Susan Sink

Salmon and Peas in Cream Sauce

Posted on July 15, 2014 by susanmsink@gmail.com

One of the best things about summer, when there’s so much produce, is sitting around with an ingredient in mind and figuring out what I want to do with it and then how to make it happen. It might be that when you’re only likely to get 2-3 cups of peas for the summer, it feels all the more special to figure out how to prepare them.

I had a second almost-cup of shell peas on Saturday, and also wanted to make something special for my husband’s birthday. I took out some salmon to thaw and also just couldn’t get past the idea of pasta and cream sauce. And dill. Lemon-dill maybe. I have a forest of dill. But definitely cream sauce, peas, and salmon.

Putting these three ingredients into the epicurious.com recipe generator wasn’t getting me where I wanted to be. But The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook I bought in the spring had the beginnings: “Sweet Peas and Shells Alfredo.” What I love about Deb Perelman’s recipes is that she makes great stuff but also knows how to keep it simple. There’s no flour in her Alfredo, no stirring until the butter is brown, etc. In fact, she does the whole thing in one pot.

More searching turned up a simple marinade for the salmon, which I could then grill. It’s from Betty Crocker, so that made me kind of nervous, since I’m becoming that kind of snob, but it looked good and had no packaged ingredients. It turned out to be a great marinade that kept the fish moist. In fact, I even came up with a “technique”! I never come up with techniques, but I really wanted to cook the salmon without flipping it over. When I close the grill cover everything in the grill immediately catches on fire and the temp shoots up to 800 degrees and, well, that is usually why I just flip things over. Instead, I tented (love that verb) some foil over the fish on the grill. I had to weigh down the foil with little rocks, but it worked great! (Then I sent out my husband to get the salmon and saw him flipping over one of the filets. “Nobody told you to flip them! Just bring them inside!” I felt like Jackie Chiles watching Kramer use a balm. Seinfeld™.)

Let me just say, dinner was lovely. (I only wish there had been more peas!) For dessert, we had some angel food cake with the first ever raspberries harvested from my garden. I added some thawed strawberries (that I picked a week ago) with sugar and it was good the way it can only be when the berries come from your own backyard.

Grilled Salmon with Creamy Pasta and Peas

Salmon marinade:
1 tablespoon canola or olive oil
1 tablespoon chopped fresh dill weed
1 teaspoon grated lemon peel
3 tablespoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons honey
1/2 teaspoon garlic-pepper blend
1 lb salmon fillets, cut into pieces

Marinade the salmon in the fridge for 20 minutes while you prepare the other ingredients.
Grill it over medium heat (with grill cover closed or tented foil) for 10 minutes.

Creamy Pasta with Peas
1/2 pound pasta of your choice: rotini, orecchiette, shells, linguine, etc.
1 cup shelled peas
1 cup half and half
3 Tbs butter
freshly ground black pepper
1 tsp finely grated fresh lemon zest
1 Tbs freshly squeezed lemon juice
1-2 shallots, thinly sliced
1/2 cup finely grated Parmesan cheese (more for topping the dish)
1/2 cup finely grated Gruyere cheese
2 Tbs fresh dill, chopped
1 Tbs chopped fresh parsley

Cook the pasta in a boiling pot of water per package instructions. Add the peas in the last 30 seconds and drain them together. Reserve 1/2 cup cooking liquid. Clean out pot (or use a different one if you want to do it all simultaneously. But a pot, not a skillet, is best for making the sauce.)

Pour the half/half in the pot and bring to a simmer. Cook until slightly reduced, about 4 minutes, stirring frequently. Add the butter and stir until it has melted. Generously season with pepper; add pinch of salt and lemon zest as well. Add the Parmesan and at this point I also added the shallots. Mix until smooth, then add the Gruyere and mix until smooth. Toss in the drained pasta, peas, lemon juice and dill and cook about 2 minutes. Add the pasta water if needed to loosen up the sauce. Serve in pasta bowls topped with salmon filet, parsley and more Parmesan!

July Garden Tour

Posted on July 11, 2014 by susanmsink@gmail.com

I keep hearing how everything is late this year, but you couldn’t tell by me. Everything this summer has crept up on me. I wasn’t ready for my birthday in June. July 4 went by like a blur. And in the garden, I keep feeling like everything is early, even though it is the Feast of St. Benedict, mid-July, and so there is no denying it is summer.

In the early morning hours, a storm did all my watering for today, while I lay awake incanting “no hail, no hail, no hail.” Not only was there no hail, the tomato cages didn’t even blow over.

I do believe this is the best year I’ve ever had in the garden. I can state that unequivocally because, well, there are peas! There are never peas! I’ve struggled heartily to plant them at the right time, in the right place, starting them inside and out, in what little shade I have or in sun. They have either not grown at all or they have plumped too quickly and been hard and dry. But this year I’ve had a good run on snow peas and now have big, beautiful, plump shell peas hanging on their vines. The green arrow peas look just like the pictures in the catalogs, snug in their pods in long rows, emerald necklaces, green pearls. Last night, I harvested a whole cup and made pea pesto. I’m not sure if this helped, as I think it’s really about the fact that we had a cool June, but I planted them in the “shade” of the asparagus plants, which seems to have worked.

I’ve also been a little haphazard in my green bean planting. But this year I’ve got vine and bush varieties, and the bush plants are already putting out tender, long beans, while the vines are full of blossoms. (The red blossoms are scarlet runner beans for delicious, giant shell beans.)

I’m watching the zucchini and yellow summer squash, sometimes checking them in the morning and picking them in the evening as they grow to just big enough.

The potato bags are really not thriving, except for the blue variety, which has gorgeous purplish vines and had great blue flowers. (Good thing I also have a giant bed of potatoes.) The other night I rooted my hand around in one of the yukon plants in a raised bed and plucked out three golf-ball sized potatoes to put in that night’s medley. With shallots, basil and thyme, the sautéed vegetables just come together by themselves. I can afford now to be a purist, nothing from the produce section but lemons, limes and ginger for the rest of the season!

I’m letting the cilantro go to seed, which will be coriander that I can grind. I’m also letting some lettuce go to seed for fall planting.

I usually don’t plant anything in July, but I’m tempted to replace the beet bed as soon as I finish harvesting it. For one thing, I got one kohlrabi (another is ripening) and would like some more for slaw! And I neglected to grow chard and would like to have some for the fall. And I might try as an experiment to plant the fall beets a little earlier.

Meanwhile, another plant I’ve had trouble growing, eggplant, has blossoms, and the tomatillos are like Chinese lanterns on beautiful plants.

No doubt fall will be along soon enough and catch me by surprise as well. Steve mentioned that the air has felt particularly like August the past few days, dry and a little hazy. And yesterday afternoon a red tint to the air…

Posted in garden, the Farm | Tagged beans, green arrow peas, mid-summer vegetables, organic gardening, organic vegetable growing, pea pesto, peas, summer, vegetable gardening | Comments Off

Two Beet Salads

Posted on July 8, 2014 by susanmsink@gmail.com

Roots are really fun to grow. It’s very satisfying when it’s time to start pulling up beets and radishes by the fistful. When a tall, thick carrot comes out of the ground, it’s a miracle. We’ve been making do with the carrot tops and the beet greens, and even radish greens to round out a salad, but now with the real deal in hand, the greens mostly go onto the compost pile. (Well, not the carrot greens… I’m making and freezing the pesto!)

We’re still a few weeks away from carrots, and really, a couple of these beets could have been left in the ground a week longer, but I couldn’t wait! And some of them were pushing themselves mostly out of the ground, which means they’ve kind of done all they’re going to do. (Don’t worry. There’s still plenty.)

Rather than jump right into another pesto, I started off by just roasting them and eating them with a little olive oil and feta. I have to remind myself each year that I really do like beets, after only eating them pickled for most of my life.

Then I went looking on the internet and my recipe books at beet salads, and many of them involved the combination of beets and oranges. I guess beets, as a root storage vegetable, also grown in fall, are considered a winter veggie. Oranges are NOT in season, and I really don’t like to buy produce at this time of year, but I went ahead and bought a less-than-inspiring orange (and a couple small cans of Mandarin oranges) and a head of fennel for a recipe I really wanted to try. It was a beet, fennel and orange salad I’d saved from Epicurious.com mostly because it was attached to a salmon recipe.

I also found (again, with salmon) a recipe for an Asian beet salad. (Truth is, the night before I made salmon and was just too tired to make either of these, so made asparagus instead. Then the next night I made BOTH beet salads and no meat. ‘Cause that’s where we are.)

The first, Mediterranean salad, used roasted beets. To the recipe I added a can of garbanzo beans and lime juice, and consoled myself with the fact that I wasn’t just using orange, fennel and feta, but also from the garden I used shallots, mint, and parsley. I didn’t have hazelnuts, which was in the original recipe, but I had plenty of pine nuts in my anticipation of pesto season, so I toasted those. The second time I made it (tonight) I used toasted walnuts instead (you could also use walnut oil in place of the olive oil).

The second, Asian approach, was a slaw and used raw beets. It was also very good, just different. And really, you shouldn’t eat both these salads on the same night, but, you know, it was beet night! I bought oranges! Dang those peeled beets are gorgeous. As with most things that have a dressing of soy sauce and sesame oil, the natural flavors of the veggies were pretty altered. Also, I didn’t have cabbage (I was not about to buy a cabbage with four growing in the garden) so I just put the rest of the ingredients on a bed of rubbed kale. That’s why I’m calling it a salad instead of a slaw.

I had my very first ever homegrown kohlrabi. (Why didn’t I plant more of them?? I’m starting some more right away…) I sliced it into the slaw, and two carrots from the co-op, as I’m being patient and waiting for mine to grow up. I agree it would be best to do it right, as a slaw with cabbage, but that would also take away some from the beets, which are my stars right now.

In any event, it was all delicious, and there were no leftovers. I doubled the first recipe tonight when I made it again, with the second half of the fennel bulb and Mandarin oranges only, and again, no leftovers. The herbs give it a really fresh taste and the beets are definitely in a starring role. And it’s vegan.

Beet, Orange and Fennel Salad with Feta

for the original recipe, click here

4-6 beets, depending on size, mix of golden and red is nice
2 oranges or 1/2 small can of Mandarin oranges
1 small fennel bulb cored and sliced into thin strips
1/4 cup chopped mint
1/4 cup chopped parsley
1/4 cup roasted pine nuts or walnuts
1-2 shallots, thinly sliced and chopped
1/2 lime
1 Tbs balsamic vinegar
2 Tbs olive oil (or walnut oil)
salt and pepper to taste
1/2 cup feta cheese, crumbled

Roast the beets wrapped in foil in a 350 degree oven until tender (about 50 minutes). Slip them from their skins, slice them and put them in a bowl.

Peel and section the orange into slices, or do yourself a favor and just use ones in a jar. Add them to the salad. Add the fennel, chopped herbs and walnuts. Mix in the balsamic vinegar, oil, salt, pepper, and either lime juice, orange juice (if using real oranges) or combination of both. It really does need juice to make it moist.

Mix the salad before adding the feta cheese to keep it from getting too pink from the beets. You can even add feta to the bowls/plates at the table.

The Asian slaw recipe can be found here. But I’ve copied it below verbatim. To this recipe I added thinly sliced kohlrabi and thinly sliced radishes. I’m sure it’s better with cabbage as a slaw than how I made it, as a glorified kale salad. A friend recommended red pepper flakes, which also would be a great addition. The dressing is very good, and the honey gives it that slaw sweetness.

Asian Beet Slaw

1½ tablespoons sesame seeds, toasted
1 cup julienned beets (If you don’t have a julienne peeler, slice a beet in half and then use a vegetable peeler to shave the beet into half moons. Next slice the half moons into very thin strips.)
1 cup shredded carrots
3 cups finely chopped green cabbage
1 navel orange, peeled, segmented and chopped
4 scallions, finely chopped (whites and light green parts only)
1½ tablespoons low-sodium soy sauce
1 teaspoon rice vinegar
1 tablespoon fresh lime juice
1 teaspoon honey
1 teaspoon fresh ginger, minced
1 clove garlic, minced

Instructions

First, you need to toast the sesame seeds. Heat a small pan over medium heat. When hot, add the sesame seeds and toast for about 1 minute until they are golden brown.
In a large bowl, combine the beets, carrots, cabbage, oranges and scallions.
In a small bowl, combine the soy sauce, rice vinegar, lime juice, honey, ginger and garlic.
Pour dressing over the beet slaw and toss to coat. Serve room temperature or chilled.

Posted in garden, recipe | Tagged Asian beet slaw, beet salad, beet slaw, beets, fennel, feta, fresh beets, Mediterranean beet salad | Comments Off

The Berry is Always Sweeter…

Posted on July 2, 2014 by susanmsink@gmail.com

Lucky for me, the strawberries also waited for me to get back from Chicago. Today I went out to Produce Acres to pick my year’s share!

Picking strawberries definitely reveals one’s outlook on life. Me? I was convinced right away that my row was a loser. First, as Russ and I were walking to it, a little boy picking berries with his mom shouted, “Mom, I’m picking all the big ones!” Russ said softly, “You’re supposed to pick ALL the ripe berries.” His mom followed up by saying it was good she was going behind him.

I got the row next to this duo. And on his way out, I heard Russ say, “Did you want to pick two rows? No? Well, then, this is your row.”

Sure enough, as I started picking, all my berries were tiny, and sparse. I kept catching the sight of bigger berries in the next row over, and even in the row the woman and her son were picking. I felt free to pick theirs, since they had already been through. I was discouraged. It was going to be a lot of cutting out tops from tiny berries… but they were mighty sweet.

I was pretty alone in my spot. No one to overhear as I made my way down the row, just time to think. And so I wondered about managing a U-Pick operation. What row and where do you start people so they will not be discouraged and give up or leave disparaging your operation? About halfway through I hit larger berries and more plentiful plants. Russ walked by again and said: “You’re getting into the motherlode there.”

Yes, yes I was! And that pushed me to keep picking, getting all those great berries, piling them on top of the layer of little berries. I picked even more than I’d planned, six pounds. Who could stop in the middle of a motherlode?

In the end, Russ’s strategy struck me as smart. Make people work for it at first, so you get those little berries picked. Then have them come upon the larger, more plentiful plants, just as they’re starting to lag, where they’ll feel renewed and rewarded.

And yes, there will be jam.

Posted in garden, Uncategorized | Tagged strawberries, strawberry picking | Comments Off

Back in the Garden

Posted on July 1, 2014 by susanmsink@gmail.com

I was gone a week. A full week. Before I left I watered everything as much as I could, typed out instructions labeled: watering, weeding, harvesting, and prayed for rain.

When I left there were tiny beets in the ground and the beginning of the four broccoli heads, and the very first few snow peas. My biggest fear was missing the entire pea season. I’ve had such bad luck with peas every year, and if they didn’t get picked or there was lots of heat and no water, they might put out stunted, plumped, bad-tasting peas.

Hooray Sophia! My niece who lives on the farm did her job, namely harvesting. She picked the peas and even cut the four broccoli heads, leaving the stalks where a few side shoots are starting to emerge. I had instructed her on distribution (one head for her family, one for Amy and Kevin, and two heads for me).

What didn’t happen was rain or watering (yes, I know, too much to hope for, really, for the tired landscaper to turn on a hose on a timer!!)

Still, nothing actually died, although the already struggling potato bags may actually fail after such neglect. Oh well, there are potatoes planted everywhere. There will be potatoes. And he did poison the gopher twice, just as it was advancing on the beds of beans, onions and potatoes.

And I did not miss the pea season. In fact, the Green Arrow peas are still plumping in their pods. Water (which I am now providing) will help with that.

The first evening home I made a gigantic salad. There was still just a bit more lettuce, and there were radishes, broccoli, snow peas, beet greens, spring onions, and a wonderful salad dressing of yogurt, sour cream, lemon juice, dill, and garlic scapes all mashed up in the blender. YUM.

Last night, chicken, herb rice, and roasted beets with feta.

Tonight, a stir-fry with pork, snow peas, broccoli, radishes, onions, basil, scapes AND four very tiny zucchini I couldn’t help but pick and chop up, especially seeing all the other flowers and beginnings of squash on the vines.

It was a lovely week in Chicago. And it’s good to be home!

Posted in garden, the Farm | Tagged beets, broccoli, food gardening, organic gardening, radish | Comments Off

At 50

Posted on June 25, 2014 by susanmsink@gmail.com

Today is my 50th birthday. Although I know this is a tough milestone for some people, I started looking forward to turning 50 when I was about 30. Back then, everything seemed so unsettled. I thought surely by 50 I would be in a place where I was not starting over all the time. I would hopefully have more control over the way my life was arranged than it seemed I had at the time.

I made mistakes for my 30th and 40th birthdays. At 30, I was at the MacDowell Colony, an artist’s colony in New Hampshire. I thought it would be a good idea to celebrate my writing self, and I was very lucky to get accepted. I had been at Yaddo when I turned 26, and that had been a fantastic experience. On the day I’d visited a composer in residence who played for me a Kyrie Eleison he’d composed. While there, I saw my first opera, The Marriage of Figaro, when the Met performed at an outdoor venue near Saratoga Springs.

But turning 30 at MacDowell, I was terribly lonely. It was a very intense group in residence, and the energy in the place was difficult. I was working on a very dark novel, and my cabin was in the woods and seemed to only get sunlight from 9:35-10:50 a.m. Despite the good writing and the intense beauty of an Audubon lake where we went swimming most afternoons, I felt alone, unsettled, very uncertain about my future. I was not in a relationship, the novel would almost certainly come to nothing, and I had just learned from a phone conversation that the friend staying in my apartment back in Chicago was having sex in my bed, which seemed really unfair and disturbing at the time!

It was still a magical time and place. I will never forget watching the O.J. Simpson slow speed chase in the small t.v. room. One of the writers at the colony was also a producer who had worked for years with Diane Sawyer. She was weighing two job offers, with Primetime on ABC and Dateline on NBC. Flipping back and forth (manually) to watch the coverage of the chase on the two networks, she made her decision.

At 40, I was newly divorced. I went to another artist’s colony for the month of June, this time in Costa Rica. It was gorgeous and the other artists were very nice. I had planned to work on poems, but a memoir started spilling out of me, page after page. By the end of the month, I had a good first draft. Still, on the day of my birthday, I was lonely. There was no real internet connection and everyone was working like a regular day. One of the very nice painters made me brownies and a woman put together some flowers for me. But I felt very unsettled and uncertain about the future.

So here I am at 50. And life is quite good. I am married and more settled than I thought I’d ever be. I am surrounded by beauty and rich stories. I feel loved. And I am spending my birthday in Chicago with family and friends. Such a better option!

A week ago on a bike ride, a phrase went through my head: “Failure is really holding me back.” It was about writing and thinking about how I’m struggling having confidence in my ability to revise the novel. After having a great time writing the first draft, I now am having trouble maintaing confidence in my ability to craft it into something that will make its way out in the world. The self-talk related to the projects that didn’t go through (that novel from 1994 that was not really very good despite several drafts; the memoir that was very good but didn’t get published) kicks in.

My sense of the writing path has changed. And though I’d like to think the writing itself is all that matters, it is not enough. The real goal is to “get it out there,” have a readership.

Of course, it has not been all failure for me! Habits was a wholly successful venture. For what it is, a small collection of prose poems, it had a greater run than I would have ever predicted. It got press! It got into the hands of readers who love it! I am proud of the writing! It looks beautiful!

I would like to bring out a book a year. Some will be self-published, but there are others I’d like to go a more traditional route. I will try to have expectations that match the project. I will enjoy the readership that comes my way.

And for my birthdays, I will have cake! I will be with friends and family and celebrate the beautiful, rich life I’ve had so far, and the promise of all that is to come.

Thank you to all the blog readers! I do appreciate you being on this journey with me!

Posted in writing | Tagged 50th birthday, writing | Comments Off

Carrot Top Pesto

Posted on June 17, 2014 by susanmsink@gmail.com

My friends are starting to get their first shares from their CSAs and, I have to say, it’s humbling. These CSA farmers are not messing around. My friends, living in Illinois and Michigan, are getting boxes full of wildly diverse produce. Asparagus, bok choy, giant leeks, plump spring onions, spring garlic and scapes, spinach, lettuce, carrots, pea shoots, radishes, broccoli, and more. Even strawberries.

Me? I’m weeding. The weeds have been just awful this year, and the mosquitoes have arrived early. We’ve had a LOT of rain, and there is flooding all over the state. When it’s not raining, it is humid and hot (80 that feels like 90). This means the plants are exploding out there, but so are the weeds. So I’ve been putting in a lot of time keeping the beds relatively weed free. And pruning the tomatoes so they won’t blight before it dries out.

It takes me a while to catch on to some things in gardening. For instance, spring onions. I have been trying to grow scallions and “green onions” for two years now from seed. Only this year did it occur to me that if I pulled up some of the onions I planted a few weeks ago, they would be good spring onions. Oh, you start from seed onions, not from onion seeds! I had known that onions come up really quickly in the spring, so I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me that I could plant some extra, even close together, and harvest them at the same time the lettuce and radishes come in. Next year, I’ll plant more.

Meanwhile, here I am on a Tuesday night wondering what to eat. The radishes are gone. So are the spring onions. The lettuce is bolted or soggy. The basil is small. I let the asparagus get away from me. I do have some nice kale. I also could have pea shoots, but I’m not willing to give up the pea vines now that they have flowers (am I missing something here? Like, plant more peas to get the shoots??)

I did go out and thin the carrots, and ended up with a big bunch of carrot greens. Carrot greens have never looked all that appealing to me, but a trip around the internet says that carrot top pesto is actually good.

I don’t have scapes yet, but a few of my garlic plants weren’t strong enough to push through the straw. They kind of made their way weakly out of the side, so I went ahead and pulled a few. No bulbs, but very nice garlicky whites, like spring onions.

I went with a standard pesto recipe, though some people use lemon juice and hazelnuts and other nontraditional ingredients. I did substitute slivered almonds for the pine nuts, toasted. And because I was skeptical, I threw in about 2 Tbs of basil and a sprig of mint with 1 1/2 cups or so of carrot tops. A handful of parmesan, 1/2 tsp of salt, the green garlic, and olive oil drizzled in until I got the consistency I wanted.

And, I gotta say, it is GOOD! Really fresh tasting (I wasn’t liking the “earthy” description on some sites). Bright green and actually, I’d eat it any day in place of basil pesto.

Now I just have to wait. There are lots of pea blossoms, the beets are in good shape, and the second crop of radishes are filling out nicely. In the meantime, I’ll just eat kale and hope the lettuce bounces back. . . . oh, and there is this one container of frozen beet pesto in the freezer and a bunch of dried tomatoes. . . .

Posted in garden, Uncategorized | Tagged carrot greens, carrot tops, CSA, garden produce, growing food, organic gardening, pesto, unusual pesto | Comments Off

Au Revoir, Gopher!

Posted on June 14, 2014 by susanmsink@gmail.com

“In the immortal words of Jean Paul Sartre, ‘Au revoir, gopher’.”

This line belongs to Carl Spackler, the groundskeeper played by Bill Murray in the film Caddyshack. He brought the epic battle of man versus gopher to life. And that battle goes on today. I spotted the mounds pretty much as soon as the snow melted, and started bugging Steve to get out there and work on it.

Little did I know that my brother-in-law Kevin, who also lives on the farm, is a gopher killer extraordinaire. As soon as he heard there were gophers by the garden, he sprung into action.

He has a gopher killing kit. It is a bucket that includes his traps, a trowel for finding the tunnels, a carpet remnant to kneel on while digging, and bug spray. He puts on his cap and padded shirt and heads over to set the traps. You have not seen determination until you’ve seen Kevin coming up the drive with his shovel and bucket to hunt gopher.

He’s explained the process to me. You go to a fresh mound and dig behind it. This allows you to find the tunnel entrances, which you expose with a trowel. You set a trap at both entrances.

The gopher thinks, “Why is there light in the tunnel? Why is my tunnel exposed?” He runs over to check it out and right into the trap. That is the way it is supposed to work.

But as we all know, gophers are crafty. Sometimes they come out at another place and go over and just fill in the tunnel again, avoiding the traps.

In this year’s gopher war, we had an early victory. The first time Kevin set the traps, we caught a gopher overnight. And then whatever other gophers were there (Kevin estimated 4-10 gophers, but I have no idea why) took off into the fields and we didn’t see another fresh mound for a month.

Last week, the gophers were back. I called Kevin as soon as I saw a mound… two actually. One by the compost and another close to the cold frame. And he let me know as soon as he got home from work he was on it. And he was.

Unfortunately, maybe because it rained that night, or maybe because the gopher is onto us, we were thwarted. The next morning, both hills were filled in from above, nothing in any of the four traps. kevin with shovel

Steve prefers poisoning. The procedure is similar. You dig out the tunnel entrance and using a special, long-handled cup invented for the purpose, you slide in a helping of gopher poison. He used this on a friend’s landscape project, and she recounted that one evening while she was having dinner a gopher came up out of the tunnel, staggered around, and fell over dead in front of her. What a ham!

In the end, you gotta use your superior intelligence and every tool at your disposal to get the varmint.

As Carl said: “To kill, you must know your enemy, and in this case my enemy is a varmint. And a varmint will never quit – ever. They’re like the Viet Cong – Varmint Cong. So you have to fall back on superior intelligence and superior firepower. And that’s all she wrote.”

We lost the battle, but by God, we will not lose the war.

Posted in garden, the Farm | Tagged Caddyshack, garden pests, gophers, killing gophers | Comments Off

Mature Prairie: Life After Weeds

Posted on June 10, 2014 by susanmsink@gmail.com

It’s amazing what one week of gorgeous weather will do for a person and a landscape. Everything is good. I am glad I was born in June, because it is such a happy month. October is still my favorite month, but June is a close second. It has been a week for walking around. Oh yes, lots of time has been spent weeding the garden, where the weeds have come up in the most astounding clumps, just hundreds of little leaves popping up all together, veritable armies of pigweed and maple trees and other things I don’t let live long enough to identify. But the plants are also happy. Everything is not just planted but up. Everything is up. Garlic is way up. Onions and shallots, up. Cucumbers and squashes all have multiple leaves. Peas are climbing the trellises, even the beans, though rabbits have gotten a few, have developed quickly and profusely in their long row. However, it is the prairie that has been calling me this past week. I’ve been drawn to it, because it looks different. It was burned this spring and as it has come in, it has looked, well, mature. It has looked like flowers with big spaces between that are not filled with weeds. I can even see this from afar. It makes me keep wanting to go out there. And so I have been walking the paths. When I went out to walk the paths on Saturday, once again the lupine took my breath away. They have this impact on me every year– I always forget. They are so dramatic, the only blooming thing, and in big bunches of cones covered with little purple pouches. This year we counted ten different lupine plants while walking the outer rim trail, more than last year and farther afield. coneflower base growth 6-2014 What is truly amazing, though, is the promise of flowers to come. In the prairie there were all these tall, dead stalks, black-eyed Susan, grey-headed coneflowers, alexander, milkweed, and at the base was a profusion of leaves, this year’s flowers. I don’t remember ever seeing that before– the dead flower and a big bunch of new life.

Usually what we’ve seen this time of year is competition. We’ve seen the big, burly weeds still coming in as strong as the wildflowers. Yes, the wildflowers have been winning, but not like this. This is it! This is what you hope for in the years of prairie restoration.

It is true that there are still grasses in there, and I’m not talking bluestem. There’s a lot of fescue and bluegrass, but those “lawn” grasses are not like the reed canary and brome that threatens the prairie and continues to come up in the wet parts especially. In fact, these other grasses are kind of pretty, too, with their wiry little stalks. But as for the flowers, well, I just had to lie down out there and look up at the blue sky, look across at ground level and see all the prairie flower greenery. I was quite caught up. And I still am. It is so gratifying to see the prairie coming in like this. I remember not too long ago when it just all seemed like struggle— the spraying and mowing and the weeds, weeds, weeds.

The thing about nature is, it is only at its peak a very short time. Shakespeare’s sonnets are full of that sentiment. There is struggle and competition and decay and disease and failed germination and storms and hail and drought and mosquitoes and pocket gophers and weeds without end! It is a miracle that things survive and that beauty continues. Oh, what beauty!

Posted in garden, the Farm | Tagged mature prairie, native plants, native prairie, prairie restoration, wildflowers | Comments Off

Remembering How to Eat

Posted on June 6, 2014 by susanmsink@gmail.com

Now that I eat mostly seasonally, I sometimes forget what I eat. It’s like putting away clothes for winter. By spring, I’ve forgotten about those t-shirts I love or the pretty sleeveless blouses. I’m always surprised.

When I am looking at a bed of lettuce and greens at the beginning of summer, I wonder: “What do I do with these again?” I make a vinagrette, because I remember what salad is, but then I wonder about meals. What are the first meals?

I’m grateful then for a cookbook like From Asparagus to Zucchini that basically tells me: “Just saute and eat the stuff you’ve grown. It will taste good without a lot of work.”

This happened last week when I had a jar of dried cranberry beans and a bunch of cabbage leaves from some michili cabbage that bolted. I thought, “Beans and greens. That’s a thing, right?” I looked in Asparagus to Zucchini under greens, and there it was. Cranberry beans and greens. Basically, saute them together with some olive oil and garlic and you’re good to go.

This week I went to Forest Mushrooms and paid my $20 for a season of all-the-compost-you-can-haul. They also sell it for a quarter a bag. I will not use 80 bags (more like 20-30), but I’m happy to give them the $20 and not have to pay each time. In fact, I feel like I’ve reaped the full value already. There in the stack of bags was this gigantic cluster of oyster mushrooms. I took advantage of the opportunity and harvested them.

Back home, I hadn’t really planned on cooking with mushrooms… so I felt momentarily confused. Then I went with the old adage and got together the other veggies I had. I roasted potatoes (store bought) in a pan with olive oil/butter for 20 minutes, and then slid in another pan with the mushrooms with olive oil/butter/garlic for an additional 20. In the last five minutes I added garden asparagus, a frozen chili, and spring onions. Then I dumped the mushrooms into the potato pan, where the liquid boiled away nicely, and added some spinach to wilt. Topped with parmesan cheese, chives, thyme, salt and pepper, this was a real winner.

Posted in garden, recipe | Tagged asparagus, beans, cooking with spring produce, greens, oyster mushrooms, spinach | Comments Off