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October 2007 Newsletter
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To read the full newsletter online, please see: www.kitchengardeners.org/newsletteroctober07.html
Dear Kitchen Gardener,
How do like them love apples? Aren't they beauties! Well,
not beautiful in the conventional, airbrushed, Gourmet magazine
kind of way. The beauty, for me, is being able to enjoy my own
reddish tomatoes in late October in Maine after the first light
frost.
True, they may not make the
cut for tonight's starting salad team, but they'll do just fine simmered
in a sauce or
slow-roasted to bring out their latent sweetness. They may
well be our last sauce tomatoes of the year.
It's been quite a run for us
this year, tomato-wise. I can't even guess how many cranks I've given
on my food mill (my new favorite kitchen gadget) over the past 6 weeks.
All of this brings me in a round-about kind of way to the theme of this
month's newsletter: one person' trash is another person's pleasure
or, if you prefer, one person's waste is another person's taste.
Yes, I realize those may not be expressions you're accustomed to
hearing, but they're ones deserving some consideration.
Tomatoes like mine would end
up in the waste bin if they dared infiltrating the ranks of the
picture-perfect, red, round globes that grace the shelves at the local
supermaket. They would be deemed an eye-sore and most likely a
health risk in our bacterophobic culture. For me, though, I see them and
think "pasta al pomodoro" and "Superbowl Chili". With nearly 20
bags of them in our chest freezer, we'll be thinking lots of different
things right through the winter, all of them tasty.
In this month's round-up of
articles and videos, we take a closer look at trash, treasure, waste,
and taste.
Barbara Damrosch's latest article encourages us to go gleaning in
our own gardens. You might be surprised at what you'll find.
3000 miles away, in Portland, Oregon, a group of people from a nonprofit effort called
The Portland Fruit Tree Project is
thinking similar thoughts. A short video follows them as they go
on an
urban fruit gleaning mission, something my family and I have been
doing this month with our neighbor's apple trees. Our neighbor
sees apples with blemishes, we see apple sauces, crumbles, and pies.
In a
world still very much in the grips of hunger and malnutrition, work
like this should be taking place in every community where neglected
fruit trees and underharvested crops can be found.
You know this already, but I
think that we, the organic kitchen gardeners of the world, have an
important role to play in changing people's perceptions about food.
We know better than anyone else that there's really no such thing as
trash when it comes to the garden. What doesn't make the grade for
the table is always a welcome addition to the
compost pile where it awaits magical transformation into next year's
pleasure.
Warmly,
PS: 2008 has just been named
the International Year
of the Potato by the United Nations. If you have a clever idea
how KGI might celebrate potatoes next year,
don't be shy in sharing it.
PPS: And don't be shy in
general. I'd love to hear from you on what we're doing right or
what we might do differently. You're also invited to comment on our
articles and share some of your own knowledge or lack thereof, as the
case may be. That's what the comment form is for at the bottom of
each page!
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| 4. |
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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| 5. |
A berry good activity for kids
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By Barbara Damrosch, published Thursday, November 1, 2007 in The Washington Post
An emerging tribe of hunter-gatherers colonized our farm this week. Look out the window and you'll see them creeping down the rows of crops, nibbling as they go, or reaching into low tree branches for apples. They are the grandchildren, and they know, with a primitive wisdom, how food should best be eaten. Send a grown-up out to pick raspberries for supper and he'll come back promptly with a quart. Send a young child forth with an empty yogurt container hanging from her neck by a string and she'll come back with a berry mustache, the container as empty as before.
Among this summer's best memories is the one of the 2-year-old twins, Heidi and Emily, gorging naked on tiny alpine strawberries during a warm July rain. Recently their 3-year-old cousin, Bode, joined them for the almost endless harvest of these ever-bearing fruits. The blueberries were finished for the year, but there were still a few raspberries left, and one day Bode walked in with a fistful of green pods filled with sweet, fat fall peas to savor, one by one. His grandfather lifted him up so he could reach the Swenson Red grapes dangling from the arbor. There were even some cherry tomatoes in the garden. Nobody of any age can resist the sight of red Sweet 100s or yellow Sungolds beckoning from the vines.
Everybody at our place is a perpetual grazer when easy-pick goodies are in season, but it's especially heartening to see the kids go at it. Foraging gives them hours of amusement (much more harmonious than those spent fighting over toys) and the idea that fruits and vegetables are not something they are told to eat, but delicious prizes they go out and win, all by themselves. Pretty soon, Preschool Nation will be out in fleece jackets, pulling our winter carrots, as sweet as candy, from the cold soil. One of them just came in with a fistful of kale, not yet ready to try it but, well, interested.
Even if you are not a parent or grandparent, there is no better way to welcome young neighbors or visitors than to send them out on a fruit-finding mission. And even if you are not yet a gardener, watching such a scene might turn you into one. What better introduction could children have to real food and its source in the good earth?
The snack aisle at the food store is not something you'd ever want to imitate, but it does provide a useful challenge. Make sure the rows in your garden are just as tempting, and no one will even mention candy.
Article copyright of Barbara Damrosch. Reprinted with permission.
Photo credit: Adam Clarke
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