She Brings Me Water
An aeclectic look at the nearby worldArchive for Recipes
Mid-Summer, Litha or the Summer Solstice
Whatever you choose to call it, now is the time to celebrate the shortest night of the year, and the longest days, and the burgeoning fields and gardens. There are many, though, that at this time will not be celebrating, because of the destruction of their fields and gardens and homes through floods, drought, or some other catastrophe exacerbated by global warming, mono-culture agriculture, destruction of wetlands and flood plains, or Mother Nature just fighting back. So we might also take this time of year to reflect on our lives in relation to the world around us and what we can do about the problems we see.
Treehugger has posted a few suggestions for observing this time of year; which you can read about here. They also have suggestions on greening your life, as well as environmental news; I recommend them as well as Grist for great reads on being green. Mother Earth News, the “original guide for living wisely”, has a post here on how to help the Midwestern flood victims. At all of these and many other places online, not only can you learn about greening your life (and possibly life as we know it), you can also glean tips for saving money, becoming healthier, reducing waste and chemicals, and maybe score some great recipes into the bargain.
As I’ve talked about before, one of the major ways you can achieve all of the above-mentioned goodies is by cutting meat out of your diet, in particular red meat, or at least reducing it substantially. We have also cut out chicken and have changed our fish-eating habits based on evidence that some types of fish have been drastically over-fished and that the “farm-raised” ones are as full of chemicals and hormones as feedlot cows (salmon is an example of both of these categories; natural populations are dwindling and the farm-raised ones, just like feedlot cows, are being fed corn which is not their natural diet and so they must be fed antibiotics and hormones to help them stay alive until they are big enough to kill).
This brings us back to the celebration of the Summer Solstice, or Litha, the festival of enjoying the summer sun and warmth, and sharing the abundance of the fruits (and vegetables!) of our labors. So for my part, I’ll share with you a few meatless ways to partake of your garden’s produce (or your local farmer’s market, or even your grocery stores’)…
For Father’s Day, we were going to my dad’s for a covered dish/ barbeque and I decided to bring something based on what was available in our garden on the day of the gathering. The day before, I dug some red potatoes from the four hills we have of them, and cut a zucchini squash and a yellow squash. We have bunches of lemon balm pretty much all over the yard, so with all this mind (and in hand), I made a garden potato salad: first, I cut the potatoes into chunks and steamed them until just tender, then I cut the squash into chunks and steamed them till just tender along with some chopped onions. All of these I rinsed in cold water to stop them from cooking after they were done steaming. Then I combined them all together along with handfuls of chopped lemon balm, some lemon pepper seasoning, some chopped garlic and sour cream, and put it into the refirgerator to let the flavors “marry”. Later my husband added dry mustard, garlic powder and paprika. If we had been having this at home as a meal, I probably would have added some steamed greens as the “side” dish, and that would have been our entire meal.
Later in the week, I took more zucchini and yellow squash, steamed them and combined them with couscous, chopped roasted red peppers, some leftover alfredo sauce and parmesan cheese in a casserole, seasoned to taste with lemon pepper, garlic and coarse salt. This morning, our burgeoning basil plants needed cutting, so I cut a large basket full and made three batches of pesto (pine nuts, garlic, basil leaves, parmesan cheese, lemon pepper season and garlic powder) and tied two handfuls together to hang and dry. I don’t add olive oil to my pesto while I’m making it because it tends to “cook” in the food processor as you are whirring the ingredients around, and I think it keeps longer without it. I put my pesto into tight-lidded jars, label and date them, and keep them in the freezer till I’m ready to use them, except for one jar I keep in the fridge for quick access. I add the olive oil when I use the pesto; for example, when I put some on my salad, I pour a little olive oil over it and stir it around in my salad. Same with pasta: cook your pasta, drizzle olive oil on it, then sprinkle on the pesto. This is particularly good when making a primavera (spring) pasta: another chance to pick and choose whatever veggies you want in your dish, steam them separately or cook them right in with your pasta, drain, season with pesto and parmesan cheese and there’s a complete meal.
Now get out there and enjoy the Mid-Summer Litha and/or Solstice, whatever you choose to call it and however you choose to celebrate it.
Why Bother?
“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.
Yellow Squash, Native Americans and Locavores
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.
Garden Update
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.
Crock Pot Bread?
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
Harvest Home
I ended my last post with a reference to the autumnal equinox and the shortening of the days. This equinox, also known as Harvest Home or Mabon, on September 23 (beginning the evening before), marks the second time of the year (the first is the spring equinox) when day and night are of equal length. After the autumnal equinox, the days will continue to grow shorter and the night longer. Mabon, or Harvest Home, celebrates the “bringing home” of the summer’s crop, the time when harvest festivals (also known as state fairs) are held, and we can begin to relax a bit after the summer’s hard work. We can catch up on our reading, try out some new recipes, do a little painting…
The watercolors above are a set of four ATC’s, or Artist Trading Cards, that I painted for an ATC “swap”. The theme of this swap was pagan celebrations, and so I painted two cards with Ostara (Easter) symbols, one for Beltane, and one for Mabon, in the lower right-hand corner. It’s a representation of the Mayan maize god, depicted as an ear of corn.
Here’s a recipe I made up recently using some sweet potatoes our next-door farmer/neighbor gave us and some of our corn (steamed and scraped off the cobs):
Sweet potatoes, black beans and corn
Peel and cube sweet potatoes, cook in microwave with a little water and butter until tender. Add 1 can of black beans (drained), some fake crab (chopped), cooked corn kernels, shredded cheese (cheddar, colby, or jalapeno jack). Season with cumin, seasoned pepper, lemon pepper, garlic powder to taste. Microwave until hot.
As you can see, this recipe was made entirely in the microwave. We’ve decided not to fix our stove, for various reasons: it uses lots of electricity, not good for our aging fuse box or the environment. We really don’t need it, because of having the microwave, toaster oven, camp stove (on the porch). Most of my cooking involves steaming or sauteeing vegetables, and maybe cooking some rice or couscous, for which I only need a burner or two. To supply this need without having to go out on the porch to use the camp stove in the dark and cold of approaching winter, we are going to purchase a small propane camp stove to set on top of the not-functioning oven. We’re also going to start using our crock pot again, which we’ve discovered uses surprisingly little electricity. In the winter we eat lots of soups and stews, and the crock pot is perfect for that. I also discovered that you can make bread in one; I’ll let you know how that turns out.
