Two Kinds of Suburbia

Here is an inventory of our back yard vs. an inventory of our next door neighbor's back yard. I'm not counting the shrubs and trees on the edges, but I am counting the ones that interrupt the lawn.

Their Back Yard:

Grill

Two Adirondack chairs

Small table

Sun umbrella

Trash can

Huge two-story playhouse/swingset (bigger than some houses in developing countries)
Our Back Yard:
Three compost piles (finished, maturing, and in process) in connected wire enclosures
Giant pile of branches and trimmings
Two rain barrels, one attractive and one ugly and not hooked up yet (it was free)
Chicken coop under construction (much, much, more on this later)
Big tough clothesline between T-poles
Raised bed, to be planted this weekend
Hugelkultur bed, or for the lay person, "pile of branches, compost, leaf mulch, and topsoil" soon to be planted
Two of each: elderberries, American Beautyberries, pawpaws, and persimmons; a butterfly bush, a dogwood tree
The boys' "clubhouse" or secret meeting place inside a giant shrub, furnished with old bricks
A hole that a five-year-old Will dug as part of a "leprechaun trap" that has never quite been filled in
Shed
Large dog
Inaccurate concrete sundial with a jaunty but enigmatic saying on it (see photo)
Fence
Fire pit
Grill
Half whiskey barrel turned upside down (It houses fish and water plants in summer. And water.)
Big metal table and six chairs
Two chaise lounges
Random pots with nothing growing in them, yet
Huge ginkgo tree
Maybe there's something quirky in the neighbor's yard that I can't see, perhaps the gravestone of the previous owner's pet? Or a rusted out hose reel cart? Please? I guess we just have different visions of suburbia. They like everything cleaned up and mowed and empty like a big green carpet. And? I wonder if they think we're white trash.
Well, enough idle speculation. Time to go make some hooch.

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Fried Queso Blanco with Lime

We're between the winter CSA and the next one, and farmer's markets are not open quite yet. (Media's opens tomorrow.) And still no local asparagus at the Swarthmore Co-op. I refuse to buy asparagus from Mexico during Pennsylvania asparagus season. It feels like we're living in some kind of Bermuda Triangle in which all local fresh vegetables have gone missing.

Anyway, I decided, for a recent Cinco de Mayo party, to make cheese instead of tracking down the elusive asparagus or some other local vegetable in hiding. I had made queso blanco very successfully once with raw milk.I wasn't sure how to present it, but after browsing through cookbooks and searching online for a while, I found the idea to fry the cheese and then squirt it with fresh lime juice. Simple and elegant. And no asparagus.

Here is what I made. The cheese recipe is in Home Cheesemaking by Ricki Carroll, and the frying idea is in Jam It, Pickle It, Cure It by Karen Solomon. The narrative is mine and refers to my own experience making this. I thought the cheese would be much firmer than it was, but it worked out. I use the term "slicing" loosely. Start to make this the day before you want to serve it.

Please be forewarned that you may need to strictly ration these goodies. They disappear fast.

Fried Queso Blanco with Lime

One gallon raw cow's milk (pasteurized whole is fine, too; just don't use ultrapasteurized)
Quarter cup apple cider vinegar (Bragg's is the best)
Coconut oil
Salt
A couple of limes


Heat the milk at medium low heat in a large pot until it reaches 186-190 degrees. It's very important that it not boil. Take the pot off the heat and slowly add the vinegar. You can move a spoon slowly through the milk to distribute. Wait for curds to separate from whey, and when I say "curds" I mean large blobs. You can add a little more vinegar. This will take a few seconds.

When curds have formed, spoon them into a strainer lined with cheesecloth. Save the whey in a bowl; it's good for bread, soup, and smoothies and is very nutritious. You can just pour the last bit, as it's too hard to fish out all the curds. Tie up the cheesecloth and tie the bundle over a faucet and let the whey continue to drip out until the cheese gets to a consistency you want. This will take hours, or overnight. I wouldn't go longer than that. Refrigerate the cheese for a while before slicing. If you don't have a good place to hang this, you could wrap the cheese in the cheesecloth, and put a weight on top of it, like bricks or a cast-iron pan.

Preheat a large frying pan at medium heat. Slice the cheese as best you can and don't worry if it seems a little soft. Add a tablespoon of coconut oil to the pan and fry the cheese until browned, two or three minutes on each side depending on thickness and size.

Drain cheese for a minute and arrange the slices on a serving plate, salting and squirting lime juice over them to taste. Garnish with lime slices and serve. Can be warm or room temperature. Makes approximately a pound and half.

 

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Confessions of a Pickler

I have a confession to make. Once a month I skip church. At 8:30 AM I leave the house to drive 50 minutes away to the Kimberton Waldorf School's beautiful farm and kitchen. About 14 or 15 others also converge there. Some come from as far away as Carlisle, the Poconos, and South Jersey. We are all attending a year-long series of workshops called Fearless Homesteading, on practicing permaculture. In October we pickled vegetables in brine, and in November we made wheat bran starter for bokashi composting, and melted beeswax and calendula oil together to make calendula salve. In December we looked at how to make a rocket stove. In January we started growing mushrooms, and learned about growing herbs.

Why do I do this? Because I want to understand nature better and take part in its rhythms, patterns, and energies instead of fighting, ignoring, or trying to work around them. And? It's fun. This workshop is taught by Melissa Miles, a permaculture design expert and manager of the Two Miles Microfarm in Montgomery County. The herbalism part of the course is taught by Susan Hess, of Tthe Farm at Coventry.

Here is how you can pickle some vegetables at home using the brining method. It's not a super precise recipe. It just depends on what you have and what you like. If you don't like garlic, don't put any in. Or try some peppercorns. These lactofermented pickles are delicious and great for your digestion. And so easy to make. Just do it.

Pickled Vegetables

Equipment

A fairly wide-mouthed, very clean jar with a lid, or a food-grade plastic container with lid. Or several smaller jars.

Something to push down veggies (pestle or potato masher, depending on how big your jar is)

Ingredients

2 tablespoons (or more) uniodized salt (sea salt or kosher)

Quart of filtered water (or you could let a quart of tap water sit out for 24 hours to let the chlorine evaporate)

Carrots, sliced in thin coins or grated

Cabbage, cut into shreds

Cabbage leaf to cover the pickles

One whole garlic clove

One half of a small hot pepper, seeds included, if you like some heat

Radishes, thinly sliced or grated

 

Dissolve the salt in the water.

Add some vegetables to the jar and pour some salt water to cover. Gently push the vegetables down with your potato masher or pestle. You want to crush the cells a bit so salt can be easily absorbed. Add more vegetables and more water until you're a half inch or so away from the top. Keep packing down the veggies. If you have an uncut cabbage leaf, set it over the top to help keep the veggies submerged. Screw the jar closed, loosely, for the air that will escape. Set it in a semi-darkened place. Mine was on my kitchen counter out of direct light, and it was fine. Since it's winter, the kitchen is probably cool enough, but in the summer you probably want to keep your fermenting pickles in the basement.

Taste the pickles in four or five days. Keep tasting every day or so until you like that level of pickledness (is that a word?) and then store in the fridge. It will last a while in there. But you'll want to eat them before then.

 

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"So Romantic"

Here is one of my two American Persimmons, persisting in its romantic vision of someday bearing fruit. With a little help from deer netting, that is.

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A friend of mine said something seemingly innocuous to me that I have been mulling over, off and on, for two years. I had been saying to him that I thought it was great that so many people are keeping chickens and bees, growing their own vegetables, and so on. He said, "I guess a lot of people find that to be a romantic idea in this economy."

Romantic? I was stung. A chill wind emanated from him. I was stung and chilled. But I also found a grain of truth in what he said. Damn those grains of truth.The vision of a garden, blooming and verdant, and happy chickens clucking away, bees humming lazily by the hive, is a romantic one. The Secret Garden, anyone? We want to reclaim either the lost Edens of our childhood, or of North America before Europeans discovered it, or of Eden itself. Life was purer, simpler, and more wholesome back in (fill in era) in (fill in location).

How sad, though, that this vision of health and life is so far removed from our daily world that it could even be considered "romantic." But that's how far away from nature we are. Think about it. We buy dirt. At the store. We are dimly aware that there is already dirt in the yard, but we don't know how to amend it (with kitchen scraps to make compost) so we just buy it from Home Depot because we trust them more than we trust ourselves. People on the East Coast buy apples that come from Washington State or even China, while our yards might be just right for an apple tree or two. But how would we know? Generation by generation, we are losing our knowledge of the earth and its own regenerating power.

And that's why this particular back-to-the-land movement is real, and practical, and why it matters. Because we needed this. When we lost knowledge, we lost power, to paraphrase Jefferson. Then we unknowingly gave this power to the corporations, who sell the food to us that we could have grown, or bought locally, without packaging or using fuel. To say nothing of all the middlemen who take a cut: the supermarket, the food distibutor, the truck drivers, and more.

Over the 20th century and into the 21st, corporations have taken control of our kitchens, appetites, and yards while we weren't looking. The global oil industry, more powerful than the U.S government, is perfectly happy that we eat apples from thousands of miles away. Drill, baby, drill. And, by the way, there are lots of other fruits out there besides apples, bananas, and those big tart grapes. What about pawpaws, persimmons, or ground cherries? All are American native fruits that have vanished from the marketplace, replaced by the easily shipped, often bland-tasting fruits from across the world.

You, dear reader, should be mad as hell and not going to take this any more. Take back your lawn from the gas-guzzling mower and take back your diet from the corporations. Here's a "mere sound byte" for you: Get a shovel. Dig a hole. Plant a fruit tree. Repeat. It's one of the most romantic, practical things you'll ever do.

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On Fall Planting

Butterfly Bush

Each time we plant in the fall, we practice the gift of waiting. We believe the promise that somehow, these shrubs, or maybe bulbs, dormant through the winter darkness and frozen soil, will come to life in the spring. It's easy to plant when you're delirious with spring fever. In the fall, you're aware of the bittersweetness of the garden. The leaves are changing and you know you can't enjoy the blooms, fruit, or foliage for long. You're planting now for a later time. And, if you're extra spiritually mature, you'll note that nurseries have great sales on shrubs! So get 'em while they last!

My friend Maria and I moseyed over to Mostardi's Nursery the week that school started. This butterfly bush was 50% off. Butterfly bushes aren't native, but I'm not a stickler for that. Everything I plant, though, must either attract birds or bees, or be edible for humans, or be on sale. Mr. Forkenspader (as I'm cleverly calling him) and I planted it by the fence. It has some room to grow, and also I want vines of some sort on the fence, and I don't want the butterfly bush to interfere. I'm investigating hardy kiwi (certainly not native).

And while you're looking at this photo, see that clothesline? My father in law made the poles out of cedar a few years ago. Unfortunately it's planted under a black walnut tree (that big old tree you see there). What that means is every August brown stuff drips off the tree. For a few weeks I either don't use the clothesline or I turn the clothes inside out. My plan is to move the clothesline to a sunnier, more central-ish location and to prettify it with vines. At least the poles are not in concrete.

That same day, I bought a Giant Lemon Daddy Hydrangea, also, you guessed it, 50% off. Here it is, with Zane posing nicely and hoping I'll play with him. This is back under the infamous and lovely black walnut. The shrub seemed huge when I bought it, but not so big in the picture. I wanted to brighten this area back here and give the back woodland edge some diversity. The shrub by Zane is a viburnum I planted in the spring. Before that it was all pachysandra and pachysandra and pachysandra, and old tennis balls.

Big Daddy Lemon Hydrangea and Hopeful Dog

That wasn't enough fall planting, so I went back and bought two native American Beautyberry shrubs to disguise or to distract from the pile of branches and homemade leaf mulch piles in process in the back. The nursery guy wanted me to buy some kind of cherry laurel for this purpose because it's evergreen. But the cherry laurels, with their mononotonous dark green glossy leaves, seemed funereal. I wanted something a little wild and bright and crazy, with berries for the birds. Here is one of the American Beautyberries, below. Speaking of the gift of waiting, Zane has that, in spades. We're going out to play.

American Beautyberry

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The Tomato Pies of Late Summer

Slow-roasted tomato and pork pizza with mozzarella, provolone,  garlic, and fresh basil

Tomato pie. Say it. "Tomato pie." If you accentuated "pie" and said a long "o" on "tomato" you may not know about tom-AY-ta pie. Tom-AY-ta pie is an Italian-American specialty only found in Philadelphia, New York, Trenton, Providence and maybe a couple of other places. Tomato sauce slathers a thick Sicilian-type crust, with a little Romano or Parmesan cheese grated over the top, and it's usually eaten at room temperature. It's a rectangular pie. If you live near me and want to try it, they make the real deal at Romano's. It's near the airport in Essington. The reason I've not gotten the tom-AY-ta pie there is that Romano's invented stromboli. And the stromboli is truly good--I get the original with sweet peppers. 

This looks like a 1970s cookbook photo. It's from a "pie fest" we went to on Labor Day.

Anyway. Tomato pie, as as opposed to tom-AY-ta pie, encompasses many dough-tomato variations, always a good thing with so many plum tomatoes these days. I like to slow-roast the tomatoes first.  They're still juicy but not watery, and the flavor is sweet and concentrated and amazing.As for storage, they last several days in the fridge with a little olive oil. 
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Slow-Roasted Tomatoes

Plum tomatoes
Olive oil
Sea salt
Sugar (optional)

Preheat oven to 300. Wash and dry the tomatoes. Cut each one in half. Find the right size pan for how many tomatoes you have. I like to use a rimmed cookie sheet or a sheet cake pan lined with parchment paper. Place the tomatoes in the pan and brush with olive oil. Salt and pepper to taste, and you can sprinkle a little sugar over them if you want. Roast until tomatoes are a little shriveled, 30 to 40 minutes.
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Yesterday I roasted some tomatoes along with two "Holy Mole" peppers from the garden. They were tossed with whole wheat pasta. I didn't have that many tomatoes or peppers, so on the other side of the pan, with a good wide berth of a couple of inches, I roasted some beets, cubed into bite-size pieces. The tomatoes needed 40 minutes and the beets needed 60. I hate to waste oven heat, and it's always a great idea to throw in as much as you can. Just test the vegetables every once in a while. The bigger the pieces, the longer they take, and the more dense the vegetable the longer as well. Beets should be segregated from other colors unless you want everything to be pinkish red. By the way, the beets were served in a salad.

That picture up there, of all the pies, is from a "pie fest" some friends hosted. The pies were all wonderful, and tomatoes were a big theme, of course. Mine is the one just to the left of the "savory" sign, a roasted tomato and eggplant pie, with smoked mozzarella and ricotta cheese, and a Trader Joe's crust. I didn't use a recipe; I just layered the roasted vegetables alternately with the ricotta mixture (with egg and parmesan cheese mixed in with the ricotta), and with shredded smoked mozzarella. I think I was in some kind of perverse anti-show-off mode because I could have made a real crust, but didn't. I show off when I don't have to, and don't show off when I should. Maybe it was all the getting-ready-for-school deadlines, but the siren call of the Trader Joe's crust was just too appealing.

And as for the pizza up there in the top picture, that's from our weekly Friday pizza night. Yet another kind of tomato pie. Please have or make some tom-AY-ta pie, or some tomato pie, this week, before summer completely escapes you. I insist.

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Lemon Verbena, Queen of the Side Garden

Lemon Verbena

You might say that this lemon verbena needs a little taming. But I cherish its success too much to prune it. Last year when I planted it, I thought lemon verbena was an annual. But no! It's technically a "tender perennial." I planted two of them, and one didn't make it through the winter, but this one? When I went to clear out the garden in April I clearly saw the"I ain't dead yet" look in its stalks. I cut one with my pruners and, yep, a green center. I'd call this particular plant a "tough-as-nails" perennial, since this is the north-facing wall of the house.

Tough as nails this shrub may be, but the leaves have a lemony fragrance and taste that is gentle, not at all harsh or grassy. You can make lemon verbena ice cream or simple syrup, you can put the leaves in salad or flavor vinegar with them. I like to make lemon verbena iced tea, adding a sprig of mint for depth of flavor.



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Lemon Verbena Mint Iced Tea

Put water on to boil. Pick leaves off the plant, using about four leaves per cup of water. Pick a sprig of mint if you have some. Wash the leaves and chop them. When the water boils, take it off the heat and add the mint and lemon verbena. Let it steep ten minutes. Pour through a strainer into another vessel, like a pitcher. Pour over ice. Hold it up to the sun and admire its light yellow-green color. Drink.
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This particular lemon verbena? It's one of those plants whose success I had nothing to do with. Gardening is like that. You can fuss over something for ages and it dies or, worse, it stays alive but never grows, and generally looks wan and spindly for months, giving you the evil eye. Or you can ignore a plant and it flourishes like this riotous lemon verbena. In July I found a gloriously healthy butternut squash plant growing in my compost, with a big old flower. It was growing sort of upside down-ish and all contorted, so I transplanted it to what I thought of as "a better place," the vegetable garden, where it dramatically wilted and died within three days.

I tell you, plants these days!