26 posts tagged “garden”
I just love Mike Rowe:
So, on the subject of infrastructure, I've been wondering about two things: One of them is something Mike already mentioned a bit, although I've been wondering about it from a slightly different angle. The kinds of education programs that Obama seems to support don't really have much to do with training people for infrastructure-related jobs. Granted some of these jobs do take a college degree (drafting, engineering, and so on require different kinds of degrees), but a lot of the jobs we most need people to fill--especially since they effectively cannot be outsourced--require apprenticeships rather than college of any kind (although some apprenticeships do have some technical school courses as a component). But, as Mike points out, it's hard for Ivy League wonks to get their heads around the idea that these people who didn't go to college and work in some kind of dirty job or another have an inherently important role to play in society and can and do have meaningful lives. I've said it a million times before, but going to college doesn't make a person smarter or their life more important or meaningful or anything, though most college-educated people like to fancy that it does. And it seems clear to me that the last thing this fucking country needs is more people running around with lit degrees.
The other thing that has occurred to me is that Obama's big push to send people to college is really rather a setback for us, at the very least it is a setback in terms of competing with other nations. There was a time when a high school diploma meant something. It meant you were educated enough to be a functional citizen and capable of doing or learning most jobs. It doesn't mean that anymore. Now, so often in this country, you need some kind of college papers--even if it's just a two-year degree. Effectively this means that we need a minimum of 20 years to turn out functional, employable people, where most other European and Asian nations only need 18. There are, of course, further ramifications, including the ever-increasing need for remedial classes (only most colleges aren't supposed to call them that anymore, lest anyone be made to feel badly about themselves). Since a college education, even at a university that offers advanced degrees, so often begins from a level that should have been mastered sometime in high school--and, believe me, some of the remedial composition classes start at levels that should have been mastered by the sophomore year of high school--the level of discourse in all classes is lowered (except, in my experience, some of the less popular disciplines. Philosophy professors still seem to hold to a basic, if outdated, idea that if you don't understand the material, it's most likely your fault and you probably just need to study harder).
The problem is that nobody really seems to know how to fix our public schools, do they? Well, there are some ideas--even a few that I support--but it's all very political, and no idea that might actually work is ever going to happen. So, what the hell? Give up and see if we can just push more people through college. For our kids, we're planning to use a combination tactic that includes homeschooling and some time in the paramilitary schools of Japan (kiritsu!). Right now and for the next couple of years, my son goes to public school, but we supplement at home with our own program (his preschool is doing a good job teaching him phonics, so right now we're focused on science, arithmetic, and learning to read Japanese).
But anyway. Today is one of those great days when I just don't care about the news, and thank goodness, because it's fucking dismal. None of it--not Chris Dodd, not the breathtaking incompetence at the Treasury Department, none of it--is going to bother me today. Because today was a beautiful day, and we took a stroll through the garden (the snow is all melted for now), and there is not only spinach coming up already but also the rhubarb is pushing up through the mud and mulch, and it's looking like a good year for rhubarb. We're already dreaming of the rhubarb cake and cobbler and jam. Oh, yum. I guess spinach and rhubarb are related, right? That's why they're our first two performers. Oh, well, there is also radicchio, but I never know what to do with it anymore since my husband has decided he hates it. And so, with the prospect of new fresh food on the way, we're starting our yearly push to empty out the pantry and freezer. Tonight I'm putting a compote of dried fruits in the crock-pot. We'll eat it for breakfast, and it should use up some of the fruit I dried last year. Yum.
On that note, I just finished reading Consuming Passions: The Anthropology of Eating. Interesting stuff. That stuff you hear about how the Asian concept of "meal" is, basically, "rice" is true, at least for my husband. He can eat a big spaghetti dinner and not feel full until he's gone and had a nice bowl of sticky white rice. The thing is that, for him, it's not just rice, but white rice, and not just white rice, but Japanese white rice. The jasmine rice doesn't quite cut it, and if I make brown rice for dinner (as I often do, because I think it tastes good), he still needs some white rice after. It's really weird. I was talking about it with my mom (she's the one I borrowed the book from) and we were talking about what might be like "rice" for an American. I speculated that it might be bread, but I actually think now that for most Americans, it's meat (and especially if you can expand your definition of meat to include eggs). I think the American conception of a meal revolves around the meat, whatever meat it is. Mine doesn't really, although I guess I usually assemble meals based on what's going to be our protein and then what will complement that, so I guess that's still the American mindset at work, because in Japan I know I cooked differently. In Japan, I cooked more Japanese-ish, in that I thought, "OK, there's rice and there's side dishes. Tonight for side dishes, I want X, Y, and Z side dishes." Rice is always given, though. I guess when I cook Japanese food now, that's how I think about it, too, but since we have access to so many different things here than we did in Japan, I only cook Japanese a couple of times a week (and almost never for breakfast, much to my husband's chagrin. But you just can't buy natto around here).
Now I'm re-reading a book from one of my philosophy seminars called Poor Richard's Principle by Robert Wuthnow. I thought it would be interesting to re-read it in light of the current state of the economy, and it is. I know when I read it the first time around I severely underestimated the importance of it. Not "important" in the sense that it's going to make some big difference in the world, because, yes, I know: nobody has read it. But "important" in the sense that they probably should.
One final thing: I've been reading on another site a debate about abstinence-only education versus comprehensive sex education, and people have been citing these statistics that purport to show that "abstinence education doesn't work." To me, what they seem to show is that there is not much difference in the behaviors or attitudes between students who receive abstinence-only ed and those who receive comprehensive sex education (although every study shows something different, so who the hell knows?). To my mind, that doesn't mean that "abstinence ed doesn't work"--it means neither of them "works." I mean, I see that the point is that abstinence-only education doesn't cause extraordinary abstinence. But that doesn't mean that comprehensive sex ed, then, must work better, just because we've set that up as the opposite. As far as I can tell, it doesn't have a great impact on when kids start having sex or even how likely they are to use protection routinely. In other words, I think this is a totally false debate. Neither "works." This is not at all surprising given the completely mixed signals kids get from our culture as a whole.
Meh. Anyway. Fruit compote!
Well, I realize the gardening season is pretty well over...however, I finally gave up on figuring out how to hook my camera up to my computer to post pictures. So, I just went and bought a new computer that has a slot for my camera's memory card, and now I shall attempt to post pictures directly from memory card to Vox. We'll see how it goes. If it goes well, I may have to go back to Flickr Pro.
That, my friends, is some of our purple cauliflower. Attractive, no? It turns kind of a deep violet when you cook it, but it's still nice. I imagine it would make a very interestingly colored soup, though I have not tried that yet. We have one more head of this stuff still growing out there.
Unbelievably, I actually took that picture in our garden, on one of the Mammoth Grey Stripe sunflowers. I used stealth! It's a lovely picture, I think. Maybe I should try stealth more often.
Here's my son with one of his recalcitrant grasshopper pets. He looks grumpy in the picture because he wants me to tie this grasshopper (named "Whirly") to a string so that he can lead it around like you would a dog on a leash, but he has already (accidentally) killed one pet grasshopper doing this (the grasshopper unexpectedly and tragically jumped right where my son was also jumping), so I have refused. I have instead suggested a house for the grasshopper, and he is not entirely pleased. Eventually, he came around, and Whirly was with us for many days until he finally escaped...in the car...anyhoodle...
And, finally, how about some pretty flower pictures from our garden:
So, this is just something I have to post about: Last night, I made the best fried cauliflower I've ever had in my life, which isn't really saying much, but this was delicious.
See, I had been out in the garden that morning and realized that one of our cauliflowers had suddenly become gigantic. I also had a hankering for Indian food, but I wanted to make something different from the Indian food I usually cook. I mean, sure, a cauliflower curry would have been the obvious road, right? But, no! I yearned for something different. And so I consulted Julie Sahni's Classic Indian Cooking and was intrigued by her recipe for cauliflower fritters (I also made the keema in scented white sauce, which was fantastic as well, but right now let's stick with our florets). She breads them with a batter made of garbanzo bean (chickpea) flour, coriander, salt, and red pepper flakes mixed with water. She whips this batter up, then lets it ferment for a while before dipping the florets and then frying them until golden brown and delicious.
I used "garfava" flour since we didn't have straight chickpea flour, but it worked fine. We have coriander from the garden, too.
This is my new favorite batter for frying things, I've decided. I already feel confident that it will be delicious on zucchini and mushrooms, among other things. The combination of flavors is subtle--neither the coriander nor the beany flours overwhelm the flavor of the vegetable. It becomes nicely crisp and stays that way for quite a while. It has a light texture yet still feels substantial. We all ate it until we felt we would pop. I hate to admit that the success of the cauliflower somewhat overshadowed the greatness of keema in scented white sauce, but it did. Next time I make the keema, I will make sure I don't also make the cauliflower, because it deserves some attention of its own.
I also made a spicy dipping sauce for the cauliflower that consisted of Sriracha and homemade apple "ketchup" (really more of a pureed apple chutney, which anyway I guess ketchup is just a pureed chutney, but this stuff doesn't taste like what you think of when you think of "ketchup" unless maybe you're a damned foreigner or something). That's all. Quite a simple sauce, but it was perfect with the cauliflower. We were happy campers.
That, I have to say, is one more thing I like about the garden. It all started because I had a truly enormous head of cauliflower and just wanted to do something different with it. You tend to eat whatever you have planted quite a lot, and so you start searching for new things to do with it, and then you end up discovering greatness in a very unassuming cookbook that features no photography or other pretensions to sexiness. It just wants to quietly teach you how to make truly delicious Indian food, there in the privacy and comfort of your own home.
This is soon going to happen to me with leeks, too. See, I've never really been a leek eater. I mean, they always seem to be very expensive at the store, because they inevitably charge you by the pound, but most recipes seem to only want you to use the white parts (though I suppose you could use the greens for soup stock, no?), and the white parts are often very small. So, we never buy leeks, because they seem too expensive compared to other oniony alliums. But I want leeks with a desire whose origins are mysterious. So, I planted a bunch, and they're really doing well. We're going to have a big old crop of them, and I have no idea what to do with them except for leek and potato soup. I think Jamie Oliver has some useful ideas, but I don't know. I just have never really given proper consideration to what I would do with them once I had them.
Kale this year is also exceeding expectations. Kale this year may, in fact, be exceeding our desire for it, and we like kale. We do really have a lot of it this year, though, so, again, I am having to find new and interesting ways to cook it. A while ago--did I already mention this?--I made a kale cobbler. Basically, I made creamed kale, like you'd make creamed spinach, then slapped a savory cobbler topping (basically, drop biscuit dough) on it and baked it. We loved it.
Last year there was salsify, too, an entirely new vegetable for us. It isn't easy to even find recipes for it, but we managed to find a couple (in Barbara Kafka's excellent Vegetable Love for example). People say it tastes like oysters, I guess, but I don't get that. It does taste good, though, so we planted more this year, but it didn't do so well. There are roots, but they are too slender to be of much use. Perhaps next year.
And this year, there will be cardoons. I don't know what to do with them, either, and I've never eaten them. I have found some recipes, and we'll just go for it and see what these rather lovely plants have to offer us. One day when we can really undertake a landscaping project, we will go with edible landscaping, and cardoons will play a large and handsome role in that, along with purple shiso and that gorgeous black Tuscan kale.
Also, am I the only person who finds Swiss chard to be a very sexy plant? It's so lustrous and colorful. I stop by and admire it everyday. Fortunately it is also placed near the purple cauliflower. My son really wanted the purple cauliflower when we saw it in the seed catalog, and my husband and I were naturally skeptical that it would turn out as beautifully as the photo, but it has and even more so. Every time I walk by, on my way to the Swiss chard, I glimpse the still-growing heads in there, shining brightly as well-polished amethysts.
The vegetables seduce me, every year. Each year I think I can eat no more kale, but each year we begin a new affair, a rapturous lust after the beauty of leaves, curled and frilled and lacy, in deep, cool colors. Each year corn silks wave in the breeze, all come-hither, and despite myself I keep planting corn (this year we have 5 kinds, one of which has produced amazing magenta silks). Each year the shock of blooming nasturtiums against the deep purple of eggplants enchants me. Each morning, I take my coffee and go to stand in the garden and let the heady thrill of the vegetables wake me.
In this, as in so many things, I am just like my father, who did the same thing. Back then, I didn't understand why he would just stand in the garden, sipping his coffee and looking around at everything--assessing, taking pride, enjoying. To me, then, the garden was just work and a source of endless tomatoes that I would eat with just salt and always outdoors so that their voluminous juice could drip down my arm back to the earth whence it came. But now I understand, and I do the same thing. It makes me feel good just to stand there and look at it all. Sometimes I think about how this agriculture thing that humans do is so weird, natural and yet completely unnatural, but mostly I just look and enjoy.
Ah, yes, and we've reached the time in the summer when my husband and I look at each other pitifully and wonder why the fuck we keep doing this. It happens. Over the next month and a half or so, until the growing season really goes kaput, we'll groan and mutter and whine and rub each other's aching shoulders (at least I don't have two cords of wood to split...my heart and shoulders ache for my poor husband and his wood-splitting chores) and slog through it all.
In addition to the previously referenced subscription to Gourmet, I also get a magazine called Mother Earth News. It's full of great information about gardening and composting and building your own solar contraptions and all sorts of other stuff for people who are just sick to death of the overconsumption, wastefulness, and helplessness of modern life. In this issue, one of the letters suggests that this way of life--the canning, the homemade solar contraptions, etc.--is not, in fact, a "simple" life. She suggests that going to the store and buying canned spaghetti sauce is "simpler" than canning your own. She has a point, on the one hand; it's a lot of bloody work. (Hot work, too: The temperature around my pickle station today, as I was putting up jars of oregano-scented giardiniera, was 103 F, which I believe is the official boiling point of my brain).
On the other hand, I think she's missing the point. The idea that this is the "simple" life (although I also find that to be a sort of silly thing to call it) is that it's simpler in terms of the technology and systems required to run it. The canned spaghetti sauce in the store has a lot of technological support, from the types of tomatoes that have been bred for commercial processing to the mechanical harvesting to the trucks that deliver it to your store and the various systems that the store itself requires. Certainly, that sauce is simple for you, the consumer, but nothing else about it is simple at all. On the other hand, the technology required to grow and harvest paste tomatoes and then cook and can them in your own kitchen is practically medieval, transparent, and available to all (or pretty close). Similarly, hanging my clothes out on the clothesline to dry in the sun is not simpler for me; indeed, it's a pain in the ass. However, in terms of technology and energy use, it's vastly simpler than using a dryer (besides just the obvious, we also require no dryer sheets as no static builds up in our clothes). So, I guess I'm saying that "simple" for you on a micro level takes a lot of (often invisible) complexity; pain in the ass for you means simple on a macro level.
Anyway, I've begun a new offensive on winter: I am dehydrating kale. Kale is one thing we have tons and tons of. It's really a shame that more people here don't eat kale (they don't--I tried selling some of our excess at the farmer's market, and people had no idea what to do with such an item. "Wash it, cut it up, cook it with some bacon," said I, but still no takers. Sigh.) since it is one of the few things that will grow here way past frost and be happy about it. We actually have three varieties of kale this year which, admittedly, seems excessive (we have that Tuscan black kale, a Scotch blue curled kale, and a Red Russian--they don't taste a whole lot different, but there are textural differences). Anyway, it is producing so well that we have started wondering what the heck to do with it all, so now we're drying it. Greens dry fairly well and then you can add them all winter long to soups and rice while it cooks or whatever, quite easily.
I've also discovered a little trick that I think is quite clever. I already mentioned, I think, that I am trying to stockpile herbal teas, because my son and I drink a lot of tea during winter. Well, we've been out picking wild raspberries (I think these are actually thimbleberries, a relative of raspberries, but what the hell?), and I had noted previously that most "raspberry" herbal teas actually contain raspberry leaves rather than raspberries. Same with strawberry. Anyway, so now whenever we go pick the berries, I get some of the leaves, too, and now I have a significant stockpile of those, along with my chamomile and goldenrod and such. It's kind of amazing to think how much money I would have spent on that this winter had I not finally thought to just start bringing some of the leaves home. I'm going to go ahead and dry the leaves of our strawberry plants at the end of the season, too. I mean, why not?
So, tomorrow, I have to: harvest beets; dehydrate most of the beet greens along with some more kale; pickle the beets; harvest coriander, dill seed, and poppy seeds and get them in the solar contraption to dry; harvest chamomile and calendula and get them to drying; feed the worms (we have a vermicomposter, aka "the worm farm," in the basement, and if I don't feed them, then they don't poop for me) and get their poop and spread it where we just harvested the All-Blue potatoes tonight; plant daikon and other radishes in that spot, amongst the worm castings; experiment with the cucumbers (I'm going to try freezing cucumbers that have been purged, i.e., salted and allowed to drain thoroughly; I'm wondering if purging the cucumbers will let them freeze successfully. Purging eggplant before freezing it works a charm in keeping it a reasonable texture, so I'm hoping it might work for cukes. And, besides, for a lot of applications I purge the cukes first, anyway. So...maybe. It's worth a shot, anyway); make chokecherry something or other, probably jelly and syrup since we have a lot of bleedin chokecherries this year (I want to make chokecherry wine, but I just don't have that in me right now).
All of that is just to say that I'm sorry I'm not responding to anyone right now or reading anyone else's blogs or emailing or anything at all right now. If I get all distracted by actually corresponding with friends and family, the beets and kale will rot in the ground and we'll starve to death this winter. Alright, that's an exaggeration, I know. But, still. After another 6 weeks, I'll be back to my usual prolix bitching. Well, I might be around more in a couple of weeks because that's when my semester starts again, so I'll be online anyway.
Oh, man, now it's getting late and I did not get the onion relish done...so I guess I have to do that tomorrow, too. These computers are the biggest damned distraction ever.
One last thing...has anyone reading this read any Murakami Haruki? I just read After Dark, and that was the first Murakami book I ever read, and...I don't get it. All the reviews I read said it was brilliant, but if it's brilliant, then I am clearly not. I mean, I understood it, but I don't understand what's supposed to be so brilliant about it, I guess, which means I'm missing something? Or...? The dialogue really grated on my nerves badly, but since I was reading it in translation I can't necessarily blame Murakami for that. Feck. Maybe it just irritated me that two of the main characters make a show of asserting that they're totally not the type of people who go to love hotels, like it's some kind of terrible thing to go to a love hotel. THERE'S NO SHAME IN GOING TO LOVE HOTELS. Anyway, it isn't just me. I also recently read (finally!) No Country for Old Men, and I not only got it but sooooo much loved it. It could have been me. I spend way too much time in the summers analyzing canning and pickling cookbooks. Sometimes I can't remember what it's like to think of things that do not involve vinegar.
The other day we were watching an interview with the singer Jewel about her life growing up in Alaska, and she said that basically up there you spend all summer getting ready for winter.
We don't live in Alaska anymore, but Idaho is close enough (actually, according to the USDA Zone Map, many places in Alaska, including where Jewel lived and where we used to live, do not get as cold as it gets here, and considering they actually have humidity up there, the weather in general up there is less harsh than it is here), and we know exactly what she means.
Today my husband and stepdad went out to cut wood and spent all day (well, 7 hours) doing it. We now have a giant pile (about a cord and a half) of wood scattered about our backyard; my son has already built a fort out of some of it. That wood needs to be split and stacked, and we still need to get about 4 more cords. It's work--muscle-straining, backache-inducing work.
And today I spent about 4 hours working on cherries. I had bought about 10 or 12 pounds yesterday at the farmer's market. These are locally grown (more or less) Bing cherries, picked absolutely ripe and indescribably delicious, the kind of cherry that turns you off supermarket fruit. I washed them all and pitted them. The slightly overripe ones will go into jam (make that tomorrow) as cherry jam is one of my all-time favorite yogurt toppings, and we need a lot of it. The perfectly ripe ones are being individually frozen. I put them on cookie sheets to freeze, so that once they are bagged I can just pull out however many cherries I want at a time instead of having to defrost the whole bag.
All the peas are harvested and stored now. We have about 10 quarts of snow and snap peas in the freezer, along with 2 gallons of shelled peas. We also dried enough peas to total about a pound of dry peas for soup. We dried all the peas on a homemade screen rack outside in the sun. We will plant peas again soon, for a second harvest in the fall.
Chamomile and other herbs for medicine and tea have to be harvested almost daily in this weather, because they're growing so fast. We dry them on the same screen rack outside, using nothing but solar energy. We're going to have a bounteous supply of chamomile tea, although I'm also mixing it with pineapple weed flowers. Pineapple weed is, yes, a weed, but it's closely related to chamomile (the Matricaria chamomile, anyway), and it tastes really good as tea and offers some of the same benefits (being soothing, etc.). We also have calendula flowers to dry and yarrow. Indeed, I am utterly in love with yarrow. I have never tested its supposed fever-curing properties, but if it's good enough for Achilles, it's damn sure good enough for us. We also picked about a pound of wild mint leaves, and we are drying them and intend to mix them with our garden-grown mint (we have three varieties, currently) to make a mint tea for winter. I'm letting the cilantro do as it wants to do and make coriander for me. The poppies are also doing what they want and making seeds, later to make lemon poppyseed muffins with. Lillies, sunflowers, nasturtiums, and cornflowers (aka bachelor's buttons) are all blooming to great effect and pleasing me mightily.
Oh, right, y'all wanted pictures. After work finishes up, OK?
Also at the farmer's market yesterday, I bought 20 pounds of local apricots. Yum. I hope to get another box next week. Of course, we are eating them, letting the bright-orange juice get all over our faces and forearms, but we will also make jam (we eat a fair quantity of jam, mostly because we only buy plain yogurt, and we put jam on top of the plain yogurt--we also use it on biscuits and pancakes and so forth, of course, but the yogurt habit is what really affects our jam consumption), and then--THEN!--I ordered a new food dehydrator, a 9-rack commercial type unit, and we will make dried apricots. Oh, super yum. I bought the big dehydrator because we intend to do a lot of drying this year, especially once my husband gets a deer (jerky!--fingers crossed, as getting a deer is by no means a foregone conclusion), and things like apricots and cherries take a long time to sun-dry here. I think we're going to do the tomatoes out in the sun, though. Oh, right, I also intend to make zucchini chips this year. I read about it this winter, and I'm always looking for new ways to sock zucchini away for the winter since it produces so abundantly, and apparently dehydrated zucchini slices make a delicious chip, that you can just eat straight out of the bag like a potato chip. You could also rehydrate them, of course, and use them in soup or whatever. Whatever. It's chips I want. I figure once the zucchini gets going it shouldn't be too hard to fill that 9-rack dehydrator. Fortunately, I have a mandoline for easy uniform slicing.
Oh, we also found a big patch of wild raspberries the other day while we were fishing/harvesting mint. They're in flower now. Can't wait...can't wait.
I only have one week of work left for the summer, and it's good, because August is too full of getting ready for winter to hold down an actual job. Once the tomatoes and zucchini start in earnest (all our tomatoes are still green right now--we should start having cherry tomatoes soon), dealing with them is a full-time job.
People ask me all the time if I don't get tired of it. The truth is that we get very tired of it about the end of August or middle of September, but the rest of the year makes up for it. Well, not only that, but to be honest, I think for us there is great satisfaction in doing this kind of work. There is satisfaction in using your hands and your back to do real hard work, in getting sweaty and dirty from mixing about with earth. All three of us (because my son helps, sort of--as best as a 3-year-old can) sit back in October and look at our carefully split-and-stacked wood, our pantry full of dried and canned foods, our freezer stocked with both vegetables by themselves and some ready-to-eat convenience foods that I make (stuffed zucchini, soup concentrates, zucchini fritters, etc.), and we take pride and comfort from it. It will mean lower grocery bills for us, of course, and it will mean fewer trips to the grocery store, more selection when decent produce is hard to get in winter, and higher quality food. It also means that a significant portion of the work we do in our lives is not work where we trade our time for money, but where we work directly for whatever it is that we need, cutting out the money part of the deal. It means that that work that we did was work we did as a family; it was time spent together, working towards a common goal, laughing, bickering, cooperating, trying not to cut each other's fingers off with the axe.
I don't mean to get too sentimental about it--it is hard work, and as I said, we do get tired of it. And I don't want to sound preachy, but sometimes I wonder if more people tried it out, if they wouldn't also find it more rewarding than they imagined. I wonder, too, if people would appreciate the energy (in the form of electricity, oil, or food) they consume more when they knew what that consumption meant in real physical terms. Maybe we wouldn't be so wasteful as a society, and maybe we wouldn't abuse food the way we do. Maybe being outdoors and working and finding yourself reaching for apricots and peas for snacks would give us better health. Maybe the time spent working with their families would be good for kids and adults alike. Oh, I don't know...but maybe.
I know, I know--I'm a dreamer and an idealist, but when you spend 4 hours pitting cherries, you have a lot of time to daydream. Trust me.
So, I'm sitting there eating some popcorn and enjoying one of life's truly great guilty pleasures, Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares on BBC America, listening to great Gordon tell some aspiring chef that he has tiny balls or something, when this commercial comes on. It's for an upcoming news program about Zimbabwe and why Mugabe just can't be beat. I think the answer is clear enough when one fella says something like, "Well, if you're the opposition, you'll be in jail." But this does not satisfy Mr. Fucking BBC News Guy.
He asks the question: Why does the US send its military to impose democracy on Iraq but can't be bothered with Zimbabwe?
I have to answer that question with some of my own questions: Hey, you're British--if you care so much about Zimbabwe, why don't you send your own goddamned military to impose democracy? Or don't you think Zimbabwe is worth British blood? Are you meaning to imply that it's a good thing America is doing in Iraq? Because most of us would beg to differ. Are you seriously meaning to imply that America should send its military to interfere with the politics of YET ANOTHER sovereign state? How many nations do you think ought to have the American military in them, muddling around in their governance? Do you seriously, seriously not realize that America has no more military to send fucking anywhere--not anywhere, not for any reason? Do you not know that America has no more money to spend on this shit, either? Seriously, there are a lot of nations who count on America for their defense, and right now, even such a soldiering sort of nation as America cannot muster enough troops to cover current commitments adequately, let alone add new ones.
And, last but by no means least, what the fuck?
It's just so revoltingly stupid. It's very easy to blame America for everything, but when are people like this guy going to realize that you don't get it both ways? You cannot buy a Big Mac for lunch and then blame America for the fact that fast food is taking over your country--YOU fucking bought the Big Mac. Stop buying Big Macs and American fast food companies will close for lack of profits. Similarly, the world relies too heavily on the American military to protect them (hello, Japan) and to intervene when there is any kind of humanitarian crisis. Then, of course, they resent our military presence everywhere.
If I was Commander in Chief, knowing this sort of thing, I'd just be all, "Dude, Mugabe? Isn't Mugabe, like, the capital of Turkey?" because, you know, we're just stupid Americans who don't know anything about any other places and don't care. Might as well live up the stereotype.
While we're on the subject, I keep hearing that because however many Americans cannot find Iraq on a map, they can't possibly know or understand what's going on over there or have any reasonable opinion about the war. To me, there appears to be no logical connection between the two things. Finding something on a map does not inherently imply or require any understanding of that thing or the geopolitical environment of that thing, or anything else. I know it's also hilarious and gratifying to constantly harp on how stupid Americans are, but please. You have to come up with something better than that to impress this American that she is stupid.
I'm struck by a sudden craving for a Big Mac accompanied by tiny-scrotum jokes from Gordon Ramsay. You know why I love Gordon Ramsay? The man's a tyrant, yes. But he fucking cares. He cares about food, he cares about the chefs he works with, he cares about the restaurants he's there trying to help. I don't watch Hell's Kitchen, because I did once, and the contestant people (people? is that the right word for that collection of cretins?) were beyond depressing. I've never seen such a bunch of sad sack cooks in all my life. But Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares is brilliant stuff. Come insult me, Gordon. Please. Because I know that if I take your insults to heart and follow your f-words to the letter, I will totally get a Michelin star.
Speaking of food, because this will purge Mr. BBC New Man from my system, let me tell you: Food preservation season started today. I am not ready for that part of the garden effort yet. But the greens are telling me it is time. The greens, you see (and here I include spinach, some lettuces, and an array of the mustards and cabbages), hate this time of year. They hate the day length; it makes them go to seed quickly. They hate the sudden dry heat, which makes them turn bitter and tough. They hate everything about it. So, we're pulling them up. Tonight it was mustard greens. Tomorrow it will be spinach and bok choy and Napa cabbage and probably the red mustard as well. God have mercy. Because once food preservation season starts, it won't let up until late September or early October. After the greens, there will start being peas. And cilantro and parsley which are also desperately trying to bolt of late. By the time we get done with that, we will be lucky to have a short time before the early cucumbers start coming in...then the early beets and carrots...and I'm already going to be exhausted before the tomatoes even come in.
It's a strange cycle, I guess, or it seems strange these days. You work your ass off half the year and enjoy the fruits of that the other half. During the winter, when we're relaxed and being merry (and very cold), we are so grateful that we did the work--that we cut the wood and split it and stacked it; that we did the garden and harvested so many things; that we took those things and things we got a great deal on at the farmer's market and preserved them in some manner (canning or freezing or drying, usually) because our freezer and pantry are full of organic vegetables and fruits. But right about now, in the start of the preservation season, it's hard to remember the times in winter when the work is done and I just have to pull stuff out of the freezer or a jar. I must keep reminding myself of how good it is then. That's the only way through this.
Especially now, with these damned allergies. I've always had hay fever, I suppose, but never like this. Last year was bad, our first year in this town; this year is markedly worse. T's theory is that I'm allergic to the wheat that is growing and blooming all around this town. He may be right, since eating wheat gives me a lot of trouble. Whatever it is, I have never suffered allergies like this, and once I find out what it is, we are moving somewhere where that thing does not grow. I don't care if that means we're moving to Antarctica.
Whew. We got pretty far afield from the original topic. Fekkin BBC.
Yesterday was the summer solstice for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere. How did you celebrate the arrival of summer and the longest day of the year?
By shaking my fist at the heavens. This is some fucked-up weather we're having. Spring, very cold this year and extraordinarily damp (not that we're complaining about the rain, but really? 50 degrees in June? That's the best you can do, sun?), lingered on and on...until, suddenly, about two weeks ago, the temperature climbed 30 degrees and went completely dry. We went from rain every day to 23% humidity.
My garden is in shock. The few things that were really enjoying the cold damp spring (spinach, mustard greens, peas though they would really rather be a bit warmer) suddenly--oh, and I do mean suddenly--started suffering heat stroke. The sweet peppers almost all dried out and died. The eggplants nearly all suffered frostbite in those last cold days when we had unexpected hail, snow, and frost (in early June), but they're making a good recovery now. The peas and their lovely purple and white blossoms are drooping and wheezing.
We're in despair. There are only three things so far that are doing unquestionably well: cilantro, dill, and sunflowers. Sigh. The cilantro and dill are totally taking over the garden, they're doing so well. Actually, the nasturtiums are doing very well, too, so it's nice that they're edible. We're going to have to take what we can get this year.
Also, for the solstice that we actually forgot about and do not celebrate in any way, we went to Jackson and ate okonomiyaki.
But, hey, we did the coolest thing today. We put in a new window in the kitchen. Mostly my husband and stepdad did it, and I just popped in to make concerned noises from time to time. It's a supersweet window. Low-e, tinted to keep out the hot afternoon glare, very nice--and it opens, which the former kitchen window did not do. It makes me feel like a real homeowner, like a real adult, to have gone to the Home Depot and ordered a window and brought it home and installed it. I don't know why it should make me feel that way, but it's like the final goodbye to the way I used to live. And that's fine with me.
What are some of the best(and worst) things about summer?
Submitted by L33tchica.
Well, the worst thing about this summer so far is that it isn't summer. As we approach mid-June, temperatures are not rising above the 60s. See that blue area? See that 50? Yeah, that's us, on June 8. Bloody hell. YOU THINK EGGPLANTS GROW IN THIS WEATHER? NO, THEY DO NOT. I'm so aggravated, not that there's anything to be done. Someone needs to pray to the weather god or something.
But ordinarily the best thing about summer is the fresh produce and swimming in rivers. I don't know why I like swimming in rivers so much given my experience. We used to do most of our swimming in Arkansas in the White River, and you always have to be on the lookout for water moccasins, a kind of snake. Up here in the north, swimming in the Blackfoot River or whatever, the water stays so cold that it actually makes your bones ache. It's incredibly painful, yet also joyful. If I remember right, it gets warm sometime late in the summer, so there's just this little window of opportunity between the time the river warms up and the outside temperatures drop so low that you can't or don't want to go swimming anymore. Maybe that's why I love it, because it's so fleeting. Delicious river swimming. My ideal day is to spend all day in the river and then top it off with a grillin party and watermelon that drips juice all down your arm.
The worst thing about summer. Hmmm. Well, it depends on where you live. In Arkansas, the worst thing was the combined heat and humidity, I suppose, although the incredible numbers of parasitic insects (chiggers, skeeters, ticks, etc.) is a close second. I remember days when we would have 100 degree heat (that's F--38 C) and 100% humidity without it actually raining. That is a special kind of misery, one I was unhappy to encounter while 2 months pregnant in Vietnam. In New Mexico, I suppose the worst thing about summer was just the heat, although it's not so bad--I mean, it's very hot, but it cools off substantially at night, and it's not humid at all. Here in Idaho, man, the worst thing about the summer is this fucking wind. It is the wind of hell, so dry that you can feel your skin sort of crinkling up and dying after just a few minutes.
Oh, except we get the wind in winter, too, as a special helper to the cold, a way of moving the sub-zero temperature straight into the core of your body to cause immediate cardiac arrest.
Anyway, at least the peas and spinach like this weather, so the garden won't be a total waste.
Holy swizzle sticks. Last week it snowed. Seriously. Not a lot, but it did snow. Today it was 85 degrees F (let's call it 30 degrees C, for you foreign communist types). I shake my fist at the heavens.
Oh, oh, first some good news: I don't think I told you people, but I totally got a teaching job again. I am adjunct faculty now. Their plight is now mine! I will be teaching medical transcription (yay?) and English for a Montana college. I will work entirely online and entirely asynchronously so that I can do the work around my other schedules. It's going to be so fantastic.
We got our "economic stimulus" money today, and it was...puzzling. There are two adults in our household and one child, so we believed we would be getting $1500 ($600 per adult, $300 per child). But we actually got $900. Now, I realize it's stupid to complain about suddenly receiving $900, but we are puzzled as to whether I don't count for $600 because I only work part-time or if T doesn't count because he isn't a citizen (though he is a legal permanent resident, a full-time worker, and a taxpayer). T thinks it's probably him because it isn't the first time that he hasn't counted for something since he came here. We think the American immigration system is wack. But anyway.
Oh, I have to make one comment (or possibly more) about Top Chef before I continue. This week Antonia made the comment, and from the tone I am assuming she meant to disparage, that Dale only cooks "Asian food." That's like insulting someone for only cooking "European food." In fact, in this one episode he made a Japanese-ish salad and then a Vietnamese lunch. I would venture that there is more difference in flavor profiles and ingredients between Japanese cooking and Vietnamese cooking than there is between Italian and French cooking. Get over your Occidentalism, bitch. Besides, in the last episode, Dale actually made a ragu that was one of the only things the judges liked on that team, and so far as I know, Italy is not in Asia. Sorry, I just really hate it when people think that all "Asian food" is alike (or, worse, that all "Asian culture" is alike). It really ruffles my feathers.
OK, OK, onto the good stuff. Hum de hoodle. The weeds proliferate. The weed problem here is never going to be really under control because we have two large fields that are entirely uncultivated and uncontrolled near us, and the seeds blow in from there. But the number and tenacity of the weeds blows my mind every day. Fortunately, we eat some of them (dandelions good), but today I pulled up a dandelion that had a taproot of roughly the same diameter as my wrist. Obviously I didn't get all the taproot, which means it will come back, and when it does, I'm going to break out the big tools and get that taproot and roast it and drink a cup of Victory Chicory. Yum.
My son is on a kick where he wants dandelion muffins all the time. For those we use the flowers. I pull all the petals out of their base and only use the yellow petals, then I just fold them into a regular muffin recipe, and they give a light honey-ish flavor to the muffins. We like them a lot, and my son is a devoted picker of dandelions when he is offered muffins. Later this season, I am going to make "poor man's capers" by pickling miscellaneous edible flower buds, and I have dandelion buds on the list. If we keep picking the flowers now, we might actually have some flower buds again late enough in the season to try it, but we'll see. I've heard the "poor man's capers" are quite good, and I do have a recipe of sorts, but I haven't made it in the past. I'm growing a lot of edible flowers this year, so I should have a good variety to choose from, each with its own flavors, and then maybe I can choose a favorite. It is unlikely that I will ever live in a climate where I can successfully grow real capers, and we can't afford them at the store, so I have my fingers crossed.
I'm finding myself somewhat baffled, also, by the sporadic germination going on in the beet and daikon areas. I have about 8 daikon that are just growing like mad, and they're all clustered together in this one little section of their designated growing area. Same with the beets. I cannot for the life of me figure out why the other seeds around and near them are not germinating. However, I am a big believer in Darwin, and I will keep seeds from these few, these proud, these survivors, because clearly these seeds have what it takes to survive the harsh conditions in which they find themselves. I feel like I need to do a Stephen Colbert fist pump now. I'll bet seeds are much happier in California. Damn this weather.
Let's see. My son keeps snacking on herbs before they've really had a chance to grow. He is especially partial to sage and thyme, although the various mint plants are taking some hits, which is fine because you can't kill mint once it's there. Raw, straight off the plant. Am I the only one who finds this odd?
(In other good news, the kid is now entirely diaper free! Yay! It took a while to get him off the night diaper, but we let him set his own timeline and do it when he felt ready, and it's worked like a charm. It's so cute when he wakes up all sleepy-eyed to go potty in the middle of the night and then demands a "huggle." You can have a huggle anytime, kid.)
Operation Shubbery is also coming along grandly. I don't know if I mentioned before, but when we bought this house, there was very little in the way of shrubbery or shade trees. Our gigantic hounds promptly killed off the backyard grass, too. And last summer we baked. No shade, bare dirt, white house--our backyard was a fucking convection oven. This year, we put rosa rugosa all along the south fence (that's where most of the wind comes from, and the roses should look good and offer some wind protection). We also installed three baby trees--no, four. Three paper birch and a black walnut, though they're all just one-year-old saplings right now. Along the back of the house, we have put two rose bushes and two blueberry bushes and we're going to add one red-twig dogwood. My husband has cut sod out of the places where we have the vegetables and the new flower beds and installed the sod in the backyard. The dogs are sequestered in a portion of the yard. They have shelter there and very nice shade, and when we are back there with them to mind that they keep out of the veggies patches and refrain from eating the rose bushes, we let them out to roam around the backyard, but so far the sod is living and looks good. I am really hoping that between the grass, the new bushes (which are admittedly still small) and the sunflower forest we're going to plant, this year won't be quite so bakey back there. It was truly intolerable last year. Next year, we are going to put in several more lilacs. For one thing, we need some screening in the front yard. We live right across the street from the elementary school, and I often find myself groggily watering my rhubarb in pajamas and cursing at squirrels, and the kids don't need to see that. For another thing, we need to screen that giant damned propane tank in the back yard. We have one new lilac there this year, but we really need two to properly screen it so that we can enjoy our flower beds and corn field without having to look at that hulking sign of dependence on fossil fuels that are not only unsustainable but also originate largely in countries whose governments I don't particularly wish to support. God, I hate the propane. I love that my cook stove is gas, yes, because electric stoves are stupid (unless it's one of those super induction stoves that I covet so, as if such a thing were ever going to be financially within reach for us), but I hate everything about our heating system. We have taken note that we need more wood this year, and we will get it and burn it and try to get off the Saudi teat, but damn.
People, right now, and this is no joke, the plants are eating up all of my available free time. I even do things with them (repotting, watering, what have you) while I'm watching Stewart and Colbert. I feel like I am eating, breathing, and sleeping dirt. It's not entirely awesome, and I'm ready to just get all the little babies planted and get it all mulched so that I can occasionally take a breather. Bleh. But official last frost date here is Memorial Day (sure, it could frost after that, but you have to bet that it won't--the only month frost is truly unlikely here is July), so a lot of things can't really go out until then. I may well die before then. And now I'm all frantic because I'm actually going to be gone on Memorial Day weekend, and not much will get done (we're going to Austin, TX--my son, me, and my mom). I alternate between feeling like there's only so much I can do and it will all get done eventually, if not in the most ideally timely manner, and freaking out because it's not all already done now.
Oh, I need to get some pictures up, don't I? Eh, when I get back from Austin, I'll figure out how to get the pictures from camera to computer, I promise.
Anyway, I'll be writing more when things get a bit more sane around here.
I just wrote several paragraphs flaying some idiotic bitch that I randomly saw on TV today, but then I lost interest. Yes, she was an idiot. She was an idiot of a variety that I have met very commonly, namely the idiot who thinks that having friends who are gay and/or Hispanic wins her the Tolerance Merit Badge, despite the fact that said friends grew up in similar conditions, were similarly educated, read the same books, and hold entirely the same political opinions as she does. Because diversity is all about the skin color or sexual orientation. Right. Idiot.
But then, as I said, I just lost interest. Idiots are a dime a dozen. She was certainly not an exceptional idiot--half the college students in Missoula think exactly the same way (and the other half are too drunk to notice such a subtlety as someone's race). So. Let's pass her over for more interesting and non-idiotic topics.
Namely! The asparagus! It hath risen! So, fuck you, Californian asparagus! It's nothing against California or its asparagus, but I'm so excited that the asparagus I tediously planted and laboriously tended last year is coming up this year. As yet, the stalks are barely peeking above ground, but we will actually be able to harvest and eat some of this year's crop. Sweet mother Mary!
Oh, and the radicchio overwintered very nicely, and we harvested our first radicchio today! Hurrah for fresh greens (or reds, as the case may be). They are calling out to me for some bacon and cream, because nothing enhances healthful greens like a giant dose of heart attack. Yum.
I don't know if I told you, but I developed an elaborate garden plan this year to milk as many nutrients out of our backyard as possible. First, there are the cool-weather, spring things like peas and fava beans and spinach. We basically turned our entire garden space over to these things with the understanding that they will be mostly kaput by the time we need to begin insertion of nightshades (tomato, pepper, eggplant). In other words, we expect to have approximately one gazillion peas. The first couple of weeks after planting, we had terrible weather with snow and lots of freezing, and the peas refused to sprout, and I had begun to despair that, as so often in the past, all my plans had come to nought. But they sure the hell are sprouting now. We have rows and rows of peas (only two rows of favas, because we do love favas, but last year they failed miserably, and we couldn't see giving a lot of space to something that failed so completely). We have Alaska bush peas, Green Arrow, Blue Pod Capucijner, and god knows what else--name a variety of pea, and we likely have it sprouting out there. Some will get frozen. Some will get dried. Many will be eaten right there in the garden. Yum.
The spinach is going nuts! The kale! The daikon! I am so pleased. Despite the batty weather, things are going according to plan.
We did also get some tomatoes this year that are supposed to have some cold hardiness. Specifically, we have Beaverlodge, Oregon Spring, and Stupice tomatoes. All of those do need protection from frost but should otherwise be OK in the cold. I'm a little skeptical. I learned to garden primarily in Arkansas, and the heat and humidity down there just make this a much different ballgame. We did bite the bullet and go ahead and plant the Oregon Spring seedlings, though, and so far they look fine. We're also putting in the potatoes. Ack! The potatoes! What a fiasco!
See, my parents have recently purchased 5 acres where they are building a new house, and I had received permission to plant my potatoes on their land, so I ordered....ohhhh...about 27 pounds of seed potatoes. That's actually 27 different varieties, one pound each. I got them from Ronniger's, a source I highly recommend. I have every color of potato known to man, I'm fairly sure, and I believe we have three different varieties of purple potato (my favorite!). As it turns out, the water is a long, long way from being hooked up at my parents' new house (the city is dragging their feet--long story), so if I planted the potatoes there, I'd have no way to water them and so would have to just pray for rain everyday. So, we planted them here. It's going to be tight to get everything in this year.
I thought earlier that I should list all the varieties of veggies that we're growing to give you a sense of the scale of the enterprise here, but I realized that that was a bad idea. We have more than 20 varieties of tomatoes alone. Hell, we probably have more than 40 varieties of tomato, and then there's the peppers and the eggplant and the potatoes and the brassicas! The brassicas!
Perhaps I can give you a sense of the stupid overreaching of my plan by telling you we have two different kinds of sesame (kin, which is tan, and kuro, which is black). Four kinds of scallions, in addition to the chives, shallots, leeks, and onions. Three types of kale. Two types of salsify. Salsify, for chrissakes!
Lord, I cannot wait. It's all so delicious.
OH! OH! I have to tell you about this new book I got. Obviously, since I do the home canning, I am always on the lookout for good cookbooks for that activity. Canning is not a subject that gets a lot of play in contemporary cookbooks, as you can imagine. I suppose it is out of style, but it's really something you need a good cookbook for since it is really one of the most scientific and potentially hazardous of all kitchen tasks. You can't half-ass it when you're dealing with pH and pressure--it's serious business. Anyway, so I happened upon this book called Pickles to Relish. It was written by a scientist/home canner who apparently is inhabited by a semi-fictitious alter ego known as "Jamlady." And both of them are serious. The first part is a rant about the failures of modern education, the failures of modern society, and a call for a return to the art and science of home pickling. It gave me goosebumps. I mean, she is preaching to the converted, but I was so pleased to know that someone (anyone! even a questionably mentally ill woman!) else thinks this way. I have no named alter ego, yet I have long felt crazy and isolated by my pickle-making. It isn't just a hobby, dammit. It's a way of life! God, I love crazy pickle-making ladies. Maybe later this summer I'll have another contest to give away some pickles.
Also, later this summer, I'm going to start getting with some recipes and processing and storage information for all the vegetables.
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