When you read stories about people gardening, often it’s this idyllic picture of a grandmother and child or mother and child going out to the garden and picking and eating things right off the vine. Tomatoes bursting in their mouth. Beans sweet and crisp. Peas that melt in your mouth.
Almost every time I eat something straight from the garden, I end up chewing these little crystals that feel like dirt or sand. This is, of course, especially true in green season. I should wait for tomatoes (and it’s true that eating sun-warmed cherry tomatoes off the vine is a particularly delightful part of any harvest).
Everything you plant in the garden has a consequence in the kitchen. The consequence is the time it takes to clean, prepare and/or preserve it. The truth is, I don’t just spend a lot of time in the garden; I seem to spend as much time in the kitchen!
Before growing food, I hated preparing salads. I just don’t like washing salad greens. I don’t mind chopping things, peeling or scrubbing nice, solid vegetables. Greens, however, seem kind of suspicious even after you’ve washed them. And buying them prewashed in a bag doesn’t make me trust them more.
Lettuce goes limp, bruises (especially, it seems, the pale green tennis ball lettuce that Thomas Jefferson grew at Monticello), and even after you’ve put the leaves in the salad spinner, they’re still not really dry. I’ve taken to using these green garden bags that supposedly make produce last longer. One key requirement is that the veggies you put in them are completely dry. Completely.
Of course I don’t blame the lettuce I’ve grown from a seed for needing to be washed before I eat it. I’ve gotten used to filling the sink with cold water and using more paper towels (as well as regular towels) than I ever use during the rest of the year. Then I sock it into the fridge, where it does indeed perk up, and top it with salmon, rotisserie chicken, anything to make a big salad into a dinner. (Then I beg my landscaper husband to supplement his dinner salad with chips or more beer or some high-calorie side dish.)
The weather has been hot and muggy, making the lettuce and spinach threaten to bolt way too early. Come on! There’s at least two weeks before we’ll have peas or even beet greens that can hold us over! The next crop of radishes (I’ve been having some trouble with ants eating them before they are ready) has just popped out of the ground…
For now I’ll just keep picking it, washing it, and eating it as fast as we can… and try to keep the ants off the chard and kale that I’ll need if there’s suddenly a gap in the schedule.