“But the act I want to talk about is growing some — even just a little — of your own food. Rip out your lawn, if you have one, and if you don’t — if you live in a high-rise, or have a yard shrouded in shade — look into getting a plot in a community garden. Measured against the Problem We Face, planting a garden sounds pretty benign, I know, but in fact it’s one of the most powerful things an individual can do — to reduce your carbon footprint, sure, but more important, to reduce your sense of dependence and dividedness: to change the cheap-energy mind.”

The title of this post and the above quote are from an article in the New York Times (April 20, 2008 ) written by Michael Pollan  (author of In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto, and The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals) in which he talks about why one might want to plant a garden and why one should, if one can, and why one might have to whether one wants to or not.  The “Problem We Face”, of course, is global warming. Did we plant our garden because of global warming?  Not really, but other reasons that Michael gives for doing so do are, among others, ours as well.  You can read the article here.

In a previous post I wrote about the blueberry plants we planted and how I was really hoping they would bear this year; well, one is trying to live up to my hopes.  The picture is of our Legacy blueberry with clusters of small, green blueberries.  There are still some strawberries in this patch of ground but our two resident foxes generally eat those.  Speaking of the foxes (which I believe are gray foxes, because of their black-tipped tails), they are becoming more accustomed to our presence and trot by us unconcernedly as we work outside.  One even came onto our porch one night (through the cat door) in search of popcorn. 

There’s been more planting in the Native American garden: the Southwest quadrant is planted in Ruby Queen corn; after they have come up we’ll plant Mexican cucumbers (which are supposed to deter the raccoons), King of the Garden lima beans, and Golden Honeymoon and Tigger melons.  I also planted nasturtium seeds on the sides of the zucchini and squash hills to keep away borers, and transplanted marigolds to the corners because of their ability to repel all sorts of pests.  And speaking of pests, some sort of bug nibbled holes in the basil and tomato seedlings, so yesterday we whipped up a batch of soap spray and sprayed all the seedlings. 

Today I sowed some radish seeds in the cucumber hills, as they are supposed to keep away the cucumber beetle.  And I planted three mounds with Detroit Dark Red beets.  Beet greens are good just steamed by themselves and seasoned with lemon pepper, garlic and butter or olive oil.  The beets themselves I like to peel, slice and cook till tender, then add some hard-boiled eggs till the eggs turn a lovely red-purple.  Then I use them to make a salad with chickpeas and feta or mozzarella cheese. 

Since this garden post seems to be turning into an eating post, I should also mention that our asparagus is coming up thinly, so I bought some from Cullipher’s Farm Market to supplement it.  Last night, I steamed them and seasoned them (lemon pepper, garlic, butter and olive oil), sauteed some mushrooms (a la Julia Child: slice some very dry mushrooms, put about half a stick of butter in a pan, heat pan but don’t add mushrooms until the butter foam has just begun to subside, add the mushrooms and brown on both sides, add as much red or white wine as you want, salt and pepper to taste), added some shrimp, combined this with the asparagus and feta cheese and served it all over couscous.  There’s leftovers, if you get here quick, and don’t forget to go read Michael Pollan’s article.

Winter is on it’s way out, spring days come and go, on sunny days the causeway to the island is lined with turtles basking, piled up on each other like dominoes after the fall.  The turtles are mostly sliders; I tried to photograph them last week but they were too wary of me, even though I pulled the truck over across the road from them.  They all were sliding into the water before I even walked halfway across the road to where they had been.  I did see a snapper walking through the mud alongside the causeway, there’s usually water there but sometimes the water is so low it’s nothing but mud in some places.  So I took this snapper’s picture as he/she slogged along, leaving a trail behind and no place to go to escape me, but you can’t see the turtle well in the picture, so I decided not to post it.  Here’s a picture of some of our irises instead:

Planning this year’s garden began with the decision to plant more of a variety of things instead of sticking to the traditional three sisters- corn, beans and squash.  Last year, we had ears of corn coming out of our ears, more lima beans than we hardly knew what to do with, and no squash.  So we pulled our seed packages out of the fridge, went through them all, drew up a new diagram of the garden, and began to plan.  Outside, the garden needed digging and weeding and re-making of the mounds, plus the addition of compost and good soil into each mound.  Inside, we started tomato, basil, green pepper and swiss chard seeds in peat pots, and because this garden gets full sun, we acquired (from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds- www.rareseeds.com) new seeds to try out there- Poona Kheera cucumbers from India, Mexican sour gherkin cucumbers, Tigger melons from Armenia, and Golden Honeymoon melons. 

These are red potatoes coming up from eyes I cut from some potatoes just before we ate them (the potatoes, not the eyes):

Earlier, in our smaller gardens, some of which don’t get much sun, we planted spinach, lettuces, beets, turnips and okra; some of these seeds are old and didn’t come up too well last year, and aren’t doing all that well this year.  Which is why we have bought new replacements for some of them.  We store our seeds in the refrigerator year-round to keep them viable, but they eventually just get too old. 

So this past weekend, I got all the seedlings planted in the garden formerly known as the Native American garden, now informerly known as the “big” garden (see the blog’s previous posts).  On our diagram we laid out where everything was to go, consulting our copy of “Carrots Love Tomatoes“ by Louise Riotte so we’d know who likes to be next to whom and who doesn’t, also called companion planting.  The weather people were promising (or threatening) days of rain coming up so I also got in as many seeds as I could, even planting some where they aren’t supposed to be, just to get them started.  This was Rod’s suggestion, a good one I think; we can transplant them to their permanent places after they sprout.

Here’s a picture of one of the Tiny Tom Tomato seedlings with deer tracks around it- that was close!

Here’s a list of all the plants and seeds that are now in the big garden:

10 tomato (Tiny Tom, Delicious and Rutgers) seedlings, 18 Italian Sweet basil seedlings, 3 California Wonder green pepper seedlings, and 6 Fordhook swiss chard seedlings.  I forgot to mention that there’s already three mounds of red potatoes coming up as well, and two swiss chards that over-wintered from last year:

Now the seeds: Fordhook zucchini, Emerald okra, Dixie yellow squash, Table Queen acorn squash, Early sweet sugar pie pumpkin, Kentucky Wonder pole beans, French filet bush beans, Cherokee wax bush beans, Poona Kheera cucumbers, and the Mexican sour gherkin cucumbers.

One-quarter of this garden will still be for corn, and with it we are planting the Tigger and Honeymoon melons and the Mexican cucumbers.  They’ll be planted next, and we’ve also marked some places on the diagram for beets, and there are still some empty mounds!  Any suggestions?  And since today is Earth Day, how about telling us your plans for what you are doing today to celebrate our Mother’s Day for the Planet?  Here are some links for inspiration:

http://www.thegoodhuman.com/2008/04/21/lets-make-this-earthday-a-real-earth-day/

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/04/080418-pope-environmentalism.html

http://blog.blogactionday.com/environment/50-quick-painless-ways-you-can-help-the-environment-today/#more-17

Since it has stopped raining, I’ll be out in the garden.  See you outside.

Today and for the past couple of days, we’ve had a taste of spring here on the island.  The temperatures have been in the 70’s, the breeze has been southerly, and the sun has been shining (some occasional showers as well).  Our double row of daffodils are coming up and have their buds on them.  The narcissus are coming up, birds are clamoring at the feeders…I know it won’t last, there’s more winter on the way, but a little taste of spring is better than none.

Back in December 2007 we ordered and received six blueberry plants from Finch Blueberry Nursery.  Each plant is a different variety and their names are Brightwell, Croatan, Legacy, Powder Blue, Tifblue, and Climax.  They are three-year old plants and we have planted them where the strawberries that the foxes eat used to be.  We were told they wouldn’t produce this year, that it would be next year before we’d get any blueberries, but I’m hoping that the little guys are so happy here that they’ll pop out a few this year.  And I’m hoping that foxes don’t like blueberries as much as they like strawberries.

Somewhere earlier in this blog I said that I wanted to choose the seeds for the Native American Three Sister’s garden earlier than we did last year.  Because we conceived and executed said garden so late in the planting season, we were limited to the seeds we could find locally.  So here I am, looking earlier, and after researching heirloom seeds and Native American varities online, I have requested catalogs from Seeds of Change and Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. 

 We don’t really need any more seeds.  Our refrigerator’s bottom shelf is half-covered with a basket, bags, and a covered container of all different types of seeds, many that we’ve harvested ourselves, including some of the Ruby Queen corn and King of the Garden limas and Kentucky Wonder pole beans from last year’s garden.  But I would like to plant heirlooms, and “real” Native American varieties, and I also want pods to pick that aren’t green and therefore camoflauged in the corn stalks.  Picking the green beans and limas last year was like being on an Easter egg hunt where the eggs are all green and are hidden in tall, green grass.  Give me some color, please.

 So, from the above-mentioned sources, I’m considering pole beans called Gold Marie Vining Bean, and Purple-podded Pole Bean.  They should stand out in the crowd.  And for the Native American choice, there’s Cherokee Trail of Tears Pole Bean.  Green, but native.  Also Lakota Winter Squash, Black Aztec Sweet Corn, and Rouge Vif d’Etampes.  I threw that last one in to see if you were still paying attention.  Actually, it’s a pumpkin that was a staple of the Paris markets, and like my husband says, I’m a sucker for anything Parisian.

Today (in this hemisphere and Time Zone!) is February Eve, also known as Imbolc.  From Chalice Center:

“The First of February belongs to Brigid, (Brighid, Brigit, Bride,) the Celtic goddess who in later times became revered as a Christian saint. Originally, her festival on February 1 was known as Imbolc or Oimelc, two names which refer to the lactation of the ewes, the flow of milk that heralds the return of the life-giving forces of spring. Later, the Catholic Church replaced this festival with Candlemas Day on February 2, which is dedicated to the Virgin Mary and features candlelight processions. The powerful figure of Brigid the Light-Bringer overlights both pagan and Christian celebrations.”

I encourage you to go to this article at Chalice Center to learn more about Imbolc; it’s beautifully written and detailed.  Anything that heralds the return of light and spring and warmth is welcome!  As for us, we’ll be lighting white candles and browsing heirloom seed catalogues in preparation for this year’s garden.  And trying to keep warm while awaiting spring.

The first- line contest has ended and I hope everyone who visited during these past few days, and those who entered, had as much fun giving their brain a work-out as I did coming up with this.  Our winner, Surrealist Gesture (read his blog here), was first with all the correct titles and authors.  The second entry, from Steve Posin (his entry is in the comments section of this post), also had all of the answers correct.  (I would have accepted either A la Recherche du Temps Perdu, Remembrance of Things Past, In Search of Lost Time or Swann’s Way for the Proust quote.  Trust Marcel to make things complicated.)  The third entry, from Quinn McDonald, had a couple of answers wrong but she made her entry interesting to read with her remembrances and remarks on the books.

And now, on to the challenge.  No, this challenge doesn’t have a goofy acronym like NaNoWriMo (if you are thinking “whut?” like I did the first time I saw this, google it).  I’ve seen these GoAcs (goofy acronyms) for everything from comitting to writing every day for a month to doing yoga every day to committing to thinking every day (just kidding on that last one).  On second thought, why buck a trend?  Let’s have a GoAc for this challenge:

REvBoITConCha!

It’s the Read Every Book in This Contest Challenge!  I give you one year.  The Prize?  There isn’t anything I could give you that would be of greater worth than what reading these authors will give you.

 If you know anything about me, you know that I love to read books.  I Read.  A Lot.  Of Books. I was, in honor of the end of the Old Year and the beginning of 2008, going to give you a list of the books I’ve read over the past year, the ones I’m reading now, and the ones lined up waiting to be read.  Then I thought: boring.  For anybody except me.

So then I thought: Contest!  Prize!  Everyone loves a contest, right?  You love a prize, don’tcha?  Well, here’s your chance to show off your literary chops and add to your Christmas booty as well.  If you win, that is.

 So, here’s the contest:  I’m going to list the first line of some of the books I’ve read this year and you get to answer with the author and the book in which the line appears.  Put your answers in the comment box below.  At the end of the contest time, the person with the most correct answers wins!  Simple, no?   Oh, and no fair googling (or any other kind of searching) for answers; if you don’t know an answer, say so.

Here are the first lines (or snippets of them):

1. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…”

2. “I was born in the year 1632, in the city of York, of a good family…”

3. “For a long time I used to go to bed early.”

4. “Squire Trelawney, Dr. Livesey, and the rest of these gentlemen having asked me to write down the particulars about…”

5. “Marley was dead, to begin with.”

6. “On the 24th of February, 1815, the watch-tower of Notre-Dame de la Garde signalled the arrival of the three-master Pharaon, from Smyrna, Trieste, and Naples.”

7. ”Call me Ishmael.”

8. “Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by any body else, these pages must be show.”

Hint: All of the books are considered “classics”.  And the prize?  (Wait for it.)  A $25 gift certificate at Amazon, which I’m sure you will use to buy a book.  I would.  Oh, and the contest ends January 4th, 2008 at midnite, EST in the US.  

Bonne Chance!

(The picture at the top of this post is our latest acquisition of books, the Harper & Brothers Household Edition of Charles Dickens’ works (16 in the edition, we got 14), published in the decade after Dickens’ death in 1870.)

I have a cyber-friend who occasionally puts up a post on her blog that she calls “I surf so you don’t have to”.  The posts usually contain many links to interesting, informative and creative sites that she’s run across on her travels through the Web-o-sphere.  So I’m taking a page from her book today and posting a few links to some things of interest I have encountered to share with you, beginning with her blog: http://quinncreative.wordpress.com/

I belong to an online community of people who love books; it’s called Library Thing and today they posted an idea they have come up with for the holidays called Santa Thing.  It’s sort of a Secret Santa project where you can sign up to secretly give $25 worth of books to someone (chosen by Library Thing) and sign yourself up to receive books as well.  They say it’s better to give than to receive but I may be on the fence with that one when it comes to books.  Just kidding.  Maybe. Oh well, here’s the link: http://www.librarything.com/blog/index.php

Speaking of communities, perhaps you’ve been searching for just the right place to jump into the Web 2.0 world but don’t know where to start?  Some places are too huge and impersonal, or have no “real-world” components, or no mission in cyber-life other than to make as many “friends” as possible…here’s a place, a new-kid on the block, where there is a mission and a real-world aspect.  It’s called Avanoo and one of it’s founders has just set off on a trip across the US to “Share the World”.  Whose world?  Go see: http://www.avanoo.com/

But wait!  Perhaps you are put off by that term “Web 2.0″; what does that mean, anyhow?  Learn all about it, how to participate in it, and all kinds of other interesting things along the way at http://www.dailywriting.net/Wild%20Gardeners%20eLearning/Advent2007.html.  Start at step one and work your way down the path.  Be sure to bookmark this journey because other steps will be added as the days count down to Christmas.  Brought to you by the good people at Soul Food.

Okay, you have a lot to do now, get going on all these links and when you have mastered it all, head over to Web Worker Daily and write up a post (for your new blog or for Avanoo) so you can have a chance at winning a prize!  http://webworkerdaily.com/2007/12/06/wwd-giveaway-look-forward-to-2008-and-win/  And if you win, remember who tipped you off!  Me!!

And to end on one last shameless plug for myself, a recent commenter on my Proust blog revealed to me that Starbucks (I’m not putting a link here, we all know where they are) carries madeleines!  I am not a frequenter of Starbucks but I had to check this out, so last Friday, while on a shopping trip, I stopped in at Starbucks.  I didn’t see any madeleines so I asked and sure enough, from behind the counter in a little fridge, they pulled out a box of them.  “How many would you like?” the barrista asked.  I said, “I was told you had them and just wanted to see if you did”.  So they showed me the package (3 madeleines for $1.95!!), I decided to buy one and was asked what I wanted to drink with that?  Nothing, I said.  Strange looks all around.  I put the madeleines in my purse and ate one with my homemade chocolate coffee when I got home.  How were they?  Okay.  But here’s a link to the post, which also contains a link to recipes for regular and chocolate madeleines.  Much better and cheaper made at home: http://marimann.wordpress.com/2007/08/06/twice-as-nice-marcel-sightings-4-and-5/

Want the good news first or the bad?  Okay, bad news first: A night or two of freezing temps have killed the squash.  It was a gamble from the start and we (or they) lost.  The good news?  Our survival doesn’t depend on the success of our squash crop.

The early English colonists to this country were dependent on their crops for their survival.  When the pilgims in New England had a really good year, they decided to give thanks by having a big feast.  They invited the locals, the natives who had helped them survive and taught them what was good to eat here and how to grow it.  According to one of the only two period accounts that tell of that first “Thanksgiving”, the natives brought five deer.  There were games as well, and a good time was had by all.  That’s the good news.  The bad news?  Our United States government still refuses to grant some Native American tribes in Virginia sovereign Indian Nation status (read more about it here).  So the descendents of some of the Native Americans who may have aided the colonists at Jamestown and other East Coast settlements, are not being recognized or assisted by the federal government that they helped make possible.  Happy Thanksgiving, y’all.

Native Americans at a Powwow in Virginia Beach, Va. 

I’m sorry I did not ask their names or their tribe.

And while we’re on the subject, we (husband and I) don’t celebrate Thanksgiving, but this year I cooked a meal for us that (almost) falls within the definition of the word that was just voted 2007’s Word of the Year by Oxford University Press: locavore.  The word means someone who eats only food that has been grown or harvested within 100 miles of where they live (this 100-mile zone is known as your “foodshed”).  Here’s what we had:

Swiss chard from our garden (chopped, steamed briefly and seasoned with lemon pepper, garlic powder and olive oil)

Sweet Potatoes from the neighbor’s garden (sliced in half, placed in a casserole with butter, cooked till tender)

Corn Pudding from our corn and using a recipe from Barbara Kingsolver’s new book called Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (see recipe here)

Cranberries from the grocery store (organic in a bag, cooked with sugar and water)

I said almost locavore because the seasonings in all the dishes and the ingredients in the corn pudding (besides the corn) were not sourced locally.  Kingsolver’s book is about the year her family went locavore; I recommend it to anyone looking to learn more about being a locavore or anyone who just wants to read a really fine writer.  Or you could read my latest work called Proust was a Locavore.  Just kidding.

It’s really beginning to be fall-ish here, the past couple of nights we’ve had temperatures in the mid-40’s and northerly winds…last Fiday and Saturday we even had a “northeaster”, very cold, high winds and low temps.  So I thought it would be a good time to get an update on the Native American garden and see what’s still growing.

In the Three Sisters garden, the corn stalks are completely dried up and are only acting as supports now for the lima beans.  It was a good crop of corn and we still have shucked ears in the freezer, waiting to be cooked, and there are still lots of lima beans on the vines, some drying but some still ripening and I’ve been picking and shelling them periodically.  We’ve discovered that the best way to have them is in a soup, takes some of the bitterness out of them.  I also discovered, through the magic of Google, that they were heirloom-type limas, called “King of the Garden”, a high yield variety introduced in 1883.  Supposedly they will keep bearing until frost!  I see a lot of bean-shelling ahead. 

Also still producing in the garden are some volunteer cherry tomatoes, and the green beans we planted are still putting out a bean or two.  We did get some yellow squash planted but not in this garden, we put four seedling plants in over on the west side of the yard.  They have blossoms and small squashes on them right now but these past two cold nights have set them back and the northeaster injured their leaves; it’ll be a race with time to see if the plants can grow their fruit large enough before the cold kills them.  But, no vine-borers (yet!)  Probably too cold for the little dears.

Who’da thunk it?  Not me, but apparently others have and did and now, I have not only thunk it but done it.  In our on-going search to find ways to cook things without using the big oven (Reason 1: it’s not working right now {or maybe it’s just our continuing fuse box problem?}; and 2: it uses beaucoup electricity), I found out that the crockpot that we have, a Rival 3 and 1/2 quart model, could be used to make bread.  Rival used to make an insert that you could buy (I don’t think they do anymore, this is an old crockpot) called the Bread ‘n Cake Bake Pan, which the e-Bay meister found on e-Bay (surprise!) and purchased for moi.

Kinda purty, eh?  Here’s another view looking down inside:

The pan came with an instruction and recipe sheet, and after perusing the recipes we decided to start with the Boston Brown Bread one.  Hey, who’s in the World Series, eh?

1 cup flour

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup yellow cornmeal

1/2 cup whole wheat flour

1/2 cup dark molasses

1 and 1/2 cups buttermilk

1 cup chopped nuts (I used walnuts)

1 cup raisins

Combine flour, baking powder, soda and salt.  Stir in cornmeal and whole wheat flour.  Add molasses and buttermilk, beat well.  Stir in nuts and raisins.  Pour batter into a greased and floured Bread ‘n Cake Bake pan.  Pour one cup of water into crockpot, set pan inside.  Cover and bake on high 3 to 4 and 1/2 hours or until pick inserted in center comes out clean.

I used a butter-flavored pan spray to “grease” the inside of the pan, and began checking it with a long skewer after 3 hours.  I think it was actually ready at 4 and 1/2 hours, but we let it go another 15 minutes which was a little too long.  But it was good, dark and chunky with the raisins and nuts.

Looks a little like a birthday cake, doesn’t it?  A little cream cheese icing, some candles…

Anyhow, it worked very well, and was a pleasant surprise.  The whole learning experience is a pleasant surprise, and my next culinary creation a la the crockpot will be the Pumpkin Tea Bread.   Halloween treat, n’est-ce pas?

PS~ Here’s a link to a PDF file for instructions and recipes: http://www.endtimesreport.com/Rival_Bread’n_Cake_Bake.pdf