2026 CW40 - Rajas con Crema
It has been a pretty week in the garden, and I wanted to capture a big picture image to do it justice! Stacking a bracket of images of varying exposures, I compiled this HDR photograph to ensure that the details of the shaded hanging baskets as well as the clouds all persisted.
Rajas con Crema
For this week’s cover story, we are cooking a traditional Mexican dish called Rajas con Crema which translates loosely to sliced poblano peppers in cream sauce.
The first step of this dish is harvesting fresh Poblano peppers and searing them on an open flame such as this gas-powered grill.
Once charred fully, the peppers are placed into a bowl and then sealed to allow steam from the [still blistering hot] peppers to loosen the charred skins.
After steaming for about 10 minutes, the charred Poblanos can be removed from the bowl and the blistered skin peeled away. Unfortunately, I seem to have had the temperature of the grill wrong which resulted in much more difficult peeling. However, I was able to peel them sufficiently as to not have large, tough sections of pepper in the dish!
At this point I got a little carried away with the cooking and forgot to take more progress pictures. You’ll have to settle for my narrative to fill in the gaps and just enjoy these pictures of the end product!
Once the peppers are prepared, you toast some fresh corn in a skillet. With the corn toasted and removed from the skillet, you then slice and sauté fresh onions. Once caramelized, the corn and peppers are introduced to the pan. Immediately after that, cream cheese and sour cream (traditionally you would use Crema Mexicana but all I had was the American version) are added as well. With that all that remains is to stir and cook down until thickened! This makes for a great dip with tortilla chips, a base for a shredded chicken infused dish, or even filling for tacos!
Breadwinner and Breadmaker
Before leaving the kitchen, I figured we’d check in on the most recent bread baking adventures of the Bosarge household! Most of you who’ve been reading this blog for some time know that Sara is the designated bread-maker of the house. Here you can see the results of some of her most recent efforts in the form of a Pumpkin-shaped Sourdough Loaf. But, as a doctor, Sara is also the de facto bread-winner of the house. Before you ask, no, I do not know how I landed such a solid one-two punch.
Around the Garden
It would not be much of a garden blog without a walk around to see what’s still growing!
Here we have some Hens and Chicks succulents in a planter on the back patio as well as the bare stalk of a spent Ginger bloom towering above the surrounding landscape.
Elsewhere in the backyard, we have a few straggling watermelon Crape Myrtle blooms desperate to hang on until the cool weather sets in. We also have a few pink-throated purple blooms left on the Princess Flower plants which we just purchased this year to fill the empty blue ceramic pots left behind by our citrus transplanting project.
Dedicated subjects such as breathtaking blooms and tiny insects are fun in the garden pictures, but sometimes I just like capturing a broad view of garden texture! Here we have a shot of some Lemon Grass which has absolutely taken over one of the raised vegetable garden beds here in the late summer.
With spooky season just around the corner, we’ve already harvested a handful of Pumpkins to serve as decorations around the house. Here we can see one still attached to the vine ready to be picked! (Louis I know you’ve been waiting to see these!)
Pests and Pets
Per usual, no garden blog would be complete without some six-legged creatures and our furry garden supervisors!
I was able to capture perhaps the largest size disparity between two similar insects in the garden in the form of these two Bees. Sat upon this late summer orange Zinnia bloom is what appears to be a Sweat Bee. These tiny little animals (only 4mm~8mm long!) are incredible pollinators, completely harmless, and a welcome sight in the garden. In stark contrast to the petiteness of the sweat bee, the Bumblebee featured on the Luffa Bloom is amongst the largest of all bees, topping out around 25mm! They are also crucial to pollination of plants such as the Luffa as they practice buzz-pollination, where they physically shake the flower to loosen pollen.
Checking in on the furry friends Henry took a break from the spotlight this week to make room for a silly appearance from his sister, Scout. She is not exactly known for her lady-like posture and can frequently be found in what I assume are incredibly comfortable positions such as this one.
If you’ve found Scout, there is a good chance that her older brother Yoda is nearby. Yoda is the complete opposite of his sister, maintaining perfect posture almost all of the time.
