About as local as it gets. To grow your own mushrooms check out Far West Fungi.

We started with the first cherries of the season at the farmer’s market.  We bought a big bag and munched on them all day in the warm sun.

There was music and dancing on the quad, we crashed on a blanket and ate more cherries and shared Carrie’s garlic fries.

There were booths with clothes of all kinds of patterns and fabrics and colors.

Patches of color and bikes (of course it IS Davis!)

We wore our Tie-Dye of course. There are more pictures of the low impact fun at my flickr.

Knit Pumpkins by Sarah Mulholland

This is a bit of a cross post with my other blog but I just made this yummy pumpkin cake for our Berkeley Stitch and Bitch potluck Halloween weekend so I felt I should share it here where fellow potluck goers might find it. I make this countless times every fall for birthdays, Thanksgiving, X-mas, parties, and very little of it every comes home.

Disappearing Pumpkin Cake:

Ingredients:

• 4 eggs
• 3/4 cup vegetable oil
• 2 cups of turbinado sugar
• 15 oz. can of pumpkin puree
• 1 cup all purpose flour
• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp each of ground cinnamon, cloves and ginger
• 3/4 tsp salt

Mix the wet stuff (eggs, oil, sugar and pumpkin) in a medium sized mixing bowl. In another bowl mix the dry stuff (flours, baking power and soda, spices and salt). Combine dry ingredients with wet by adding small amounts of the dry stuff at a time, stirring as you go until totally combined and not lumpy, a whisk helps, but stop mixing asap or you will end up with a flat cake. Pour into a greased and floured baking pan 9×10 and bake at 350 degrees for about 35 min. Cake will pull a bit from the sides of the pan and a knife will come up clean in the center when done.

For an easy icing I just make a glaze with confectioner’s sugar, a splash of vanilla extract, and a few tablespoons of milk. I don’t measure this out  so you will have to play with it or get a can of your icing of choice, the original recipe called for a cream cheese icing but that was a bit rich for us.

Also, this recipe is great if you have lactose intolerant friends, the only dairy is in the icing and you can skip that and get some soy vanilla ice cream.

Enjoy!

Today we are getting:

• Green Beans
• Cabbage
• Carrots
• Fennel
• Purslane
• Stockton Red Oinion
• Potatoes
• Summer Squash

This week we are getting:

• Apricots
• Carrots
• Basil
• Onions
• Potatoes
• Salad Mix
• Summer Squash

Hurray for Freash Basil!!! Anyone want some new potatoes, we still have lots.

Today we got:

• Carrots
• Green Cabbage
• Winter Savory
• Strawberries
• Lettuce
• Fresh Onions
• New Potatoes
• Dino Kale

Perhaps a pic to come tomorrow.

Today we are going to get:

• Artichokes
• Asparagus
• Napa Cabbage
• Carrots
• Sugar Snap Peas
• Lettuce
• New Potatoes

So for a couple weeks now we have been getting a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) Box from Full Belly Farms and I have decided that I need to start posting all the healthy goodness that we get in the box because we need to start getting better about using it all up. Case in point, right now we have THREE bags of mixed greens and three HUGE leeks because we haven’t been eating it fast enough before the next box comes.

I am generally the one who ends up cooking, not because he can’t (his steak is WAY better then mine) but I can open up the fridge and put together stuff on the fly while he needs a recipe/plan/directions. But of course by the time I get home it is already 6 pm most days, if I am not tired when I leave work the traffic drains me of what I have left, so some motivation is needed to do more then just make scrambled eggs.

Here is what came in this weeks box:

• Artichokes
• Asparagus
• Salad Mix
• Spinach
• Dill
• Radishes or Tokyo Turnips (Wednesday only)
• Strawberries

The strawberries will last, oh about 5 seconds, but everything else is going to take some conscious effort to use up thanks to our back log……anyone want some salad?