Friday is Galette Day

It's a perfect beach day in Santa Cruz. Maybe you can imagine me there, laying on the warm sand with the sparkly blue water and sea gulls edging up the sand to eye my lunch. Or put me next to a swimming hole surrounded by shady redwoods, or under a tree anywhere, watching the fine clouds etch lace over the high blue.

Whatever you do, don't put me where I have to be, sitting next to a concrete pillar in an atrium adjacent to the library, typing away. For well-paying work, so I shan't complain, although that sunshine does look mighty pretty, and there's a moonlight hike I'm going to be skipping too, for the sake of a job to do. But at some point tomorrow, the Green Zebra tomatoes and sweet Thai basil will get planted in my freshly-dug bed in the kitchen garden--a rough little plot behind the kitchen where we can have our own private plots. I didn't even mind heaving a wheelbarrow full of compost all the way from 'compost row' this morning--not usually my favorite job, but it's amazing what a little private ownership can do to one's incentive. Living here has made me appreciate many things, and having my own space is one of them.

The 'up', or Chadwick, garden, where I'm working for the next six weeks, is a maze of fruit trees and organic roses, with beds of lettuce, onions, and many many peppers squeezed in higgledy-piggledy wherever there's room. Passing the heavy-bearing aprium trees every morning on my way to the greenhouses, I resolved to use the little farm kitchen for a spot of galette-making come Friday. And it worked: during our two-hour break from noon to 2pm, I whipped up a batch of dough, picked a bowl of not-quite-ripe but tasty fruit, assembled two galettes and got them in and out of the oven. They were gone too quickly for photos, but recipe to follow...