There isn't really any bad news. It's just that, with this beautiful weather, I got out into the garden two days this week to do some weeding, and I'm happy to report that I'm not suffering for it.
What's so tough about weeding? Well, when I do it, it's with a shovel and a spading fork, digging up clumps of lawn that have sneaked over and established themselves in my gardens, pulling up the tap roots of dandelions and wild lettuce, shaking the dirt off foot-square pieces of sod, levering out dead rosebushes, hauling up roots of the catalpa I cut down this summer, moving rocks ...
After all the stretching and bending and lifting, I thought I'd be out flat. This time of year is probably when I'm least in shape, and I apparently inherited my father's bad back. But a couple of Ecotrin and I'm good to go. Yay!
I had three dwarf penstemon, a Scotch broom and a huge Queen's Tiara iris still in pots. They've withstood several freezing nights, including at least two at 20 degrees, and still look good. I got them into the ground, while digging up a few lemon balm to give away.
The lemon balm is not only still green, but has rosettes of new growth at ground level. Hardy stuff!
Unfortunately, my sage didn't make it to Thanksgiving:
Guess I'll have to use store-bought.
I still have to plant a Wine and Roses wiegela, some Japanese iris and a bag of tulips, so I hope my back stays just as happy as it is now.
While the days have been nice, some of the nights were downright frosty. So I've been cooking warm dinners (including another round of Walking Onion Chicken) and baking treats.
I've also been hoarding food. There was a 99-cents-a-pound deal on pears lately, and I bought half a dozen each of three varieties. They were so pretty and ... well, fruity. I made up a recipe for pear-caramel pie, but still had 6 pears left.
I wanted something a little different -- a crisp or a cobbler would be easy, but too much like pie. I thought about making chunky pear sauce for ice cream, but then decided on cake. So I looked up an old recipe for coffee cake and improvised from there.
When I chopped the pears, though, I had more than I expected, so I had to basically double the cake recipe. That's why it makes so much!
You know how sometimes you're asked to make something for a potluck, and it looks so good, you wish you'd made one for yourself? This makes two coffee cakes -- large and small.
Pear-Almond Coffee Cake
(keep-one-and-give-one recipe)
Cake:
4-1/2 cups flour
1 Tbsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup flaxseed meal*
1 tsp cinnamon
2/3 cup shortening
3/4 cup sliced almonds
1/3 cup dried cranberries
1 cup milk
2 eggs, beaten well
1 tsp vanilla extract
6 ripe pears
Topping:
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup flaxseed meal*
1/3 cup flour
1/3 cup sliced almonds
1 tsp cinnamon
1 stick butter or margarine, melted
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour two cake pans -- one 9"x12" and one 8" or 9" square (or use just 9"x12" for one thick cake).
Peel and core pears; chop into 1/2" or smaller pieces; set aside.
Mix first six ingredients for cake. Cut in shortening with pastry blender until crumbly. Add almonds and cranberries. Stir in milk, eggs and vanilla. Fold in pears.
Spread into pans, smoothing flat.
Mix all topping ingredients except butter. Sprinkle topping evenly over batter. Carefully drizzle melted butter evenly over topping.
Bake 50 minutes to an hour, or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. If making two cakes, rotate pans after cake firms up. (Smaller cake will bake faster.)
*The flaxseed meal acts like shortening in the cake (and keeps it nice and moist in storage) and as filler in the topping. If you leave it out, increase topping ingredients (except butter) by a little bit. No adjustment is needed for the cake, although you could add 1/3 cup flour to make up the bulk if your batter is too thin.
