I also made them two eco tawashi scrubbers. One was in the shape of a tooth cutaway, but I forgot to take a picture of it. I really wanted to crochet something for Brittany. I remember her great-grandmother, Martha Smith, crocheting wonderful things for people, from afghans, potholders, all the way to crocheted ducks that “pooped” jellybeans. The tooth scrubber married her lightheartedness with functionality.

The on the “brush. floss. love.” towel, I also embroidered a “Brittany & Seth” underneath the motif.

We had to stop 2 or 3 times for directions. Everyone knew where the place was, but everyone had different directions for it. In the end, we had to deal with two construction zones that derailed us!

The first site looked good for swimming, except the bank was littered with bait containers and hooks. I was unsure about swimming in a fishing hole, and the local fishermen said there was another place upriver where people swim. There were also some pretty interesting bridges in decay at that site.

The second place turned out to be right beneath I-30! We went downriver, away from the noise of the interstate and floated around in some medium fast moving waist-deep water. Right under the bridge, the river was 2 inches deep with large gravel underneath. Just before the bridge was the packed swimming hole. The water depth was just at 5 ft, and people were flying off of a rope swing.

Ty, Sujith, and I all took turns on the rope swing. I received a bad welt from not waiting until the rope swung back to let go. Ty was a pro. There were all sorts of folk there, grilling out, swimming, cooling off. The craziest site was a 2-3 year old kid in a life vest, tethered to a tree with a clothesline so he didn’t float down river. We also saw some interesting graffiti under the I-30 bridge.

I’ve been battling bugs. Ty thinks the chiggers got my shins when I was out picking blackberries. I’m convinced they attacked when we went out to Beaverfork Lake, went swimming, then sat on a blanket in the grass. There were 30 seconds where my ankles were in contact with the grass, and I think they spread from there. The itching has been constant ever since.

I’m not going to post the picture here, but you can click through to this image if you would like to feel my pain. The bites are much darker and gross looking now, but at least they’re itching less. I used a combination of AfterBite, ChiggerX, Calamine Lotion, and Benadryl pills (at night) to fight the itch.

The other bugs I’ve been dealing with are squash borers. My new favorite blog, Little House in the Suburbs, is located in Memphis. That’s about the same latitude that we are at. They had a warning post, a fighting post, and a losing the fight post. The bugs have taken over my spaghetti squash and yellow squash plants. They apparently don’t appreciate cucumbers. The plants have yellowed off and died except for the new growth on the tips. We got 3 yellow squash, and may still get a spaghetti squash before everything dies.

The only way to get through all of this trauma is to relax on the roof. Here are some pre-fireworks/dinner pictures from our roof to put you at ease.

It is called a quick pickle because they’re pickled in 3 days, and kept in the fridge only covered, not sealed. This time the pickles included cucumbers, green beans, a few green roma tomatoes, golden and red beets, onions, garlic, and the first okra of the year.

The most mouthwatering answer was from my friend Anne Hepburn, “puff pastry crust + mascarpone & whipped cream + blackberries= best dessert ever.” I’ve got whipped cream, but no mascarpone or puff pastry. Maybe I’ll do that one tomorrow. I do have bread dough though!

The beauty bread book I keep referring to is that it has you make enough dough for 2-8 loaves depending on the size of the loaf. The dough stores in the fridge for up to 2 weeks, and we’ve never had a problem with the dough lasting that long. Most of the fruity/sweet bread recipes in the book use the challah/brioche dough, except for the cinnamon rolls. My intuition told me that the regular bread dough would be good for a rustic tart also.

Here’s the recipe for the Rustic Blackberry Tart:
1 grapefruit sized ball of the European Peasant Loaf dough
3 T melted butter
2 T granulated sugar
1 t cinnamon
1/4 t salt
1 C fresh blackberries

topping
3 T ap flour
2 T granulated sugar
2 T brown sugar
1 t vegetable oil
whipped cream

Take a grapefruit-sized piece of dough, flour it and make a gluten cloak around it (so the dough is not sticky). Flatten the dough a 9 inch silicone round cake pan. Pour the melted butter over the dough, covering all of it. Sprinkle the sugar, cinnamon, and salt over the butter. Turn the edges of the dough over to create a 1/2 inch crust. I liked the idea of putting the butter/sugar on first so it would get captured in the crust. The crust creates a wall to enclose the blackberries and topping. This also meant I didn’t have any butter left over for the topping. Next time I’ll use butter instead of oil.

Once the crust is formed space the blackberries out over the tart. Mix the topping ingredients together and sprinkle over the blackberries. Bake for 30 minutes at 425F. Top with fresh whipped cream.

Finally a rant for this post. In high school, we created a cookbook for a yearbook fundraiser. The sponsors of that feat decided to use T for tablespoon and t for teaspoon, mostly because it saved space, but it also saved ink! I’ve read so many recipes where I’ve missed the “b” in the “Tbsp” vs “Tsp”. I encourage you to implement this shorter hand abbreviation in the recipes you create or type in for a fundraiser or email to your friends.

The line on the inside of the bucket shows I’m about at a pint! That’s not really enough for a pie. Going to have to call Virginia in the Catskills for her blackberry pie recipe, because we’ll soon have enough. I’m so glad I wore long pants and gloves.

As a thank you for putting me up over the weekend, I crocheted them this Ms. Pacman tawashi eco scrubber.

Maybe I’ll post a pattern later. Free form crochet for me is becoming less and less trial and error, and more and more derivation of formulas. I did the bow in a crazy figure-8 in a combination of single, double, and triple crochet stitches.

The larger osprey squawked at us and then took off in large circles around us, performing jet ski-like maneuvers through the bald cypress maze that is Lake Conway. We watched the smaller one for a long time. It was a more juvenile creature with white splotches. Mark remarked that it gave the bird an Andy Warhol air.

Hi, I’m Julee, your cruise director on the Love Canoe.

We took a garden tour through tomatoes, red lettuce and the corn canoe!

We have been really talking up the cotton gin waste compost mix we got from Freyaldenhoven’s Greenhouse of Conway, so Mark and Robin got a load for their canoe planter. I brought them some multiplier onion seed my grandfather smuggled into the country when he immigrated.

For dinner, Robin made a great cold potato squash soup from The Enchanted Broccoli Forest. Mark grilled up some salmon and catfish with curry and without. I definitely prefer salmon, but when you’ve just canoed Lake Conway, you need to eat some catfish.

I’m so glad I tried it, it was definitely the best catfish I ever ate. Normally, I prefer fried catfish because it seems to keep all of the moisture in, and give some shape to the otherwise flaky mass. Mark has got a secret to grilling catfish, and I think he derived it from years of cooking other fish. He leaves the skin on the salmon, and cooks it skin side down. This creates a char buffer, but also the skin has a layer of fat next to the meat that keep the fish moist, but the fats rise up through the meat to cook it.

Catfish do not have the same sort of skin, and it gets discarded in the cleaning process. To make up for this lack of fatty buffer, Mark cooks each catfish fillet on a flat of bacon. He says sometimes the bacon crisps up, sometimes it isn’t as well cooked. The catfish is always the same uncharred moist goodness.

The tomatoes are taller than I am and outgrowing their cages.

We’re going to eat the first two red ones tonight, after we swim through the humidity to pick them. The air is so thick that it blurred these pictures. They’re Super Sweet Hybrid 100 Cherry Tomatoes.

Still haven’t seen fruit on the Brandywine variety, the Super Beefsteak are producing fruits even in the tiny pots. The Roma plants are full of fruit and keep getting bigger, darker, and shinier. Blossom end rot is still a factor with the Roma plants in the large containers.

On Friday and Saturday we had a lot of wind pass through the area. A few plants were knocked over, but no fruits were knocked off. To keep everything standing, I had to tie some of the outer cages to the inner sturdier cages.

But life is not just about tomatoes. Last week the Kentucky Wonder pole beans started producing in time for the sugar snap peas to taper off. I have to stand on a cooler to reach all of the beans at the top.

The spinach and radishes are officially finished. I planted a bunch of eggplants on the end of the row, and then kale along the sides. I’ve never planted kale before, and I didn’t realize it was a cool weather crop. The back side of the tomato box stays shaded sometimes, so we’ll see how they do. Otherwise, I’ll probably just keep planting more chard, lettuce and beets. The beets are so big and really need to be picked. They wilt really fast on a hot day. I should roast and freeze a big bunch.

The cabbage is just about ready to be picked too!

Finally, my favorite, the cucumbers are doing great. We’ve eaten, made taziki, and made cold soup with them so far. The dill is coming in too. I adore pickles, but nothing beats them fresh with a little salt and pepper. I think we’ve picked about 9 so far. We picked two on Saturday, and after the second rain, two popped up in their place.

The hot wax peppers are coming in, but seem to take a long time to change colors and get hot. I’ve tried to wait a few out, but they look like they’re really getting heavy for the plant so I pick them. We’re still waiting on the zucchini, mature swiss chard, brussels sprouts, and for a second yellow squash.

We are approaching a garden milestone. One cherry tomato is about to turn red.

If you need some gardening pictures, here is an update on Katie’s square foot garden.