Linda Ly's Blog, page 33
October 23, 2014
Sparkling Apple Cider Sangria
Once you’ve had a sip of freshly pressed, unfiltered, unsweetened apple cider, the “apple juice” sold in stores just cannot compare. And luckily for those who’ve never tried it, fresh apple cider abounds this time of year.
What exactly is the difference between apple cider and apple juice? After all, cider is essentially the juice extracted from apples. But both names persist in the marketplace, and in the United States, only a handful of states actually regulate what can and can’t be labele...
October 20, 2014
What Is CSA? (And Why I Wrote a Cookbook For It)
After announcing preorders of my book last week (shameless plug if you haven’t yet preordered!), I had a few readers ask what a CSA was and why I’d written a book about it.
According to the USDA:
CSA consists of a community of individuals who pledge support to a farm operation so that the farmland becomes, either legally or spiritually, the community’s farm, with the growers and consumers providing mutual support and sharing the risks and benefits of food production.
CSA is a sustainable foo...
October 17, 2014
Five Things Friday
The five little things that made my week…
1. It’s seed-starting season! About 60 varieties of vegetables, herbs, and flowers going in the ground for fall.
2. The strawberries are starting to come back.
3. Freshly picked kumquats.
4. Adore this cactus right outside my bedroom window. It’s over two stories tall!
5. Can’t wait to dig into these boxes that my friends at Boogie Brew sent over! For the last couple of weeks, I’ve had bags and bags of worm castings sitting in the garden, and I’...
October 13, 2014
The CSA Cookbook: Preorder It Now!
Whoa, what just happened here? A few weeks ago, I revealed the cover (and the making) of my forthcoming book, The CSA Cookbook. (This is the final one going to print!) And today… I am stoked and so. fired. up. (!!!) to announce the book is finally available for preorder!
Sometimes it feels like I simply cannot wait another day for the book to be released (and by the sounds of all your awesome messages, neither can you), so we’re making it possible for you to reserve your copy early!
The CSA...
October 10, 2014
Baked Cinnamon-Applesauce Donuts
I didn’t make too many donuts this summer… I don’t know why. Maybe the heat is to blame. And the fact that baking always equates to heating up the house even more with the oven. And that baked goods (especially donuts) always, must, go hand in hand with a hot mug of coffee — neither of which was appealing to me when the weather app kept creeping up toward the triple digits.
But we finally have a week of relief where it’s beginning to feel a little like fall around here… I’m closing the doors...
October 8, 2014
Salt Point on the Sonoma Coast
Living in California means I’ve seen my fair share of beaches, and spectacularly beautiful ones at that, from the dramatic coves down the hill from my house to the Central California coastline that includes Big Sur.
So I don’t say it lightly when I profess that Salt Point, a serene stretch of coastline in Northern California, ranks up there as one of the most picturesque beaches in the state.
Salt Point is actually a California State Park encompassing over 6,000 acres of Sonoma County, and i...
October 6, 2014
Fish Pepper: A Peculiar Pepper With Deep Roots in African-American History
One of my favorite things about growing heirloom varieties is learning the history behind the seed and how it arrived in my hands. In the case of these fish peppers, they come from a long history in African-American culinary culture that predates the 1870s.
Fish peppers are distinctive plants due to their vividly striped fruits and beautifully variegated foliage. They’re like no other pepper plant I’ve seen, and they nearly became lost in the early 20th century.
Believed to have arrived in...
October 3, 2014
Five Things Friday
The five little things that made my week…
1. Ending the weekend (and then starting the week) with my new favorite soak in the Sierra, where a little hike brings you to a series of stone-lined hot tubs along a river. Geothermal water trickles down the cave from above.
2. Those multi-colored patches on the mountain are the first trees turning color in California. A beautiful barometer of the seasons. (Yes, we do get fall color out here!)
3. Celebrating National Public Lands Day at the South...
October 2, 2014
Finding God and Going Off-Grid: Salvation Mountain and Slab City
One of my favorite films of all time is Sean Penn’s “Into The Wild
,” a true story based on the Jon Krakauer novel
(of the same name) about a young vagrant named Christopher McCandless. In the middle of his soul-searching journey, Christopher stopped at Salvation Mountain and Slab City, two famously eclectic landmarks in the Colorado Desert of California.
There, he met an intriguing and colorful cast of characters, from the creator of Salvation Mountain, Leonard Knight (who played himself), t...
September 30, 2014
The Post-Apocalyptic World of the Salton Sea
The Salton Sea, one of the world’s largest inland seas and lowest points on earth, exists entirely by accident.
Situated in the Sonoran Desert (the hottest desert in North America) and occupying the Salton Sink (a valley below sea level that has no outlet), the Salton Sea was created in 1905 through an engineering mishap by the California Development Company. Irrigation canals were dug from the Colorado River into the Imperial Valley to support the agricultural land surrounding the sink. Whe...
