I Love Polar Bears

The New, the Interesting and the Unusual (Vegetables, That Is)

Posted on March 24, 2013 by Patricia

This post first appeared on goshencommons.org on February 9, 2013.

oakley_0216a

I have culled my seed catalog collection. Now begins the process of carefully going through each one and making my first-round choices of seeds to buy for the spring. I will then make a list and realize that there is no way that everything will be able to fit into the garden. That will mean that I will have to go through a second round of seed selection and make a shorter list. This will continue until I decide on a quantity that I think I can manage (and one that will not break my budget).

Every year, I like to plant at least one thing new to me. This year, I had already decided that would be hops. But I can’t help but be drawn to the new, the interesting and the unusual. As I went through the vegetable sections of the catalogs this year, these are the items that caught my attention.

Amaranth: This is usually grown as an ornamental, but has edible leaves. I also may be able to use the seed in bread. That sounds quite exciting.
Celeriac: This is a type of celery, grown for its roots. I’m interested in it, because I’ve read that it stores well in a root cellar, or, in my case, the basement.
Horseradish: I’m not sure how or when I would use this, but I’m intrigued by the idea of growing horseradish.
Kohlrabi: I’ve seen kohlrabi, but I’ve never grown it, nor have I ever cooked it. But, like celeriac, it also can be stored in a root cellar.
Quinoa: It looks like this would be a striking addition to the garden with colorful seed heads.
Mushrooms: These are typically grown indoors, but one of my seed catalogs has a variety that can afterwards be put into the outdoor garden.
Salsify: This is supposed to taste like a cross between artichokes and oysters. That sounds weird enough to be intriguing.

I haven’t even started looking at the herbs or the fruits or the wildflowers. Maybe I should stop now and make my first-round list.

What have you planted that is interesting and unusual? Do you have any experience with any of the plants on my list? Please leave comments. I’d love to hear about your experiences.

Categories: Garden | Tags: flora, garden | Leave a comment

The Aesthetics of Seed Catalogs

Posted on March 22, 2013 by Patricia

This post first appeared on goshencommons.org on February 9, 2013.

Seed catalogs are arriving in my mailbox almost daily now. Some go directly into the recycling. Some go into the basket of magazines and catalogs near the door for perusal at a later time. Some come into the house with me for immediate consideration.

What differentiates these catalogs is not the content (though I do tend to favor organic and heirloom seeds over the conventional variety). What differentiates these catalogs is their aesthetics.

First there is the size. Seed catalogs come in all sorts of sizes. The catalogs that are in large tabloid sizing go immediately into the recycling. That size is just too cumbersome. They are hard to hold. I can’t easily sit in bed or in a comfy chair and pore over each page. The bottom crinkles on my lap and gets creases in weird places unless I hold the catalog higher, but then my arms get tired. It is just not worth the bother. So into the recycling they go.

The other sizes are much more manageable. There is the traditional magazine size, which is reasonable to handle. Then there is a smaller size – a bit taller than a paperback, but not much wider. All these catalogs deserve a look.

Once I have determined that a catalog is worth looking at, I open it. Now comes the next differentiating criterion: the layout of the interior pages. Some catalogs are crammed full of little pictures of plants on each page. Accompanying the barrage of little pictures is the tiny font that describes the seeds. When I look at such pages there is an overload of information. I have to strain to read the type. I get agitated. I cannot relax and enjoy the experience of savoring each page. Into the recycling they go.

Often associated with the amount of information on each page is the amount of color on each page. Sometimes the colors are much too bright. Sometimes there are just too many colors crammed together on a single page. I much prefer more muted colors and a more coherent color scheme. So if the colors in a catalog disturb me, into the recycling it goes.

Some catalogs try to catch your attention by highlighting certain seeds as award winners or the catalog “choice.” All those extra icons and symbols make the pages look messy. I particularly dislike those catalogs that are alarmist in nature and pronounce that this will be your “last chance” to purchase some seed variety. Really? It will be my last chance ever? Are those seeds going extinct? Into the recycling these catalogs go.

So now I have pared down my selection of catalogs: they are of a reasonable size, and they have a reasonable number of selections of seeds on each page and a soothing color scheme. Now come some finer distinctions.

Catalogs are printed on different types of paper. Most of them are printed on glossy magazine paper. Some are printed on rough, grayish newsprint paper. I must say that I do prefer either white paper or glossy paper, though I feel that I should like the newsprint best. (Is newsprint more biodegradable?) Though I have a preference for the type of paper, I don’t dismiss any catalog simply on that basis.

Some catalogs have text boxes that discuss planting tips and germination times in addition to the description of the seeds that they sell. This is all helpful information. My estimation of those catalogs rises.

So, you may be wondering by now what is my favorite catalog. I am not sure that I can answer that. There are several catalogs that I enjoy perusing and from which I purchase seeds.

However, if I were to select a catalog for purely aesthetic reasons, there is one catalog that stands out above the rest.This catalog is magazine sized, with just a few seed selections on each page. The color scheme is very muted. In fact, many of the pages are just charcoal print on white paper with dusty green headings. The paper is white but not glossy, heavier than regular laser-print paper, but not as heavy as cardstock. And there are no photos at all. Instead, there are drawings, some in color, some just in that dusty green color.

Even though this catalog is not packed with seed selections, it gives me the impression that the seeds that are offered have been carefully chosen. The presentation is beautiful. I’ve already started starring those seeds I am interested in getting. And I am sure that I will look at this catalog, John Scheepers Kitchen Garden Seeds, over and over again.

Categories: Backyard, Garden, Lifestyle | Tags: garden | Leave a comment

From Cheese Sandwiches to 52 Pints of Pickles

Posted on March 19, 2013 by Patricia

This post first appeared on goshencommons.org on Feb. 2, 2013

As a teenager, I had decided that I was never going to do traditional household work such as cooking. I was going to be a professional woman and live solely on cheese sandwiches and ice cream.

Though Pete still does most of the cooking in our house, I do sometimes cook. And I certainly do engage in food preservation: canning, freezing and storing produce in our basement.

So what changed?

What changed is that I started growing my own food.

Even though I didn’t want to cook, I still had this desire to plant things – edible things. So I planted. And edible things grew. And then I needed to do something with the produce that I had grown. I wanted to cook with it. And, before I knew it, I was making more than cheese sandwiches. oakley_0202a

Even more than cooking the bounty from my garden, I wanted to store it so that I would have my homegrown produce over the winter months. Looking back over my preserving tallies from 2009 and 2010, I think I may have gotten a little carried away. Fifty-two pints of sweet pickles and 45 half-pints of red hot sauce seems a little excessive. We’re still eating those pickles and that hot sauce from 2009 and 2010 (and likely will for years to come).

I wonder if others have experienced this change in attitude toward cooking (and canning) after growing one’s own food.

(I still do like cheese sandwiches.)

Categories: Garden, Lifestyle, Sustainability | Tags: Lifestyle, Sustainability, vegetarian | Leave a comment

A Summary of My Year of Mathematical Knitting and Crocheting

Posted on January 1, 2013 by Patricia

Now that 2012 is over and 2013 has begun, here is a summary of The Year of Mathematical Knitting and Crocheting.

Hyperbolic Space

Parallel lines and Triangles

A Pseudosphere and a Symmetric Hyperbolic Plane
A Hyperbolic Coral Reef – just for fun

The Möbius Band

The Klein Bottle

Constructed by knitting one Möbius Band and then “gluing” the edges
The Zipped Version
Constructed by crocheting two Möbius bands and then joining them.
The Zipped Version

Fractals and the Sierpinski Triangle

Seifert Surfaces (of the Trefoil Knot)

The Projective Plane

Categories: Fiber, Knitting, Math | Tags: Hyperbolic Plane, Klein Bottle, math, Möbius Band | Leave a comment

Remembrance of Thanksgivings Past

Posted on November 22, 2012 by Patricia

Though my parents were immigrants to the U.S., we embraced the Thanksgiving Holiday, complete with all the traditional Thanksgiving foods: cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes, and, of course, turkey, stuffing, and gravy.

A day or so before Thanksgiving, the turkey, if frozen, came out of the freezer and went to soak in some cold water in the sink to thaw. But Thanksgiving morning, the preparations began in earnest. Bright and early in the morning, probably as early as some children get up on Christmas day, I would bound out of bed because I had an important job to do. My job was to toast and cube the many loaves of store-bought bread that would go into the stuffing. The toaster came off the counter and onto the kitchen table to be better able to access it. I sat at the table, happily toasting and cubing amidst the bustle of other activities. On top of the stove, onions and celery were being fried in butter for the stuffing. The turkey was washed, inside and out, and the neck, the liver, but not the kidneys nor the heart, went into a pot with some vegetables and water for the turkey stock. The sweet potatoes were washed.

Finally, mid-morning, everything was ready to be assembled. Toast cubes were mixed with onions and celery in an enormous bowl with generous amounts of poultry seasoning. When everything was mixed, we all got small bowls of this stuffing for our breakfasts. Then the stuffing of the bird commenced. Thread and needle were prepared. Someone would stand the turkey up while someone else packed the stuffing into main cavity. Slices of apple were positioned at the opening. And then skin was overlapped and stitched with needle and thread. The bird was flipped over and more stuffing was put into the other end. More thread was used to tie the legs together, a roasting pan was lined with aluminum foil, and the bird went into the pan, covered with more aluminum foil, and finally put in the oven. At some point, sweet potatoes were positioned around the roasting pan.

Then there was the waiting, during which the china was taken out of storage boxes and the table was set. After hours of cooking, the turkey was finally removed from the oven and the frantic last-minute making of the gravy using the stock and the all-important drippings from the roasting pan took place. Around the table, dishes were piled high with slices of jellied cranberry sauce from a can, baked sweet potatoes cut in half, turkey slices, mountains of stuffing, and hot gravy poured over it all.

Now, preparations proceed at a more leisurely pace, since dinner is often late in the afternoon. Marriage brought another tradition into my family preparations: my husband makes pies, both a pumpkin pie and a pecan pie, usually baked the night before.Fresh cranberry relish replaces the canned jellied cranberry sauce. The dressing includes kale from our garden. We are now vegetarians, so there is no turkey to stuff, but a celebratory roast from Field Roast to bake. Gravy is made with vegetable stock. Sweet potatoes are still baked, but sometimes wild rice with mushrooms is added to the menu. Something green, usually a salad, is included.

Family gathers. Festivities begin.

Categories: Lifestyle | Tags: cooking, Thanksgiving, traditions | 1 Comment

Perennial Leads to Soup, Thoughts of the Grandmother Who Once Made It

Posted on November 17, 2012 by Patricia

This post first appeared on goshencommons.org on November 17, 2012

In previous posts, I introduced two plants in the international collection of green leafy perennials growing in my garden: Russian Kale and Italian Cardoon. Today, I want to talk about a third plant, French Sorrel.

When I was growing up, we didn’t have much of a garden, but one plant that we grew year after year in our tiny backyard was sorrel.

Sorrel is a perennial green with a tart, lemony taste to the leaves. I loved picking the leaves and munching on their sour goodness. (As I mentioned before, I was a child with an unusual predisposition to like strange vegetables and fruits).

My babushka, who lived with us, would make a sorrel soup. We called it, in Russian, schavel. She must have learned how to cook this soup in her native Belarus, and I learned to devour this soup with delight. But then my grandmother died; I moved away from my childhood home; and I forgot all about both sorrel and schavel.

A couple of years ago I saw sorrel advertised in one of those seed catalogs that I get in the mail every winter and the thought of schavel compelled me to buy a seed packet of French Sorrel. I planted the seeds next to the asparagus in the perennial garden bed behind the garage. And then I went in search of a recipe for schavel.

My mum did not remember the recipe, but she did have lots of Slavic cookbooks. I perused them with her, trying to find a recipe that was close to what we remembered that her mother, my babushka, made. In “Traditional Ukrainian Cookery” by Savella Stechishin, we found a recipe for schavel that was pretty close but not quite the same. So we modified.

Here is our recipe:

——

Sorrel Soup

1 onion, chopped

3-4 stalks celery

6 cups vegetable broth

3 cups chopped sorrel

1/2 cup sour cream

Salt

Pepper

Dill

Fry the onion and celery in butter or olive oil until transparent and soft. Add the vegetable broth and bring to a boil. Stir in the chopped sorrel and continue cooking. The sorrel will wilt and get soft quickly. Slowly add the sour cream to the soup, stirring so that lumps do not form. Heat through. Season with salt, pepper and dill. Puree the soup in a blender. Serve with homemade bread, butter and more sour cream.

——

Sorrel is derived either from the Germanic word “sur” or from the French word “surele” that, in both cases, means “sour.” Its flavor derives from oxalic acid, a compound present in rhubarb leaves (which we don’t eat) as well as in spinach and chard (which we do eat). While high amounts of oxalic acid should be avoided by those with kidney problems, healthy individuals should be able to eat sorrel without any problems. Sorrel is easy to grow, comes back year after year and is useful for flavoring soups and sauces.

Sorrel soup is sometimes served with a hard boiled egg, cut in slices, in the bottom of the bowl. Though I have never had this soup with egg, the description in “Here Is Where We Meet: A Story of Crossing Paths”, by John Berger, does make me bit nostalgic.

You cut the egg into slices, and you eat it with the green soup. And the mixture of the sharp green acidity and the round comfort of the egg reminds you of something extraordinary and far away.

Sorrel, green, lemony, tart and altogether good, is a great addition to the homesteader’s garden.

Categories: Garden, Lifestyle | Tags: Recipe | Leave a comment

It’s Green! It’s Leafy! It Comes Back Every Year! It’s Super Food!

Posted on November 3, 2012 by Patricia

This post first appeared on goshencommons.org on November 3, 2012

As much as I love planting seeds every year, I love plants that come back every year on their own. In my garden, these plants include cherries, raspberries, pears (though I only get fruit every two years), strawberries, rhubarb, asparagus and the super food – kale!
I don’t know if kale is supposed to be perennial. Does it re-seed? Does it spread from roots? I don’t know. What I do know is that the variety I planted several years ago (Red Russian) does come back year after year. After one particularly cold winter it was a bit scrawny in the spring. But it survived and came back in full force the following year.

Kale is a great food. Here are some facts about kale.

Kale belongs to the brassica family of vegetables. Other brassicas are cabbage and Brussels sprouts. Kale is like an open-leafed cabbage with similar firm leaves.
Kale is a good source of many nutrients, including beta-carotene, lutein, calcium, and vitamins A, C and K.
One cup of cooked kale contains about 2.5 grams of protein and about 5 grams of dietary fiber.
Kale has been cultivated for many, many years. It probably originated in the Mediterranean region.
Kale grows well in cool weather, so it is an ideal plant to have in your fall or spring garden.
In addition to surviving the winter, kale does spread. I don’t mind since I like kale so much. I even now have kale growing in my lawn.

Kale is, apparently, pretty trendy now. I’ve even seen kale chips in the store. But I started growing kale before I was aware of its increasing popularity.

My favorite way to prepare kale is quick and easy. I rarely go to recipe books, preferring instead to just throw some ingredients together and see what happens. That’s how this recipe (if you can call a loose set of instructions a recipe) came into being. I had lots of kale in my garden and wanted to make something with what I had on hand at the time. I loved the result.

Kale with Onions and Tomato

Get out your largest frying pan. I have a relatively deep cast iron frying pan that I use for just about anything I want to make.
Chop an onion and fry in some olive oil until transparent. If I have garlic on hand, and remember, then I might also fry minced garlic along with the onion.
Chop up a bunch of kale. How much is a bunch? Well, I really don’t know. I just pick kale from my garden until it fills up my market basket.
Add the chopped kale to the onions in the frying pan and cook it until it wilts. I usually have picked so much kale that it doesn’t all fit in the frying pan at once. But kale wilts down quickly. As I cook the kale, I add more of the raw kale until all is cooked.
Add spices as desired. Here is where you can get creative. Do you want an Italian flavor? Then you can add oregano and thyme. Do you want something more spicy? That calls for red pepper. I like to experiment with spices. I don’t usually add salt, instead relying on other spices and herbs to provide flavoring.
When the kale is all wilted, stir in some tomato paste and heat through. Again, I can’t really tell you how much tomato paste to add – it depends on the amount of kale – but I would start with just a small can, enough to coat the greens, but not make the dish saucy or soupy.
Serve warm on toast.

I’ve been making this kale dish for years. Imagine my surprise when I found a similar recipe written down in a cookbook. “Simply in Season” has a recipe for Savory Kale that uses the same ingredients. The instructions are somewhat different, however. I don’t add water and I don’t cover the pan to steam the kale and I cook everything together rather than separately, but, otherwise, Savory Kale is very much like my recipe.

“Simply in Season” has other recipes for kale and other greens. Greens in Peanut Sauce has become another favorite way of preparing kale. That recipe has the unlikely combination of peanut butter and tomato, but these ingredients surprisingly blend together quite nicely. Another way we’ve used kale is as a substitute for spinach in a vegetarian lasagna.

So, if you haven’t yet, give kale (trendy but timeless) a try.

Categories: Garden | Leave a comment

M	T	W	T	F	S	S
		1	2	3	4	5
6	7	8	9	10	11	12
13	14	15	16	17	18	19
20	21	22	23	24	25	26
27	28	29	30	31