Jenmenke

Road Warrior

Garden

Granny Sue’s Rhubarb Cake

My First Rhubarb Love

That, of course was before I fell for Al Sicherman. But I recently made this cake, after about a year hiatus. Morgan declared it her personal favorite. I suspect that’s mostly because she always sides with my mom. They have this little thing going. Have I ever mentioned that Morgan and my mom are very much alike? Yes, well, they are — and it makes my life very difficult.

Anyway, now, every time I will want to make Al’s Rhubarb Pudding Cake, I’m going to have to listen to her bellyaching that she wants me to make this one. I hate when kids have opinions. Children should be seen and not heard. Remember being told that as a kid? I think we should bring that adage back into use.

If you read the other rhubarb cake recipe, you will know that I also love this cake. It is very, very good. Especially still warm from the oven. Seriously. I might even like it more than the other one at that perfect point in time. But if you are wanting to pick at it over the next few days, it just isn’t as good for keeping.

I think I might have solved that problem, though. I halved the recipe and made it in a 9 x 9 pan and it worked great! I’m going to give you the recipe for a regular 9 x 12 cake, but just know that halving it worked really, really well and was just perfect for the four of us and breakfast the next morning! (I am conjuring up a post about why we should consider cake and pie breakfast foods.)

One other note: It calls for buttermilk. I never have buttermilk. Well, I do right now, but that’s a rarity. In the event that you do not have buttermilk, add 1 tablespoon white vinegar to 1 cup of milk and let stand about 15 minutes. The flavor of the substitute is great. The consistency is more thin. Whether that affects the final cake is a matter for debate. I think it does, while others claim not to be able to tell the difference.

OK, I do have one more gripe. At the end of this recipe you are required to mix powered sugar, milk and butter into a glaze. I hate making the glaze. Why?  Because I am feeling lazy at that point and I just want to eat the damn cake, not make the glaze. Second, no matter what I do, my glaze is lumpy. My mom’s is always perfectly smooth. My glaze makes me feel like a failure. What’s your secret, Mom? What are you holding back on me? Is this one of those potato soup recipe secrets? Anyway, I have come to blame the cake for my glaze-making failures. Of course, in true Morgan fashion, she claims it’s the glaze that makes this cake her favorite. And lumpy or not, it still tastes great.

Actually, even though it’s thundering, raining, windy and a cold 58 degrees (while my Weatherbug iphone app tells me it’s sunny and fast approaching 83 degrees), as soon as the storm passes I’m going to out and pick more rhubarb and use the rest of my buttermilk to make this cake.

Mom’s Rhubarb Cake

Preheat oven to 350. Grease 9 x 12 pan. (Recipe may be halved: use a 9 x 9 pan)

  • 1/2 c shortening
  • 1 1/2 c sugar
  • 1 egg
  • 1 t vanilla
  • 1 cup buttermilk*
  • 1 t baking soda
  • 2 c flour
  • 1/2 t salt

Topping

  • 2 T softened butter
  • 1 cup powdered sugar
  • 2 T milk
  • 1/2 t vanilla (optional: my addition)

Combine the buttermilk with the baking soda in a 2 cup container (sometimes it will bubble over a 1 cup measure, sometimes not), set aside for 5 minutes.

In a mixer, cream the shortening and sugar together. Add egg, beat on high for about a minute. Stir in vanilla. In a small bowl stir the flour and salt together. Take turns adding some of the flour mixture, then some of the buttermilk mixture to the mixing bowl, mixing on medium-low until all is added. When well combined, gently fold in 4 cups of cut rhubarb with a rubber spatula. Pour/spoor into a greased 9 x 12 pan  and smooth with a knife. Bake at 350 for 45 minutes.

For the topping, combine butter, powdered sugar, milk and vanilla. Mix well and drizzle in lines across the warmish (not hot) cake.

* Buttermilk substitution: you may substitute scant cup of milk combined with 1 T vinegar for buttermilk.

Asparagus, Week Four

For the uninitiated, this is better known as: Stage Three.

“Dave,” I ask, “Is there anyone you want to brown-nose at the office?”

“No, not really.”

“Charlie. Do your teachers want more asparagus?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Morgan?”

“NO MOM!”

I rack my brain… Who has told me they would do anything for fresh asparagus? I can’t remember.

Something tells me that everyone must be as sick of it as we are. Fickle, us human beings, aren’t we? How long ago was it that I was laying on my belly, scrounging around looking for those first tips to emerge from the soil? And it’s come to this?

I walk out to the garden and instead of jumping for joy, I am filled with dread: MORE ASPARAGUS!

It doesn’t help that every time I go to pick it, I am faced with this type of debauchery:

A threesome, no less!

Ugh. Asparagus beetles. Striped. Spotted. I’ve got ’em all. And the same winter that had such a nice insulating blanket of snow for my plants, also protected the pests. At least that’s my suspicion. I have never had this many beetles. Not even close. In the past, I’ve pretty much ignored them as they were more of a nuisance than anything. But this year, they are actually damaging the spears. Chewing right into them. So I go out there with my gloves and crush as many as I can. It’s pretty gross. Not as bad as decaying worms swimming around in green slime on top of the pool cover, but right up there.

Stage Three Asparagus meals are…

Oh Gosh, I can hardly even write about it. I’m so sick of asparagus.

Stage Three Asparagus meals are roasted or grilled. Tonight I’m roasting it. For the life of me, I can’t imagine why anyone would ever want to cook or eat asparagus. Ever. Again. But for the sake of  formality, I bring to you this insipid Stage Three Asparagus recipe.

Oven Roasted Asparagus with Balsamic Vinegar
  • 1 bunch, or 3-4 spears per person, asparagus
  • 1 T olive oil
  • 1 T balsamic vinegar
  • lots of kosher salt and fresh ground pepper.

Preheat the oven to 475. In a perfect world, you would heat the pan in the oven as it preheats and add the asparagus to the hot pan. I didn’t do that tonight. You can use a baking sheet or a cast iron pan. Put the asparagus in a single layer in the pan and drizzle with olive oil, roll around to coat.

Pick off any stray maurauders:

Put in the oven. After about 5 minutes (it should be sizzling pretty good), use a spatula or an oven-mitted hand to roll across the top of the asparagus (to turn them all at once) it and cook another 3-5 minutes. Drizzle with balsamic, salt and pepper. Bang it down on the table with dinner and tell them they have to eat it. You don’t care how sick they are of it. Fresh asparagus is a gift from GOD and dammit, they better ENJOY it.

It’s Still 40 and it’s Still Raining

I need a garden fix. I want to weed. I want to escape this stupid computer and stupid soccer and get the Hell out of my office. My dog is ready to implode. I have chicks in my laundry room. The cats are sitting in the trees with the bird feeders. It’s raining. It’s cold. And I never went looking for more Morel mushrooms. My asparagus has stopped growing. I want to take a bath. I want to take a bath and go back to bed. I want to eat banana bread in the bath and then go to bed.

Waa waa wahh.

How’s that for a pity party? I’m good at those. Oh. I forgot one thing. I have a headache. I had two meager glasses of wine last night after a long day and today I have a headache. So stupid.

With plenty of work-work to do today (work-work is my made up word meaning ‘real work’ for ‘real clients’), I put on my  ugly hood (shown on model with the face I use to scare my kids with):

And went out to feed the chickens, the birds, empty the compost bucket and take some garden pictures. Come along for the ride…

First stop: Let the chickens out. You think that’s a scary face in the photo above? How about this one? Especially when he flies at your face. I have a big stick I use to keep him in his place.

Sadly, I lost one of my two hens — on MOTHER’S DAY of all days. She must have flown out of the 7′ high fence. We are blaming Lola.

Next stop: Empty the compost and check out the garden.

That’s looking back toward the house. You can see that not much has happened in the last three weeks.

Lettuce, spinach, kale, arugula and cilantro are all just eeking along.

One big surprise are the strawberry plants. They were new last year. I struggled with bugs and this year I have removed the straw mulch, having read it makes the bug problem worse. My *plan* is to keep the refuse under the plants very clean. We’ll see how that goes…

Look at all the blooms!

Here is the garlic, planted last Fall. It is huge compared to other years. The heavy snowfall protected the bulbs and I didn’t lose even one. I predict a June harvest instead of last year’s August harvest. That is both good and bad. Good because I’ll have garlic sooner, bad because it is much harder to store through the hot months.

Here are those scary red potatoes I planted in early March. They are doing well, except for the frost damage from last weekend.

It got down to 28 here in Watertown. See the damage?

And they were even covered with a heavy blanket:

In fact, I tried to cover EVERYTHING with blankets, which was actually quite funny:

So glad I did. Not sure what the apples will do, but you can tell which blossoms were covered and which weren’t.

Here are those shallot plants I was so worried wouldn’t fill in. I should have planted the bulbs last Fall with the garlic, but I forgot. They went into the ground in late March. Most came up and and I am excited. I haven’t had shallots in several years.

I have a bunch more pictures to share, but my ‘work-work’ awaits. After the garden/compost stop, I filled the bird feeders. Thanks to Red-Winged Blackbirds, my gallon-sized feeders have to be filled daily if I want to sustain my little Chickadees, Nuthatches, Red-Bellied Woodpeckers and so on. On the way, I pass my very favorite shrub, the Snowball Viburnum:


I hack about six feet off this thing every year. (I have no idea how large it would eventually get.) I’m trying to prune it so that the left side sort of arches over the path. Yeah. Good luck on that one. I’m a spaz with a pruning saw…

That’s the flower close-up. It is the most gorgeous chartreuse green at this time of year. No scent to the flower, unfortunately, but man are they pretty in a vase.

Then it’s back into my God-Forsaken house with my God-Forsaken animals and the new God-Forsaken chicks.

Are You There God? It’s Me, Jennie. Please send Sunshine. And a personal assistant. I promise to try to be a nicer person.

World’s Best Dandelion Digger

That is not an attention grabbing headline, guys. I’m serious. This thing is insane.

But, I suppose I should qualify that statement by telling you that my previous tool had been the same one my mom handed to me when I was 10 and sent me out the front door. You know the one — a 14″ long single handle fork. You had to bend over or sit on the ground, dig it into concrete-like clay soil, swear, curse and complain, only to have the dandelion break at the top of the stem? Yeah, that one.

So, when I say “World’s Best”, the competition wasn’t all that impressive.

Still. This is one amazing tool, if only for the fact that you can use it standing up. Many times, it gets the whole dang root. If that isn’t the most exciting, satisfying high, I don’t know what is.

And here is where I waiver a bit…

How important is it, really, to eradicate dandelions? Especially where I live, out in the country:

That field above is ‘prairie grass.’ Actually that field is weeds. I have no idea why the prairie grass didn’t take there, but we still treat it like prairie grass. And the weeds are definitely winning. So you’ve got this meadow of dandelions. And then you’ve got this manicured lawn butting up to it. And I waiver…

Cuz I’m a fairly organic kind of girl, and getting more so as I get older. I just don’t like the idea of rolling around in a sea of poison. But that’s what you’ve gotta do to keep the dandelions away unless you dig them out. And frankly, that seems down right impossible — though I’m going to try. Because Weed-B-Gone is about the worst of the worst when it comes to toxicity and longevity in the soil. I. Hate. Weed-B-Gone.

Now here’s where things really get hypocritical: I just fertilized the grass and the fertilizer had crab grass preventer. Dave bought it, not me, because he thinks my organic bend is silly and stupid. Yes, we probably need to keep the crab grass at bay. But has anyone read the bag? It’s SCAREY! That stuff sits on the surface of the soil, doing its thing for SIX WEEKS! So there I am with the dog, rolling around on little poison pellets. Isn’t that crazy? For a manicured lawn? Still, I’m the one who spread the stuff. I am surely a hypocrite or organic philosophy.

Now don’t be going all namby-pamby in the comment section. Yes, I have tried corn gluten meal, and other various organic weed control and fertilizer products. For years. And I don’t buy it. I think contractors use crappy soil, I think sod is crappy and thatch-ridden and you live with it and deal with it forever after. I have wild grass that has escaped the ‘lawn’ into the adjoining prairie, where the dirt is natural and isn’t part of the sod and it is so healthy! Too bad I don’t WANT the grass there…

Anyway. That’s my dilemma for the day. It is my debate for the duration. It is my anguish come August.

…And it is my life for the next week while I listen to The Seamstress on my iPhone and dig dandelions with the World’s Best Dandelion Digger.

Asparagus Diversion

Perfect fast lunch for a Meatless Monday

Tastes better than fresh hollandaise, I swear.

Cook a few spears of fresh asparagus in water like I show you in my first asparagus post.

Gently fry (not like me with my huge freaking bubbles in the whites) one or two fresh eggs

(rub the feathers off first)

Put them together, break the yolks, squeeze with lemon or lime and shave with pecorino or parmesan an drizzle with olive oil or a pat of butter.

Then, try not to egg-fart for the rest of the day. Or is that just me?