Waning Summer Days, Storage Crops and Chiles Rellenos

The end of summer is a time of preparation. The glut of summer is still...glutting?...but the plants are showing signs of slowing. We'll have tomatoes, bell peppers, cucumbers, and the like until the fall frost takes them, but the frosts are coming so we have to prepare. There's a good deal that can grow during mild and hard frosts, but it's not much fun to grow it- if you don't believe me go back and look and the day harvesting mizuna in calf-deep mud blog post. It is much easier to grow as much as we can to store and preserve it rather than race to grow a ton of stuff in freezing rain and mud. Winter squash, onions, garlic, potatoes, and sweet potatoes are such an important stand-by in the winter when your boxes get overrun with roots and greens. 

It seems odd to plant "winter" squash in summer, but that's when they do best! Our first rounds of them are ready. We know it's time to pick when the squash has gone from light to dark colored (usually green to another color) and you can no longer puncture the flesh with gentle pressure of your thumb nail. This is a partial cure. It's time then to run up and down the jungle of scratchy vines with long handled pruners (loppers) and cut their stems from the plants. Then the trick is lugging them out back through the scratchy leaves and vines... and the occasional snake and ugly spider. Then they're placed in a dry, shady spot to fully cure. 

Here is our first haul. This is about 50' of 3 rows. Aren't they fun!

These guys were some crosses done by a plant breeder. Your guess is as good as mine as to what they are. It'll be fun trying out some new varieties! 

How do you carry neck pumpkins out of the field? Bracelet style...heavy, heavy bracelets...

Or as a neck-pumpkin-lace.

Sweet potatoes are another really great storage crop. We grow them by making our own "slips". We buy whole, organic sweet potatoes and bury them in greenhouse soil and water them... like A LOT thirsty buggers that they are... and wait. Soon, green shoots start to emerge. When they look sturdy we take the buckets out to a prepared bed and dump the bucket. Usually, the potato is still in tact and you can slip the "slips" off the potato and tuck it into moist soil. You can re-use the potato to make more slips or eat it! If this sounds bizzare and hard to imagine, think of the many old potatoes that got lost and forgotten and sprouted. Those green shoots out of the potatoes eyes are the slips I speak of.

The potatoes are a long season crop and hang out doing their sweet potato thing for a few months. You know they're ready when the plants start looking haggard. You can do a few test digs and see how they're progressing. It's magic really, to shove a fork into the ground and lift up massive orange tubers.

Byron is ensuring that the sweet potatoes never feel lonely.

 Onions are another great storage item. We planted them a bit differently this year in hopes of making them easier. Usually, we seed 4-5 seeds per cell and separate them out when transplanting. This means tucking a tiny, sensitive onion plant every 4". This needs to be done for 3-200' lines in 3-4 beds. I'm not going to do math, because this math makes my knees and heels of my hands hurt thinking about crawling on the ground that long, but it's a lot.

This year, we left 3 or less onion sprouts together on advice from another local farmer. It worked! The onions still sized, albeit slightly smaller. They just shoved each other out of the way! We also transplanted these 3-onion-cells with a carousel transplanter so no crawling was involved.  This really made it easy to love onions this year!

Here is Tarra genuinely enjoying the onion harvest!

I think our friend may have gotten transplanted upside down and still found a way!  Well, kind of...

Onions and cinderblocks on their way to a shady spot to be put up to dry, cure, and keep!

Our drying system is pretty simple. It is by no means ideal, but as crude as it is- it works! We put down 3 pallets and cover them in shade cloth. We spread the onions out onto it and stack the blocks around it. Then 3 more pallets go down with shade cloth and more onions. In all we have 6 layers this year. Someday we'll have a big drying shed with pull out drawers and everything on pallets with a forklift... but this is elegantly simple and works wonders with what we have on hand! 

Leaning tower of onions?

 This late summer recipe celebrates one of my favorite summer fruits: peppers. There are so many kinds of peppers: frying, sweet eating, small snacking, hot, stuffing, and drying. In North America we really don't appreciate the wonder that peppers are. I've become partial to them over the years out of sheer culinary curiosity. And, seeing as how I am choosing what to grow you... you're going to learn about them too! Chiles rellenos (literally stuffed pepper) are a great way to enjoy some of the larger varieties of peppers that are grown. Below is a basic recipe for the restaurant style chile relleno with some suggestions on how to make them interesting.

Chiles Rellenos

Long, hollow med hot chilies

½ pound queso fresco or jack cheese

3 eggs

1 tbs flour

1 C oil

Broil chilies whole until they start to blacken and blister. Remove and place in bowl with a kitchen towel over it. Let them steam for 10 minutes to make skinning easier. While they’re steaming, separate eggs and beat whites until stiff peaks form, mix flour into yolk and fold whites in.  Heat oil in pan until shimmering. Stuff skinned chilies with cheese and dunk in batter. Fry peppers until golden brown.

Variations/Suggestions:

Serve with rice and beans for a meal

Serve with a spicy tomato sauce or enchilada sauce

Make a Mexican picadillo mix to stuff the peppers with it
Use smaller hot pepper like jalapenos 

Let me know what you think! Enjoy!

The Crunch of the Seasonal Change and Late Summer Minestrone

August seems to be the Fall's answer to March.  Just as things are still booming from summer, fall and winter are being tended to. I seeded 5 trays two weeks back for the fall and winter gardens to start off. These were things like celeriac, celery, broccoli, and leeks that take 6-8 weeks to get up to a transplantable size. I just seeded 14 more with things like napa cabbage, fennel, kohlrabi, mizuna, bok choi, and kale that take about 4-5 weeks to get up to size. We're a bit late on the fall garden, which really is nothing new. We've got it cleaned of stakes, j-hooks, t-posts and the regular residents of the gardens and got it mowed. Today we got the last sprinkling done and now we wait until it dries out a bit.

Wait, why are you watering nothing? Aren't we in a drought? Good question! For one, working bone dry dirt with a rototiller, s-tines, or anything that loosens the dirt up so plants can have healthy roots, will turn your clay soil to dust and boulders if it doesn't break your implement. Second, hopefully you sprout some of the seeds in your "weed seed bank" and can work them back in and have less weeds to hoe out once you plant in the bed.

Once it dries out, we'll rototill, roll down, knife in drip tape, roll down again and we're good to plant! First in will be direct seeded carrots, beets, parsnips, rutabega and the like. Then the transplants. In the meantime we'll start this same process for the winter garden.

The glut of summer always seems to land just when everyone is sick of it. We're swimming in cucumbers, peppers, cherry tomatoes, okra, and basil. So, if anyone want's to come grab some stuff to preserve, pickle, or the like with, please let me know! We even have fresh grape leaves for pickles! (It is supposed to keep them crunchy... something about tannins)

Here are some pictures from my own preserving adventures as well as other farm friends and adventures:

What to do with 30 lbs of cucumbers that never quite got where they were going, and now are just a bit to soft to ever get there? PICKLES!

We let them lactoferment for about a week. We read that when it is this hot, we should add 1/3 extra salt.  Not surprisingly they're very salty. We downsized the containers and added some fresh water before refrigerating.  Everyone does this on the floor next to the cat, right? 

Our cherry type tomatoes exploded! I picked what I could one day and set out to can. 

This is the result of our first round of cherry tomato canning. Never had canned cherry tomatoes? They're delicious! They won't do for spaghetti sauce, but they're amazing as a soup base (they'd be awesome in this week's recipe come winter!) or in grain salads (strain out liquid and use it to cook grain, add back tomatoes at the end).

We also had some overgrown summer squash friends. They're a bit on the tough side, but because of this- they make great stuffers! I mixed up sausage, bread crumbs, egg, cherry tomatoes, the squash insides, garlic, onion, basil, and the usual salt and pepper and made the filling. Unfortunately I had too much filling, so they ended up being meat domes. 

This past weekend we had a booth at the Woodland Tomato Festival. We featured our finest tomato wares and enjoyed the fine fried foods offered at such affairs. Tarra even made a new friend. 

Well, we made two new friends. This beautiful dog came to visit us several times to borrow our shade. She was available for adoption from the SPCA. She was too big for our house though,  which is too bad, she was such a sweetheart! 

This week's recipe is a household favorite. You can make it as simple or luxurious as you'd like. I like to go all the way with it: making chicken stock and garlic broth- using both for the base. I like to use tomato paste and brown it to give a depth of flavor AND use fresh tomatoes (especially cherries).

Late Summer Minestrone

1 large onion, diced

1 head garlic, smashed and peeled

5 C stock

1 C tomato (fresh[chopped} or canned)

1 med or large summer squash, diced

Okra, sliced

Green or long beans, sliced into 3” strips

½ med cabbage, shredded

Pasta

Basil

Heat a large pot and sweat onions in oil. Add garlic until fragrant. Add stock and tomatoes and bring near a boil. Add chopped veggies and cook until tender. Cook pasta separate and add at the end with fresh basil.

Variations:

-Add a dollop of pesto before serving

-Use garlic broth

-Add tomato paste to onion garlic mix and brown to deepen flavor

-Add some white beans for authentic Italian flair

-Use orzo or Isreli couscous for fun pasta

-Add the rinds of parmesean to stock and let sit in soup

-Add greens!

Gumbo, Okra, and a Tale of Cultural Complications

Omg. No. You did NOT just put okra in my box. What am I supposed to do with it? Well, dear friend, you may actually dislike okra, I will admit that can happen. But, what I likely think is true is you THINK you dislike okra. You may have heard it's horrible, and just adopted that idea. You may have tried to cook it and experienced its... thickening ability... and been turned off forever. It's hard to love, I get that, but let me bend your ear for awhile, coax you into trying one more time, then if you still hate it, that's just fine.

This is an okra plant. I know, I know. I once heard a lady tell a story where she just loooved okra. She grew a bunch of plants in her backyard and was dismayed to come out and find her beloved plants denuded. Turns out her neighbor thought she was growing Marijuana. Even the police didn't believe he was that dumb until he hurt himself jumping her fence. Lord knows what that itchy stuff that causes skin rashes does when you try to smoke it...Anyway, it's a nice looking plant.

It also has really nice looking flowers. I wish my phone took nicer pictures, but I give that up to have a sturdier drop/run-over-proof phone. 

Gumbo doesn't seem like a very exceptional dish. If you've lived in California all your life, you probably haven't developed preconceived notions about it, and probably not really ever tried it. This is not true if you live in the South. Gumbo is a dish rich with as much tradition as taste. I've hunted up some interesting articles and linked them for your further reading if you should be interested. I've pulled the interesting things out if I only have 5 minutes of your attention. Click Here for a cool PBS page if you've only got 2 minutes.

Gumbo is a food deeply rooted in place. The way you even begin the dish owes a lot to mixed cultural heritage. Food 52 looks at the way Louisiana was colonized to understand gumbo:

"The state was originally colonized by French and Spanish settlers, and gumbo may have been a direct descendent of the French seafood soup bouillabaisse. The presence of roux, or flour-based thickener, is also distinctly French -- although gumbo roux is much darker than the French variety, having been prepared with flour that is browned in oil or fat of some kind. Spanish settlers contributed sofrito, the combination of onion, garlic, peppers, and tomatoes cooked in olive oil. In Cajun and Creole cooking, an iteration of this -- celery, bell peppers, and onions -- is known as “the Trinity,” and with the addition of garlic it becomes “The Holy Trinity.” The name “gumbo” itself is derived from the West African word for “okra”, which is an ingredient found in many versions of the dish. Native American Choctaws added filé (ground and dried sassafrass leaves) to the mix, which is frequently used in gumbos instead of or in addition to okra."

What I wonder about the name: gumbo- did it come from Africa with the Moors when they entered Spain, then to the U.S. with colonization? Or was this a tradition transported via slavery? The south has obvious connections to Africa via slavery and This National Parks Service Site notes that:

"Congo Square, near the future site of New Orleans Jazz NHP, was one of only 2 areas in the United States where African drumming, singing, and dancing was permitted during the mid-eighteenth to nine-teenth century."

It makes you wonder...

Not all gumbo is created equal however. As much of a mixing pot as it is, people have their "own" gumbo and believe it to be the best. Lousiana's Folk Life informs us that you can tell where a person is from by the what they put in gumbo and they way it's served. (I'm going to go out on a limb and say a big NO to potato salad):

"Although people in all parts of South Louisiana make meat and sausage gumbo thicken with filé, seafood gumbo thickened with okra is more common along the coast, where seafood is more plentiful. If you make duck, venison, or squirrel gumbo, you most likely have a hunter in the family. If you put a scoop of potato salad in your gumbo before serving, you likely have some German influence. If you make the much less common, meatless gumbo z'herbes for Lent, you are likely Catholic and your family has been in Louisiana many generations. You are less likely to find this in many of the Cajun and Creole cookbooks so readily available now. And if your family wants to extend the gumbo, you might add boiled eggs."

This National Parks Service Site also seems to be making a somewhat cryptic argument that New Orleans Jazz music is as tied up in gumbo as okra is. I didn't see any recipe or links to anything other than soundbites... maybe you're better at the internet than I am, so poke around or just get a visual recipe from them for "Jazz Gumbo". 

PBS  notes that the peppers used to make the dish spicy themselves have a story:

"In the 1840s, hundreds of Louisianans went off to fight in the Mexican War. They returned with Mexican pepper seeds and a passion for heat. Adding green peppers to sauces and to meats kept foods from spoiling in the era before refrigeration. Eating pickled and raw peppers is still a popular Louisiana bar-room contest."

Gumbo seems to be a metaphor for itself: a great mix of ingredients and cultures that when brought together, are better for it. Though, gumbo wasn't universally celebrated. Before the Cajun craze in the 80's, it was thought of as "poor food" or "ethnic food" with some seriously negative, seriously racial connotations. The Atlantic explains the origin of the word "Creole" used synonymously with Cajun to describe the kind of cooking that gumbo falls into: 

"The word evolved from crioulo , a Portuguese term applied to slaves of African descent but born in the New World. Later, the definition expanded to include people of European descent born in the New World, as well. In French and Spanish Louisiana, and especially after the territory became part of the U.S., "Creole" came to signify people of all ethnicities (except Native Americans) who were "native" to Louisiana--especially French-speaking New Orleanians of European descent and the free people of color whose numbers and influence in the city were unusual when compared to the rest of the South."

Wherever it came from, however it was formed, one thing is true: gumbo is delicious. One thing is also kind of true: there are few wrong ways to make gumbo. Whatever you do, don't snub okra just yet. Give it a try!

Below is an obvious adulteration of the dish. I have not yet covered vegetarian gumbo because it is not traditional. Not eating meat is a modern luxury. We have access, even if we're poor, to high quality proteins that can substitute meat in sufficient quanities. This was not always the case, especially in the south. If you were poor, you were probably eating squirrel or rabbit gumbo, or shellfish gumbo depending on where you lived- probably drug home from a day's hunt. But here, I give you the option. Make it veggie- use veggie stock, miso, heck- even tofu! Make it seafood- use seafood stock, shrimp, shellfish, and whitefish! Make it savory and southwest inspired- use chilies, chorizo and corn. Just because you know and understand the history of this dish does not mean you are bound to it! Enjoy!

Vegetable Gumbo

2 Spring onions, diced

3 Bell Peppers, diced

4 Ribs Celery, diced
4-7 cloves garlic, smashed

Okra, sliced

6 C stock

1 basket cherry toms, roasted

1 ½ tsp Cajun seasoning

Salt to taste

Heat a thin layer of oil in a dutch oven until oil shimmers. Add onions, garlic and peppers and slightly brown. Add all  the rest of the veggies and cook until some color develops. Slowly add stock allowing pot to deglaze. Add cherry tomatoes and seasoning and cook until veggies are done and soup has thickened. Serve over cooked rice.

Variations:

Add chilies-roasted, fresh, rehydrated

Add sausage to the pan with the veggies

Add seafood at the end

Add other veggies! Corn, roasted tomatillos, squash!

Make your own Cajun seasoning! Save $

Make it veggie- use veggie stock and add miso paste for umami flavor

Life/Work Balance and Polenta Suck Muck

I'd like to sit down to my computer therapist and download all of my emotions right now- but I will resist.  So, I'm going to give you the tip of the iceberg then move on to some much needed silliness. My personal life exploded, and I am having a hard time putting it all back into its neat little box that I can ignore. My wife's family wants to come visit on her birthday (the end of this month) and they're not super on board with the whole...her having a wife thing. So, yeah, let's do an awkward meal. My dog had a seizure last week and I have no idea why nor do I have money for a doggy cat scan or extensive doggy blood work. Then out of the virtual blue, my biological father "friends" me on Face Book. I haven't seen him since I was two. Then, my mom friends him and starts talking to him without telling me. I think I chose wisely being a farmer, at least the pigweed and the pumpkins don’t have complicated personal histories and feel the need to burden you with them.

So, I'd like to put up some sort of cosmic notice: All Full! No more room for drama here thanks! I have no idea how to navigate all of this and still buy groceries, send emails, blog, keep weeds down, plant for fall, plan for winter, talk about partnership stuff, think about canning before all the good stuff is gone. Really, what's happened is I haven't been sleeping. I stay up canning, pickling, blogging, managing accounts,  or just tossing and turning. It's been a long, hard few months, and I will be ever grateful to see the backside of this year-assuming this is some kind of one year drama curse?

I've also been trying to resist the crack down of seriousness with as much fun as I can squeeze in. Even in small moments, I try to let it all go. Here is some of the silliness I promised- because when life gets waay too heavy, you've just got to laugh. 

We've been picking A LOT of cucumbers for the Sacramento Food Bank. Twice a week we've been picking 200 pounds  of these bad boys! Best part is when they come off odd looking. Here, I envisioned myself a cucumber-mustachioed Hulk Hogan. 

Tarra saw this one more as a horse shoe.

Here Tarra is paying homage to our farm chupacabra- feasting on the heads of  egg-eating ground squirrels.  (If only...)

This cucumber went for a full spiral. 

Cyclops cucumber?

Crookneck cucumber?

Crafty gopher made his home under our cucumber patch. He drags what he would like to eat that day down the hole. Terrifying, irritating, and cool all at the same time. 

Once thought extinct, the wooly cucumber mammoth shows up in Woodland. 

Ohh nooo! We're being invaded by a flying saucer... squash.  

If you let them go too long, you may choose to use them as fancy squash hats. 

We did sneak in some off time recently. We went to the Clips of Faith festival in Davis. We've been going since they started 5 years ago. You really can't beat a night of good beers, bikes, and independent movies in the park! Here, Byron  is enjoying people watching.  

There was a great dress up booth there too! I think this was Byron's favorite part. 

They also had this amazing giant connect four game! Tarra won...

You may ask yourself- why is she sharing all of this? I mean, I get the veggie pictures, but so much about her personal life!? How is that part of the farm? Good question. I think many people would argue that it isn't. Though, if you wanted veggies without context- there's the grocery store. If you wanted fresher, local veggies- there's the farmers market. But, dear friend, you've chosen to get them from me. I seed, transplant, thin, weed, water, pick, pack, and deliver your food. It travels in my car next to my dog, spare clothes, old coffee cups and such. It sits on my porch waiting for you at my house. It may come to you at your place of work- where my wife works. It's so ensnared in every part of my life, I don't bother separating them. The story of your food is sometimes how it grows, sometimes where, and sometimes who grows it. I hope that I cover enough of all of those stories here in this blog.

This week's recipe is a good one for this kind of week. You're tired, stressed, busy, and you don't want a big hassle. The name comes from the videoBetter Names for Food by Jenna Marbles. She renames oatmeal, "suck muck" which is fitting, but also oddly endearing. I think of this often when I make polenta- it's kind of mucky. But don't let the name fool you, this is all kinds of delicious! Play with it! Make it your own comfort food!

Polenta Suck Muck

-2 C polenta

-6 C water, stock, or a mix

1 med onion

5 or more cloves garlic

Olive oil

Salt to taste

Olive oil

Cherry Tomatoes

Summer Squash

Eggplant

Bell Peppers

Basil

Sweat onions and garlic in a large pot. Carefully add water/stock and polenta. Salt to taste. Stir and cook on med heat until thickened, about 30 min. While that is going, heat olive oil in a pan and cook firmer veggies first (zucchini eggplant), adding softer veggies(tomatoes basil) later. Cook until al dente and not mush.  Spoon polenta into a bowl and add veggies on top.

Variations-

Add cheese to polenta!

Crisp bacon in pan before you cook the veggies

Use garlic or mushroom broth in polenta

Sauté sausage in pan with veggies

Fry an egg and toss on top

Add spicy peppers to the veggie topping

Add other fresh or dried herbs to the polenta

Let me know what you think!