PPWF, repetitive version

Some of these are repeats, but some are new: Youtube Stills of Food Art

Eggplant for Haters?

Yea, I basically hate eggplant. Have I admitted this already? I had a bad experience once and it blocked out any good times I'd had previously with this nightshade fruit. I'm fine with excluding it from my diet, it was never a big part. But I liked these photos--pretty amazing how similar the colors are, between this Rosa Bianca and red garlic, right? So I typed "eggplant haters support group" into Google (no joke), and found Eggplant for Haters, a recipe by Nonlinear Girl.

I'm intrigued (though not that down with the racism-food aversion analogy). Haven't had a chance to try it, it requires somewhat fancy ingredients (dark sesame oil, rice wine), but I'm determined to give it a go. Well, maybe next eggplant season. Her tip is that Chinese eggplant, the one that looks like a purple zucchini, is a more likeable version than the rounded, dark purple American or Globe eggplant.

Kale Soup, Kale Soup for Dr. Seuss

Alright, level with me: are these whimsical blog post titles making you lose your appetite? Because I swear this one was totally deserved--the brassica garden looked like it jumped off the lovable Dr.'s page, and I took a break from weeding to imagine being miniature and wandering around under these knobby, slightly goofy-looking trees. Then I took another break to photograph them (no wonder there are so many weeds!).

Kale soup recipe here

Above: Brussels Sprout Palms (lower leaves removed to allow sprouts to get nice and big). Left: Kale "trees" within the asparagus forest--don't mind the weeds!

Some Seed Saving

Joy's the real expert in this area, but I thought I'd at least throw up some links--it's fascinating stuff. It's also a lot of work. Luckily we had a lot of volunteer help for our major projects, including these pretty purple shelled beans.

Saving Our Seed, a website on just that.

Common vegetable seed saving guide from ISSI.

Short and sweet guide from Sustainable Methow.

PDF specifically on isolation distances by Jeff McCormack.

Leslie Land's instructions saving tomato seed.

I think when I do start I'll go with easy herbs like cilantro and dill, then try beans and tomatoes, to get my confidence up. Here are some other suggestions on "easy" places to start.

Cilantro seed starting to turn

Sometimes You Feel Like A Nut

We had a chance to visit Mark Shepard's permaculture shire (oh okay, "perennial agricultural ecosystem", according to this bio) in southwestern Wisconsin last week. I won't get into the awesome awesomeness that was Mark and his farm, but I will post some hazelnut photos...

In the U.S. we use the term hazelnut and filbert interchangeably, while in Europe filbert only refers to varieties of Corylus where the husk is longer than the nut. The "hazel" comes from the Anglo-Saxon haesel, which means headdress or bonnet (referring to the outer shell's shape). The "filbert"? Some think the term comes from the German vollbart, meaning full beard, also a reference to the husked shell, but the most commonly heard explanation is that hazelnuts mature around St. Philibert's Day, August 20.

According to "Permaculture Plants", hazelnuts begin bearing at 4 years of age, and can live fifty years or more. Their flowers can survive temperatures slightly below zero (-20 degrees C), and they have the potential to produce over 30 pounds of nuts per tree (though in the midwest, sans pruning or any cultivation, i think 5-8 pounds was cited as a good go). Great source of protein and oil (think of how great a hazelnut biodiesel tractor would smell--although maybe the alcohol component would neutralize the oil's aroma? Any chemistry majors in the house?).

Due to the high percentage of oils in hazelnuts they aren't storage hardy. Shell on, you could get four months in the fridge (one month at room temp). If your hazelnuts rattle in their shell when they're shaken, they've lost water moisture and are probably not so great anymore.

For more on permaculture goodness, check out Midwest Permaculture or the Permaculture Research Institute. For filbert cooking tips, check out about.com's hazelnut cooking page.

PPWF, Garden Photos

Some Fruit Carving Oddities for your viewing pleasure

Joy's Enchiladas

This recipe is easy--even I could do it! I was sure, too, that my version just wouldn't be as good as Joy's. But credit the simple recipe, it's nothing if not trustworthy. I did feel like a bit of a jerk for using canned tomatoes when there were fresh ones on the vine, so I threw some diced in between the layers, and the next time I made the recipe I did a combo of dicing and blending fresh tomatoes to substitute for the canned--yummier, of course.

Enchiladas de Joy

1 2/3 C pinto beans, uncooked
1 C rice, uncooked
2/3 C onions, diced
1 t garlic, minced
1 t cumin
1/2 t coriander
1/4 t chili powder
2 10-oz cans tomato sauce
12 corn tortillas
1.5 C corn
4 C monterey jack cheese

Soak beans overnight, cook until tender (1 hour abouts). Cook rice. For sauce: saute onions, add spices and tomato sauce. (If you like spicy, you'll need to add that--this basic recipe isn't). Simmer until hot. Combine beans, rice, and sauce. In greased 9 x 13 pan, layer tortillas, rice and bean mix, corn, and cheese. Repeat. Cover with foil and bake at 350 for 45 minutes. Serve with salt and pepper.

Onion Harvest

We sure grew some big onions this year. Hats off to Emma, the onion crop-planning queen.

Not really in a soup mood these days (yay for summers in the midwest), I managed to dig up an onion bread, or Pletzel, recipe. From the way the author tells it, you'd be doing your part to save this alledgedly endangered staff of life.

We laid them out on screens in the steershed to dry and braided some, too.

An Easy Carrot Side

I loved this recipe. Not only did it allow us to rescue all the carrot seconds from the morning harvest from languishing in our kitchen, but it's also yummy (I just knew I was keeping fennel seeds around for a reason). The recipe comes by way of Straight From the Farm, submitted by reader Gintonio. I hope linking to them makes up for reprinting the recipe...

4-5 large carrots
2 garlic cloves
3 T extra virgin olive oil
3 T balsamic vinegar
1 t fennel seeds
1 t paprika
Salt and pepper
2 T chopped fresh cilantro

Slice carrots thinly, place in a saucepan with some water and steam 5-8 minutes until tender, but not soft. Drain, let cool a bit. Mince garlic and mix with everything else but the cilantro. Toss carrots with dressing and cilantro.

She recommended letting it marinade at least overnight, a fact that I didn't realize until right now (and obviously did not do. They were still good, I guess better the second day, though). Serve cold or at room temp.

Zucchini Trial

Not really a fan of zucchini? Blame Monsanto. Okay, that's a stretch. But blame the consolidating impulse present throughout the agri-business food system. I don't think I'd ever even seen anything besides that plain, dark green, bland variety of zucchini until a few years ago. And when I did I just assumed that they all tasted alike. Not so. Joy fixed us up with a taste trial and here's how it shook out:

1) Mutabile
2) Costata Romanesco (Johnny's calls it "best tasting", but I was overruled here)
3) Yellow Crookneck
4) Dk. Green--your plain old grocery store zucchini

If you've never dug on zucchini, maybe you just need a variety upgrade!

Stuffed Squash Directions:

Use any stir fry that you would have included squash in, thems the guidelines. Hugo kept this one pretty simple: onions, garlic, tomatoes. Scoop into quartered, de-seeded zucchini, sprinkle with cheese. Bake on low until heated through/cheese is melted.

Food Playing with People

In tribute to the current zucchini onslaught, here are people being Attacked by Food, a la zefrank.

Golden Beets

How gorgeous are golden beets? I'd never heard of them before, but luckily Joy had and we ordered seed--they are almost too pretty for their own good. Very full greens, as well. No specific recipe for these allegedly sweeter sisters of the red beet, just some eye candy.

I'm Currantly Rocking Out

We made currant jam this week, yup yup, and did you know that fresh red currants are unrelated to the dried currants you may know from various baked goods? Those are actually dried zante grapes, and they had the name first.

Related to the gooseberry, currants are high in vitamin C (the black more so than the red), though canning temperatures destroy vitamin C. So I guess you just have to like the flavor. It's a nice change from the regulars, but not my favorite. Though maybe because this recipe made for a less gel-like jam, it's more the consistency of a pear butter. The color of the finished product, however, is a vibrant 80's pink--that makes up for a lot.

Currant jam recipe here

Another good option is to juice the raw berries (no heating) and freeze the juice in ice-cube trays, for adding to smoothies and other concoctions all winter long. This method is especially attractive when it's hot and humid out and the thought of being in a hot canning kitchen is too much to take.

Cutting Celery

Heard of it? We hadn't, so we ended up planting enough for a big, healthy bed of it. Call it a successful, if unintentional, experiment. I like cutting celery's vibe. When it's neighbors were droopy or bolting, complaining in some way, it seemed just dandy. It's season is also longer (and earlier) than regular celery, a plus for spring or late fall soups.

Cutting celery looks like a hardier cousin of flat-leafed parsley, but the smell and ridged stem will end any confusion. The flavor is a bit stronger than regular celery--a few sprigs will substitute for one stalk (i heard)--and it holds its flavor when dried.

I first tried substituting cutting celery in my lazy sunday lentil recipe.

People Playing With Food, War Edition

I'm a little uncomfortable with war analogies. People seem to use them whenever there's a large group effort underway, but I can't help but wonder if there aren't better examples of determined cooperation that we could use. I guess troop and troupe are from the same word? I should just accept the double meaning? Either way, I won't say that we're at war with the weeds, currently, but you get the idea. So here are the newest PPWF links:

Grocery Store Wars: A classic. You've probably already seen this Star Wars spoof, but if not, enjoy, it's good.

Fruit Wars : Stop animation and food? I like where their head's at.

The Real Fruit War: Same idea, more violence.

What a difference 20 days can make!

Seasonal Eating Gone Awry

I'm not sure why I'm posting this. It feels like crossing the line between food blog (which should be heavy on the food porn and recipes) and diary. But you'll have to excuse me this once because danggit, i just tried so hard.

The summer menu was garlic scape pesto served with a strawberry dressing topped salad. The strawberry dressing was me trying to live up to my salad dressing challenge. It was a no go. The embarrassing part? I made five of them. Five strawberry salad dressings, all a little different, displayed on the table as some sort of fun taste test. And they all failed. Maybe it was the combination that did me in--the garlic scape pesto a bit on the thick side, paired with a heavier dressing. Whatever it was, the links to these dressings are now lurking in my bookmarks, waiting to be stumbled upon, the debacle relived (you're allowed to be melodramatic in your diary, right?). A lesson in trying too hard, i guess (note the parsley).


Er, maybe a different angle would help? No, no it did not.

Fancy Pasta

Having been a citizen of "emergency pasta" town for about as long as I can remember, I was slow to grasp the concept of Fancy Pasta. Yea, the olives and capers are an investment, but they turn a plain noodle dish into something extravagant. Perfect for potlucks.

Shawn's Cinque Terre Sauce*

1 red sweet pepper, roasted on stove top (didn't have)
1 medium eggplant (didn't have)
1/2 cup olive oil
2 cloves garlic (or more)
1 hot red chili (not sure if we had)
2 C peeled, canned tomatoes
2 T chopped parsley
1 T fresh basil
1/4 C red olives (pretty sure we used black)
capers
oregano
salt and pepper

Trim ends of eggplant and cut into half-inch cubes. Heat oil, then add garlic and sliced red chili and cook until browned. Add eggplant and continue cooking. Next, add the tomatoes. Cover and cook slowly until the eggplant is tender. Add parsley and basil. Cook 5 minutes and then add the olives and capers, and some oregano. Peel, core and seed the roasted sweet pepper, then cut into ½ inch cubes and add to sauce. Cover and cook 20 minutes.

* Full Disclosure: I like to make the recipes I post at least twice before sending them out into the internet, but this one is untested. Also, I dislike eggplant.

Damned If You Dough, Damned If You Don't

Chives. Have no idea how to use them. The examples I've seen involve dairy products that I remain distrustful of: sour cream, cream cheese, you know the type. But their flower is gorgeous, so I'm using them as the photo for this post, on cookie dough (the brownie batter got me thinking...)

I make a lot of cookie dough. Much to the chagrin of roommates past and present, I am not inclined to bake this dough. This dough is for eating. If you're making some dough with this purpose in mind, read on (because i'm not actually sure that my recipe makes better baking cookies).

Though I'm currently a food snob in training (eh, most of the time), and prefer Ghirardelli chips or Scharffen Berger chunks, I grew up on Nestle chocolate chips. That's the recipe I have memorized, that's the one I always make (usually just a half recipe). My new favorite uses less butter and less sugar, for a thicker and less grainy treat:

Dry
1 1/4 C AP flour (or 50/50 with whole wheat)
1/2 t baking soda
1/2-1 t salt (depends if your butter is salted, how much salt you like)

Wet
1/4 cup and a little extra sugar
1/4 cup packed and a little extra brown sugar
6 Tbs butter (1 stick is 8 Tbs), melted enough to mix
1 t vanilla extract (or to taste)
1 egg

Chocolate-- quantity and quality left entirely up to you. I don't judge (well, okay, if you didn't put any chocolate in I would judge you).

Stir Dry together in a small bowl. In a bigger bowl, mix Wet. Add Dry to Wet, mix well, add chocolate. Serve immediately. Stores quite nicely, covered, in fridge for a few days. Bake only if necessary. (*chocolate photo credit: Kim Sue, 2005)

Black Plastic:The Devil Within

We're not supposed to like black plastic. It's high on the list with diesel fuel and water usage, heated greenhouses in winter, and corporate seed distributors. Sustainable ag-ers deal with it in various ways; here in Wisconsin we've met some who were apologetic, but see it as necessary, some who are trying the new "compostable" corn plastics, and a few who do without, using a heavy straw mulch or covercropped aisles instead.

But the black plastic is seductive. After we were done, I found myself drawn to photograph the straight rows (beginner's luck!), the sheets reflecting the clouds above like some strange sea. With any luck it'll have become prohibitively expensive by the time I'm in a position to make the call--I don't trust myself one bit.

Here's a link to what I'm calling Black Plastic Brownies. Mostly because they were the only thing I could think of to mimic the rows with (not because you should feel guilty about eating them, i don't support that ridiculousness). They came out a little cakey and dry for my taste, but the batter was yummy, I'd consider serving it as a mousse.

I believe I believe I believe

They took they took! Alright, so these photos are from a few weeks ago--but look! Our trees took!

In March we had the chance to help graft apple trees for the orchard we visit. It's an exercise that requires a lot of faith--from what seems like little more than two twigs, a tree. The thin cambium layers of the scion and rootstock managed to find each other despite our unsure (sometimes downright wavy) cuts. I'm just amazed. I was going to talk about the process, but realized that nobody is going to go out and start grafting based on directions from this blog, so I won't bore you. But I do have some photos of the process and the orchard in spring!

Photos here!