"bad to the scone."

Preheat oven to 400 degrees and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Sift together

1 and 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1/2 whole wheat pastry flour

2 teaspoons aluminum-free baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

with 1/2 cup brown sugar

Add 6 tablespoons of chilled unsalted soy margarine chopped into small pieces. Gently work the flour-butter mixture with a pastry blender until the dough looks like coarse meal.

Tip: Overworking the dough makes scones tough or heavy.

In a separate bowl, mix together

3/4 cup soy milk, or 1/2 soy milk and 1/2 tofu cream.

1 teaspoon vanilla

1/4 cup sesame seeds

For variations, you may add an additional 1/2 cup chopped pecans or walnuts

Add to flour mixture and stir just until blended.

On a floured board, pat the dough into a circle and cut into 8 wedges.

If you are making small scones using this cranberry scone recipe, divide the dough in half and pat into two rounds, then cut into wedges.

Place on the baking sheet, bake for 15 minutes until lightly golden. Cool on wire racks.

so i found this online b/c i have no recipe for cranberry scones and i had lots of cranberries. it was a lot different than the other recipe that i've been working with, i.e. the ONLY recipe i've ever used.

as usual, i used w. wheat flour.

i also cooked them about double the time since i forgot to pay attention to the recipe, but i think they needed a little extra time from the original recipe and about 5 minutes less than i cooked them. either way, i think they're good.

oh, and i also forgot to "sweeten" the cranberries, besides the fact that "honey" was suggested and i'm not that kind of dirty vegan.

The best alarm clock is sunshine on chrome. -Author Unknown

last week we made a pesto out of our garlic scapes. we were gifted w/the garlic scapes from my mom's garden as they thought they were too creepy to eat. (they are creepy looking, but once they're cut up it's easy to forget since they're filled w/garlic-y goodness.)
i, of course misplaced the recipe that we used but it really doesn't matter since we altered it so much, anyway.
this time the recipe went:

1 C scapes
1/3 C nuts
about 1/2 C oil
a little sprinkling of "cheese" type something or other
salt & pepper to taste.

i also made garlic scape "scallion pancakes" last week, too, which will be revisited as well, as soon as i can get the jar of sesame oil open...

greens of all sorts from both our garden and my mom's. salad it up.

there's some sort of motorbike event at the end of our road again this weekend and for the past few days RVs and pick-ups have been going by in caravans. much-less maddening than the constant rumble of said-bikes on the trail that is directly adjacent to our property.

i think i'm going to make some muffins, later. maybe cranberry. possibly w/walnuts. maybe raisins, idk. feeling indecisive. i just know that i have all of these things! possibly do nothing but go out to the garden as it's supposed to be a pretty rainy weekend.

tomatoes are looking more promising than last year! come on, tomatoes!

"In order to live off a garden, you practically have to live in it." -Frank McKinney Hubbard

after what was possibly an entire week (the first week that posed no threat of frost, so-the week to put in starts) w/out rain-it began raining last night and is scheduled to return to a more "normal" pattern of no rain for a couple of days and then a day of rain/thunderstorms for (about) the next few weeks, which i am mostly fine w/though it's scheduled to just be pretty rainy here, for the next week.

really hoping that the tomato blight that hit the NE last year doesn't reoccur. a super-rainy season is what brings it out from dormancy and allows it to ravage the tomatoes/potatoes.

so far, our garlic is being good as well as a set of Brussels sprouts starts that we got from a farmer at the Ithaca farmers' market that i don't remember the name of.

we also had to buy a bunch of tomato starts from another farmer at the market as our one window that faces South and is able to be closed off from cat-activity is just not cutting it as far as getting starts properly started.

also got some Hungarian wax peppers. a couple of our own pepper starts might survive. a bunch of Japanese Giant Mustard reseeded itself from last year so is sporadically strewn throughout the garden(as we tilled it up-twice before planting.) Stan gifted us w/some OG lemon-cucumber seeds that none of us have any first-hand experience with. * shrug*

as far as herbs go, basil is this years' winner. yay! have about 12 little plants that are looking promising. also have chive, our always-faithful rosemary, horseradish and the wild mint that planted itself and continues to spread.

got some strawberry plants that we have yet to decide on a home for.

kale and spinach are doing well, the former more-so than the latter.

snap peas, also.

weeds are the bane of my existence. no, that's a lie. rocks are. no. bugs. all team together. team horrible!

we went over to my mom's for Memorial Day and i made an apple pie. it was my first attempt at making a pie crust from the whole wheat flour that we've taken to dominantly using, as it's local and bought in bulk at the Greenstar Co-op in Ithaca. it's incredibly hard to work with. it acted like it was a really dry dough even though it wasn't dry at all. basically, it fell apart a lot. but really, i thought it tasted fine despite the fact that my mom wasn't too keen on it.

tonight is the season premiere of Hell's Kitchen and that usually means pizza, but we've decided to go the calzone direction, instead. Gordon Ramsey, pizza-type-food and wine. yes!

later this week we are going out to dinner w/dad to this place:
http://www.moghulcuisine.com/

hope it has good samosas. actually, i hope it's all good as Central NY is severely lacking in the "other cultures" department.