Now Norma Knits

195. P is for Plentiful

Coming back to the garden after a few days away, and after the nice coincidence of a very rainy day in my absence, is a good thing.  (I worried that things would dry out, but nope. Thank you, Mother Nature!) We've now reached the point in the summer when things are starting to come fast and furious. I was out there bright and early at 7 a.m., and even the very persistent and bellicose deer fly that was extremely attracted to my new hair color -- which, now that I think about it, is very White-tailed-deer-like -- did not chase me in until 10:30 a.m.  I was more than a bit busy picking produce and spraying pyola on the Japanese beetles that were hosting a worldwide convention in my rose bushes, plum trees and asparagus ferns.  Phuckers.

A single harvest photo of the day is a challenge to choose, so I give you a mosaic, with apologies in advance to Marcia. (She gets a bit miffed every time I post a mosaic, because they continue to elude her. I use BigHugeLabs.)

Dinner last night consisted of those peas in that bowl up there, in a garlic cream sauce, poured over grilled wild salmon burgers that I got at Costco. I served sauteed Swiss chard on the side and mixed berries for dessert.  Having the garden so productive brings the cooking spark alive, that is for sure. I must make a big disclaimer that I have never, ever, EVER had such a good garden before this year.  I've had good, but this is outstanding. I've apparently hit the perfect storm with it this year. I don't know if it will ever happen again, but I sure as hell hope so.  Wait 'til you see how the pears, tomatoes, basil and pumpkins are doing. Unbelievable.

Following a suggestion made by Pamela of The Finster blog about how she prepares collard greens, I added a splash of red wine to the Swiss chard preparation. It's a keeper!  UnbeLIEVably delicious.

Can I mention how much I enjoyed the deviled egg "tasting party" we had the other day, as well as all the greens cooking suggestions and comments from that other "green" day?  Love them!  Keep them coming!  The whole egg-tasting party does sound like a great idea.  If deviled eggs weren't so darned filling, I think it'd be a FABULOUS idea.  Can you imagine?  40 guests -- 40 different methods of making deviled eggs.  Well, all except, apparently, for the Mexicans, though I don't believe that for a minute.  I'm picturing something with avocado, lime and coriander, with a kick of mezcal.   

157. O is for Organic. Or: The State of the Food Garden Address II

The last time I did a State of the Food Garden Address was May 5th.  Though there have been incremental updates about various pieces of the garden, I think it's time to do another comprehensive wrap-up.  I thought it was time anyway, but then I went out and took some photos.  And then I looked at that May 5th post, and wow!  This blogging-every-day thing is good for some things -- for chronicling whatever it is you want to chronicle, and to help your memory, because I am simply amazed at where we are now, one month later as I write this, compared to where we were then. 

I'm also amazed at how early I have gone "off the grid," to borrow a commenter's phrase that I adored (I'm sorry I can't remember who), this year for buying vegetables.  I have not bought a vegetable, and indulged in as much/many as I possibly can indulge, for at least a few weeks now.  This doesn't usually happen for me until, at the very earliest, mid-July.  I think it's a combination of the magic of the black grow beds, the optimum condition (finally!) of my soil, the lovely Intervale compost, and we must not discount the weather, but my garden has never done so well before.

So why don't we get to it, then.

In the foreground of this photo, we have the second planting of beets.  See the onions way in the back, how big they are compared to before?  And it's hard to see how much more advanced that bed of beets is.  In the middle is a bed from which many, many radishes have been harvested and more are still growing; many salads' worth of lettuces and spinach have been repeatedly harvested; as well as parsley; and the Swiss chard is really taking off now.  On the right of the photo are two rows of peas.  Interestingly, the closer one is the first one I planted. I was worried about that row, because the one I planted several weeks later is far ahead of it. You can see that in the far right distance of the photo.  But then I discovered that the first ones I planted are "mid-season" peas and the ones in the back are Amish early peas.  Still, it strikes me as counterintuitive that the planting times don't seem to make sense, though it might fall back on the soil temperature for germination issue.  Once again, I grew up thinking that peas love it cold.  They do, but only within reason, it appears. There's cold and then there's cold. 

A pot of arugula set on some stones at the edge of the garden.  Decorative and useful.

The pole beans have germinated.  I was beginning to get worried about them, but I needn't have worried, I guess. 

Composting and mulching at the same time.  I've been pouring kitchen cuttings (but nothing that will attract varmints, such as partial apples or anything tempting like that) in the centers of the bean towers.  Food for the worms, which becomes food for the beans, and while it's decomposing, it acts as a nice moisture-retaining mulch.

We've got green strawberries!

And two kinds of pears!  They look like they're doing well.  The Summercrisp (on the left) seems to be doing particularly well.  I attribute this to two things:  It's planted in friable and beautiful garden soil, not just "anywhere" in the yard, and it's heavily mulched with the leaves that I rescued from the landfill.  And the little Seckel pears (on the right) seem to be doing well, too.  My experience tells me that it will be a miracle if these pears survive the bugs, etc., if I leave them wholly organic.  But I will anyway. 

My started-from-seed broccoli is thriving.

As is the Romaine.

Here is a collection of six hot and sweet peppers that I started from seed, and to maximize space, I crafted a trellis for cucumbers at the edge of the bed.  I used old bamboo poles and a purchased nylon (ick, but...) trellis from Gardener's Supply.  I formed it into a lean-to, supporting it on the ground outside the bed.  This allows the cukes to grow in the bed, benefiting from the gorgeous compost/potting soil in the bed, as well as the better and warmer growing environment than my awful native soil, but since it's a vining plant, it can vine away up the trellis without taking up a lot of space from the peppers.   

And just when I thought I had seen it all, and I was walking into the house, a little something caught my eye. 

Green tomatoes.  In Northwestern Vermont.  On June 5th.  This is a stunner.  These are the "currant tomatoes" I started from seed indoors this spring, and despite the unseasonably cold weather we've had up 'til now, check it OUT!  I continue to stand by my belief that that red tomato mulch is pure magic. 

And now, for a little bad news:  I've got slugs.  Lots of them.  That is to be expected with all the lovely organic materials about.  I have a weapon, though, and it's a good one -- not poisonous.

It's simply iron phosphate pellets.  It works like a charm, and it doesn't take much.  Yes, I've tried beer in dishes.  I can't be bothered.  This stuff is much better.  They eat it and apparently lose their hunger so they stop eating. I got it here, although they seem to have either run out or have simply changed the product to a "supreme" version.  I've sworn by it for years.

156. N is for New Beginnings

O is for OMG.  P is for Pretty Scary.  Q is for Quell my fears.

Yes, I'm accelerating the ABC-Along along.  Heh.  I just had to get that redundancy in there.  (did you catch it?)

But anyhoo.  Yes.  New beginnings.  Life changes.  Fairly big ones. Good ones. I think. Relax, some of you:  It's to do with work.   

To that end, I'm looking for recommendations for easy-peasy billing and scheduling software.  Got any?  I just know you do.

I'm excited.  Well, excited and scared.  (bonus points if you recognize those lyrics.)   

This is a cheat out of an N entry, for it has no photo.  So I'll give you a legitimate N some other day. And those Os, Ps and Qs were just for kicks.  As in kick ass!  I know, I know, I'm sounding a little bit whacked out.  It's all good.  I promise. 

And no, it's not that I'm starting a jam-making empire, though if you looked in my kitchen and freezer, you might be forgiven for thinking otherwise. 

Can I help it if the rosa rugosa are particularly floribundant this year?

So... you will notice the mottled light pink ones, I imagine.  I decided to do a batch with white petals, just to see what would happen.  Well, when I was about to put in the pectin, it all looked rather like .... um.... well, never mind.  So I threw just a few red petals into the blender with the mix, and it made it all nice and soft pink with little flecks of deep rose.  Kind of nice.  However, in the jar, I'm not so sure.  It might look a little bit like red roe instead of red rose.  But hey!  You won't know if you don't try, right?!  It still tastes great.

And then there are the new plastic freezer jam jars by Ball that I bought.  Quite nifty.  Lighter; no worries about broken glass; they have reusable screw tops; and they lock and stack.  But the jam doesn't look half as nice in them.  Nuts. 

Come to think of it, I think this is your N.  Then again, N could be for Now Norma is Her Own Agent. 

155. M is for Mmmmmmmm. (Or, I'm Getting Impatient With The ABC-Along)

It's rose petal jam time again! 

Last year it was June 17th.  Wow.  Things are sooo early this year.

Consistent with my pledge to myself to keep putting food by and not letting produce go by without doing something about it, over the past three days I made four batches of jam. It tastes like sunshine on a spoon.  How does one describe this flavor?  Floral and tangy and sweet -- it's a thing unto itself.  Luscious. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

The recipe I use is here. Over the years, I have found that it works best for me if I make the petal/lemon juice/sugar syrup in the blender and pour it into a mixing bowl.  I then cook the pectin and add it to the mixing bowl and gently stir it by hand.  When I've tried to do it in the blender jar, it sets up way too fast and becomes a gloppy mess.  Still tastes great, but it's impossible to pour into the jars nicely. My refrigerator-top freezer now overfloweth.  I'm going to have to start toting the jars of jam out to the freezer in the garage, because I fully intend to make more of this before all the roses are gone.

And coincidentally, on Sunday, the day I first made this, I saw in my stats that someone was Googling for "norma rose petal jelly."  The rose petal jam is apparently on someone else's mind, too.

A clarification on the freezing:  This jam is uncooked, except for the pectin, so it's got a relatively short shelf life.  If I want to keep it around to give me summer-on-a-spoon in the middle of winter, I freeze it.  I tried putting it in a boiling-water bath one time, and it really didn't do nice things to this jam.  So freezer-jam it is!

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The auction for Prunella Primrose is back up.  You can bid on her here.

154. L is for Lucky To Know Her

Symeon North (aka PippiKneeSocks) is a friend of mine.  We've had some wonderful laughs together, that girl and I, though I often insist on calling her blog name PippiLongstockings. I really do get the joke -- I do!  But still, I'm Pippi Longstockings hardwired, I think.  It was my favorite book as a kid, and I fudge up her blog name every time.  She's bought and bartered some of my homemade Motherwort tincture in the past, and she's sent me some gorgeous hand-dyed yarn when I was feeling down. 

Well, if you haven't heard already (but I bet you have), Symeon has been going through some tough times herself. You can read about it here. 

Wonderful Amy Boogie has been shepherding some eBay auctions to raise money to help Symeon and her children.  Naturally I wanted to help, too.  I have been racking my brain trying to think:  What do I have that is really special -- something that people in our community would place a good value on and be willing to purchase in our fund-raising effort? 

I needed to look no farther than my living room. 

How many of you have been reading Jane Brocket's lovely blog long enough to remember her beautiful, highly detailed handcrafted dolls?  The ones about which Jane wrote the most creative and clever biographies that made them almost literally come to life?  The ones that gave me a warm chuckle and made me wait on the edge of my seat for the next installment?  The ones she made before she went off in different directions and became an author of gorgeous books?  Do you remember? 

Specifically, do you remember Ms. Prunella Primrose?

Well, I am lucky enough to have given Ms. Primrose a home early on, when she was bereft after her beloved Willie unexpectedly passed away in a tragic accident on the escalator in the Knightsbridge tube station after picking up some champagne truffles for Prunella at Harrods. 

She's resided here for two and a half years now (though never one to mince words, she says it seems longer) and sadly she tells me she's grown more than a bit tired of the Vermont weather.  She concedes that the spring is a difficult time to move on, and just about the right time to stay in Vermont for a few more months.  However, she knows that she cannot manage to survive another winter here -- the cold is simply brutal on her voice.  And in summer, the Vermont humidity does dreadful things to her hair.  Despite her name, she really never was into gardening, nor is she an outdoors person. (she hates bugs)  Physical exercise gives her hives, and organic food seems to wreak havoc with her digestion.  She longs for a nice repast of pate de foie gras on toast points and champagne in the afternoon. Sad to say, as long as I am hostess, there will be none of that here.

She would like to travel more -- see the world!  Find a new love before it's too late!  Who can blame her, really?  Hank has been a disappointing companion.  She has tried not to be judgmental of his banalities (he is just a gnome, after all) and has tried to suppress her desires for a more stimulating man with whom to spend the rest of her years. At first she thought there could never be an adequate replacement for her Willie.  But she has watched the years go by and the blush of her rose beginning to fade.  It's now or never to get back into society!  Perhaps she will even sing again!

Here's Prunella sitting in a large wing chair, to give you an idea of her true size (This was a big surprise to me when she first came here. I thought she'd be much smaller than she really is.)

Her face has natural charm. She shuns Botox, choosing instead to enhance her beauty with well-chosen earrings, just a touch of lippy, and a lovely beaded hat.  Her British accent is particularly charming when she says words like "lippy."

Before she left England, a friend made her a lovely handknit Rowan Kidsilk Haze scarf and presented it to her at her leaving do, which was a very quiet affair -- just the two of them.  Several other people had been invited, but amazingly, they were all previously engaged that day.  The scarf has been Prunella's only salvation against the long and hard Vermont winters, and though she has lost touch with the friend who knitted it, she does remember her somewhat fondly.

Prunella's fashion sense is impeccable.  Note the beautiful vintage buttons in shades of plum and green.

Her dress is made of vintage tea towels, which she chose long before it was fashionable and trendy and everyone else was doing it. (but she would never point that out to anyone herself)

She's signed on the bottom with Jane's mark.

Prunella's full biography (up 'til the time she came to live in Vermont) comes with her, dated October 2005, also signed by Jane.

Go check out Amy's auctions.  Prunella will be there, waiting for you to whisk her away.

All proceeds will go to Symeon and her kids. 

The auction is here.  (click)

149. Oh, All Rigkt. I'll Rise to the Okkasion.

Klap your hands for Kickass Kale and Other Gkreens for Braisink

Click to make the mosaic bigger.

...from my kingdom.  (It's very green and lush around here right now, I must admit.  I'm not gloating.  Really.)

BRAISED GREENS (Easy and Quick! You ken do this! Yes, you ken!)

Assemble a larger quantity than you think you will need (they cook down in volume a lot) of various young greens.  Mine this time were kale, beet greens, spinach, and of course my new find, radish greens.  Rinse the greens, and shake off most of the water, leaving them a little bit wet.

Heat a tablespoon or two of a good-quality oil over medium-high heat.  This time I used peanut oil. (Peanut oil is great for stir-frying and braising, because it can tolerate high heat.  It's also high in vitamin E, which is a good thing, or so they tell me.) 

Add the greens to the hot oil, stirring to coat them with oil.  Stir occasionally.  After a little while, sprinkle some salt on if you wish.  Let them continue to wilt down, stirring occasionally.  Don't overcook them! 

You can eat them just like that.  Or do as I did this time:  Sprinkle them with a little balsamic vinegar.  Or lemon juice.  Be creative.  Pine nuts would be a nice addition, as would garlic cloves added to the oil when it is heating (but be careful not to burn the garlic).  Sliced onions or scallions added at that time would be good, too.

Your body will thank you.

This is very, very early in the year for me to be enjoying such bounty from my kingdom.  I'm not komplainink. 

P.S.  THANKS for all the great ideas for chives yesterday!

P.P.S.  I feel we must stage an intervention for Poor Sandy. Girl's never had a radish.  How can a gastronome of such stature have never had a radish, I ask you!  I'd ship some of mine, but they wouldn't ship well.  I'd put them in the car and drive some down there to her, but for the price of gas and global warming.  Sandy, get thee to a farmer's market and buy (and eat) a radish.  You cannot leave this earth without having tasted one. I mean, really.

K?

P.P.P.S.  K is also for kvetch.  I have not yet been blessed with the Typepad upgrade, praaaaiiiisssse the Loooooorrrrd.  But I had my first experience with trying to leave a comment last night, and having it deny me.  Twice!  How dare you deny me, Typepadsk?  And then this morning MY blog did not publish at its preset time. I had to publish it this morning after I got up.  Please do me a favor:  Finish debugging that fooker before you send the upgrade my way.  Believe me, you'd rather piss off my friends than me.  KThanks. 

148. Chives and Radishes and Other Random Stuff

1.  I have lots of chives in my garden, but I no longer eat things like cream cheese and chives on bagels or sour cream and chives on baked potatoes.  I sometimes mourn those things, but I'm much, much better off without them.  But, assuming a high-protein/low-carb lifestyle (I mostly save my carbs for chocolate, and I'm sorry, but I won't put chives on my chocolate.) what do you do with chives without cream cheese and sour cream and pasta and bread?   Chives in scrambled eggs, I guess. Other than that? 

2.  I answered my own question with a few well-placed Google queries and my own imagination:  For example:  Goat's cheese, asparagus & chive crustless quiche.  Caramelized shallot, mushroom and chive quiche.  Chive flower omelets.  How about jumbo shrimp and salmon chunks baked in garlic and chive butter? I'm thinking one of these nights soon I might add chives to goat's cheese, flatten a chicken breast, then spread the cheese-and-chive mixture inside the breast, roll it up, and bake it. 

5. I like radishes, and I grow them every year.  They have always struggled in my clay soil, but they are positively thriving in the raised beds.  Yay!  But I have just discovered that I have always underestimated the poor little radish. I never thought of it as anything more than a peppery garnish, and figured it wasn't very high in nutritional value.  Definitely better than a cupcake, but as far as vegetables go, I thought it was pretty empty.  But then I read this, and I got totally turned on to focusing more on the radish and less on the little red garnish in my salad.  In addition, to focus on the leaves, which are doubly high in vitamin C and other good things. So there's another challenge in my kitchen.  How do I incorporate radish leaves into my food and not just waste the most nutritious part of the radish?  The leaves are quite hairy, which is not an attribute I appreciate, and therefore they are not so pleasant to eat on their own.  But I did it! 

6.  Here's what I did:  I chopped up four or five radishes and their leaves quite fine.  I stirred them into some soft goat's cheese (chevre).  I took the cheese-radish combo and I spread it on some thick-sliced deli roast beef and some pastrami, rolled up the meat slices with the radish-filled cheese inside, and ate three of the rolls for lunch.  They were great.  I preferred the pastrami one for flavor, but I try not to eat many processed meats.  The deli roast beef strikes me as a bit less processed than pastrami.  Still, quite nice.  If I were still a vegetarian and ate bread, I would try the cheese-radish mixture on whole-wheat, pumpernickel, or sourdough toast.  (I do eat certain kinds of bread on occasion, and I will try it that way, as well.)

6.1.  And I did something else:  I had homemade chicken-mushroom soup simmering on the stove.  Just before serving it, I put radish leaves in and let them cook slightly 'til they were bright green.  It was delicious!  They had a very mild spinach-y taste, with no hairiness evident from the leaves.

7.  Given the affinity of beef to radish (or horseradish) and goat's cheese, I think if you took all that stuff and blended it together in a blender (roast beef, radishes, radish leaves, and chevre), or just chopped it fine and stirred it together, you could dollop it on toast points or garlic melba toasts or the like, garnished with a couple of chive pieces, for a very elegant appetizer.  Or if you didn't want to have the blended look, you could layer it.  Or you could get thick-sliced pastrami, spread the spread on it, roll it up, and slice it into pretty rollups.  Cripes, now I'm wishing for the next dinner party or potluck I'm invited to, so I can try this. 

8.  So the next time you buy radishes at your farmer's market or get them in your CSA share, don't throw away the leaves!  They're filled with good nutrition.  Of course it goes without saying (or maybe it doesn't), the fresher and younger the radish, the nicer the leaves will be. 

3. I think I'm going to skip K in the ABC-Along.  I did keyboard last time around, and I pulled out the unabridged dictionary and scoured it for another K word that would work for me.  There just aren't any.  I'm taking a stand against the K. 

4. Or maybe I'll come up with something at the last minute.  I remember that's how I came up with keyboard last time, too.  I must have a mental block about Ks. Of course, then down the road comes the X and a few other nefarious letters.  I do remember now why I said I would never do the ABC-Along again. 

13.  Has anyone noticed the randomly misplaced numbers?

9.  Since we last "spoke," I have set up and planted two more raised beds.  This time I planted tomatoes and basil and radishes in one, and sweet and hot peppers and cucumbers in another.  My garden has never looked so pretty and orderly before.  I'm in love with the raised-bed system, and I'm unstoppable!

10.  I'm so much happier blogging since I've given myself permission to not knit and not blog about knitting, but blog about whatever is on my mind.  That's what it's all about.   

139. J is for Juice

I used to be a big juice drinker, back in the day when I was a bona fide health food fanatic and didn't drink Diet Pepsi for breakfast.  Not so much fruit juices, but vegetable juices.  So I have a fancy juicer and for years I used it every day.  For a couple of years now, I thought a part of the juicer had been lost or inadvertently thrown away, but recently when cleaning out a cupboard I found the missing part. I decided to make a healthy juice drink, not incoincidentally because I was searching around for a J word for the ABC-Along.  I used carrots, beets, turnips, ginger, celery and lemon. 

It was pretty good, if you're into that sort of thing, and it made me feel really healthful doing it.  In the process, though, I remembered one reason why I got away from juices -- they use up so much produce, and all that fiber is left behind.  Just a lot of expensive compost.  It seems like it would be healthier to just eat the veggies. I do use the pulp around my veggie plants, though.  I just pour it directly around the base, and boy, do they respond well to that!

My juice drink did make me feel very rejuvenated, and I thought I was sold on returning to the juicing culture.  That is, until later that evening when I had a horrible stomach ache and violently threw up the entire contents of my stomach -- juice and dinner included.  Vomiting is an extremely rare event for me, so I am not sure what happened there.  Maybe I ate solid food too soon after filling my stomach with all that vegetable juice.  Maybe there was some harmful bacteria in there.  Maybe my body was in shock that I was sending it all those vitamins and minerals and beneficial phytochemicals instead of artificial sweetener, phosphorus and caffeine.  Maybe I was having a reaction to a tetanus/dp/pertussis shot I had had earlier in the week.  Maybe it was just a message that I should put the juicer back in the cupboard and forget about it for another several years. 

120. I is for Iron(ic)

Wow! I couldn't believe the size of my email inbox when I got home last night. All such wonderful comments, and a terrific discussion.  I am trying to answer everyone, but whammo!  Work is busy.  Just finishing up the school year for CART, and already have depositions overlapping, as well as outside-UVM CART clients keeping me busy, and a few other things I'm trying to manage.  So in the meantime, allow me to present to you my i for the ABC-Along.

I hate ironing and will do it only as a last resort. And yet somehow there is a collection of old irons in my house. Hint: Except in the legal marital estate sense, they're not "mine."  Anyway, here is a sampling.

Were these people nuts? Coal-filled, kerosene-fired, heat-on-the-woodstove, dangerous heavy items of laborious drudgery. Why were more husbands not murdered via these lovely blunt instruments? Oh, I guess because without a husband to bring home the bacon, the women would be doomed to taking in people's IRONING to make a living. I'd sooner commit suicide by turning the kerosene-fired implement on myself. Are wrinkles really THAT bad? Humans are really weird creatures.

I'll admit this, though:  They make fairly decent bookends flanking an antique set of horticulture encyclopedias, and they made a good excuse for buying an antique rustic jelly cupboard at an estate sale a few years ago in which to display them. 

Apart from that, they're basically just dust-catchers. Maybe I'm being too harsh?

107. H is for Hard At Work

I may be stretching the rules (though the rules are pretty loose) of the ABC-Along with this one, but I could not resist the literal and figurative meanings behind these photos.  I'm as busy as the proverbial bee with work as the university year comes to a close, and happily so. I also could not resist celebrating the opening of the purple crocuses in my yard and the many apian species I observed toiling away when I got home yesterday.

Spring is really here. 

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P.S. The mosaic maker, the framer I used to make the framed photos on Saturday, as well as several other nifty tools, are all found at BigHugeLabs.