“A what?” I asked.

“An herb,” she said. “I don’t know what kind it is, but Stella tried to eat it.”

Sure enough, when I went out to water the containers, there it was, grown big enough that it was more than a mouthful for Stella, the tiny French bulldog. I pinched off a leaf and smelled it to be sure, but it was, most definitely, a slightly fuzzy clump of sage.

Of course, unlike the rest of the plants, which are growing in relatively expensive, allegedly good soil, this sage plant is growing in some sandy, tiny dirt that separates our patio stones from each other. I’ve never watered it, nor even given it any attention until today.

“Unbelievable,” I said when I got in from watering. “It’s the most successful plant out there.”

We’re leaving it and seeing how much it’ll grow. After all, the sage in the container garden continues to grow in a stunted, sorry manner, so why mess with the one real success outside?

• Water: It’s a good thing
• Free lettuce seeds from Earthbound Farm
• Watering cans: Actually functional
• Squirrel mafia
• pH, which also stands for pHtttt

The plants look better than they did. There are still yellow leaves, but not nearly as many as before. The basil has started growing again. And the bean plants have started putting out a couple of runners.

But everything still looks sickly and sad, and though I have myriad yellow blossoms, there are no tomatoes fruiting yet. In fact, there are a few yellow blossoms that have taken suicidal dives into the sand below the pots.

This is not how I define success.

I have some excellent ideas on how to remedy the situation from a certain tomato doyenne in Tennessee, but haven’t made to any store that sells the right stuff (including a garden spray bottle) to actually try out said remedy. That’s going to have to wait until next week, for any number of reasons, many of them starting with B and ending with LogHer. I’m spending the rest of the week and weekend in New York City, slinging back martinis with the rest of the Lady-based Blogerati, and doing very little thinking about gardening and yellowing plants.

But when I return, I have to buckle down and figure this out. Now that I’ve tackled the water deficiency, it is clear to me that something else is missing, and that something else is, most likely, some sort of plant nutrient.

• Wash away the dirt
• Tomato lust
• Tomato plants should not be yellow
• Hunger Challenge: Day Two
• Green is for vegetables

And, while I have access to excellent Chinese and Vietnamese markets in my neighborhood, they do know their primary clientele, so they don’t sell Genovese basil. Or lemon basil. Or any variety of basil besides Thai, which I like, but not in everything.

But here’s the thing. I know all too well that basil doesn’t keep well in the refrigerator. But everyone I know says to cut the stems a bit, free the bunch from its twist tie or rubber band, and set it in some water in a glass. Everyone I know claims this works amazingly well in getting the basil to stay fresh and healthy and happy on their counter for a week or more.

In my experience? That hasn’t happened.

Here’s what happens to me: I bring the basil home, free it from its mortal coils (of rubber band), snip the ends, plop it in water, and then do whatever else I’m doing that day. The next morning, invariably, the basil’s already looking unhappy. Two days later, it’s in a full state of wilt. If I don’t use it by the third day, I throw it away.

This happens if I change the water every day or not. If I snip the ends or don’t. If I put the basil in a window or leave it in the kitchen where its natural light quotient is less-than-satisfactory.

I stumbled upon my friend Marc’s method recently, and I will admit to never trying the plastic-bag, faux-hydroponic approach. I’m willing to try it, and it makes sense to me from a biology standpoint, but I’ll bring a healthy dose of skepticism to the table. Maybe basil only likes me if I grow it myself?

• Lavender coolers
• Not living up to her name this year
• Shortbread times four
• Hunger Challenge: Day Seven
• Whole red snapper with mint, basil and feta

I came to this theory while daydreaming about what other ingredients go with thyme. A giant tomato floated into my consciousness, and, well, it couldn’t have hit me harder if someone had thrown it at me.

Tomatoes go beautifully with thyme. And what drink stars the tomato? The Bloody Mary.

Thusly and therefore, I gave it a whirl. The drink was fantastic—as substantial and spicy as a traditional Bloody, but with that edge of thyme that gave it a freshness straight out of the garden.

My experimental subjects are, unfortunately, too far away to test the theory right now, but I have plans. Oh, yes, I have plans. And in the meantime, I recommend this for your next Spring brunch. It’s, after all, about thyme.

Thyme for a Bloody
(Serves one)

6 oz. tomato juice
2 oz. thyme-infused vodka*
1/2 tsp. prepared horseradish
1 tsp. soy sauce
The juice of a 1/4 lime
A dash of hot sauce

1. Combine all ingredients in a pint glass.
2. Stir quickly to mix thoroughly, and add crushed ice to fill the rest of the glass.
3. Garnish with your favorites: olives, spicy pickled green beans, lime, celery, etc.
4. Serve immediately.

This is my post for Weekend Herb Blogging, which is being hosted this week by Chriesti from Almond Corner. Please stop by Chriesti’s blog for the full round-up after the weekend’s over!

* To make the thyme-infused vodka, simply take a clean mason jar, put in 5-7 clean thyme sprigs, then fill with good vodka. Cover and steep in the refrigerator until ready to use.

Other thyme-infused beverage recipes to try:

• The Country Thyme on Married With Dinner
• The Raspberry-Thyme Smash at A Dash of Bitters
• The Blackberry-Thyme Margarita at Well Fed
• Pear-Thyme Sparkle at Al Dente

• The infusion begins
• Harry Potter and the Mint Killer’s mojito
• Thyme on my hands
• Maple-Lime Glazed Sweet Corn
• When beauty turns ugly

I’m a girl that embraces signs, symbols and all kinds of mysterious stuff. On Saturday night, I took one sip of the Sadie and loved it. My parents, my friend who tried it? They weren’t as into it. Too herbaceous. Not sweet enough.

But I loved it. In one sip, I was transported. In one sip, I was out in my back yard with scissors in hand, clipping thyme in the hot Iowa sunshine. And while the time in Iowa was maybe harder than any other time of my life, there is so much about it that shaped where I am now.

“You know what?” I said to my coworker, Kim, as we took a break out in the sunshine yesterday. “Today is exactly a year since I applied for this job.”

It’s a strange, dotted line from Iowa to Oakland to a cocktail in Staunton and back again. But I can see it as clearly as a mapped route, and for that reason, I’m giving the Sadie a try, starting with infused vodka.

I’ll report back on how it works.

• Thyme for a bloody
• A paw-shaped divot
• Snow and ice and Lenten sacrifice
• Go west, young gardener
• Welcome to the urban garden

“I should probably just put it out of its misery,” I told my parents. “It’s not like it’s growing.”

“Maybe you should mist its leaves,” said my Dad.

I do, indeed, have a teeny-tiny mister, but I rejected that idea. Mostly because that would involve walking the whole way across my apartment (that’s 12-15 steps, people…maybe 16 if you’re limping or something), and open a closet door, and remove said mister, and fill it up with water, and DO YOU SEE??? That’s a lot of effort for eight leaves of basil.

Because of this, I just didn’t deal with the thing until the following weekend, when I was having people over, and felt like half-dead basil was not appropriate décor. I decided I would cut back the last of the leaves, wash them and wrap them in paper towels (just like Rachael Ray), and put them in the fridge to use sometime in the next 24 hours.

But when I went to cut the leaves, I noticed tiny white spots all over their backsides.

As we all know, tiny white spots on a backside? Not usually a good sign. I looked closer, and determined that, indeed, they were one of two things: some kind of disease or some kind of larva. Regardless, I was not going to eat that. Not even with a good freshwater rinse.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, was the end of my basil plant.

• Pasta arrabbiata with eggplant
• Seedlings wearing too-tight pants
• Berry surprising
• Long live the aristocrat
• Basil-scallop kebabs

Rarely, my friends. The answer is, rarely.

But in all my life, I can only remember a few times when I have had truly homemade gnocchi. I’ve had it a time or two at Gina’s Place, a fabulous Italian restaurant in Bonneauville, PA, run by a Sicilian woman who, along with her family, turn out some seriously amazing food.

The night after I signed my lease in Oakland, I went back to the Mission, where I was staying with a friend, and since she had a work function that night, took myself out to a little Italian restaurant that served me some of the best housemade gnocchi I’ve ever had. (And the waiter? Not so bad himself…both because he was a hottie AND because he could barely speak anything that wasn’t Italian.)

And once, at a memorable evening at Maggie and Heal’s house, we showed up and found that Maggie had made dozens and dozens of perfectly shaped gnocchi, all lined up on parchment paper and ready to plunge into boiling water. Um, yum.

It’s not that I have had trouble with store-bought gnocchi—I love it, too—but with some Happy Boy Farms sweet potatoes in the crisper, it occurred to me that I might put a weekend evening to good use by trying to make some of the homemade variety. Topped with a simple sauce made of Straus Family Creamery butter, Happy Boy Farms sage and salt, and paired with a glass of Sonoma County Merlot, it was a decadent way to serve up a lovely weekend dinner.

I’m calling these “rustic” with a tip of the hat to Laura Rebecca’s Kitchen, which features Rustic Napoleons in today’s entry:

“I’ve decided that anything I make — be it baked, sauteed, fried, roasted — that doesn’t come out looking like something out of a Williams-Sonoma cookbook will be dubbed “rustic.”

Hence, rustic Napoleons. (I should probably go back through the archives and rename 95-percent of the recipes here.)”

Because it was my first attempt at gnocchi, these didn’t look nearly as pretty as the ones I’ve eaten by more talented chefs. And this was even after getting some over-the-phone instruction from a Sicilian friend who’s a pretty talented chef himself. Thusly and therefore, mine are rustic, because otherwise I’m going to have to tell the truth, which is that they looked a little bit like small thumbprint cookies without the jam in the center.

But they did not taste like thumbprint cookies. Not in the least. They were delicious and satisfying comfort food, which is just what I was looking for when I started the process. And using sweet potatoes rather than regular potatoes imparted a Fall-spirited earthiness that I loved.

One final note: This recipe made enough gnocchi for four people as a side dish or two people (three if no one’s really starving) as a main dish. The gnocchi freeze quite well, as long as you put them on a cookie sheet and freeze them individually for about 20 minutes before you put them in a bag for safekeeping in the freezer. When you’re ready to cook the frozen gnocchi, just boil water, salt the water once it’s boiling, and add the frozen gnocchi at that point. Once they’ve floated to the top of the water, let them cook about another minute or two and they’ll be ready to serve.

Rustic Sweet Potato Gnocchi
(Serves 4 as a side dish, 2 as a main course)

Approximately 1/2 pound of sweet potatoes
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. freshly grated nutmeg
1 egg
1 c. whole wheat flour
1 TBSP. olive oil

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Bake the sweet potatoes until they are soft. Remove them and let them cool.
2. Mash the sweet potatoes (you can also rice them, but I don’t own a ricer, so I just used a potato masher with reasonable results). Add the salt, nutmeg, olive oil and egg and mix well. Add the flour a little bit at a time, working it into the dough before adding more. You want the dough to be soft and pliable, so if you don’t need to add the full cup of flour, that’s OK.
3. Boil a pot of salted water. While the water is boiling, pinch off evenly-sized pieces of dough (approximately 1/2 TBSP per gnocchi) and roll them in your palms to make an almond-shaped piece. Then use your thumb to gently indent them. When the water is boiling, drop them in and let them cook until they float to the surface. Remove them with a slotted spoon and serve immediately with a sauce of your choosing. I recommend melting butter and sizzling about a handful of torn fresh sage leaves in the butter, then adding some salt to taste and drizzling the mixture over the gnocchi just before serving.

Although it’s a little early to be thinking about the weekend already, this is my contribution for Weekend Herb Blogging, which is hosted this week by Amy and Jonny of We Are Never Full. This weekend, I hope you’ll swing by their joint to read the full round-up.

• Potato eater’s salad
• Roasted fingerling potato salad
• Lazy pesto potatoes
• Crepes a la Sam
• Slow-cooked roast beef with fresh sage and dried tomatoes

“Maybe you could get them to let you put a tomato in a corner of the upstairs deck,” one of my friends said when I moved in.

No such luck. Although I’m a renter, my landlord is a condo owner, and it’s a condo building, complete with everything that comes along with it: sterilely manicured open space, a list of approved movers to use when entering or leaving the premises with your worldly belongings, and, although I will admit I haven’t asked the question, an absolutely-not policy on putting tomato plants on the roof.

So instead, I’ve been trying to make do with a miniscule potted plant collection in my living room window. I have a low table and plenty of light (although not much direct sunlight, to be honest), coming in, and that has caused me, in moments of weakness, to buy plants that I am probably dooming to certain death.

My indoor plant track record has not ever been good.

The first arrival on the scene was a mini Gerbera, bought at Trader Joe’s. The movers had just arrived that morning, and I was exhausted and at the store expressly for the purpose of impulse-buying large quantities of cheese and wine and convenience foods, and the cheery red flowers (oh, how I do love Gerberas) sat there muttering at me as I went by, “Hey lady! Lady! How ‘bout just a little taste?”

Of course, the following weekend, I was leaving for Hawaii for a week’s vacation, with no plan for watering the Gerbera while I was gone. It still has barely-surviving foliage, to be sure, but since I returned from Kaua’i, has refused me additional blossoms.

Then, last week, after my first stint in the Victory Garden, I decided to buy a basil plant that was on sale at Whole Foods. (You may notice a trend here, a trend that involves shopping when hungry AND needy-of-plants.)

The basil plant was beautiful, indeed, but I purchased it and did what I do with every plant I ever take home, whether I’m on vacation or not: I forget to water it. Or, worse, I remember that I should water it and just think, Oh, I’ll do that later. And then later becomes dinner out with friends and then there’s that workout I really should be getting to and then I have laundry to do and the dishes to wash and then…and then…

This is why outside plants and I get along so much better. If I don’t plant them under a godforsaken Black Walnut, they have such a better shot at getting what they need from the sun and the rain and the earth-that’s-not-potting soil.

This leads me to the inevitable, which is Sunday, when I suddenly looked at the basil plant and noticed that it was utterly droopy. This set me atwirl, trying to remember if I’d watered it, or if I’d over-watered it, or if I’d maybe given it some wine just for fun one night?

I decided to go with under-watering, because that’s my usual M.O., and gave it a drink. The water ran right out the bottom as if it didn’t even want to stop to say hello to the dirt, so I gave it some more, operating in my usual, I-have-no-idea-what-I’m-doing manner.

I also watered the Gerbera, which is really just a pot of Gerbera greens, which is really a plant that I kind of want to just throw out, but which makes me guilty so I keep it and begrudgingly nurture it. I am like that guy in The DaVinci Code, the albino monk? That Gerbera plant is my cilice.

By the next day, the Gerbera was waving its little fronds of greens in the air like a happy camper. And the basil, while still clearly in need of more attention, looked at least a little less limp. That’s really all I can ask for.

Except that I’m going away for the weekend. I promise I’ll water the plants before I go, but seriously…if they gave out licenses to garden indoors, mine would have already been revoked.

• Water: It’s a good thing
• Tomato plants should not be yellow
• Watering results in only partial success
• The patio garden and its stay of execution
• Leafy greens

I would really rather not have eaten this particular meal at this particular time.

I would prefer to have stumbled across it, like so many other recipes posted by food bloggers I know and enjoy, and would prefer to have just made it whenever, unnoticed. I would prefer not to have been thinking about what I was going to way when I wrote it up.

Most of us in the food blogging community know this already: last Sunday morning, very suddenly, Sher of What Did You Eat? died of a heart attack.

Sher’s one of the bloggers I had not met. But I’d been reading her for awhile now, connected to her via Kalyn’s Weekend Herb Blogging, and because I have a friend who lives in Davis, I always felt like I could visualize where she lived as I read about her life.

And now she’s gone, and that’s left me with a lot to think about. She’s the first blogger in my regular reading to fall away, not because she abandoned her blog, but because life abandoned her. It breaks my heart, and I find myself thinking about the other food bloggers I know, the other people in this community of technologically-minded women and men who enrich my life so very much, and how they are not just glimmers on the screen to me. They are my peers, my friends, my compatriots. Any one of them gone leaves a hole.

Sher's stuffed mushrooms

My mother called while I was cooking up Sher’s Poblano and Cheddar-Stuffed Portabello Mushrooms last night. As I talked, I dried the spinach, and my salad spinner is a noisy thing. “What are you doing?” she asked.

I explained. “She was only 60,” I said. “I’m not very joyful about preparing this meal.”

The event: Remember Sher through her recipes. Kalyn suspended Weekend Herb Blogging in Sher’s honor, and asked those of us who take part in an event to take part in this one, organized by Mary, the breadchick, instead.

I spent some time browsing Sher’s archives, looking for something that spoke to me. This recipe did, partially because I love stuffed mushrooms, partially because it featured cilantro, an herb that, I’ll admit, I tolerate, but that I know Kalyn loves. And Kalyn and Sher were such good friends that it seemed appropriate.

I can tell you this: the “green taste” that Sher describes? It really shines in this dish. There’s no other real way to write about it, so I’m going to leave it in Sher’s hands. And the recipe is amazing. I do wish I had made more of it. I will make it again, to be sure. I’ll even keep the cilantro in there—I really enjoyed the recipe as Sher posted it.

But I hope to never make it again with as heavy a heart. To Sher’s family, I wish you consolation in your grief. To Kalyn, I wish you consolation as well, but I thank you for organizing this.

And to Sher, thank you. Thank you for this recipe, thank you for the other recipes that folks will have chosen and prepared in your honor this weekend, and thank you for your joyful writing. Know that we miss you.

• Weekend herb blogging
• Apple-plum crisp for one
• Don’t mess with the Texas tarragon
• One cup of mint in one fell swoop
• Last appearance

• The arrival of the tomato circus