Garden

Plant your Garlic Now! Quick, before New Moon Comes Out!

November 2, 2009

(Headline was a cheap-attention getter, sorry.)

I don’t know why I thought I already wrote this piece, but I swear I did. Maybe I dreamed it.

Get ready, because I’m planning to boss you guys around. Again. It seems like all I do is tell everyone what to do and why they should do it. Well. I don’t care. You should plant garlic. You really should. It is super easy and the difference between store bought and home grown garlic is vast. Not as vast as the difference between a store bought and home grown tomato (what is?), but still vast. And the best part? Easy to peel! I hate to peel garlic (and shallots and onions). In fact, if and when I run out of garden garlic, I far prefer to buy huge jars of already-peeled whole garlic — practically as horrid as garlic salt, if many gourmands are to be believed — hideous, refrigerated whole garlic! …rather than to buy and peel the tissue thin skin of a store bought clove of garlic.

You don’t need much room to grow garlic. You don’t need great soil. But. And this is a big but: You need to plant it NOW! The first week of November is a good time for Zone 3 and 4 gardeners. If you are warmer, just make sure to do it before the ground freezes, but not early enough to let the little buggers sprout. If a prolonged warm spell is still possible in your neck of the woods, hold off.

To plant your first crop of garlic, you have to order it from a garden catalog. I love Territorial, Pinetree, kitchengardenseeds.com and others. It’s a good idea to find a seller that is close to where you garden, or at least in the same type of climate and zone. Garlic adapts to where it grows. So it stands to reason that garlic purchased from a seller that grows its crop in a climate like yours will grow better in your own garden. Hopefully, that will be the last time you have to buy garlic to plant, because ideally, you will save a portion of your harvest and plant those cloves the next Fall.

[UPDATE: A commenter mentioned something that made me realize something I should have mentioned: if you have a farmer’s market that sells organic garlic grown in your area that you love, YOU CAN PLANT THAT TOO! The benefits are that you know what it looks like, you can taste it, it’s probably a good deal, etc. etc. Thanks to freshnewengland.blogspot.com for jangling my brain.]

It does happen that you can lose your crop, as has happened to me once, over the course of a particularly brutal and snow-free Minnesota winter about 4 or 5 years ago. It was very sad, but I have moved on.

It is also helpful to take notes on what type of garlic you grow. And if you grow more than one variety, to keep track of where it is planted and what bag or box it is put in when it is harvested. That way, when someone says, “That is beautiful and delicious garlic! What variety is it?” You can say, “Why, thank you for asking. It is Inchilleum Red.” Instead of, “Um. Polish Red? Longkeeper? I have no idea…” Like I end up saying every year. Even when given the opportunity to start from scratch four years ago, I did not learn that valuable lesson. So learn from me, and make a note.

Planting it couldn’t be easier. 1) Loosen the soil.

2) Separate the cloves. Discard (and eat) the itty bitty cloves.

3) Push individual cloves, pointy side up, one to two inches below the surface of the soil.

4) Smooth over and cover with something to protect area from being disturbed if you have dogs, cats, chickens or other curious varmints.

(Please ignore the drunken, wavy formaldehyde infused fake wood. I assure you. The stuff usually works great.)

5) After the ground freezes, if you are worried about very severe cold with no snow protection, you can mulch with hay or leaves. Just don’t do it too early, as you don’t want the prevent the ground from getting cold and freezing, which would encourage growth.

Next spring, clear the bed and amend the soil with a little compost scattered here and there, don’t worry about working it in. You don’t want to damage the cloves which are just below the surface. Water as you would anything else in the garden and harvest when the tops fall over. If you planted a hard neck variety, you’ll want to cut off the scapes to keep the energy directed to the development of the bulb. You can saute the scapes, they are delicious.

So that’s it for garlic. Does it appease the guilt and shame that I have about not finishing the Apple Madness posts? That I only have part one finished? That all I can think about is the ugly and probably festering apples in the cooler outside that should be in the four remaining pie crusts that are awaiting rollout in my fridge?

NO! Now LEAVE ME ALONE! I’ve got a book to read. And it’s so good, too… Hope none of my clients are reading this.

Apple Madness, Part One. Ugly-But-Useable-Apples Recipes.

October 21, 2009

Ugh.

I wish I could be more upbeat about this whole harvest thing, but MAN. I’m ridiculously SICK of it. How do orchard people stay happy? How does anyone stay happy? It’s just one thing after another thing after another… it’s never over. I’m never done!

aah. I digress. Again.

Not only do I sit and think “Oh my gosh, I’ve got to deal with those _______.” (fill in the blank with apples, peppers, eggplant, kale plants, beets, carrots, parsnips, etc.) But then I think “Oh my gosh, I’ve got to get that apple post up on the blog.” And then I wonder “What the hell am I even doing this stupid blog for?” For which I do not have an answer.

Aside from my petulance about all the harvest things I have yet to do, I am really, really excited smug about this pairing of apple recipes.

First, know this: I grow organic apples.

Second, know this: I grow organic apples because it is the easiest way to grow apples. You basically do nothing, versus spraying chemicals on the apples every two weeks. I can’t be counted on to do anything “every two weeks.”

Third, know this: my organic apples are very ugly and hard to give away.

Fourth, know this: I hate to waste garden food and therefore I have a lot of ugly apples. Very tasty, ugly apples. Hence this combo of recipes.

Backstory
We had two hard freezes before September was over. Normally we have a few frosts, things wind down slowly and the apples are about the last garden item to be harvested, along with carrots and parsnips. This year however, our first frost was not a frost, but a freeze. The apples were mostly OK that night (26), but a week later the temps dipped down to 20. Not 25, but 20! So I spent the day picking all the apples and sorting them into 3 piles: compost, really ugly but useable, and maybe-I-can-eat-this-apple-fresh piles.

I use the “Really Ugly but Useable” apples for pies and sauce. I basically just cut away everything gross and use what I can. Last year, I was making tons of pies to freeze. I had a bucket of peels and cores under the sink in the compost bucket. I think I might have even emptied some coffee ground on top of them. Then I read something about boiling the peels and cores to get juice that you use for apple jelly. Honestly! That’s like making food from garbage!

So I brushed the coffee grounds off the browned peels and cores and dumped them in a pan with some water and started boiling. I got only 1 pint of jelly out of it, but oh MAN, it was so insanely good! In my opinion, it’s way better than my raspberry jam that everyone seems to want. The jelly was too runny last year, but I didn’t care. This year, I was hoping I could do it better.

So here is my process. And if I may be allowed to say so, it’s brilliant. I don’t know how many other people have ugly apples, but if you do, please don’t throw them away: try this!

Apple Sauce and Apple Jelly

The ugliest useable apples go into the Sauce/Jelly pile (this is a very complicated pile system) while the prettier ones go into the Pie/Jelly pile (that’s Apples Part Two, coming soon). Just for the record, my apples are a mixture of Honey Crisp, Haralson and two mystery varieties.

I take an apple, and cut it in half, then quarters, and assess the situation:

if looks OK, I cut the core out and put that in the jelly pot. The quarters go into the Sauce Pot.

If it looks über yucky, I use what I can.

Nice bright pieces go into the Sauce Pot.

Mottled brownish pieces (trails from the Apple Magot Fly) go into the Jelly Pot.

I do confess that we often just eat the less disgusting brownish ones. They are only trails of worms long gone. You can hardly see some of them. Just so you know: I like to think I’m preparing my family for some apocalypse that will take place some time in the future. My kids are going to be way more immune to gross food than yours will be.

I work my way thru the pile (which isn’t disappearing nearly fast enough). And yes, that’s a trash can and yes, it’s kind of dirty…

The pectin for the jelly comes from the peels and the seeds, so you need those for the jelly. The peels stay on the sauce apples because I will put those thru the food mill and they make the sauce pink, which is very pretty. I could leave the cores on the sauce apples as well, but they are helpful for the jelly and it’s easy enough to just cut those out. Is this as confusing as I think it is? It shouldn’t be…

Oh my gosh I have a terrible headache… But I still have 42% battery left on my laptop, so I must press on!

I basically just keep going until one or the other pots fill up. Then I add about 1 cup of water to the sauce apples and turn on low and cover. I almost cover the Jelly Apples with water and add a whole bunch of ROSEMARY (my favorite flavor). Do not skip this step. If you don’t have any, go buy some. Seriously.

Add 1/2 cup of fresh squeezed (not!) lemon juice. (I’ll squeeze up to 1/4 cup. More than that, and I use this stuff, kindly given to me by my friend Chris when I complained that real lemon juice — as opposed to RealLemon brand yucko — didn’t exist. She got this at CostCo.

Stir it up and turn on low, cover and cook till apples are soft, at least an hour.

Once soft and tender, line a strainer with several layers of cheese cloth (or use a jelly bag, whatever the Hell that is, if you happen to have one. I do not.) set over a large bowl and pour in. Do NOT push or force apples thru.

This mixture needs to sit a good long time, preferably overnight in a cool place. I’m thinking that maybe it’ll be cool enough on my porch tonight. Ya think?

Meanwhile, the Sauce Apples should be soft and ready to process. Put the Sauce apples thru a food mill to get rid of the peels and any seeds.

I put the food mill right back over the pot they cooked in because once you are done processing them, turn the heat back up, add 1/4 c lemon juice for about 4 lbs of cut apples and sugar to taste. I added about 1/2 cup. I also add about 1 teaspoon of cinnamon because we like that. Bring to a simmer and ladle into clean, hot sterilized canning jars.

Heat process (steam or boil) 10 minutes for 1/2 pint jars.

You are now done for the day, go to bed feeling like a superstar. Tomorrow, though, it all begins again, so sleep well.

In the morning (or several hours later), put the juice from the strained apple rosemary mash into a measuring cup.

I have just over 4 cups, so that means I need to add 4 cups of sugar. Put it into a big-ass pot, because the jelly needs to be cooked at a full rolling, foamy boil.

It took me about 20 minutes to reach the magic temperature of 220 degrees F. Be sure to skim off as much of the foam as possible because it makes a bigger difference for clear jellies. I don’t worry about it too much with my jam, but you can see it below, suspended in my jelly. As soon as it reaches 220, turn off the heat and ladle into hot, sterilized 1/2 pint jars, wipe the rims and seal. Heat process for 10 minutes. Refrigerate any jars that don’t seal.

See the foam? Really ticked me off, I have to say. But then, just another reason to keep it for myself.

Apple Sauce and Apple Jelly. Leave it on your counter to admire for a couple days, then trudge it out to the garage or basement or where ever you store that type of thing.

And this year, It’s the PERFECT consistency! So happy.

Rosemary: Out of One, There Were Many

October 6, 2009

What a stupid title. Some days, I just don’t have it.

I’m chronicling my fall garden tasks and since rosemary is one of my top two flavors (the other being garlic), I always take care of my rosemary plants.

I live in Minnesota. Global warming (or marketing gimmicks) have pushed the Minneapolis/St. Paul gardening climate into definitive zone 4 and even zone 5 according to some. I, in the hinterlands of Watertown, down in my deep hidey-hole, am a committed zone 3 gardener. It’s just plain colder here. Plus, I hate buying plants that don’t make it through a marginal winter. Some talk about micro-climates. Well, I live in a ass-freezing macro climate of cold. So that’s why I have to take special pains with my rosemary.

Rosemary can take a bit of frost, no problem, but I don’t push it too far. We’ve had two frosts so far, one was a pretty good killing frost for almost everything: beans, pumpkin & squash vines, tomatoes, cucumbers, edamame)

…The hardiest garden dwellers live on: chard, kale, carrots, parsnips, cilantro, sage, beets, raspberries, even my strawberries still look okay.

So, this weekend, I figured it was time to start digging stuff out. First on the list: Rosemary and Lantana. I fear I might be too late with the Lantana, since frost nicked the tops pretty bad in that first frost. When I’m done, I will still need to dig the sage and the thyme. I shouldn’t have to bother with thyme since it’s “hardy” (ha!) Sometimes my thyme makes it through, but it always looks horrible, so I just dig it out to be safe.

For the record. I have a single pane glass greenhouse which is totally useless in the winter, unless you happen to have money dripping off trees and don’t mind 80% of your heating dollars melting away through the glass. I use it as long as I can without heating. When the subzero temps threaten, I drag all these pots of herbs into the dark barn, which doesn’t dip below 32 degrees, but hovers somewhere around 40. I stop watering and basically just leave them alone for a month or two, with the exception of scooping out the inevitable barn-cat poop that appears magically sometime during January.

When the sub zero temps are mostly past, I haul them back into the sunlight, cut them back and begin to water. I’ve been doing this for years with pots of rosemary and sage. You could do it in a basement, too.

One thing that has never worked for me, though, is keeping rosemary in my house. Honestly, I just can’t do it. Sometimes, when my pots burst into flower during February or March, I will bring them into the house to enjoy, but I have seriously almost killed them in just a couple weeks. I have no idea why. Maybe I’m cursed.

Anyway, while digging out the rosemary, I noticed that one of the plants had long, drooping branches that touched the ground. Where they touched the ground, they took root and made it difficult to dig out and put into a pot.

Being an opportunist, I decided to take advantage of this. It’s the same concept as deliberate layering — a complicated process to propagate plants and some woody shrubs which always eluded me up until now. But here, I’m a better gardener than I thought! (Take that, smug people who can keep rosemary alive in their houses!) I layered my rosemary! Which is really nothing more that pushing a branch down into the dirt and letting it root, then cutting it off the main plant and potting it up.

So that’s what I did.

Now we’ll see if I can remember to water the little pains-in-the-ass.

ONIONS!

October 1, 2009

Ok, I know most gardeners have long since dealt with their onions, since most are ready to harvest in June. In Minnesota, most of us didn’t harvest until July because of the weather. I pulled all mine out in early August, let them air dry outside for a day or two, then put them in our lower garage, which serves as my pseudo root cellar. I have to say, though, August and September don’t really do much for storing root crops. Flipping back through the notebook I keep in my office with all my to-do’s I see that I started writing “Chop Onions” as early as September 2nd. You will be happy to hear that I was finally able to check that off my list… On September 30th.

I would like to share how I deal with my onions.

Maybe it’s just me, but my onions do not keep through the winter. I don’t know if it’s because I am a bad gardener or because I’m a bad store-er. I’m guessing it’s a little of both. Should I cut the tops off before I cure them, or leave them on? Should I let them dry in the sun a day before shuttling them off to the dark depths of the lower garage or let them dry longer? You can find support for just about any variation. Seriously. I’ve researched this. I’m willing to chalk my failures up to variations in circumstances. That rationale has served me well in all areas of life, by the way.

This year was a good onion year, albeit a late one. After harvesting, I leave the tops on, letting them dry for a day in the sun. Then, I put them in a ventilated box (mine is the lid to an old rabbit hutch, the occupants of which I decided would be happier if left to roam the wilds of our 40 acres) and put them in the lower garage, which is dark and cool.

I write “chop onions” on my to do list about a month later. After ignoring that line item for about a month, I decide to “chop onions” on the day that I also have to “make salsa.” It would be easy to continue to ignore “chop onions” except for the fact that I need a lot of chopped onions to “make salsa.” So, the two would seem to go together quite nicely. (“Make Salsa” post coming in the next day or two.)

In the past, I have been totally anal about the chopping of my onions, preferring perfectly diced cubes, which of course requires hand chopping. This year, however, I have decided to cut corners and pulse the onions in the food processor to see if it makes any difference.

First, however, I have to decide which onions to chop and which to store. Since this was a good year for onions, it appears that I have lots I might be able to store for at least a few months. It would be a lot easier just to store them all, but I have to say: grabbing a handful of chopped and frozen onions during the winter for sauteing is a luxury I have learned not to live without. Plus, when I first started growing onions, I learned the hard way that many of the onions start to rot from the center out. That resulted in a lot of wasted onions for me. Now, I am ruthless when it comes to judging whether an onion should be stored or chopped.

If there is any give at all in the stem area of the onion, it goes into the chopping pile:

Sometimes I am right in my assessment:

Sometimes I am wrong:

But this year, I am very happy with my storage pile. It’s always nice to have some back-up onions ready for chopping:

The rest, I peel and quarter and chop.

But either way, let me give you a great tip: USE GOOGLES FOR NO TEAR ONION HANDLING!

Cute, huh?

I actually saw some onion goggles at a kitchen store in Colorado during our Road Warrior trip. They were $24 dollars! Insane, when you can wear these charming specks designed by Speedo.

Anyway, I put the the chopped onions on to cookies sheets in a layer about 1/2″ to 1″ thick. And let me give you another valuable tip: USE WAX PAPER AS A SHEET LINER. I did not, and now I have onion smelling cookie sheets. Morgan made some cookies yesterday that have a very peculiar onion aroma that I can’t say added much to the flavor of the cookies.

I freeze the sheets, and then break into pieces and store in freezer bags.

Once you try this, you will find yourself growing more and more onions. It is an unbelievable time saver.

Jennie’s Low Sugar, No Pectin, Raspberry Jam

September 18, 2009

I am taking a quick break from Road Warriors, which will return to it’s regularly scheduled time in a few days in order to take care of some much needed business. Raspberry jam. If there is anyone out there with raspberry bushes like mine, they will know what I am talking about when I say I’ve got raspberries coming out my eyeballs.

This is a no pectin recipe that I also categorize as low sugar, but that needs to be clarified: low sugar is a relative term when it comes to jam. This recipe is low sugar when compared to other jam recipes, namely, any that use pectin. (One sentence in and I’m already making excuses for myself.)

I’ve been making this jam for years and I continue to tweak it. I’m sorry I can’t give absolutes, but the amount of time needed to cook the berries changes even as the weeks progress. I should do a video to show you the sound it makes when I consider it “done.” But maybe I can try describing it for now. Next time I’ll video it.

Here goes:

Use 8 cups berries to 4 cups sugar for a 4 1/2 – 5 quart heavy pan. A Le Creuset 24 is a perfect fit if you have it. I have a really big one (7.25 qt Le Creuset 28) and can fit 16 cups of berries in at a time, which I do quite often. There is a trade off for doing a big batch at once though, and that is that you end up having to cook it a bit longer than with a smaller batch. Some would argue that the longer the berries cook the less “fresh berry taste” you will have. I disagree. I even made a pectin batch to see if it had a brighter flavor, since you only have to boil jam made with pectin for a minute or two. It really didn’t taste any “fresher.” It was sweeter though. But that makes sense since you use only 4 cups of berries to 6 cups of sugar plus a packet of pectin. YOWZA!

I have also been experimenting with using less and less sugar. So far, so good. I’m down to 16 cups berries to 6 1/2 cups of sugar. We’ll see how that keeps on the shelf. But to be safe, stick with the 2:1 ratio.

I pour the berries into a bowl, or into the pot they will cook in, if that pot is available for most of the day. I put it in a sunny spot if it happens to be sunny out and stir it up every time I pass by. For whatever reason, I seem to always can jam at night, so the berries sit most of the day. This allows the sugar to dissolve and the berries to break up without cooking, which I think helps the flavor in the end.

When it’s time to cook it, I make sure I have clean and sterilized jars ready. I used to be gonzo mental about this. Now I just run them through the dishwasher and call it a day. I put the berries in a pot on a low to medium low heat. You can go ahead and put it on high, but don’t come crying to me when –within a matter of seconds — the liquid foams up and boils all over you stove and into your burners. Have fun with that one. It’s medium low for me. And I don’t leave the kitchen until it has been gently boiling for a few minutes.

Skim as much of the foam off as you can. Don’t be mental about it, it’s not that big of deal. More an aesthetic thing.

It will boil merrily along for a while and you can get some other stuff done. Just be sure to stir with a rubber spatula every few minutes. My latest recipes were this: After reaching a gentle boil, an 8 cup batch took 12 minutes to be done and a 16 c batch took 20 minutes.

You are looking for a change in consistency from a watery boil to a thick boil. Not a spluttering boil, where globs pop up at you when you stir, just a change in the sound and a visible consistency shift to thicker. If, however you go too long, it isn’t a disaster, it will just be thicker and darker and you won’t get as many jars out of the batch.

Then, while the jam is still hot and simmering, fill the jars to 1/4″ from the top, put the lids and bands on and screw tight. USDA will tell you that you need to process these in a water bath for 10 minutes. I used to do just that. Now I don’t. The jars are warm, the jam is boiling and I still get a nice, tight seal. I can vouch for the fact that my jam, when processed this way, is good for 2 years, as long as the seal is intact when opened. Obviously, store it in the the fridge once it’s been opened.

So far no one has died. And the jam looks and tastes so much better.

Keeping Up With the Beans

August 6, 2009

(and zuchini…)

I have a confession to make: my family & I hate canned and most frozen vegetables.

This poses quite a challenge for the whole local food movement because it disallows us from truly utilizing my garden’s bounty by canning and freezing the excess harvest. Come December, I hang my head in shame as I shop the produce aisle of Cub Foods purchasing plastic bags full of imported green beans. It is a serious shame. But isn’t it worse to slave away, steaming and freezing green beans that languish in the freezer, only to get fed to chickens in July? Tough call.

Anyway, because of the frozen food aversion, I give away a lot of my harvest. It is one of the only nice things I do with no ulterior motives. (Really.) I do still end up preserving quite a bit: raspberry jam, tomato salsa, I cook and freeze kale (it suffers none of the indignities that beans or carrots do when boiled and frozen), etc. Oh, and I pickled several pints of green beans this year, completely ignoring my notes from six years ago that said, and I quote, “do not pickle beans. no one eats them,” because I figured a lot can change in six years. But mostly I ignored the note because I have so many effing green beans. Aside from freezing them again — and notes from last year’s wasted frozen beans score a lot higher on my believability chart than the pickled beans from 6 years ago — I just don’t know what else to do with them! You wouldn’t believe how many of today’s fine UPS and FedEx drivers are uninterested in free bags of green beans! In addition, two large families I used to supply started their own home gardens. The nerve!

Anyway. I have never professed to be a good cook. I cook good. There is a difference. A “good cook” is creative and inventive. I cook other people’s recipes “good.” However, today I actually invented a recipe.

I am calling it my KEEPING UP WITH THE BEANS recipe. Plus, I offloaded several zuchini into it, so that is an undeniable bonus. It also happily accepted cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, and onion. I’m pretty sure that you could add just about anything — in vast quantities.

I will reiterate that last point: It uses vast quantities of garden produce. I say this because of how many times I have searched for recipes in order to use up some massive quantity of zuchini, for example, only to find that instead of four, 5 lb zuchinis, it calls for only 1/2 cup. Totally pointless. This recipe uses LOTS of beans. And since it’s a salad, you can keep it in your fridge for days and munch on it at will. Fatty finds this very handy, and I’m sure you will, too.

Twp important tips:
1) DON’T OVERCOOK VEGGIES AND
2) USE AN ICE BATH IMMEDIATELY TO STOP THE COOKING AND RETAIN COLOR & CRUNCH!!

I steamed the beans, corn and zuchini all together. I cut up 2 cukes, 1/2 large onion and as many cherry tomatoes as I had on hand. After that I thought “hmmm….” and added a can of garbanzo beans and bacon crumbles, which were both super good. I went scrounging for some blue cheese as the crowning glory, but alas, my hunk was no longer even blue. It was orange and greenish. And while I am a huge proponent of pushing the expiration envelope, even I have standards. I threw it out and chopped up the remaining fresh mozzarella I had, which was good, but blue would have been better.

For the dressing, I used about 1/4 c balsamic vinegar, 1 teaspoon honey, 1 teaspoon dijon mustard, then slowly whisked in olive oil until the mixture was thick and tasted good. I am guessing it was about 1/4-1/3 cup of olive oil. I added salt and pepper to taste. I tossed the dressing with the cooked, iced and chopped veggies, then chilled. Before serving, I sprinkled skinny strips of basil and mint over the top.

It was FABULOUS and GUILT FREE! Try it. And let me know what changes you made. Pine nuts? edamame? Comment!