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Heavenly Steamed Eggplant
Black Beauty eggplant I love eggplant, but always thought it had to be salted, pressed and fried or baked. Cookbooks always talk about bitter juices that need to be leeched out. The recipe for Coucharas (see recipe list) calls for steaming eggplant until it is very soft so that the pulp can be mashed and combined with other ingredients.
Japanese or Chinese (long) eggplants have few seeds Now with an abundance of eggplant, both Black Beauty and Japanese, in my garden, I looked for some simple eggplant recipes. Maybe everyone else in the world knows how incredible lightly steamed eggplant is, but I just found out!
Choose glossy, firm eggplants I took a Black Beauty (globe) eggplant that I’d harvested the week before and was beginning to go soft, cut off the stem end and quartered it lengthwise. I steamed the slices for 8 minutes (no more than 10!).
Slice long eggplants into bite-sized chunks The texture was silky and smooth, not at all bitter and incredibly light. Over the top of the quarters I spooned a very easy sauce. The eggplant, which is notoriously spongy, soaked up the sauce. Slicing the eggplant, skin and all, was a dream and eating it was sublime.
Eggplant is in the same family as tomatoes and potatoes It was so good in fact that I did the same with Japanese eggplant the next night, but instead of quartering them, I cut them into bite-sized chunks, then after steaming poured the sauce over them in a bowl and stirred them around to absorb the sauce. I served both with very thin noodles. Photos of cooked eggplant are rarely delicious-looking, so you’ll have to let your imagination guide you.
An enormous double eggplant! There are many sauce mixtures on the Internet, but here is mine:
Heavenly Steamed EggplantAuthor: Diane KennedyRecipe type: Main DishPrep time:Cook time:Total time:Serves: 2-4Quick, light, tasty, low-calorie and wonderfully different, this eggplant recipe is a gem.Ingredients- One large Black Beauty eggplant or 3 Japanese eggplants
- 2 Tablespoons Rice Wine Vinegar (or other mild vinegar)
- ⅛th cup Bragg's Amino Acids, Tamari Sauce or low-salt soy sauce
- ¼ teaspoon sesame oil
- 2 Tablespoons olive oil
- ½ teaspoon grated fresh ginger
- If you like garlic, dice or grate a small clove and add it in. You can also include chili paste to taste.
- Fresh cilantro (optional)
- Toasted sesame seeds (optonal)
Instructions- Cut stem end(s) off the eggplant
- If using one large eggplant, cut it into quarters long-wise from end-to-end. If using long eggplant, cut into ¾" - 1" bite-sized chunks. Do not peel.
- Steam eggplant for 8-10 minutes until a knife easily slides into the skin; do not overcook!
- Meanwhile, mix all sauce ingredients except cilantro or sesame seeds, if using.
- Plate the eggplant quarters and drizzle the sauce over the top slowly so it absorbs, or put chunks in bowl and mix with sauce, then plate. Offer extra sauce separately.
- Sprinkle with fresh, chopped cilantro and/or toasted sesame seeds.
- Very good with noodles or rice.
- Bees, Birding, Gardening adventures, Heirloom Plants, Other Insects, Permaculture and Edible Forest Gardening Adventures, Photos
Bouquets for Birds and Butterflies
Lilliput zinnia At the beginning of this summer, the new subterranean drip irrigation system was installed on my property. It features tubing with holes at either twelve or twenty-four inches apart. When it runs (from my well) it leaves circles of dampness polka-dotting the soil surface. I had purchased two packets of wildflower seed, one with a selection of plants to attract bees, and the other for butterflies. Mixing them together, I figured that they wouldn’t fare well scattered, at least this year. My daughter and I pressed seed into many of the wet spots and hoped the rabbits wouldn’t notice.
What happened was a delightful surprise, as only a garden can provide. In many locations around the yard grew mixed bouquets of wildflowers.
Mexican sunflower, cosmos, nasturtiums, zinnias, surround a white calla lily If we had separated selected seed and planned the planting, nothing so beautiful would have come of it. Although many species either didn’t emerge or were eaten, the most common survivors were zinnias, cosmos and borage.
Cosmos, borage, zinnias and alyssum. I was amazed and thrilled; I had purchased a borage plant and then fed it to the rabbits (at least, that is what they thought). Here now are borage plants all over the yard, their royal blue, cucumber-flavored flowers dipping modestly behind the flaunting cosmos.
Sweet basil, cilantro, dill and zinnias In fact, I now have several very hearty sweet basil plants that put the carefully cultivated plants in my raised veggie beds to shame. There is also dill and cilantro growing well even this late in the season.
Cosmos, sweet basil, zinnias, borage, camellia balsam, alyssum There are some plants in the bouquets that haven’t reached maturity yet, so there may still be some surprises. The only flower that emerged that I didn’t recognize and had to look up was camellia balsam (Impatiens balsamina). Two stalks of it, one pink and one red, give these ‘arrangements’ a vertical line.
Camellia balsam (Impatiens balsamina) Although not all of these wildflowers are native to San Diego, or even California, they provide food for birds, bees and are host plants for butterflies, providing the caterpillars food, a place to form their chrysalises, and nectar for the mature butterfly. Bees like small flowers with little drops of nectar too small to drown in, with a nice landing pad of a petal close by. Everything in the carrot family works well. Here are some suggested flowers to plant:
For butterflies:
Mexican lupine, Mexican sunflower, borage, calendula, camellia balsam, scabiosa, cornflower, milkweed, parsley, crimson clover, aster, coreopsis, cosmos, prairie gayfeather, purple coneflower, sweet sultan, sneezeweed, sweet William, bishops flower, black-eyed Susan, dill, snapdragon, yarrow, bergamot, cleome, verbena, and butterfly bush.
For bees:
Cosmos, sunflowers, borage, coriander, Siberian wallflower, dill, coreopsis, poppies, gaillardia, zinnia, sweet basil, purple prairie clover, globe gillia, catnip, lemon mint, black-eyed Susan, goldenrod, lavender hyssop, bergamot, yarrow, mint, California buckwheat.
Be sure to plant flowers that bees love away from paths and walkways if you or your family want to avoid contact with the bees.
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First Rain
Rainfall on the pond The first week of October and we’re having a day of heavy rain… almost unbelievable. Normally October in San Diego is high fire season. The brush is crisp from months of drought and high temperatures, and then the Santa Ana winds begin: wild dry winds that blow east to west from the deserts, full of static and mad gusts that turn brush fires into firestorms.
My property is a watershed, funneling rainwater from the street through to the streambed in the barranca below, taking all my topsoil and some of the embankment with it. This year I had the beginnings of a permaculture garden installed to remedy this pattern. By deepening the loam and placing berms around plant guilds water is encouraged to pool up and soak in rather than run off. Overflow is channeled through a series of dry ponds which allow water to soak into the ground. From there it is channeled safely down to an overflow into the stream. Today was an early test of what has been worked on since Feb. 1.
The tilling, mulching and berming done by the crew of landscape architect Roger Boddaert proved successful.
Berms hold water back so that it may soak into the loam The soil has a high clay content, which was good news when digging the large pond because it held water without a liner. It is bad news for other areas of the garden where water is pooling up instead of sinking in. I was able to take note of these areas this afternoon so that they could be drained and mulched for more absorption.
Aquascape, the company that installed the series of ponds, is still planting and maintaining the waterways. Jacob came out in the rain and watched it flow, shaping and fortifying as the force of the rain and thus the volume increased.
Jacob helping water flow Water flowed under the fence from the street, but instead of flooding a cement culvert as it used to do, it is channeled down to the ponds.
Street run-off enters under the fence 
Blocked by debris, water floods past the bridge Silt and debris blocked water flow under the bridge, and was eroding the area by the structure called the Nest. I cleared the debris and raked rocks and silt to the weak side, and that fixed the problem temporarily.
Rainwater flowing into the first 'dry' pond Water quickly filled the first dry pond; with the high clay content, water percolates but does it slowly.
'Dry' ponds filling and slowing run-off 
Logs and rocks are ornamental and slow water flow 
Normally dry, the stone crossing is now almost underwater 
The little pond is rapidly filled. As water reached the small pond, which wasn’t intended to permanently hold water but the clay had a different idea, the sides had to be shored up and the overflow diverted.
Water is diverted from the little pond around the big one Extra floodwaters aren’t being diverted into the large pond because we don’t want it filled with silt, and we don’t want it overflowing rapidly and eroding the sides. Instead the water flows through a channel around the large pond, then down to a prescribed place to flow out and over the embankment to the stream below.
Overflow is channelled past the ponds and out to the natural stream below Some areas of heavy erosion had been filled and supported, and as of six this evening they looked wet but not iffy. What a night of heavy rain will do, I’ll have to see in the morning. I am very lucky to have this type of
rain early in the season. It has been heavy enough to cause significant water flow to help shape the watercourse and show weak spots, and the rain will be reduced to showers tomorrow then clear up, so repairs and improvements can be made before true flooding happens later in the year or early in the next.Although much more water is being held on the property, and topsoil is not being lost, it still pains me to see so much rain channeled out to the stream. Rainwater is a neutral Ph, and carries nitrogen (especially when
there is lightning). It is the best possible water for plants, as well as for human consumption and bathing. In side-by-side comparisons with tap water, plants watered with rainwater flourish far beyond the growth of the others. I’m greedy to hold that water onto my property, letting it soak as deeply as possible for tree roots to use far into the year. As the newly planted trees grow, their roots will help hold water and soil. As their leaves drop the mulch levels will raise, aided by compost and mulch that I will be constantly adding, and the soil will become more absorbent farther down. Each rain should have less runoff and more absorption. This rain has shown a great success with the garden, but I know it is only the beginning. - Animals, Bees, Gardening adventures, Heirloom Plants, Other Insects, Permaculture and Edible Forest Gardening Adventures, Vegetables
What Bugs See
To veer off from the vacation photos, I thought I’d talk about bugs! I’ve been working in the garden a lot and watching the myriad types of insects drawn to the various flowers blooming all over, and it reminded me of something amazing that I learned last year. The way flowers look to us is not what most insects and birds see. The flowers are bright and showy, but they offer up visual clues to pollinators through colors and patterns that can only be seen with eyes that see UV light. Humans can’t. We can’t assign colors to UV light in the way that we understand them, so when photographing with UV light we substitute our colors to show the change in patterns. The markings on the flowers are guides to where the pollen is, like lights and painted lines on airport runways. Just as baby chicks’ mouths are large and brightly colored to show mom and dad where to put the worm, especially on the inside as they gape and wait to be fed, so have flowers made sure that the pollinators get to the right place for pollen! The differences between what we see and what insects see can be startling; there is a whole hidden world right before our eyes, just as there are supersonic and subsonic sounds that we cannot hear. Elephants make subsonic noises that other elephants can hear miles away, but we aren’t aware of it.
Below are photos taken with and without UV light by the brilliant Norwegian scientist-cameraman Bjorn Roslett. Remember that the UV colorization is man-made to show the difference in patterns. More technical information can be found at his site here: http://www.naturfotograf.com/UV_flowers_list.html , with lists of types of flowers and what approximate color changes there are under UV light.
Dandelion 
Vinca minor 
Vinca minor under UV 
Norsk mure (Potentilla norvegica) 
Norsk mure under UV 
Primrose 
Crocus 
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The Surprising Facts about Figs
A young common Black Mission fig People either love or hate figs. Figs were grown long before wheat became a crop. They are members of the Ficus family, which includes such spectacular specimens as the famous Banyan tree that grows enormous roots and support trunks from air roots. The fig tree, and members of the ficus family such as the Bodhi tree, are mentioned in all three major religious texts.
However, figs are not fruit. Nope.
Figs are swollen, fleshy stems called syconiums.
Figs are swollen stems. A fig is actually a swollen, hollow stem that has internal flowers!
The insides of figs show the flowers When the flowers are ready for pollination, the end of the stem opens slightly to allow in the fig wasp, its only pollinator.
The end opens. The syconium will then set seed inside, which is the time when they are usually harvested. Happily for fig eaters, many fig types are self-pollinating. Now you can amaze your friends and family with this interesting trivia over the dinner table!
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Of Monarchs and Milkweeds
Monarch (photo: Miranda Kennedy) The migration of the monarch butterfly covers an astounding 2500 miles. Instead of dying off in the cold of winter, these flimsy, light-as-air insects fly from parts of the US to groves of Oyamel fir trees in Mexico. They are the only insect to cover such territory. They are particular little beasties, for they rest only in the Oyamel firs and look for milkweed plants on which to lay their eggs. Milkweed exudes a sap toxic to animals which the Monarch caterpillars eat, obviously immune, making them toxic in turn. The caterpiller’s bright coloration is a warning.
Snazzy stripes mean 'eat at your own risk' (photo: M. Kennedy In fact, the Viceroy butterfly, which is very tasty to predators, mimics the Monarch’s coloration to keep from being dinner.
Deforestation, insects, climate change and pollution have cut a huge swath through the Oyamel fir tree population, and the Monarchs are struggling to survive. They also combat the decrease in milkweed as human populations spread and plant lawns instead of weeds and wildflowers.
At the beginning of this year, in my efforts to change my property into habitat, I was determined to help the Monarchs. Every year I see maybe one or two of the majestic butterfly pass through my yard, and I’ve been sorry that I can’t offer he or she anything except nectar.
What I had been calling milkweed actually is sow thistle Sonchus oleraceus, which is an edible kitchen herb brought over from Europe with the settlers as food. It also has a milky sap in it’s hollow stem, thus the erroneous name of milkweed. There are over 100 varieties of real milkweed. So, I purchased two Balloon Plants, or Asclepias physocarpa (Asclepias is the botanical name for the milkweed family). They grew quite well, developing the balloon-shaped seed pods which, when ripe, burst open spreading small seeds with feathery wings attached that carry them everywhere.
Seeds burst and fly To my great excitement my daughter spotted very tiny Monarch caterpillars on the leaves!
Tiny Monarch caterpillers (photo: M. Kennedy) The caterpillars have been eating voraciously and growing big and fat.
Monarch caterpiller and milkweed (Photo: M. Kennedy) We’ve seen Monarchs in the yard many more times than in the past. We are monitoring the caterpillars closely, waiting for them to metamorphosize. I’ll help the plants distribute seeds throughout my yard, and I’ll plant the native narrow-leafed milkweed as well. I’m so excited that within months this goal was achieved and that these wonderful creatures have one more place to find refuge.
Good links:Monarch Watch http://shop.monarchwatch.org/ , Monarch Migration http://www.monarchbutterflyusa.com/Migration.htm.
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King Watermelon
This year I grew watermelons. I planted organic seed in my raised vegetable bed, protected from gophers by aviary wire, grown in excellent soil and fertilized with organic fertilizer, watered often, and the vines produced three melons the size of grapefruit. The chickens enjoyed them very much. However, a non-organic watermelon from a six-pack stuck in the ground under a bamboo, decided to take over the world. Not only did it’s foliage cover a good portion of the upper soil, but it grew and has grown enormous beasts of watermelons. One we call King Watermelon.
King Watermelon is in the foreground, laying in wait. My daughter and I watched a YouTube video on how to tell if a melon is ripe. One way is to watch the tendril opposite the stem of the watermelon, and when it turns brown the melon should be ripe. The area where the stem connects to the fruit should also turn a little brown. Also, under the melon should be a pale spot where it rests on the ground, and when that area turns from white to yellowish, that is another sign. King Watermelon had no spot. We checked every few days for weeks as the beast grew larger and larger, it’d tendril tenaciously green. Then suddenly, it was brown. Much celebration. My petite collegiate daughter crept up on King Watermelon and swiftly cut it’s stem. Then staggering with it, brought it into the house where we weighed it. It was an incredible 28 pounds. It is a wonder that any other plant in the area got any irrigation! Normally we’d slice the melon on the countertop, but King Watermelon was so large that he had to go into the kitchen sink, and he barely fit! It was there that he was butchered, in consideration of all the juice that might come out.
So large it had to be 'butchered' in the kitchen sink! The insides were perfectly sweet, juicy and crunchy. I couldn’t believe how perfect it was.
Beautiful inside; sweet and crisp. My daughter cut and cut, saving some for our dinner (all that extra water before bedtime wasn’t a great idea, though), and wrapping the rest. The chunks had to be stored on cookie sheets to distribute the weight on the shelves and protect from leaking juice. We had watermelon the next day too, and fed some to our very grateful and thirsty tortoise during the heat wave. There is a lot of King Watermelon left. It is scary to look into the refrigerator and see it all. Even cut up and wrapped, that melon still has an attitude. And I think he won the battle after all.
Wrapped sections for infinite eating. And there are more melons ripening with each passing minute. Gulp.
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Finches Eat Sunflower Leaves
Are your sunflowers being stripped? Are the leaves acquiring non-snail-like holes and then disappearing altogether? You may be feeding the birds, but not with the seeds!
Lesser goldfinches apparently are nuts over sunflower leaves. They will tear little bits of the leaves off and injest them, and within a day or so there will be nothing but a stem and a flower.
If your goal is to feed the birds, then this is okay. If you have bird problems on your vegetables such as peppers, then you may want to plant sunflowers off to the side to distract them.
Why do they eat sunflower leaves? They must like a little salad with their seeds, and sunflowers are particularly yummy for them. In searching the Internet for suggestions as to why they like sunflower leaves so much, there were many postings about the incidents, and yet most respondents insisted that the birds were after bugs on the leaves, or that snails came in the night and ate the leaves!
This occurrence seems to happen mostly in California, and other than bird nets (which one person said that the lesser goldfinches chewed through!) or planting sunflowers thickly (one for them, one for you), you may as well just enjoy the show. Ours come up from dropped or buried birdseed, and when the plants are growing their flowers, suddenly they are beset by birds who skeletonize the plant. We’re okay with that; it saves a little cost on the very expensive Niger thistle seed! (Oh, and by the way, Niger thistle isn’t thistle seed at all).
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The August Garden
Plants have been enjoying the beautiful weather and the constant irrigation from the well, and the garden is flourishing. So, unfortunately, is the Bermuda grass, but that is another tale. Since I see it everyday I don’t notice the change so much, but when I show someone around I am thrilled all over again with the incredible change that has happened on this property. There are so many birds, insects, reptiles and other animals either already here or scouting it out that I know the project is a success. It is a habitat, not just for me and my family, but for native flora and fauna as well. It wasn’t so long ago that I had a cracked, weedy asphalt driveway, a termite-ridden rickety porch that needed pest control, a house with a stinky deteriorating carpet and old splotchy paint, a tile kitchen counter with the grout gone in between and a cleaning nightmare, and a yard full of snails, weeds and Washingtonia palm trees, with the embankment eroding each rainfall. Over the last four years we’ve survived some pretty intense construction projects (none of which were done on time, no matter what they promised!). My house still has some repairs that need to be done but I no longer am embarrassed to have anyone over. The garden is wonderful to walk in and explore. I’ve taken some photos this evening to show you how things are growing:
Bees enjoying purple coneflowers 
The luffa squash has mighty asperations. 
A luffa squash and bloom. They are edible small and green, but I’ll leave them to dry. 
Five eggs today! Each laying hen participated for the first time! The little girls have grown up. 
The small lower pond and the palm pathway. 
The veggie bed. 
Rushes, fleabane, waterlilies and other plants are growing in nicely around the big pond. The boat is still on loan from Aquascape. 
A pumpkin tree? This apricot isn’t healthy, but the pumpkins sure are. 
These bare areas I’ll fill with plants that will make up guilds, each plant filling a niche to help the others grow. 
The entrance to the bee garden. 
Native vinegar weed loves a place we left untouched, and so do the bees. 
Sugar pumpkins ready a little early for Halloween. 
A feral zucchini, still producing at least one a day. 
Melons, passionfruit, pitcher plant and many others under the back porch we call the Poop Deck. 
Very eager bamboo, sugarcane and hops. 
Olive trees tied to painted PVC pipe to make a hut. 
The ‘Nest’ beyond the dry stream bed. 
A thud and a swish… with no warning the neighbor’s tree fell across the fence. 
A green roof for the entranceway, just beginning to show. 
The watermelons in the vegetable beds were tiny… these monsters are wild. That one grew on the rock on its own. 
Entranceway flower tunnel… with dogs waiting to go inside! -
Dedicated to Evelyn
Almost time.... We’ve gathered seven eggs from the girls this week. We believe the first one was Evelyn’s, the beautiful blond Buff Orpington. The next ones are Miss Amelia’s, followed by a blue/green one from Chickpea and unbelievably, a brownish one from our other Americauna, Kakapo.
First three beautiful eggs, L-R Evelyn's, Miss Amelia's and Chickpea's The two Barred Rocks are too young yet to lay, but they certainly are interested in what is suddenly so popular about the nesting boxes.
The Barred Rocks are curious teenagers The nesting platform in the chicken tractor isn’t deep enough to keep straw from being kicked off, so I’ve put up three bee ‘supers’, which are four sides and no top or bottom. Until something else can be arranged, they do just fine.
Miss Amelia, tail up and ready to get it over Watching the girls as they become hens has been interesting. Miss Amelia sat in the nesting box and panted.
As a mom, I know how she's feeling. She allows me to pet her now, as she squats into the mating pose. It is a little disturbing, and doubtlessly frustrating for both her and Emerson who is caged separately.
Miss Amelia is desperate for... attention. Sorry! Chickpea, the big girl, jumps from box to box annoying everyone trying to nest in there. She kicks as much bedding out as she can, sending it flying across the coop with her big feet. When she’s ready to lay she goes into a chicken trance. You can wave your hand in front of her eyes and there is no response, just some panting. Then, voila! A beautiful greenish egg.
Chickpea in a trance Kakapo is the nest builder. She’ll squat down in one of the boxes then lean her head far out of it, almost losing her balance, to grab a wisp of straw to throw over her shoulder into the box.
We hadn’t seen Evelyn lay, but assumed the first egg which was pointier than Miss Amelia’s, was hers. She’d been in a mood for several days and had settled down. Yesterday, though, she sat down in the corner of the pen by her beau Emerson and took a nap in the daytime which was uncharacteristic. She appeared perfectly healthy; in fact, I commented on how red and full her wattles were. This morning we found our dear Evelyn dead on the floor in the corner of the coop. We also found two eggs with transparent shells in the lay box. There was no evidence of what made her die, but I’m guessing it had something to do with the egg-laying. We don’t know who laid the shell-less eggs, but that shouldn’t kill anyone. It is remedied with more calcium in their diets on top of their lay pellets. Perhaps she was egg-bound, or just couldn’t handle the eggs. We were horrified and greatly saddened. I buried Evelyn under the lime tree just behind the coop. Now we have five hens and a rooster. We gave the girls crushed egg shells and kale leaves, and I’ll sprinkle calcium on their food tomorrow. We’ll miss the beautiful Evelyn something terrible.
Evelyn looking great. No signs of illness. You May Also Like
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