Archives for July 2009

The Great Broccoli Lie

July 27, 2009

There is a lie that gets told every year in the Menke home right about now. It goes something like this:

“Hey guys, this is our first broccoli from the garden this year.” (Jennie)

“Really? I thought you weren’t going to grow broccoli anymore.” (any one except Jennie)

“Yeah, I know. But I was at Shady Acres and it looked good, so I bought some. I got it in early, so the Cabbage Moths weren’t a problem.” (Jennie)

“Really? Are you sure? (Family member A)

“You are positive there aren’t any worms?” (Family member B)

“Have you seen any moths? Do the leaves have any holes? Are you sure?” (Family member C)

“I am positive there are no worms. I promise.” (Jennie – THE GREAT LIE.)

BT is a very good (and organic) control for cabbage worms. The problem is, you have to go into the barn, find it, mix it, spray the plants and repeat at least once a week during the growing season. I simply can’t be counted on to do that.

Oh, what’s that you say? I should just pick the worms off? Sure. No problem. Here is what my family sees when they sit down to some perfectly steamed broccoli:

And this is what I see, right after telling the Great Lie:

Of course, this second photo has been enhanced, for your viewing pleasure. It is what I see. My family, most notably, does not see the worm, even though it is there. Scroll back up and look for yourself.

I have two choices at this point.

1) I can fess up and tell them that I lied. That I really did see moths, and holes on the leaves and even saw a worm before steaming, but was positive they were gone until right this very minute when I saw it on my plate.

Or, 2) I can keep my mouth shut, eat the worm and pretend nothing untoward is happening.

What would you do? (comment please).

Well, as I’m sure you all know by now, I ate the worm. Admitting I was wrong would have been way harder.

Sex in a Plot

July 24, 2009

That’s sex in a garden plot! I don’t know why these photos seem so sexy to me. Well, the carrot, yes. She (clearly, it’s a she) looks like a demure, leggy vixen! I finally had to let Charlie eat her though. What would be the point of letting her languish in the refrigerator? The garlic photo, on the other hand… I guess I just think garlic, the smell of garlic, the taste of garlic, is all sexy. I love garlic. I even love garlic breath.

I harvested my first true carrots, thinning my rows. I’ll harvest now as needed. I direct seeded a new bed with carrots in mid July. Hopefully, those will mature before the hard frosts stop their growth. Fall harvested carrots are way better than summer.

Half my garlic was ready to harvest. I am super-paranoid about waiting too long. Every single garden source tells you that when the tops flop, they are ready to be dug. I have found that when most of the tops flop, I have rot. Now, it could be that the rot was due to late moisture, but how can you stop the rain from falling down? I’d rather sacrifice a millimeter of growth for healthy bulbs.

The soft neck garlic had just started flopping over when I harvested it. The hard neck (which forms the curly scapes I wrote about a few weeks ago) takes a bit longer. My softneck variety is inchillium red… or polish red… I can’t remember which. But hear this: garlic is in my top five favorite things to grow in the garden. I love it. After digging, I leave it the sun for a day or two to dry a bit, then move it to a cool dark location to cure. You can eat it whenever, but if you cure it right, your garlic will last until next season. I will earmark the biggest heads to plant in late October for next year. For some reason, that’s always hard for me to do…

The onions are still going strong. So weird. Usually they are long done. I suspect they will start to flop in the next week or so. I have the same exact problem with onions as with garlic, so I am very quick to harvest when they show the first signs of floppage. I used to try to store them over the fall and winter, but now I like to chop and freeze most of them. Having chopped and frozen onion that you can grab by the handful is habit-forming. Plus, it’s so darn maddening to spend all that time growing and weeding only to find that every third onion is rotten in the middle two months down the road.

The new mutt-chickens are in their upgraded abode. I went mental with the electric wire. The darling white picket fence is really my clever way of electrifying the fence door, which has always been a hole in my defenses since the door swings out and I couldn’t have the low wire in front of it. Now, I can easily step over the fence and open the door, but hopefully still keep marauders out. The chickens now enter the fenced run by way of a small door (unseen in the picture) that I cut into the end of the coop (nee playhouse). I am very proud of my handiwork, but was too lazy to document its making, so you’ll just have believe me when I tell you I did an excellent job. Anyway, short of Big Foot or Hedwig the Owl, I think they will be safe:

I can’t believe I just said that.

The Black Rage of Menopause

July 20, 2009

The only thing that qualifies me to write anything on the subject of mental health is the fact that I suffer from my own mental health. Or lack of it. I am certainly not qualified to write anything about menopause, given I have done almost no research on the topic. So why am I writing about it? In my gardening and cooking blog no less?

To be clear, I am only 44 years old — way too young to be talking about menopause. Only I’m not. Too young, that is. Peri-menopause can go on for years. I’ve had maniacal hot flashes–which seem to come in phases–for over a year now. I was hoping the Black Rage would also be a phase, only it doesn’t seem to be going away.

I am writing about the Black Rage because I have been living under it’s cloud for about 3 months now. And instead of it getting better, it is getting worse. So I have decided to cave in, stop fighting it and embrace it. Today, for the first time, I googled these two words: Menopause + Anger. The search results were almost as funny as this weekend when I googled “Underduck vs Underdog.” The top hit in that search was freakishly perfect. (For the record, it is “underduck: when you push someone on a swing and run under them as you push.”) Friends and I were having an argument about it. It was 5 to 1 against me. I was so pissed. I digress… Google it yourself. Vote for what YOU called it in the comments below, cuz I’m curious.

Anyway, the search results for “Menopause Anger” were so astoundingly spot-on that it actually made me mad (are you sensing a theme here? A theme of rage?). I was irritated because I like to think of myself as unique and special. How can all the other people in this world be experiencing the same thing as me?

For example, on one of the sites, a woman named Lori wrote: “…I have found myself getting mad at my dog because she wants a pet.” Check. (The only difference is that I don’t “find myself getting mad,” I rise up in an unadulterated fury and scream “GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE, YOU STUPID DOGS, THIS IS MY COUCH!” And, I might try to kick them as they scatter.)

Another writer named Pat found the need to “detach myself from some longstanding ‘volunteer’ commitments that I’d taken on when I didn’t really want to, because I felt obligated or guilty or whatever.” Check. (The only difference with me is that I didn’t detach myself, as Pat did. What did I do? I simply made one of the people that I do volunteer work for cry this morning. Do I feel bad about it? Well, if being madder that she started to cry counts as remorse, then yes, I feel bad about it. If not, then no. I’m ticked that I didn’t think of crying first.)

Anyway, for all you who actually know me, go ahead and say it. Chant it aloud if it makes you feel better. You know you want to:

POOR DAVE.

Only, if you are really going to go to the trouble, you might as well throw in:

Poor Morgan. Poor Charlie. Poor Buzz. Poor Lola.
And as of this morning, Poor Susie at Freedomfarm.

Something tells me I might need to add a new category to my blog topics.

Weeding 101

July 16, 2009

My Friend Recently Asked Me (and I quote): “How Do You Keep the Weeds Down in Your Garden?”

After staring at her for a few seconds to see if she was kidding, or if I had misunderstood her, I finally said, “I pull them.” She tossed her head back laughing (so she was kidding?) and said “No, no, no, no. I mean a lot of weeds!” And I stared at her again and said “What, are you kidding? I pull them.”

Clearly we were not on the same wave length. She kept trying to tell me it was impossible to pull the amount of weeds she was talking about — surely I didn’t understand what she was dealing with.

Oh no?

How about this?

If you look closely you will see there are some wee plants tucked in among the weeds. Crab grass? Barn grass? Who cares grass. It’s a pain-in-my-ass grass and it has to come out.

If you have a yard, a garden, dirt in a bucket then you battle weeds. I’m not above using Round-Up, or even Weed-B-Gone in some areas of the yard. I try not to, but sometimes I do. But in my garden, well, isn’t that the whole point of growing your own stuff? To not have it laced with chemicals? So I pull them, dig them, hoe them, mow them. And I try really hard not to let them go to seed. Which is just about effing impossible.

When it is weeding day, I get my garden gloves and my iPod. I play several back-to-back Good Food or MacBreak Weekly podcasts, or listen to a good (and sometime bad) Audible book. And the hours pass. If you are looking for an escape from family life, it’s a great activity, because no sane child or husband will come looking for you while you are weeding, lest they be given a bucket and put to work. And, in the end the Weeds B Gone with no bad chemicals. Plus, Fatty got some exercise.

And if this is all just too confusing and technical for you, I’ve made a simple, easy-to-follow how-to video:

Need to Feed the Masses but Don’t Have the Cashes?

July 14, 2009

I’m not going to really use that headline. Or am I…

Anyway. This is one super easy, super cheap, super good way to feed a crowd. I’m not going to belabor the point with witty prose. Let’s get to the meat of it.

Buy lots ‘O pork shoulder from your local butcher. Yes, your local butcher. Costco carried it last time I was there and you can get it from them, but you will have to live with the guilt of supporting mass feed lot economics and all that goes with it. When I started making this on a regular basis, Costco didn’t carry it, or I probably would have bought it there. So I had to find large quantities of it elsewhere. And I’m glad I did, because buying local helps me to feel superior and better than you. I can’t remember what Costco sells it for, but my local meat market (Reider Meat Market in Delano, MN) sells it to me for $1.36/lb. You can’t even buy bones for that anymore! So it makes me very happy to buy it there.

Three shoulders (about 27lb) fits very nicely inside my very inexpensive roaster oven, and costs roughly $36 (the pork, not the roaster oven).

You rub the meat with seasoning. I use a mix that a friend made for me, or I use pork producers (is that a local thing, or does everyone know what pork producers is?), or Chef Paul Blackened Redfish Magic (yes, you read that right. it’s awesome on just about everything), or just salt and pepper. But here’s the thing: BE GENEROUS with the rub. Slap the seasoned pork into the roaster, cover it and cook at about 225 degree F until the meat falls apart when you stab it with a fork. I like to cook it outside on our screen porch overnight. I turn it on around 10pm and Dave turns it off when he leaves for work around 6am. The point is this: this recipe is like “give or take an hour or more.” It’s pretty hard to mess up. (Tell that to my dad, who wants exact times, quantities, etc. He was using a meat thermometer and obsessing. Hear me on this: do not use a meat thermometer. Simply cook it on a low temp until it falls apart when you stab it with a fork.)

After it cools a bit, you strain the juices off into a separator.

And then start pulling the pork. I don’t know how the experts do it, but I do it with my hands. Or in this case, with Charlie’s hands. It’s always nice to force your kids to help. I take a hunk of meat, get the fat off and hand it to Charlie to shred. There is a fair amount of fat, and as much as I love the stuff (I really do), this gelatinous goo needs to be culled. Your guests will thank you.

Once that’s done, you can serve it as is with BBQ sauce on the side or, as I have found works better, toss it with the sauce beforehand and serve warm in a crockpot. Let me explain: I love shredded pork in my freezer for lots of stuff: tacos, pozole, etc. And while I love BBQ Pork sandwiches, I don’t love them nearly as much as the other stuff I make with the pork. So I am always a little reluctant to add the sauce to all that precious pork we just pulled. But, if you really have the masses coming to eat, chances are you will eat it up anyway. So: I make enough to fit in my large crockpot. The rest I store in the refrigerator (and hope I won’t have to serve) until the party is over and then freeze, for my own personal use later. I have found that when I have selfishly served the BBQ sauce on the side (the better to have the untainted leftovers, should that miraculously happen) people either didn’t use it, or didn’t use enough and the result was less than spectacular sandwiches. And since the only reason I entertain in the first place is to be fawned over and praised, that was a losing deal for everyone concerned. So I mix the damn sauce into the pork.

I don’t have a set recipe for the sauce. But here is it in a nutshell: For one large crockpot, I use one bottle of store-bought BBQ sauce, lots of the defatted broth, apple cider vinegar, some honey, some worcehstershire sauce and anything else within arms reach that sounds good at the time.

I like it tangy and maybe a little spicy. But here’s the important thing: IT NEEDS TO BE THIN! If you use the BBQ sauce out of the bottle, your pulled pork will be thick and gooey. And it will make sick noises when you spoon it onto your bun. It’s gross, so don’t do it.

Add more sauce than you think you need. Serve with cole slaw (on the bun is best!) and chips on the side. How else can you feed 80 people generously on $36?

World’s Smallest German Shorthair Pointer

July 9, 2009

Or is it the World’s Tallest Asparagus?

It’s really hard to show just how tall the asparagus really is. I suppose I should be in the shot, to show the human proportion, but then, you’d all see how gross I look. (But just so you know, it is way taller than 5’7″ me.)

Actually, I am really liking this camera. I can’t believe how good it makes me look:

All cameras should have this feature. Who needs wrinkle cream?

This, my friends, is called auto focus. And what was focused was the post behind me. I kind of like it that way. Who need skin-enhancing software — or wrinkle cream, for that matter, when there is the much cheaper out-of-focus option available?

Here is a better picture of a different post (that is falling down). The sweet dumpling squash planted on the right side of the fence is in the process of actually crawling and climbing onto the falling-down fence. It is soon to overtake the garlic, planted on the left, which needs to hurry up and mature. Otherwise, where it stands now, planted between the mutant asparagus and creeping squash, it doesn’t stand a chance.

I’m thinking that a new feature of this site could be WWYT (what were you thinking). That’s a nod to my soon-to-be-published friend Sheila, who got picked for a mention in David Pogue’s Twitter book. He liked her acronym. And so do I. But since adding a tab might take three years to figure out on wordpress, I’ll just randomly throw them in. Today’s is:

Strawberries: WWYT?

Why you ask? Because you have to be INSANE to try to grow strawberries in a home garden. It only makes you realize that you must be ingesting some pretty effing insane amounts of pesticides when you eat the spankin’ clean berries from the store. These are my strawberries. And I share them with the birds, the bugs, and Lord only knows what else. ( I cut them up, lest my family figure out that the other half of the berry they are eating was recently in the mouth of a chipmunk.)

Busted!

July 8, 2009

Well. I was out weeding yesterday, I had my camera, and truth be told… it really didn’t require all that much stealth to catch her in the act. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, click here and read the sad pea story.