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happy new year!

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Happy New Year, all! Welcome to 2009! 2008 was certainly a full and busy year, and I can’t say I’m sorry to see the backside of it. I’m looking forward to a more steady 12 months; getting married was great, but I wouldn’t want to do it again. Ditto with all the traveling we did; we were glad to see family, but not always happy about the reasons for the trips.

Looking ahead to this year, I am excited about the next round of work we’ll be doing on the house. Installing some kind of trench-and-pump system in the basement to deal with the water inflow is the highest priority, and we plan to get that taken care of over the next few months. Once that’s done we have two small projects on deck—installing an exhaust fan in the upstairs bathroom and in the kitchen—and then it’s (‘just’) gardening and painting. We’re pleased with the progress we’ve made this year, both by ourselves and via the folks we’ve hired, and are starting to be able to see the light at the end of the tunnel. It’s true that the major renovations we started out discussing—central air and a redone addition, namely—are going to have to wait until the unforeseeable future. However, we’re coming to the end of the smaller scale repairs and back maintenance, so that feels good. After we complete these few projects the work we do on the house will be optional and voluntary and much less costly, a shift that we greatly look forward to.

I hope that the new year brings peace and harmony to your homes, and outward from your homes to the world. Namaste, friends.

happy new year!

garden log : cleaning up for winter

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The lavender bush, blooming in autumn.


The lavender bush, newly planted in spring.

This weekend we engaged in a superhuman final push to get the yard cleaned up for the winter. ‘Cleaned up’ is, of course, a relative term. We did not, as I’d hoped, prepare any beds for the transfer of rose bushes in the spring. Nor did we plant anything, move any bulbs, or cut the ivy back off of our neighbor’s trees. We didn’t even mow the lawn one last time before the cold rain of November descended for real (oops).

Even without meeting any of those goals, we accomplished a lot in the yard this year. Much of that work took place in the spring and early summer: digging up the liriope, relocating plants that were being suffocated, planting new azaleas in the front, putting in a new bed in the back, cutting back the ivy, and pruning the quince trees. Nonetheless, we pushed on and were able to find more to do. We dug up (even) more liriope, filling about three contractor bags with the stuff. I cut back the holly trees, to allow us to walk under them and to give the recovering crape myrtle (ours) and magnolia (our neighbor’s) some breathing room. We pulled oodles of dead vines down from the back trees and cut the mulberry back from the garage. I raked all the leaves, and we transferred them via the tarp method to the back beds where the great multi-year weed-smothering process continues. I was extremely glad to see that a decent layer of leaves remained from last year in many places, such that the leaves from our own yard should be sufficient for this year’s efforts. The tarp method, in contrast to last year’s wheelbarrow method, also went quickly and allowed us to move larger piles of leaves at once.

All in all, it was a satisfying clean up and I’m pleased with how our yard is looking. It’s conceivable that what remains to be done — ivy, liriope, and sapling stump removal — can be accomplished in the spring without much effort. Okay, with a lot of effort, but in plenty of time to allow me to actually plant things throughout the summer. Imagine: gardening that involves futzing around moving things here and there rather than mass killing.

garden log : cleaning up for winter

food : canning applesauce

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Applesauce!

In order to preserve for future use the 30 pounds of apples acquired on our first apple-picking expedition, I chose to make applesauce. As with the apple pie filling, I used a mix of Stayman, Braeburn, and Empire. I used a recipe that called for 1.5 pounds of apples, 1 tbsp. of lemon juice, and 2 tbsp. of sugar per pint. I used about 1/3 cup of sugar for the whole batch, and mashed the cooked apples with a potato masher until uniformly chunky. Then 25 minutes in the hot water bath and I was done. The result was a bit tart, but very tasty. We’ve eaten two of the seven pints already!

We’re planning another trip to the farm, and I’m thinking I’ll make some applesauce mixes the next time. Maybe rhubarb (I have a lot of that diced in the freezer) or cranberry. I can’t find a cranberry applesauce recipe I like, but I’m thinking of just adding a cup of fresh cranberries to the whole batch and seeing how that works out. I’m also considering making apple chutney or something along those lines. We’ll see how many apples I end up needing to make something with. Regardless, the pints and half-pints are much easier to process, and I think I’ll stick with that size until I get a more authentic canning setup (I’m currently using a stockpot and a steamer tray).

food : canning applesauce

apple harvest

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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

tomato season

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About half the tomatoes we received from the folks we know in Frederick.

This summer we expected to have three sources of tomatoes: our farm share; our own plants; and my partner’s boss, who brings surplus vegetables from his home garden into the office. As expected, we did receive quite a few from the farm share, which I ate sliced onto sandwiches if they were big and my partner took as part of his lunch if they were small. Sadly, our homemade boxes did not really work out. I suspect that we both overwatered and overfertilized them, as the plants turned pretty much completely brown. We ended up getting about a half dozen cherry tomatoes and four regular ones from the seven plants, with a very daring squirrel making off with most of the green tomatoes as they reached a goodly size. We may try again next year, but it’s more likely that we’ll dig a garden into the ground either next summer or in two years, whenever the major work on the foundation and in the yard is completed.

By far the most prolific source of tomatoes, though, was my partner’s boss. He and his spouse have an enormous home garden that includes 40 tomato plants of 25 varieties, and that’s simply more than they’re able to eat and process. We were invited up to the house to see the property and have dinner; they built a house on former farmland that is now wooded and zoned for conservation. After a very nice evening walking in the woods, harvesting in the garden, and sharing a meal, we were sent home with a trunk full of mason jars — this was part of the plan, as they had acquired many more than they now need over the years and were looking to donate them to someone just starting out with canning, which would be me — and a back seat full of beautifully hued heirloom tomatoes. When we got home, I sorted them into baskets by type and promptly gave away about a third of them to neighbors and friends, discovering in the process that heirloom tomatoes are a perfectly valid and welcome contribution to a summer potluck. Even with eating the cherry tomatoes like they were candy, we were still left with about a dozen quarts of tomatoes of varies shapes, sizes, and flavors, which required me to get creative.


Chopped up and headed into sauce.


Chopped up and headed into turkey lentil pilaf.

The first thing I did with the tomatoes was stew them up with onions and the spicy peppers we received from our farm share into a sauce that I served over cornbread. I use the cornbread recipe from Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant, substituting just about everything: I like the recipe because it remains delicious with rice milk, whole wheat flour and egg beaters. We had that meal for a couple of nights, I put three containers of sauce in the freezer, and we were still looking for something to do with the rest of the tomatoes. I turned at that point to my new favorite cookbook, Simply In Season and hit upon turkey lentil pilaf. This recipe not only used a bunch of fresh tomatoes, but had the added advantage of using the two packages of ground turkey that had been in the freezer for nearly a year. It also used up a of couple of containers of chicken broth that I made last winter from the farm share’s stewing chicken and some of the lentils and some of the stockpile of lentils and rice, so it was a good eating-from-the-stores recipe all around. Between making that twice, eating sliced or cherry tomatoes as snacks, and mixing up a couple of large batches of cucumber-tomato-mint salad, we managed to make our way through the tomatoes in about two weeks.

Of course, our farm share tomatoes kept coming: I have about a quart in the kitchen right now and will pick up more tomorrow. The ones in the yard, we decided to just leave for the squirrels.

tomato season