4 posts tagged “pickles”

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. 

Do you have a green thumb?

Apparently.  It has now frosted twice, I have not covered the zucchini, and the damn things are still making more zucchini.  What will it take to kill you, zucchini?  Why do you torment me so?  How much zucchini do you think one family can tolerate?  I tell you, we are reaching our limits.  We have zucchini pickles.  We have Italian marinated zucchini.  We have frozen zucchini in various forms (grated for zucchini bread, sliced and blanched for saute, zucchini soups, calabacitas). 

And I still have about 15 pounds of the stuff sitting up in the kitchen waiting for me to decide what to do with it. 

Zucchini plants, I am no longer enchanted with you.  If you don't quit soon, I will take a hatchet to you.  Are we clear?

I took my son to his first rodeo this weekend.  He was duly impressed by the numbers of horses and cattle.  He turned frequently to the other spectators and made incisive comments such as, "There's so many cows!" and, "The horses are fast!"  Nothing gets past my little man, no way.  He had no idea what was going on other than that, and that is probably just as well considering these rodeo contestants were an inept lot.  I have never participated in a rodeo myself, and so it's easy for me to sit in the sidelines and roll my eyes at their inability to literally get the bull by the horns, but damn ...inept rodeo is some kind of boring.  I went to a lot of rodeos back in high school, and I enjoyed them well enough, but then some of my friends were pretty good at it, so it gave me something to get excited about. 

Also, we got our first frost this weekend.  That meant a flurry of harvesting--boxes full of freakin zucchini (no kidding about the boxes part), purple shiso (from which I am going to attempt homemade yukari--wish me luck), and a wheelbarrow load of pumpkins and melons.  Like, what am I supposed to do with all this?  Seriously, people--I'm swamped.  I've been just staring at the goods sullenly and devouring chocolate chip cookies, like if I keep putting it off, they will magically put themselves into jars. 

Another important first occurred this weekend--indeed, it may be what caused the frost, because possibly Hell froze over.  In the midst of shirking my canning/freezing duties, I ...well, I played, um, World of Warcraft.  The odd thing is not really that Lokii finally convinced me to join him in a game, it's that I had a really good time doing it.  Sure, it took me most of the night just to figure out how to move my priestess lady around, but I finally managed to get it together and kill some kobolds and, uh, stuff.  There's a lot of killing in that game.  Lokii did a lot of my killing for me--either because he didn't want me to sully my priestess raiment and tousle my flaxen locks, or because I was totally incompetent--and he does it with style.  Or at least he does it while making ridiculous comments that kept me laughing all damn night.  Indeed, all day long I have been replaying the absurd dialogue with the befuddled, perverted dwarf in my head and laughing uncontrollably.  I think you're right, Lokii:  I think he was a 13-year-old boy who had not reckoned on meeting such a verbal foe as you, but his dwarven cavities will never be the same, I'm sure.  O-my-o-my-o.  The really sick thing is that I'm looking forward to doing it again.  This is how addicts are born, people--stay on the alert. 

I am making the pickles tonight, not to worry. 

Who knew?

I have been wasting my life.