How [not] to make Persimmon Pudding

It all started with a trip to the big box store where I get my toilet paper, my kid’s lunch snacks, and my frozen goods.  There they were, beaming up at me.  Persimmons.  I have to admit to a secret love affair with persimmons.  They’re mysterious.  They’re sweet and sour at the same time, which is why my son named our dog Persimmon.  They look like a yellow tomato, but they’re not.  They grow from a variety of ebony tree.  Native to China then exported within milliseconds to Japan, their varieties have beautiful Japanese names, like Fuyu and Hachiya.  The Hachiya looked gorgeous, and I had a potluck coming up Saturday night, so I would try my hand at persimmon pudding.

Saturday morning dawns, and I make breakfast for my husband and myself while my teenager wannabe has a lie-in.  As we wait for the water to boil, I offer hubby a slice of one of the gorgeous Hachiya persimmons with the USA sticker, and I bite into one myself.

Big mistake.

I instantly feel as if I downed a bottle of 100-year-old Bordeaux.  Without the buzz.  My gums pull away from my teeth.  My tongue grows hair.  I start clearing my throat at the rate and with the sound effects of an 80-year-old man with a sinus infection.  Good gods!  What is happening?  This is not the persimmon I knew and loved!

A quick trip to Wikipedia tells me I am not suffering from an allergic reaction, and, to my relief, would not need to visit the ER.  Turns out that Hachiya and Fuyu are quite different varieties.  Fuyu, which are short and squat, can be eaten like apples.  Hachiya should be kept on one’s windowsill until they’re completely soft and mushy.  Until that point, the tannic acid—the same tannic acid found in oak barrels to keep wine, and in such fruits as the cashew apple—has an extremely astringent effect.

I’ll say.

Once my hairy mouth wears off, I head off to the farmer’s market.  Once I get an idea in my head, I’m not easily dissuaded.  I ask my friend Sarah, the second-in-command at the market, if anyone sells persimmons.  I had never seen them there, but Sarah is in the know.  As luck would have it, the first-in-command had just purchased some from none other than my beloved Claybank Farms’ farmer Greg.  Whaddya know.  I smile and try to keep myself from running to his booth.

I’m pretty sure my love affair with persimmons started with a family recipe of persimmon pudding from my youth.  My mother and aunt talked about a persimmon tree that grew on their parents’ farm in Clay County, Illinois, coincidentally not far from the Claybank Farm itself.  A little more Wikipedia research tells me that there is an eastern US variety of persimmon, the American Persimmon, that is even higher in vitamins and minerals than its Asian cousins.  Flavor and nutrition?!  I’m hooked.

I ask Greg about the persimmons, and his face lights up.  “Why, yes, the persimmons are finally in season!”  He goes rooting around in his coolers and comes up with a Ziploc bag of what looks to be orange pingpong balls in mush.  Yes, this is what I remember.  This.  He proceeds to tell me that his aunt recommends simmering them before running them through a strainer or food mill.  I add the persimmons to my weekly order, and as I’m paying him, he asks, “hey do you know what you’re supposed to do with the seed?”

I shake my head no.

“Well, if you cut the seed in half, it will predict what winter is going to be like.  Of course, the persimmons have to be local.”

Of course.

“If you see a spoon, the winter will be full of snow and precipitation, but not very cold.  If you see a fork, the winter will be dry and windy.  That’s what I’ve been told, anyway,” he winks at me.

I can’t wait to get home to split one of those seeds open. But first, persimmon pudding.

So…in keeping with my romance with the southern Illinois persimmon, I feel I have to use my grandmother’s original recipe.  I crack open the Ancient Binder of Secrets, and find this:

Sorry, Grandma, this is completely unusable.  First of all, despite being a food hoarder, I simply cannot imagine cooking a recipe that calls for milk and flour in units of [half] gallons.  Second…what do I do?  Where are the instructions?  Third, what is a “slow oven?”  I have a high ambiguity tolerance in general, and usually I’m OK with vague cooking instructions, but this has me beat.  Once again, I turn to the internet.  I find a couple of recipes here and there, and glom them together to make something I think would be tasty, and more pudding-like than cake-like.  All the recipes have flour, milk, eggs, baking soda, cinnamon, sugar.  And, of course, persimmon pulp.

Next, to process the persimmons into persimmon pulp.  According to Greg, after simmering them for a bit it should be relatively easy.  I simmer for a few minutes, then let them cool.

Curses to you, Greg.

I start with my grandmother’s ancient food mill.  I grind and I grind and I grind.  A half-inch of pulp clings to the bottom of the mill.  I scrape it off and start over.  Almost nothing.  Frustrated, I grab a strainer and start pushing it through.  Even worse.  After going back and forth between food mill, strainer, and colander, I am cussing.  And the beautiful persimmon-y orange color has oxidized to a dark brown.  Finally, after about a half an hour of processing, I get enough pulp to make a double-recipe of the stuff.  I swear I will never do it again.

I started with the food mill

... then the strainer

...and finally the colander

But after baking the pudding in a water bath, it is splendid.  It’s not too sweet, which I prefer, and with a drizzle of maple syrup, it’s just as I remember.  A dollop of vanilla ice cream makes it divine.  And although most people thought I had brought brownies to the potluck, they soon discovered the wonder of my family’s fall culinary heritage highlight:  the persimmon pudding.

No photo.  You know what brownies look like, right?  Like that.

But, wait…what about the seed?

My husband and I rescue one from the compost bin, and I come as close as I ever have to cutting off my own finger in an attempt to cut it in half length-wise.  After last year’s horrible winter, we want to know what we’re in for.  We hold our breath to see if it’s a spoon or a fork.

It’s a knife.

We go through the process again, again narrowly close to losing a limb, only to find the same exact shape.

Most decidedly a knife.

For the third time, I thank the powers-that-be for the blessing of the internet, and all the knowledge that she holds.  (Farmer Greg will get an earful the next time I see him). A site with the full farmer’s almanac lore sheds more light on the matter; if the kernel inside the seed is shaped like a spoon it means indeed a warmer, snowier winter (spoon = shovel); a fork indicates a mild winter with powdery snow; and a knife indicates a cutting, fierce wind and lower-than-normal temperatures.  See for yourself at http://www.almanac.com/content/predicting-weather-using-persimmon-seed.

Family folklore, winter weather wiles, and cinnamon-persimmon-y goodness? That’s something you can’t get from those puckery persimmons at the grocery store…

Day 7, Final Day of Shopping at Home: Reflections on the Experiment

I cheated.  Well, sort of.  My son had the day off from school and we took the opportunity to visit our local pumpkin patch and apple orchard.  We found gorgeous pumpkins, and just couldn’t resist the pull to pick our own luscious apples right from the tree.  You can’t get more local than that, right?  And then, you have to round out the experience with the apple doughnuts and the apple cider, right?  So…technically, we bought food to bring home, but I still wouldn’t count it as grocery shopping.  I’m still pulling from my stores for dinner.  I’m on the last of my eggs and milk.

I’m calling the week’s experiment a success.

Dinner was simple.  I thawed bratwursts from Triple S and set them to boil.  This time I looked no further than my countertop for inspiration, where a big bowl of sweet potatoes has been staring me in the face for a couple of weeks.  I used my favorite recipe to make sweet potato oven fries, a recipe passed on to me from a neighbor.  I thoroughly cleaned two pounds of the organic jewel sweet potatoes from the Co-op, trimmed the ends and bad spots, and cut them into cottage-fry-sized pieces with the skin still on (I would only do this with organic sweet potatoes, by the way).  I tossed them in a blend of olive oil, equal parts salt and brown sugar, chili powder, cumin, and a pinch of cayenne, and spread them out on two baking sheets to roast at 425 degrees for half an hour, turning them over halfway through.  I stuck the boiled bratwurst in the oven to brown for the last ten minutes.

We didn’t have a green vegetable, but since we had beautiful, fresh apples for dessert, I figured that was OK.  And Friday evenings are like that sometimes; often those dinners are the three of us grabbing and reheating our favorite leftovers from the past week, so actually cooking something was an achievement.

So, now that the Shopping at Home experiment is over, what next?  What have I learned?

1.           My food hoarding is over the top; I could—and I just might—cook for another whole week without shopping.  I won’t be blogging about it daily, but I’ll keep you updated on my progress!

2.          I didn’t even have to be that creative to use up my stores; my son said, “I can’t even tell you’re not shopping.  It’s just the same as when you shop!  Well, except for that fried rice.  That was really good!”

3.          I will need to use more frozen goods in the near future.  I haven’t really made a dent in any of my freezers.  I tend to buy frozen fruits or vegetables, or freeze them myself, then completely forget about them.  Freezer organization is key.  So is weekly meal planning, starting with the ingredients already in my inventory.

Meanwhile, I’m off to the farmer’s market.  

I’m only buying a few things, I promise….

Day 6 of Shopping at Home: Kids and Vegetables

I’ve lamented in the past (here) my difficulty of getting my kid to eat vegetables, or at least the amount and frequency of eating vegetables that I feel is appropriate to help him grow well and protect his immune system now and in the future.  It is a battle I fight with ingenuity and persistence, and even when I’m in the middle of a Shopping at Home Campaign.  (To his credit, he seems to be rooting for my success, checking every night before dinner, “did you go shopping for this, Mom?”)  I always put vegetables on his plate, and I always make him taste them, even if he says he’s tasted the dish before, and he knows he doesn’t like it.  I tell him that tastes change over time, and someday he might actually decide he likes whatever it is.  Sometimes I win, sometimes I lose; fortunately, tonight I won.

I was tempted to dive into the packaged vegetables in the freezer, but I knew I needed to clean out the refrigerator, and that I had been avoiding the vegetable drawer.  No more.  Tonight would be my unique version of pork fried rice.  I started with making a large quantity of long-grain jasmine rice (my favorite).  I sliced up the pork cutlets cooked last night.  From the depths of the fridge I found both leftover and fresh veggies, and prepped the lot.

Discovered:  1. Huge bag of organic baby carrots.  Cut up about a cup of them into tiny nubs.

2. Collard greens from farmer Greg at Claybank; about half were turning yellow, the other half were salvageable.  Removed the spines and chiffonaded the leaves.

3. Brussels sprouts. Trimmed the outside leaves, then cut them into small pieces.  Still have a portion left which might be my lunch tomorrow.

4. Green beans, left over from last night’s dinner.  Cut into small pieces.

5. Green onions, also from Greg, drying out.  Stripped off the outside layer and chopped them into the light green part.

6. Triple S pork cutlets, left over from last night’s dinner.

7. One of three little lonely yellow onions left in my basket.

Purged:  1. Half of the collard greens.  This made me sad.

2. A bunch of kale from Blue Moon.  This made me even sadder.

3. A plastic bag with a small handful of arugula, also Blue Moon.

4. A plastic bag with a small handful of Blue Moon cilantro.

5. A tiny, spongy cucumber from my own garden.

6. A tiny bunch of radishes from Blue Moon.  I love them on salad, and had totally forgotten about them.

7. A quarter of a red onion from ???.  I always seem to end up with a quarter of a red onion left over, no matter how small of an onion I buy.

I started with parboiling my uncooked veggies—the Brussels sprouts, the carrots, and the collard greens-- just to even the playing field with the green beans.  I drained them, then added a splash of rice wine vinegar to remove that earthy flavor and add some pizzazz.  I set them aside.  I put a couple of tablespoons of coconut oil in my giant cast iron skillet.  This oil is a good choice for high heat, and I love the flavor it adds.  I diced up a regular onion, then sautéed until it started to brown, and then added my veggies, including the green beans, and small pieces of diced pork cutlet. They were on high heat for a few minutes, then I beat three small farm eggs (with their gorgeous dark yellow yolks), scooted the veggies to one side of the pan, and poured in the eggs to scramble.  Once they were done, jumbled into pieces, and mixed in with the rest, I added a stir-fry ginger sauce, then a whole lotta shoyu (soy sauce would work here too).  I mixed in about two or three cups of rice, and made sure the whole thing was hot, and all the liquids were absorbed, trying to avoid letting the rice stick to the skillet.  I threw in the green onions at the last minute.

I dished it up just as my son was getting back from soccer practice, and he immediately pronounced it “delicious.”  I beamed with pride. Two minutes later, his little eyes squinted and he said accusingly, “You are sneaky.  You somehow managed to sneak Brussels sprouts in here!”

I only smiled.

“And what is this?” he asked, trailing a ribbon of collard green from his fork.

“More vegetables,” I responded.

“Then why does it still taste good?” he asked.

“Because I’m just good that way,” I said with a wink.

Full of vegetables; even Persimmon thinks it smells great!

Day 5 of Shopping at Home: My Roots are Showing

My parents grew up in southern Illinois, and occasionally I can’t help but let loose my cooking alter ego, the southern farm gal.  I grew up on dinners like these; all I can say is you should either be bringing in the harvest or walking the dog a lot if you have these dinners more than once in a blue moon.

Thanks to my mother’s tutelage on the making of a fine southern gravy—to which I’ve added my own twist—tonight’s dinner was embarrassingly easy.  I defrosted a package of pork cutlets from Triple S and pan-fried them in my super-sized cast iron skillet, adding a sprinkle of salt and white pepper.  While the microwave was doing its magic on my frozen green beans, I whipped up a little gravy.  Pork cutlets from Triple S fortunately, or unfortunately for gravy-making, have less fat than their commercial counterparts (hey, I’ve personally seen those pigs move), so there are very few pan drippings to use.  Here’s where the southern cook part comes in:  I add a couple of tablespoons of butter to the pan after the cutlets have been browned and transferred to a plate on warm in the oven.  After the butter has melted and blended with the pan drippings, I whisk in about 1/3 cup of flour, creating a skillet full of little delicious lumps.  Keeping the flame on medium, I whisk in milk a little at a time, stirring until the lumps mostly dissolve.  I keep whisking and heating and pouring milk until the desired amount of gravy is produced (usually around 1 1/2 cups), keeping in mind it will thicken even more as it cools.  When it reaches gravy perfection, I add salt, white and black pepper, and a teaspoon of my favorite herb, dried thyme (yes, the thyme is the “twist” I mentioned earlier).  I simmer a couple of minutes more on low heat, and then pour the gloppy deliciousness into my Fiestaware gravy boat.

My mom taught me that milk gravy is always made from chicken or pork drippings, but beef should be accompanied by a water gravy, using beef broth or the water from cooked vegetables as the liquid instead of milk.  She also taught me that biscuits are not necessary; all you need is a fine slice of high-quality bread to soak it up.  In our case, a slice of rye bread from Pekara bakery worked very nicely.  Gravy can be poured over the bread, over the bread and veggies, or over your entire plate of food.

My boys focused more on the gravy than the meat, so there will be leftover cutlets for tomorrow’s dinner.  I’m already making plans…

Days 3 and 4 of Shopping at Home: Transformed Tomatoes and Jiffy Nostalgia

So…Day 3 went pretty much as I imagined, eating up the leftovers of zucchini soup and pizza.  Perhaps an odd combination, but I do not want to have too many leftovers.  I mean, the purpose of this week’s exercise is to get things out and used up, not to make more to have hiding in the back of the fridge.

Day 4 is a planned evening out with some friends for me, and my son has soccer practice in the early evening, so I need to prepare something that can simmer on the stove or in a crock pot until the boys are ready to eat.  During my sweeping search for shredded cheese, I discovered two more pounds of Triple S ground beef I didn’t know I had.  Also, some of those green tomatoes from the last garden haul?  They’ve magically turned red!  So chili is a natural consequence, easy, tasty, and nutritionally complete.  Mine is not a special recipe by any means; I always have dried black beans or cans of them available, and they are my favorite for chili.  Sometimes I add kidney beans, but I don’t have any this time, and no shopping allowed!  My “secret” final ingredient is to add half a beer while the chili is simmering.  This will help diminish the Corona in our fridge downstairs, as it was left over from a party long ago, and not really the kind we like to drink.

Discovered:  1. Tomatoes needing to be rescued; they look a bit dry for eating, but will be perfect in chili.

2. Ground beef, and lots of it.

3. A giant box of Saltines on the verge of going stale.  I could see my boys using up a sleeve or two of those in chili.

4. Corona.  Don’t even remember how this came to our house, but probably some sort of summer gathering.

Purged:  Nothing this time, but I might want to take another peek into my veggie drawer just to be sure.  Some cilantro might be hiding in there, which is great as a chili topping, but it might be ready for the compost bin.

Back in the day I was less concerned about organic and natural foods, and I kept a stash of Jiffy prepared corn muffin mix on hand.  Believe it or not, I get slightly nostalgic about Jiffy cornbread.  It would go so well with the chili, and it’s so inexpensive and easy. Those little light blue boxes are so cute and compact, and the packaging hasn’t changed since at least the 1970s.  Just add eggs and milk.  Sigh.  But, alas, no.  One look at the ingredient list convinces me that I should either make corn muffins from scratch, or stick with the Saltines.  And begin planning Day 5…

Day 2 of Shopping at Home (and possibly Day 3): Babybel Pizza

I peered once again into the depths of my refrigerator, looking to see what was on the brink of becoming compost.  I saw little darker green spots in my box of spinach, and knew it was time to use or lose.  Also, a little container of leftover cooked Italian sausage peeked out at me, and I knew homemade pizza was inevitable.  Easy-peasy, I thought, I always have the ingredients for pizza!  There’s a bakery’s worth of flour, both whole-wheat and white, in the pantry for the crust; I remembered seeing a couple of cans of Muir Glen organic pizza sauce, my favorite brand; I had ordered pepperoni from Triple S last time; and I always have shredded cheese in the freezer, always.

Well, except when I don’t.

Good lord, how could I not have cheese?!

But I didn’t panic.  I emptied one chest freezer, and then the other.  Then I scoured the shelves of my refrigerator freezer.  Nothing.  In my refrigerator deli drawer lay the only cheese in the house:  shredded sharp cheddar, parmesan, light string cheese sticks, and packages of Babybel for my son’s lunch.

Hmmm.  Well, when it comes to pizza and cheese, for me, less is more.  I prefer a strong-flavored cheese, and less of it, to flavor and enhance the vegetables and meats.  The Babybel and the cheddar were by far the best contenders, and I could string up a couple of cheese sticks to round out the cheese ratio.  So I set about peeling off those red wax pods, reminiscing about when my son and I saved these from his lunches and actually made a candle.  I sliced them thin.

After my dough was ready, I pre-heated my pizza stone and prepped my ingredients.  More D & P (Discovery and Purge).

Discovered:  1. some leftover oyster mushrooms from Claybank Farms. 

2. pre-cooked Triple S bulk Italian sausage.

3. ½ a box of baby spinach, which I “chiffonaded.”  That’s a fancy word, improperly conjugated, to mean that I stacked up the leaves, rolled them into a big roll, and sliced, creating long-ish strips.  I like this for basil, sage, and spinach on pizza.  It’s more difficult to chiffonade arugula.

Purged:  1. the leftover mushrooms from Claybank Farms.  They didn’t look right, and I didn’t want to spoil the pizza.

The little ovals of Babybel lay gleaming between pepperoni, and a light sprinkle of cheddar added just the right amount of cheesy goodness.  And I didn’t have to run to the store for Italian cheese!  Pizza night was a Shopping-at-Home success.  And the best news of all?  The recipe makes three pizzas, so more leftovers!  

Day 1 of Shopping at Home: Curried Zucchini Soup

 Well, I survived Day 1 of shopping at home.  No farmer’s market!  No quick trip to the grocery!  I was sorely tempted, but…my first priority was to get rid of leftovers, which we did for the most part at lunch.  Second, I needed to pay full attention to my vegetable drawer, the first place I end up wasting food.  I tend to over-buy fresh veggies anyway, and having a garden this summer exacerbated that problem.  I opened my veggie drawer and found the most pressing to be the last of my garden zucchini, a half of my last monster zucchini left over, and another which had been sadly neglected.  I looked over my recipe from my not-so-new New Basics Cookbook; the recipe called for six zucchini.Well, the size of these could count for at least three store-bought zucchini, I thought.  I cut the bad spots off and grated them with my box grater to make about three cups. Guess I would have to start foraging in the freezer for the rest.

 

A trip to the freezer meant Discovery and Purging (heretofore referred to as D & P).

Discovered:  1. Store brand frozen onions.  I have no idea what possessed me to buy frozen diced onions, except maybe they were on sale, or maybe I thought about those very few times in my life I haven’t had onions in the house, or haven’t felt like cutting them up.  No date on them, but I don’t remember buying them.  Oh, well, worth a try.

2.  Shredded frozen yellow squash.  Again, no date (boo!), but I do remember shredding and freezing a lot of yellow squash last summer.  Or was it the summer before…? These could be used in place of zucchini.

3.  Two containers of Triple S chicken broth, one container with a cracked lid.  These needed to be rescued for sure.  There was a generous layer of fat on top that could be scooped off before adding to the soup.

4. Three wild-caught cod fillets.  I was craving fish, and it would be a nice accompaniment to the soup.

5.  Frozen fried apples.  Dessert would be easy.

Purged:  1. Edamame, freezer-burnt to a pale yellow color.  Ick. 

2. A bag of corn from 2009.  Wasn’t sure it was still corn.

3. A package of Mission whole-wheat tortillas, now mostly in tiny pieces after being jostled about for a substantial amount of time.

I managed to sauté the frozen onions in butter after cooking off the inevitable goopy water that comes with frozen vegetables.  I added three tablespoons of curry instead of five, as I knew my son wouldn’t like that much zing.  I added the partially thawed, de-fatted broth and three peeled and diced potatoes, and brought to a boil.  After the potatoes cooked, I added salt, pepper, the shredded zucchini, and the shredded yellow squash, then brought to another boil and simmered for 15 or 20 minutes while my fish was baking (I had prepped the fish with a simple spritz of coconut oil and a topping of gomasio, a simple but tasty blend of sesame seeds and sea salt). I substituted a can of coconut milk for the cream in the soup recipe, then used my immersion blender to make it creamy.  The color was an inviting yellow, the color of most of the leaves covering our lawn.

I heated the frozen fried apples up on the stove, and then served them warm with a dollop of the last of the season’s vanilla custard from our local Jarling’s Custard Cup.

The result was a perfect, warming fall meal.  So far, so good, and leftovers for lunch tomorrow!

Shopping at Home

A quart Ziploc bag labeled “greens” with something dark and dried up inside.  A plastic container with a cracked lid from Triple S marked “chicken broth.”  Honkin’ big bags of almonds, pecans, and walnuts from the big box store.  Separate bags of grocery store frozen veggies.  A humungous bag of mixed frozen fruit from when my stepson was living on smoothies after his accident.  Corn from two years ago (from a crop that I remember as being particularly starchy).  Blackberries bought frozen from farmer Greg.  My last Triple S meat order—plastic shrink-wrapped packages spilling willy-nilly—where I over-ordered everything, including dog bones.  A soup which only I liked, so I froze small portions for lunches, then never thawed them.  A precious package of wild-caught smoked salmon from Trader Joe’s, saved for a holiday or brunch.  Ten (!) loaves of bread from half-off Sundays at Pekara Bakery. Cheesecake cut into squares, left over from my son’s birthday. More Ziplocs with shredded yellow squash and zucchini mixed together, a perfect soup filler.  How will I ever be able to empty all of this out enough to defrost my freezers, or even one of my freezers?

How long do things last, I ask myself?  Well, if you turn to the internet, anything over a year old should be tossed, six months for meat or prepared foods.  But I know that a few years ago I managed to turn some ancient, frost-covered raspberries into a delightful jam.  And big veggie soups can disguise that a vegetable has gone from frozen to freeze-dried.  Corn seems to last forever, especially for corn chowder.  Hmmm…

I’m a terrible food hoarder, as I’ve mentioned before.  While others are scouring Pinterest or Houzz for bathroom remodels or wreath design, I am drooling over photos of pantries.  In my current house, in a wonderfully remodeled kitchen, my cabinets have overflowed to the basement. Our basement pantry sits under the front porch, approximately 2’ x 5’, four shelves and a covered floor.  

Having this in the basement forces me to exercise a bit to fetch what I need

In it:  cereal, juice, hot chocolate dry mix, Trader Joe’s backups of ketchup, mayo, tartar sauce, cornichons, capers, roasted red peppers, mustard, jams, canned fish, quinoa, rice, couscous; wine, several different bottles of hard alcohol, liqueurs and mixers which we almost never indulge in; pasta, dried beans, canned tomatoes, canned pumpkin, canned sauerkraut, canned beans, canned coconut milk; boxes of protein bars, fruit cups, juice, crackers, graham crackers for my son’s lunch; on the floor are boxes of La Croix, San Pellegrino, chicken stock, vegetable stock, and beer. And these are not exhaustive lists, by the way.  I forgot about oil, nut butters, popcorn, vinegars, flour, sugar, salt…Move to the back room and you’ll see two chest freezers and an old secondhand fridge (whose freezer door has long been frozen completely shut, who knows what’s behind it…?). 

What's inside the mystery freezer?  We may never know...

Just one of my freezers, filled to the brim

The fridge stashes our backup of local eggs, bulk yogurt, almond milk, and our recent haul of apples from Wolfe Orchard. 

I used to live in an apartment with a tiny kitchen and a single refrigerator with a miniscule freezer.  I had one small cabinet containing canned goods, pasta, cereal, baking goods, and spices.  Soon after my husband moved in—and before I started needing to store breast milk—we bought a cube-proportioned chest freezer for the basement; it was almost never full.  I’m not sure at what point of home-ownership or married family life that I went over the top to start over-storing food.  In this post in my other blog about Surviving Winter’s Worst, I talk a bit about my food hoarding tendencies.  I’m not sure if I have a fear of the zombie apocalypse, or if I just hate endlessly running to the grocery store, but whatever it is has resulted in having to go through my storage areas every once in a while and throwing out stored food long past its glory.  And I hate throwing food away.

A friend recently posted on Facebook her family’s intention to go shopping at home.  They would try to use only ingredients they could find on their shelves.  The first example was a minestrone soup and a big cheese bread; they had every ingredient except for the yeast.  I took this a challenge; how long could I go without going to the store?  I would perhaps allow myself one ingredient per day (celery and lemons never seem to be there when I need them, for example) to buy at the store, but everything else would come from home. I just did a big box store run for perishables, so I should at least be able to go a week without buying food.  I will not even go to the farmer’s market—gasp!  I will post my progress here!  My creativity will be kindled, my frugality at a peak, my family will be inspired, and hopefully my freezers and fridges and shelves will be cleared out in no time! 

And then I can fill them up again. After all, the holidays are coming…

The Not-Cucumber

I started removing the vegetable garden about a week ago, but haven’t been able to finish up until yesterday.  All week my husband has been asking (in his funny French accent), “Did you see the long, big, coh-cohm-ber?”  And every day I look for the “coh-cohm-ber” and can’t find it.  What is he seeing that I can’t see?  I ask myself.  My cucumbers were a vibrant yellow variety this year, as I’ve mentioned, and would reflect the slanting rays of fall sunlight.  But every day as I pass by after walking the dog, I can find nothing.

Yesterday was one of those perfect fall days you don’t want to end.  The sky was a deep, deep blue, the sun was hot, and the breeze was almost musical.  I grabbed my gloves and pulled up stakes, snapped zip-ties, shook clumps of dirt from root balls, and folded up my vines into compost bags.  I found my labels and washed them off to remember what I planted for next year.  I grabbed the monstrous zucchini vine last of all….and there it was.  Not a “coh-cohm-ber” at all, but a giant, hulking, dark green, hard-to-miss zucchini. Three and a half pounds of not-cucumber.  And three hours later it became not-cucumber bread.

Freshly washed not-cucumber; with a wine bottle, for size comparison

That same husband also picked a huge number of hard, green tomatoes out of the compost when he got home and brought them proudly into the kitchen.  “Here!” he said, triumphantly.  “I brought you these!”  I am pretty sure he knows they’re tomatoes.

I think next year we might need a bit of training.

Meatless Monday and the Chicken Fish Mushroom

Sometimes it’s difficult for me to experiment with new foods or combinations of foods.  I, like anyone, get into a food rut fairly often.  Fortunately, two factors help shake me out of my rut periodically:  meatless Mondays and Claybank Farms’ Farmer Greg.

Meatless Mondays are a way to incorporate more vegetarian entrees into your diet, but without a huge commitment.  I’m always on the lookout for simple vegetarian fare for Monday evenings, and often a fun recipe will catch my eye from my regular email, blog, or Facebook feeds.  Not so yesterday, though.  I was looking for vegetarian comfort food, and not finding it.  And that’s when I thought of the chicken mushrooms.

Greg at Claybank Farms has started a new CSA-type buying club this summer for some of his quick-to-go farmer’s market items.  You pay a certain sum up front (say, $100 or so), Greg calls each Wednesday and gives you a list of his “special offerings” for the coming weekend, then deducts the amount from your card each week. Mushrooms are often on this list, because normally if you don’t make it to the market by about 8:00 a.m., they’re sold out. This way, I can come to the market any time before noon and get my pick of whatever he has available.  Last week he called with an offer of a brand new item:  chicken mushrooms.

Chicken mushrooms?  Chicken mushrooms, I ask?

I google it of course, and find out that chicken mushrooms, Laetiporus, are indeed a common variety of mushroom, and have a texture and flavor similar to white meat.  Mushrooms are rich in B vitamins and hard-to-find minerals, and it seems that this particular variety has the benefit of inhibiting the growth of staph bacteria. 

Greg laughingly told me he was accused of serving his vegetarian guests fish when he cooked the chicken mushrooms into a pasta sauce.  So I needed to find out for myself if they tasted like chicken or fish…

I chopped them into thin slices.  It looked more than a little like cooked salmon.  I was leaning towards fish.

I started out with sautéing them in a bit of butter, olive oil, and a couple of minced cloves of garlic.  But I had to add more oil, as they stuck to the bottom of the pan.  I coated them with a bit of flour, then added some chicken broth, a cup and a half of half-and-half, and a half cup of shredded Italian four-cheese blend.  I guess tonight’s dinner wasn’t going to be light vegetarian fare after all.  In hindsight, I should have cooked the mushrooms in broth to start with, as their texture really is quite dense and a bit dry.

 

I combined the creamy garlic mushroom sauce with a package of cooked farfalle, and served some roasted kale on the side.  My son sat down to dinner, took a bite and asked, “is this chicken?”  A few minutes later my husband sat down to eat and said, “I didn’t know we were having salmon.”

I guess the jury’s still out.  I think they taste like mushrooms.

Reflections on gardening

Two little Prescott Fond Blanc melons

Two tiny little lonely melons.  That’s all that’s left of my resplendent raised bed vegetable garden.  Oh, occasionally a particularly persistent band of yellow grape tomatoes will appear, or a sadly deformed cucumber, but it is clear that autumn has arrived.  The rest is just a tangled mess of yellowing vines.  I planted no pumpkins or squash, so I am now headed back to the farmer’s market for local fall vegetables.  And soon I will clear everything out and ready the bed for winter.

So, time to reflect:  what did I learn from my raised bed vegetable garden?

• The raised bed does not keep vines from growing all over the place.  Of course this is obvious, but I was amazed at how quickly they escaped the confines of the bed and started to spread into our driveway.  More and stronger vertical structures would be useful for keeping tomatoes, cucumbers, and melons corralled. Also, pinching off some of the new vine growth when actual tomatoes first start to appear will increase production, a trick I learned from my mother-in-law, but forgot to employ.
• Fewer is better.  Overcrowding the plants cut down on my production, with the bigger plants shading the smaller plants.  My raised bed limits my space, for better or for worse.
• Fortunately, my current spot is perfect for sun/shade.
• Consistent watering can extend the growing season and increase the yield.  Duh.  I stopped watering too early, thinking that the season was over.  I kept getting smaller and smaller versions of the original produce; my little plants didn’t want to give up!
•  I know why my grandmother spent so much time with a hoe in her hands.  It really does help to hoe the weeds and aerate the soil around the plants, so rain and watering sinks in, instead of running off.
•  I can grow bell peppers!
•  I can grow greens!
• Almost anything will ripen if left on my kitchen counter, not piled on anything else, and if the house is relatively cool and dry.  If I can keep the dog away from it.  Green peppers magically turn red.  Pale yellow tomatoes turn a luscious orange.  Melons start to perfume the house.
• Even with poor production, heirloom plants, a “new” raised bed, “imported” topsoil, spoilage, and sacrifices to squirrels, I think I saved money.  The tomatoes alone would have cost the same amount as the load of topsoil if I had bought them at the farmer’s market, and I know exactly how these are grown.
• Gardening is hard.  Gardening is also easy.  But every bit of effort and patience is worth it in the long run.

Can’t wait to start planning for next year’s ultra-local harvest!