Busy in the Kitchen

It's heating up here! It's finally staying sunny and hot. The tomato plants are perking up, the eggplants are starting to grow, and the zucchinis are getting huge! The mosquitos are coming out, too! I have a lot of bites now, so I'm getting used to it, but I'm certainly learning that they don't like to be out in the sun; these mosquitos would rather swarm around in the shade or as the sun goes down. The sun is my best friend here. All the farmers are happier as well.



Besides the weather, the kitchen is heating up also! On Tuesday night, I made the warak 'enab dish, which is Lebanese stuffed grape leaves. Even though the measurement system here is different (they use grams instead of cups) and the stove top doesn't have a low setting (only high, haha), the final dish was a success! The family had never ate it before, but they enjoyed it. The girls didn't seem used to having a salty dish, but they still tried it. The other WWOOFers loved it! The Japanese one hopes to make it in Japan for her friends. She said that putting lemon with rice is a new taste for her.



On Wednesday, the other WWOOFers cooked! Naoko made a fried Udon noodle dish with zucchini, sautéed potatoes and carrots in soy sauce, and a basic noodle soup. For dessert, Alison made Eve's pudding, which was a baked cake with apples on the bottom. She added a strawberry sauce to it, and said that we should pour heavy cream on top, too. It was terrific, but not the sweet kind of cake that I'm familiar with. I guess I have an American sweet-tooth, and she cooked something I would find to be bland British cuisine. Even so, it tasted great, and the smell of baked apples in the oven reminded me of home.

While on the topic of fruit, I got to pick my first fresh fruit from the farm to sell for the market: red currents! The plant is beautiful. The leaves look like those of grape vines. I didn't find the fruit so great, though. It tasted very tart. In the gardens, I have also been spraying with more copper nutrients because there still has not been enough sun for the potato and onion plants. I have also been weeding. Ja-Ja just planted a lot of new salad plants. The varieties are endless! Even at the market, customers really seem to be picky about their lettuce. The Freanch seem to know what varieties they like best. I sneakily planted a red lettuce plant myself. I think I'll watch over it as if it were mine, hehe. We also did more raking of hay in the fields. They smell of fresh-cut hay is spectacular, in my opinion. It's similar to burning wood, in a way.

I learned that Chérif and Ja-Ja have a certain rotation for their plants. Once a vegetable has been completely gathered from a garden, they weed it, put some dung on top as fertilizer, and till the soil. When they put in more seeds or baby plants, it's always of a different vegetable. For example, potatoes followed by lettuce. They never replant the same vegetable within a three-year span. With this system, the plants are less likely to get diseases. There are other benefits for the soil as well. Perhaps that could be a tip for you gardeners out there!

Okay, time to go back to the kitchen! Naoko and I are cooking a "Goodbye dinner" for Alison tonight because she is leaving Sunday morning. She has always wanted to go to South America, so we are cooking Mexican for dinner: guacamole, cinnamon rice, and a spicy chicken salad. The avocados are very expensive here, and come from Israel. It's times like these I am very thankful for California and its produce. Hurray for American farming!