Tag Archives: art

  • More Blossoms….Because We Can.

    March 18, 2013

    41 Comments

    Early cherry blossom.

    Early cherry blossom.

    All sorts of new blossoms at the farm this week. Spring, it seems, keeps…um, springing. And we are quite happy about that. In just the last week cherries, pears, strawberries and apples all started to bloom. And the peaches, nectarines, figs, rosemary and blueberries came into full flower. Our potato plants are taking off, the mint is already trying to take over the world and wisteria is just starting. Citrus still sits ready on the tree (but not for much longer).The bees are back, doing their magic. Wildflowers start to cover the hills. Color and sound fills the soul. This never gets old. Never.

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    First apple blossoms.

    First apple blossoms.

    Peach blossoms.

    Peach blossoms.

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    Early comice pear blossoms.

    Early comice pear blossoms.

    Figs, growing quickly.

    Figs, growing quickly.

    Blueberries. Can't wait.

    Blueberries. Can’t wait.

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  • Mixology Monday LXX Roundup: Inverted

    February 22, 2013

    46 Comments

    Stir and Strain’s El Jardin de Mi Abuela.

    Another Mixology Monday has come and gone, but this time we were hosting. Thanks again to everyone who participated and to Fred Yarm at Cocktail Virgin Slut for reviving and maintaining Mixology Monday.

    mxmologoThe theme was “inverted”, and we will spare you the full back story (post here) and just say the theme was intended to see if we could “flip drinks on their heads” any and all possible ways. And the Mixology Monday crowd certainly delivered. We saw drinks “inverted” on name, spirits, solid/liquid (ice was well used), colors, layers and temperatures. All good stuff. We are “working” our way through as many of the cocktails as we can, and many are very good.

    As for us, we found this theme somewhat more challenging than expected. We created two drinks, but also failed repeatedly to make our third, a champagne-based cocktail that tasted and looked like Napa Cabernet (some things simply aren’t meant to be, and who wants a cocktail to taste like wine anyway?). Oh well. In any event, here are all the cocktails (mostly) in the order we got them:

    BarFlySF gave us three cocktails that invert classics using light instead of dark spirits. We like their use of homemade limoncello as a substitute for darker liqueurs. Their Union Square inverted the New Orleans classic the Vieux Carre.unionsquare1

    BarFlySF then took up our challenge to invert the Manhattan and created the Nemo.

    nemo

    And finally, BarFlySF, added another post and inverted the classic Brandy Sidecar and created the Pisco Pedicab. Extra points for use of blood oranges.pisco1

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    Shake Strain and Sip took the inverted theme to another place altogether and put the drink inside an ice-cube. The Alice’s Looking Glass is a very cool, and very tasty, creation with rye and Aperol in the lead. (We made it with regular ice, still great).——

    901 Very Good Cocktails managed to create a cocktail, discuss the Butthole Surfers (a band from our youth, yes we are that old) and even promote the idea of moderation. We are all for moderation….in moderation.  The Shah Sleeps Cocktail inverts standard cocktail proportions and leads with Amaro Montenegro.Shah

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    The Shorter Straw applied the inverted theme to the Super Bowl (we would still like to invert that outcome) and gave us the 35th Minute. The lights went out during the 35th minute of the game and we certainly would have liked to sip this beautiful Rhum Agricole-based cocktail while we waited.

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  • Our First Anniversary, And Some Gratitude

    February 2, 2013

    69 Comments

    petals13Hard to believe, but it has been one year since our first blog post. We had no idea where this was going when we started, but our family blog is now a labor of love. But it isn’t even “labor”, we simply love this. We are not much on milestones here at the farm. We enjoy every day and hope to do a little better every tomorrow. We don’t look back much, as we are so grateful for the present. Sometimes heaven is a place on earth, and many days we think we’ve found it (or at least something pretty close).

    awards1But we will mark this anniversary because we want to thank all of you for visiting us. We cannot begin to tell you all how grateful we are that you would take time out of your day to visit Putney Farm. We feel like we have dozens of new friends from all over the world. And for that, we are eternally grateful.

    peachWe are also grateful for all the feedback, suggestions, jokes and encouragement. Bloggers, it turns out, are a very fun group of people. We are also grateful for all the corrections and suggestions to improve our recipes. It pains us to make mistakes or poor choices (and we apologize for any and all recipe issues), but the only way to get better is to recognize where you can improve. And we can both say we are much better cooks, photographers, gardeners and bartenders than we were a year ago. And for this we are most grateful. To us, food truly is love, and to constantly make and serve better food to those we love is a dream come true. Thank you. (And a summary of photos from the last year).

    scofflawtritiphotsauce1orc7forage8gaz5 Continue reading »

  • Daffodils…Just In Time

    January 24, 2013

    31 Comments

    daffyWe are in the midst of a “real” winter here in Norcal. We can’t complain, we need the rain. And I guess the cold and wind just comes along with the deal sometimes.

    daffy9But just when almost all the colors fade, the Daffodils (or Narcissus, your choice) pop up. The yellows and whites gleam amidst the browns and grays of winter. There are always signs of spring in California. That comes with the deal, too.daffy1daffy12daffy8daffy5daffy1daffy13daffy3daffy4 Continue reading »