towards a garden

I am caring for the hof, or courtyard, at our apartment. I think of it more as a flock or a gathering of apartments as it was once a town based farming family's house that has been since first owned by three different families and turned into three houses (barns and outbuildings becoming bedrooms and kitchens, for example) and now into 5 apartments. The whole thing still has the feel of belonging all together but we live independently within it. In any event, I care for the courtyard. Which means, maybe most importantly to the germans, that all weeds are kept out of the cracks between stones and paving and and and. There is a small patch of struggling uneven growing grass that the poodle pees on every day when the american husband lets out the dog. (we are so lazy and think that lawns are for dogs to poo on, right?) the spanish wife always takes the dog on a lead out of the gate and into the street to do his business. So, apart from the grass, there are a few garden beds around the courtyard of cobblestone with a horse chestnut tree growing in the middle. The second task, only slightly less important, is to rake leaves and clean up after the tree. Third is my favorite, of course,  the care of the little garden beds and the sad patch of grass. I worked for two hours today out in the courtyard sweeping and raking and caring for and pruning a rosebush. I don't know so much about roses, except that they like parsley planted near them and they don't like wet feet, they grow off of old wood and they need to be pruned (more on that in a later post).

Our landlady says I can also work in her garden on the other side of the house. If I do, i might be able to actually plant vegetables and flowers and things in the ground. But I am not getting to carried away with that. Of course, I'm already making lists of the things I want in containers this year: Tomatoes, Zucchini, lettuce, kale, wax beans and pinto beans, strawberries, maybe eggplant, and in the window boxes: mint, basil, dill, chives, cialntro, thyme, parsley, oregano, sage and flowers- marigolds, snap dragons, nasturtium, black eyed susans. Most of our seeds we brought with us from the states which i am sure breaks all kinds of legal, ethical, and ecological rules, but there you are, i wanted to bring my garden from santa fe with me through the seeds from the plants we had grown.

Today I transplanted house plants, planted dill and cilantro in pots, and I have chicken stock cooking on the stove for a sort of chicken Thai-ish soup with sweet potatoes, broccoli, and the usual coconut milk/lemon grass etc. Yesterday I made a lemon cake from my new Nigel Slater book "The Kitchen Diaries" in which he writes almost every day for a year what he has eaten, bought at the farmer's market, or cooked in his kitchen. This lemon cake is from his diary entry of March 19. The flavor is incredible and delicious, but it is altogether too dense and moist for me. Even wetter than zucchini bread, I just don't really think of it as cake, almost a pudding, but not quite. I might try tinkering with it some more to see if I can get it drier and crumbier. It has almonds, brown sugar, lemons, and a syrup of lemons and brown sugar poured over the top after baking to which I added french thyme syrup. Maybe next time I'll skip the lemon brown sugar syrup and just brush a bit of thyme syrup over top after baking, or mix it in before hand. Also, I don't think it needs so much butter, when I took it out of the oven the butter was bubbling so much I think the cake had poached in it! Granted I am converting from ounces to grams, which is always tricky, but I think less butter would help. If I get something I am happy with I'll include the recipe. Anyway, here is a picture:

And the day before that I made Lasagne. THe trick with a good lasagne is to have way way too much sauce. The opposite of the cake, actually. So much sauce that you think the whole thing will swim in the dish. After it bakes it is perfect. And by the way, leftovers are a great way to make a lasagne fast. I had bolognese left over and lentil I had cooked with garlic and bay leaves and juniper berries. I found buffalo mozzarella and mortadella at an italian stand in a farmer's market here on saturday. So I made Lentil ground beef buffalo mozzarella lasagne with bechamel and tomato sauce. We ate it in bed, watching Moonstruck (my favorite all time movie) no vegetable anywhere in sight. Total carbohydrate indulgence. We each had two huge helpings and then started eating it right out of the pan. It was good that we were already in bed and didn't have to do anything afterwards. And there was still enough the next day for me to have lunch.