Late Summer Garden

This year our garden has been less successful than usual, in no small part due to skyrocketing inroads made by critters (squirrels for sure, maybe wood rats, too). They've managed to nibble the tender shoots and flowers of all our squash plants, so we aren't expecting any. Interestingly, they've left the cucumbers alone (too prickly?). The asparagus patch is about exhausted, the crowns having a limited life span. We're planning on eventually digging up those that are left, evaluating, and moving them to another location. Meanwhile, here's what I gathered the other day:

Rubarb: second harvest. Our plants give us two harvests a year, one in early spring, one in late summer. I simmer it with sugar and cinnamon, then freeze it to use for desserts in the winter holidays. Ours also never gets really red, but it tastes just dandy.

Lemon cucumbers. Rodent-proof. We hope. So far.

Green beans, Emerite variety. This type is prolific and stays tender even if seeds form. It's possible to use as a dry bean, too, but we eat them green. They freeze really well, too, when lightly steamed and vacuum sealed.

Not shown: tomatoes (late this year), grapefruit (our poor tree is sooo confused by climate change, it keeps dropping fruit now instead of in the winter). Wild blackberries, almost done in the heat (33 quarts frozen so far...)

Yet to come: pears and apples, sunchokes (after first frost), maybe parsnips (ditto).

Passover 5779: My Favorite Charoseth Recipe

Passover is my very favorite holiday, Jewish or secular. I love the warmth, the connection with tribal history, and so many of the phrases that remind me everyone is welcome at this table, and that until all of us are free, none of us can be. Of course, all the stories about Passovers past, like the one in college when, after all 4 obligatory glasses of wine, V called his parents in Chicago to wish them Happy Passover, so I did (mine were in California), and the L called hers -- good Southern Baptists... It was that same seder when, at the moment when we fling open the door to invite Elijah into our homes and our hearts, B stopped by, hoping to scrounge dinner. And so forth.

Then there are the foods, glorious foods! Most Ashkenazi Jews make charoseth (which represents the mortar the Hebrew slaves used to build the pyramids) from finely chopped apples, walnuts, sweet Passover wine, and a little matzoh meal (from the special kind of matzoh kosher for Passover, that has been carefully monitored to make sure there is no leavening). This concoction always set my teeth on edge. I dreaded it...until I discovered this recipe for Yemenite charoseth. It's so sweet, I can eat only a little at a time, but bursting with flavor.

Yemenite Charoseth -- about 12 servings

1 cup pitted, chopped dates (I use Medjool when I can find them)
1/2 cup chopped dried figs
1/3 cup sweet Passover wine (or fruit juice)
3 Tablespoons sesame seeds
1 tsp - 1 T ginger, either powdered dry or fresh, according to your taste
Dash - 1/2 tsp ground coriander
Dash cayenne -- optional
2 Tablespoons matzoh meal (I use brown rice or sorghum flour as it needs to be GF)

Combine the fruit and wine. Add sesame, spices, and matzoh meal until thoroughly mixed. Roll into 1" balls or serve in a mound.

L'chaim!

The image is the first Nuremberg Haggadah, circa 1449 C.E.

Summer Bounty

It's late summer and the garden keeps giving. This afternoon I picked a basketful of cucumbers: Russian Brown, English Telegraph, and lemon cukes. The Russian Browns are nice in that, like the lemons, they don't get bitter. When they're ripe, the skin turns rich brown and sometimes gets crackles. We will eat 1 or 2 per bowl of salad. (you can see a little container with purslane from the garden at the upper left.)

Then there are the pear trees. One is a Comice, the other a variety we haven't been able to identify. It's a little like an Asian pear but tastes terrible raw. When cooked, however, it is flavorful and intensely sweet.

I picked a couple of baskets, including bird-pecked ones, chopped and seasoned them with cinnamon, cooked them until just tender, and canned them in quart jars. I brought some extra to a gathering at the home of a friend, where they were much enjoyed. Some years I will slice and dry them, too -- sweet as candy -- but I still have some left from last year.

This process will go on for a while, many quarts' worth, as the "Asian pear" tree bears heavily. I'll refrigerate the Comice pears to eat fresh.

Then there are 2 apple trees...but those are fine when chopped, tossed with a little sugar and ascorbic acid, and popped into ziplock bags and the freezer. They are slightly spongey that way but go wonderfully in oatmeal, where the cooking softens the texture just right.

Breakfast, With Blackberries and Grapefruit

In the midst of all the political upheaval, trolls going sideways, and general upsetness, it's a good thing to take a deep breath and savor a meal. 

The grapefruit (about the size of an orange) is from our tree, which for some reason has decided to ripen the fruit several months early this year. The blackberries are from our neighborhood. Under the steel-cut oats are chopped pears from our trees, and this is the right season for them. 

The tea is Trader Joe's Mango Black tea.

Ahhh...

Tea, Earl Grey — Iced?

In the cooler months, I often drink tea throughout the days, beginning with a eye-opening cuppa English or Irish Breakfast and proceeding through lower-caffeine green or white teas. I like flavored teas, as well: Earl Grey, Lady Grey, tropical green tea, blackberry sage. Most summer mornings I begin in the same fashion, but once it’s hot enough to make a steaming drink unappealing, what to do?

Water is, of course, the default, and ours is delicious, even unfiltered. But sometimes I want a change. Lemonade is always an option, particularly when graced by the tree of a friend with fresh lemons. Often I’ll make hibiscus tea in a quart canning jar, sweeten it to taste, let it cool, and drink it right out of the jar. Today, however, I wanted something a bit classier.

How about a variation on Captain Picard’s iconic “Tea, Earl Grey, hot”?

I embarked upon the adventure by preparing a cup of Earl Grey, only using less water than usual, adding a bit more sweetness and milk* and then ice cubes. The result was both tasty and thirst-quenching. It came with the added benefit of that lingering, perfume-like bergamot aroma.

A second experiment might be to prepare it like Thai iced tea with cream instead of milk, although I am given to understand that sweetened condensed milk is often used, which is an abomination. My larder was devoid of cream, so I used 1% and my usual sweetener.

Notes: * What? You put milk in Earl Grey tea? And you think sweetened condensed milk is an abomination!

Well, yes. I put milk in all black teas. If your stomach lining was in the shape mine is, you’d want the added protection of milk protein. Not only that, I used to be meh about Earl Grey, considering it to be highly overrated, but once I put milk in it, tea-endophins flooded my mind. It might do the same for you.

Sweetened condensed milk is a perfectly acceptable dessert recipe ingredient. Never shall it be introduced into a teacup on my premises. Should you feel otherwise, I await your report on its effect upon otherwise decent tea.

Tomato Harvest - Two Easy Sauces

We think of autumn as a time to harvest pumpkins, but around here, it’s bonanza time for tomatoes, as well. Our tomatoes don’t get going until midsummer because the night time temperatures are still too low. The plants just sit in the ground and shiver. Long about October, they are in full swing and we’re wondering what we were thinking to have planted so many. A bowl of cherry tomatoes sits on the kitchen counter, ready to grab for snacks, and every dinner is accompanied by a salad that’s mostly fresh tomatoes. What to do with the rest? Make pasta sauce, of course!

The usual instructions call for dipping tomatoes in a bath of simmering water, then peeling the skins, and either scooping out the seeds or running the cooked pulp through a food mill, ricer, or sieve. I’ve tried the water bath technique, and find the prospect of standing over a steaming pot, getting my fingers burned, and sweltering in late summer heat less than appealing. So I’ve devised or adapted a couple of simpler, less painful approaches.

Method 1: One Pot, Food Mill.

Wash your tomatoes (this goes without saying, but is even more import if you, like we, let our tomato plants just sprawl all over the place, of particular merit when growing ginormous varieties like Mortgage Lifter; as the fruits ripen, place a plastic lid of appropriate size to shield them from ground moisture) and chop them into big pieces. Fill up a big pot. Do not add water.

Heat up the pot, stirring to avoid burning as the tomatoes release their juices and to mix up the more- and less-cooked chunks. Once everything is more or less juicy, reduce the heat and simmer on low for hours. And hours. Really. Open the windows and bask in a cool place, stirring every half hour or so. It will thicken as it reduces down to a fraction of its former size. When it’s however thick you like it, let cool a bit.

World-Building, Dying, and the Memory Lane of Comfort Foods

The brochure from hospice inform me that as a dying person’s body winds down, appetite becomes erratic and diminishes. The sense of taste changes so that formerly favorite foods are no longer appealing. The person eats less when they do eat.  Finally, many dying people refuse all food. This can be complicated because throughout human cultures, offering food is a way of expressing love. The dying person may continue to eat in order to please a loved one, but in the end the demands of the body prevail.

Besides nourishing our bodies, sometimes past the point of health and into diet-related diseases, food is laden with symbolic meaning. We celebrate with festive meals; we soothe ourselves with favorite treats from our childhood; we give candy to our sweethearts. Even the term “sweetheart” refers to sweetness, a taste, as do “honey” and other endearments. Taste and smell are the most basic, “primitive” senses, so our expressions of care go zing! right into the oldest portions of the brain. 

For me, one of the most enjoyable aspects of world-building is creating different cuisines for each culture or social class, ethnic group or family. While it may be true that just about every cuisine has some version of pancake-rolled-around-filling, stew modeled on the canned stuff in American supermarkets shouts “generic fantasy!”