A long and winding road

How, you might justifiably ask, does a goofy garden event in Eugene, Oregon in 2008 lead to lemon curd in 2015? So glad you asked, chickadees, because there's a story in there.

No, silly, that's not horrible Eugene, that's OUR garden, back in the tidy days.

Comfortable? This is a long one. You might need to lay in some supplies. Hard tack, cornmeal, dried fruit...Oops, we're not going on the Oregon Trail (Phrodaux here "...you have died of dysentery..." Phrodaux out), are we? Maybe just iced tea and a cushion. Relax.

So. Once upon a time, Phrodaux and I were much more into ornamental gardening than we are just now. These days we're just barely keeping the home (city) garden alive (F-ing climate change...how is it that it didn't rain in June? That temps got to 100 in June? That the blackberries are ripe and the farmers already have their hay in? What the $#)$*)*$?????). Farm garden is another story. Fueled by Phrodaux's ingenious drip system of 5 am watering every other day (from our well, all right?), we are enjoying kale, mustard and collard greens, lettuce, raspberries, garlic, a few potatoes, and the occasional rogue sugar snap pea, while dreaming of tomatoes and chiles and gravenstein apples.

Wait. That wasn't my story.

Editor, everyone needs an editor. Have you noticed? Next time a friend starts to tell you a story, remember FQ's advice: Everyone needs an editor.

Anyway...2008. Ph & FQ go to the hell mouth that is Eugene for the Hardy Plant Society Study Weekend. Go ahead, look it up. There we meet Fab MV, our NYC pal of PR and Green Envy fame. At first we thought he was someone's gardener. It was the Tevas and the gardener finger nails. But after a swoony weekend of new and shiny friendship, we googled him, of course, and came up with this. Oops, no one's gardener.

But based on one weekend, fast friends we were. We went east in 2009, he came west in 2011. Then in 2013 we went east again, for the trip that started this blog and included Fab MV's milestone birthday party, at which we met K & S, who became our lovely friends in L.A. There are a lot of stories in there (burned vegetables, renegade cocktails, magnums of Veuve Clicquot, a treacherous staircase and the Fairy Queen's lost shoe) but this post is already too long and we haven't even entered the same time zone as the point. So maybe later.

ANYWAY (Editor! Is there an editor in the house??)

(Phrodaux here "...you have died of dysentery..." lots of that going around)

 * * *

24 hours have passed. Where was I? It was supposed to be about lemon curd, right? Now I'm out of patience for all this meandering. Cut to chase! Through gardening, we met Fab MV. Through him, we met lovely K&S. We recently spent a long weekend with them in LA, admiring their beautiful West Hollywood bungalow,

taking in lots of groovy architecture,

Future home of Fuse Lighting and its amazing genius founder, our friend, K.

OK, so whatever about the architecture, it's a hangar. But that's the Endeavor.
It went to SPACE. Made me cry to see it.

Oh, California. It's a drought, people. Why are you adding grass in front of the observatory??

The Bradbury Building, of Blade Runner fame. So unnecessarily beautiful.

The train station. Also swanky-pants beautiful. Also in Blade Runner (look for it!)

 ...and eating eating eating good food. Highlights:

• Wurstkuche
• Ostrich Farm (no, we did not eat ostrich)
• Egg Slut (where Phrodaux had to order the dish called Slut, but I'm not sure if it was because of the name or because it was the most complicated thing.

(Phrodaux here "...you may not have died of dysentery...this time...let's say it was weasels, yeah, weasels")

And of course TALKING about good food. K&S are good eaters but don't cook too often (except for S's otherworldly guacamole, which I have had the immense good fortune to eat twice now. Capers! Who'd have thought?) On the other hand, Phrodaux and I are deep into our "let's make that" phase (gin, tonic, bitters, jam, pickles, sourdough, dinner) and are nursing a major food lab fantasy (see future blog post, I'm sure).  So, once we were back at home and K texted with the news that a friend had some Meyer lemons to share, and was I serious about making lemon curd, what could I say? Other than YES SEND THEM RIGHT NOW PLEASE. Which I mostly did. I may have been slightly more polite.

Sent they were, each lemon lovingly hand-wrapped in paper. This was a LOT of lemons.

Without Phrodaux, I trekked down to the farm on a Monday afternoon with a mission. Make some curd.

(Phrodaux here "...you have died of dysentery..." what exactly did the Oregon Trail smell like, eww) FQ: It couldn't have smelled as nice as my pile of lemons.

Let us set the stage. My recipe makes exactly two half pint jars and the curd cooks for ~9 minutes of constant stirring. I quadrupled it, which required more than an hour of constant stirring (if you stop stirring, you get lemony scrambled eggs - not often served in fancy tea shops where everyone is wearing a fetching hat). And it was 98 degrees outside. And approaching that inside. My arm may have shrivelled a little bit. There may have been whimpering and an occasional curse word. The dogs didn't care; they were already mad because we were NOT SWIMMING.

At the end of the day, there were 8 gorgeous jars of curd cooling on my table, a long swim with the pups, and a care package full of nice things to send back to the boys in L.A. (curd, jam, pickles, bitters - I'm glad I didn't have to describe contents to the dippy FedEx girl).

 
Around here we are enjoying our curd on English muffin bread (thanks, America's Test Kitchen) as well as on schlumpy meringues (I think it was too hot for height when I was making them).

Food experiments proceed, and friends are found when and where you least expect them.

This guy? I think he's saying: Relax. It's all good. Or maybe: Hey, where's my lemon curd?

(Phrodaux here "...you have died of dysentery..." Game over. Play again? y/n)