Spoonflower

Drool… you can now custom-print your own fabric via Spoonflower, a tiny tech startup still in beta. I shall have to brush up on my image-processing skills.

The Fruit Hunters (and Beans)

The Fruit Hunters

I like to read food history books, and with the whole Michael Pollan thing going on, publishers are taking a chance on more and more. Some of them are a bit of an effort - I managed to finish Betty Fussell’s The Story of Corn, but it draaaaagged …  The Fruit Hunters was a lovely counterexample.

I did know that the hand grenade was inspired by the pomegranate, grenade in French, I just didn’t know why. It turns out the pomegranate was originally dehiscent: when it was ripe, it shattered and threw its seeds some good distance. It’s been bred now not to do that, obviously. Yay trivia.

Even though it’s got the trivia, and the requisite chapter on How _x_ Shaped Humans (yes, yes, monkeys see the color red stand out with respect to the background forest), this is not really a history book- it’s more of a travelogue. The poor guy was even infected with his current Fruit Hunting passion in Brazil, just like me. 

It is also an Immense Jealousy-Inducing Shopping List. 

I now need me a mangosteen. How strange that this has become my number-one reason why I’m thankful to live close to Canada. 

Best recent Actual Food History book goes to Beans, by Ken Albala. Great stories, separated by variety so you can trace them over time (it even mentions the Hutterite Soup bean! Awesome!) plus great recipes, plus it’s just darn pretty. I love when books are designed and printed well, so that it’s a pleasure just to hold them in your hand and flip through them. Highly recommended.

Mourning Dove

ROCK! There apparently is a Mourning Dove sitting right outside my window right now, singing to the dawn.

Sometimes night shift can be cool. Song here -

Gingko Leaf Booties

I had thought I’d run out of time to enter Craft Magazine’s Michael Miller Baby Bootie Contest, but I found out 1st July that they’d extended the deadline for another week. So, last night:

The side leaves were meant to be attached asymmetrically to give the effect of wrapping around the foot, but with their size I don’t think I achieved that. I might explore overlapping velcro patches with longer leaves, in the future.

With snaps, the booties will open flat for storage.

I picked up the marvelous polished wood bowl at Mandan’s 4th of July Art in the Park craft fair, from Sean Ung of Splendid Nature. Just beautiful. And food-safe. And cheaper in person than on the website.

Garden Observations

I’ve never had a common culinary sage overwinter before - the vibrant blue flowers are bigger than the cultivated ornamental sages, such as “May Night”, and the bees love them.

 

I’m a bit short on insectary plants in my garden area at the moment - the skirret is forming buds, so it will be ready soon, but my volunteer borage is still only at the four-leaf stage. One of the best things you can do for garden or orchard productivity is to insure you’ve mixed in some insectary plants with staggered blooming seasons, so the bees always have something to come back for. Umbels are lovely and liked by many predatory insects, who will help keep down the unwelcome bug population. (And anything we can do for neighborhood bees, the better.)

The below picture, unfortunately, is an early symptom of fireblight in a prairie rose. Notice the “shepherd’s crook” of curled, dead leaves at the top of the stem. This particular individual was stressed, as it’s been growing in a pot since last spring’s mass-uprooting-of-rose-runners-from-my-planting-beds, and I tend to forget about artificial fertilization. None of the ones still in the ground is showing symptoms, thank goodness. I cut off the infected branch as far down to the root as I could, sterilized the pruners in a bit of bleach (chased with a bit of vinegar to keep the bleach from deteriorating the tool), and gave it a meal - and the remaining branches are looking better already.

I had had a mild spate of this last year, in the rose tangle that I had not yet gotten up the courage to crawl into to prune out, but it looks like the cleanup I did last fall and this spring was mostly successful. I ended up trimming canes on my back armed with oven mitts and a bow saw (and found out I had some nice rockwork under the snarl of canes, ouch!) but I was extremely proud of myself when it was done.

It’s a bit sad to see, as a lot of our big fruit species like Apple and Pear are in the Rose family, and thus susceptible to fireblight. Newer cultivars have been bred for blight resistance, but most of the important heritage varieties of which I evangelize to friends and neighbors, of course are not. You kinda think of North Dakota as an isolated backwater - we’re still lucky enough to be free from the Emerald Ash Borer, but it’s coming! - but plant diseases try hard to survive.

Junior Master Gardener, with marshmallows

Last fall I took the Master Gardener course, so this year I am working on the 40 hours volunteer time required to get the Official Certificate and T-Shirt (TM) (not kidding.) By the way, I still need hours, so if you have any gardening questions send ‘em over!

They asked us to teach a session of the Junior Master Gardener summer program for 3rd-5th graders. I pulled the first session, Plant Development, which turned out to be Super Cool as I got to bring in lots of show-and-tell.

Plants are Cool Because They Give Us:

• Clothing!  FABRIC: Above you can see Flaxseed, Linen, Cotton, Mercerized Cotton, Knit Picks Shine which is a mix of cotton and Rayon from the beech tree, and some Recycled Sari Silk made of Rayon from the banana tree.
• Clothing: DYE TO COLOR IT WITH: A Weaver’s Garden, amongst many other things, provides the Requisite Gross-Out Story: Indigo blue. Indigo dyers used to keep vast vats of the dye simmering, and when the dyestuff was exhausted would simply add more plant material to the existing liquid and keep going. Unfortunately the most popular liquid used to make the dyebath was human urine, as it contains a small but perceptible quantity of the same pigment that turns into indigo blue. So, as you can imagine, the dyers were generally kept wayyy outside of town. (Hmm… human urine can also be distilled into phosphorus… I wonder if there were any explosions if dyebaths were left to burn too dry?) 
• Clothing:  SOAP TO WASH IT WITH: See below for some Soapwort herb feeling sudsy.

• Medicine! We had Horehound (cough drops! Beekeepers used to keep a hive planted closely in Horehound, and when the flowering season was done pull out that honey immediately and jar it up as cough syrup), Mint (tummyaches!), Calendula (scrapes and diaper rash), Catnip (sleepytime), Lovage (a digestive, plus the seeds smell like yummy spicy celery), Aloe (scrapes and burns), and my favorite, Marshmallow (a demulcent good for sore throats and upset tummies.) The big draw with this one is that I had seed for their test garden, and we’ll be making real live marshmallows from the roots for their graduation ceremony. (Recipe will be in the next post.) The best reference ever - Making Plant Medicine. With essays, techniques and a list of plants and their uses, I like to sit down and read this for fun. I will be trying the Honeyed Marshmallow Roots cough sweets with my own marshmallow planting this fall.

We finished up with the Also Requisite Messy Class Activity - making aloe lotion from the goo inside aloe leaves. We basically slit open leaves, had the kids strip out the goo, and mix it into already-prepared lotion - but it was wonderful as the stuff inside was stringy, sticky, clung to your hands, and was clear with the faintest yellow color… i.e.  SNOT. One little boy got his hands entirely covered with the snot, with strings connecting finger to finger… it was absolutely lovely but as I was a bit snotty at the time myself I could not get a pic.

Lion’s Mane Mushrooms

BRAAAAAIIINNNS!

I got a kit to grow Lion’s Mane mushrooms from Fungi Perfecti. It’s awesome because it’s a sawdust kit - you get a bag of sawdust fully colonized with mycelium, then all you do is cut slits in the plastic to induce fruiting and keep it moist. I’ve grown Portobellos twice - they must be segregated in a low-light area, and as they’re manure-based kits do seem to develop a case of gnats towards the end. The Lion’s Mane needs indirect light so can be kept in your actual living area.

Just like all kits - when the sawdust runs out of nutrients, you can use the still-living mycelium to inoculate logs in your backyard, to keep the crop going for years. (Check out the awesome Mycelium Running, which is worth reading anyway, for more details.) Lion’s Mane is reported to aid the nervous system, so Paul Stamets recommends a backyard log as a wonderful resource for families with a history of Alzheimer’s, etc.

More pictures and a taste report:

First raspberry!

A raspberry coloring up on relatively-new primocane red raspberry variety ‘Double Delight’, still in a pot on my porch waiting for its future home to be dug and trellised. This variety has pink flowers!

ETA: I moved the pots out into the yard to test spacing - turned my back - and a bird ate the berry. Stupid birds. ;) Looks like I’ll be incorporating some netting into the trellis setup.

I’m using Stella Otto’s 1995 ‘The BackYard Berry Book’ as my general handbookfor small fruit, as the growing information is still wonderful even if the variety lists don’t include the newest cultivars. Growers around here really talk up the ‘Heritage’ and ‘Autumn Bliss’ varieties for best production in a farm setting, which are listed in all my mailorder catalogs, but most nurseries around here only had ’Souris’, a new variety which at least SOUNDS optimized for my area. I had to hunt to find someone carrying some of the good old varieties mentioned - but I did manage to pick up two each bareroot Boyne, Killarney and Cumberland (which I was pleasantly surprised to find out was a black raspberry, when I got home and could look it up.) Blacks are convenient as they don’t spread as much by runner (=tidy patch), and are more reliable in times of water stress than reds. I’ve temporarily potted them up while the digging is pending, and all but one Cumberland have definitely broken dormancy. (It’s been a cold, wet, cloudy June.) The nurseryman advised if I was going to pot them, to keep them there for at least a month to get a good root system to hold in the soil - removing too early where the soil would fall off the tender new roots would possibly damage them.

All of these others are floricane bearers/summerbearing, and so need trellising. I plan to use a V-trellis system as described in the newest issue of Pomona, NAFEX’s journal, to allow the canes maximal headroom, and hopefully encourage new shoots to come up in the middle of the row instead of outside it in mowing territory.

Cultivated blackberries are too wussy to make it up here with any fruit quality, but if you’re able to plant them, remember to keep the roots covered during the planting process! For some reason, exposing blackberry roots to light will greatly reduce their transplant success (which may account for the secondhand stories that “you can’t dig up wild blackberries and plant them at home, they’ll die.”) I’m in envy of those people who ”have this great wild blackberry patch which is completely adapted and gives us buckets every year,” - as it’s rather hard to purchase Wild blackberries commercially, hopefully I’ll find one of these people soon who’s willing to share. :) 

Fun with Brassicas

I don’t know why, but suddenly I really enjoy cabbage. I don’t know if it’s my repressed German heritage creeping out, or that I finally found a good way to cook it (stuffed cabbage rolls in tomato sauce - yuck!) but it now ends up on my menus fairly often. Which is convenient, because cabbage holds up well in storage and would therefore fit easily into a grow-your-own scenario.

I am incredibly surprised that even sauerkraut qualifies in that list - I was almost ruined for sauerkraut by a 5th-grade class cooking demonstration featuring a casserole of mashed potato, ground beef, sauerkraut and bananas. I THINK the bananas were meant to cut the acidity of the sauerkraut but… no.  My husband kept extolling the virtues of “knoephla and kraut”, and as I have started enjoying more sour and pickled things, I thought I’d try it again. A local restaurant’s spaetzle + sauerkraut + corned beef + dijon cream sauce = AWESOME.

Bestest Sauteed Cabbage (for sides!)

• 1/2 a firm green cabbage head, cored and sliced thin
• a bit of oil
• salt and pepper
• up to 1 T white sugar if you want
• 1/4 cup chicken broth

Heat the oil in a 12″ saucepan, and add the cabbage. Salt and pepper well, and add sugar if you like. (I don’t know if I agree with replacing the traditional bacon fat with sugar, but see if you like it.) Saute until tastily well-browned, maybe 10 minutes. Pour in the chicken broth and cover to let steam until soft. Maybe add some bacon bits if you miss the old ways…

Russian Cabbage Baked with Feta 

From “Please to the Table: The Russian Cookbook” by Anya von Bremzen. (Serves 6)

• 1 head cabbage, 2.5 pounds, cored and slivered
• 3 T butter
• 2 T vegetable oil
• 1/4 cup sour cream
• 2 large eggs
• 1/4 cup finely chopped fresh dill (optional)
• salt and pepper
• 1 1/3 cups finely crumbled feta
• 1/3 cup coarse dry breadcrumbs
• 1 - 2 tsp sweet Hungarian paprika
• 5 T butter, melted

1. Blanch the cabbage in boiling water for 2 minutes. Drain and pat dry (using an UN-linty towel.)
2. Heat the 3 T butter and the oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Saute the cabbage until browned, about 15 minutes. Let cool until you can handle it easily.
3. Preheat the oven to 375 F.
4. In a small bowl, whisk together the sour cream and eggs, and mix into the cabbage. Add dill and season with salt and pepper. Transfer to a casserole dish.
5. Combine the feta and breadcrumbs, and sprinkle over the cabbage. Sprinkle the whole with paprika and the extra melted butter, and bake till bubbly and browned, 15 minutes.

 Cabbage Pie Soup!

The Winter Vegetarian, Darra Goldstein. Serves 8.

Dough

• 2 cups unbleached white flour
• 1/2 pound unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
• 1 cup sour cream

Filling

• 4 T unsalted butter
• 1 small head cabbage (2.5 pounds), cored and slivered
• 1 cup water
• 2 tsp salt
• 6 T sugar
• 2 tablespoons cider vinegar
• Pepper
• ——
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1 quart of your favorite vegetable broth

First, prepare the dough - blend the flour and butter together in a food processor or using a pastry blender, till about the size of fine cornmeal. Add the sour cream and mix until just blended and beginning to hold its shape. Split into two balls, wrap in wax paper, and chill for at least an hour.

For the filling, melt the butter in a large skillet, and stir in the cabbage. Cook covered over medium-low heat, until cabbage is softened. Uncover and cook further until liquid is evaporated.

Preheat the oven to 425 F. Roll out half the dough into a rectangle 12×15″, to fit a 9×13″ pan. Add the filling, and cover with a second crust. Brush with beaten egg and bake until brown, 25 minutes. Cut into large squares.  Place a square into a large flat soup plate, then pour broth over. Serve at once.

Using Garden Greens

The silliest gardening problem I have is using what I grow. I tend to plant one or two each of many different special plants, and then as “I only have one!” of the adult, find myself “saving it” for some occasion which never arrives, and it overmatures or rots in the fridge or gets eaten by rabbits. This is made more likely, as due to an immense maple shading most of my backyard, I primarily focus on greens-producing plants as most likely to yield well - and many leafy things require a good-sized patch in order to make a meal.

What to do with tiny amounts of random green leafies?

• Assortment salads, of course. But to control the unruly texture of tasty-but-fuzzy things like radish thinnings and young borage leaves, kale thinnings and silvery young lambsquarters, it can be fun to stack the leaves and thinly slice them into a chiffonade. Dress the ribbons with something light like vinaigrette. This also works well to incorporate bright citric sorrel, oxalis or purslane without it being tooo surprising to bite into.
• Soup! Chopped carrot greens make a great addition to soup you’ve used the young carrots in; same with beets.
• There is a traditional German/Ukrainian dish that wraps bread dough in beet leaves, then bakes the rolls touching each other in a pan with a bit of cream and onions underneath.
• Consult your nearest Greek cookbook. Greek cuisine is expert at using lots and lots of different kinds of greens (horta), as their islands are famous for their horticultural variety. Where do you think the word “horticulture” came from?

Use this tasty Greek pie filling baked between layers of pie crust, puff pastry, thick phyllo, or wrapped up in individual egg roll wrappers and fried.