The apple tree

My son's oldest friend used to live down the block from us. About 15 years ago, they asked us if we wanted a crab apple volunteer that had popped up in their yard.

It was about 2-3 feet tall, so we dug it up and transplanted it. For years it didn't do much-- no blossoms, no fruit, although it grew beautifully. Then several years ago it blossomed for the first time, and the following year started producing fruit. Just a handful at first, but then more and more, until last year we ended up with several bushels. And not crab apples, but rather full baby-fist sized actual apples.

We started researching apple trees to see if we could get it to produce usable fruit, and to find out what variety we had.

Of course, it's not any kind of variety at all. It's a volunteer, so by definition it's wild. And there are no "wild" apples. All commercially grown fruits, including heirloom and organically grown varieties, are grown from grafted root stock; essentially all apple trees are clones, with an entire orchard producing identical fruit. There are experimental orchards that grow trees from seed, in the hope of developing a new commercially viable fruit, but all commercial growers, and the ones you buy for your backyard, use standard varieties, and just keep rooting/grafting the trees to get new trees.

This is one of the reasons that it's such a tragedy to lose heirloom varieties in apples. Once it's gone, it's gone. You can't just plant an apple seed and hope to get a Gala apple. You might; but more likely you'll get something entirely new and not necessarily edible.

Our apple tree grew from a seed. Possibly dropped by someone eating an apple in the backyard; perhaps by some critter, um, dropping a seed on its way through the garden. The apples we get are small and very tart, but edible. I thought I might be able to try making my own vinegar; unfortunately to get usable apples you really have to treat the tree, both to get rid of the many pests that apple trees attract, and to discourage fungus, a very common problem (our tree has some sort of fungal disease, in fact). Last year I used the apples to make a border to one of my vegetable beds, and then in the fall dug the apples into the dirt to compost.

I feel a foolish pride in my wild volunteer apple tree, despite the fact that I had nothing to do with its birth, other than transplanting it to a sunny spot. Maybe this year I'll try to save some seeds, and see if I can start another wild baby.

Apple Bread
more or less from foodgeeks.com

1 cup oil (I used hazelnut, but any nut oil, corn oil, safflower, or canola will work)
3 eggs
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 tsp. vanilla
2 T. whisky, rum, or liqueur

3 cups apples, diced
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 T. orange zest
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
1 cup chopped nuts or raisins (optional)

In a large mixing bowl, combine and set aside the oil, eggs, sugar, liquor and vanilla. Sift flour, cinnamon, soda, and salt in a separate bowl. Add dry ingredients to the oil mixture gradually. Add apples and nuts/raisins, if any. Batter is very thick, because the apples will add a lot of moisture during baking. Bake in 2 regular loaf pans for 1-1/2 hours at 300°F. Cool 10 minutes in the pan.

In which we welcome the god and the goddess

Grow Project April post

Having been extremely kind to the Midwest all year, the goddess continues her gentle journey into the spring with a string of 80F/26C days. The goddess’ consort, in the form of a large robin again, watched me work, mostly brute labor building beds, setting paths and amending soil. I gave the goddess a pincushion plant for an offering this year.
The weather rarely works out so perfectly for planting, or coincides so neatly with my schedule. Friday a hot sunny day for all the grunt work and some early transplanting. Saturday a gentle cool rain (still in the 50s). Supposed to be dry and warm (60s-70s/10-15) again next two days, plus, the moon phase is exactly right for putting in my early spring root vegetables. I’ll savor it, because this confluence of need and ability is so rare.
My offering to the goddess yesterday was apparently appreciated.

Among the many gardening tasks for the weekend was planting out the indoor starts of the "Spitfire" Nasturtium for the GROW project. Five seedlings went into the ground by the cyclone fence, behind the birdbath, strawberries, and columbine. This should give me color there when the columbine fades, and incidentally help draw the aphids away from the eggplants going in a little ways down the fence. I'll be cloching these early set-outs under pop-bottle cloches to protect them from the cold, since I put them out a little early (I'm not having great luck with the indoor starts; the cold can't possibly be any worse for them than my incompetence.)
I'm growing Nasturtium "Spitfire" for the GROW project. Thanks, to Renee's Garden for the seeds. I planted 6 seeds in Ferry-Morse organic seed starting medium on March 8, and got 5 seedlings. There are also 9 seeds planted in a wintersown container, in plain soil mixed with perlite. These just poked their heads out of the dirt today.
And, because it's Easter, and I hate to put up a post without a recipe:
Greek Easter Twists
(Koulourakia)

1/3 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1/3 cup milk (or a little more if needed)
3-4 cups cake flour
2 tsp. baking powder

Cream sugar, butter and vanilla thoroughly. Add 1 egg at a time, beating well after each addition. Add milk and flour alternatiely, beating vigorously until well blended. I like using cake flour rather than all-purpose flour for these cookies; it makes a nicer texture when done. Use your judgment about the last cup of flour to make sure the dough is not too dry. You may need to work the dough with your hands at the end as it will be quite dense and springy. (If you have a food processor, these mix really well in a food processor.)

Break the dough off in small portions, rolling it on a cutting board until you have a roll about the width of your finger and 6-8" long. Form into traditional shape- a circle with the ends pressed together, or a twisted "braid." Beat an egg and coat each cookie (I use my fingers rather than a pastry brush). Bake them plain, or sprinkle with sesame seeds first.

Bake on a greased cookie sheet at 400F/200C for 20 minutes, turning once to ensure even cooking. Makes about 28 cookies.

A good enough cook

I call this blog " a common sense cooking blog, for regular people." I started it when my kids moved out, so that they could get the family recipes, and then discovered that I was enjoying figuring out these recipes, so even after I'd managed to post pretty much all of them, I kept going.

Like my garden, I don't really know anything about cooking, despite being, I think, quite a good cook. My baking is a little hit-or-miss still, but I can learn that.

And that's the point.

How good do you have to be to make your own homemade meals for your family?

It's the same thing that struck me when I started participating in gardening communities on line. People seemed to know so much- which plants need acid and which need base (as opposed to my method, which was--that plant didn't do so well with the peat, maybe I'll try bone meal.) How much sun they got. The scientific name, the genus, the family. I'd been growing tomatoes, peppers and eggplants for 15 years before I ever heard the term "solanum." And yet, somehow, I managed to grow tomatoes, peppers and eggplants just fine. Still a little hazy on which ones are the "brassicas" but I figured out the "cucurbits" right away, once I'd learned the word.

I don't know how to make a roux. I can't chop vegetables super fast. I apparently committed a terrible sin by drying my herbs in the microwave (I guess the heat destroys the enzymes, but won't the heat from cooking do that too?) for which I was publicly admonished by some locavore guru (offers sheepish grin, goes right back to microwave drying herbs, because it's fast and space-saving).

I can make a mean veggie lasagna, and tomato sauce from scratch. My chicken soup is to die for and I roll my own dolmades. And yet, one of the favorite dishes that my kids absolutely love is just noodles with butter and cheese. And that's good enough.

Everybody's favorite noodles
Any kind of noodle--spaghetti, pasta, egg, rotini, etc.
3-4 tablespoons of butter
"sprinkle cheese" i.e. grated Parmesan or Romano

Cook the noodles according to package directions; drain, but leave them in the pot. Melt the butter, allowing it to brown very slightly. Add grated cheese to taste, plus salt and pepper. And that's it. You can add a green like broccoli or spinach, but mostly we ate it as is with some peas on the side.

If you want it to be a little more politically correct, do this with your own spaetzel.

Body Spirit Art Intellect

Why garden?

Because it satisfies the senses: does it taste good (body), does it feel good (spirit), does it look good (art).

There's another aspect to gardening, that people tend to equate with "real" or "good" gardeners: do you understand it (intellect).

Intellect is gardening knowledge; all the things about planting that concern the science of the effort: What is the variety? How does it behave in my zone? Are there any reasons not to plant it— zone, effect on the native ecology, interaction with other plants (either positive and detrimental), is there enough light, how big will it get?

I’m quite impressed at gardeners, especially novice gardeners, who can identify a scientific name by the look of a plant, who know what variety they are planting, and can compare one variety’s behavior against another. I’ve always joked that my garden is “Darwinian”— only the fit survive—or worse yet, laisser-faire. I've been gardening for more than 20 years, but I'm not sure how much I know about gardening. Garden bloggers in particular intimidate me terribly-- they seem to know so much stuff!

You can get joy from gardening that is visceral and emotional. One puts in a bed to fix the shape; or put in a plant to change the profile or enhance the color. My garden has a beautiful design, but I didn't "design" it. It's just twenty years of living in a space, and moving things around, kind of like the living room furniture. It just takes a little longer with plants. If the color or size works in the spot I want to fill, I’ll try it. If I want to try growing some new thing to eat or preserve, I'll try it.

But it’s hit and miss, with plants cycling through because they were the wrong choice made for the wrong reasons, or wouldn't grow here, or maybe I just didn't like them. (The morphing of my garden can be seen here.)

A benefit of this is that the plants that have survived are indeed hardy, with some spectacular successes. But a lot of the garden areas never quite get there because I haven’t really considered what they need, from a more scientific viewpoint. Thank goodness, because then I get to try something else.

Cooking is the same way. A flavor combination will pop into my head-- how about cinnamon and hot? Basil and raspberry? And I'll try it out (I seldom look up recipes first-- someone has always thought of it before me, which takes all the fun out of it.) This one is an exception, since it's baking. I confess it was inspired by kelly at MyFolia, who was bragging on Twitter about eating these. So I looked up a recipe to try my own. Couldn't quite find one, so I adapted.

Rosemary Peasant Bread
adapted from Make and Takes

• 1 packet dry yeast (or 2 1/2 tsp) with 1 T. sugar; or use the self-starting kind with no sugar
• 1 1/2 c. warm water
• 2 T. honey
• 2 tsp salt
• 2 c. white flour
• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• 1 cup corn meal
• 1-2 tsp. fresh Rosemary plus more for topping
• Olive Oil, Corn meal, Melted butter and salt

Dissolve yeast in the warm water and sugar. Add flour, salt, and 1-2 tsp Rosemary and stir until blended. No kneading--the dough is quite sticky, you won't be able to knead it. Cover with a moist cloth and let rise for 1 hour or until double in size.

Remove dough. It will be sticky. Coat your hands lightly in oil for taking out the dough and shaping it. Place it in 2-3 rounds (about 6" diameter each) on a cookie sheet lightly coated in oil and sprinkled with corn meal. Cover with a towel or greased plastic wrap. Then let it rise another hour.

Brush each round with melted butter and lightly sprinkle with more Rosemary and sea salt. Bake at 425 for 10 minutes, then reduce temp to 375 for 15 minutes more.

Eat it with
Squash baba ganoush
from Jeff Smith's Our Immigrant Ancestors

Butternut or acorn squash, about 1 to 1 1/2 pounds, roasted
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 1/2 tbsp tahini
1 tbsp lemon juice
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
sea salt
cracked black pepper

Method

1. Place the squash in a bowl, along with minced garlic, tahini, lemon juice (or vinegar), olive oil, sea salt, and crack pepper. Combine and taste. Adjust the seasonings to taste.a

What the kids remember

From Proust to your grandma's pot roast, food memories are primal. Mine are all tied up in my mother's illness when I was a teen. I strain to remember what she taught me before she got sick and gradually stopped cooking (when I was about 14). I seek those tastes and smells. Forty years later I still scour her cookbooks, looking for the pages that are stained, or where the binding stays open, because then I know she made that item a lot.

If I could give one piece of advice to young parents it would be "pay attention." I don't mean for them to turn every precious second of Princess's life into a Kodak moment, I mean observe, and savor. Be mindful.

I asked my 24 year old son and 21 year old daughter for their memories of food growing up.

From my son, Seng Lim:

My earliest food-related memories with you were of that little organic grocery store we used to go to. I don't remember the foods very much, more the smell and look of the store. I don't quite remember when you stopped doing as many home cooked meals, but I feel like it had to do with a combination of you taking on more work and Nga Jee coming along and getting picky.

I feel like the food started with good, healthy food in early childhood, followed by "the dark side" when Nga Jee and I were 8-12 years old. Once I got to high school, I remember full family dinners became less frequent—I can recall many evenings when I would get back from school around 5pm and be the only one there until 8 or 9 at night, or I would be out doing something late and have to buy dinner for myself. The summers around that time were different—you were growing lots of vegetables by then, and our schedules were less crazy so we were together for meals more. But during most of the year, I ate a lot of popcorn for dinner (hey, I was pretty lazy back then). Overall, I think we were pretty typical kids as far as randomly refusing to eat things, but I think we all always appreciated and enjoyed your meals, especially the "family favorites."

My memories of the garden are mostly of forced manual labor. I enjoyed the fresh vegetables and the colors when it was in bloom, but mostly I think about digging flower beds, laying paths and patios, and mowing it soooo many times. Also, I remember your compulsion with it—picking weeds to and from the garage every time we left the house. That one's easy to remember, because I'm pretty sure you still do it!

Also, why did you feed us lima beans? Do you actually like lima beans? I am never going to feed any child of mine lima beans.

From my daughter, Nga Jee:

I can't remember much of when you started feeding us crap*, but I'm almost certain it was because of me, because I don't think Seng Lim cared much about what he ate and if he did he's not really the kind of person to complain about it. Most of what I remember about the garden is you FORCING me to work with you (and not liking that). But I remember when we had the patio and the old porch. The flower beds on the left have always been there for me and I can just remember before there was the little side paths and all that stuff.

I always really liked the garden veggies. I thought the carrots were lame compared to the grocery store ones because they were so puny but they tasted better. And I remember walking to and from the grocery store with the red wagon. Strangely all my memories of groceries occur in the summertime. I can't even remember recent grocery trips in the winter. I remember even when we drove we would load the wagon in the garage with all the bags and drag it to the bottom of the porch too. Which seems funny to me now, cuz the garden's only like 7 meters long.

I actually really liked when you got new plants and we had to dig the hole and then put in the plant and then fill it with water.

*this would be because she was the fussy one, eating not so much "crap", as she puts it, as an all-carbohydrate diet. The child lived on bread and noodles. Neither of them were big candy-eaters until they were well in high school, meaning I ended up eating most of the contents of their Easter baskets and Halloween haul. This is how mothers get fat.

What do your offspring remember about food growing up? What do your younger ones think about it now?

Old-fashioned popped corn
about 1/4 cup oil
3/4 cup popping corn
(I got mine through freshpicks.com from a local farm. Most farmers markets will have a vendor selling locally-grown popping corn.)


This is how we made popcorn when I was a kid, before air poppers and before microwave popcorn (in fact, when I was a kid, only The Jetsons had magic ovens like microwaves)

Get a large, lidded pot. It is important to use a pot large enough, so that your popcorn won't overflow and cause a mess. Coat the bottom of the pot with a thin layer of oil (about 1/8 inch). Heat the oil on medium on top of the stove until it's hot, or until it appears to reach a watery consistency. (Another way to test whether your oil is hot enough is to stand back and flick a droplet of water into the pot and wait for it to sizzle.) Coat the bottom of the pot with a layer of popcorn. A 1 gallon pot will take about 3/4 cup of popcorn, which will yield about 2 quarts popped. Try to ensure that there is only a single layer of popcorn and that none of the kernels overlap.

Cover the pot and turn the stove up to medium-high/high. As the oil begins to bubble, gently shake the pot in a left to right motion (not up and down) so that the popcorn kernels move and don't burn. After a minute or so, the popcorn will begin to pop. Continue to shake the pot on the stove until all of the kernels have popped. It's a lovely sound.

Transfer your popcorn into a separate container. Melt butter in the microwave and drizzle over your freshly popped popcorn! You can add any seasonings you like-- grated cheese, herbs, pepper, salt (of course).

Dial up a movie and kick back! I can't believe Seng Lim used to eat microwave popcorn for dinner. I am apparently the Worst Mom Ever.

How to eat sustainably

Here’s an 8-step by step guide to getting back control of your own food supply, from the simplest to the most obsessed.

Easiest: Stop shopping at the big chains like Safeway
Buy your groceries from the locally-owned neighborhood grocery store, if you’ve still got one. In big cities, you’ll find these in every Polish, Chinese, and Mexican neighborhood, less and less in the other immigrant areas. Don’t be intimidated by the language or the comparative messiness of these stores. They have to abide by the same health laws as the chains. But you’ll be putting money in the pocket of a local, family merchant, rather than a multinational several states away.

A little more challenging. Seek local brands.
You may need a couple of trips to the market, to write down brands so you can research them (or check them out on your smart phone if you’ve got one). A lot of packaging now will say “product of STATE” and/or product of COUNTRY. Careful though. They play games like shipping California milk to Wisconsin and bottling it there, then calling it Wisconsin milk. Diary labels have a code that allow you to track not just where they were bottled, but which farm the product came from.

Still with me? Read some labels.
Buy certified organic. Many shops now carry organic brands, especially the chains, if you don’t have a local family grocer. Check ingredients, too. If it’s got high fructose corn syrup in it, don’t buy it. Let’s get rid of our dependence on King Corn. Even refined sugar is better for you and better for the planet, plus, it tastes better. Yes, this means you'll have to stop buying soda. Don't worry, I've been working on a homemade syrup that tastes like Coke! As soon as I figure it out, I'll share it with you! (So far, some combination of raspberry, coffee, and caramel seems most promising...puts on mad scientist coat and goes back to work.)

A little harder, because now you’re denying yourself stuff
Only buy in season. This means no fresh fruit in the dark of winter in my area. But I’ll let you buy locally-grown preserved fruit and vegetables, including jams, canned, frozen, pickled, etc. You’ll also have to relearn what’s in-season when. You can’t tell anymore by what’s on the shelves.

Do you have some time left?
Don’t buy things with ingredients (this is straight out of Michael Pollan). And I don’t just mean frozen pizzas and pre-prepared meals, or soup in a can. I mean jam, salsa, bread, crackers, granola and other breakfast cereals, desserts, etc. Make them yourself. Soup is easy and cheap. Making jam is rolling off a log. Ditto tomato sauce and paste. Don’t know what you’re doing? I seldom baked before I started trying to eat like this. I thought it was hard. I thought it was boring. Turns out it took exactly 3 weeks to figure out how to make all those baked goods. Even your mistakes will taste better than the corn-syrup and salt-laden imitations they’re forcing down our gullets.

Now it gets challenging. Plan ahead.
I don’t mean plan what you’re going to eat on Friday. I mean plan in July for what you’re going to eat in February. If you want locally grown, organic jams, pies, tomato sauce, and vegetables when snow is on the ground, buy it at the farmer’s market in the summer, and “put it up.” This will be a lot of work in July and August, but basically you won’t have to cook in January, February and March, because you’ll have done it already.

In pretty deep? Plant a vegetable garden.
Start with the things you know you eat a lot. Produce only what you need for the summer at first, then start adding within the constraints of your time and space. If you don't have a yard, put some pots on your porch. If you don't have a porch, put some herbs on a sunny windowsill. Don’t worry about budget. You’ve saved so much money taking the steps above that you have plenty to start a garden. What you can’t grow, buy at the farmer’s market.

Meat, dry goods, dairy
Look on line a FamilyFarmed.com or localharvest.com for merchants, farmers, and markets near you that have these things that are difficult to find locally.

Finally, give yourself a break.
We live in an interconnected, global society. I firmly believe you should eat in season (including imported fruits like oranges), and make things that make sense to make (bread, jam, main dishes) but that you can carry it too far. Humans have always traded. Get your cinnamon from the east, and coffee, and chocolate. Don’t deny yourself oranges in Canada, or rice in Illinois. But seek out fair trade brands, and locally-owned distributors. If you want to eat out or order in, try to find a restaurant that buys locally-grown foods, but the next best thing is to just go to a one-off, family owned business instead of the national chain. For the goddess' sake stay out of MacDonald's, can you do that for me?

If we all follow these steps as far as our time, energy, and budget allow, even if we never get past step one, we'll go a long way toward repairing the damage that our profligate and blindered life style has gotten the planet into.

My garden doesn't need to be a success

I garden for fun, or for my soul, or to the betterment of society. To have control over what my family eats, or to fill my time, or to share my experience. To save a little money.

I don't garden because that's where our food has to come from.

I don't write about it to make sure everyone else is doing it right. If you end up with homegrown food on your table, by definition, you're doing it right.

Even the use of the term "gardener" is telling. In some societies, if you're not a gardener, you're also not an "eater." Once in human society, we were all gardeners. It would have been like saying, "oh, I'm a breather."

If my tomatoes fail, I can walk down the block and buy some. I can choose not to grow garbanzo beans, because the plants don't fit in my beautiful layout, and I'd have to give up the space I give to raddichio. I can get garbanzos in a can for 79c. I can even get farmers' market garbanzos grown in my county, thus satisfying both my desire and my politics.

What I do with a garden is laudable, and enriching, and important. But it's not necessary.


Sourcream-honey crackers with rosemary

1 cup plain flour
1 cup wheat flour
1 teaspoon seasalt
2 tablespoons softened butter
liquid: 1/3 cup each milk, sour cream, honey

seasoning: 1 teaspoon each seasalt, white peppercorns, dried rosemary

Preheat oven to 150'C/ 300'F.

Grind the seasonings together in a mortar; whisk the milk, sour cream and honey together to form about a cup of thick liquid

Add the salt to the flour, and in a mixing bowl or food processor, cut the butter in until the mixture looks like fine breadcrumbs. (I start this with a knife or pastry cutter, then finish it with my hands.)

Slowly mix in enough liquid to form a soft, but not sticky, dough.

Divide the dough into four portions and roll out one at a time, until paper thin. Some people recommend a pasta press, but I did it fine with a rolling pin. Keep turning the dough over, and lightly coating it with flour so it doesn't stick to the pin or the board.

Lightly brush the sheet with a flavorful oil (nut or olive), then sprinkle and pat the seasonings on it. Using a sharp knife or pizza roller, cut the dough into crackers. Line cookie sheet with parchment (or just put them directly on an ungreased sheet), then transfer crackers to the cookie sheet if you rolled it out on a board.

Bake for 20 minutes, until lightly browned and crisp. Allow to cool on the tray and then store in an air tight container for up to a week. This recipe made about 200 1" square crackers.