Midwinter eating!

Well, just because it's winter doesn't mean we have to be boring, does it?

This week in Boston Organics I got a beautiful, deep, luscious-red watermelon radish.  Sweet on the outside, spicy on the outside.   And, of course, citrus!

So what to do?   Make a lightly-pickled watermelon salad with citrus dressing!  Place up the sweet/spicy/tangy flavors of the vegetable itself.   Yum.

Ingredients:
1 large thinly sliced watermelon radish
1 small white onion (thinly sliced)
Juice from one small orange (about 1/3 cup)
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. fresh-ground black pepper
2 Tbs. olive oil (I used light-tasting)
2 Tbs. apple cider vinegar
splash rice wine vinegar (optional)

Mix everything together.   Store in a bowl in the fridge overnight (or for a few hours).   Eat!
Source:
http://kblog.lunchboxbunch.com/2010/10/meet-watermelon-radish.html

Dairy test day update

Ice cream is out.

Light/heavy cream are out

Chedder cheese and sugarless yogurt may require more testing.  

A cool (local) Paleo food blog....

My new favorite!


http://nobeantown.tumblr.com/post/34592119622/homemade-tomato-sauce-spaghetti-meatballs


This post is about paleo spaghetti and meatballs - I want to try it.  I made amazing bolognaise and put it over grilled eggplant....in the end, it was too much meat for not enough...something to eat it on.


Maybe I'll try this next time.


(Although I'm not too thrilled about the "Paleo" label - like I'm too cool for the last 10,000 years.   I prefer the concept of Anti-Inflammatory instead.)

Paleo/30 day anti-inflammatory diet

So...I'm writing here so I don't annoy everyone on Facebook  (and don't sound like a groupie for the so-called "Paleo" diet, which feels like it's gained a sort of self-righteous "look at me, I'm awesome" glow around it).    And because it feels like a big deal to be making big changes.   Also, warning:  I talk about lady things (like menstruation) in this post, and if that freaks you out...sorry?

This is the end of my first week eating no: sugar, grain, dairy, legumes, canola/soy oils.  


Why did I do this? 

Kimchi

Nappa Cabbage, young onion and daikon after soaking overnight in brine

I've found pitchers are good for brining a lot of stuff

Ginger and garlic

Kimchi flavors: garlic, ginder, Korean chili powder & anchovy sauce
(the last two, plus daikon radish, found at a Korean grocery in Allston)

Many vessels for brining

Ingredients (I've found having a kitchen scale fantastic for this stuff)

Mixing everything together

Stuff into clean jars, pour brine over all

ready to ferment

All in all, I'd like to say, a resounding success.  After learning from other fermentation fails, I thoughtfully placed these puppies in the basement.   Fermentation happens best between, I think, 75- 85  degrees - and it goes faster the hotter it gets.   Our apartment is often in the upper range of that, I think, in the summer, so sometimes things get a little too ferment-y.   One week in the basement, however, worked well.

One addendum to Liana Krissoff's excellent recipe: when the fermenting is done, I poured off the brine and replaced it with water, extra garlic, ginger and chili.  Otherwise it's overwhelmingly salty.

Cruel, Cruel Summer

Well, my work part-time gardening is only paying off....medium.


So far, my straight up late start on some things plus an incredibly cool, wet and rainy summer plus my very shady backyard = not a whole lotta action.

So far we've harvested one cucumber, one eggplant, a handful of (sickly) roma tomatoes, onions, garlic, a bunch of tiny bitter carrots, a few peas and plenty of lettuce, nappa cabbage, arugula and herbs.    So greens = happy (except for my cabbage that has been eaten by ....something),   roots and fruiting plants = not very happy.
Right now my garden makes me think of mid-July, not early august:   squash and cukes are just flowering, we're just getting the first ripe tomatoes, tiny peppers forming, beans flowering, etc.

But today at least is hot and sunny...we'll see if things are able to take off.


The biggest pest I have right now is something, probably a rabbit, that ate my carrot tops and half of one of my cabbages.   I'm used to dealing with tiny pest problems (like bugs and slugs).  I'm not sure what I'm going to do about the big nibblers.  They've been in our neighborhood for quite some time, but I was hoping the cats would keep them away.

I have managed to make at least one *amazing* stir-fry dinner so far:

From our garden:  
garlic
onion
eggplant
nappa cabbage

From Boston Organic:
Mango
more onion
green pepper
ginger (amazing!  so juicy!)

From Trader Joe's:
Basmati rice
"Thai Curry Simmer Sauce"
chicken.


I grilled the chicken, cooked the rice, fried the eggplant, garlic and ginger in peanut oil in a big wok.   (cooked eggplant for over 1/2 hour a la Mark Bittman...it became creamy and delicious!) Threw in onions.   Peppers.  Cabbage.   red pepper.   Fresh mango.  Cut up chicken and stirred it in.   poured simmer sauce on top.  Delicious!   (also, I am very proud to now be able to grill a chicken breast *while* stir frying on the stovetop inside.  I am magical.)

late June salad recipe

Simple, but exactly what I've been eating.  I love arugula, so anything with it will be delicious to me.

(haven't made this yet, but wanted to keep the link because it looked so good!)

http://whatscookingamerica.net/Salad/caesarargulasalad.htm

Donating my windex to charity

My homemade cleaners &  ingredients.
 (I recycled the empty "Mrs. Myers" spray bottle for the "Fantastic")

ahh.   After a grueling semester and at the end of my first year teaching, I have a few days to relax and unwind.   There's something really special about being able to own your own time, at least for a little while.   I find I can keep my mind on the one task ahead of me, instead of always trying to see what I'll need to be doing two or three steps ahead, like I do when I am teaching a full schedule.

So what did I decide to do on my first day of total freedom?  Why, clean the house, of course!   No, seriously, there's something totally cleansing about having the time to take care of your space and return it to a condition that looks, feels, and, as of today, smells good.  For some reason it feels kind of luxurious, like taking a long bubble bath, to really be able to get in and clean all those cobwebs, crumbs, stains and streaks that have been subtly pissing you off/grossing you out for some time.   And living in a house that looks cared for makes me feel, well, pampered.   (Do you get the idea that deep cleaning is something that happens fairly rarely around here?   eep. )

So as I was cleaning today, I realized that I was running out of my $12-a-bottle all-natural cleaner.   And I hate to go to the store, so that's a bummer.   Then I remembered that I had a list of all-natural recipes from Vida Verde, an eco-friendly cleaning co-op started and run by Brazilian women.   These women came and spoke to our ESL students a few months ago about the dangers of chemical cleaners and handed out recipes.  They were friendly, charming, knowledgeable and totally rad.   (If you are looking for an earth-friendly and worker-friendly house cleaning service, for sure check them out!  http://verdeamarelo.org/vidaverde/ ).

http://walthamfieldscommunityfarm.blogspot.com/

Another cool local farm blog - they have excellent (-looking) local recipes...I'll let you know if/when I try some of them.

I really like the writing these farmers do about farming and the kind of more spiritual, reflective aspects of farming.

Of course, they are farmers, not gardeners, but you get the idea.

Short-term cucmber-onion pickles (or the quickest pickles of all...)

This one's for my friend Katie who was trying to figure out what the heck to do with the pile of pickling cucumbers from her Boston Organics order.  Here's some pickles that you can make this afternoon and eat tonight.  From Deborah Madison's Local Flavors - a cookbook with seasonal, semi-fancy farmer's market-based recipes.

I would serve these pickles with grilled meats, put them on sandwiches, throw them on a salad or eat them plain.  (for the simplest pickles of all, I slice salad cukes or onions 20 min-1hr early, throw them in a tupperware, sprinkle a few spoonfulls of vinegar on them, close, shake, and store in the fridge until its time to serve the salad. yum!)

QUICK CUCUMBER-ONION PICKLES:

2 shiny fresh red or white onions
2 cups thinly sliced cucumbers, peeled only if the skins are tough

Pickle Troubleshooting

Here's a link from the Canning for a New Generation facebook page - now, if you try to make one of the pickle recipes I posted, you can find out what went wrong!  : p    Or you can scan it before you start to avoid trouble...

Hopefully you won't need it, but just in case you do...

http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/how/can_06/fermentproblems.html

Quick pickles...or what to do with all those beans.

Veggies cut up to make Achar Segar - and Indonesian quick pickle

So....I love beans, and I harvest a lot of them - especially the purple-spotted dragon beans I love.   I also have a bean teepee that's in full effect right now.   But the problem with beans is that you need to pick them almost every day - they are best when they are just a few inches long - in just a few days they can grow to 7" monsters that while still might be crunchy and sweet, can also be a little tough.

So what to do with all these beans?   Well...rinse them, cut off the tips and tails, and throw them out for hungry dinner guests while waiting for the rest of the food to finish.   Or steam them for 3-4 minutes and cover them with a little salt and butter.

Preserving beans?   Well, I've tried just throwing them into a plastic freezer bag and into the chest freezer - and the result is ok - defrost, saute and serve - but still a little squishy.

Sauerkraut: advice from the pros...

Learn about fermentation from the pros - Sandy Katz, who I got to learn from during a summer internship at IDA in central Tennesee, actually was one of the first people to show me how to do food preservation.    After I left, he published the book he'd told us he was working on, and its become a little bit of a cult phenom for people who love to ferment.   I still haven't bought the book, but here are his tips for making sauerkraut - which actually makes me more confident about my own kraut.   Check it out for more info on starting your own fermentation.

Wild Fermentation Sauerkraut tips

How to make pickles and sauerkraut - Part I

All right, kids, I had to do a little quick research on wikipedia before writing this blog entry....because a) I got confused reading all the different recipes to make pickles, and b) there are at least two, completely different ways to make pickles, and I wanted to make sure I had the terminology/verbiage right for this.  

So....If I say that I am making pickles, there are two different methods I could be talking about.   One method, that I'll talk about in another post, is to simple submerge a vegetable in vinegar (or a vinegar-salt-water-sugar-and-spices) mixture for a certain period of time.   I've done this with carrots, beans, beets, onions, garlic and cucumbers.   The finished product can either be canned (safely, because of the high acid content of the vinegar), or stored in the refrigerator and eaten within two weeks (although some recipes say these "refrigerator pickles" can be good for months at a time...I've certainly eaten commercial pickles months after I opened them and stuck them in the fridge...but then again, I often eat things I shouldn't....:)

Summer Squash refrigerator pickles

Ingredients

 So my friend Dave calls up with a quandry.   He's just inherited an overflow of squash from a neighbor's CSA.   He wants to know if they can be pickled.   They can, says I, put its hot as balls and canned pickles often come out squishy.   What's to be done?   Well....refrigerator pickles.

Cold peanut noodles and the July Garden - stir-fry season

Cold noodles + garden veggies in homemade peanut sauce on a hot day

Well, I have about a million blog posts I intend to write, but for now a short one will have to do.   It's July, it's hot as balls up here in the northeast, and things are moving at their usual unpredictable schedule.   The tomatoes just grew out of their cages, but so far everything is green, green green.  Green tomatoes, tiny green peppers, green peas, dark green kale, bluish-green broccoli (still no heads), neon-green cabbage.   The hot weather stuff is still coming:  in what I think is a first for this year, no eggplants, beans or cukes yet.   We are late.

Garden Diary - frustration, salad days

Well, here it is June, for real now. Finally hot - classic New England non-spring: straight rainy cold into boiling heat.   So, conditions not so perfect.   But as David Mas Masumoto writes in his farming memoir "Epitaph for a Peach"  - we can't control the weather.   And we can't control the garden.   In fact, organic gardening, and growing food in general, is in a big way about letting go of control.   Of course, its way different to grow food for the table than for income - I don't have a season's worth of work on the line.   But still, after putting in work into a home garden, I wish I could guarantee that everything turns out perfect.

The good: despite the weather we have big, beautiful heads of lettuce that taste delicious with a little homemade vinaigrette - if we can eat them before they bolt.   There are herbs and green onions to sprinkle on food.

And the peas out front are finally flowering, but no pods yet.   Spinach, kale and bok choi still growing, but small.  carrots tiny.   Tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, potatoes and beans all growing, but none even close to producing fruit or roots: the bigger ones are just starting to flower.

Even more frustrating, the backyard peas are small and will probably need to get pulled to make room for the cucumbers.   Only a few radishes balled up, and the beets are still teensy.   (Also, Trouble dug half of them up.  Sometimes she thinks the garden is her litter box, little jerk).  The carrots are patchy and it will take at least another month to see how they do.   Caterpillars are chowing down on the cabbages, and barely any of my beneficial-insect plants have flowered yet. Nothing in the broccoli department, and each green onion means one less big, full season onion.

Strawberries have come ripe almost all at once - delicious, but a time-limited proposition - we have to eat them before they go squishy.

In other words, despite lots of hard work, the garden produces some frustration along with produce.   But I've been thinking about this - about how working on this garden project is a lesson in humility.  A certain kind of manic energy, of perfectionism, will always be thwarted in a living project like this one.  And I have those qualities in spades, always rushing around, trying to plant something and fill in blank spaces where something failed, trying to cram another plant in, trying to prevent any kind of failure.  But another way of thinking might help us prepare better for reality - prepare for imperfection.  Yes, squash vine borers will inevitably seek a home in our zukes - yes, some tomatoes will rot on the vine because I run out of time or energy to preserve them.  Yes, some things will not grow or grow poorly, weeds will come up, and sometimes I'll forget or won't have time to weed, prune, water or feed.   These things could (and do) cause a little anxiety in a home gardener, especially for me, this season when I'm feeling so on top of my game and have put some much time into making things healthy and productive.   But a garden is good for teaching me a lesson about control - that we are not, in fact, in control.  There is the weather, there are insects, there are the plants themselves, and there is life, which sometimes switches up our priorities without warning.   We do our best, and then all we can do is wait and hope and appreciate what comes - and forgive ourselves if it doesn't.

Right now, I'm trying to exist in the here and now, in the salad days.  I could stress about how the beets aren't doing that well, or how maybe my decision to plant carrots between the spinach will make it hard for me to plant fall crops in that section.   Or I could eat lettuce.  Lots and lots of lettuce.  Truth be told, with a chopped green onion, a tiny radish, Boston Organic carrots, a head of our lettuce and bbq'd chicken on top, its something I made almost from start to finish.   And its lunch.  And just about the best damn salad I think I've ever eaten.

Recipe for vinaigrette, courtesy of Alice Water's Simple Foods:

Mix together 1 Tablespoon red wine vinegar,
pepper and salt
to taste.

Whisk in 3-4 Tablespoons olive oil.

pour over your salad and eat it.

We Made Cheese!!!!

This is where the magic happens!

Listen, I"m still impressed that I can grow my own lettuce.  So this next step is blowing my freaking mind.   We made.  Our own.  CHEEEEEEESE!  

And the next step to world domination is complete.   wha ha ha! 
I'm not going to describe the process in detail, since there were about eight steps.    But sufficeth to say, we bought a cheese-making kit from the Homebrew Emporium in Cambridge, MA and followed the directions.   Of all our food-craft projects we've attempted so far, I might venture to say that this was actually the easiest:  30 minutes from start to finish, minimal clean up, yummy product, and other than the kit, all the ingredients (milk, not ultra-pasturized) were available at the Stop and Shop.   Sweet.

That's me stirring the curds, and the whey, w/new apron. 

The process involves mixing rennet and citric acid into a gallon of milk, heating it, letting it sit a little....um, some more stuff (we kept the kit and instructions, don't worry!).   I will say, we separated the curds and whey, and all I could think was "Little Miss Muffet, Sat down on a Tuffet...." the whole time.   


Eventually, the curds separate, we drained the whey and stuck the whole mess in the microwave for about 45 seconds. 

    "No Whey!"    "Whey."

Then....basically, it got kind of messy and we forgot to take pictures. (There are some hilarious movies that may make it onto YouTube).  But we stuck the curds in the microwave, then, with a brand-new (almost) pair of dishwashing gloves, we followed the instructions to: stretch and pull like taffy.   ("OK," I said, "here goes nothing"  and proceeded to pull with abandon).   Then, it started looking like cheese!   I rolled it into little balls and tossed it in icewater.   Here are the results:

It's pretty delicious, and Dawn went right ahead and made herself a little tiny home-made pizza.  

I waited until tonight, and got to make "homegrown" lasagna...sort of.   Well, it has home-grown tomatoes in the sauce, plus frozen pesto and homemade mozzarella.   Pretty darn cool. 

Yum.

Keeping the Harvest.....

So it's been far too long since my last blog post, but now, the day before Thanksgiving, I finally have a little time on my hands.

The garden has been put to bed, almost.   Late to mid October, me and Dawn cut down the tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, beans, cucumbers and broccoli.   I pulled up the last of the carrots (some of which, left to grow the proper amount of time, actually got to a decent size!) and beets (ditto), pulled off the green peppers, hoping they'd go to red in our fridge, and gathered up all the green tomatoes to bring inside.

It's comforting, after a few years, to start to have a ritual.   Now I know when the heat goes on in late October (we can never make it to November 1!), upstairs comes the little wooden, three-shelved "onion box" I got at an unfinished wood store, with little mesh grates on the doors.   It lives in our back hallway all winter, our impromptu "root cellar" where we keep onions, potatoes garlic and winter squash.

The dried garlic and onions I grew are gone - I always mean to keep them longer, but they are so good, I always say, what the hell, what if they spoil, live for today, and they go into everything I cook between August and October and then they are gone.  :(  Every year I vow to plant more.

The last of the potatoes are hanging on, and I am carefully plotting their fate, planning my last few potato dishes with them in mind.  But we are moving into a different phase of year, here in New England, something I am slowly getting used to.   When I realized that tomatoes, eggplants and peppers were only fresh here for a few months (more like six to ten weeks!), it brought me down.  How the heck are you supposed to eat the lush, sweet, local produce everyone rhapsodizes about, when October-May practically nothing grows?

Well, some people use season-extenders, which I'd like to learn more about, just like everything else I'd like to get around to (sewing buttons back on my coats, selling my stand-alone Ikea closet from two houses ago on Craigslist, writing a novel).   Apparently, with the right cold frame, you can get lettuce in January (and I might believe it - my lettuce is still going strong!) but until then I'll have to stick to a tried-and-true old farmwife tradition: food preservation.

So, a few seasons into my New England gardening education, it suddenly dawned on me: old school (ie, colonial) housewives couldn't go to the supermarket in January to get food.  They knew this in the flush seasons of July and August, and that is where our very most basic "processed foods" come from: jams, jellies, pickles, ketchup, mustard, relishes and sauerkraut, wine and beer.   Who knows if the nutritious value was preserved (was it?) but at least they had a little variety.    It also explains the difference between what we know as "Italian cuisine"  and "German cuisine."    Italy is linked with tomatoes, basil, zuccinis, and other fresh veggies of every kind.   Well, guess what?  It stays warm in Italy for a lot longer than in Germany, which is famous for bratwurst, beer, and sauerkraut.  Or worse, Russian food, where tomatoes often barely make it to ripe at all.   This is actually where my ancestors come from, and it is known for hardy root vegetables: potatoes, cabbages and beets.   Black bread.    Why?   Not because they are unhealthful and hate salads, but because this was what was available.

Preserving and Perservering

Beans

Well, it's August, and you know what that means: full on harvest time.  Yes, there are still many chores to be done, but I feel like in August the bulk of the work shifts to inside the house - what to do with the tons of produce we get.   This year we got a CHEST FREEZER, and so instead of having to stand over a hot canning bath if I want to keep something, I can just pop a lot of stuff in the Freezer.  Like those beans.  Cool.

And, in this garden, you win some, you lose some.  I think I got 1.5 beets, after all that fussing over them.  I (fingers crossed) will have 1 really nice canteloupe.   And the squash bit it, hardcore.   In general, my plants seem to be able to fight off most bugs that attack their leaves.   But we got squash vine borers, that get the part of the plant that goes into the ground, and pretty much finishes them off.   So no squash.

But we are pulling in 5-15 tomatoes a week, including some heirlooms, 3-4 cucumbers, and maybe 20-30 new beans every time I look outside.   The onions, potatoes and garlic are in, so I can cook with those, and the eggplants are producing on schedule.   Peppers - well, lots of green, we are holding out for red.   And I'm trying to coddle some late-summer lettuce, bok-choi and peas - so, in general, I'm feeling pretty well fed.

The food goes into stir-fries, pesto, tomato sauce and salad.   I also got ambitious with the tomatoes and beans:   The umpteen beans got turned into a sort of bean-based pesto type dip, that is really delicious, and frozen for future parties.  (Babs Kingsolver calls it "frijole mole" - most people seem to think it's: strange but good)
http://www.animalvegetablemiracle.com/Frijole-Mole.pdf

Into the freezer can now go pesto, bean dip, tomato puree, roasted tomatoes, and whole beans.   I'll get to canning and pickling in a week or two, when it's a little colder.

And with the tomatoes, I"m trying it all.   I've peeled, cored and seeded plenty of my over-healthy romas to make from-scratch sauce, run them through my roma-3000 (or whatever it's called) to freeze the puree, and even bought extras to put away. - well, I bought about $10 of almost-ripe heirlooms at the farmers market to try preserving.   As per my book (The Busy Person's Guide to Preserving Food, by Janet Chadwick), I sliced the tomatoes up thin and left them in Dawn's food dehydrator until they became, and I quote, "leathery" and put them on my shelf, and also roasted a bunch at 225 degrees, with olive oil, to freeze (note to self: 6 hours waaaaay too long for thin sliced tomatoes to roast - anyone want burnt-up tomato chips?).

So, to all my friends who have cooked with me, and to Dawn who has suffered the effects of my vegetable mania ("OK, so I'll cook the carrots and the beets together, the beans on their own, we'll mash the potatoes, oh yeah and the corn, and what about a salad....?"), thanks for the help.    I'm excited for the cooler weather and some canning, because who doesn't feel good with jars and jars of home-grown food on their shelf?