Sunday in the garden + potato salad recipe

I spent this Sunday afternoon  as I've done for the past couple of weeks: in the garden.   There's lots of other stuff I should be doing on Sundays - writing, grocery shopping, paying bills or getting my car fixed.  Looking for work in the fall.   But there's something truly seductive for me about the backyard on a quiet weekend afternoon.   It's at the point right now where the garden needs a few hours of work a week, and then it will be more or less happy.   But its just a wonderful thing to do, on a day to myself, to give attention back to the plants that will feed me.  Last week I fertilized the nightshades, peppers, and vines, and planted about nine more feet of carrots to come up this fall.   Even out in the hot sun, I love puttering out there: stringing up cucumbers that are trying to grow upside-down, pulling crabgrass out of the beds, checking the tomatoes to find out that we have FIVE new super-ripe Roma tomatoes.    Deciding to cook them up into sauce, and invite a friend over for potato salad.  Pulling up a few big, bulbed out onions, tiny beets, yanking out a few purple carrots that after 2 1/2 months are finally big enough to eat.   Emptying out a couple potato buckets to find out how they did, pinching suckers off the tomato vines, harvesting basil or sorrell, or transplanting teensy, tiny little lettuce plants from the shady part of the yard.   After a week full of work and driving around, errands and deadlines, it's nice to slow down for a few hours, exist in greenspace, and tend to something - All this week, I'll know that my garden will grow healthier, and more food will be ready because of the work I put into it.  

Upstairs, I cooked the onions under low heat, skinned and seeded the tomatoes, and stewed them together for a little bit of sauce, along with salt, pepper and some basil.  Ate it for lunch over raviolis - without any extra sugar, the tomato sauce was a little acidic, but full of flavor.   Potato salad tonight was a little bit more complicated, but the basic idea is fresh, boiled potatoes, oil, vinegar, a little bit of mayo, and anything fresh from your garden you want to add....




I love the fact that this time of year, I can truly make a whole meal from the garden.   (well, everything minus eggs, milk, cheese, meat or pasta....).   After all the time I've spent with my fingers in the dirt, or tearing out weeds, or sweating and seeding, or just sitting, trying to stay still long enough so that I can hear all the millions of bugs, wasps, grasshoppers and other weird buggy-type creatures that feed off my dill and oregano flowers - all that goes into creating this meal.   Then the tops and greens and rotten bits go back into the compost, back into the soil, and up again in the form of new plants, making me food, that I then harvest, preserve, or compost all over again.

The good news is, cooking from the garden is pretty easy - the flavors of the veggies pretty much speak for themselves - no fancy sauces or exotic ingredients necessary.    Usually just a little boiling, plus a little salt, oil or vinegar is enough to create a really delicious meal. 

This time of year you begin to understand the rhythm between what you choose to grow and what your house wants to eat.  We get sick of Bok Choi pretty fast around here, but never run out of appetite for carrots or cucumbers - so that's what we plant the most of.   For this dish, I tried to incorporate what was available (and what was in my fridge!)

Fancy Mid-summer potato salad:
Two handfulls of potatoes, cut into 1" cubes
           (At this point, I can mix "red thumb," "all blue" and "yukon gold" potatoes for a tricolor combo!)
1 small onion, sliced into thin rounds
1 cucumber, quartered and sliced into rounds.
small carrots and beets, halved or quartered and cut into chunks no bigger than 1"
1 pepper, (green, orange or red), diced
handful of parsley leaves, minced

Dressing:
1/4 cup olive oil
5 tbls wine vinegar, seperated (I used my herb-and-garlic vinegar)
2 tbls mayonaise (or more, if you like it more mayonaise-y)
salt and pepper to taste

Add 3 Tbls vinegar to the onions and cukes in a small bowl.  stick in the fridge.  (this will pickle them both slightly, and give them a mellow, tangy flavor)
Boil potatoes, beets and carrots in salted water until just tender, about 10 minutes.  (if you have time, stick them in the fridge too, to let them cool.)
Before serving:
whisk together olive oil, remaining 2 Tbls vinegar, mayo, salt and pepper.     Strain onions and cukes, mix in with potatoes, beets and carrots.   Add peppers, parsley and dressing.   Stir and serve!


For four seasons' worth of great potato salad recipes, consult Barbara Kingsolver's excellent Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.   I wanted to try the roasted summer potato one, but couldn't bring myself to turn on the oven.

http://www.animalvegetablemiracle.com/Potato%20Salad.pdf