I've just been rambling through my overgrown garden for something -- anything -- for lunch and found that my first borlotti beans are ready to harvest. Those are the marbled beans used to make pasta fagioli, that hearty soup of beans and pasta that's beloved all over northern Italy.
Usually I just use dried ones from the market, but this year I planted an Italian heirloom variety called lingua di fuoco -- tongue of fire. I guess it's the red marbling on the pods, and slightly on the beans, that gives them that name. Whatever you call them, they are real beauties.
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 Even for those of us who think we can’t possibly get enough of good tomatoes, this time of year can be a bit of a test. It’s very nearly an over-abundance of riches. They seem to be everywhere, and the variety and quality is unbeatable. To honor this bounty, the Hollywood Farmers Market is hosting its annual Peak of Summer Tomato Festival Sunday. As always, it will feature samples (this year more than 30 varieties will be available), as well as tips on canning and drying, and a demonstration of preparing “heirloom tomato juices” by someone called “Chef E.”
But for true tomato lovers, the real highlight of the day will be an appearance by Amy Goldman, who will be signing her new book “The Heirloom Tomato.” Like Goldman’s previous books “The Compleat Squash” and “Melons for Passionate Growers,” this book sets tomatoes up as art objects, highlighted by gorgeous color photography by Victor Schrager.
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 With its temperate, sun-soaked climate, Los Angeles is prime home-garden territory, so it's little wonder that Marta Teegen, the founder of Homegrown Los Angeles, which offers gardening classes to green-thumbed Angelenos, says her courses are regularly filling up these days.
Surely her packed rosters also have something to do with a smattering of recent news reports about the renewed bloom of the American home garden. With the economy in a slump and gas and food prices riding high, it seems that families feeling the pinch have taken to growing their own vegetables, much like they did with the liberty gardens of World War I and the victory gardens of World War II, as well as during the economic downturns of the '70s and '80s and briefly after Sept. 11.
In May, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that the nation's largest mail-order seed company projected that "sales of herb and vegetable plants and seeds might outpace last year by as much as 40% to 50%."
Teegen, who grew up on a farm and started her gardening career helping private chefs plant gardens at their clients' homes, says she expanded her reach to helping citizen gardeners because of the enthusiasm shown by the public.
"People are much more interested in learning how to do it themselves," says Teegen, adding that her most popular class is her "container gardening" class.
"People don't have much space," she says. "But you don't need to have much. You can grow an
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When I was young and poor and hanging out in Tuscany, I fell hard for pinzimonio. It was inexpensive. It was incredibly delicious. And it took a while to eat, perfect if you want to linger over dinner without spending too much.
Forget the dish of olive oil with your bread served at Italian restaurants here: nobody does it in Italy. But pinzimonio is a better way to assess and appreciate the virtues of a special bottle of extra-virgin olive oil. It’s basically a platter of raw vegetables -- baby fennel, celery, red bell peppers, cauliflower, carrots, scallions, et cetera, cut into strips or pieces and served with a small bowl of that deep-green-gold olive oil, the very best you can afford. (Peppery olio nuovo, new oil, is the ultimate.) It’s usually accompanied by sea salt. Some like to add a grinding of black peppercorns, too....
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You say tomato, the artists/activists over at Island of L.A. say Love Apples, a nod to the South American tradition that they're supposed aphrodisiacs. 
In keeping with such good vibes, in early July, Islands planted 72 of them, from roma to sweet cherry and beyond, across 12 of the city’s traffic islands in a playful attempt to get Angelenos pondering urban farming of the future. (check out arts writer Lynell George’s piece on Islands founder Ari Kletzky).
After a little back and forth with City Hall, the experiment flourished, and this Sunday all comers are invited to sample the harvest at Salsa Salsa — a four-hour, free salsa-making, salsa-dancing soiree, in conjunction with fellow food pranksters Fallen Fruit and downtown’s sustainably minded salon Farmlab.
--Mindy Farabee
Photo: Susan LaTempa
 When I decided this spring to start blogging periodically about my summer garden, it was intended to be a catalog of triumphs: Here’s something great I cooked with something great I grew. That’s not quite the way it worked out in real life. It’s not that my vegetable garden turned into a total disaster, but pretty close. Let’s just say that I’m sure glad there are so many farmers markets around.
Of the more than a dozen pole beans seeds I planted, only a half-dozen actually germinated and only three (3!) plants survived to any kind of maturity. If I’m very, very lucky, my summer harvest might be enough for a garnish. I planted three shishito peppers, and I honestly don’t have any idea where they went. My eggplants gave off about one fruit each before they decided to take the rest of the summer off.
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 Shiso seems to love one corner of my herb garden, and my Asian friends often come over to raid my shiso plants. Sonya drops over to cut some of the bigger leaves as wrappers for barbecued short ribs; Sonoko uses them for garnish in Japanese home cooking. From the garden, I can hear the clop of Naoko’s geta sandals coming down the stairs before I see her. Armed with scissors and a sandwich-sized Ziploc bag, she gives my trio of shiso plants a pruning, stacking the leaves neatly into the baggie. I’ve given her a shiso plant, and she’s also planted seeds, but somehow neither have done well in her garden. So she comes over every week or so to get some shiso. This is her method for storing the leaves: First she washes them and pats them dry, layering the leaves between paper towels in a bigger baggie where she says they’re fine for up to two weeks. I tried it, and it works like a charm.
—S. Irene Virbila
Photo: Glenn Koenig / Los Angeles Times
 After last week’s Farmers Market item on choosing netted or rough-skinned melons, in which I commented that smooth-skinned melons were harder to choose, I got several e-mails from readers offering their tips on choosing them. So in the interest of providing a universally melon-happy summer, here’s the rundown (just for the record, all were explained in my book “How to Pick a Peach”).
- The best indicator of ripeness in a smooth-skinned melon (such as a honeydew) is to rub your fingers across the rind -- it should feel slightly tacky, like the difference between the sticky and shiny sides of wax paper.
But there are more signs of ripeness -- after the jump.
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Having complained here about having (in succession) too many avocados, too many apricots, too many peaches and too many plums, it's a bit embarrassing to confess that I have only myself to thank for having too many figs. See, there's a tree in the alley behind my house that no one seems  to pick from. The fruit, circled by drunken insects, ferments on the tree.
Meanwhile, a friend, Sally, who was our house guest during peak stone-fruit season, sent me a dehydrator as a gift. When it arrived, I had finished canning the last of the plums (as plum butter) and wondered what I'd possibly do with it. Then the figs started ripening so I put found fruit and gifted tool together and tried drying the figs. 
The hydrator, it turns out, is kind of hilarious -- a humming box that might as well be sending messages to Mars as slowly sucking the moisture out of whatever you put into it, but after 24 or so hours,
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 Here they are, the gorgeous purple pole beans I grew from seed. They’re an heirloom variety called trionfo violetto from Franchi Sementi seed company in Italy. I’ve been going out every morning and picking a fat handful from beneath the burgundy-tinged leaves. The flavor is wonderfully direct and grassy. Too bad they don’t retain that plummy color when cooked: instead they turn a lovely green.
I like to blanch them in boiling salted water, then plunge immediately into an ice water bath. In summer, I prefer green beans served as a salad so I’ll dress them either in a shallot vinaigrette or a fragrant loose pesto. Easy.
As mentioned in a previous post, the seed source is Seeds from Italy at www.growitalian.com. 100 gram seed packet of Trionfo Violetto beans, $5.05.
--S. Irene Virbila
Photo by S. Irene Virbila
 What? Apple pie season before July's gone? For amateur backyard growers, it is indeed so. 
Most of us have been steered when planting to the Beverly Hills apple, an early variety that doesn't require low temperatures to thrive. Its fruit is lovely-- pale green and smooth at first, passing through a stippled red-on-yellow stage, and finally-- if the birds don't get there first--to an overall russet red. But after you've had a tree for several seasons, you seldom want to let hanging fruit get beyond the yellow-red stage. The flesh quickly loses its snap.
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 Everybody’s talking about eating locally, but Sunset magazine actually did it. The August issue features a package on a feast made almost entirely from ingredients that were actually grown on the magazine’s Palo Alto campus. For those of us who get cranky just trying to keep up with zucchini and tomatoes, it is either inspiring or humiliating.
Spearheaded by food editor Margo True, staffers raised chickens for eggs, kept bees for honey, and grew most of the fruits and vegetables themselves in the magazine’s test gardens. About the only foods that came from off-site were the olive oil (their own trees were infested with bugs), ocean water (evaporated to make salt) and wine (from grapes harvested in the nearby Santa Cruz mountains, but crushed and fermented in the magazine parking lot).
The article documenting the project is presented in the magazine’s format, which means very short stories and lots of informational break -ut boxes and color art, and there’s more available on the website. Still, the thing seems to beg for a book.
--Russ Parsons
(Photo from Sunset magazine)
 My husband and I are accidental orchardists. When we moved into this house, the backyard was already dominated by trees — including a three-story-tall avocado tree, two plum trees, an apricot and an orange tree. The apricot stopped bearing (or so we thought) about eight years ago, so we added a small white peach tree about four years ago.
Suddenly this summer, we and other fruit growers have seen old trees come to life — we had an enormous crop of wonderful Blenheim apricots. I made pies and cobblers, froze purée for future mousses and Bavarians and put up jars of apricot butter. Then, of course, the new peach tree, which had borne only a few dozen fruits in its early years, grew up overnight (as adolescents do). And all the cliches about branches groaning under the weight of fuzzy orbs came true. I made pies and cobblers, jars of pie filling and peach butter and took baskets of fruit in to work.
Now the plums are here. They're gorgeous Santa Rosas and they make a delicious plum buckle and are wonderful out of hand. In past years I've canned and preserved them but this year my at-stove time is getting ahead of my beach time so I'm taking the free farm stand route. We get a lot of smiles and waves and thank-yous from neighbors and passers-by. Sweet.
If the Test Kitchen has time to try it out, I'll post a terrific plum buckle recipe here in a few days. It's a great coffee cake, made in a skillet in the oven, and uses up a respectable three to four cups of sliced plums. Check back.
— Susan LaTempa
Photo by Susan LaTempa
 Remember my zucchini issue? I posted last week that I was going nuts trying to remember how I used to make zucchini salad. I remembered the ingredients (duh: zucchini, oil and lemon juice, garlic, pine nuts, basil or mint … hard to forget one of those). But there was a truc I was missing, one of those little chef’s tricks that transformed the raw zucchini. I knew it wasn’t cooking. And I’d tried soaking the zucchini in ice water (a la Marcella Hazan), but that wasn’t it either.
A couple days later I was reading through my friend Joyce Goldstein’s new book, “Mediterranean Fresh,” and there it was! Not the exact recipe, but a zucchini salad that starts with salting the zucchini and letting it stand. That was the step I’d forgotten. The salting pulls moisture from the squash, softening it a little and removing that bitter vegetal edge, turning the flavor nutty.
So here’s how you do it: Cut up zucchini about a quarter-inch thick (quarters, halves, rounds — depends on the size of the squash). Put them in a colander, salt liberally and let stand for 30 minutes. Rinse them well, pat them dry and then combine them in a bowl with just a smidgen of garlic puree, olive oil and lemon juice and toss well to coat the squash pieces. Toss in some torn basil or mint leaves and a bare handful of toasted pine nuts.
It’s one of my favorite summer salads. I’ve served it at least three times in the last week and will keep serving it as long as the plants (and my wife’s patience) hold out.
— Russ Parsons
Photo by Russ Parsons
Now that we’ve gone crazy for cooking Asian in our household, I thought I’d like to grow some Asian herbs and vegetables. I used to order from Kitazawa Seed Co. in Oakland when I lived in the Bay Area. The company started out in 1917 selling seeds to just-arrived Japanese immigrants. Now, 91 years later, their catalog (available by mail or online) encompasses some 300 varieties of Asian vegetables for Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai and other Asian cuisines.
Impressed by their selection of heirloom vegetables from Japan’s Kansai region, I ended up buying much, much more than Chinese chives and Japanese scallions. After scouring their catalog, I decided on three of their seed collections — Asian Herb Garden, Thai Garden and Japanese Heirloom Garden (seven seed packets each). I completed my order with two kinds of yardlong beans, Lunar white carrots, Chinese celery, Japanese bunching onions, two kinds of Thai basil, and more. It’s easy to order online from their informative site, which lists eight — count 'em — types of Thai basil.
From the library, I had checked out Joy Larkcom’s classic gardening book “Oriental Vegetables” (see photo after the jump), decided I liked it and was looking for a used copy online when I discovered the British organic gardening expert had just published a revised version. I immediately ordered it: Now I have someone to hold my hand while I try growing all this exotic stuff. Wish me luck.
Kitazawa Seed Co. (510) 595-1188; fax (510) 595-1860. Seed packets, $3.35 each; seed collections, $21 each.
"Oriental Vegetables" by Joy Larkcom, Kodansha International (2008), 232 pages, paperback, $19.95.
— S. Irene Virbila
Photos by S. Irene Virbila
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 You just knew that the first thing to be ready to be picked would be the zucchini, didn’t you? What else? Not the tomatoes, certainly, and not the peppers, soybeans, eggplants or beans. (Actually, the beans needed to be replanted; I think I put them in too early and they never got off to a good start.) But you know what? Having zucchini come first is not a problem for me. I really love zucchini. That’s not to say that with four plants, there won’t come a time later in the summer when I’m leaving bags of them on my neighbors’ doorsteps, but that’s hard to imagine right now, having just picked my first.
What did I do with them? The obvious choice for me was braising them (you can call it glazing if you prefer): Cut them into 2-inch sections and then cut each of those into lengthwise quarters; cook them covered over medium heat with some olive oil, minced garlic and just enough water to slick the bottom of the pan; when they’re tender, take off the lid and raise the heat to high to reduce the pan juices to a glaze; toss in some basil at the end, if you like. It takes about 15 minutes to make this dish and as far as I’m concerned, I probably won’t taste anything better all summer.
Actually, these squash I grew aren’t really zucchini. They’re cocozelle, which is a predecessor to the zucchini. According to my main squash man, Dr. Harry Paris of the Newe Ya'ar Research Center in Israel, true zucchini didn’t show up in vegetable gardens until the start of the 20th century. Cocozelle are much older, you can see them in paintings from the 16th century. But I didn’t grow them just for their history: Cocozelle are reputed to have flavor superior to any zucchini. Based on my first sampling, let’s just say that I wasn’t disappointed. Next up? My wife has already called dibs on frittata. What would you do with an antique zucchini?
— Russ Parsons
(Photo by Russ Parsons)
This year’s garden find: Seeds From Italy, an American company started by Bill McKay, a passionate gardener who had trouble finding the Italian seeds he wanted to grow on his own plot of land. In 2000, he became the U.S. agent for Franchi Sementi (Seeds) in Bergamo, Italy — a company that dates from 1783 — and has been selling Italian seeds ever since.
I can’t remember what I was searching for when I found his site, maybe speckled borlotti beans (lingua di fuoco). But what a glorious bonanza for Italophile gardeners. Seeds From Italy does have lingua di fuoco, also thick-fleshed peppers from Piedmont and cardi gobbi, the hunchbacked cardoons that are essential to bagna cauda. He’s got the wild green called agretti, several varieties of radicchio I’ve only seen in the Veneto region, and on and on.
I kind of went crazy ordering stuff. The radicchio I think I’ll plant later when the weather cools down. Right now, though, I’m growing an escarole mix for salads, a couple of different eggplants, violetta and romanesco artichokes, a yellow bush bean from Piedmont streaked with red, another that grows in a curlicue, cultivated dandelion and zucchini da fiore — zucchini bred to produce lots of very large flowers for cooking. In addition to the Franchi seeds, he has seeds from small purveyors in the south of Italy.
And four times a year McKay publishes his useful newsletter (which is archived on the website) with advice on growing the various vegetables, along with tips from customers who have written in to tell him how they like to cook their Italian produce.
— S. Irene Virbila
Photo by S. Irene Virbila
 Frieda Caplan has never been shy about trying new things. After all, she is the woman who in the 1960s found a fuzzy little green fruit and turned it into the global sensation called the kiwifruit. As a result of that and other discoveries, the purple “Frieda’s Finest” sticker quickly became ubiquitous in supermarket produce departments. This summer, along with daughter Karen Caplan, who is running their company now, Frieda (pictured) has launched her own version of a farmers market at the Los Alamitos headquarters of the national wholesale produce company. They’re careful to call it a “Fresh Marketplace,” not a farmers market, but you can recognize the trappings: tables under tents, cooking demonstrations and a jazz band.
There are some pretty interesting things to taste, as well, all of them coming from Frieda’s warehouse. In addition to the by-now-expected farmers market fare of shallots, fingerling potatoes, fresh herbs and heirloom tomatoes, there are fresh and dried chiles, tomatillos and jicama from Frieda’s line of Latin products. And of course there are exotic tropical fruits: three kinds of bananas, different varieties of mangoes and papayas, kiwano, rambutan, feijoa, cherimoya and — wouldn’t you know it, kiwis — both green and golden. There are even farmers — last weekend’s was Mark Maggiore from Brentwood, a Frieda’s supplier who brought in corn and sugar-sweet white apricots called Angelcots.
And, of course, there’s the irrepressible Frieda herself, still marketing at more than 80 years old, parked under an umbrella and signing copies of her “Purple Kiwi Cookbook” for anyone who wants one.
Frieda’s Fresh Marketplace, 4465 Corporate Center Drive, Los Alamitos (Cerritos Street at Lexington Drive). Saturdays 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. through July 26.
-- Russ Parsons
Photo by Russ Parsons
 "How're my vegetables!" my 7-year-old niece yells into the phone.
"Fine," I reply. "How are you? How's school?"
"How big are my sunflowers!" she interrupts, too focused for pleasantries. I tell her the sunflowers are about up to her knee. And she continues, wanting information on each of the vegetables: the corn (up to her waist), tomatoes (waist), beans (as tall as she, but spindly), cucumbers (size of her hand), melons (same as the cucumbers), and pumpkins (the leaves alone are as big as her head). She's not interested in the peppers.
Last year, I converted part of the backyard (about 200 square feet) into a vegetable garden. I wanted it to be totally organic, which was -- and still is -- quite a learning experience. Yeah, I learned all about tomato worms and white mold, but nothing beats the feeling you get when you can pick your tomatoes and cucumbers five minutes before they go into your evening salad. It was so rewarding that this year I wanted to invite my niece to participate, so she could learn firsthand how all her dinner vegetables come to be.
 We started six weeks ago, weeding and tilling the soil, readying the garden for planting. I placed an order earlier this year for seeds and seedlings from Seed Savers Exchange, a nonprofit organization focused on preserving heirloom vegetable and flower varieties. When everything arrived in the mail, we were ready.
We followed the "Three Sisters" method for planting the corn, beans and pumpkins: The beans climb up the corn to support it, the corn provides extra nitrogen in the soil for the pumpkins, and the pumpkins provide shade so the soil doesn't dry out. We planted basil with the tomatoes; supposedly basil keeps the tomato worms at bay. When everything else was planted, I installed an irrigation system to help combat the white mold. (The mold thrives on damp leaves -- no more watering with a hose for me.)
After two weeks, everything had sprouted. To keep all the bad bugs at bay, we picked up ladybugs and praying mantis egg sacs from the hardware store. I don't know what fascinates my niece more, watching those seeds turn into big plants, or seeing 700 hungry ladybugs emerge from a pint-sized jar.
 Though my niece has come over every other weekend since the planting, she'd call once a week for updates. Now that the plants are -- quite literally -- growing a foot a day, I get my call almost daily.
So far, no white mold or tomato worms, and my fingers are crossed. But if you have any other suggestions, please comment, I'd love to know. Otherwise, I'll be sure to update as the season continues, but I'll spare you the daily briefings.
-- Noelle Carter
Photos by Noelle Carter
 Though most of the edible action in my new front yard is focused on the four raised vegetable beds I’ve written about before, there’s also a fuyu persimmon tree and — miracle of miracles — three big artichoke plants. And while everything else seems to be enjoying a slow spring adolescence, those artichokes are going kind of crazy. This is big news for me, because I’m kind of crazy about artichokes myself.
I’m not sure exactly where this affection comes from. Certainly, there’s plenty to love about artichokes just from a culinary standpoint. But that can hardly account for it. One of the first long food and farming stories I did was about the artichoke industry just north of Monterey around the little town of Castroville (home to something like 85% of the artichokes grown in the United States). All I know is that I still feel a thrill whenever I drive through the area and see those rolling, fog-shrouded hills covered with giant, gray-green plants.
So it’s probably only appropriate that the first thing harvested out of my new garden was an artichoke. I clipped the biggest of the half-dozen buds that have popped up already, snipped off the tips of the outer leaves, rinsed it well (aphids and ants!) and microwaved it (4 minutes on high in a sealed container, just long enough so that the leaves pull out easily). Then I served it with some garlic mayonnaise.
I’m not going to tell you that a home-grown artichoke is going to change your life. It’s not a tomato, for goodness' sake, and after all, artichokes are certainly tough enough to ship fairly well. But it sure was good. It may have been just my imagination, but there did seem to be more nuance of flavor there. It was somehow more “artichoke-y” than the ones you buy in the store. And best of all, a little corner of my front yard looks just like Castroville.
-- Russ Parsons
Photo by Russ Parsons
As promised, here’s an update on the Parsons’ Family Farm (well, the  four raised vegetable beds in my front yard). The squash and the melons have poked through and are doing well, as are about half of the bean seeds I planted at the same time. The beans seem to be a little slower to germinate than the cucurbits. (I planted them all April 13.)
I’ve also planted three tomato plants I bought last week from Barbara Spencer at Windrose Farm. Two of them are old favorites: Cherokee Purple and Brandywine Pink. The third is something called Double Rich Red, which I’ve never tried but Spencer says is “high-acid,” which fits my palate perfectly.
The question is this: I’ve still got one tomato spot left. What should I plant? Cherokee and Brandywine are beefsteak-types. Double Rich Red looks to be more of a slicer. I’m tempted to put in a cherry, or maybe a paste. I’m a couple of miles inland, but the early summer months still tend to be foggy and cool (this last weekend notwithstanding!). So maybe something very reliable like a Sweet 100 or even Early Girl (not a cherry, I know) would be a smart bet. What do you think?
-- Russ Parsons
(Photo by Russ Parsons)
 Several readers have asked about my front yard vegetable gardens, so I thought I’d post some pictures. And who knows? If everything doesn't die, maybe I'll drop in from time to time with news about how things are growing and what I'm cooking.
The raised beds are the brainchild of my brilliant garden designer Nick Tan, of Urban Organics Design. My wife and I had dreams of a fairly basic xeriscape garden, but he knew of my interest in cooking and growing and suggested the beds and as soon as he said it, we all immediately knew we had to make room for them. Our house is on a corner lot and the vegetable beds are arranged along the side yard, behind a fence that will soon be covered by a climbing rose. There are four beds, each about a yard square, and there is another long, narrow one along the back with a trellis that runs up the wall.
I've been traveling a lot lately, so it'll be a couple of weeks before everything is planted. Right now I've got Victoria rhubarb from Burpee's intermixed with some California irises. Waiting to go in are a bunch of seeds I ordered from Victory Seed Co. One bed will have melons — an old variety called Queen Anne's Pocket Melon; they're very small (softball-sized) and extremely fragrant. Supposedly, they were carried by Victorian women in their purses as deodorants. I'm also planting zucchini, if you can believe it. Actually, it's a zucchini predecessor called Cocozelle that I almost never find at farmers markets. It's supposed to have really terrific flavor. The trellis bed will be a mixture of Scarlet Runner Beans (the hummingbirds love them) and an old Italian variety called Valena that can be eaten as green beans, as shelly beans and as dried beans. I've talked to Barbara Spencer at Windrose Farms about tomatoes for another bed. I'll definitely do something Brandywine-ish, and maybe a great paste tomato, especially if she can come up with true San Marzano. The final bed will be a cut-and-come-again salad bed with mixed herbs and greens.
Besides the beds, I've got a Fuyu persimmon tree and a Panachee fig tree, plus three artichoke plants that may or may not be used as ornamentals. We'll see how that goes. A garden, like a blog, is always a work in progress.
-- Russ Parsons
Photo by Russ Parsons
 Last year I bought three evergreen passion fruit (passiflora edulis) vines from Jimmy Williams of HayGround Organic Farming at the Hollywood Farmers Market. Williams, who sells organic herb and vegetable plants there every Sunday (and also on Saturdays at the Santa Monica Farmers Market), suggested the vines as a solution to covering 80 feet of chain link fence at the back of my garden. Three plants? I was skeptical, but he swore up and down that in six months I wouldn’t see the fence.
He was right. The ugly fence is now completely covered in hand-sized emerald green leaves with dozens, if not hundreds, of passion fruits dangling among the leaves. My neighbor tried one of the egg-shaped fruits and promptly ordered a vine. I’m sure the neighborhood wildlife has been chowing down on the bounty too. 
I’ve been making vinaigrette with passion fruit instead of lemon. The fruit’s tartness and luscious perfume is fantastic on salad greens. I want to try making sorbet and soufflés too. But meanwhile, last night, my husband, Fred, had the idea to cook some gorgeous little carrots from the farmers market in passion fruit juice. He braised them in a little butter with the saffron-colored passion fruit juice (with the seeds sieved out), a spoonful of sugar and a couple of sprigs of thyme until done. Just before serving, he turned up the heat to thicken the juices and caramelize the carrots. Delicious!
However, I just picked another basket of fruit. Now what?
-- S. Irene Virbila
Photos by S. Irene Virbila
The tomatoes are still on the vine and will be for a while, but it's time for SoCal kitchen gardeners to start planning for October planting season. There are strawberry plants in some nurseries (fall's a good time to plant, though you'll get another chance at bare-root time in January/February) and of course seed catalogues and websites are ripe for the perusing. (Check out seedsavers.org for heirloom varities; reneesgarden.com for the smartest, liveliest culinary collections from the woman who founded Shepherd's Seeds; and Anaheim-based evergreenseeds.com for Asian vegetables.)
Think greens -- chard, lettuces, a micro green mix, maybe?, arugula, of course, and shiso. There are dozens of beyond-spinach choices. And if you put edible-pod pea seeds in the ground in October, you'll have them to harvest and enjoy for Thanksgiving.
In the meantime, there's a lot of digging to do.
-- Susan LaTempa
Photo by Susan LaTempa
After picking about 4 pounds of incredibly ripe, sweet-oozing figs from a tree in the alley behind my house this morning, I was glad to hear that the food tree lovers at Fallen Fruit are holding another Public Fruit Jam this Sunday.
Fallen Fruit is a collaborative project that maps sources of fruit on public land, encourages cities to landscape with fruit trees, and facilitates bartering and sharing among home orchardists. The afternoon includes a discussion of the basics of jam making and a pooling of participants' home-grown or foraged fruit and herbs for what organizers hope will be some creative and unusual jams. Bring any clean, empty glass jars you have on hand too. The fruit you go home with will have a whole different personality from the fruit you came in with.
Public Fruit Jam 2007, noon to 3 p.m. Aug. 19 at Machine Project, 1200-D N. Alvarado St., Los Angeles, (213) 483-8761. More details at www.machineproject.com.
-- Susan LaTempa
 Who could resist? As I went to rinse this morning's backyard harvest of golden tomatoes (my red varieties are between-times at the moment) and the first of our 5-year-old apple tree's fruit, I noticed that each matched a bowl in the dish drainer. For now. The apples, a low-chill variety called Beverly Hills, turn from this apple green to a russety red-streaked yellow. But they never make it to that shade at our house -- we prefer their McIntosh-like bright-white flesh when it's firm and crisp.
P.S. The oregano's in bloom.
-- Susan LaTempa
Photo by Susan LaTempa
 I'm all about fruit guilt these days, thanks to that bountiful stone fruit season you've been hearing about. Our plum tree is full of ripe, red-purple plums and the birds and squirrels haven't gobbled up as many as in previous years. So after taking a big bag to the office (Friday), making a tart (Saturday), giving away two bags to enthusiastic cook friends (Sunday) and setting out a box with a "Help Yourself" sign on the sidewalk in front of the house (refilled daily), I got into home preserving mode. I don't have time to take a whole day from the office to put up jars of plum conserve, plum chutney and plum jam, but I can grab an hour here and there and end up with a year's supply of plum butter.
My strategy is all about rapidly getting the fruit to a first stage of preparation so it doesn't spoil, and then catching up with myself on the weekend. So I harvest every day, then immediately wash the plums and cut them, unpeeled, into a pan on the stove. I add nothing to the pot -- these are a mixture of super-ripe, kinda ripe and oops-that-one's-not-ready-yet fruit -- and there's plenty of liquid/juice. I bring it to a quick boil, simmer 10 or so minutes until the fruit's tender, cool a bit and then use an immersion blender to purée the cooked fruit.
This I can store in the fridge until I'm ready to proceed with making plum butter -- measuring the purée, adding an equal amount of sugar, spicing it with cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg and then simmering till thick. It's the simmering till thick part that takes time, but I'll have already done the fruit prep, so this second stage will take only a couple of hours max.
Then I'll head out to the yard and start picking again.
-- Susan LaTempa
Photo by Susan LaTempa
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