it’s bean so long…

Oh, but I love this time of year, when the star-billing summer crops are just beginning to come in. Before you start to wonder what in green harvest HELL can be done with six more zucchini, another gallon of beans. Right now is the fun part, when I get all giddy about seeing what’s ready to be eaten.

It’s been like 10 months since I had fresh green beans straight from the vine. Before we left for Ohio, they looked about like toothpicks on the trellises.

I used to grow a couple kinds of beans every year, but this year I finally decided I could quit pretending I didn’t unremittingly favor one over the others, and grow only the one variety.

Really, I’ve never tasted a more delicious green bean, and as a bonus, if you miss one — and they hide, I swear they do — and it grows past its optimal picking point, it will get all lumpy and bumpy and not so pretty, but it stays tender and delicious, never a string to be found. Even the girls gobble them up.

that's my Fortex

And it’s fun to see how long they get, too. We look for record-breakers every year. Snapped in half and boiled for 4 minutes and 45 seconds, I’d happily eat these every day for lunch AND dinner.

And in about two more weeks I won’t have much choice in the matter, of course.

road trip: post #1

We were scheduled to leave town Sunday after lunch, so in the morning I headed up to the garden at light-thirty while all the rest were still asleep to do a final watering.  We’ve had such a damp spring that I’ve only watered twice and don’t have the sprinkler set up yet, so I armed myself with my watering wand for a watering wander through the paths, a good opportunity to check everything out.

Jeez but those cucumber leaves don’t look good, not at ALL.  Bleah:  cucumber beetles, by the dozens.  How could I have missed them up to now?  Shitfuck.  I start squishing.  Then I realize they’re in the flowers, and there are literally hundreds of flowers, and I’ll never find them all, and by the time we return the hidden ones will have eaten their way through every leaf  and laid eggs that will hatch, and THOSE beetles will infiltrate the melons, and all those lovely baby cucumbers and cantaloupes that are starting to grow will die,  the end, boohoo.

I stomp back down to the house to find husband awake, but sitting down and reading the paper just as if we didn’t have cucumber beetles and more than a morning’s worth of pre-departure items to check off.  I proclaim, loudly and bitchily, that WE HAVE CUCUMBER BEETLES and thus WE DON’T HAVE TIME to read the paper.  Husband eyes me mildly and sets the paper down.  I stomp off to get the bottle of Neem Oil Concentrate and fire up the hose-end sprayer.

Thoroughly dose the cukes, the cantaloupes, and the beans for good measure.   Cross fingers.

Morning passes in a fog of frenzied packing and cleaning, because I can’t bear to leave a house that I don’t want to come back to.  Lunch is eaten, the kitchen is cleaned again, and we finally load up the girls at about 1:45.  Not bad, all things considering.  Make a run through the downtown farmer’s market with the notion of picking up some local peaches to drive 400 miles to enjoy, but in vain — Sunday pickings are slim, and there are no peaches to be found.  On the road, officially, at 2p.

And the rest of it was truly uneventful.  The girls traveled beautifully; Kira fell asleep a few minutes out of town and Megan entertained herself practically to West Virginia, where Kira woke.   We played games and I doled out eggies and snacks; more games, and counting bridges and crossing rivers and then BAM, we’re in Ohio.

Stopped in Jackson, about an hour out from our destination, for dinner, which is a big deal since road trips are just about the only time the girls get fast food.  Megan’s been lobbying for Arby’s since Charleston and praise be, we find one even though it wasn’t listed on the handy blue exit sign.  Per usual, she eats only her meat and Kira eats only her bun.  One of these days we’ll wise up and just buy one for them to share, and maybe I’ll get a Jamocha shake, large, for myself with the savings.

I marvel every year how much longer it stays light in Ohio, being as we drive toward the farther reaches of the timezone.  As a bit of amusement, the gas light came on well before we exited Route 35, with just 290 miles on the tank, but onward we drove.  Maybe three bikes on the roof rack had something to do with compromising the mileage.

In any event, we pulled in to Yellow Springs at 8:40 and the fireflies were just starting to come out in the drifting light.  So the girls chased and we chatted in lawn chairs on the front lawn at my folks’ place for a good hour, at which time it was truly dark and truly time to head to my brother’s and put the girls down.

I love being back in my hometown.  And I love being on vacation.  We’ve done a whole lot of not-much, all of it fun, most of it majorly relaxing, although I did go out and meet up with a group ride last night for an energetic 40.

There’s rumbling about some folks reuning (I’ve assessed the lay of the linguistic land, and recently decided to stop curmudging and cantankering and tasked myself to just vault right on up on the verbing wagon) at a local watering hole on Friday, and Megan has decided that she wants to stay and do the parade and fireworks here instead of back home, so it looks like we’ll be extending our visit at least 24 hours.  I’m all in favor.

Hopefully my unbridled joy & enthusiasm is shared by our hosts, my brother and his lovely wife.  Having hit the three-day mark today, I imagine we’ll be quite redolent by Sunday morning.

Wait til they hear Megan’s already decided she wants to stay a MONTH the next time we come.

the annex

Just so you can, as you are moved during your day, visualize me in situ, I wanted to provide you the photographic backdrop of where I’ll almost assuredly be at that very moment.

Plus, since you can’t see too many of the weeds, and none of the leaf-hoppers or the whitefly cloud, it looks right purty and I wanted to share the fruits of my labor.  Visually speaking, that is, though if you want to pop by I’ll be happy to load you up with some tasty chard, or kale if you prefer.

coming through the gate. facing east, for the compass-minded

I wish I took great photos; this is a view of about one-third of the space.  That’s my back-fence neighbor’s house there in the background.  I don’t know her well but by all accounts she is a lovely person and I harbor hope that she finds my garden a pleasant backdrop to her gorgeous yard.

from outside, looking north-ish

Again, not a great photo but you get a bit more scope.  No need to adjust your screen; that’s monofilament running horizontally there.  It’s supposed to confuse the deer mightily, obviating the 8-foot fence requirement.  So far, so good.  Squash in the foreground, looking past edamame onto chard, kale, tomatoes and bean teepees.  Raspberries on the high left.  And my corn endeavor over there on the right, behind the cantaloupe vines.  I’m trying not to get too excited about backyard sweet corn because I know good and well the raccoons have the GPS coordinates all plotted out already.

from the inside high point, looking north-northwest

A slightly different view with my beloved green soybeans in better focus, and the cucumbers hove into view there on the right, just past the pea fence (the peas have flushed, and fled).  I’m trellising the cukes, but the plants are right prolific this year and I’m not sure how exactly that’s going to work out.  I haven’t harvested any yet, but I noticed this evening there’s one looking like it might meet its shaker on Sunday (and if you don’t salt your sliced cukes, you should, if only to appreciate the pun).  I happened just last year on this variety, called Satsuki Madori, and oh my they are amazing.  The long skinny asian kind (you couldn’t guess, I bet) and they can get a good 18″ long and stay tender-crunch sweet.  Yum.

I’m starting to panic just a little over the realization that I will be parted from all of this for like six straight days next week when we make the hometown pilgrimage to Ohio.  In fact, I’d better stop thinking about it right now or I’ll never get to sleep.  Which I need to do.  Promptly.  Yikes, it got late.  Night, y’all.

I have met the enemy…

… and it is Yellow Nutsedge.

I cannot even estimate how many hours I’ve spent in hand-to-hand combat with this creation of Satan, but I know I added three to the total today. It is a motherfucker of a weed.

There is exactly one herbicide that is sold over-the-counter, so to speak, to control it, and they allow right up front on the label that YEARS of regular application may be required to achieve eradication. Not to mention that something toxic enough to kill this shit is not going anywhere near my veggie garden.

Yellow nutsedge scoffs at six months’ solarization with black plastic, and I have seen with my very own two green eyes that it will grow straight through a chunk of wood that perchance gets in its way. You simply can’t kill it, or even barricade its growth.

So I dig, and sift the soil I’ve dug, and pluck the little bulbs (they really do look like tiny brown nuts). And then I dig and sift and pluck some more. And I’ve done so for two years now. Because the bitch of it is, the whole thing doesn’t really come out like that photo up there. No, the root is fragile and will snap off at the slightest whim, and you can get down, down, tracking six inches of root and thinking ohyoulittlebastardyou’reminenow, and then notice there’s no little nut on the bottom. And know that it will grow again shortly, probably having sprouted a twin, like the Hydra of Greek mythology.

After my many seasons of battle, I’d like to think I may have at least reached a stasis of sorts. But then again, I did spend three hours in the hot sun today.

Stay tuned for more gripping updates from the front, because this mission is clearly far from accomplished.

spring break ‘09

Hey y’all. I’m going to be taking some time off. Yes, I may pop in once in a while, but look for pickins to be slim to none here for a bit. It probably won’t be long, but I’m not sure I know that right now.

In no particular order:

1) It’s the start of garden season, and since Garden Plot Fraught underwent some fairly serious annexation over the winter, this is a far more intensive project than in years past. I have got some major bed-building and soil-amending and conceptualizing and just plain dirt-diggin’ to attend to.

2) There are a lot of miles calling my name in the coming gorgeous spring days, and at least until semester’s end I cannot justify increased time riding and running without giving up something. Because there’s that pesky 24-hours-in-a-day thing curtailing my life.

And most pressingly perhaps, 3) It’s time for some of that movement toward being a better person that I reference in my About section. And this time around it’s pretty clear that that means time journaling and writing down stupid ugly sometimes painful crap that’s in my head, stupid thoughts I’m having and stupid things I’ve done and my feelings about the above and general ugliness I don’t much like to look at. And while I know there are those who throw all their angst onto the public blotter of a blog, that’s not going to happen here at Fraught, partially because I know that it will take the tides of seclusion and privacy to get me where I need to go but mostly because that’s just not how I roll.

And if I’m blogging, I’m not journaling. Period. Because blogging is a heck of a lot more fun, and when I’m done with a post not only am I sort of all writ out for a while, but it’s such a different kind of writing, I can’t for the life of me seem to switch gears very well. Maybe I just need a new clutch or something. I’ll be sure to get that looked at.

So, now. Don’t go way far away. I hope to be back soon.

later, ‘mater

I am so late. I’m going to blame my dad, because he is the one who is supposed to start tomatoes for me, or at least hint to me that it’s time to get working on it. But he isn’t doing those things this year, to my grieving disappointment, so I’m left to my own devices. And my own devices are laggards, curse them, invariably running well behind schedule.

I did at least remember last summer to save some seeds. I have this fancy-nancy method of seed preservation and cataloging, which is to smear seeds onto a slice of paper towel, label it with something supremely precise and Latin indicating its species, cultivar and origin (e.g., “Yummy CSA”) and let the goo dry thoroughly. Then I stick them in a ziploc in a drawer and forget about them until February April.

Then I get my fancy-nancy seed starter kit out. If it looks strangely to you like a styrofoam egg carton, I hate to tell you but you might have that nasty Conficker virus, or maybe you need to adjust your monitor or something.

I spoon some potting soil in, and then I tear out little smidges of towel with two or three seeds thereon and place them on top of the soil.

Then I cover them up, and wait.

It’s fun to let the girls water them, and they get pretty excited to see the shoots pop out. Almost as excited as their mommy does.

It’s also a good idea, of course, to label the egg carton
deluxe fancy seed-starter, so you know what’s what. I am living on the edge this year and thinking I will remember that I planted 6 cells of Sungolds, 4 Brandywines, and 2 Russian Blacks.

Typing that, I’m wondering why I did so many Sungolds, but I do like to give them away. I sure don’t need 12-plus Sungold plants, much as we enjoy ‘em around here. They are bright orange, the size of a shooter marble, and wonderful bursts of summer in your mouth.  And if you want a plant, by all means let me know.

Since I got such a late start, I think I’m going to experiment with a little auxiliary warmth, in the form of some heating-pad action. I need to research this so I don’t fry those babies, but I’ve heard rumor of such being used to good effect. Anybody know anything?

weekend report

After our lazy bliss of the morning yesterday, we meandered down to a Sunday breakfast of waffles and eventually got cracking on some of the things that were on our weekend list. You have one of those too, I bet, a daunting compilation of those things that require a larger block of time than the week affords to Get Done.

Though we’re dead in the middle of a very residential area, with neighbors at every contiguous point of our backyard, we have fairly serious deer “pressure,” which is a euphemistic term addressing how many damn deer regularly come your way.

The MPM fenced my garden the first year we were here, after we learned of the deer pressure.  I don’t cry over much, but the overnight demolition of an entire spring’s worth of planting is worth a few tears.  That fence, while having served well for Bambi and friends, has suffered at the hands mouths of numerous ground-level critters, not to mention one tornado and two limb-dropping thunderstorms.  After amendment with chickenwire and abuse of the weather, it’s not been a thing of beauty to behold.

Our plan in place for 2009 is to annex the garden on three sides, so earlier in the fall the MPM bribed an auger and rented a friend (or maybe it was the other way around) to come sink some serious fenceposts.   These posts, which are cedar and rough-hewn, extend 7 feet above the ground, because deer can, with singular ease, jump impressively high.

So yesterday we took down the tired old 1×1 posts, with the Pisa-like leanings they’d adopted over the years, and the tired old polypro fencing, and all that’s left is the new posts.  Put in place by two engineers, they are plumb vertical, which pleases my visually exacting eye no end, and being as they’re sunk in a hefty amount of concrete they will be staying that way.

As anyone who’s viewed sprawling tomato vines and fading bean plants knows, only a mother could love the face of a garden in late summer, but I have a vision of birdhouses perched atop the posts, and other asthetic adornments in place. I’d so love for my garden to be a work of art, as well as a labor of love, and it’s starting to look like that might actually come to pass someday.

I’m excited to start planning the layout of the expanded space, which will be enough to let the squash crops roam, along with my potato bed (because I have that thing about fresh-from-the-earth potatoes), and maybe room for other root crops too, which are space-intensive.

It will be a long time and probably closer to never before we are weaned from our CSA, because they do so much and do it so well, and no matter my efforts it seems like one crop or another manages to pretty much fail dismally. Last year it was cucumbers (squash borer) and the peppers (bacterial wilt), and this year it was virtually all the squash save a few early zucchinis (unknown maladies).  And I have yet to have great luck with eggplant, but I’m going to keep trying, because of Rave-Worthy Moroccan Chicken if nothing else.

Frankly I can’t imagine anyone wanting to read more on this, so that seems like a good reason to stop here.  But the new & improved garden is just getting started, so you’ll be hearing more come spring, never fear.

Training log, stardate 3.942:  82 minutes, one stop-to-chat and 9 miles.  Not bad for my 3rd run in as many weeks.  No tumbles, either.

summer pasta standby

I haven’t written about food in a while, despite the fact that the acquisition, growth, harvest, preparation, consumption and enjoyment thereof consumes a fair, or even unfair, portion of my days. So it’s time, once again.

I make this dish enough that it came a while back to be known as titled above, and now to be abbreviated in my records as, simply, “SPS.”

Parenthetical: sheesh, yes, I do keep a log of what I make for dinner, though I assure you I’m nowhere near as anal as such a thing might lead you to believe. There’s a true method to this apparent madness, which is that I’ve discovered it’s brilliantly helpful when I’m at a loss for ideas on dinner, as I so often am: I just page on back through the months and almost invariably something will pop out at me that otherwise wouldn’t have come to mind.

But back to today. Since SPS has saved me on occasions too numerous to tally, I thought I’d share. You can either come to my house some night soon and take the odds-on chance I’ll be serving it, or attend one of the many gatherings where it makes a (popular I blushingly add) appearance, or give it a whirl on your own using this, er, “recipe,” term loosely applied. It’s entirely fail-proof and eminently forgiving.

Summer Pasta Standby

Boil 12 oz or so of amusingly shaped pasta in salted water
Add 1 to 2 cups of any or all of the following:

• chopped tomato
• green beans, snapped in bite-size lengths, cooked in boiling water for 5 minutes (DO NOT COVER or my Aunt Diane will roll over)
• zucchini or yellow squash in bite-size chunks, steamed until the texture you like
• spinach, chopped coarse and wilted, or not

and a handful of either or both:

• chopped olives – Kalamata is my choice; husband votes for standard green
• pine nuts, toasted if you’ve time and inclination

toss it all lightly, and top with:

• three generous glugs of olive oil, no less and more if you wish
• 1/2 c or so of fresh basil leaves, chopped fairly fine
• parmesan cheese, the kind you grate yourself and not the green cylindrical variety

For complementary protein and an instant one-dish meal, add a can of black or other beans. Bon appetit!

summer fare

If you’re disappointed to click and get yet another food post, I apologize, but not much. It’s summer, and summer is my favorite eatin’ time of year. Don’t get me wrong; I love me some soup too, fall through early spring, and okay, it’s not much of a secret that I like to eat all year round. But passion? Passion I save for the fresh stuff, preferably right out of my own garden, or someone else’s in my same area code.

And my very very favorite thing that comes out of my garden? Well, long before they started appearing on chichi restaurant menus everywhere — under the fancy-nancy name of “edamame” — I was eating plain ol’ green soybeans, boiled in the pod for 9 minutes with plenty of salt. Best thing ever under the late-July sun. If you’ve tried them and thought they were just “meh,” I’m sorry to say you have been duped with the equivalent of a supermarket tomato in January versus one straight out of Grandma’s garden.

Fresh, never frozen, green soybeans (and you can call them edamame, I don’t even care) are a world apart from anything you’ll get in a restaurant or the frozen-food section of your grocery store. Trust me. And the funny thing is, no one grows them. Well, maybe they do around where you are — and if you can buy them on your farmer’s market I’d love to hear about it — but I personally have never once seen them for sale fresh, anywhere, anytime. (Though, because I am lazy and such, I haven’t made any trips to like other continents or even many cities specifically in search of).

And I find this lack curious, because though they differ from field soybeans in the same way that your delectable Silver Queen differs from high-as-an-elephant’s-eye field corn, they ARE soybeans, after all, and soybeans are a commodity crop for a reason: they are prolific producers, easy to grow and tolerant of pathetically poor soil, and as far as I’ve been able to tell, devoid of any major afflictions or predators. (Although I’ve learned to take measures when the seedlings first start to pop out of the ground because the #*!(%&(#ing, um, adorable chipmunks will behead every single last one when they are tender and young.)

So since you can’t buy them, the only thing is to grow them, and for your own gustatory pleasure I hope you’ll consider it. I’ve had fantastic luck with the Butterbean variety sold by Johnny’s Seeds out of Winslow, Maine. (And not to worry; I’ll remind you next spring too.) I recommend planting a lot of them, because they will be popular. BigSis is the champion at extracting them from the pod, and we occasionally have to remind her to breathe, BREATHE, while she attacks, in order that the rest of us can have our fair share.

And now my problem is how to keep the neighbor kids from picking them clean, because they’ve gotten hooked too. It’s starting to look like I may have to resort to a combination lock on the garden gate.

making a hash of it

Given that neither of my parents is given to culinary prowess, my Aunt Diane was my primary childhood cooking influence. Her kitchen was a place of absolutes, of Thou Shalt Nevers, and one of her pronouncements was that leftover potatoes can never be brought back to life; uneaten, their destiny lies in a straight line from table to compost.

Though come to think, being that she wasn’t given to such hippified undertakings as compost (she Married Up, as my Gram, her mother, once remarked), I’m sure hers went in the garbage. She had the first Dispos-All I ever knew intimately, but another dictum was that potato skins (along with onion skins and celery strings) are death to Dispos-Alls, so the garbage it would have been. But I digress.

Saturday about a dozen early redskins (that’s food, not football or political incorrectness) practically sprang out of the soil as I forked over the first few plants in my garden. If you’ve eaten potatoes minutes from their time in the earth, you know why I lost all restraint and boiled every last one, though in truth it was enough for a family of eight, which we aren’t. And even though they were just as spectacular (perfectly steamed) as I’d imagined, and no one shirked, not even The Picky One, there was no escaping the dread Leftover Potato. But the notion of tossing them in the garbage, yea even the compost, was horrifiying to me: they’d just come to life, after all! Their time, so recent! So into the fridge they went.

And my oh my did they ever look unappetizing when I came upon em this afternoon. Cracking the tupperware lid I saw a sheen of dampness magnifying the definite grayish cast they’d taken on (from pure white matte creaminess?? howso??), and I almost pitched them, I really did. Yick. I could think of just one thing that could possibly offer salvation, so I sent up a little prayer to Aunt Dan and started chopping.

Smoked Salmon Hash

~1 lb leftover boiled potatoes in 1/2″ dice
8oz cold-smoked salmon
2 T olive oil (choose your own virginal status)
1/2c of sweet red pepper, small dice
T fresh dill, chopped
generous T prepared horseradish
1/4 t each kosher salt & fresh ground pepper

Heat the oil and add potatoes on medium heat in a good heavy skillet. Leave them be until they are good and brown on that bottom side, then turn them and ignore some more. Turn again. Don’t be skimpish with the oil if you need more.

While you’re leaving them be, boil 2c water in a saute pan with the salmon in it. Simmer till it’s light pink (6 min or so). Remove, drain, and chop. Toss in a bowl along with the remaining ingredients.

When the potatoes are getting along some, add in the fish mixture. Saute them happily together until the potatoes are crispy golden yummy.

Aunt Dan, I promise I won’t ever boil green beans with the lid on. But I wish you could try these potatoes, lady.