Vacation and the Garden

Posted on July 23, 2011 by susanmsink@gmail.com

I was on vacation for a week in Washington State, and while I was gone, it seems like all havoc broke loose in the garden. The first two days of my trip, it rained heavily here, and the last four days we had terrible heat. You have to ask yourself about global climate change when Moorhead, Minnesota, is the hottest place on the planet, with a heat index of 130 degrees between the temperature and humidity.

When we came back on Tuesday night I went out to the garden and felt filled with despair. It didn’t help that it was 100 degrees, but how had this jungle grown up in my absence? There were a few rotten baby zucchinis on the vine and a few potato plants seem to have died, I think because the soil isn’t draining and we’ve just had too much rain. Our local “truck farmer” Russ Willinbring in Cold Spring, where I pick my strawberries, said things just aren’t growing in the waterlogged fields, and what is growing is late and stunted.

Now I have to admit that I asked my husband not to spray any weeds in the entire area surrounding my garden. So I should not have been surprised that the prairie has grown back around my raspberry bushes and apple trees. But I had kept on top of the weeding in my garden beds, and in my absence large amounts of grass have invaded.

The next day, things looked considerably more manageable. I easily pulled out many weeds and harvested the rest of the onions, which are drying on the porch. Blight has indeed begun on the tomato plants, but there are also lots of blossoms and green tomatoes, so now it’s just a race for them to ripen before the blight kills the plant. There will be tomatoes. In fact, the cherry tomatoes, which were incredibly dissapointing last year and resulted in NO canned salsa, are flourishing and blight free, so there will also be salsa!

Here’s another photo. I have a lot of these, but they all kind of look like this. Insane amounts of giant weeds as far as the eye can see.

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Prairie Bouquet

Posted on July 9, 2011 by susanmsink@gmail.com

Here’s a photo of today’s prairie bouquet. It’s very tempting to cut flowers from the prairie, but each year I realize how fragile they are when you pick them. They can sway out there in the pairie pummelled by wind for weeks, but once you put them in a vase, they seem to immediately start diministhing. I check the water temperature, but that’s not it. They just want to be in the soil, in the wind, part of the whole.

And since this is the same season my orchid very happily blooms inside, I probably will just enjoy the flowers from the window or visiting them for the rest of the summer.

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One Night of Cauliflower

Posted on July 7, 2011 by susanmsink@gmail.com

Remember when I bought four cauliflower plants back in May, thinking they were cabbage? Well, I can’t remember a single time I have cooked cauliflower before tonight. I pulled out two of the four plants to make room for the cabbage seedlings I went back and bought, but tonight I harvested the compact but reasonably-sized cauliflower heads on the other two plants.

I turned to Deborah Madison’s Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone for some advice, and found just what I was looking for– an Indian dish that would also use the fresh cilantro that is ready (and when it’s ready, you just have to go ahead and eat it) and the arugula greens. (This is why I bought this cookbook to begin with, because I am challenged when thinking up vegetarian dishes.)

Her recipe title is, like almost all of them in the book, purely descriptive: Cauliflower, Spinach, and Potato Stir-Fry with Coconut Milk.

OK!

I had picked up a jar of something called Coriander Chutney made by SWAD the last time I was at the Asian market, a wonderful mix of cilantro, serrano pepper, ginger, garlic (and other ingredients you don’t want to know about). I also had some green curry paste in the freezer.

Of course, when finished this dish that was not just delicious but also the most nuclear color green imaginable. I’m choosing to believe it was the combination of cilantro and turmeric and not the FD&C Blue #1 and Yellow #5 in the chutney. I do indeed love India and Indian food!

And that’s it. Cauliflower season, c’est finis!

Here it is, with my adaptations:

Cilantro, Cauliflower and Greens, Indian Style

1 small cauliflower, cut into florets
1/2 lb of red potatoes, sliced 1/3 inch thick
Salt
1 bunch scallions (or spring onions) with some greens
1/2 cup chopped cilantro (or 1/3 cup SWAD coriander chutney)
1/2 tsp turmeric
2 serrano chilis, minced (or 1 Tbs green chili paste)
4 Tbs vegetable oil
1 large bunch greens, such as spinach
1 15-oz can coconut milk

Boil the cauliflower and potatoes in water until tender, then drain.
Puree half the onions and most of the cilantro, turmeric, chiles and 1 Tbs oil– if you have coriander chutney and chili paste, skip this step.

Heat a wok, add 2 tsp oil and, when hot, add the onions and stir fry for 1 minute. Add the greens and stir-fry until wilted and tender. Set aside.

Add another 2 tsp oil and fry the chili paste and chutney until fragrant. Add the cauliflower and potatoes, season with 1/2 tsp salt, and cook until heated through.

Pour in the coconut milk and add the spinach. Bring to a boil and simmer for 2 minutes. Garnish with cilantro and scallions and serve over brown basmati or jasmine rice. Serve to happy, freshly-showered with no 7 p.m. bid to run off to landscaping husband.

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Locavore

Posted on July 6, 2011 by susanmsink@gmail.com

It’s easy to be a locavore come July in Minnesota. Between the garden, the St. Joseph Farmer’s Market and our new Minnesota Street Market Co-op that carries Forest mushrooms grown right up the road and local, organic milk, I’m even making local pizzas! Friday night’s was made with homemade mozzarella that was so buttery yellow and had such a real mozzarella texture, it was a revelation. It was topped with Forest criminis sauteed with garden spinach and farmer’s market onions. The dough was made with the whey from the cheese and local flour from Freeport, Minnesota. I did use garlic that was no doubt imported from China, but hey, it’s small! (wait until next year…) And, since I’m confessing, Trader Joe’s pizza sauce.

I also made a batch of what’s called in Ricki “the Cheese Queen” Carroll’s Home Cheese Making book, lactic cheese. It’s a pretty bad name for a really excellent soft cheese that you can make in 24 hours if you have rennet, thermophilic starter and salt. I’ve been making it all year, and nothing is better on a Triscuit than this cheese with some herbs de Provence mixed in. Except, perhaps, the “rosey dill radish dip” I made this weekend.

The last of the garden radishes and first of the garden dill were amazing in this dip, which calls for cream cheese, but I would imagine that cream cheese is too sweet and thus not as good as with lactic cheese. Again, it uses an exotic garlic clove and lemon, but there’s no need to go crazy with this locavore stuff. After all, we Minnesotans are a practical people. And the food system has not yet collapsed.

Here’s the recipe, which comes from the Common Ground Garden CSA web site.

Rosey-dilled Radish Dip



8 oz. lactic or cream cheese, at room temperature (so you can mix it)
1 Tbs lemon juice
1 Tbs fresh chopped dill 
1 clove garlic, minced
1 cup finely chopped radishes


Combine all the ingredients well. Refrigerate at least 1 hour to incorporate the flavors before serving. Serve with crackers, chips or vegetable strips.

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4th of July Prairie

Posted on July 4, 2011 by susanmsink@gmail.com
bergemot

Last year, with an early spring and lots of warm weather, for some reason the prairie flowers were pretty unimpressive. This year, however, everything seems anxious to make up for the long, cold winter and spring, or maybe all the rain has helped.

In June the whole story was yarrow. It came up in big patches throughout the prairie. I think of the prairie as having waves of color– first white, then yellow, and finally purple.

On July 1, thre were already clear signs that yellow was coming in, with bright spots of coreopsis and, here and there, some early black-eyed-Susans.

But here it is just July 4, and already there are three beautiful purple coneflowers, those ladies with their droopy skirts. Walking out there, I found bergemot coming in, among all the dried stalks of last year’s grey coneflowers. And bright purple thistle.



purple coneflowers

The prairie is mostly green grasses still, but the promise is there of great glory, a profusion of flowers in the weeks to come.

For more photos from July 4 on our prairie, click here.


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Fruit

Posted on July 2, 2011 by susanmsink@gmail.com

In Barbara Kingsolver’s book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, when the family contemplates what they will miss most during their year of eating locally and seasonally, her older daughter laments the loss of fresh fruit. With good planning, after a year one could have plenty of dried fruit and jam, but raisins and fruit leather is not really the same as a bowl of cherries.

I’m living in greater awareness of where my food comes from, but could not resist a carton of peaches from Trader Joe’s last weekend. I also bought bananas yesterday, something we don’t usually eat in the summer, because they were at the new food co-op in town (so many, so yellow, we’d better buy them and eat them!)

Then, yesterday, I also went strawberry picking at the Willenbring’s Produce Acres in Cold Spring. Last year, when I went on my birthday on June 25, the berries were already past their prime. This year the berries were smaller and dark red, due to the cool, wet spring, not enough sun to plump them up. Still, they are very sweet, and quickly filled the kitchen with the smell of strawberries. They made beautiful, dark red strawberry-rhubarb jam. And the whole time I was making the jam, I was thinking of the popovers of winter, when the jam will be most welcome.

And now, suddenly, with peaches, bananas, strawberries and blueberries in the house, it is time for fruit salad! This holiday weekend, we will enjoy the real bounty of summer in its freshest, juiciest form!
Strawberry-Rhubarb Jam
makes 8 8-oz jars
3 cups chopped rhubarb
4+ cups hulled, crushed strawberries (I leave some smaller ones whole)
5 Tbsp lemon juice

2-3 Tbs regular powdered fruit pectin (or one package– I’ve upped the fruit but it would still work)
4-5 cups sugar

1. In a deep pot, combine the berries, lemon juice and pectin, stirring until the pectin is dissolved. Bring to a boil, stirring frequently. Add sugar all at once and return to full rolling boil, stirring constantly. Boil hard, stirring, for 1 minute. Remove from heat. (Skim off foam if present, but I haven’t had much foam with this fruit.)
2. Ladle hot jam into hot jars, leaving 1/4 inch headspace. Wipe rim and center lid on jar. Screw band down until resistance is met, then increase to fingertip-tight.
3. Place jars in boiling water canner, ensuring they are completely covered with water. Bring to a boil and process for 10 minutes. Let them sit in canner 5 minutes, then remove to counter to cool completely. Make sure the seals are firm before storing.

If, while making the jam, you have filled jars in the canner simmering, when you empty them you will have plenty of hot water for processing. It also keeps things moving along, while sterilizing the jars. I made two batches from start to finish in 2 1/2 hours.

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Landmarks

Posted on June 30, 2011 by susanmsink@gmail.com

On Monday, I accompanied Sister Josue Behnen to St. Cloud Hospital, where she was giving a “lunch and learn” presentation on prayer. Sister Josue spent most of her working life as a nurse, including 17 years on mission in Taiwan, before joining the staff of the Spirituality Center and heading up the spiritual direction program.

When we got to the hospital, S. Josue told me that she learned the route from the monastery to the hospital from Sister Mary Jude Meyer. S. Josue was just back from Taiwan in the 1980s and going to begin working at the hospital. S. Mary Jude drove her and, at the first turn, a stoplight with a granite monument business on the left, she said, pointing: “When you see that tree, turn left.”

The same thing happened at the next turn. “When you see that tree,” she said, pointing to a good-sized tree and not the gas station or school on opposite corners, “turn right.”

For S. Mary Jude, there were no street signs or landmarks more recognizable than the trees. Isn’t that a wonderful way to see the world?

The photo above is of the monastery catalpa tree, currently in bloom. I don’t remember these trees before I moved to Minnesota — probably just because I wasn’t paying attention. They only bloom a few days each year.

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Snow Pea Season

Posted on June 29, 2011 by susanmsink@gmail.com

This week marked the beginning of snow pea season. Snow peas are the crop where I feel like I’m starting to get my money’s worth from the garden. Snow peas are expensive, and there is nothing like them. My other success in the garden is the appearance of a large head of broccoli. It’s the first time I’ve successfully grown a head of broccoli, either from seed or seedling (I started these in the basement on a whim). Of the two other plants that survived, small heads have emerged, with little to no sign they plan on enlarging. I’ll cut them off in a day or two and have them with pasta.

Tonight we had a bounteous stir fry with the last of the spinach (a good-size bag that filled the wok), the broccoli, an early onion and the first of the snow peas. I like this variety, Sutton’s Harbinger, which I see looking back at the catalog is not actually a snow pea. That explains why it starts swelling when the peas are not very long. I’ve been eating them at only about two inches long, when the pods are still tender. I would like to have regular peas, however, so in a week or two I’ll let them fully develop.

I planted Green Arrow peas in what is now officially “the dead zone,” a quarter of one bed where nothing will grow. I planted the peas twice, then tried edamame, and finally tried Hidatsa beans. Nothing sprouted there, despite a profusion of growth on the potato plants opposite and peas at the other end of the bed. I’m going to leave it for the summer, now.

I’m almost finished with the early garden. Next year I won’t bother with arugula or fancy lettuces (my endive turned out more like romaine). My early garden will be lettuce, spinach, radishes and kale (which started nicely inside). I’ll plant more onions so I can harvest some green, and garlic bulbs in the fall to have scapes and then bulbs.

In this middle season, I’d like to have planted more potatoes so I could be digging up baby reds along with the peas. I won’t bother with beans other than green beans next year. It would be nice to have some Swiss chard coming in (I planted that later) with the potatoes and peas.

It seems like all summer, all we do is wait on tomatoes. They have their run of three full beds, and they’re so unhappy with the wind and the rain. Still, they hang in there, although they sulk and whine and flop around, leaning on the cages.

The other wonderful thing I saw today was a real ladybug. Not the smelly orange ones that clog the windowsills and walls, but a bright red, black-spotted ladybug. I can’t remember the last time I saw one, and there it was, sitting on a leaf of a pea plant. The Colorado beetles have disappeared after I sprayed some organic stuff on the plants, and now here is this beneficial insect. It’s heartening!

The ads for strawberry picking have begun to appear in the paper. Friday I will go to Willenbring’s in Cold Spring to pick a flat. It will be nice to have some local fruit with all this vegetable bounty. And then it will be the 4th of July, which means the parish festival and the Joe Burger stand. Which means, of course, summer is really here.

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Eucharistic Minister

Posted on June 19, 2011 by susanmsink@gmail.com

I have been a Eucharistic minister at my church for about a year. It is always a wonderful and moving experience. I was first trained as a Eucharistic minister in Southern Caliornia, by a wonderful woman who took the time to tell us what it was all about. In addition to the reverence factor, and how to shuffle a host back into the dish if someone dropped it, she told us, “Don’t deal ’em out like cards. Present the host to the person and look the person in the eye. It is a joy to present the Eucharist to another. Don’t be too serious and solemn about it.” It is not a matter of distributing a bunch of communion wafers as quickly as possible so we can get out of there, it is a sacramental experience. And we are the ministers of this sacrament.

People do genuinely respond when you present the host to them, and generally they approach with a smile. It is a joyful experience for everyone, from mumbling, awkward teens to mothers and fathers with children on their hips to older people. It is also a full experience of community. Our whole community, most of whom you don’t ever see, approach the front of the church for communion. What first surprised me, and now continues to gladden my heart, is the number of older farmers. Their hands are grained with dirt, some of their fingers are misshapen or even, occasionally, missing. The act of them putting out their hands and me placing the communion wafer in their palms is, truly, art.

This morning one of the other Eucharistic ministers was a man whose house was foreclosed on several months ago, after a long battle. He had told us about a recent experience when his car broke down. He was walking home from where he’d had to abandon the car and a man from the parish picked him up. Together, they made arrangements for the car, and then this man drove him home. About a half hour later, the man showed up at the apartment and gave the man whose home had been foreclosed on $300 in cash. Knowing what I do, about how this man has struggled with his own business and his wife has been downsized, I found this story quite affirming. This morning, I watched the man who had given the money receive communion from the man who received that earlier gift, very matter of fact and as it is done each week. It only caught my attention for a moment, then I turned and offered communion to his wife, a woman I used to work with and whom I admire very much.

There are times when you feel the privilege of being part of a community, and this was one.

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Flowers

Posted on June 18, 2011 by susanmsink@gmail.com

As my vegetable gardening ramps up, I’m less and less interested in flower gardening. We have terraced beds along the side of the house and the first year I stuck in a bunch of oriental lily bulbs which have been dramatic every year. I fill in other spaces with annuals, the customary border of alyssum, and have gradually been adding other perennials like lilies. In the really shady space, since I don’t like hostas, I put in some columbine this year, which will probably take over…

I did transplant some of my favorite flowers from my garden in Cold Spring when I moved, including my absolute favorites, the siberian irises. I am not in general an iris fan, since they seem more leaves than anything, and I find their “beards” somewhat lewd. But the elegance and vibrance of the siberian iris, even before it blooms, and its thin, spiky leaves, always make me happy.

This year, I also had these three giant dianthus plants come back. I still can’t quite believe it, but there they are. Everything I’ve read says they’re an annual, but as soon as the ground thawed, their green leaves were visible. They made it through a Minnesota winter! So I don’t have to wait until August for them to be big and full of blooms. Next year I won’t pull out any of my dianthus at the end of the season– we’ll see if they make another encore.

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