s fault! Poor Kiri, doing only what us cats do best: freaking out in the face of imminent danger. I know he didn’t mean it. He’s a good cat and a sweet cat and, I imagine right now, a very sad cat as well.

And so, for Kiri and for Clare, since I can’t get to the chocolate (as it’s being heavily guarded by humans with cravings), I offer this small token of my appreciation…

…a fall color explosion!

(For more special get well soon Weekend Cat Blogging, visit Boo the cat over at masak-masak!)

My father watches over the garden from another place now. At least I’d like to believe that, even though my spiritual notions hover in that vague realm between nothing and slightly Buddhist. In the weeks before he died, we’d wheel him out to the deck so he could see the flowers and see what small progress I’d made, weeding the beds, laying tarp on the main vegetable area to rid it of grass and dandelions. Sometimes I’d ask him to identify plants, but it was difficult. His eyesight wasn’t what it used to be, and there were days when just looking up and out, away from his lap, was a chore.

Closer to the end, when he was unable to leave his bed, I described the plants to him:

We’ve got nasturtiums now, I said. Lots of them, and I’ve bought two big half-whiskey barrels to put over the septic lids.

And you’ll never guess what we found between two of the blueberry bushes. A volunteer potato plant! It even has little baby spuds on one of the roots (which I quickly reburied, of course).

These past few weeks, after he left us, I worked like a demon. It became an imperative with me — as if I’d be dishonoring his memory to not end each day with cracked, dirty fingernails and mountains of progress.

I came home from our brief trip to Portland to find more flowers in bloom, the vegetable starts flourishing (except for the onions which have become bird lunch), and a single lily in the fish pond.

I’m not quite sure if all is right in the world yet, but I know all is right in the garden. This one’s for you, Dad.

I grew up gardening at my father’s side. We lived in a 1890s farm house on a half acre of land. Not a huge spread, but enough for us to raise chickens, put in a fish pond, and plant a quite useful vegetable garden.

I don’t remember much about what we planted — other than I know we had pumpkins for Halloween, giant sized late summer zucchini, and I always begged to have at least one or two sunflowers to harvest (though I was challenged getting to the seeds before the crows did). I remember spring time when I was no more than five or six, doling out seeds, running from hole to hole with the hose, impatiently checking for sprouts, day in and day out.

More though, I remember the other highlights of the yard: Our Bing and royal Anne cherry trees, the upper branches in perfect pit-spitting distance from one another, the pie cherry tree that always yielded her crop on June 14th, thus creating the family tradition of Bastille Day pie, the peach tree that, if we were very lucky, yielded just a few peaches per year, and the mountain ash — not edible to us, but to the evening grosbeaks, it was better than the neighborhood pub. By the time those bright orange berries had reached perfect fermentation, the tree would be saturated with grosbeaks, all chattering up a storm and falling off branches, dead drunk.

That’s what I remember. My father, I’m sure, remembers the detail of his planted garden. Not just the vegetables, but his native plants as well — taking pride in having much more than the hydrangeas and camellias we saw at all our neighbors’ houses. Colts foot, bleeding heart, devil’s club. Just the names alone made our garden the coolest garden in the neighborhood.

We’ve long since moved from that house, and now my parents live at the edge of unspoiled woods with a meadow in front and just a small plot that my father’s turned into workable garden space. With my brother’s help he put in a pond. He’s planted fruit trees, raspberry canes, his favorite native plants, and a lively vegetable garden. But, in more recent months, he hasn’t been able to do much more than pull a few weeds or clip back a tiny portion of the winter’s debris.

And now it’s spring again. And this will be his last garden. And since we are here, my husband and I, and since we know how much he hates to look out form his wheelchair and see the weeds and neglect, we will plant it. We have big plans. Squash, peppers, tomatoes, an assortment of greens, potatoes, peas, and as many herbs as we can cram into our designated space. We’ll prune the fruit trees, make quick work of the berries, and run string up to the eves for a late summer riot of green beans.

He won’t be able to eat most of what we plant, and he may not be around for the harvest. But that’s not what matters here. I want him to know this garden will be well cared for. I want him to know I remember my childhood of gardening and that it was never a chore and always a pleasure. I want him to know he taught me well.