apple harvest


Apples!


All the best ones are out of reach.

Last weekend we drove up to Larriland Farm in Howard County to pick apples. I remember picking apples as a kid, but it wasn’t something we did every year. What I don’t remember is what we did with all the apples we brought home! We discovered this year that it’s easy to fill up on apples quickly when each of you have a bag that holds 15 to 20 pounds and there are rows and rows of trees before you. In retrospect, it’s hard to believe that I was nervous there wouldn’t be enough: we could have filled our entire car and not made a noticeable dent in the orchard’s bounty. We also brought home beets, spinach, and more pie pumpkins, again taking only the smallest portion of what they had available.

After much deliberation we decided to pick only two of the three varieties available, Stayman and Braeburn (my two favorite kinds, which weighed heavily in the decision-making process). I like tart crisp apples, which I’ve learned are typically late-season apples. My partner eats apples with his lunch, sometimes two or three per day during local apple season. The smaller and slightly more sweet Braeburn were designated for that purpose, leaving me with about 15 pounds of Stayman apples to use as I wished. After making a couple of the requisite pies — my usual contribution to dinners where we’re the guests — I decided to put some of them up in jars for use later in the winter. To round out the firm apples with some that would mush up — that’s a technical term — when cooked, I picked up some Empire from my regular farmers’ market suppliers, the folks at Harris Orchard.

In an effort to use some of the interesting quart jars I received this summer — some of which are nearly antiques as they’d been collected from estate sales over the years — I started with pie filling. Not only have I never canned pie filling before, I’ve never made a pie from canned filling, so this was a new experience all around. I found a recipe online, cleaned and sterilized the jars, and started processing the apples using the handy peeler-corer-slicer I bought with our one of our last lingering wedding gift cards. (As an aside, I have been happily using all of the kitchen items we’ve received as gifts; having the proper tools and large enough bowls makes cooking all of our meals every day so much more enjoyable!) Of course, things didn’t go entirely smoothly: I didn’t peel enough apples initially, and had to conscript my partner to do that while I kept the sauce from scorching and the quart jars were a tight squeeze in my stockpot, as I have a bit of a rigged up water-bath setup. Everything seems to have turned out fine, though. Only one of the jars didn’t seal, so I stuck it in the fridge to be the test pie in a couple of weeks. I’m considering giving the pie filling as gifts to a couple of people (shh, don’t tell!) and want to be sure that it makes a decent pie before doing so.

Next up: applesauce. I’m sure that the combination of fewer ingredients and smaller jars will make me feel like a canning pro.


The finished product.

apple harvest

grocery choices in a price-inflated world

For the first time, this week, I made active changes in what I was buying at the store as a concession to inflation. I had been conserving and trimming luxuries for a while, but yesterday marked the first time I downgraded in the selections I was making. It’s not that we haven’t been making changes for a while; the biggest shift we have made in our household since I (voluntarily) stopped teaching has been in the way we eat. We no longer eat out, for primarily budget reasons, and I cook almost everything we eat at home, primarily for health reasons. For the first year of our plan, my partner still frequently bought lunch or coffee at work and we would eat out with friends. We joined a CSA in order to receive organic produce on a weekly basis, nearly all year round. As our savings dwindled and inflation started climbing we’ve trimmed luxuries, like cookies and soda and juice (not that we purchased these frequently, but we now purchase them only in times of desperate need). When we learned my partner’s cholesterol levels were dangerously imbalanced, we cut out the purchased lunches and I began cooking nearly everything we put into our mouthes in an effort to change the cholesterol profile through diet (which we did).

Through all of this, though, I have remained committed to certain principles of food purchasing and consumption. I don’t buy industrial meat, and with the higher cost of free range and pastured or organic meat we hardly ever eat it. From the local organic market, we buy basics — oils, flour, légumes in bulk, peanut butter, milk, butter — and fair trade items when they’re available — coffee, sugar, and spices. Several of the companies we support are cooperative businesses, namely Organic Valley, King Arthur and Frontier. While I’d likely be choosing their products anyway, it’s important to me that our household dollars are going to support ethical labor practices and helping to keep workers and farmers in control of their own livelihoods (yes, all my bank accounts are with credit unions, too).

With the close attention I’ve been paying to cost, I’ve noticed that the local market is consistently less expensive than Whole Foods for the items I buy regularly; not that Whole Foods is inexpensive, it’s just usually the only option for processed organic food. For our household cleaning supplies, we use almost exclusively Seventh Generation products: in addition to being free of fragrances and dyes, they are vegetable-oil based and use a large amount of post-consumer recycled paper and plastic. I could draw you a map of which stores carry them at the lowest prices: toilet paper at the Giant (by about $3 per package, surprisingly); dishwasher detergent at Whole Foods (only because they are the only store to carry the larger size since Target stopped stocking the products); Whole Foods again for paper napkins (because the organic market stopped carrying the brown option in larger packages); dish soap, trash bags, paper towels, laundry detergent and bathroom cleaners, all at the local organic market. I won’t bore you with the list of what we use for shampoos and soaps: suffice it to say that they all cost the least at the local organic market, too. When I buy produce beyond what comes with our farm subscription, I get it from the weekly farmers’ markets (fruit, mostly) or the organic market (onions, mostly).

The non-organic things that I buy at either the Giant or the new competitor are all related to my partner’s new cholesterol-busting diet: Cheerios (it really does help lower cholesterol, we’ve found), pretzels (the no-fat alternative to corn chips), bread (Roman Meal Double Fiber has the best fiber-to-sugar ratio of sliced wheat bread), and egg substitute. This week, for the first time, I chose the store brand egg substitute over Egg Beaters: it was a dollar less expensive per container. It’s not like the Egg Beaters chickens are any less crowded and warped than the store brand, right? Industrial egg products are industrial egg products. I also bought, for the first time in years, regular garlic at the Giant rather than organic garlic at the market. It’s garlic, right? Also, it was less than half as much.

Neither of these are major substitutions, but the fact of the choice I was making gave me pause. While I admire people who stretch their family budgets by buying in bulk or clipping coupons from the Sunday circular or stocking up on food close to its expiration date, that isn’t me. I keep — and use! — store coupons for the things we buy regularly, but I’m not going to switch to mac and cheese dinners (or ramen noodles) just because they’re 10 for a buck this week (they’re not, as far as I know, by the way: no need to rush to the store). I would prefer to winnow down to an ‘all lentils and brown rice all the time’ diet rather than buy the processed crap that’s the cheapest.

Over the past two years I’ve already learned that I’m willing to do a lot more cooking, and the attendant lot more dish washing, than I previously realized. I’ve always liked to cook, but never before have I had to make such a stark choice to commit to more labor in the kitchen to gain the freedom from laboring for someone else, as well as the resources to spend on the products I value. Garlic at $6 per pound, I learned this week, is apparently not one of them. I’m not ready to say that I’d get a job in order to keep buying fair trade organic sugar, but I’m also not sure that I wouldn’t.

grocery choices in a price-inflated world

garden log : mating dragonflies


Dragonflies mating on our porch post.

I went outside this afternoon to enjoy the unseasonably warm day, and after my mole eyes adjusted to the sun, I noticed a pair of dragonflies mating on our porch. These dragonflies have been around the yard for a while now, and I also see them in the town park. Which is great, because it means our stream is both clean and wet enough to support dragonflies (the overgrowth along the edges is apparently also ideal for them to do their hanging thing when they’re young).

Despite having purchased a dragonfly identification book, I have not been able to figure out what kind they are. For example: is that a clubtail? This is the first time I’ve ever tried to identify a dragonfly beyond those really obvious white-winged blobby ones that I see at the pond, and I’m a bit overwhelmed by the choices. So, please feel free to identify them for me! I’m in Maryland, they’re mating in October, and the water habitat nearby is a creek bed that is mostly fed by storm water. Go to town!


Still mating.


More mating.


And still more mating.

garden log : mating dragonflies

squash baked with apples and walnuts


The whole kit and kaboodle, pre-baking.

I think I’ve mentioned that I’m dealing with a bit of a squash situation? Right. Last week’s efforts involved an upgrade of squash-baked-with-garlic that was inspired by a recipe at Simply Recipes (a site I use as a starting point for both new ingredients and classics that I just never tried to make before). I was planning to make the recipe as written, with adjustments to the butter and sugar, but because we live Down South, cranberries aren’t available in the grocery stores yet, even though it’s been autumn for three weeks. (Maybe this is unfair and you don’t have fresh or frozen cranberries available Up North yet, either?)

My version: toss together peeled and chunked squash (I used courge longue de Nice), peeled and chopped apples (I used Stayman, because I wanted them to keep their shape), minced garlic (I used about 4 or 5 or 6 cloves), whole walnuts, olive oil, and salt and pepper (I could have used more salt), and then bake at 375F for about an hour (until the squash gets soft). It was, I have to say, pretty good.

squash baked with apples and walnuts

presidential debate two, live!

Obama’s shot over the stern: fire those execs!

John’s plan: I would completely cripple the government’s ability to do anything by not collecting any taxes!

No, actually, I don’t think there are a lot of Americans qualified to be the Secretary of the Treasury. Really, I don’t. And that’s okay, let’s just be honest about specialized skill sets and all.

John: please tell me you aren’t reminding us that you suspended your campaign like that was a good thing.

There can be only one (letter).

This is really not all that interesting without crowd reactions.

Does John really believe this ‘I’ve been a reformer’ nonsense or is he just a totally craven power-hungry loon? Also, how does ‘taking on the leaders of your party’ become a metric for being a good lawmaker? If the leaders of your party are not insane and promote a set of ideas and proposals that are good for the general public, why do you need to take them on? Yeesh.

My friends! I was wrong, I thought they’d focus-grouped that phrase out of his lexicon.

Since when have the Republicans’ good friends the Saudis been ‘terrorist organizations’? Bizarre.

And I get to use my graph again:

Ye olde Visual Aid.

Dude, WTF? ‘Eliminate agencies,’ that’s your sacrificing? We’ll just have to git along without that thar Department of Education, that’s what! Or maybe Health and Human Services? How about the FDA? I notice that The War Of A Hundred Years is not on that elimination list.

That’s right, Person With Health Insurance, I’m not going to tell you that you have to wait: you’re going to have to start paying taxes on that benefit now!

Mr. Obama: I refer you to my Visual Aid. But, you know, thanks for pointing out that it’s conceivable we could conserve energy in our own homes. Also, I do like your service corps idea, probably because it was my idea years ago (not that you took it, I’m just saying that a civil service of infrastructure laborers has long been a pet fantasy of mine, except that mine includes mandatory not voluntary service).

Herbert Hoover? That’s all you got? Oh no, you also have small business scare tactics. (My friends! Point 2!) Oh and: I am not in favor of tax cuts for the wealthy, I am in favor of permanently extending the tax cuts for the wealthy that I have already voted for in the past. Wha?

I am enjoying this little ‘words mean things’ and ‘parts go into a whole’ breakdown by Obama on the tax plan debate.

Wow, am I the only one who finds his ‘look, my friends’ and ‘it’s not hard to fix social security’ schtick annoying and condescending? Also, whoa with the ‘great Ronald Reagan!’ nonsense. (My friends!)

You must be desperate indeed to be name dropping the Lieb into this mess. Let’s go nuclear! Also, you know, safety — something like that *hand wave* Um, that was kind of crazy looking, John, rein it in!

Dude, nothing is sponsored by ‘Bush and Cheney,’ they’re the Executive Branch. Also, please to be referring back to the Visual Aid above with regard to offshore drilling!

I love the ‘generally pretty supportive of Republicans’ about the US Chamber of Commerce: that may be the understatement of this Q&A session.

Note: efficient. Not effective. Not comprehensive. Not fair. That is the telling point. Also, there are lots of things we don’t go across state lines for in many places. Raw milk. Wine. Et cetera. And, I think we all know by now that the 5k is not for you, it’s for the health insurance companies.

No cheap shots at the Joe, John! It’s hardly in your best interest to start either a physical ability or a vanity mud-slinging fest.

Another relatively obscure legal question sees the light in these debates, that of the lax incorporation laws that lead to all the banks being headquartered in Delaware. Also, way to drop the deregulation hammer on the old dude, Barack!

‘The greatest force for good in the world’? Arrogant much? (My friend.)

The whole bit about the US spending billions per month in Iraq while ‘the Iraqis’ have 79 billion in reserve must be playing well with the audience insta-dials, because he keeps using it.

Steady hand is what you’re looking for, and it’s hard to argue a policy that’s based on assessing the ability to ‘beneficially affect the situation’ right after you’ve talked about not giving up on a war without end unless you can WIN.

First Reagan is your hero, then Teddy Roosevelt? Who’s next, Rambo?

Ok, there is just too much one thing right after another here with the foreign policy stuff, I am falling off my chair with the laughing which makes typing hard. ‘The same strategy except different but basically the same which was successful which was getting the people on our side.’ Um, the Iraqi people are on the side of the occupation now? When were we greeted as liberators that I somehow missed?

‘I know how to get him!’ Well, for the love of the baby Jesus, John, tell someone else so that he can be gotten!

‘Hey, veteran friend, I got a good one for ya: let’s start another war! Ha ha ha ha ha!’ I swear, this man sounds certifiable when he talks about this stuff. When did that happen? I don’t remember him sounding this weird in the past.

I admit that I was live-chatting with an old college buddy just now, but it seemed like McCain did not make a single lick of sense in that whole rambling bit there about Russia and no new cold wars and moral support and victory and honor. What did I miss? (That Putin name drop was for you, btw, Ms. Wolf-Shooter!)

Obviously, after Iraq, the US will wait for no nation when it comes to military aggression.’ Oh good lord are we back on the negotiating-without-precondition crap again? No one likes that approach, John, pay attention when your staff brief you on the insta-dial readings. Oh, ugh, again with the second Holocaust schtick. A war does not become a Holocaust just because the people in the country at war are Jews (or any other ethnicity). Unless we are arguing that invasions and wars equal genocides, in which case we’re perpetrating an enormous one in Iraq. Crazy illogic logic, you make my brain hurt. Feh.

Nice shout out to the wife there.

Nice dodge and redirect of the question by both candidates, and nice attempt to horn in on the single-mom sympathy train there, John. (But good job getting the ‘steady hand on the tiller’ corrected there.)

And there you have it, folks, live on Tuesday night. Good night, and good luck.

presidential debate two, live!