weekend visit to Patuxent NWR

It’s been a long time since I’ve hiked around Patuxent NWR, and I took advantage of yesterday’s beautiful clear afternoon to suggest a trip up there. The full Cash Lake trail was open, not yet closed for the season to protect the waterfowl that winter at the park. In addition to getting some fresh air after days of being stuck inside avoiding first humidity and then thunderstorms, we were also testing out my partner’s new hiking boots in advance of our trip up to Acadia National Park next month.

The hike itself was really more of a nature stroll than a hike that anyone who owns those pants that zip off into shorts would recognize as such. Patuxent is usually good for birds, but we saw hardly any: some goldfinches in by the Redington Lake bridge, a red-tailed hawk being chased by some crows above the beaver dam, some chickadees and nuthatches in the woods, a noisy red-bellied woodpecker, and a lone male kingfisher flying up the shore of Cash Lake. The highlight of the walk was definitely the amphibians: the previous two days of rain had created the ideal summer environment for frogs. We saw green frogs in the learning garden pond by the visitors’ center, a veritable mob of leopard frogs in a puddle at the base of the trail, and a lone cricket frog doing exactly what the guidebook said it would, which was attempting to evade us by a series of erratic hops. (I still caught it, but only to examine the teeniest frog I’d ever seen for identification purposes and then move it to the grass from the path of the trolley.) We also saw a skink, climbing a tree near where we’d stopped to locate the woodpecker; it was only the second time I’d seen one, so that was exciting.

In addition to frogs, the meadows were alive with butterflies. We saw Monarchs, Eastern and Black Swallowtails, Red-spotted Purples, a Great Spangled Fritillary, and a Common Buckeye. It’s possible that I also saw Spicebush and/or Pipevine Swallowtails, a Common Wood Nymph, and Least or Delaware Skippers (I didn’t have the book with me, so all identifications were from made at home from memory). We also saw a couple of something that looked like a cross between a cicada and a hummingbird, that we named Mini Mothra. There were dozens of dragonflies, including several distinct types I’d never seen before, but I didn’t have that book with me, either. All the dragonflies and frogs, in combination with a nice breeze off the lakes, meant that we weren’t bothered by mosquitoes at all.

weekend visit to Patuxent NWR

food : peaches

This year I am canning peaches for the first time. I’ve never been drawn to canned fruits, although I know people who can pears and peaches every year in massive batches. I couldn’t resist the recipe for brandied peaches that reran in the New York Times recently, and decided that I could make a few pints. Since I was only able to scrounge up four wide-mouthed pint jars in the house, four was what I settled on. Which is good, because six pounds of peaches is heckuva lot. At every step—weighing, peeling, slicing, boiling—the bowls and pots I have were at capacity.

The peaches themselves were not the best I’ve ever had. They were ripe, with a couple of exceptions, but the texture was a bit mealy (which I discovered when I went to have one for breakfast earlier in the week). They came from the farmers’ market, from Harris Orchard which generally has excellent fruit. I think the weather this year just didn’t agree with stone fruit, even more than is typically true in this area.I hope they won’t fall apart with cooking; it’s my belief that sugar syrup and brandy will go a long way toward making the texture of the peaches not of paramount importance, but maybe that’s the wrong end of the stick.

After cooking them in sugar syrup until just soft, I packed them into the jars. I’m pretty sure I cooked them too long, and I’m not clear on what I could have done to have the jar not be filled with liquid that seeped out of the peaches. Maybe drain them in a colander first? That seems to defeat the purpose of having them hot. At any rate, I drained them a bit in order to have room in the jars for more sugar syrup, but in the end only had room for the brandy. So, I had an enormous pot of sugar syrup left over. It seems inconceivable that peaches cooked in sugar syrup could end up not being sweet enough, so I’m going to assume that they’ll be fine. In the unlikely event that they’re not, I suppose we can sprinkle sugar on them.

In the future, if I do this again, I think I’ll keep the peaches in halves and definitely not cook them nearly as long. I’ll let you know around Christmas how this batch turned out.

food : peaches

food : tomatoes

A couple of things have contributed to my silence around here the past couple of weeks. One, it’s been godawful hot and sitting in front of our furnace of a computer is the last thing I want to be doing. Plus, the heat makes my brain melt so anything that requires stringing words together coherently is out. Two, we’ve been up to our eyeballs in fruits and vegetables, and it seems like I’ve been working around the clock to chop, peel, dice, slice, bake, roast, stew, and generally turn them into meals. It probably hasn’t been around the clock, it just seems that way because the kitchen gets so hot.

This year has not been great for tomatoes in our area, so we didn’t get as many early in the season as we usually do. In the past, we’ve been heartily sick of tomatoes by this point in the summer, and this year we’re just getting going. I’ve had sliced Purple Cherokee tomatoes on fried egg sandwiches and my partner’s been taking the assortment of cherry tomatoes to work with his lunch. That leaves us with several pints per week from our CSA (now quarts as the harvest picks up) of mid-sized red, orange, and yellow tomatoes to deal with, in addition to whatever odds and ends are given to us by our friends with the enormous garden. Two weeks ago the solution was deer chili. Yes, I said deer chili. I know that you couldn’t pay me to eat a venison burger during the nine years I lived in a deer-shooting-friendly state, but now that I’m a grown-up and the deer is free and leaner than beef, I’ve succumbed. It’s actually not that bad, and works really well in the recipes in which I’d previously used ground turkey. So, yeah, I’m not a vegetarian anymore, but that still doesn’t mean I’ll eat any of the meat that is reasonably easy to procure and cheap by way of coming from a CAFO. Mennonite-raised chickens and turkeys, wild salmon, and deer killed by a friend: that’s about the whole of it. I may branch out to Mennonite-raised pigs for the holidays this year; don’t hold your breath, though.

At any rate, the chili was good and used up a lot of tomatoes. We have another 2 lb. package of ground venison, but since we also have 2 containers of chili in the freezer, I probably won’t make another batch just yet. Last week I made ratatouille for the first time in order to use up some tomatoes and one of the two eggplants we had in the fridge. While I ate ratatouille growing up, I never buy eggplants of my own volition because I don’t really like them. Since subscribing to our summer CSA, I’ve had to adapt to receiving them as one of the semi-regular vegetables. The first year, I made all of the eggplant into baba ghanoush. Which worked out well, because many of our friends liked it so I could serve it to guests and didn’t have to really eat that much of the eggplant at all. Last year, the weather wasn’t great for eggplants and we didn’t get many (or, possibly, our farmer scaled back because we received so many the year before). This year has been a low-eggplant year, but in CSA terms that means I’ve only gotten a few of the Japanese eggplants and 2 decent sized standard ones. Thus, ratatouille, using the Simply In Season recipe. It was good, and my partner liked it well enough for us to allow for a repeat later this week. I did have to go out and purchase the courge, which I found kind of amusing. Our farmer is committed to not overwhelming us with the vegetable that everyone else is typically overwhelmed with in the summer, thus the summer squash shortage.

Winter squash, however, is a different story. We are already starting to see the boom of winter squash, and I had two spaghetti squashes (one enormous, one normal) to find a use for. I’ve seen those weight loss shows, I know that you can do some weird thing and the squash gets all stringy and you can eat it with sauce if you’re on the Atkins Diet. I just really didn’t know what weird thing, or if this was a food that a person not trying to lose 10 pounds per week would ever want to actually put in their mouths. Since we had the squash we gave it a try, serving the ratatouille over it, and I am pleased to report that it was good. The other half of the (enormous) squash I used to make a cold salad with chunked fresh tomatoes (also chopped onion, minced garlic, and fresh basil). The salad was surprisingly good. I am not the best at cold salads; it rarely occurs to me to make them and I am always doubtful regarding their appeal. Last summer was the first year I made a cold salad other than bean or potato (and I haven’t made potato salad in years), a shredded beet salad from a recipe foisted on me at the farmers’ market by the guy who runs the nearby community garden farm. This year I tried a couple new combinations, and they were all nice so I shouldn’t really have been that surprised that a non-green salad was good. So good that we voted to use the remaining squash for another salad rather than with the ratatouille, even.

In addition to tomatoes, which another round of salad has the benefit of making a dent in, the item I most need to find a use for is chicken stock. Our winter CSA included two stewing chickens, and due to limited time I only ever stewed one of the chickens. (Yes, I don’t have a job, but that doesn’t mean I actually have a lot of time for all-day activities like making chicken stock.) Now, limited freezer space means that I need to use the chicken stock I have before I can thaw and stew the remaining chicken. One of the only recipes that I make regularly with chicken stock—Turkey Lentil Pilaf, also from Simply In Season—also uses up fresh tomatoes, so we’ll be having that tonight and probably a couple more times over the next few weeks. In fact, the recipe doesn’t use much more than chicken stock and tomatoes: lentils, turkey, rice, and fresh mint. Probably also some onion and garlic. Now you know.

After tonight’s pilaf and tomorrow’s ratatouille, I’ll assess the remaining tomatoes and decide if some of them need to be stewed and frozen. And then we’ll pick up our CSA on Thursday and start all over again.

food : tomatoes

food : blueberries

The echoing silence around here has been due to our absence. We were off in the Great White North last week, visiting family and collecting blueberries from the family farm. Usually when we arrive this time of year the bushes are laden with fruit, so much so that it’s impossible to pick them all. Along with the fruit, the bushes are typically crawling with all manner of wasps and hornets which feast on the berries as they become overripe. Despite our best efforts each year, we’ve never been able to pick the bushes totally clean.

This year the bushes were the barest I’ve ever seen them; oddities of weather meant that the crop was unusually small. The scarcity when we arrived was also due in part to the decision to allow pick-your-own folks to access the field without set hours; the easy to pick berries at eye and hand level were all gone. Berries remained at the interior of the bushes and at heights that required one of us to stand on a stool while the other held the bucket. In addition to these, some bushes were dotted with second round berries, those that were left to ripen after the bush was picked nearly clean earlier in the season. As a result, we spent more time in the field this year for fewer berries. The weather was gorgeous, clear and much cooler than home, even on the hottest days. It was nice to be outside, and I lost track of time each day as I usually mark the hours passing by the number of berries in the buckets.

Now that we’re back home we’re eating berries in our cereal, I’m freezing some for the winter, and I’ve made one pie and some sauce to go over the angel food cake we had for my partner’s birthday. There’s a recipe for pickled blueberries that seems to be something like a sweet relish or chutney that I’m interested in trying, but I may decide that we don’t have enough berries to spare for that. I remind myself that the berries will grow again next year; I’m sure I’ll be convinced, as I am each year, to share some with our friends.

food : blueberries