August 20, 2023- The oven cometh

Been there. Done that. The heat is coming. With no rain.

It looks like this next week will be the hottest week of the year.

Every day will be in the 90's, or more. Yikes. 

Our last rain was a week ago, and there is none in that hot forecast.

On the other hand we had several days of cool this week. As I write this, it is in the dark, early on Saturday morning. There is an owl someplace in the neighborhood. And the cool air is just rushing in through the open window.

The official temperature even dropped down to 49 degrees Friday morning. That would have been, as they say, in the low lying areas. I wore a jacket to do a little weeding very early in the morning. 

This cool weather should be enough to trigger a bloom rush for the Night Blooming Cereus. Actually I found a bud on the big plant in the front yard. Then I rotated the plant and found 3 more. These are several weeks from blooming. They are fun to find and watch.

Cool temperatures with decent rain just energizes a person. This coming week I think will be a low energy week.

Last Sunday, in a burst of that energy, I planted two flats of lettuce. The packet said it would be ready in 46 days. That would be October 1. When we planted lettuce inside on January 1, 2023 it was in fact ready in 46 days. We had lettuce for months.

One flat was green lettuce. One was red. The green kind germinated in 3 days. The red was up in 4. They will now go to the greenhouse to get sufficient light. They will need plenty of water.

One of the four flats of kale came for a visit yesterday. About half of that flat were bumped into bigger pots. The other half were planted in the garden along the street. Since we have close to 150 of these seedlings we can do some experiments. Some were put into bigger pots and returned to the greenhouse. Some were planted where they get maybe half day sun. We shall see.

Last week in selected pictures the most votes went to the hibiscus.

What a lovely color.

Here was the full vote.

Here are the best pictures from the week of August 13-19.

#1 Red Hoya flower

#2 Almost ready tillandsia

The tillandia globe has many individual plants. They first turn bright red. The they bloom, with the tiniest blue flower.

#3 Sun on blackberry lily

The blackberry lilies are mostly over. This means you appreciate those that do bloom even more.

#4 Epiphyllum hookeri

Hookeri will bloom until frost. It is mostly with individual flowers, rather than a group.

#5 Red Zinnia

#6 Sun on Japanese Anemone

Other pictures this week

Sometimes the sky is really blue. This is the sunflower over at our little garden plot. The really big seed head has dropped over. In its place are a lot of smalled flowers. I did a big watering over there on Friday. I will probably need to do that ever 3-4 days. I just need to remember to activate the watering schedule.

The bumble bees really like the few flowers that are blooming this time of year.

The best time to get a decent picture of the hydrangea is early in the morning.

The pink anemonies are getting organized.

Here is a video

A shortage of rain reduces the number of bugs. I have not seen much damaage due to slugs this year.

Several hosta look really good. Maybe this week I will do a photoshoot for hosta.

Julia's recipe

Eggplant Pizza

Eggplant! Fresh from the farmer's market (on this occasion)! We now have our own from our little garden. But I digress. This recipe is for eggplant pizza. Really. The recipe is from Joanne Weir's cookbook, From Tapas to Meze, which, as you might expect, is about Mediterranean small plates. Fresh-from-the-market eggplant is not bitter so it takes less prepping than it does when it comes from the grocery store, which is to say, on a truck from who knows where.  I would not have thought of this treatment of eggplant, but it was good. And if you have access to a pre-made pizza crust or use my pizza crust recipe, pretty fast.  

The ingredients:

1 pizza crust (see below);

1 long skinny (Japanese) eggplant;

6-7 tablespoons olive oil;

1 tablespoon smushed garlic;

1/2 cup sun-dried tomatoes (in oil);

1/2 cup water;

1/2 cup red onion;

2 teaspoons balsamic vinegar;

3/4 cup grated fontina cheese;

3/4 cup grated mozzarella cheese;

some fresh basil leaves;

salt and pepper.

There is a recipe for pizza dough on the blog somewhere. I got the recipe from Robert the wine guy at the Co-op many years ago. I am not sure what a purist would think, but I am not a purist in matters of pizza so I like the pzza crust recipe. If you have a stand mixer and use my recipe, you can make pizza, including the pizza dough, in about one hour. If you prefer, buy a premade crust or a blob of pizza dough, which I understand is available in commerce these days.  

Use a skinny eggplant, as they are not seedy. A seedy eggplant (like globe-shaped) would not be so good. 

I turned the oven on to 500 degrees and prepped the eggplant by washing it and cutting the ends off and then slicing it into thin (less than 1/4", more than 1/8") slices, slightly on the bias. 

I put the slices on a rimmed baking sheet with a silpat and then brushed the slices in olive oil. I used about 2 tablespoons of olive oil. 

I put the baking sheet in the oven while the oven was heating up. I baked the eggplant slices for a total of maybe 12-15 minutes, turning them over after about 7 minutes and brushing them with some more oil after flipping, not quite 2 tablespoons. 

While the eggplant was baking, I poured another 2 tablespoons of olive oil into a little bowl and added one half of the smushed garlic (that is, about 1/2 tablespoon) and set that aside. I chopped the red onion, measured 1/2 cup of the sun-dried tomatoes into a cup and poured about 1 tablespoon of the sun-dried tomato oil into a little skillet. 

I added the onions to the skillet, along with the rest of the garlic and cooked that mixture until the onions softened. 

Note the eggplant slices out of the oven and in varying degrees of brown. All good. 

When the onion was soft, I added the tomatoes and the water. I cooked that mixture for a few minutes, then I put the mixture into the food processor and zizzed it until it was smooth. I poured that mixture into another little bowl and stirred in the balsamic vinegar and a little salt and pepper. 

Assembly time. 

I put my pizza dough on a big pizza pan and stretched it out. I have learned that having wet hands makes it easier to stretch out pizza dough. Next I brushed the crust with the garlic oil (remember that 2 tablespoons of olive oil and garlic?). 

Next the tomato sauce and then eggplant slices. 

I had grated the cheese while Philip wasn't looking. I spread the cheese over all and put the pizza pan in the oven. It baked for about 10 minutes.

While the pizza was baking, I shredded the basil leaves, ending up with about 1/2 cup of slices. 

I sprinkled the sliced basil over the pizza when it came out of the oven. The heat of the cheese wilted the basil. 

As I said above, I would not have thought of making pizza with eggplant. Turns out it was great. 

In large part, I followed the recipe. Next time I will simplify. Sun-dried tomatoes are nice, but I think an equal amount of tomato sauce would be fine and would eliminate the need to use the food processor. 

Cold pizza is always good.

Odds and Ends

Here is the Iowa City forecast as of Saturday evening.

That rain yesterday was a fooler. Or a prank. 

I understand that book banning has reached the Iowa City public schools. This is not voluntary. This is the Governor and her party. I have not seen the list. I am not sure I want to know what is on the list.

It seems to be rather quietly accepted. Maybe I can make some good trouble. 

I have written emails this week using the word daylily. It is interesting to see the autocorrect suggestions. "Daily" seemed to be the most common.

The students are back in town. The University starts classes on Monday. Bunny hopping is going on at the sororities. 

With the heat coming in the midwest, there are fires in Canada and the State of Washington. Then there is Hurricane Hillary. I worry about what kind of world we are going to hand over to our grandchildren.

Caterpillar news- There is news but it will wait until next week. Can you tell the difference between a monarch caterpillar and a swallowtail caterpillar? 

War continues in the Ukrane. Day after day. Month after month. Year after year. Pray for peace.

Philip