gardening Archives | The Good Hearted Woman

Little Oven Annie’s Cherry Tomato Tart

Feta, caramelized onions, and grape-leaf walnut pesto create a savory bed for fresh cherry tomatoes in this beautiful Cherry Tomato Tart.

Our garden is yielding a bumper crop of cherry tomatoes right now, so I decided it was time to tackle something I’ve been putting off – a real tomato tart. However, even after spending some significant time cruising Pinterest for inspiration, everything I could up with sounded Blahh. Or had already been done… twice. So I put the idea on the back burner – until last week when I was standing in my kitchen staring at a bowl full of freshly picked cherry-tomatoes, when it hit me like a pizza stone. Wouldn’t you know it, just like Dorothy and those darn shoes, the answer had been right there in front of me all the time.

My sister introduced me to Leonardo’s Pizzaria in Vancouver [WA] some years ago. Leonardo’s creates Amazing pizza. Whenever Gael and I are over that way together, it’s our first choice (and possibly our second and third too).

Our favorite pizza at Leonardo’s is the Little Oven Annie, a savory sweet fusion of caramelized onions, feta, spinach and a unique Grape Leaf Walnut Pesto – the perfect base for a tomato tart that will set your taste-buds dancing.

5 from 2 votes

Cherry Tomato Tart

Prep Time45 mins

Cook Time20 mins

Total Time1 hr 5 mins

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Course: Main

Cuisine: Vegetarian

Servings: -10" Tart

Author: Renée B. ♥ The Good Hearted Woman

Ingredients

1 lb. fresh cherry tomatoes
1 large pie crust homemade or store-bought
1 batch Caramelized Onions Instructions below
3 tablespoons Grape Leaf Walnut Pesto Recipe follows; or you can just use regular pesto
2 ounces crumbled feta cheese
1/4 cup packed fresh spinach chiffonade

Caramelized Onions

2 tablespoons salted butter
1 large onion halved and sliced thin, end-to-end

Instructions

Caramelized Onions

In a large skillet over medium high, cooked sliced onions in butter, stirring occasionally for about 20 minutes, or until onions are soft and deep golden brown (The edges of some, but not all, of the onions should be very dark brown).
!Click here for directions on caramelizing onions in your slow cooker.

Assembling the Tart

Preheat oven to 450°F. (Or 425° F for glass pie plates and some anodized aluminum baking pans.)
Lay the pie crust into a shallow pie dish or tart pan. Crimp or trim edges.
Spread pesto over the bottom of the pastry. Layer on caramelized onions, and then feta. Cover the entire tart with cherry tomatoes.
Bake for 20 minutes, checking crust edges after 15 minutes: if they are getting too brown, cover with a strip of aluminum foil or a pie shield.
The tart is done when the cherry tomatoes begin to burst and the crust is a light gold brown.
Remove from oven and allow to rest 10 minutes. Sprinkle with a chiffonade of fresh spinach.

Tried this recipe?Mention @TheGoodHeartedWoman or tag #thegoodheartedwoman!

Little Oven Annie’s Cherry Tomato Tart | The Good Hearted Woman

5 from 2 votes

Grape Leaf & Walnut Pesto

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Course: Sauce

Author: Renée B. ♥ The Good Hearted Woman

Ingredients

2 ounces coarsely chopped fresh grape leaves stems removed (About 2 cups packed)
3 cloves garlic
1/4 cup Parmesan cheese
1/2-3/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup walnuts
1 ounce fresh basil about 3/4 cup packed

Instructions

Blanch grape leaves by placing them in a pan and covering with boiling water. Let sit for 3-5 minutes.
Heat the walnuts in a small frying pan over medium heat, stirring frequently, until they smell "toasty." (Do not let them burn.)
Combine blanched grape leaves, basil, garlic, Parmesan, olive oil, and toasted walnuts in the bowl of a food processor. (If you use a blender, start with about half the grape leaves and add the others after the first half has been pureed.) Blend to a smooth paste.

Tried this recipe?Mention @TheGoodHeartedWoman or tag #thegoodheartedwoman!

The most time-consuming part of this dish is making the caramelized onions, so start them first. Otherwise, it’s a piece of cake… or tart.

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City of Roses – Portland’s International Rose Test Garden

June 18 By Renée 5 Comments

We took a trip to Portland’s Rose Garden last weekend. As I wandered through the seemly endless rows of roses, I found myself contemplating this quote by Dale Carnegie:

One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today.

While I embrace Mr. Carnegie’s sentiment, I wonder if he might have chosen his words differently had he been a native of the Rose City, for it is certain that we Portlanders have magical garden of our own, blooming right outside our city window.

Tucked between the toney homes of NW Portland and the hills of Washington Park, every spring this century-old garden bursts with velvety, buttery blooms for nearly as far as the eye can see. It is nothing short of Magnificent.

The oldest public garden of its kind in the United States, Portland’s Rose Garden can trace its beginnings back to 1915, and Jesse A. Currey, rose lover and Sunday editor of the Oregon Journal. Fearing that European hybrid roses would be destroyed in the bombings during World War I, Currey convinced city officials to institute a city rose test garden as a safe haven for unique varieties from across the Atlantic.

Peace Rose – Photo credit: John Haupt, reproduced under Creative Commons 2.0.
(I didn’t get a good photo of this one.)

Many of the roses in the test garden are named to commemorate people, places and ideals, but my favorite is the Peace Rose. I remember being very young, standing close as my Poppy held a huge bloom full in the palm of his hand, bending it down to me so that I could see its delicate yellow and pink petals come alive in the sunlight. It was his favorite too. Legend has it that this aptly-named hybrid tea-rose was on the last plane out of France before Hitler’s occupation.

Honestly, I could go on and on about Portland and roses and all the entwining history. But I won’t. Because pictures are worth… well, you know.

Enjoy.

Portland Rose Garden | The Good Hearted Woman

“Lagerfeld Grandflora”

“A garden requires patient labor and attention. Plants do not grow merely to satisfy ambitions or to fulfill good intentions. They thrive because someone expended effort on them.”
~ Liberty Hyde Bailey

Washington Park International Rose Test Garden

Currently open from 7:30 AM to 9:00 PM daily. Admission is free.
Located in Washington Park in Portland’s West Hills, the garden includes more than 10,000 plantings of over 500 varieties.

[All images are mine unless otherwise noted.]

Wooden Shoe Tulip Festival

April 12 By Renée 4 Comments

Image courtesy of Gaelynn M. (My little sister!)

Last Wednesday my sister and I had the rare chance to spend the day together, and her only request was to go “somewhere pretty.” So I took her to one of the prettiest places I know of in the Portland area – the Wooden Shoe Tulip Festival in Woodburn. This time of year, the tulip fields are a photographers dream – they are so full of vibrant color that images almost paint themselves into the camera.

Image courtesy of Gaelynn M.

The Tulip Festival, which began in 1985, is a tradition started by Ross and Dorothy Iverson, who raised their children on the 40-some acre family farm, and are passing the tradition onto them and their grandchildren.

The tulip fields are rotated each year with other crops, and this year they are planted a little farther out than recent years. It’s a bit of a walk, but it is definitely worth the effort. You also have the option of riding a shuttle out to the fields, or on a cow train or tulip cart, the latter being one of the numerous children’s attractions at the Festival.

I love how this filter highlights the contrast in the Leen Van Der Mark tulips so beautifully!

Does it bother anyone else that this bench is tilted ever so slightly as compared to the horizon?

Tulip stems can be purchased on the spot, or you can order bulbs from their extensive catalog to be shipped just in time for planting season. Mr. B and I did this a couple of years ago, and I remember being so excited when our bulbs arrived in the mail in the fall.

I fell in love with this tile piece, and I should have bought it, but I didn’t. However, {ahem…May birthday here} you have my permission to nudge Mr. B in this direction. I’m sure they would ship it!

The Tulip Festival has a wonderful gift shop full of all things Dutch and tulipy. Food and beverages can be purchased on-site at their Tulip Café, including sandwiches, sausages, burgers, fish, and chips, ice cream, elephant ears, kettle corn, espresso, beer and wine. Nearby in the Crafters marketplace, you can watch a wooden shoe-making demonstration, browse booths for crafts and art, and enjoy local food offerings.

The tulip farm’s collection of old farming equipment was pretty cool.

Image courtesy of Gaelynn M.

Walking through the fields got me to thinking about Hazel, an elderly woman I used to work for many, many years ago. Hazel and her husband, George ran a craft store – Hazel’s – in the center of town. Something of a local legend, Hazel was well known for surveying the store from her “perch” above on the mezzanine, from where she would offer her opinion, solicited or not, on just about everything to those below. I remember one time when she overheard a customer’s concerns that some colors Hazel had suggested for a project might clash.

“I want you to think about every flower you can think of,” Hazel said. “Can you remember ever thinking to yourself, ‘Hey those flowers there clash with those other ones?’” When the little woman shook her head, Hazel went on, “Well, there you go. Flowers never clash with one another. You never see anything in nature clashing.” Then Hazel stalked off shaking her head at the woman. She had no patience for people who would not heed her advice.

I never forgot that exchange, and it has influenced more than my art in the years since. Because Hazel was absolutely right, and here the tulip fields bear it out – bright pinks and deep purples grow right alongside vibrant oranges and sunny yellows, and together they create a captivatingly beautiful color palette.

Funny thing about Hazel: she was as endearing as she was opinionated, and the town is a little less colorful now that she is gone.

The Tulip Festival has something for everyone with a full calendar of events now through May 4th, and includes everything from photography classes to a chicken BBQ to an Easter Egg Hunt. If you live in the Portland area, take time to attend – you will come away with some beautiful memories.

Wooden Shoe Tulip Festival

33814 S. Meridian Rd., Woodburn, OR 97071
Festival & Gift Shop Hours: 9am – 6pm daily through May 4th
Admission: $5 bikes & motorcycles, $10 a carload, $20 buses
Season Pass: $40

Disclosure: Nothing to disclose – I paid my admission, walked through the fields, took some pictures and came home to share them with you. I received no compensation of any kind for this post.

How to Grow Rosemary

September 20 By Renée 7 Comments

A Guide for the Horticulturally Challenged

Fresh rosemary. Nothing quite like it. Beautiful, organic and free – I think everyone with a kitchen knife and a slow cooker should have a rosemary plant of their own.

Mr. B takes care of our yard. He mows and weeds, fertilizes and gardens. Sometimes I help, but I’m careful to let him take charge because it is a well-documented fact that, if my thumb were a Crayola crayon, it would be a shade somewhere between Eggplant and Licorice: Plants in my care must fall into the little-to-no maintenance category if they are to have any hope for survival. Which is why I am so successful growing Rosemary.

How to Grow Rosemary - For the Horticulturally Challenged

Rosemary – perfect herb for the Horticulturally Challenged

My current rosemary plant was a wedding gift to Mr. B and me from my kids’ Gramma Edith. Edith, who is their father’s mom, is a woman with thumbs so green she could make a Popsicle stick bloom. When it comes to gardening, she is always very helpful and encouraging – always trying hard to give me opportunities to succeed. Over the years, however, she has come to understand and accept just how severely Horticulturally Challenged I am. Nevertheless, it is through her positive, encouraging example that I have learned I am very good at raising a few specific plants: African Violets, for one, which people tend to kill by over-watering. And Jade. Ditto. (Over-watering is just not a problem for me.) And Rosemary, which is apparently the Wile E. Coyote of the herb world: you can literally throw it off a cliff onto a pile of Acme dynamite and it will still keep on growing. Here’s what Wikihow says about Rosemary:

Rosemary will adapt to most growing conditions and is quite hardy. It’s happy with snow, limestone, high temperatures, by the seaside, and all sorts of soils. It will grow its best however, in a warm to hot, fairly dry climate.

“Warm to hot, fairly dry climate...” Apparently that’s why it grows so freaking well here in the temperate rain forest that is the PNW. Which is to say, Rosemary is my kind of plant – it doesn’t get hung up on the rules and it’s almost unstoppable. And if I can grow it, so can you. Here’s my easy three-step guide for Rosemary cultivation:

Find a good, hearty Rosemary plant. You can buy one, or ask someone who has one if you can have a clipping from theirs.
Plant it in the ground (or in a pot) and water it a little.
Leave it alone. Except when you need some rosemary, in which case just go out with your kitchen shears and cut some off. Then leave it alone.
If the weather is unseasonably dry, give it a good soaking once a week.
Try to avoid moving your rosemary plant once it has taken root.

Keep in mind that I live in the Pacific Northwest. If you live somewhere else, here are a few more thorough sources you may want to consult:

Growing Rosemary
How to Grow Rosemary

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