I love cranberries and have been adding them to fried rice and other dishes. Then I decided why don’t I start baking with them too. So I whipped up my own batch of cranberry bread for the holiday.

Photo from Naturipe Farms.

I made one with pumpkin and dried cranberries, it kind of reminded me of biscotti and is great eaten with coffee or tea. And a little spreadable butter goes a long way.

Recipe:

1 1/2 cup of all purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 cup of vegetable oil
1/3 cup of brown sugar
1 egg beaten
1/2 tsp of vanilla oil
pinch of Pink Himalayan salt
handful of dried cranberries
3-4 ripe bananas*

Note: With this basic recipe, *I was able to substitute with either bananas, pumpkin or pineapple. The best combination is banana with pineapple bits and cranberries.

This is one of the first few bounty harvested from my mom’s garden.

We’ve always refer to them as Japanese pumpkins. The correct name is Kabocha squash, and it’s a type of winter squash.

The Kabocha squash took only four months to start producing. The seeds came from the squash she purchased at the market. I am always surprised to find that seeds from market produce can grow just as nicely in the garden.

My mom thinks they are one of the most easy to grow pumpkins. She just loves growing pumpkins and has three varieties in her garden.

One of which is almost white in color and grew by accident. But then it became a favorite for it’s taste. Her pumpkin varieties are known to be very creamy, nutty, and sweet. And the Kabocha fits right into the list.

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When I visited Blackberry Farm recently, I didn’t realize the community garden was actually part of Santa Clara County Master Gardner’s Program.

Pretty purple tip Dahlia.

It just happen to be located near the Blackberry Farm. And the berry farm isn’t really a farm, just like Knott’s Berry Farm isn’t a real farm either. It’s more of a summertime recreational center with a swimming pool. No wonder it’s been close for the season and there weren’t much people around. But most of all I wanted to share more photos from McClellan Ranch Community Garden and creek in Cupertino, California.

Lonely lopsided Halloween pumpkin.

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