S-s-s-so C-c-c-cold

Earth Day. I'd rather it was warm and sunny so I could go plant a tree or smile at a child or something, but it's 40 and raining (again). It's amazing the bad mood that extended unseasonably cold weather can put you in. And it's not just the cold, it's the lack of sun. We've had maybe 3 days where it was sunny all day in the past 2-3 weeks.

Part of my spring recharge ritual, since I work in isolation in my house and never get to talk to live human beings, is to take little walkabouts in my garden. I've substituted this for obsessing over the seedlings in my basement, but somehow it isn't the same.

On one of my basement walkabouts I excavated eggplant, tomatillo paste, tomato paste and frozen tomatoes from the deep freeze and made this wonderful portobello chili.

Eggplant-portobello chili
1 eggplant, roasted
2 quart bags (or 2 cans) whole peeled tomatoes
1 pint tomato paste
1 quart bag roasted tomatillos
1 pound portobello mushrooms
Olive oil
1 1/4 cup black beans
1 cup corn niblets
1 T (or to taste) chili powder
salt to taste

If using dried beans, bring to a boil in a large pot of water, then simmer for one hour; allow to soak until water is cool. Just before making the chili, boil again, for 20 minutes. (I think this yields a softer, better bean than the "soak overnight" method.)

Dice the mushrooms, and saute in a couple of tablespoons of olive oil. When all the oil has been absorbed by the mushrooms, squeeze a quarter lemon on it; the mushrooms will release some moisture; sautee until they are quick limp. Cut up and then add the eggplant. Cook these together until the eggplant has lost all structure. Add the tomato and tomatillo and cook this down to a thick sauce. Add the beans, corn, chocolate and spices. Adjust spices to taste.

The things we carry

At Earth Hour dinner the other night, my hostess Holly sent us all home with slices of chocolate chip date cake. I didn't realize how deeply I had internalized the idea of avoiding one-use plastic until I felt myself cringe as she casually pulled out a ziplock bag to wrap it in. I didn't say anything, but that ziplock bag is sitting on my counter still, several days later, like Banquo's ghost.

Holly is about as green as they come--active on the American Institute of Architect green design committees, spearheads construction debris reuse for a department of the city of Chicago, an avid cook. But she didn't think twice about pulling out that ziplock bag.

We pack a lot of things in throwaway wrappers that we ought to be reusing. How many times have you gone to the grocery store and left your 14 canvas bags in the car? And you get to the check out, and just say, oh they're in the car I'll just use plastic today. But why not go back out to the car and get the bags? Or put the groceries back into the cart and bag them when you get to the car. I shake my head in wonder every time I see some young mother, of a generation who should know better, and in affluent areas of the city where one assumes a degree of awareness and buy-in, leaving the grocery store with groceries stuffed into 20 or 30 petroleum-based plastic bags. What will it take to create awareness and a willingness to act when mothers like that don't even understand that what they're doing is wrong.

Doggie bags made of styrofoam. Lunchboxes made of plastic. When will we learn that avoiding these things is easy, cheap and necessary. We simply cannot keep casually wrapping in plastic a piece of cake that's going to be consumed 10 minutes later.

We need to teach our children to be thoughtful and planning-oriented. We need to train ourselves to stewardship; to bring the bags in from the car, or go back out for them if we forget. We need to pack our fruit in paper bags, and never buy another ziplock again. Or at the very least, to wash them.

Green isn't just reading the proper blogs and donating to Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution. Green is getting to the point where you cannot bring yourself to use plastic when there's an alternative, and to have the courage to tell your friend, "just wrap it in wax paper."

Another risotto
1 cup Arborio rice
4 tablespoons butter
1/4 cup raisins (they can be crusty old dry ones, which is what actually inspired this)
1 medium onion, diced
1 eggplant, roasted (or from frozen preserved)
2-3 cups broth
salt and pepper to taste
grated hard cheese

Remember, you cannot leave risotto for even a minute--keep stirring or you'll be scrubbing a burnt pot later.

Heat the broth to a simmer, and keep it there. Melt the butter in a large saucepan. Add the raisins and saute about a minute, add the onions and saute until they just start to go transparent. Add the rice and saute about 5 minutes, until they start to look a little toasted (not burnt).

Start adding the simmering broth 1/2 cup at a time. It's important to add the broth in small amount and allow it to absorb into the rice completely before you add more. When the first 1/2 cup is absorbed, add another, and allow it to be absorbed. When you've used half the broth, add the eggplant, stirring thoroughly. The eggplant adds a lot of moisture, so allow that moisture to be absorbed as well.

Continue to add the simmering broth 1/2 cup at a time, until the dish is sticky but not glutinous. I've never used all the broth, the one I made last night used only 2 cups because of all the moisture in the eggplant.

Serve hot, sprinkle with grated cheese. This dish does not keep well.

Dark Days meal

I set out at the beginning of last summer to make it to January using only vegetables from my garden (of the ones I grow, anyway).

Well, here it is, well into February, and it looks like I'm going to make it all the way to my first harvest in June, with some to spare. I've still got plenty of tomato sauce and frozen tomatoes, cucumber and eggplant, loads of pickles, several jars of corn relish, one more quart of blanched chard, roasted frozen green and jalapeno peppers. I have plenty of frozen vegetable peelings for making stock. Just used the last of the raspberries, making me eye my non-bearing apple tree with evil intent: wouldn't that space be better used as a a berry patch? Hmmmm.

So here's a "larder meal," made from my stores (plus some CSA onions). Oh, also? Go Team Eggplant.

Pumpkin-eggplant soup with carmelized onions
1 roasted medium-sized eggplant, peeled and cubed
3 roasted medium-sized tomatoes, or 3 tomatoes blanched and peeled
1 quart pumpkin puree (approximarly equivalent to a can)
1 quart vegetable stock

1 large onion
1-2 teaspoons molasses

seasoning:
1 teaspoon whole coriander
a few green peppercorns
1/2 teaspoon dried tarragon
1 teaspoon coarse salt

Put the first four ingredients in a large pot and bring to a simmer. In the meantime, melt about 3 tablespoons of butter in a skillet, turn the heat down to low and add the onions. When they start losing their shape, add the molasses and slowly sautee until the onions are completely soft and shapeless. Grind the spices (in a spice grinder, coffee grinder, or mortar and pestle) and add to the soup. Add the onions, draining any leftover butter into the pot.

Cool with a little cream or half-and-half when serving.

Are we frugal, poor, or just lazy?

One of the things I've found in trying not to buy anything, is that I don't really buy anything. I'm not really sure why this is. I've never been one of those people that hunts down bargains. (Talk to my brother in law, who once drove 30 miles to buy milk at $1.59 a gallon. In his defense he bought enough for everyone, and I mean everyone.) I don't clip coupons, mostly because they tend to be for name-brand extras that I don't use anyway.

We make a decent living. Yes, we're trying to put two kids through college with cash (one down, one to go), so that takes every dime of discretionary money, but the point is, we have discretionary money. If I buy an extra skirt, it's not going to put our tuition payments in arrears.

Which brings us to the most likely culprit-- it takes effort to spend money. Go to the store, go to the mall, stop off on the way home. Even entering all that initial info for "one click shopping" on line is often more effort than I'm willing to put in.

Which gives hope for everyone. If you're not naturally frugal, and you've got money to spend, you can still avoid the beast just by remembering that shopping is a pain in the ass.


The vegetable ingredients are all from my larder, frozen or canned last summer, but that's just me bragging. Feel free to buy these ingredients from your local CSA, neighborhood grocer, or even a chain or big box store.

Eggplant Chili
1 pound ground beef
1/2 pound chorizo sausage, skinned and crumbled
1/2 cup eggplant puree
1 pint tomato sauce or loose paste
1-2 tomatoes, blanched, peeled and cut into chunks
1/3 cup salsa verde
1 medium onion, diced
1 cup dry mixed beans or 2 cups soaked or canned
chili powder to taste (at least 2 tablespoons)
sea salt

If using dried beans, the instructions will say "soak overnight" but I've found this is not enough. Boil your beans for 30 minutes in 2-3 quarts of water with a little salt, add another 1-2 quarts of boiling water and soak in the hot water at least 2 hours. Drain and discard the water (or pour it onto the compost).

To make the eggplant puree, slice one medium eggplant, dredge heavily in olive oil, and saute until it starts to fall apart. Peel off the skin, add about 1/4 cup of the tomato sauce, and whisk briskly by hand, or in a blender or small food processor.

Saute the onions in about a quarter cup of water, until soft; when all the water is gone (and not a second later, or the onions will burn), add a tablespoon of olive oil, then crumble the meat onto it. Brown the meat (don't worry if you get "burnt" meat on the pot-- this is good, it will flavor the chili. Add the chili powder and simmer a few minutes until thoroughly mixed.

Once the meat is browned add all the sauces and simmer until the browned residue has been released into the sauce, then add more chili powder if needed. Mix thoroughly and add the beans. Simmer at least 30 minutes, being careful not to burn it by stirring frequently.

(post moved, in case you found the old link and it doesn't go anywhere)

One Seed Chicago: Eggplant

One Seed Chicago is an urban greening project. People, just like you, vote for a favorite seed and One Seed Chicago mails you the seeds for free. Grow them in your garden or a community garden in your neighborhood.

This very fun project was one of the first on-line community events I ever participated in. It led me to understanding how to get the most out of gardening and cooking on line, and helped me to meet a lot of great Chicago gardeners.

This year is an all-edible choice for the second time (2009 was Blue Lake Beans). All you have to do to get seeds is vote. You'll receive a pack of the winning seeds in time to plant them for the 2011 growing season, whether your choice wins or not. Here's what I planted the last two years: Blue Lake Beans in 2009 and Bee Balm in 2010.

The choices are swiss chard, radish and eggplant, three winners (the selection is always tough). My pick is eggplant. It's a hugely rewarding plant- it grows well in the ground or in containers and it's beautiful: if you only have an ornamental garden, you can fit an eggplant in as an ornamental with benefits. And even though it can be challenging to grow from seed, somehow I tend my One Seed choices really carefully; I guess I just feel an obligation to make it work.

You can start Eggplant from seed as late as late April or early May and still get fruit.

I don't want to hear "I don't like eggplant" or "I don't know how to cook it." Here's about 3000 eggplant recipes from Ashbury's Aubergines (found via Metafilter.com). I just made the following eggplant bharta from eggplants that I roasted and then froze last summer. Fresh, local, organic eggplant in January. Doesn't get better than that.

Update: if eggplant wins, I'm cooking an eggplant meal for Mike Nowak (whether he wants it or not). Maybe I'll make this or this:

Eggplant Bharta
recipe adapted from C. Solomon Complete Asian Cookbook

2 large eggplants (or 1 quart bag of frozen roasted eggplant)
2 large ripe tomatoes (or ditto, or 1 pint preserved tomato sauce)
3 T olive oil
2 medium onions, diced
1 1/2 t. fresh ginger, grated
1/2 t. turmeric
1/2 t. chili powder
2 t. salt
1 t. garam masala

You can make this from fresh uncooked vegetables, but I liked it better with the eggplant roasted, and the tomatoes peeled. To roast eggplants, cut them into 1" slices and dredge both sides with oil; put them in a 350F/175C oven for about 30 minutes, or until they are quite soft. To peel tomatoes, boil a large pot of water (deep enough to submerge the toms). At a full boil, submerge each tomato for about 30 seconds (this is called blanching); the skin should then slip right off. You can also remove the seeds if you want to, but it's not necessary for this recipe.

Saute the onion and ginger in the oil until onions are transparent. Add the spices and mix thoroughly. Add the eggplant and tomatoes and cook, stirring occasionaly, until it's a thick sauce-- personal preference on how runny or thick you want it. You can mash it into a puree with a fork, or use an immersible blender. If you've left the tomato seeds in you'll have to cook it down a little longer because there will be more liquid.

Serve over noodles, or as a side dish with fish or pork.

How much should I preserve?

At this time of year the blogs are full of pictures of 40 jars of tomatoes that some uber locavore just put up. You read about people's 20x20 foot hand-dug root cellars, and the 200 cucumbers that they turned into pickles.

I just read a comment from a friend that she "doesn't have enough to save right now"-- but what does that mean? How little is too little?

I mostly eat as I grow. I don't really have the space, or I'm not willing to devote the space, to grow enough for the 8 months of preserved food that you need in this northern temperate climate. But even so, for most of my gardening life I've grown just a little too much to consume.

Now, I'm a somewhat selfish gardener. I don't give much (ahem, any) food away. I'm always impressed, and slightly guilt-ridden, over people who bring their baked goods or overflow tomatoes to work. If I've got 10 extra tomatoes, that's a quart of sauce. Too many zucchinis, peppers, or eggplants? You can roast and freeze those. (Or pack the roasted peppers in olive oil. They won't keep quite as long, but they give the olive oil an amazing flavor). And you don't need either the time nor the storage for dozens of jars. Put up 3 jars, and for all I know, eat them next week. This year for the first time we got a small chest freezer, just 5.5 cubic feet, for freezing fruit and blanched vegetables, and I use my son's tiny old dorm room fridge for about 20 jars of heat-canned sauces and relish.

So if you've only got enough tomatoes for a little extra sauce, well, you're not feeding an army, and there's a grocery store down the block for January (for now, anyway). It's great to save a lot.

But you can also save just a little.

Fried squash blossoms with chorizo stuffing

12 large freshly picked squash blossoms (any type-- I've got Butternut, Pumpkin and Zucchini)

The stuffing:
2 chorizo sausages
3 small potatoes
1 large sweet pepper
3 small zucchini or 1 medium eggplant
2 egg yokes

Fill a sauce pan with light oil (canola or corn) to at least 3" depth (do not overfill- top of oil should be no closer than 1" from the top of the pot). Heat to 400F.

If using eggplant, dice it, place it in a seive over a bowl and lightly salt. Let it sit about a half hour until it drains, then rinse it. Discard all liquid. Drench it with olive oil and let it sit 10 minutes or until the olive oil is absorbed. Peel and grate the potatoes, dice the pepper and zucchini or eggplant. Remove the casings from the sausages and fry in a little olive oil, breaking them up into a ground meat texture. Place all ingredients together in the frying pan and continue frying until the eggplant is completely cooked, adding olive oil if necessary. Add egg yolks and quickly mix it. Saute on low until vegetables are soft (about 20 minutes). Allow to cool.

For vegetarian, clearly, leave out the sausage, replace with wild rice or toasted pine nuts.

The batter (from Cape May Magazine, although I thought theirs was too thick, and added a second egg white):
½ cup flour
½ cup rice flour
Salt, pepper
2 egg whites
½ cup club soda

Mix flours and spices and add to club soda. Whisk lightly to incorporate. Lumps are better than over mixing. Whisk egg whites until foamy. Add to batter.

Gently spoon the stuffing into the blossoms, folding over the ends to hold it in. Hand dip into the batter and immediately submerge in hot (400F) oil. Deep fry until the batter is golden brown. Serve immediately.

These were so good that by the time I got the camera, 6 of them were gone.

The dilemma of the grocery gardener

We eat really well at my house in the summertime.

Starting in mid-June, with the first harvest of snowpeas, early greens, and radishes, it's fresh food bonanza well into October. I've been known to go weeks without stepping into a grocery store and our food bill drops to less than $2 a day (even taking into account the direct cost of the garden). In a good garden year I can stretch that into November and even December with lardering--preserving, drying, freezing, and modified root cellaring.

But by mid February the bounty is really gone. I don't have the space, harvest, time, or technology to get much past Christmas from the garden. And I hate, I absolutely hate buying produce from the market. It just feels so wrong. I want my food miles and carbon cost as low as possible, but of course since I live in northern Illinois, this is impossible. It doesn't help that I'm not much of a meat eater. I stand in the produce section and I have to force myself to pick up that eggplant. Ugh, I'll think, it probably came all the way from Chile or something, but I really really want lasagna.

Today I bought my garden at the market. Eggplant, broccoli, two kinds of squash. Snow peas, baby peas, corn (the last two frozen). Peppers, tomato sauce. (I almost tried quinoa, but was put off by the admonishments to prep it right "to get rid of the unpleasant bitter taste." Yum.) Just 11 weeks until I might be able to pick something from the garden.

Vegetarian lasagna with roasted peppers
One box lasagna noodles
Romano or parmesan cheese, large wedge, grated
Mozzarella cheese, 1/2 to 1 pound, sliced or crumbled
1 each, large green and red peppers
1 medium eggplant
1 large summer squash (yellow or zucchini, or 1 of each, smaller), sliced thin
1 medium onion sliced very thin
1 pint mushrooms

2 quarts tomato sauce (from a jar, or make your own from canned tomatoes, or really make it from scratch. I used the stuff in a jar today. I'm only human.)

Prepare the lasagna noodles per package instructions. Yes, I know you can get that kind that cooks in the sauce in the oven, but, um, no.

To roast the peppers, quarter them and cut out the seeds and the white part of the spine. Place them face down on a lightly greased cookie sheet (cooking spray will do). Place them on a high rack (not the very top) in a very hot oven (400-450F) and roast for 20 minutes. Let them cool until you can handle them, then peel the blackened skins off. The flavor of roasted peppers is indescribable. Cut into strips.

To prepare the eggplant, cut it into 1/2" (1 cm) or thinner slices. Salt it and let it drain on a paper towel or newspaper for a few minutes, then heavily dredge it in olive oil. When the olive oil is completely absorbed, dredge it again, and then sautee it. Keep adding olive oil until it stops absorbing. Add the mushrooms and saute until they start to change color. Add the onions and saute until the onions are soft.

Start layering with a layer of noodles, then sauce and cheese, then noodles, then sauce cheese and veggies, until you finish with a top layer of noodles. Cover completely with sauce (make sure no noodle is sticking out, or it will dry out), and then sprinkle the remaining cheese over it.

Bake for about 30 minutes in a 350F oven, or until the cheese is lightly browned.

If you really must, you can substitute chopped meat for the eggplant. Make one quart of the sauce a meat sauce.

Tell me this is not how you spend Friday night

Yes. Yes it is. In my defense, while I'm sitting here eating this delicious garden ratatouille in front of the computer, a cake is baking (just a mix this time, but I have homemade pear and pumpkin pulp just waiting for some ideas).

I call it ratatouille, but it's another "what's ready to harvest" meal. Late in the season now, nothing (not even the tomatoes this year) are producing more than a meal's worth each day, so it becomes a creative exercise to see what you can come up with. Tired of stir fry, no pita to go with baba ganoush, the fish I bought is still frozen...

So, stone soup. I have a smallish eggplant, 5 cherry tomatoes and one fist-sized brandywine, a couple of cups of broccoli florets, some carrots, some onions, garlic, chard,and a reddish pepper. In the cabinet, half a bag of fettucini. Sounds like ratatouille to me.


Garden ratatouille

Must haves:
Large eggplant
2-3 tomatoes
large onion, sliced Greek- style*
Red or green pepper (or both)
1 large carrot
2-3 cloves garlic

Also in here:
a couple of green beans
Large handful of swiss chard
broccoli
7 small brussels sprouts, halved

Cut the eggplant into large chunks, place in a deep bowl and drench with olive oil. Mix it well, making sure the olive oil covers every chunk. Salt well and set aside. Soaking olive oil into eggplant is the secret to getting these to come out savory and tender rather than bitter and tough.

Cut other vegetables into slices or chunks. Put the onions and peppers in an 1/8th cup of water in a deep saucepan, saute until all the liquid is gone (including the liquid released by the vegetables), immediately put in the oil-drenched eggplants, adding more oil to keep it from sticking. Saute until eggplant starts to lose its color a little (it will turn greenish and then back to white), then add all the other vegetables. Saute until the broccoli is bright green and al dente.

Serve as a side dish with meat or polenta, or as I did, as a sauce for fettucini or your pasta of choice.

*to cut an onion Greek-style:

Cut off the ends. Balance the onion on one of these cut ends, and slice in half. Place the slice side down. Cut each slice angling in to the center-- never cut straight down. Cutting this way gives you every slice the exact same size.