October 2007 Newsletter
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!
continue reading...
Added on: Oct 31, 2007 in
Category:
From the Garden
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Other News in the From the Garden category |
| 2. |
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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| 3. |
Optimal timing for your garlic harvest
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Plants tell us a lot with their leaves. In the case of garlic, they tell us when the bulb is ready for harvest. Or do they?
Scanning some of the literature written by expert growers, we saw differing opinions on what harvest signs we should be looking for:
Garlic is mature when the tops fall over (mid July to early August).
-Eliot Coleman, Author of the Four Season Harvest
When half to three-quarters of the leaves turn yellow-brown, it's harvest time.
-Organic Gardening Magazine
Each green leaf above ground represents a papery sheath around the cloves. Once the leaf tips begin to yellow and die back, its time to dig the garlic. The lower six to eight leaves still being fully green indicate optimal harvest timing: This allots 5 to 7 protective wrappers around the bulb after curing. Our harvest here in northern New Hampshire begins the latter part of July and gets completed by the first week of August.
-Michael Phillips, Heartsong Farm
It's time to harvest garlic in the late summer when the bottom two or three leaves have turned yellow or the tops fall over.
-Ed Smith, author of the Vegetable Gardener's Bible
Harvest in summer when the bottom leaves are beginning to yellow and before more than one or two leaves turn brown (July through August).
-University of Wisconsin Cooperative Extension
Fully green, yellow, or brown: so who's right? Well, in a way, you could say that all of them are. It depends on what your garlic goal is. The longer you wait, the larger the bulb. The danger in waiting too long is that the bulb will start to split apart into individual cloves. If Michael Phillips urges an earlier harvest when the plant is still upright and showing a lot of green, it's because he has a different goal: long term storage. An earlier harvest helps insure that the garlic cloves are "well-wrapped" for fall and winter feasts.
One surefire way of knowing whether your garlic is ready is to dig up a test bulb. If it's a decent size and seems well formed, then you can harvest the rest of your crop with confidence.
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| 4. |
Backyard chickens: local omelets or fowl play?
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Urban and suburban chickens have a buzz about them these days that hasn't been seen in several generations. It makes sense that if people are looking to shorten the distance between field and fork, some of them will also want to shorten the distance between fork and omelet. This "fair and balanced" video presents the two sides of the backyard chicken debate as it is playing out in Missoula, Montana and in many other parts of the US.
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| 5. |
Chocolate Zucchini Cake recipe
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Do you think you'll die if you see another zucchini? Well then here's a recipe to die for. The photographer made hers in a Bundt pan, but the recipe below suggest a 13 x 9 baking pan. Either way, you're going to love this cake. Before you know it, you'll be out in the garden pulling back leaves looking for one or two zucchini for another batch.
Ingredients
2 1/4 cups sifted all purpose flour
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 3/4 cups sugar
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup buttermilk
2 cups grated unpeeled zucchini (about 2 1/2 medium)
1 6-ounce package (about 1 cup) semisweet chocolate chips
3/4 cup chopped walnuts
Procedure:
Preheat oven to 325°F. Butter and flour 13 x 9 x 2-inch baking pan. Sift flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt into medium bowl. Beat sugar, butter and oil in large bowl until well blended. Add eggs 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in vanilla extract. Mix in dry ingredients alternately with buttermilk in 3 additions each. Mix in grated zucchini. Pour batter into prepared pan. Sprinkle chocolate chips and nuts over.
Bake cake until tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 50 minutes. Cool cake completely in pan.
Serves 12.
Recipe source: Bon Appétit, November 1995
Photo credit: Tania Ho
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Other News |
Tried 'n' True: Throw this salad together day before carry-in
We are always looking for something different. We have a salad this week, again from Rita Bumpus. You have all these Christmas dinners, also carry-in for your church party. Here is something you can throw together the day before for next day’s party.
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Everyday Menus: No Cook Recipes
