Looking at a squash

So that's what I'm doing this morning. I'm waiting for the coffee to brew and looking at a squash.

It's a butternut, locally and organically grown.

I bought it.

Of vegetables that I grow myself, it's the first one I've bought since last June, so it's kind of mythic.

Sadly, I often stare at food. When I first loaded up the freezer with all the preserved food I managed this year, I'd have to stop myself from going down to the basement to look at it. I did occasionally open up the little dorm fridge full of canned goods just to look at all the lovely little rows of jars. Every gardener knows the phenomenon of staring your seedlings into growth. Has anyone managed to make that work yet?

Staring at food is what food and garden porn is all about-- lovely pictures to look at, so you can imagine, "I'd make that/plant that/create that if I had that much time, those tools, that expertise." Apparently, staring at food also helps satisfy your desire for it, causing you to eat less, although I have not personally experienced this phenomenon. Somehow, staring at candy bars makes me buy them. People are trying however.

Meantime, here's this squash. Just between you and me, I think it's staring back.

Hide-the-squash-from-the-kids meatloaf
1 pound ground beef
1 pound ground lamb or pork
1 cup diced roasted squash
1/2 cup bread crumbs
small onion, diced

Seasoning:
sea salt
ground green pepper (black is fine if you don't have the green)
1/8 teaspoon cinnamon
2 teaspoons mint

Peel and seed the squash, then dice enough to yield a cup (quite a small dice, remember, we're hiding it from the kids); lightly toss with olive oil and saute until soft. Roast the rest of the squash in the oven at 400F/200C and save it for baking, risotto, or soup.

My meatloaf, by the way is not for the squeamish. Get out a loaf pan and spray with cooking spray, or lightly coat with olive oil and bread crumbs (this is to aid clean up). Turn on the water in the sink, and let a warm stream run, you're going to need it. Put all ingredients in a large bowl and mix them together with your hands until everything is evenly distributed throughout the mixture. Form into a loaf and press into the pan. If you need to further disguise this from the kids, put a little ketchup on top as a glaze, but with the squash version, I like to leave this off.

Rinse your hands, then put the loaf in the oven. Roast for about 90 minutes, or until it is completely brown all the way to the center. If you are using cheap meat, you will need to drain the fat about half way through, but please don't use cheap meat. You'll just end up eating more of it and getting just as fat.

Hipster Supported Agriculture

The problem with Hipster Supported Agriculture, is that the Hipsters, at least the ones I know, were hard to convince about the value of food-for-labor. I've kept one victim, um ah HELPER, in a continuous supply of swiss chard (which she planted) and walnut butter from my uncle-in-law's farm. My son, hipster-extraordinaire, has gotten plenty of food, sans the labor, but since he put in all the hardscaping over the years, I can't really complain.

Today I got to work at a different site with an entirely unknown bunch of kids, the Service Learning Program from Chicago's Mather High, at the Peterson Garden Project, where I'm one of the core volunteers.

Project volunteer Ann Van Z arranged for the group of 30 kids and their 4 supervisors to come and weed whack. They were disappointed that they didn't get to pick any vegetables, but did a fantastic job cleaning up the perimeter of the huge lot, and clearing the weeds in the paths. Several of them also got a lesson in watering, so all the plots that needed it got watered as well. (I did my best to try to find 30 radishes in the Farm2Give plots, but there weren't really 30 ready to be picked. Upside is I have a nice big bunch of huge radishes ready to take to the Lincoln Foundation Food Pantry.)

I also talked about why it's so important to control your food source, demonstrating a planting of the last open bed at the garden with lettuce, chard, a mesclun mix, and, what the heck, some zucchini. If no one claims the plot, we can make it another food pantry plot.

One of the things that astounded me is what these kids didn't know. They didn't know where seeds come from. They didn't know what lettuce looks like growing in the ground. They didn't know what dirt is made of, and a couple of them professed to be appalled that we were growing plants in horse manure. (Several also didn't know what manure is. It was quite amusing listening to the two contingents- kids and adults- dancing around the word "shit.") So I explained about dirt, and how it contributes to nutrition and flavor, and how chemical additives and fertilizer, far from enriching the soil, actually deplete it of the natural ecology; if there's no nutrients in the dirt, there's no nutrition in the food.

I hope we made some converts. Pictures from the two hours that the kids were there is on the Peterson Garden Facebook page; I encouraged them to tag themselves, and to join the site.

It's not a garden, it's a revolution.

And maybe these are the future leaders of it.

Bonding over the compost

There's a new blogger project on gardening with your kids called "Kinder Gardens- Let's Get'em Dirty!" that makes me wish I still had some child victims of my own around to dig in the dirt with me. (The one in the picture turned 21 on Wednesday.)

I've spoken a lot recently with my kids about what they remember about the garden growing up. Surprisingly, they don't remember how much they loved sticking seeds in the dirt, or picking up worms, although my daughter did recall that she liked planting out potted plants. Mostly what they remember, as I wrote about in a prior post is the "forced labor." Although, to be fair, they also both remembered and miss the delicious fresh veggies.

They also have all bonded with their peers over their hatred of feeding the compost, which I find absolutely hilarious, and charming.

Gardening with kids is lots of fun-- you have to let go a little bit, because things get trampled, and planted wrong, and picked early, but that's part of the entertainment.

In this stage of my life, between generations as it were, I pretty much garden alone, but it's made me think about how to get my young adults involved in the garden again. I'd love for them to see it as bonding with the goddess, and with me, and bring them back in for the joy of it.

I could try bribing them with food I suppose, but here's the question: How do you get apartment-dwelling, time-crunched young adults back into the garden?

Ginger carrot scones
from myrecipes.com more or less

3/4 cup all-purpose flour plus 3/4 cup whole wheat flour
3/4 cup old-fashioned oats
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons orange zest
>1/3 cup sugar or substitute 1/4 c honey
1/2 cup cold butter, cut into small pieces
1 cup finely grated carrot (about 1 1/2 carrots)
2 tablespoons diced crystallized ginger or 1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 large egg
1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon buttermilk (if using honey, reduce to 1/3 cup buttermilk or sour cream)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 425°.

Mix together first 5 ingredients and 1/3 cup sugar. Cut in cold butter until mixture resembles coarse meal. Add carrot and ginger and mix until just blended. Whisk together egg, buttermilk, and vanilla in a separate bowl until blended. Add to flour mixture, and mix just until blended and slightly moist. (Dough will be sticky.)

Spoon in large tablespoonsful onto a lightly greased baking sheet (or line a sheet with parchment paper). Bake at 425° for 15 minutes or until golden.

Start as you mean to go on

Mac and cheese. Fish sticks. Spaghetti. Chili. Tacos. Mashed potatoes.

Most comfort foods, the ones your mom cooked, are easy to make from ingredients in your larder. They don't take any longer than it takes to open a box, and they afford you just as much time with your family as any "convenience" food you might buy.

I always get annoyed at the prepackaged food ads that use as a selling point that you'll get to spend more time with your family. I don't know about most families, but my family tended to hang out in the kitchen and on the back porch while I was cooking, or running back and forth from the living room where they were watching tv, or at the dining room table doing homework. What exactly is it that these mythical tv moms are doing with their families instead of cooking? Is it not quality time if the pursuit is other than frivolous? What is it, exactly, that they are saving all this time for? I can't honestly think of a better way to spend time with my family than in a warm, fragrant kitchen, cooking something that my grandmother learned from her grandmother and passed on down to me to teach to my granddaughter. That's called immortality.

Would you rather your daughter think of comfort food as something in a box, or as something with a memory attached? Do you want to teach your granddaughter how to open a box or how to cook?

Would you rather save time, or be immortal?

I thought so.

Fish sticks
Any dense non-oily fish like salmon or tilapia
1/2 cup to 1 cup of bread crumbs
1-2 teaspoons seasoning
1-2 eggs

Use the higher amount for more fish, obviously. The low end works with a little less than a pound of fish.

I tested two seasonings:
• 1 teaspoon orange zest (never throw away an orange rind without zesting it, then drying the zest in the microwave), ground green peppercorns, seasalt, 1/2 teaspoon rosemary
and
• 1 teaspoon garlic flakes, 1 1/2 teaspoons ground sage, black pepper, seasalt

Both delicious

Lightly whip the egg in a shallow bowl. Combine the bread crumbs and seasoning in a second shallow bowl. Cut the fish into 1 x 5 inch strips, pat dry, coat in egg, then roll in the breadcrumbs. I tried this with salmon, whitefish, and tilapia. The salmon could be easily manipulated fresh and never frozen. Slice off the skin and then bread it. The tilapia worked best frozen and then lightly defrosted; otherwise it fell apart when rolling. Cooked up beautifully and just as fast. White fish is much too loose, even frozen, and you couldn't get the skin off.

Pan fry, turning once, in shallow oil (a lighter oil like canola or corn); 3-5 minutes max. Drain on newspaper.

Serve with rice or mashed potatoes and homemade cole slaw, with a remoulade or tartar sauce. I think this would be charming at a dinner party, made with tuna or shark.

You will not believe either how easy these are, nor how much more delicious than the frozen kind. This is food that kids will eat. You have to wash an additional 2 dishes and 1 pan, but you have just taught your children how good food can be both to make and to eat.

Getting mom to make the normal stuff

When I was growing up, the mother of my best friend had a reputation for being a marvelous cook. There was even a rumor that she had a college degree in cooking. This was back in the 60s when women with college degrees were not all that thick on the ground. I assume the degree was home economics or nutrition or something like that, but to our 7 and 8 year old minds, this translated directly as "food." And we were ready to believe it because of the exotic things she made-- easter cake shaped like a lamb and covered with coconut; red velvet cake shaped like a heart.

Of course two houses over my mother was making home made pastitio and baklava, but this was boring, and my friends thought it was weird. I wanted to have Sunday dinner with the Roberts. Pot Roast! Grilled streaks! Even a toffee pull, once. I remember once telling my mother that Mrs. Roberts was a better cook, because she had been to college. I cringe now. So sorry mom, I was just a stupid kid.

But Mrs. Roberts was not immune to the cruelty of children. There was a MacDonald's-like hamburger stand we all went to, called Scottie's (believe it or not, this was pretty much pre-MacDonald's. That's how old I am. Sigh.) Scottie's had greasy, squished, delicious hamburgers, and I remember overhearing Mrs. Roberts telling my mother how her kids had demanded hamburgers like Scottie's. Not the homemade meatloaf in a bun extravaganzas that she was famous for, but flat, plain, skinny, greasy hamburgers.

So she made them. Now that was a hamburger.

Chicken nuggets and homemade potato chips
Boned, skinned chicken, cut into strips
1 egg, lightly beaten

About 3 cups of canola or other light oil

Crust:
Cornmeal, flour, bread crumbs, in 1:1:3 ratio
Salt, pepper, parsley to taste
Dried rosemary or other herbs

Fill a 2 quart saucepan with corn or canola oil, to about 1 1/2 inches from the top, heat to 400F/200C.

Coat the chicken strips with egg, then roll them in the bread crumb mixture until the entire surface is completely coated. Drop the pieces into the hot oil about 5 at a time, boil for 3-5 minutes depending on how thick they are, until golden, or just starting to turn a bread-crust color.

Do not leave the pot for a single second. As you cook these, moisture will escape from the coating into the oil, which can cause the oil to foam. Very dangerous. If the oil foams, remove it IMMEDIATELY from the heat and start again with new oil.

To drain use a Chinese skimmer or similar utensil, let as much oil drip off as possible, then lay on a newspaper to drain.

For the chips, slice a couple russets paper thin, coat both sides with a fairly heavy coating of salt (to draw off moisture). Lay them in a single layer on a several sheets of paper towels, put another paper towel layer (again, several sheets thick) over them, and weight with something flat and heavy like a cutting board. This is to draw off as much moisture as possible, again so that the oil doesn't foam.

When you're done with the chicken, use the same oil to deep fry the potatoes. You'll know they're done, because they'll look just like potato chips. Again, don't turn away for a second. To drain them, use the skimmer to remove them from the pot, then put them in a brown paper bag and shake the rest of the oil off.