Thinking People Think I’m Thoughtful

There’s a fun question we used to ask each other in high school – would you rather be thought of as athletic, smart, good looking or funny?

I think because I am so clearly gorgeous and obviously athletic that the fantasy here come down to either smart or funny for me.  Which would I rather be?

I think it’s smart.  I’d rather be thought of as smart.  Even if I have to fake it by reading books that explain what other smart people have thought in the past and then pretend to have known it already.

So, when one of my favorite blogs, Poor Richard’s Almanac, gave me the Thinking Blogger Award I was very pleased right straight down to my ego.  If you’ve never read their blog, get to it.  Most of you probably already do, but Silence Dogood, Our Friend Ben and Richard Saunders write like crazy and it’s all very, very good.  Funny and entertaining.  Informative, erudite.

The spirit of the award is to link to 5 blogs that make you think.  These memes can get crazily out of hand (who do you nominate!) and the folks at Poor Richard’s Alamanac dealt with that nicely by creating an open invite for self nomination!  Nice solution I think.

For me, I believe I will copy that.  All of the blogs in my blogroll are thought provoking!  You all deserve this award.

Outside of the gardening world I would like to direct any of my readers to some of the best thought-provoking blogs that I know of.

Neurologica. An empirical view of the world!  As an offshoot, check out the brother/sister blogs to Neurologica – Science Based Medicine, Skepchick, The Rogues Gallery, and Teen Skepchick.

Now I am off to do some deep thinking stuff.  Like play World Of Warcraft for hours.  See, I am totally smart.

P.S. I too must admit.. I am not full of think enough to figure out how to put the nifty award logo pic on my site.  But I am smart enough to know that that’s ironic.

Filed under: Uncategorized

100 Millimeter Challenge: Eat Local Or Die Trying

Day 1: The hard times have come. The news said it would happen and I trusted the man with the nice teeth and the woman with the nice hair. Here’s a story for you Bob… eat food from the store and die. Ha, ha… My family and I are prepared. No food unless we’ve grown it or hunted it. Our neighbors will perish shortly.

And then we’ll take their stuff.

Day 2: Children are really ungrateful. Eggs. That’s what they wanted, but I don’t have any chickens. Or robins even. The eggs. What you want is protein I told them. My wife wrinkled her nose, but I knew that she wanted protein too. It’s not the eggs really. It’s the protein your body craves!

There was a spider egg sac in the basement that I thought looked a lot like Peanut Butter Cap’n Crunch. They didn’t really agree. I ate it just to demonstrate how plausible this idea of 100-millimeter survival is. You just need to know what to look for and most anything is food!

The eggs were tough. Digging in the ground with my son and we found some grubs. They’re white like eggs. This one is brown. Brown grubs are local grubs and local grubs are fresh.

It’s been a hard day. One nugget of Cap’n Crunch for me. Nothing for the family. Tomorrow, the garden.

Day 6: I didn’t write for a while because my family turned on me.

It’s difficult to do, but if you try hard enough you can wriggle your way out of poorly tied knots.

Day 7: I’ve reclaimed the house, but only because I presented an exciting almost ripe tomato. My family! I have provided! This tomato is perfect.. for.. a salad.. with greens! Go! Feast!

Day 8: The boy figured out that the greens were grass. Curse the little reader.

Day 11: I ate the hair from a hair brush this morning. I am ashamed.

Day 12: I prepared a fabulous meal from scratch. Potatoes. Garlic. Butter that I churned myself from the cow that I milked myself. Bacon. Pork. Chicken. And cake.

But really it was just Play-Doh cooked in an EZ Bake Oven.

The wife was not amused, but I thought it was cute and playful.

Day 15: There’s nobody in the house. It’s very quiet. All the spider sacs I can eat. Mine. All mine.

Day 16: I followed the sound of sin. The sun was setting and I crawled on my belly towards the cacophony. I must not let them see me…

I had coated myself in compost and approached from downwind.

As I crested the driveway, I saw them. My family. My wife. All of them cavorting with the neighbors. Hot dogs. Hamburgers. So much disease in a bun!

Beer. Chips….

Pickles from the store.

Potato salad.

Frozen corn. Canned beans. Coke.

Day 17: Really, we all have to die some day right? I’ve expanded the rules of the 100 millimeter challenge. It’s the 100-year challenge and the point is to eat everything from everywhere and see if you can live to 100.

The winner gets cake.

Filed under: Uncategorized

My Tomatoes Are Saucy

Nature and blight may have taken half my tomatoes from me this year, but that doesn’t mean I won’t be taking advantage of the saucy composition of the survivors!

We’ve gathered what we could (10 pounds or so from my garden), 40 pounds from a farm stand, 5 pounds from the farm (and some basil). With carrots, onions and peppers from my garden and some other stuff, we’ve made vats of sauce that we hope will carry our two families deeper into the winter than they did last year!

Here’s the way it works. We made variations of this recipe (and actually have more still left to do), but this is basically it.

Tomatoes
1/4 cup sherry vinegar
1/4 cup sugar

1 teaspoon red pepper flakes

Basil
1 onion
1 carrot
1 stalk celery
2 ounces olive oil
4 cloves garlic, minced
3 tablespoons capers, rinsed and drained
1/2 cup white wine
Kosher salt and black pepper, to taste

In a sieve over a medium non-reactive saucepot, strain the tomatoes of their juice into the sauce pot. Add the sherry vinegar, sugar, red pepper flakes, oregano, and basil to the tomato juice. Stir and cook over high heat. Once bubbles begin to form on the surface, reduce to a simmer. Allow liquid to reduce by 1/2 or until liquid has thickened to a loose syrup consistency.
Set the tomatoes aside. (We kept the seeds and skins, but you can do away with them if you prefer.)

Cut carrot, onion, and celery into uniform sizes and combine with olive oil and garlic in a non-reactive roasting pan over low heat. Sweat the mirepoix until the carrots are tender and the onion becomes translucent, 15 to 20 minutes. Add the tomatoes and capers to the roasting pan.

Place roasting pan on the middle rack of the oven and broil for 15 to 20 minutes, stirring every 5 minutes. Tomatoes should start to brown slightly on edges with light caramelization. Remove the pan from the broiler. Place the pan over 2 burners on the stove. Add the white wine to the tomatoes and cook for 2 to 3 more minutes over medium heat.

Put the tomatoes into a deep pot or bowl and add the reduced tomato liquid to the tomatoes. Blend to desired consistency and adjust seasoning. We used a wand blender. Repeat several million times. Can the sauce as you normally would.

Filed under: Uncategorized , canning tomato sauce, making tomato sauce

How To Use Sea Shells And Egg Shells In Compost

I really tried to come up with some kind of she sells sea shells title, but it was alliteratively exhausting.

Things that come in shells are delicious. There is no exception to this rule. Eggs? My goodness, is there anything better? Clams, scallops, lobsters, crabs? They may even top eggs on the scale of deliciousness. Turtles? Fantastic! Shy adolescents? Okay, not so tasty even when they do come out of their shells.

But.. we eat a lot of things in shells (how adorable that they think the shells will protect them from us!) and normally just toss the shelly bits away. Stop! Stop being a shelly bit tosser! They add tons to the world of your compost pile. Calcium, magnesium… ummm.. byzantium, chrysanthemum, and uh… other mums. All of it good.

Egg shell or sea shell bits can often just be mashed into pieces and chucked right into the pile, but I like to cook them first. Mostly because it makes smashing them up easier and warm. But it also kills any lingering nastiness like salmonella on them. Here’s what you do:

1. Eat something that comes in a shell. Eggs work nicely. I heard of this one recipe for eggs that are scrambled! Try it.
2. Save the shells.
3. Heat your oven to 250 degrees F – less if you use celsius lingo.
4. Spread the shells out on a baking sheet.
5. Cook them for 20 minutes.
6. Remove them.
7. Place them into a bag of some kind – use one with a closed bottom and an open top to ensure you can put things in without having them fall out. A bag with sides is also good.
8. Mercilessly smash the shells into bits. It’s fun to smush them with your fingers. It’s even more fun to hit them with a rock, a turtle, or a shy adolescent. (Hint: Save the turtle or adolescent for future culinary indulgence.)
9. Add the smashed bits into your compost pile or right into your soil. (Great for tomatoes to help avoid the dreaded blossom end rot that can be caused by a calcium deficiency.)
10. You can also consider making an egg shell/sea shell tea by soaking the bits in water for a few days. The tea will be chock full of shelly, minerally goodness and you can spread it onto your calcium loving plants.

That’s it! Happy shelling!

UPDATE: 12/2009  A couple of recent commentors to this posting have pointed out that it’s a bit environmentally wasteful to fire up the stove to cook the shells and that it’s also wasteful to use a plastic bag.  In fact, one commentor had some interesting suggestions on how I should kill myself.

Oh my!

I will say this, you do not absolutely have to cook these shells – especially in the quantities I showed in this demo.  Break them up and throw them into the compost pile.  That’s fine.  And sure, don’t use a plastic bag.  Use a paper bag or something.

Update: Deb from auntdebbisgarden has a good tip too in the comments below. Use the water you’ve boiled eggs in to water your tomatoes. Thanks Deb!

Filed under: Uncategorized , composting shells, egg shells and compost, sea shells and compost, shells for compost

Harvesting Roots: Carrots And Potatoes

Nothing teaches children to love vegetables like having them reach into the dirt past bugs, grubs and worms until they find an orange, yellow or purple root to be yanked out. Once it’s out, they will remark:

“My word father! That’s a spectacular shade of orange! How delicious that will taste once we remove the grime. Please. Can I eat one now?”

Truthfully, my oldest son does like some veggies. Peppers. They’re red! And sweet. Beans. He grew them!

A dirty, gnarled root like a carrot or a potato… well that’s a tougher sell. My theory is that the love of eating something starts with a fascination for its biology. Who doesn’t love to eat frogs? None of us did before we dissected one in high school, right? But now… you bet.

So, get ‘em started early in understanding where these gnarly roots come from. Let them watch the seeds go in for carrots. Watch the potatoes go in. Watch them turn into plants! And then, let them reach in and pull the things right out of the ground.

We’ve been slowly pulling carrots and potatoes. But it was time to strike the set at least for the carrots. I’ll grab a few more potatoes and I don’t plan on pulling them all until the stalks have died back.

So, grab yourself a gnarly root, wipe it down and cook it up!

Filed under: Uncategorized , harvesting carrots, harvesting potatoes

How To Freeze Your Green Beans

If we’re lucky, many of us end up with tons of green beans. My bush beans are starting to wind up their season and the pole beans are still going fairly strong. For me, it’s time to think about preserving some of the bounty!

Canning can be scary to the uninitiated, but freezing is simple and can be done with a lot of your garden veggies. Beans are the perfect candidate.

Step 1: Cut the ends off.

Step 2: Cut the beans into your favorite size.

Step 3: Blanch them in boiling water for about 3 minutes. (This is a necessary step because it will eliminate the normal aging enzymes etc. in the beans.)

Step 4: Cool them quickly in water and ice.

Step 5: Dry them off.

Step 6: Into a freezer bag. Freeze.

They will keep longer in a deep freeze, but 8 or 9 months in a normal freezer will work too. They don’t go bad, they just might not taste as good after longer. When you are ready to cook them, just do what you normally would with frozen beans – microwave for a minute or two or boil or steam or whatever…

Filed under: beans , how to freeze green beans, pictures of freezing green beans, preserving green beans

Podchef Says: Buy Local, I’ll Cook It For You

If you’re not listening to the Gastrocast you are missing out on the podcast meant for you. That’s right.. I can say it even though I don’t know you!

This week brought the Podchef to Connecticut and off of his island (Shaw island off of the coast of Washington State) and brought us then to several local farms and farmstands. He had agreed to cook us a meal and we simply went and sourced everything we could as locally as we could.

1. Fresh veggies from our CSA at Woodbridge Farm. Potatoes, cucumbers, basil in particular for our meal. (A great tour of the farm too which I know the Podchef enjoyed.)
2. Great cheese from Cato Corner Farm which is just a few miles down the road from me.
3. Lamb from Beaver Brook Farm. A random find based upon a conversation we had while at Woodbridge. Also some sheeps milk yogurt.
4. Berries, Corn and Peaches from assorted farm stands along the way.
5. Red and white wine from our local vineyard, Priam. A great wine tasting too!
6. Oregano… jesus… where the f is oregano in this stinkin state? Nobody had it. So we got some packaged from New Hampshire.
7. Peppers, cucumbers, beans and beets, beets, beets from my backyard.
8. Bread made by my friend Chris. (He and his wife ate with us.)
9. Fresh local haddock and scallops.

From a great fish chowder to a warm beet salad, then on to grilled lamb, cheese and wine. Lots of fun and incredibly delicious.

Naturally I also got some pointers on the garden from the Podchef. He’s been gardening and farming for most of his life – you can’t find that kind of experience and guidance!

Filed under: Uncategorized , local ingredients, podchef

How To Cook Beets

Delicious beets! Earthy beets! It’s like a potato only redder and better and actually nothing like a potato!

But you can pretty much cook them like a potato.

Barbee from Barbeesblogspot asked about cooking these things and although I am not known for my cooking, I definitely love the beets and can cook them.

Baked Beets

Definitely my favorite way to eat beets. Go ahead and drop your beets into a baking dish with a cover for later. The roots and stems should be trimmed off to about 1/2″. Don’t bother peeling the beet. You can add some butter and salt and pepper if you’d like. Seal the baking dish up with the lid and some foil. Bake at 400 F for an hour to an hour and a half. Once they are cool enough to handle, you can peel the skin off pretty easily.

I eat them just like this. A little vinegar perhaps. Some butter.

Skillet Beets

I also might take some of the baked beets, slice them up, get them into a skillet with some butter, a bit of sugar or honey and some salt and pepper. Delicious.

Cooked Beet Greens

Completely delicious. If you like chard or collard greens etc. you’ll love beet greens. They are best when they are smallish, but I cook them when they are huge too. Stems and all.

Wash the greens and only pat dry them. You want some water. Add some butter to a skillet. I put in some honey and/or a bit of garlic. Cut your greens into strips or tear them up.. whatever. Put them in the skillet and stir. It will only take 10 seconds or so.

It’s a lot like this recipe from guest blogger Chris. In fact, you could completely substitute the beet greens for chard.

Enjoy!

Filed under: beets , cooking beets, growing challenge

Harvesting Beets

A quick trip through the garden (pointedly ignoring the gaping hole that used to be filled with tomatoes) for dinner.

The peppers are prolific. Cubanelle and Frigitello in particular. Very tasty, sweet. The habeneros are coming along nicely and we’ll be making some great hot sauce from those.

The beans are going strong.

And the beets are just delicious. These got baked and I cooked up the greens with just a little honey.

Filed under: growing challenge , beets, growing challenge

Is It Fall?: Carrot Soup

It’s.. I don’t know.. 6,000 degrees outside and 250% humidity.

What better meal than a smattering of local summer flavors (fresh littleneck clams), sweet summer corn, and..

Carrot soup with nutmeg.

Nothing says summer like nutmeg.

Here’s the way this was done.

1. A bunch of local carrots. About half came from my garden, 1/4 from our CSA and 1/4 from god knows where with god-knows-what chemicals, feces, and the imprinted suffering of our planet.
2. A handful of small onions from my garden.
3. A small new potato from my garden.
4. A delicious red beet from my garden.
5. Fennel from a local farm.
6. Olive oil from… the supermarket.
7. A blender from the day my wife and I got married 14 years ago.

Chop the onions and fennel into small random bits. It’s all going to get blended so don’t worry about being a slicing artist. For the fennel, cut the dilly leaves, the celery-like stalks and the bulbous bulb. It’s all fennely. Get some olive oil going and chuck your onions in.. sweat them. Chuck in the fennel. Cut up the potato and beet. Chuck them in. Sweat them all a bit until they’ve flavored one another scandalously. Get your carrots sliced up and chuck them in also. The thinner you get everything, the faster it will all get soft. The carrots will outnumber the other veggies by a lot.

Cover it up and let it stew a bit until it’s all getting tender. Now, add some spice. I used nutmeg, salt and pepper. (After eating it, a little ginger would not have hurt.) Add some moisture. Chicken stock is great.

Veggie stock is great. Water works too. That’s what I used. I covered up the mixture to about 1/8 inch over.

Let it stew a bit.

Now, if you’ve got one of those cool wand blenders, go to town. Puree away.

If you’re like me, you don’t have one of those cool wand blenders. Go ahead and use your Isaac-The-Bartender-From-The-Love-Boat blender. Spoon it all in. Puree away. You want to eliminate any vegetable individuality. Those stinkin’ veggies are too uppity anyway and too sure of themselves. Make ‘em all look like a paler shade of carrot, that’ll teach ‘em.

Get it back to your pot and let it simmer. If you want to add some more moisture to thin it a bit, go for it. I did.

It looks a little bit like baby food, but it’s all adult. Just look at this picture of my son trying to pretend like he likes it. Are you fooled? That took 15 pictures with me saying “work it, work it.. you love it baby, you love it… it’s like chocolate.. yeah, yeah that’s it.. now smile, now pout, now primp… you are a golden god of carrot eating.”

Anyway. The soup is great. Could have been a bit sweeter.

The littleneck clams, the sweet corn, the soup, the beer…. great, wholly mismatched meal.

Filed under: recipes , carrot soup recipe