Also of import is the information at the bottom of the article, which I am reposting here. Funds raised with the following bookfair will support rebuilding the library collection at the school. You don’t have to live in Gilroy – you can purchase books online and still benefit the fundraiser!

Buy a book, help the school

What: Barnes & Noble Bookfair to benefit Gateway School

When: July 12 – 18

How: Participants may purchase books at the Gilroy location, 6825 Camino Arroyo, during store hours or online using voucher number 10161198.

When checking out, notify the cashier that the purchase is being made on behalf of Gateway.

Lesley has a lovely canning and pickling book written by a British author (Jellies, Jams & Chutneys by Thane Prince) that she has been letting me peruse at the office. The recipes are deceptively simple and the pictures of a quality that entice you to commit serial weekends to culinary feats that are just a hair beyond sane. It’s the perfect book when you have ten apricot trees ripening outside!

That said, this book’s recipe for apricot jam called for blemish free just-ripe apricots. But as we run an organic ship around here, we don’t get perfect grocery store apricots. Ripe, sumptuous, sun warmed, and perfectly kissed with a blush of pink…yes. Blemish free…not always. In addition to that, the apricots I pulled off the tree the week I wanted to make jam were not barely ripe. They were VERY ripe.

I’m a novice jam maker, which means technically I’m still at the state where I double and triple check multiple recipes trying to get everything “just so”. Worried about the jam not setting, worried about the jars not sealing, worried that somehow my genius self will be the one that infuses perfectly safe acidic jams with a mutant strain of botulism. But on a good week (and the week I made jam out of WMA apricots was a good week), I can toss all that aside and make and can jam with the same abandon that I cook dinner, which is to say I wing it.

So that lovely British recipe that deems my apricots too soft, too mushy, and too spotty for good jam? Poppycock.

I rinsed the apricots well, cut out the spots that were brown, quartered the remainder (instead of dicing or pureeing it), and cut the sugar content of the recipe by half to compensate for the riper state of the apricots. I also doubled the batch (which all the recipes say is a no no), so I added an extra bit of pectin on an add, test, add, test basis til the cold plate test method had it as thick as I wanted it.

The result is a sweet-tart jam that is smooth and spreadable in some places and a little chunky in others, and tastes just fabulous over sharp English cheddar and pear with Triscuits, or mixed into morning oatmeal.

¡Viva el experimento!

Coming Soon: future rockstars The Figs and The French Prunes.

Check out the beginnings of its construction in our March post here.

And check out new photos below!

Instead, let me show you this picture that Lesley and Charles brought back to the office to torment us after they attended the opening game for the Giants. Not only did they have seats at a thrilling game, but they ate at Pizzeria Delfina too. And what did they have for appetizers? Fried Young Favas. Nom!

I will be scrounging around the front garden after work to see if we have any favas still tiny enough to make this delicacy, then it’ll be off to Mitsuwa or Japantown for me to find some panko and try to recreate this dish. Why live vicariously when you can have deliciousness yourself?

(If you’re out and about in SF, stop by one of two Delfina Pizzeria locations: Mission and Pacific Heights.)

Chard from the Weston-Miles home garden.

Scafata (Umbrian Fava Bean Stew)

2 tablespoons olive oil

1/2 cup shelled fava beans

1/2 cup chopped onion

1/3 cup sliced carrots

1/4 cup chopped fennel

1 1/2 cups chopped chard leaves

1 1/2 cups chopped, peeled tomatoes

salt, pepper

Cook oil, beans, onion, fennel, carrot and chard over low heat in medium saucepan.

When beans are quite tender, after about 45 minutes, add tomatoes and cook for another 25 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Source: La Cucina Delle Regioni D’Italia: Umbria, by Antonella Santolini

*We recommend doubling this recipe to enjoy leftovers.

With a chunk of fresh bread and a glass of your favorite wine, dinner is served!

This is a quick meal once you have shelled the favas. We used small favas the size of a dime.  They are very tender and sweet, very different that the mature bean.

(Step 1: Watch the news and shell the favas.)

Fresh Baby Favas with Pappardelle

1 cup fresh organic fava beans

2-3 tablespoons olive oil – we used Napa Valley Naturals Organic

2 cloves of garlic, minced

1 medium shallot, thinly sliced

1 teaspoon Bouquet Garni- we used Penzey’s

dash of sea salt and fresh ground pepper

1 package Pappardelle noodle – we used Rustichella d’Abruzzo

Our other ingredients – all good things to have in the pantry!

Prepare pasta according to package and drain well.

Saute garlic, shallot, and bouquet garni in olive oil for one minute, then add shelled baby fava beans. Stir to coat beans with oil and then saute, tossing occasionally, until beans are tender and bright green. Add drained pasta to pan and stir lightly to coat pasta with fava mixture. Salt and pepper to taste.

Optional: After plating the pasta, top with shaved aged parmigiano. A swivel peeler works wonderfully for wide, substantial curls.

There’s something intensely satisfying about eating a meal that is all of a few hours out of the garden!

It has been 5 years since we planted the orchard in front of the granary in the what was the old rock/asphalt truck parking and drop off area.  The first several years the trees really were severely impacted by insects and disease.  Three years ago we started planting the fava beans and vetch as a cover crop, dry farmed in November.  The first year the favas grew to about 18″ and were spindly but had some good beans, the vetch was also very thin.  We bough 30 boxes of lady bugs to fight the aphid attack but did nothing else to control pests.

French Prune Blossoms

Crab Apple

Last year we brought in about 20 cubic yards of free horse manure and rice hulls for both mulch and some added nitrogen.  Both the favas and the vetch were pretty prolific nitrogen fixers as well so the combo really helped boost the fertility.  We also planted mustard last year for the first time.  Mustards roots are very strong and work well at breaking up the soils so that water and oxygen can both penetrate. We also bought 10 boxes of lady bugs; there were quite a few from the year before and the aphids were definitely fewer than the year before.

Budding Apricot Fruits

In the orchard, fruit is setting well; a brief cold spell in January may have really helped.  It was quite rainy and we ended up pruning later and later.   It is hard to imagine looking at the orchard and cover crop how quickly it has gone from a parking lot to diseased and sparse to lush and productive.

Baby Figs

This year, once again we planted, favas, vetch and mustard……the favas are currently 4′ tall, the vetch is wild mounds of color and the mustard is also tall and strong.  The impact of the plantings being close together, the manure/mulch, and this year’s additional rains have really come together in a big way!  Even with the past 2 weeks being unusually warm, the plants are really only showing limpness and stress at the very edges.  The favas are all coming on very fast and furiously.

More and more is being said about how we can turn our empty lots into verdant food gardens.  When I first studied French Intensive/ Biodynamic gardening in 1975, we studied the market gardeners in Paris and the amount of food that could be grown with horse manure and compost from the City. Although an orchard is not as efficient use of the space as raised beds, it is a hint of what our future can bring.

It was a big deal in the studio when the office moved from 2D to 3D design tools. Foothill High School Annex for the Santa Clara County Office of Education was one of the first projects we produced construction documents for in ArchiCad, a prominent BIM software.  The drawings happened several years ago and now we are finally seeing the fruits of that labor. The building is under construction and it is pretty exciting watching it go up.

The first things to go up after the slab was poured were the columns that comprise the four walls of the expansion.

One of my personal favorite things about a construction site is being able to see components before they’re put together to make the building…

…and then also to see them once they are in place.  Here the curved roof beams are being craned into place and welded to the columns. Working with the structural steel in this project called for utmost precision in the shop drawings. The columns and beams are not like wood or even lightweight metal framing – if the columns or beams are delivered to the site in the wrong length, you can’t lay them over a sawhorse and easily cut off the extra inches.

Here, all the curved roof beams are on. This is where you really start to get a feel for what the building is going to be like!

Next they installed horizontal elements between the columns to delineate where the windows will be and provide the bracing for the sturdy “box” that is the structure of the expansion.

Horizontal elements are in, the steel has its first coat of paint, the roof deck is applied, and the walls begin to be defined.

Stay tuned for more!