I’d love to put in some winter starts but my problem is finding an empty spot in my garden. I came across this great video from Kitchen Gardeners International showing a group of school children in Africa making what is basically a raised bed. Looks like a great design with plenty of space.
Surely among the top ten slow foods, tomato sauce. The reward for preserving them in late summer will be the essence of luscious vine-ripened garden tomatoes mid-winter in a soup or marinara sauce, with an onion and sausage frittata or mushroom polenta. 
I’m a fool for tomatoes and should make myself a tomato cape, something to wear everywhere to signify my devotion. It can get ridiculous and I just pushed the bar a little far the other day. Home-cookin’ tomato-preservin’ smarty-pants.
Since our own backyard tomatoes are behind schedule I thought it would be a good idea to buy ’seconds’ from Billy and make a batch of sauce now and then again later this month when ours will finally, I hope, come on like gangbusters. (Actually, there’s a big ‘if’ in that hope.) Bob tracked down Billy at the Sunday Market and purchased a big box of seconds, 22# @ $2.25 per pound. Total $49.50. When I heard that I knew this handmade sauce would also cost an arm and a leg. A pot full of tomatoes may look like a huge amount, but if you’re making sauce they reduce in quantity. A lot.
We ended up with barely four quarts. Yeah, you’re way ahead of me I know, that’s about $12.50 per quart. That’s a highfalutin’ tomato sauce. It took all afternoon – the Slow Food thing, no problem. I’m a happy camper when something’s brewing in the kitchen.
Lesson learned. From now on I use my own from the backyard, or pull off a midnight tomato caper somewhere. I’m chagrined about the cost, but the good news is that the sauce is amazing. Rich and tomatoey, it will be delectable mid-winter. If you can somehow find tomatoes for a song, or don’t mind the pricey version, you might want to make and preserve sauce of your own.
Here’s one way to do it: 
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Monday morning I set out early to photograph the Seattle Tilth garden and the Good Shepherd P-Patch . The weather was changing as I was meandering around. By the time I reached this whirligig, the wind was blowing pretty hard. It’s legs started flying every-which-way and it was spinning around wildly. The weird thing was, no matter where I stood, it ended up pointing directly at me. Seriously.
I know it was probably just the direction of the wind and call me crazy but I took this as a sign. The truth is I’ve been feeling a lot like a roadrunner — I definitely need to take a deep breath, slow down and enjoy the rest of the summer. It’s not like I’ve been over-exercising or anything but sometime during the summer, I jumped onto what feels like those moving walkways they have in airports, speeding me to my next location.
According to Five Elements Acupuncture this is the season known as Late Summer. Five Elements acupuncturists always advocate eating with the season and this is the easiest time of the year to achieve that. Enjoying fresh food takes very little effort now with the Farmers Markets overflowing with loads of recently harvested produce. If you have your own garden or p-patch, chances are you have plenty to choose from.
The other part of nourishing yourself is taking time to appreciate and having gratitude for all you have. Slowing down gives you (and your body) a chance to assimilate and enjoy this unique time of year.
I started walking a little more slowly, trying to look closely and take in all of the beauty the garden had to offer. Okay, I’ll admit that I can’t go past a poppy without close examination and taking a few photos, even when I’m in a hurry. But this time the feeling stayed with me.
Dark green veggies are in the wings awaiting winter performances. I feel like I should whisper it, winter. We don’t want to think about it mid-August, but it’s time to get hardy greens going, past time for some.
A soothsayer would come in handy, someone to proclaim the most auspicious day for getting the little starts into the ground. It gets tricky. Plant too soon and if it’s a warm fall plants mature and flower before winter even arrives; plant too late and unexpected early cold can harm immature plants. Late July through August is usually about right, but as with all gardening the intrusion of unfavorable weather is possible. For example, we lost a bunch of newly transplanted starts during the recent heat wave, but still have plenty for ourselves and a few friends. Thanks Bob.
He started our plants from seed in late July - broccoli, chard, kale, Brussels sprouts and winter lettuce - then replanted them in fresh soil and a larger container when they reached about 3” and were getting crowded. We’ll transplant these seedlings into our garden plot in early September along with a crop of over-wintering beets.
Once they’re off to a good start little attention is required. They grow, produce their hardy leaves and stand strong through most PNW winters. The brassicas - kale, broccoli, cabbage, Brussels sprouts - will last through the winter and improve in flavor when exposed to frost. 
We’ll eat chard and kale leaves all winter long, and in late winter/early spring we’ll harvest 
their florets which are as good as the primary vegetable itself. Read the rest of this entry »
You might think the glossy dark brown caramelized ‘butter’ looks appetizing, or not. I happen to know it’s delicious so to me it’s appealing, and besides I have to love apples right now. I have quite a few.
We’ll take as many as we can to the local food bank over the next few weeks – they welcome fresh produce that’s in good condition. Or contact Tilth Hotline if you have extra fruit. They have a Community Fruit Tree Harvest program that allows us/helps us to share the abundance.
Mine is just another backyard with apples ripening by the bushel. It’s happening everywhere right now. Poppy was making applesauce last week while across town I was making a crockpot full of apple butter. In fact, we seem to have the same barely identifiable old apple trees dripping with Transparents, and in our yard we think we have old varieties of Gravenstein and King.
Our house is one hundred years old and way back when was known as Goocher’s Orchards. Now it’s an urban lot, but with the added character of three obscure apple trees, relatively young pear and Montmorency cherry trees which we’ve planted, and the remnants of a beloved Italian plum blown down in the storm a year and a half ago. We’re doing our best to honor the legacy of this little bit of land - we seem to have farming in our blood so it’s not such a stretch. Go back just a few generations and we all have that in common.
The three apple trees ripen sequentially from July through September and we do our best to keep up with most of them by making applesauce, apple butter, apple-ginger chutney, a few apple pies, and a very quick and easy sautéed apple dessert (instructions below). Smear the apple butter on a piece of toast, or on a piece of cheese. Heaven.
Here’s the apple butter technique passed on to me by my grandmother. You have to be willing to let apples simmer away quietly in a crockpot for two or three days without much more than an occasional stir and the addition of more apple slices.
Fennel, cucumber, fresh dill and tomatoes tossed together with lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper make a superb crunchy fresh salad. Others knew this already I’m sure, but for me it’s new.
I’ve been wanting to make something different in the salad department. It’s been greens from the backyard and the occasional ripe tomato with balsamic and olive oil dressing ad infinitum. Not so bad, we love it in fact, but enough already. It had become salad-making laziness. Time for change.
I had a bulb fennel from Whistling Train Farm and a half cucumber sitting in the fridge, a smidge of dill from the garden and whatever tomatoes I could harvest from our skimpy crop (so far). Mixed it all together and it was a spontaneous experiment that worked out deliciously.
Fennel Cucumber Salad w/Tomatoes: 
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It’s a tradition of mine to make homemade lemonade on my birthday in August - just a few lemons, sugar, water, and ice.
This year I was inspired by Jerry Traunfeld (The Herbfarm Cookbook), yet again, and decided to make his herbal infused lemonade, a twist on tradition. I have a yard full of the right herbs, mint, rosemary, lemon balm, lavender and he provides encouragement to experiment.
A little daunted I must admit, at having rosemary infused in my lemonade, but I tried it, liked it and so did my daughter and husband. In fact we liked it a lot. Next step, try it out on friends. 
Four of us got together and cooked for my 08/08/08 party, and slurped down glasses of rosemary lemonade. I imagined that we would take a break and sit on rickety chairs in the sun-dappled backyard, contentedly chatting beneath the apple trees, but no. We stood in the kitchen and chopped while we sipped. They approved, so this beverage made the cut and I’ll make some for the party.
Delicious and so easy. Here’s Jerry Traunfeld’s recipe for the rosemary version of his herbal lemonades as described in The Herbfarm Cookbook. This makes a pitcherful:
I should say ‘easy-going’. The strong silent type, herbs stand quietly by and just when you need to add a little punch to something, anything, there they are.
In a botanical culinary sort of way they’re like dear friends, always there for you. When I planted an herb garden just outside the back door ten years ago, I had no idea how much it would simplify and influence our cooking, the ability to have what is needed to brighten the flavor of almost anything.
This isn’t a precious garden, 
it gets some attention in the spring, cleaning up and rearranging, after that not much of anything. That’s the way with herbs, they like to rough it. They’d be good on a camping trip – hike for miles without water and then bed down for the night without any fuss. The Mediterranean landscape is in their genes and rocky scruffy soil and dry conditions make them feel right at home. Sure, they respond to a little TLC, but the point is they don’t want or need a lot of attention. Not at all like roses who will throw a temper tantrum on a whim, herbs are the least spoiled child in the garden. Leave them alone, they’re happy campers. Read the rest of this entry »
Learning to use and love the Yellow Transparent apples from the tree we inherited in our garden has taken me a long time. Year after year this old, gnarled tree produces many more apples than we can consume. Most are left on the ground for the critters living in our garden and others are carted to the compost pile. This year, I vowed to find the best use of these slightly sour and decidedly mushy apples.
I gave our apples this simple test recommended by Alice Waters. “Cut a half-inch-thick wedge out of the apple, peel it, and put it in a saucepan with just enough water to cover it. Bring the water to a boil and then simmer until the apple is tender. Probe to see if it holds its shape or turns mushy”. Yes, I’m sorry to say, in just a few short minutes, our apples were judged unworthy of a tarte Tatin or even a homely apple pie. Applesauce seemed like the way to go.
Not that I’m a huge fan of applesauce but this version had such a smooth velvety texture and a tart appley flavor that I immediately wanted to pan-fry some pork chops to complete the vision. Best of all, it is easy to make. I started by juicing some of the apples to use as liquid in the sauce — pulling out the Champion juicer , I got to work. Read the rest of this entry »
I used to think artichokes were strictly Mediterranean. It’s true they’re native to northern Africa where they grow wild, and southern Europe, but it turns out we can grow globe artichokes in the Pacific Northwest.
Maybe not commercially like they do in California, but I have to tell you there is a mini-artichoke orchard in the corner of my backyard and more appear every year. The artichokes’ sage-green spiked leaves are statuesque along the fence, living architecture. 
Attention to preparing each artichoke is required before steaming, and be forewarned: consumption is a slow exquisite journey. After cooking, each leaf must be peeled off its choke, dipped in lemon butter, scraped across the teeth for just a smidge, a molecule says my friend Peg, of nourishment. After you’ve repeated that about fifty times its succulent centerpiece is revealed, finally, and you enjoy a few hearty bites.
There are fancy ways to prepare artichokes. I’ve never been able to go there, though with a hefty crop this year maybe it’s time. I love the laid-back experience of deconstructing and eating the whole thing bit by bit dipped in lemony garlicky butter.
Not just garden ornamentals, though they are that, steam these babies, slow down for a while and savor their delicious Mediterranean vibe. My drumming buddies consumed a few of these last night and can attest favorably to their tranquil satisfying tempo.
