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Summer Shape-Up: Sane + Organic
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Pass by any magazine rack this month, and the hard-to-miss
cover lines will seem all too familiar: “Lose 10 Pounds in...
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| 2. |
Caesar salad recipe
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Ingredients
1 clove garlic
4-6 anchovy fillets
3 tablespoons Parmesan cheese
1 egg
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon wine vinegar
4 slices bread, cut thin
2 tablespoons butter
2 heads of romaine
Procedure
Mash the garlic in a large wooden salad bowl, rubbing it well around the sides. Let it stand thus for a few minutes, then scrape out and discard the garlic pulp. Put the anchovy fillets and cheese into the bowl and mash them to a smooth paste. Add raw egg to the anchovy-cheese mixture and work smooth. If you are concerned about the quality of your eggs for raw use, you may coddle it by cooking it in fast-boiling water for one minute, just enough to cut the edge of rawness. Blend in the oil and vinegar. Neither salt nor pepper is needed.
Make croutons by buttering the bread on both sides, cubing it small, and browning the croutons in the oven until crisp.
Wash the romaine well, dry and crisp it. Break it into the bowl, sprinkle on the croutons and toss lightly in the dressing until every leaf is coated and the dressing absorbed by the croutons.
Serves 4 to 6.
Recipe source: adapted from House & Garden, June 1956
Photo credit: Michael Newman
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| 3. |
Seeing October in a new light
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By Barbara Damrosch, published Thursday, September 20, 2007 in The Washington Post
When T.S. Eliot wrote "April is the cruelest month," he might have added, "October is seriously underrated."
Consider those two months. We expect from both a temperature range midway between hot and cold, with unpredictable doses of either. But gardeners, especially, embrace April with exaggerated hope and cheer, oblivious to the imminent onset of blistering heat, drought and bolted lettuce. By October many edge wearily and even gratefully into the shadow of oncoming winter, forgetting to enjoy the gardening year's best weather.
Poke your head outside the cocoon of artificial lighting and controlled indoor temperature, and you'll better understand the rhythm of the seasons' lag time, a planetary dance in which reality and symbol rarely mesh. What we call summer solstice (around June 21) runs about two months ahead of the year's hottest weather, and the winter solstice (around Dec. 21) two months ahead of its coldest. "As the days begin to lengthen, the cold begins to strengthen," the old saying goes.
The number of daylight hours on the spring equinox (around March 21) is the same as that on the fall equinox (around Sept. 22), but while the sun in March seems feeble, in September it feels strong, thanks to the slowness with which the earth absorbs and releases the sun's heat. In spring the warming of the soil surface can lag a month and a half behind that of the air on a mild day, and six feet below, the lag can be as much as three months. In fall, the ground is comparably slow to chill.
This all adds up to fall gardening nirvana. The earth is still warm, even if you start the day with a thick sweater. Pest insects are bundling themselves up in pupae to hibernate or seeking refuge underground. The shortening days let you get away with feats impossible in spring. Lettuce and spinach, whose impulse to go to seed is triggered by lengthening days, do not bolt cruelly, but bide their time, allowing a gloriously long harvest. Arugula loses its harsh bite. Carrots, beets, turnips, parsnips and Brussels sprouts begin the magical sweetening-up that comes with the cold.
As maples turn scarlet, Tuscan kale glows with the deep green of chlorophyll. By the time such summer crops as tomatoes, cucumbers and melons have frozen or lost their flavor, far more crops have reached the perfect moment. You're then ready to compost all those tired vines and embrace the garden's benign season.
Article copyright of Barbara Damrosch. Reprinted with permission.
Photo credit: Veronica Lynn
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| 4. |
December 2007 Newsletter
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Dear Kitchen Gardener,
There are
different ways of knowing whether winter has arrived. If you're in
Maine, the joke goes, you know because the driving actually improves as
the potholes fill up with snow. You can also tell the old
fashioned way by looking at the thermometer. Mine read 8 wintry degrees
(-14 C) this morning. Consulting the calendar is another popular,
albeit controversial, way. Astonomically speaking, winter is due
this Friday, but,
meteorologically, the calendar says that winter already arrived the
first week of December. Hmmm.
As with other
perplexing life questions, I like to turn to my compost pile for
guidance. Northern gardeners like to say that winter hasn't really
arrived until your compost pile is frozen solid and hasn't really left
until your pile has thawed completely. Up until last week,
my hot pile of
leaves, grass clippings, and kitchen scraps was still chugging along
nicely, melting its way through all the white stuff the sky has been
dropping on us since late November. Coincidentally, up until last
week, we were also still harvesting salad greens from our cold frames,
arguably the best-tasting greens of the year (but I admit that part of
this is due to the "it's-winter-and-I-am-still-eating-from-my-garden!"
factor which is one nature's best flavor enhancers.)
The past few days
of snow, ice, and bitter cold, however, have changed things remarkably,
putting my compost pile's
soil bacteria and worms on the defensive. If you look closely at the
photo above taken earlier today, you can see a bit of melting taking
place, but I think it's safe for me to oil up my compost fork's handle
and put it to bed for the winter.
This winter was interesting in how suddenly it came
upon us in my area. One day, I was outside in a light sweater
raking leaves and
planting garlic, the next day I was all bundled up with a snow
shovel in my hands.
A
gardening article in the New York Times a few years back suggested
that instead of talking about global warming, we should be using the
term "global weirding". While the trend is definitely toward
warming, there'll be a lot of weirdness along the way. Speaking of
the New York Times, I've been following their coverage of local food
issues these days and even managed to contribute
2 cents of my own to the debate through a letter to the editor published
in last Sunday's edition.
Another item in
the "good news" category: I learned last month that I have been chosen
as a "Food
and Society Fellow" by the Thomas Jefferson Agricultural Institute.
I'm pretty excited about this and I don't excite easily. That
award and your generous support will help me to keep KGI going and
growing, even during the dark, cold days of winter.
Don't worry,
though, about the award going to my head, at least not this winter.
It will need to penetrate a thick wool hat first.
Happy holidays,
PS: I'm busy making your
holiday gift. It's not so much a new gift, but a better version of
an old one, a gift that will allow you to grow as gardener, learn new
things, contribute your knowledge to the gardening commons, connect with
and help new gardening friends, near and far. Have you guessed
yet? It might be too late for the holidays, but will be just in
time for those of you itching to talk about gardening before the ground
and the weather allow you to do any.
PPS: Stay tuned in January as
a "special KGI correspondent" will be reporting from Argentina on a
school garden project that we're helping to launch.
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| 5. |
Pole bean or out-of-control bean?
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By Barbara Damrosch, published Thursday, August 2, 2007 in The Washington Post
If pole beans are allowed to get into trouble, they will. Early on, they are like a good baby that sleeps through the night. You poke the conveniently fat seeds into the ground, then let the warmth and easy moisture of late spring nudge forth the young shoots -- big healthy-looking things grouped in tidy circles at the base of their poles or lined up in long rows.
A vine will sometimes seem to hesitate in its upward climb, poised like an acrobat a few feet above the soil as if looking for a trapeze to clutch. That's your cue to guide it gently in the direction of the pole, trellis or fence you have provided for its support. Sometimes a lethargic plant will need to be lifted bodily from the ground and taught to twine. But from then on it's go, go, go.
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