An afternoon in Little Italy

This week Ricardo and I are home on a stay-cation, but we've also decided to take a few day trips. Today was our first trip: Baltimore. We've been to Charm City a few times, but the trips have always seemed rushed and left no time for exploring. This time we went up with no real itinerary or exact plan. We talked about eating oysters or Italian food, walking around the harbor or taking a water taxi... we we're sure. 

We also didn't look at a map, got lost, and ended up in an industrial area. With the help of our iPhone, we took little side streets through the city, venturing through Greek Town, passing Johns Hopkins... and lots of other sights we've never seen. Ricardo kept yelling out names of streets that he was SURE he saw on Homicide -- it ended up being a pretty amusing ride. 

We parked our car at the Inner Harbor, because, well, that's what we're familiar with. Now, the Inner Harbor is nice and all... I liked seeing the Coast Guard cutter in the water... but it's just not our style. We wandered around desperately updating our Yelp location to try to find a non-chain restaurant, but we couldn't find anything. We even gave in and went to the ESPN Zone for a drink to regroup, but the margarita was horrible, and I couldn't wait to get out of there (this was after we walked out of the Hard Rock Cafe). 

Not sure what to do, we headed for Little Italy. Pasta... red wine... how bad could it be?

After less than a 10-minute walk, we started seeing these banners. We found it!

The streets are so neat and tidy -- much different than the North End in Boston.

Lots of nice details -- like the tile work on this doorway and bench.

Cute narrow streets.

Little touches everywhere remind you where you are.

A nice little rooftop garden.

After walking around in circles, we randomly settled on this unassuming restaurant, Caesar's Den. Inside was like stepping back in time. The waiter was polite, the food was really, really good, and we left happy, with full bellies.

But what trip to Little Italy would be complete without a trip to an Italian bakery? Believe it or not I passed on all these pastries and settled on a lemon Italian ice and some pizzelles to go.

Little Italy -- we loved your charm and your food. Day one of our stay-cation was successful... so we headed home -- after all, there are kitties to feed.

Processing tomatoes the easy way & my first VIDEO

It's the middle of tomato canning season here in Brightwood, and this year I've discovered a miracle worker: the KitchenAid Fruit/Vegetable Strainer Attachment. I almost forgot that I bought this attachment last winter when I got my stand mixer, and I can't believe how great it is. Basically, it takes hours of work down to less than an hour (clean-up included).

Here's the tomatoes that came out of my garden this week, ready to be made into sauce and canned.

The attachment was pretty easy to put together (I googled it and found a YouTube video that showed how to do it). All you do is chop up your tomatoes and put them in the food tray, then push the tomatoes down. Juice comes out on one end, and the seeds and skins come out the other end.

Here's a close-up of the magic.

Those tomatoes filled my big 12-quart pot. 

I boiled the sauce until it was reduced by half -- it took about four hours -- now we're ready for canning. At the end of the day I had five beautiful pints ready for the pantry.

And here's a video of the attachment working, with my favorite model showing how to use it (because you know if he can do it, anyone can!)

Basil = pesto

This year I found some fancy basil seeds imported from Italy at the hardware store and decided to try growing basil from seed. Ricardo absolutely loves pesto, so I planted a whole bunch of it, and now we're on our second major basil harvest of the season.

Here's our out-of-control basil, ready for harvest.

Johnny agrees that this stuff sure smells good.

Ricardo is in charge of washing the basil and making sure there are no spiders hiding in there. (In my defense he knew I was a bug-a-phobic when he married me.)

After we pulled all the leaves off the stems, I laid them out to dry.

Meanwhile, I slowly toast the pine nuts until they're a nice golden brown.

Making pesto is actually quite easy if you have a food processor. All you need is basil, pine nuts, garlic and olive oil (and salt & pepper, of course).

I make it in batches, filling the bowl with the basil, a handful of nuts, 2 or 3 cloves of garlic, salt and pepper.

As the machine is running, I pour in olive oil until it looks something like this.

After I've got all the batches made, I combine it all into the bowl again, adding more oil and processing the pesto until it's the consistency I like. 

Voila! I put about a quarter cup of pesto in each of these little bowls, and now they're ready for the freezer. 

Taming the tomato jungle

So, once again this year my tomatoes are growing out-of-control. Maybe it's too much fertilizer? I dunno... but these beasts are just too darn big.

I grew tomatoes in two locations this year -- here's the raised bed next to our back door. Its gotten so bad that we can barely make it up the stairs -- every few days I have to try to tie them up... but now they're taller than our 8 ft. poles, and I'm running out of ideas.

And here's the new tomato bed, by our back fence. I made Ricardo stand in front of the plants so you can see I'm not lying -- they're over 8 ft. tall! We're gonna need a step ladder to pick them.

I shouldn't really complain, though... because look at all these lovelies!

So good to be home

I love coming home each day, but Monday nights are especially sweet. I can't wait to get off the bus and make the big walk up the hill. 

I'm greeted by my cats at the door every day, but on Mondays they really seem anxious to see me. Today when I came home I had this pitiful little face starting at me. Poor Samantha! Such a sad little concerned face.

After some much-needed kittie attention, I headed out back to the garden. Today I had a pretty good harvest: the pole beans are starting to come in (there are 5 varieties of beans here), and I got a couple of big tomatoes.

This baby is particularly impressive... it's called a Mortgage Lifter. Gotta love Monday nights.

Our CSA

This year Ricardo and I used some of our tax refund to buy a CSA share (community supported agriculture). If you're not familiar with this, basically you pay an upfront amount to a farm, and then every week during harvest, you get a share of what the farm is able to produce. There's no guarantee that you'll get certain foods, or how much you get, it's up to mother nature. But, for about $26 a week for 28 weeks, I get a box of organic produce -- and that seems like a pretty good deal to me.

I chose this CSA (there are over a hundred local CSAs here in DC), because the pick up day & location: Saturday morning in Silver Spring. The Silver Spring market isn't as huge as the one I'm used to in Dupont Circle, but it's not nearly as crowded, either -- and they have lots of the same vendors.

My farm is Spiral Path, a family farm in Pennsylvania. Here's the truck they drive down to our area once a week.

And here are the stacks of CSA boxes. All I have to do each week is check my name off a list, and grab a box. It's that easy - I paid upfront in February. In the box is also a nice newsletter that lets you know what's going on at the farm and a few recipes for what's in your box.

You never know what you'll get each week, and to me that's part of the fun. Here's what we got one week: 2 kinds of lettuce, green beans, heirloom tomatoes, sunsugar cherry tomatoes (Ricardo's favorite), cucumber, zuchinni, summer squash, and swiss chard.

Of course, while I'm at the farmer's market, I tend to pick up some other stuff. I went a little crazy this week. Ricardo loves the scones and baguettes, and I'm partial to the fresh ricotta and mozzarella.

We really love our CSA -- we'll definitely do it again next year. It keeps us eating healthy!

Bonnie & Clyde get collars

Our porch kitties, Bonnie & Clyde, have been wandering around the neighborhood for a long time with no collars -- and we decided we should put collars and tags on them cause we've grown so attached to them

Here's Clyde, my supermodel cat, posing on the porch railing showing just a hint of his new striped collar.

And here's another angle with a little bit of the silver tag showing -- he's such a tease!

"Yawn! Enough with the camera, Mom!"

We got beans!

This year I planted a whole bunch of beans cause they were so good last year, and it was too cool to eat my own homegrown beans for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner.

Here's my wall of pole beans -- there are 3 varieties here. I have two more poles in other parts of my yard, but this is the big sucker that gets full sun.

I planted an early crop of bush beans in containers.

We didn't get a big harvest (maybe because it was cold and rainy for so long?), but what we did get was delish -- and there's a bag in the freezer that will be heaven on a cold winter night.

Tomato update

The tomatoes are growing like crazy -- it won't be long until we're eating the 1st tomato salad of the season -- can't wait!

It looks like I planted them too close together again this year. The new tomato ladders seem to help control them, but they keep trying to escape, and its gettting impossible to tell which branch is from which plant.

Heirloom tomatoes...

supersweet cherry tomatoes...

and roma tomatoes.

Nighttime visitor

Rocky raccoon paid us a visit, and didn't mind being photographed one bit -- he was actually quite a ham!

"Sniff-sniff... what do we have here? Kitty kibble?"

"You don't mind if I help myself, do you?"

"I'm still hungry -- do you got anymore?"