Rosie's Garden.

Please join Rosie for a walk through her garden.

It's Wednesday, April 20, 2011. My first rose buds are opening.

This is a volunteer Money Plant, AKA Honesty Plant or Lunaria annua. The seed pods, green now, will become paper thin and silver and look like silver dollars. I planted seeds last year, and the plants self-seeded all over the yard. They're quite pretty.

I love this color blue iris.

I'll be back with a better picture of the light lilac colored one.

I got one of those boxes of assorted seeds last spring from Ace Hardware with a full price rebate. I sowed the seeds last spring and I am rewarded this spring with an abundance of stuff I'm not sure about. The orange one on the left is a poppy. Fellow blogger, Mar, of FoodiesUntie blogdom, and a Master Gardener, identified the others. The light orange in the middle is calendula, and I always think of Caligula before I can come up with with the correct name. The pretty yellow on the right is ...

... a western wallflower called Erysimum capatatum. More info here.

Here's my little scabiosa. Unfortunate name for such a pretty little flower. More info here.

Red verbena blowing in the breeze.

Lilac verbena.

Columbines, or Aquilegia, are one of my favorites.

And it's awfully windy out here.

Pretty little vinca, blowing in the breeze.

Caligu ... er ... calendula on the left, Western Wallflowers in middle back. Poppies in the middle front. Blue bachelor's button, AKA cornflower or

Centaurea cyanus on the right.

Blue larkspur on the left. And all over. The bachelors buttons and the larkspur self-seed violently all over my yard.

We've been eating off this one asparagus plant for almost 3 weeks now.

Remember in my last gardening post when I wrote about Mama Duck in my yard? When I was out weeding in the front rose bed, I startled her and she flew away, leaving one lone egg in the nest. She never came back to that nest but she did start another one not too far away. Right on the other side of the fence. Can you see her?

Some type of phlox on the right. A fennel plant that popped up there last year. Different shamrocks.

These are my wild orchids which are multiplying.

Wind!

Mar believes this to be some form of Phlox divaricata.

Oxalis with pink flowers.

Shamrocks, AKA oxalis, with pink and white flowers. Purple oxalis in the back. I'll be back soon and reshoot these with my other camera when there's no wind.

Rosie Prepares A Mother's Day Lunch For Mama Hawthorne.

Sunday, May 10, 2009. It's Mother's Day. Mr. Hawthorne and I traveled 300-plus miles to see our Mommies. Here's Mama Hawthorne multi-tasking as she checks her banks of emails and fields telephone calls from her numerous well-wishers. The ol' bird loves her computer.

She spends most of her day emailing

and checking certain people's blogs. I'm making a special Mother's Day lunch for Mama Hawthorne.

First, homemade applesauce. I peeled and cored and sliced three apples. Added the juice of one lemon. Some sugar. And cooked over low heat for a couple of hours ...

... until I had ... applesauce. And I like mine a bit chunky. Next I was going for a fruit salad. Here are the ingredients for my poppy seed dressing.

My ingredients:

1 TB chopped onion  
1 tsp salt
  a few grinds of pepper
 juice of 1/2 lemon
  1/4 cup cider vinegar
  1/3 cup sugar
3/4 cup oil (I used canola.)

1 heaping TB poppy seeds

I added sugar to the lemon juice, pepper, salt, and minced onion.

I poured in the cider vinegar.

I whisked in the oil to make a nice emulsion.

Action shot!

And finally, the heaping tablespoon of poppy seeds went in. Tip # 331: Keep poppy seeds in your freezer. (Just cuz my Mama always told me to and I always do what my Mama tells me to. Right, Mama Hawthorne?) Now, on to my salad:

I made a trip to the Super WalMart in Danville and bought a pound of strawberries ($1.50), a bag of mixed salad greens, a cucumber, kiwi fruit, and an avocado. I sliced the fruits and placed them artfully upon the mixed greens. I liked my placement of the kiwi slices on the cuke slices and the pinwheel, splayed slices of avocado. And I always like some red in the mix.

Poppy seed dressing went over top and the sweetness of the dressing along with the delicious natural sweetness of the fruits, combined with the textures- the smooth, nutty, richness of the avocado, the tart, crispness of the cukes and kiwis, the sweet, meatiness of the strawberries - Gosh! What was not to like? This is one of those select offerings where you just know everything is spot on. Delectable goodness. In color. In texture. In flavor. In taste. In combination.

Next up, a pomegranate reduction sauce for my pork medallions. Now, you know how I shamelessly purloin others' recipes. In this case, it's Kelly's recipe (from Evil Shenanigans Blogdom) for Pomegranate Glaze). But I must give props to Marilyn, of Foodies Untie Blogdom, who went with her Mother's Day recipe for pomegranate reduction barbecue sauce.

That's another one I'll have to stea ... er ... try. Here are my ingredients for the sauce:

1 16-oz. bottle of Pom Wonderful pomegranate juice
 1/2 cup orange juice
 2 TB brown sugar
1/2 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
 1 garlic clove, minced
2 TB onion, minced
 1 chipotle pepper in adobo, minced
1 tsp cumin
 1/2 tsp coriander
1/4 tsp cinnamon
2 TB minced onion

I poured the Pom Juice into my sauce pan.

Added in the orange juice.

The minced onion.

I liked both pics of the onions, so you got 'em both.

Now, for the brown sugar. Mama Hawthorne had 3 OPEN BOXES of brown sugar in her cabinets. And all 3 had rock-hard sugar in them. Doesn't that look like a loaf of bread to you? Yeah, but it's BROWN SUGAR, I tried to beat it up with an ice cracker I found in her drawer, but the darn thing broke. Sorry, Mama Hawthorne. But nobody every used that dang thing anyway. (At least, I think it was an ice cracker. Who knows?)

Anyways, the hard-ass brown sugar went into the Pom-mix.

I pulled out one chipotle pepper in adobo sauce.
A chipotle pepper is a smoked jalapeno pepper. 
And adobo sauce is this.

Chipotle pepper went into the pomegranate mixture.

Cumin went in.

Coriander went in.

And I didn't have my crushed red peppers from my garden and I didn't like the looks of Maxine's peppers (black, moldy, and old looking - Sorry, Max. Throw 'em out.) so I added Cayenne Pepper. I also added cinnamon. But upon tasting, I think 1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon is too little. I'd add almost a whole teaspoon. Obviously, I didn't taste the cinnamon in the sauce.

Swirl around and cook over very low heat to reduce to 1/3 cup. This took me about an hour.

Keep going.

Ahhh...

That's it.

I'd picked out a nice pork tenderloin earlier. And I trimmed it of excess fat and silver skin.

I cut out four pieces from the middle, about 1-inch thick, and salted and peppered them.

Brought butter and canola oil to almost smoking, then added in the pork medallions. About 4 minutes on each side. Remove from heat and let set. Do not cut the meat for about 5 minutes. Let the juices do their business within the medallions. If you slice it right after cooking, you lose the juices.

Here's Mama Hawthorne's plate: Fanned out pork tenderloin slices with pomegranate reduction sauce, Last night's leftover ginger/lemongrass/lemon zest rice, Bacon/corn/sour cream side dish. And damn-it-all ... I FORGOT THE APPLESAUCE! Until I was washing dishes and Mama H. was still eating, and I looked at the stove top and there was the pot of applesauce. So I ran over to Mama Hawthorne with a scoop of sauce as she was eating the very last two pieces of pork slices. I suck.

Imagine this plate with my delicious homemade applesauce. Now, on to dessert:

I brought Mama Hawthorne some chocolate brownies. Kelly's Evilicious Brownies to be exact. With vanilla ice cream. And these brownies are TO.DIE.FOR. Thanks again, Kelly. Mama Hawthorne loved them. And I hope you had a nice Mother's Day, Mama Hawthorne!