End of the Harvest

 
I can't believe we have so few photos of the garden from this fall. I found this video from sometime in November. The most recent photos are from early September! We've been busy growing a baby, I guess. We have scads and scads of pictures of my belly (with the garden in the background), but no garden.

We did get the garlic in -- just in time -- and planted great deal of it. You can never grow too much!

I know that the baby will consume our minds and arms, but I hope we still make time for the garden. I suspect much of the work will fall to me, as I will be home until April 7th. I look forward to planning where we will plant this year and what seeds we'll order, all good chores for cold winter days. David did most of the hard labor last year, owing to my exhaustion and restrictions on my movement, so it's only fair -- and it will feel good.

Our favorite baby outfit has a garden theme. My sister-in-law Laurie gave us two cute onesies with tomatoes and garden implements. I can't wait to get Virginia in them. I bought the next size up, too, because I didn't want her to outgrow them!

Right now, our only green thumb activity is forcing blooms on the bay window. I'll snap some shots soon, and then again after the holidays when the amarylis go on sale.

-- Camille

Zucchini Bread and Zucchini Quiche

Like most people, we had an abundance of zucchini in our garden, so we had to use it in creative ways. I have to share this recipe (at the bottom) for zucchini bread. I can almost always depend on Cooks' Illustrated to provide the best, most researched, most fiddled-with recipe for practically anything. The book The Best Recipe, given to us by Marnie for our wedding, is my go-to book for: - cinnamon buns - cheesecake - beef burgundy - quiche - roasted chicken - turkey for t-giving - etc

In just a little over a year, the proof of this book's worth is evidenced by the number of sticky/flour-y/and stained pages already mucking up the book.

The only two recipes that haven't gone well were the chocolate chip cookies. David said they lacked something -- butter flavor once, a brown sugar depth another time -- and he's always right about chocolate chip cookies; the other recipe that recently failed was Chicken Tikki Masala. It was tasty, and David liked it, but I felt it had twice the amount of fresh ginger and cardamom. I had our neighbor Jalpa taste it. She is Indian-American and a good cook, so she was able to identify the problems.

Anyway, the recipe for zucchini bread was not only delicious, but beautiful. Other breads took on a dark tone, but this one was bright yellow and green. The process was lengthy -- shredding the zucchini and letting it drain -- but worth the effort, and I used the juice in some spaghetti sauce. The zucchini monster I used was larger than New England Patriot Teddy Bruschi's forearm, so it made two large loaves. I added the olbigatory chocolate chips to David's loaf and kept mine pure (no nuts, even, though they would've been good).

Zucchini Bread Recipe

• 2 cups all purpose flour, plus more for dusting pan
• 1 lb zucchini, washed and dried, cut into 1-inch pieces
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup pecans or walnuts, lightly toasted (optional)
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 cup plain yogurt
• 2 large eggs, beaten lightly
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• 6 tablespoons butter, melted and cooled
  

1. Preheat to 375. Grease and flour 9x12 loaf pan.
2. Shred zucchini with 2 tablespoons sugar in 12-15 one-second pulses. Transfer mixture to colander over bowl and allow to drain 30 minutes. (You can also shred with box grater.)
3. Mix flour, nuts, baking soda, powder, and salt in bowl.
4. Whisk together remaining 1/2 cup + 2 tablespoons of sugar, yogurt, eggs, lemon juice, and melted butter.
5. Squeeze zucchini with towels, and stir in yogurt and flour mixture until just combined.
6. Add to loaf pan and bake 55-60 minutes until golden brown and knife comes out clean.

A couple weeks ago, I made this quiche and added zucchini to offset the bacon. (Yum, bacon.) It also looked prettier that way -- especially after adding more fresh herbs and our cherry tomatoes.

How food looks is almost as important as its nutrition.

--Camille

Late Bloomers

Our flowers weren't a complete failure, and David has been interested in documenting up-close flower shots. He printed a bunch of flower and vegetable shots for his classroom. I want some now too!

--Camille

Perambulations

Okay, so these pictures weren't from our garden, but they are inspiration for our flowers next year. We walk regularly in the neighborhood down the street, and although most of the houses are the same style-different color, we do like the passels of kids running around and sharing yards. Everyone we have met has been nice too. Our last encounter was with a man who saw me bending over these plants while David squatted down to take photos of the bees.

The man didn't see David, he said, so he walked over, having seen I was pregnant and in a weird position in his yard. "I got worried something was wrong with you. I hoped you weren't going into labor." Me too!

Two other neighbors came over and we chatted about the neighborhood and flowers while David snapped away happily.

We have some of these sedums(?) in our side yard, and they are quite popular with the bees. Maybe there isn't a virus killing all the fruit pollinators; maybe they are just bored and want to change menus.

These morning glories (?) were open in the evening, so I'm guessing I got the name wrong. We need something like this wrapped around our sad rusty mailbox. Problem is, it's buried in the pavement, so I might need to fashion some sort of split barrel around it to get some plants and color. I'm also hesitant because any flowers we had in the front yard have died because we are never out there to water. Maybe we'll be more conscientious next year. After all, 2008 is the year of the flowers at the Bernsteins'.

These pink geraniums -- I think I got that one right! -- scream for attention. They remind me of high school girls -- vibrant and fresh.

A bonus shot: the Franklin Conservation land on our walk. It's all around us. Our swamp in the back yard is great for animals, but it's not picturesque, and it's difficult to walk through. This scene always pleases us -- all year round.

Tomato Jam

I've been eager to make an old-fashioned condiment: tomato jam. It is a mix of tangy (from tomatoes and lemons), sweet (sugar), and umami -- earthy -- from the pickling spice. I've seen recipes for lamb and tandoori chicken that use it as a condiment.

Our unlimited supply of currant and sun sugars were perfect candidates for the experiment -- and soooo pretty. Picking this batch (left; one day's haul!) might've been the first time the sun sugars have made it into the house. Usually we just eat them off the vine.

The recipe in my home preserving book said to blanch them first, to remove the skins...can you say "not worth the effort"? That drudgery sucked the fun right out of the process, so I ditched the step after the first 20 tomatoes.

Meanwhile, I boiled sugar and water and lemons, and a tea ball filled with pickling spice. I didn't have cheesecloth, and this was my solution -- a good one, until I needed the tea ball afterwards. The sugar created a seal on the ball and made it impossible to open, even after a soak in clean hot water. I tossed it out. (I am out of my loose tea phase anyway.)

Next came the tomatoes and some serious boiling time. So pretty, so fragrant! David, who had been skeptical about tomato jam, came in to the kitchen several times to investigate and comment on the aroma. The recipe didn't call for it, but I added 1/2 a package of pectin to help set the jam.

Finally, I ladled the hot jam into itty-bitty jars -- always a mess, even when Clumsy Camille tries hard -- and boiled them in the canner for 20 minutes. I worried that setting would fail in the jars that tipped over a little, but all seemed well 24 hours later. I love the satisfying, shy, little "pop" of the jars when they seal on the counter.

And here's the final product! We had ours on salmon -- delicious -- and a week later I ate it on crackers with manchego cheese; still later (but not the same night!), I spread it on samosas. I gave a jar to Jalpa, our neighbor who runs the market across the street, who said that her mother (who makes terrific Indian food) loved it. It reminds me a bit of tamarind sauce, so I was pleased with the report.

--Camille

Fit for a Zombie

We don't know what genetic accident caused this tomato's deformity, but we dubbed it "The Brain" -- fit for a zombie's distinguishing palate.

We documented its growth from flowering infancy to succulent death and showed all of our visitors our freak show baby.

The Brain lived an honorable life, brave to the end, when it was featured member of our dinner, shrouded in balsamic vinegar.

At left is pictured (lovingly presented by Farmer Dave) our most ribbon-worthy tomato. This prettier cousin of The Brain is a German Pink variety. (Yeah, it makes me feel a little weird, too, to know that the German Pink is the most genetically "ideal.")

--Camille

Wasted Toms

David told me to make notes on which tomatoes we will grow next year. One of them won't be tumbling toms. While they might do well in a hanging basket, we weren't thrilled with the flavor. Although they are advertised as "sweet, like you expect from a cherry tomato," we found them a little tart and dry. These poor plants suffered the worst of the fungus blight, owing to their leaves' proximity to the soil; interestingly enough, the tomatoes still ripened after all of the leaves were dead -- just not to a flavor we cared for much.

I'll pick the rest of them this weekend and make tomato jam. If they do well, maybe we can find some room for them on the deck next year.

In other tomato tastings, the sun sugars won awards for taste, resilience, and prolificacy. My friend Margaret turned us onto these sweet, yellow babes. Every day we stand outside and, straight off the vine, pop them in our mouths like candy. I struggle when giving away tomatoes to friends and neighbors -- I want them to experience sun sugars, but I'm always measuring our own store. I don't want to run out!

We also loved the stupice, which may be due, in part, to their early appearance -- when we were earnestly desiring the first tomatoes of the season. They are a nice size for sandwiches and prolific enough that we don't need to eye each other suspiciously in those early days, checking each other's measure.

The black krim (in the back on left) are delicious and a little mysterious. How can a pinkish-purple bottomed and green-shouldered tomato be ripe? David still consults me before plucking one from the vine.

Yellow brandywines (middle large tomato) are mellow and beautiful on the vine, so we'll plant those again. We hope they do better next year, however: this year we've gotten only three!

I like having the big cherry reds, because they produce enough for sharing, but we don't need the currant tomatoes as well. I didn't care for their tart flavor off the vine. I suppose we could leave them for salads, but they are problematic anyway: their skins are thick but they still seem to split at the slightest watering. I like how they look, but we haven't the room for such vanity.

We haven't been too impressed with the bessers, so they'll likely give way to more pruden's purple plants. I might add a few new varieties to fill in the gaps: white tomatoes, orange pineapples, and whatever the seed catalog says is the absolute best taste: that'll take some research. Sun sugars will get two more spaces -- maybe where the tumbling toms were this year -- because I just can't get enough of them.

--Camille

Mendel Lives

I have my own little genetics-studying monk here.

David noticed that some of the cucumbers low on the vines were morphing into different shapes. Well, really one new shape: a crook-neck squash shape. These cucumbers happened to be next to the crook-neck squash, and they seemed to be cross-pollinating! They stayed green but got stripes on their plump bottoms. Interbreeding!

I checked online and oops! Garderners' tip: don't plant cucumbers next to squash because they will form hybrids that ruin the flavor of the vegetables. We haven't eaten our "squa-cumbers" yet, but they sure are neat!

We will change their location next year anyway, because the squash just needs more room than we are willing to give with the raised beds. Our patty pan squash plants have dominated the onions and cow beans. Right now we have pumpkins and gourds growing in the lower-40 field, so we'll just extend that and grow more varieties there. (I figure we have six years before we need that lower lot for David's football games with Virginia and Kids #2 [and #3?].)

We'll probably plant potatoes there as well -- unless we discover a new gardeners' tip suggesting otherwise. [Two minutes later: Yup, squash and potatoes can't go together; just found a website about companion planting. Dill and radishes are supposed to be good for squash.]


-- Camille

Coming Soon to a Stomach Near Us

We've got enough ripened tomatoes to branch out from sandwiches (although we've each had one already today). I made a four-tomato and cucumber salad.

We're having it with grilled skirt steak and our own potatoes with our garlic and rosemary.

Heaven.

I take back my aforementioned frustration with the potatoes. We'll move them next year to the lower garden, because they take up prime real estate (and look ugly growing), but they just taste too good to stop growing them altogether.

-- Camille

Summer Blooms

We haven't focused much on our flower garden, but we did plant some perennials and annuals for color -- and Stephanie, David's mom, designed a pretty little patch in the front yard.

There's always next year -- this yard is an ongoing project.

Fruits of Our Labor

In reviewing our posts, I am surprised I haven't mentioned food. Cooking with our own produce is half the reason we garden! Our goal this summer is to have a meal made completely with our own labor, but that's unlikely: the meal would be unbalanced, because we don't raise enough protein or carbs. (If only we'd gotten those chickens I wanted....) Still, more and more of our plates feature our own food.

One of the first meals we made was Easter lunch: crab cakes with cilantro cream, braised fennel, roasted potatoes, roasted beets and artichokes, and a salad, which featured our first lettuces, tender and sweet. (Only the herbs and lettuces were ours.) We grew winter density, pinetree, deer's tongue, tom thumb, mesclun mix, and amaranth, a grain whose leaves are a vivid pink (see left). One of the amaranth (which can also be used as ornamental plantings) is gigantic -- a blazing pink and yellow two-foot plant in the middle of our herbs. We plan on growing some in the flower garden next year.












Our scapes were next, and we ate them with red chioggia beets were grew on the back porch. [We also grew yellow mangle beets, but they were crowded and grew more slowly. Once they were ready, I witnessed a squirrel filching them -- and took a video of his munching because it was cute. We'll consider the donation a tithe to the animals, who have been relatively kind to our garden.] Later, we stuffed trout with scapes and lemons and grilled them outside, inspired by Finn, a prequel to Twain's classic that I was reading at the time.




We didn't grow strawberries, but I picked scads at a local farm and made strawberry pie and 12 jars of strawberry jam. My ADD got the best of me, and I failed to add the sugar and pectin in the right order, so the jam refused to set completely. When I've had it on pb & j sandwiches, I race to lick the sides of the bread before it drips on my lap. The taste is fresh and the color vibrant, but jam it is not, so I've been passing it out to friends as "strawberry topping" for ice cream or yogurt. You know, it's all in the marketing.

Observant bakers will note my lattice [above] is poorly constructed. I am not good with spatial puzzles, and I couldn't follow the drawings in the Cook's Illustrated recipe. As the picture above also shows, I also lost track of time and let the whole mess boil over on the stove. Thank goodness we have an electric range. I can't imagine how hard clean up would've been with the nooks and crannies of a gas stove.


Next on our table were our wonderful purple and yellow bush beans. I made pesto, too, for cheese ravioli and another salad with our cucumbers and lettuces. (The tomatoes weren't ripe yet.) My carnivore husband surprised me by being completely satisfied with this vegetarian meal. Usually, he begrudgingly eats what I serve and laments the lack of meat -- or, inexplicably, supplements his meal with chips. Yes. David is a chip fiend. I am not sure if he likes chocolate or chips better, but each makes an appearance daily in his diet. He's blessed with a rapid-fire metabolism, so he can get away with it.



Then came blueberries, eight pounds of them, and not a one from our own bushes (thanks, birds). Franklin has a blueberry farm smack dab in the middle of town -- 5,000 bushes strong! -- and I stopped in last Saturday after going to a yard sale. The $3.25 a pound they charge is a steal, especially since the experience is pure therapy: 8:30 a.m., 70 degrees, slight breeze, ripe fruit, twittering birds (knocking out half the crop, the owner told me), huge bushes that allow you to stand up straight while picking, and the soft murmuring of people amid the rows. I picked a pound and then drove right home to get David. We returned to pick seven pounds more, and I made a blueberry pie -- with a crumb topping this time -- and served it at board game night with friends. I ate the last piece last night with ice cream. Sigh.

There were many other meals, most of which we didn't photograph, but we made sure to document (in film and video) the pièce de résistance (and -- frankly -- the raison d’être of our garden): our First Tomato Sandwich.

There are hard and fast rules for its construction: dark pumpernickel rye, lightly toasted, generous amounts of mayo (Hellman's regular is the only brand), and several layers of thinly sliced tomatoes. Avoiding delays is important for temperature: you want to bite into the sandwich when the bread is still warm and the mayo melty; the tomatoes should never, ever, EVER be refrigerated.

The type of tomato can vary, based on availability and interest. In this case, we used stupice, because they were the earliest to ripen -- though I did have a second sandwich made of sliced sun sugars (tiny little things), because I couldn't wait torturous days for the other tomatoes to be ready.

David takes the chip selection seriously, which I appreciate (not when we are shopping, but later, when we eat). This year, he couldn't decide, so we had both Pringles originals and Fritos. Chips are nice (and we also had baked beans), but those are really beside the point. Later, when the tomato tornado arrives (we hope!), we'll get more choosy about tomato variety and we might even vary the ingredients (David adds cheese and I add slivers of onion). For now, though, we're aiming for the Platonic ideal.

--Camille

Damage Control

Our tomatoes look like the walking wounded of a battle field. Owing to the abundance of nitrogen in the compost we used, they have grown out of control, outreaching our heads by several feet. Most people's tomatoes are chest high at this point, and our friend Paul's are wonderfully full and abundant. "I don't pick suckers," he said.

Maybe we need to let the suckers go next year but control the top growth. Some of the current tomato plants are ridiculous: bent over double on themselves. We have tied all of the plants to posts, which are woefully short, and tried to salvage some damage from the fungal infection by chopping off more leaves and letting others die off.

I read that copper would help the fungal situation, but I've not gotten myself over to the guys at Agway for help yet. We worked so hard getting the garden started (well, mostly that was David), so I am not sure what accounts for our current malaise. With tomato harvest rapidly approaching, I hope we don't ruin the season!

More embarrassing was our visit from our neighbor who said the garden was bone dry. I knew that, but I'd heard rain was coming all week, and I wanted to let Mother Nature do her stuff first. "Never listen to the news; just water!" Billy said, and he's right. Our raised beds do a good job draining, so overwatering isn't a problem.

Well, today it rained, and it was a light, long rain, which is the best kind for now. That way the tomatoes won't burst with a deluge.

So. Another issue with the tomatoes is the overabundance of small ones. We have current tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, sun sugars, and tumbling toms. All four types are small. We have some monster brandywines, and german pinks (including the bizarre quadruple tomato pictured below [and this is a month-old photo, when it was 4 inches or so]), but very few solid, medium-size tomato-sandwich size fruits. One of our main pleasures is tomato and mayonnaise sandwiches on pumpernickel rye. Cherry tomatoes just won't cut it.
Next year, we've decided, we will plant 6 or 7 standard size tomato plants and then one each of the other, more exotic, varieties.

In happier news, we've eaten wonderful, wonderful yellow pencil pod and royal burgundy bush beans. I wish we had more room for additional plans and varieties. I've given some beans away, just because they are so pretty, but I want more for myself for eating! We've also had more zucchini and squash, pesto from the basil, and herbs. The colors in the garden are spectacular, with bright red peppers and amaranth, and these gorgeous purple eggplants.










The potatoes are still a mystery, and they aren't fun when we pull them up too soon, so I think we'll use that space (which seems wasted now) for more beans next year.

--Camille

Trouble in Eden

We returned from my brother's wedding in Florida to an exploded garden. We had tons of cucumbers (still tiny), loads of lettuce (gone bitter), and missing blueberries. It seems the bluebirds and robins like blueberries. Damn. Serves us right, though, for being so lax about getting the netting on. Next year.

We also discovered, especially in the last couple of days, that some of our plants have been munched. I suspect the woodchuck. He shows up in the lower yard several times a week, munching on various plants (including hostas), and dashes away when I open the sliding door. I can't tell if he has good eyesight or good hearing, but he doesn't have good manners. Based on the chomps' height -- and his proximity -- I blame him. Our acorn and butternut squash have no leaves, and the basil is mangled. I hope they can recover (and I need to make pesto soon).

This morning, I let the cats out at 3 a.m., coyotes be damed, so that they might earn their keep by securing the garden. (I let them out because I am up from 2:30 to 4:30 most mornings, for some reason -- baby is active, I think.)

Another unfortunate fact is the tomatoes' fungal problem. I take part of the blame (Mother Nature is also culpable). David suggested we planted the tomatoes too close together, but I just refused to believe him (I wanted to have as many plants as possible). Well, I think their wonderfully abundant leaves don't get enough circulation, and with the cool and rainy weather, they don't get dried by the sun. I tried to solve the problem by cutting off all the lower, yellowed leaves, but it keeps creeping upwards. So, let me publicly admit that My Husband Was Right.

I hope the tomatoes can ripen before we lose all the foliage. There are tons and tons of tomatoes already (especially on those crazy Tumbling Toms), but all are green. Can we wait three weeks?! We are dying to begin our daily tomato sandwiches.

In happier news, our beans (the bush ones, not the pole ones) are ready to eat, as are our zuchhinni and squash. We've also had some lovely swiss chard and herbs lately. When our sink gets fixed (it has a clog somewhere in the pipes), and I can get back into my kitchen, I will make some beans with a little butter. Summer!