Jenmenke

Road Warrior

Garden

Kale Harvest and a Winter Soup

Mmmmm. I know I tend to go on and on about Kale. But seriously? It’s that good.

Everyone just assumes it tastes like spinach. But it really doesn’t. Lacking a good comparison, however, that’s what most people say. Including me, I’ll admit. Because there isn’t a good comparison.

It tastes like Kale. Nutty, earthy, sweet… so good!

While spinach can be too earthy, a bit mushy, sometimes harsh tasting. –At least in comparison to kale.

So, if you haven’t tried Kale, then go buy some. Or stop by my house and I’ll give you a gallon freezer bag full.

I’ll also admit: it is very difficult for me to buy Kale at the grocery store. You get about six stems for about $3. Seriously insane. It reminds me of a lunch meeting I had. I was a bit late (always) and came in after they had ordered a couple appetizers. Being polite (hardly ever), I didn’t ask what they had ordered. When the waitress set down two steaming bowls of edamame, I blurted out, “You paid money for these?!”

Of course they paid money for those. Everyone pays money for edamame. Except me, who can’t keep up with the ice cream pails full of pods that start coming out of the garden in August. And they are so much better than the ones at the restaurants. So I encourage you to try planting edamame as well. A simpler crop cannot be found.

Anyway.

Kale.

I will admit one more thing. Processing the kale for the freezer takes about three “jennie days” consisting of anywhere from 1-3 hours each:

  1. Cutting and hauling
  2. Stripping stems from leaves
  3. Boiling, freezing and bagging

Four days this year, due to the volume of stems harvested. (It was a good year for kale.)

I detail my process here, if you are interested. Which, of course, you are not, because who but me does stuff like this? This year, I was able to do all the boiling outside which saved me from the usual three-day kale smell in the house. (Not a good thing. Imagine broccoli times ten.)

I also cut one step out of the process. Instead of chopping the frozen pieces before bagging, I simply crunched up the frozen leaves as I put them in the bags, thereby saving the cutting board clean-up. Always the innovator am I.

I saved about 6 fresh leaves and made this amazing, amazing soup. Sort of a take-off on Italian Kale soup. I substituted barley for white beans, since I had frozen barley left over from my Fall Barley Risotto and didn’t have any white beans in my pantry.

This soup was insanely delicious. And so ridiculously simple. I did start with homemade chicken broth. I’ve got a dearth surfeit** of it in the freezer that I’ve got to use up because I’ve also got a dearth surfeit** of chicken bones waiting to be made into more broth. It’s a vicious circle. I am certain it would also be great with store-bought broth.

Kale Soup with Barley, Sausage and Quinoa

  • 1 pkg hot Italian sausage (I used Johnsonville, but Chorizo with be amazing)
  • 1 medium onion diced or equivalent shallots. (I’ve got to use my dearth surfeit** of shallots up, so I used shallots)
  • 3 large cloves garlic, minced
  • 8 cups chicken stock
  • 4 cups thinly sliced kale, stems removed
  • 1 cup pearled barley
  • 1 cup quinoa
  • 1 T balsamic vinegar (yes, every recipe I use includes balsamic)
  • Salt and Pepper to taste
  • shredded Pecorino Romano for garnish

Slice the sausage into disks if using Johnsonville-type with casings. Otherwise roughly break up if using bulk sausage. In a large soup pan, brown sausage and remove from pan, leaving fat. My sausage did not render much fat, so I added some bacon fat to the pan. Sauté the onions until starting to brown, add the garlic and sauté another minute. Add the the chicken stock and barley to the pot and cook an hour until the barley is just about done (My barley was already cooked, so I added everything at once and simmered for about 45 minutes total). Add the kale, quinoa and sausage and cook another 20-30 minutes on a low simmer. Taste for seasonings. Add the balsmic and serve hot with pecorino (or parmesan) shreds and crusty bread.

Serves: 500 with leftovers*

*kidding. It serves: I don’t know, but I’m guessing 16. We ate a ton. I ate 4 days of left overs and I’ve got a container in the freezer with an additional 4 cups. Hope that helps!

**Update, 11/16/2010:
dearth (noun) LACK, scarcity, shortfall, deficiency, ANTONYMS surfeit.

Bury Your Dead

Or at least make compost out of it.

It’s that time of year in the garden. Of doing the final tasks.

What amazes me to no end is that the final tasks never actually seem to end. I’ve been doing these final tasks for what seems likes weeks now and I’m still not done!

  • Harvest the apples
  • Dig the carrots
  • Cut the raspberries
  • Harvest the kale almost done!
  • Dig the beets
  • Finish transplanting the herbs almost done! Just found 2 more…
  • Put the tools away
  • Clean up the pumpkin beds
  • Burn the diseased tomato plants
  • Cook and freeze the kale
  • Make applesauce and apple jelly
  • Make pies didn’t make pies. just froze the apples with sugar to make into pies.

I’m probably missing stuff. But even then, as you can see, I’m not nearly done. Harvesting the kale, it should be noted, is about a six hour job, since I strip the stems out of the leaves before I cook it. I tried leaving the buggers in last year, but they seriously depleted our eating enjoyment. So I listen to my book on tape, hunched over a bucket for hours while my shoulders tense up and I cut the leaves from the center stems. I have one more pile to stem before cooking it all and freezing.

Is it sick to say that I enjoy it? I actually told my friend this very morning that I feel guilty for spending so much time at it, because it seems like I am creating busy work just so I can sit on my big butt in the sunshine of my front step and listen to my audible book. (which is coincidently, “Bury Your Dead” by Louise Penny)

“Do you eat the kale?”

“Yes.”

“Would you miss it if you didn’t have it in your freezer this winter?”

“Yes!”

“Then why in the Hell would you feel guilty about it?”

“Ha ha (nervous laugh). Right. Thanks! Bye.”

Mom? Are you reading this?

No?

Good.

I blame my mom for my guilt. I inherited it from her. It’s genetic. I just don’t want her to know that. I’d feel guilty. And she’d feel guilty for making me feel guilty…

Anyway, I’m feeling crazy-behind. I have so many pretty pictures of harvesting.

So I’m condensing. If you want to see more or hear more about any individual event, leave a comment and I will comply. It’s just hard to know if I should write about apples again, for example, after writing three posts about them last year. Or planting garlic again. You know?

I do these things every year, but should I write about them every year? I subject my friends and family to repetitive litanies I guess. I suppose I could do the same here. But I’m feeling lazy. And so I’m going to do a power-post condensed harvest version.

Here we go.

Today, I planned on finishing the kale leaves, but when I went out to the garden to cut the remaining stems, I got waylaid by other tasks. For example, I strode into the garden and saw my garden fork stuck in the garlic bed and said out loud, “Shit! I forgot to plant the garlic!” And ran inside to get the garlic to plant. That took about an hour. And the following two hours were filled with digging weeds — totally pointless at this time of year I would guess, and dealing with those rabid, disease-riddled tomato vines. Ugh.

Here are the three types of garlic I planted

Aside from the fact that, like my face, my hand looks much better in person, can you see the size of the clove on the right? It is HUGE! It’s also the only variety I know for sure by name. It is called “Music” and is a hardneck variety. I planted it for the first time last fall and harvested my first bulbs in June. Very fun. The others are a smaller-cloved red softneck variety and also a red hardneck variety. I’m just grateful to have gotten them in the ground.

Oh my gosh. I just remembered right this very minute that I should also have planted shallots! Will my list never end?

  • Plant shallots

Last week I worked on my very sad apple crop.

Yes. They really did look like that and yes, I really did use them.

Here is why you can’t always judge books by their covers. Or apples by their skin:

Like with the kale, I got to listen to hours of my audible book. For the apples, it was “The Year of Living Biblically.” I pretty much burned through the last 6 hours of the book. It was a little repetitive, but good. I do recommend!

I separate the “good” apples from the “jelly” apples. The best good apples go into pies. The other good ones get made into applesauce. The borderline apples go into the jelly pot. Not to worry, all you people I have given jelly to: the green bin is NOT the jelly pot. Those went into the compost pile… And yes, Lola did eat her share of apples.

Speaking of Lola, here she is finding some volunteer snap peas that sprouted after my disastrous summer crop. She hunts them like she does phesants:

After sorting, cutting, and peeling the apples, I made the sauce and boiled the peels, cores and borderline gross apples into juice.

Here is something to bear in mind. When a recipe calls for a “heavy bottomed pan?” This is why they do that and what happens when you do and don’t follow directions:

The next day I canned the applesauce and made the jelly. My beloved, beloved apple rosemary jelly:

You can read all about it here, if you like.

Oddly, this year, my final batch did not set up. It made no sense. No sense at all. Same juice from the same batch of apples. Same ratio of sugar to juice. Same everything. The one and only thing that was different was that I actually stood in the kitchen and watched over that batch, making sure it didn’t boil too hard.

Which leads me to the conclusion that it must have to boil hard in order to set up. I knew you needed a rolling boil for added pectin jellies, but I didn’t know that about natural pectin ones. Live and learn, live and learn.

I took a few days off from outside garden work and got back to it this past weekend.

This was sort of fun and unexpected: after-the-frost strawberries! Who knew?

They seriously tasted like candy. Ridiculously sweet. Next year, I’ll have to remember that and be looking for them. Far less bugs to compete with at this time of year, too.

With that, I’m taking my last sip of wine and heading off to bed with visions of sugar-strawberries dancing in my head.

(that almost gets me excited for Christmas!)

Almost.

The Great Pumpkin

…Or Not.

Remember my nail biting back in late June about whether or not I’d get pumpkins grown in time this year due to my late planting date of June 28th?

Well, thanks –I think– to the hot summer and an unusually late first frost, I did!

I had a few surprises though. This was one of them:

To my knowledge, I did not plant any cantaloupe. I thought I had planted Cinderella pumpkins but never got any of those. It’s pretty hard to mistake thin and whimpy cantaloupe seeds for massive Rouge vif d’ Etampes seeds — the proper name for the cinderella pumpkin, and my favorite — so that doesn’t really make sense. Who knows. Unfortunately, I didn’t know about the cantaloupes until last week, since they were completely hidden from view until the frost, and all but one were overripe.

All was not lost, however. I did get enough pumpkins to decorate my front steps:

The regular pumpkins — with such cool stems this year — are just starting to turn orange. I like them when they are in that transition period. I wish they would stay this way.

This one is my favorite:

I also got enough butternut squash to keep me happy for a while.

I don’t know why, but the three summers prior to this one were horrible for butternut squash. I just couldn’t get them to germinate and when they finally did, where overtaken by the more vigorous pumpkins. So, I’m happy with this bunch.

We really only eat the butternut, though we could eat all of them, I think. Every year I vow to finally try one of the pale green “Sweetmeat” squash that I grow only because they are so pretty (the gray-green one in the the photos above). They are supposed to be delicious.

The problem is, I get very befuddled about what to do with giant squash. We tend to be a bit single-minded in our squash consumption (see favored recipe below). Like many other things in life I have vowed not to do and failed (plant corn, underplant/interplant chaos, swear at my kids), I have vowed not to fall prey to another squash soup recipe. I don’t know what it is, but I am drawn to the idea of squash soup. I make one every year and am always disappointed with the results.  So many of them have that sort of heavy cinnamon/clove combo that I don’t like all that much in anything but desserts. Others have curry or apple… which sounds good right now, but I know from experience I haven’t liked them.

And inevitably I’m left with gallons of the stuff that no one wants to eat.

Then I feel too guilty to just dump it, and end up eating it for lunch for the next week, freezing the rest, and eating that throughout the winter — vowing each time to never, ever make squash soup again.

Is it just me? All these food writers wax poetic about luscious, velvety squash soup and I end up feeling so inadequate…

Anyway, it’s hard to beat this Ina Garten original recipe for caramelized butternut squash. Try it and tell me it isn’t the best way you’ve ever had it:

Carmelized Butternut Squash (serves 4)

  • 1 butternut squash
  • 3T butter, melted
  • 1/8 cup brown sugar
  • 1t salt
  • 1t freshly ground pepper
  • sprinkling of cayenne (optional)

Preheat oven to 400. Cut off ends of squash, then peel with a vegetable peeler, making sure to get through to the deep orange of the squash (otherwise the outside is tough). Cut in half and remove seeds. Cut squash into  2″ cubes and place on a heavy baking sheet or large cast iron pan.

Stir together the melted butter, brown sugar, salt and pepper and pour over the squash, stirring to coat thoroughly with your hands. Spread in a single layer on the pan and roast for 45 to 55 minutes, until squash is tender and glaze begins to caramelize.

While roasting turn the squash with a spatula to ensure even browning. Serve hot.

 

Who Knew Hydrangeas were Invasive?

Not me, that’s for sure.

I’m known, in some circles, as somewhat of a hydrangea expert.

This fallacy has propagated itself based solely on my ability to grow big-ass Annabelle Hydrangeas. For anyone who knows anything about gardening, or hydrangeas specifically, it’s pretty funny. To my knowledge, it requires nothing more than buying the right kind, planting in a spot that receives at least some sun and cutting back in the fall so that the plants don’t get overgrown and floppy.

That’s it.

Suffice to say, I’m not a hydrangea expert.

In fact, my very own annabelle hydrangeas were all floppy and overgrown this summer. True, they had enormous chartreuse green heads on them, but they were all bent over and infringing on the path that goes around the barn, making travel in that sector precarious at best.

“What went wrong,” I wondered many times over the summer?

Well now I know. Yesterday, after finishing my work-work as much as humanly possible on such a gorgeous day, I went outside to cut them back and salvage any stems that hadn’t been turned brown by the first freeze. And I learned an amazing thing: my hydrangeas weren’t necessarily more floppy than normal. There were whole new plants everywhere, many growing so close to the edge of the retaining blocks that they had nowhere to go but to flop over the path.

As I set about to cutting them back — and this year I cut stems right to the ground, rather than leaving 6-8″ as I did last year, since I now think the shorter the stems the better — I vowed to ruthlessly cull all the “volunteer” shrubs.

In my wrath at the difficulty of of task, amidst loud groans and expletives (really, it’s a good thing I don’t have neighbors) I pulled back the rocks and landscape fabric to find roots everywhere!

Honestly, the closest comparison I have to what I saw was the matt-like roots of my “non-invasive” mint. And at each end of these lateral roots were little shoots of new hydrangea plants!

Who knew?

I hacked away mercilessly at the roots and the shoots as best I could without completely destroying the fabric. I think I failed in that attempt, but at least for now, all evidence of new plants are gone.

Of course, the trick going forward is to actually remember today’s discovery. Because I can totally picture myself next spring, in the wonder and joy of new growth, letting the volunteer plants go with the idea that I will dig them up and transplant them somewhere else. In fact, I can almost predict with certainty that that is what will happen. I can also predict with certainty that I will never transplant them and that I will ‘discover’ this whole scenario again next year with only a faint dawning in the back of my mind that perhaps I already knew this.

In fact, as I write this, that very thing is happening right now.

Well, chalk it up to another reason for writing this blog. It is rapidly becoming my memory, bringing a whole new meaning to the phrase “Google it.” Because really, how awesome would it be to Google your memory? If I keep this stupid thing up, that is just what I will be able to do.

The Horseradish Plant

Seriously. Think twice about this one before planting.

I think it might have been just last year that I actually said something along the lines of, “I don’t know why I keep reading that horseradish is so invasive. I don’t seem to have a problem with it…”

Ha.

Ha.

HA!

(to quote myself from last year’s post)

I get it now.

And I am freaking out.

Apparently each piece of broken off horseradish root will grow a plant. I’ve got it growing in the compost piles, in the weed pile, and who knows where else. Not to mention that it is completely out of control here.

I understand mint. At least I think I do. The problem I seem to have with mint isn’t its invasiveness, but the fact that I always plant it in an area where nothing could possibly grow. I figure that way, it won’t be able to get a foothold.

And it doesn’t. It just dies off (since I’ve planted it under the eaves in the rocks amongst the moss on the north side under a log).

Well, that’s if you aren’t counting the silly “non-invasive” mint I’ve been fighting in my raised beds for a few years now. I’ll admit it, this one’s got me. I’ve painstakingly dug it out twice this year so far and yet, here it is thriving again…

…which gives  me a whole new appreciation for the invasiveness of mint if planted in prime real estate.

Anyway, I planted the horseradish in what I considered a fairly challenged spot but not as challenged as my normal spots reserved for mint. It took a few years, but it finally got big and robust. I harvested pieces of the root for eating last year, assuming I was also paring down the plant in the process.

Not.

It was completely out of control this year. Bigger by almost twice the size of last year. And I vowed to dig it completely out before it took over my peonies and knocked the barn over.

…When the hole got deeper than than I could reach with my arm and there were still 3″ diameter roots growing straight down into the earth, I was ready to give up.

But I kept finding lateral roots and digging them out as much as I could. One of the larger roots sprawled out toward the retaining blocks. And the next thing I knew, I was involved in another rather overwhelming project. (I want you to know I am in bed typing this and a boxelder bug just crawled across Dave’s pillow. Luckily, he is not here to enjoy it.)

Those mothers are heavy!

I suppose I figured if I couldn’t dig the stupid horseradish roots out properly, I could at least fix the damn retaining wall that was about to tip over and prevented me from walking on.

As for the horseradish, I really did give up. I sprayed Stump Killer on the unreachable, undiggable roots and covered them back up with dirt. I am 100% sure they will sprout, unfazed by my attempt at removal.

I’m also 100% sure that the retaining wall will resume it’s tilt by spring of next year.

But at least I was able to finish listening to my ridiculously good audio book. Don’t tell anyone, but that was the real goal all along.

The Garden is a Mirror of the Soul

And Mine Ain’t Pretty.

Not my garden or my soul.

And somehow, I find that fitting.

I’m not saying that I am OK with the state of affairs, mind you. Just that it is fitting.

In my mind, summer should be a hazy, lazy bucolic event. Where I herd the kids off to an event or two in the morning and spend the afternoons and evenings puttering around the garden, reading, walking, cooking, entertaining.

Sound good to me. I’d like a do-over please.

Because in reality, summer was a stressful, unpleasant blur. There was hazy, but no lazy. To say I am happy that it’s over would be an understatement. Isn’t that sad? Again, I’m requesting a do-over.

And I find myself asking, “What is wrong with my life?” What needs to change? And for all the pissing and moaning I seem to do, I can’t really answer that question. I think I am doing what I am supposed to be doing. I can extend that even further: I think I am doing what I want to be doing.

Or am I? How can I say that summer was an unpleasant blur if I am truly doing what I want to be doing?

Is this the season of life I am in? A consequence of raising kids that turn into teenagers and suck the life out of us?

No. I seriously don’t thing that is it. I just wanted to say it for the millionth time because it is fun.

If I had to put a name to it, I would settle for this:

OBLIGATION.

**And on that note, I must leave now for yet another volunteer commitment. I say that, because I think it is both sad and funny. But I will return. **

(It is now hours later. Aside from a burst of productivity to keep paying clients off my back, my mind-set is the same.)

Obligation.

Some would call it guilt. But is it really guilt? I don’t think so. Maybe obligation isn’t even the right word. I’ll try to explain.

I want to volunteer at Freedomfarm. I want to design cool marketing pieces for my son’s struggling school. I want my kids to be able to play soccer here, close to home (I really didn’t want to run the whole program, but it seems that was the only way it would happen…), I want to help friends with their Christmas cards…, and the list goes on.

And yet, all those things add up to a full-time job. A non-paying, full-time, often-stressful job. Never mind the paying clients, few though they may be. They are often put on the back-burner to some emergency volunteer thing that needs to get taken care of  — adding to the stress. These things have a way of taking over my life, much as my cucumber vines took over my garden this year.

The one thing I do for myself is write these posts. And yet, that is often stressful, too. Because what happens when a paying client sees that I took the time to write, instead of get their logo revisions done?

That’s a problem.

Yes it is.

You would think gardening is also something I “do for myself.” But it, too, is an obligation much like the volunteer stuff I do. Yes, I want to have the garden. I enjoy being in the garden. And I certainly enjoy the bounty from the garden. But knowing it’s out there (looking like crap, I might add), is a huge burden. The work involved in honoring the fruits of the labor are immense.

You don’t just go grab beans for dinner. You spend 30 minutes picking them. Then washing them. Then snapping them. And don’t even get me started on lettuce. Washing and drying garden lettuce? I hate it! Not that lettuce is even relevant: after the first spring planting, no more would germinate. It was a problem I would have the remainder of the summer with many of the seed-grown plants.

Soon, the first frost will be upon me and with it comes an insane amount of scrambling. Digging out tender herbs, harvesting peppers, tomatoes, cukes, and everything else that is vulnerable. After that comes the first hard freeze and another wave of work: apples, kale, squash, pumpkins and more.

“Did you pick the raspberries?” “Have you picked the raspberries?” “Has anyone picked raspberries?”

(that’s Dave talking.)

“NO I HAVEN’T PICKED THE FRICKEN’ RASPBERRIES! TELL ME EXACTLY WHEN I WOULD HAVE TWO HOURS TO GO PICK RASPBERRIES!”

(that is me talking.)

First, I have to pick my lovely tomatoes. Not red one among them, I might add.

I ask you: what do you do with this many sickly, yellow tomatoes? Have you ever seen yellow tomato sauce? Yellow salsa?

I have. I’ve even made it before. And it looks exactly — exactly — like vomit. And I have better things to do with my time than make vomit colored sauce.

Like pick the raspberries.

Bye!