J is for Just make it up

My community garden is putting together a cook book. I've got a cooking blog, so I think I'm kind of expected to contribute, but the thing is, the contribution form wants to know things like "prep time" and "cooking time" and "number of servings" and, um, ah, "measurements."

As you can see from the recipe below, measurements is a somewhat amorphous concept around here. And serving size? Um, how much can I eat without looking like a total pig? Does that count as a serving size?

It's J, so I suppose I should have made jam. Oh well.

Heirloom potato salad with carmelized onions and hot peppers
4-5 good handfuls of multi-colored fingerling potatoes (have to go to a farmers' market for these, you're not going to find them at the Safeway)
1-2 cups of thinly sliced onions
1-2 large jalapeno (ha- J!) or hot banana peppers, also thinly sliced

oil & vinegar dressing, about 3 tablespoons
1/2 teaspoon ginger, if to taste (in the dressing)

Cut the larger potatoes into bite size pieces, place in a large saucepan filled with water and cook until just done. Immediately drain and refill the pot with cold water (even add some ice cubes) and put the potatoes back in.

Carmelize the onions and peppers in 2 tablespoons of butter, sauteeing on very low heat for about 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Drain the potatoes and mix all ingredients together in a decorative bowl (for pretty).

A day at the Farmers Market

I spent Thursday working the University of Illinois Extension Plant Clinic booth at the Eli's-Wright College Farmers Market.

From what I hear about the main Plant Clinic at the Ag School it's quite busy, with lots of people calling with questions, but I've only done the off-site clinics, at Garfield Park Conservatory and this one at this small near-suburban weekday farmers market.

We had several questions, including "I haven't planted my garden yet. Will the weather stay warm into October so that I have time for tomatoes?" She seriously seemed to want us to research this. We were also a captive audience for the several salespeople who took advantage of the fact that we were stuck in a booth and too polite to tell them to get lost.

I think these remote clinics could be more interesting--lots of people walked by, but didn't approach because first it's hard to tell what's going on, and second, there's nothing to look at. I bought some unusual vegetables from one of the vendors to use as paperweights, which brought a few people over, but I think there would be more traffic if we had a mini-insect petting zoo, and maybe a plant-a-seed demo for children (or adults for that matter). I'm doing another one in August and I'm extremely tempted to plant some tiny pots of parsley to give away.

My paperweights turned into a wonderful grilled salad.

Grilled summer vegetables with red currant vinaigrette
Golden beets
Summer squash
Cauliflower
Raw peas, chilled

Dressing:
1 pint red currants
2 T sugar
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
1/2+ cup olive oil
salt and pepper

Slice the vegetables very thin (1/4 inch), dredge with olive oil and salt, and grill until al dente (about 10-15 minutes). Serve the peas raw and cold as a contrast. For the vinaigrette, simmer the currants with the sugar until the fruit loses its shape; strain through a food mill to remove stems and seeds. Whip with the vinegar and oil.

Drizzle over the hot vegetables. We ate this as dinner, but it's a lovely side dish as well.

Rainy, muddy and happy

Is there any other way for a gardener to feel after a day of gardening?

Fantastic time at Peterson Garden today, selling plants, talking to gardeners and wearing my Master Gardener (trainee) hat. Okay, it was a Chicago Botanic Garden hat, actually. Planted a Three Sisters bed, communed with good gardening friends and got very wet and muddy since, as usual it started to rain.

Here's a nice chicken salad from leftovers:

Chicken Salad
1/2 chicken, roasted (in other words, leftovers)
4 hard boiled eggs, diced
pickles, to taste (sweet, kosher or dill)
2-3 small roasted potatoes (again, I used the leftovers from our chicken dinner)

1/2-2/3 cup seasoned mayo (depending on how goopy you like your chicken salad)

Seasoning:
2 T ground rosemary
1 tsp black pepper
1-2T crushed or ground sea salt

Cut up and mix the chicken, eggs, potatoes and pickles. Mix the seasonings into the mayo, and then mix it all together. Serve on lettuce or in a sandwich. If it hadn't been so damned cold for the last 6 weeks, I'd have some lettuce in the garden right now.

I used my own homemade crushed rosemary, mayo and pickles, but I'll relent and let you use store-bought as long as it's local and organic.

How did Earth Hour go untweeted?

or How I almost missed Earth Hour and made friends with a scary dog

Holly, owner of Skye the Corn Dog called me last week to come over for an Earth Hour meal. Right. Earth Hour, whatever happened to that?

I believe this happens the last Saturday of March each year, and was started in 2007 in Australia. Last year there were ads on buses, and blogs and billboards. This year, nothing. If Holly hadn't called I'd never have even noticed.

Then on the day, Saturday the 26th, here's what happened:
I borrowed Bill's car, only to discover that the clutch is a mess. I couldn't put it into reverse. Unfortunately, I did not discover this until I needed to get out of a parallel parking place (it hadn't been parallel when I parked there-- I just pulled up to the curb. Then a car parked in front and another behind me.) Had to reverse by taking it out of gear and rolling it with one foot sticking out the driver's side door.

Once I did manage to get home, I wrote one of those wonderful blog posts which apparently had some hinky code in it, because when I hit "publish," instead it "wiped out entire post."

Since taking the bus seemed in keeping with the spirit of the day anyway, at the appointed time I walked the 5 blocks to the nearest bus stop, only to discover that I didn't have enough money on my bus card. You can't use cash on the bus, so I thought, okay, I'll just turn around and walk to the train. It'll mean a transfer, but her house is only 2 blocks from the station at the other end.

I didn't make it to the train, stopping off at home first, which was good because I discovered that I didn't have any cash anyway, and you can't use plastic to fill the public transit card in Chicago (not kidding).

Since I also had had a rather awful week at work I almost pooped on Earth Hour. Fortunately, I came to my senses, Holly came and picked me up, and Skye the Corn Dog was so excited to see me that she pee'd. Since we had anticipated this, we had the greeting take place outside.

I met Holly's delightful tenant. We cooked shrimp creole with cornbread, which we ate with steamed green beans and the following salad.

And I put Earth Hour in my calendar tickler for next year.


Spicy salad with early greens and late apples
any early greens
small endive
onions, cut in rings
2 T sesame oil
1 teaspoon honey
1-2 apples , peeled and sliced thin
juice of 1/2 lime
1/2 cup frozen peas, uncooked (just let them thaw)
optional: wasabi peas, crushed

Dressing
Juice of 1 1/2 limes
1/4 cup water
1/2 cup sesame oil
1 T wasabi paste

Toss the apples in lime juice, add the endive (slightly crushed, so it doesn't "spoon" together). Caramelize the onions in sesame oil and honey (cook about 10 minutes over low heat, until onions are very limp and golden in color). Toss all with the greens and frozen peas. Don't forget to zest the limes and reserve the zest for the larder (dry it in the microwave- place on paper towel and zap on high in 30 second bursts until dry).

For dressing, add all ingredients and emulsify in a blender, or with a hand-held blender. Dribble a couple of tablespoons over the greens mix and let sit a couple of hours. Add the crushed wasabi peas and additional dressing (if desired) just before serving.

The Chicago Flower and Garden Show

To sum it up-- fantastic speakers, terrible exhibits, same old marketplace.

But still totally worth going, because I get to see all the people that I talk to on line all year, all the gardeners who have made such a difference in my life.

In general, the show was poorly lit, unimaginative and focused on hardscaping rather than plants. There were very few plants that even a casual gardener wouldn't recognize, and those weren't identified (in fact almost no plants were identified). The theme of "sports" was not well conceived, and for the most part poorly executed. (There was a pond that looked like an ice rink; really really want that.)

I managed to make it to four seminars, although I missed three that I was hoping to attend as well (stupid job). Got a great lecture about using the web as a resource from Mike Nowak, another on sustainable garden design and a presentation by Chicago Gateway Green about converting highway spaces, and responsible, workable corporate sponsorships, and I finally got to hear Lamanda Joy's wonderful talk on Chicago and the World War II Victory Garden movement.

Sadly, there was no edible garden at the show. Again. Okay, there was one, but it wasn't using the plants as edibles, but rather as ornamentals. Why is the garden show so averse to edible gardening? I don't get it. The landscape awards were all for professionally designed and installed mega-gardens in rich peoples' houses. At the very least, there should be a display featuring Mayor Daley's Landscape Awards.

Ah well. Kvetch kvetch kvetch. I rescued a lost child and I did score some wonderful dried fruits from Lehman's Orchard, with which I made these scones, and some wasabi peas, which I used in the following potato salad.

Wasabi potato salad
10 red potatoes
2 russet potatoes, peeled
1 large carrot, shaved and chopped fine
1 hard boiled egg
1/2 red onion, sliced very thin
1/2 cup dried wasabi peas, crushed

1/4 cup mayonnaise
Juice of 1/2 lime
1/2 teaspoon wasabi (less or more, depending on your heat tolerance)
1 teaspoon finely chopped basil

Cut the potatoes into bite sized pieces and boil until just done. Set aside to cool (do not put boiling hot potatoes into the mayo). Using a vegetable peeler, shave the carrot down, then finely chop the shavings. Cut up the egg, and mix everything together, no finesse needed.

I had this with crab cakes. Make your own mayo.

Old stuff

Use it up
Wear it out
Make it do
Or do without

When my daughter was in the second grade, she had a sweater. By which I don't mean she had a sweater that she liked to wear, or a favorite sweater. She had a sweater. Just one. So in the winter, she wore it pretty much every day.

She only had one for different reasons. Mostly, I'm the world's worst mom and have been known to do things like forget to bathe, clothe, and feed my children. (I have a key chain that says "Oh No! I left the baby on the bus!") But also, at the time, we didn't have any money. So we just didn't buy multiple items like a sweater for every day, plus she had all her brother's hand-me-downs if she wanted them.

Some horrible little princess asked her one day, rather snidely, why she always wore the same sweater. She answered that it was the only one she had. Shock! Horror! (My kids went to a private school on scholarship; Nordstrom's functioned as the corner store for these people.) When challenged by Princess at the inappropriateness of this, my daughter just asked her "well, how many sweaters do you need, anyway?"

It was at this point that I knew my kids would be all right.

We all have closets full of old stuff; basements full of old stuff. Fifty years ago there was no such thing as a self-storage industry; now it is the fastest growing sector in commercial real estate. When you enter "we have too" in Google, the top guess is "much stuff." Clearly, this is on people's minds.

We have too much stuff because we don't buy mindfully. We have too much stuff because we stuff our faces, so that our clothing size goes up and up and up and last year's clothes, or the year's before, don't fit anymore, so we have to reoutfit ourselves. We don't seem to be able to get rid of the old stuff. We get that it's irresponsible to abandon a coat simply because we decided we don't like the color.

But we don't use it. We want to use new stuff that we didn't need in the first place. Don't buy a new sweater. I have it on the authority of a pretty smart second-grader that you've got a perfectly good old one.

Two slaws: Basil coleslaw
1 small cabbage, shredded
3 tablespoons chopped fresh basil
1 carrot, grated
1/2 medium onion, grated

Dressing:
1/2 cup (homemade, see below) mayonnaise
1 T honey
2 tablespoons cider vinegar
2 tablespoons cream
1 teaspoon coarsely ground pepper

Toss the vegetables together. Whisk the dressing, and mix.

Traditional cole slaw
1 green cabbage, shredded
2 large carrots, grated

Dressing:
3/4 cup (homemade) mayonnaise
2 tablespoons sour cream
1 small red onion, sliced very thin
1 T honey
2 tablespoons white vinegar
1 tablespoon dry mustard
2 teaspoons celery salt (optional)
salt and pepper to taste

Toss the vegetables together. Whisk the dressing, and mix.

Homemade Mayonnaise
Adapted from The Perfect Pantry via Little Blue Hen
Makes about 1 1/2- 2 cups

2 egg yolks, at room temperature
4 tablespoons warm water
1 heaping teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 1/2 cup canola or olive oil, or a combination (using olive oil gives the mayo a pronounced olive oil flavor)
1 teaspoon salt
juice of 1/4 lemo

Put egg yolk, water, and mustard in the bowl of a 3-cup food processor. Run the blade to make sure it catches the mixture, dribble in a bit more water if needed or stir up the yolk to get it to catch. Run the food processor until the mixture is pale yellow (about 30 seconds or so).

The oil must be added very slowly to ensure that the mixture emulsifies. With the motor running, drizzle in the oil in a narrow (pencil tip width) steady stream. You can tell the emulsion is working because you'll start to hear slapping sounds as the food processor runs. Some recipes recommend stopping when about 1/3 of the oil has been added, and then continue to add by teaspoonfuls, but I've found it works fine to just keep the steady stream going. Stop the motor and check the mayonnaise to make sure it is emulsifying. If so, continue adding the oil slowly until it is all combined.

When all the oil has been added, add the salt and lemon juice. The lemon juice will help increase its shelf life. I've had this mayo last 3 months in the fridge.

It took me about 3 tries to get my rhythm on homemade mayo, but it is so superior to even the best store bought that once you get the hang of it, you'll never buy mayo again.

Meeting Farmer Rick and the Flowerweaver

I used to wonder if I would ever make the kind of intimate, lifelong friends that I made when I was in college. In that period of your life, you spend a lot of time with, well, time, and interacting mostly with people who closely share your interests and outlooks. Your off-hours are filled with them-- you eat with them, play with them, run into them at random times during the day.

And when, as an adult, do you get to do that again? You spend your days in an office with people thrown together randomly by their skill set. Most of the day you interact with these people only at it relates to the task at hand. While you can get incredibly intimate with these people-- you go to their weddings and holiday parties, they know when you've had a fight with your spouse, or your mother, they send you cards when your favorite aunt dies-- work friendships, however intimate, tend to last only as long as the job. It's very hard to connect at a personal level, independent of the profession and maintain the connection once you don't share phone lines anymore.

As an adult, you mostly meet people through very narrow mutual interests-- yoga class-- or you see your family.

And then came the internet.

On line, I have met people very much the way I used to meet them in school: through mutual interest, on my off hours, and I "run into" them at random times throughout the day. I have met a dozen people in the past year, through gardening on line, who are now some of my best friends.

Today I got to meet the people behind the blog The Flowerweaver, whom I know from My Folia, in town to visit their new grandbaby. I made them a garden lunch: parsnip soup, raspberry soda, peach scones and the autumn salsa noted below and took them to the Garfield Park Conservatory, Chicago's wonderful free 20-acre greenhouse. We spent 4 hours in non-stop conversation, and not just about gardening.

So yes, I guess I will meet new and wonderful people, all my life.

Autumn salsa

2 large apples, peeled and cored
15 medium radishes
1 small onion
lime juice
salt

Dice the apples, radishes and onions. Caramelize the onions in about a tablespoon of butter. Mix all together with about 1/4 cup (or less) of lime juice. Salt to taste. This made enough for healthy servings for three adults.

Remember to zest the lime and either freeze it or set it aside to dry. Always nice to have a little citrus zest around.

By the way, this is so delicious. I might try it with a little honey or sugar for a sweet salsa some time.

The best thing

When the first sprout pokes its head through the dirt

I always think
This is the best thing about gardening

When I make that first spring salad with the early crops
of lettuce and radish and green onion
I always think
This is the best thing about gardening

Then comes that week where you spend 12 hours
Every day,
Digging and planting and listening to the early bees
And you can’t get the dirt out of your pores

And suddenly it looks like a garden again
And I think
This is the best thing about gardening

Every day, all summer long
Flowers bloom and birds sing and bees move from blossom
to blossom
And that’s the best thing about gardening too

But then comes fall
The garden starts to die
But you chop the dead leaves
And turn the empty earth
And it is black and rich and full of worms and promise

And that is the best thing about gardening

Autumn salsa

2 large apples, peeled and cored
20 medium radishes
1 small onion
lime juice
salt

Dice the apples, radishes and onions. Caramelize the onions in about a tablespoon of butter. Mix all together with about 1/4 cup (or less) of lime juice. Salt to taste. This made enough for healthy servings for three adults.

Lammas Harvest

True to the promise of the festival, today I had the first harvest too big to bring in as a single basketful or armload. The festival’s counterpart, Beltane at the beginning of summer, the planting of the crops and the marriage of the god and goddess, is full of promise and joy. Lammas is full of bounty and joy, but melancholy too, as the god begins to prepare for his yearly sacrifice and death, and the goddess begins to remember her anger over the loss of her daughters.

In modern patriarchal theology we think of lightning as a phallic manifestation, but I like to think of August storms as the fury and despair of the goddess who cannot save the earth her daughters from their imminent death, year after year after year. She brings us daily bounty, more than we can use, as both fruited gift and fruitless bribe. It means the downward slope towards the frozen midwinter is beginning.

Lammas Salad
10 Golden beets, blanched and sliced thin
3 small Chiogga beets, blanched and sliced thin
1 cucumber, seeded and sliced
1 green pepper, sliced very thin
1-2 ears of corn, nibletted and blanched
3 apricots, diced
1 Shishito pepper, seeded and diced

Macerate (i.e. soak) the cucumber in a couple tablespoons of honey and salt for 1-2 hours. Macerate the apricots and shishito peppers in cider vinegar for 1-2 hours. Drain and rinse just before mixing up the salad. To blanch the beets, trim the roots and stems (peeling optional), and drop them into actively boiling water for no more than 5 minutes. Allow to cool, then slice. To blanch the corn, slice the niblets from the cob, and drop them into actively boiling water; leave until the color deepens (a couple/few minutes at most).

Mix everything together with a couple of tablespoons of mayonnaise. (Make it yourself.)

I served this as a side with crab cakes.

Eight things I'd hate to give up

I want to save the planet. I really do. And I'm trying. I've gotten pretty good about finding local sources, or at least local merchants, for everything from groceries to motor oil. And I reduce-reuse-recyle like nobody's business. I make my own baking powder for pity's sake. But there are some things I just don't want to give up. Here's a partial list.

Disposable toilet paper
Did you know that there are websites that propose that you get reusable toilet paper? (Also menstrual pads). I mean, I used cloth diapers for my kids, but even I have my limits. I want it to be soft, too. It's a dissolute American thing, I guess.

Tootsie rolls
Forget fair trade. I love me some rubber chocolate. And those little fake colored ones that pretend to be fruit flavored? Yeah, those.

Oranges. Avocados. Lemons.
All those tropical fruits. I live in Illinois, but this is one of those times when I thing "global economy, baby!"

Sugar
And not the kind made from beets. Real live cane sugar. Hey--I'm close to the Mississippi (okay, couple hundred miles. That's close, right?) And cane sugar grows right at the other end! Just a quick zip up the Big River.

Door to door transportation
Using a non-human power source. Biking is great. I believe in it! Healthy, planet-saving, and easy. So why do I always find myself driving two miles in the car? Terrible. I should be shot.

Saran wrap
Does a product come any more unsustainable? Or more useful?

Rubber flip flops
Except they aren't rubber anymore, which would biodegrade. They're 100% petroleum byproduct. The rattan ones give me blisters.

Apricot Potato Salad
Fortunately, I don't have to give this up, because I made it myself using fresh, local, whole, organic ingredients.

Any kind of potatoes you've got, one-two potatoes per serving. I used russets today, because that's what I had.
1 small apricot for each potato, or 1 large one for each 2-3, pitted and diced
2 serano peppers per each 3-4 servings, diced very fine
sea salt to taste



Dressing (Adjust for size of salad. This makes enough for 2-3 servings):
Whisk together:
1/3 cup mild oil, such as canola (nut or olive oil overwhelms the apricot)
>1/4 cup wine vinegar
> 1/4 cup honey
ground white pepper to taste

Dice and boil the potatoes until soft but not falling apart. Drain and cool. Add the remaining ingredients and salt to taste.

This will keep for weeks, except for the so-yummy-you'll-gobble-it-right-up part.

What would you hate to give up to save the planet?

Two summer slaws

No words of wisdom today! Just two delicious things to do with cabbage. The CSA sent GIANT cabbages this week. Had to do something!

Peach slaw
about 3 cups finely shredded or grated cabbage (1 small head or portion of large head)
2-3 peaches
3T homemade mayonnaise (from the wonderful Little Blue Hen blog. Really, follow her!)
Salt to taste

Shred or grate the cabbage, then mix with the mayonnaise. Peel the peaches (a potato peeler works great, if you're very gentle) then with your hands squeeze the bare fruit directly onto the slaw, shredding the meat as you go, so that chunks of mushed peach end up in the mix. If you are squeamish (you shouldn't be cooking) um that is to say, you can use a lemon press for this; just be careful you don't get pieces of pit in the slaw.

Taste, add salt and white pepper.

Greek lemon slaw
about 3 cups finely shredded or grated cabbage
juice from one half lemon
fresh zest from whole lemon
1/2+ cups olive oil (I like my lemon slaw very oily, so I err on the side of oops!)
salt and green pepper

Mix it all together. I grew up on this stuff and it is still probably my favorite salad.

Hipster Supported Agriculture

I'm taking part in the Kinder Gardens challenge by inviting, not children, but my twenty-something friends to come garden and cook with me. The deal is, they come once or many times, and I share the bounty from the garden and the kitchen with them. Had a wonderful first day, with a parade of visitors through my garden on cool and sunny Monday.

First to come by were my skating student Katie and her mother Trish, who like to garden but always complain about living in a condo. Then it comes out that they have a 17-foot wide balcony (didn’t ask if it gets sun). Trish said they grew cauliflower in a big plastic bin last year, so I’ll see if I can pass on some tomato seedlings for them to try. They helped me plant out the chard, dill and broccoli, and I showed Katie how to plant broccoli seeds with a radish; the radishes come up fast and mark the row, then you pull them just about the time the broccoli starts to take off. Unfortunately, I meant to plant the early sprouting purple, and handed her the Pinetree mix by mistake. Oh well. We put in more than 100 chard sprouts, so when they get to size, Katie and Trish get their first "HSA share" for their help with planting them.

Right after Katie left, a gardening buddy from MyFolia.com (another Katy) came by and I sent her home with borage volunteers and chamomile sprouts, a tiny raspberry cane, some lily of the valley and some dwarf iris. We looked for some of the things I need to divide that I can donate to her later in the summer as well (she’s trying to put in a free garden; since that’s how I put my garden in, I’m paying it forward here). She’s going to bring me some parsley in trade.

Second Katy left, and my friend Dee stopped by with her nanny charges, 2-year twins. We thought about gardening with them, but they weren’t crazy about dirt. (Who ever heard of two-year olds who don't like dirt?) They did however really like the flowers and the colors. Once we managed to convince them that picking flowers is okay, I sent them home with violet-tulip-grape hyacinth bouquets wilting in their hot little hands. I pity the next garden they see, because they now know “picking flowers is okay.” Well, it is in my yard.

After they left, I finished the garden tasks for the day: putting in several rows of carrots, planting out the nasturtiums and the second snow pea planting.

There was one more 20something to collect: at the end of the day, we went to the airport to gather my daughter, who had been on tour since August. What a perfect day.

Apple-spinach slaw with honey remoulade
3 medium apples, sliced very thin, mixed with a little lemon juice to preserve color
small red pepper, sliced very thin
10-12 oz spinach, blanched and sliced (reserve some of the water)

Dressing:
3 T mayonaisse
1 T honey
1/2 teaspoon lemon or lime juice

Toss the apples and vegetables together. Whip the dressing, using a little of the spinach water to thin it if necessary. Toss and chill for one hour.

I served it as a slaw with crab cakes, but it's delicious on its own as well (in fact, I'm eating it right now!)

Inertia

Unfortunately, the music season starts just when the larder is packed with fresh vegetables. Why is this a problem? Because I'm now cooking, essentially, for one. The remaining musician at home, Bill, chows down on the leftovers, but somehow it's not the same making homecooked goodness and then sitting down to eat it by myself. I'd send more of the bounty down to Julian but I'm afraid he won't cook it.

Eating alone, eating alone well, is a leap of faith, a statement of self-esteem. It's very very easy to sit down to Wheel of Fortune and a bag of oreos for dinner, but you just hate yourself afterwards. It's hard to hate yourself after making crab cakes and then inventing your own version of slaw as garnish.

Brussels sprouts slaw
1 1/2 cups fresh brussels sprouts, blanched and sliced
1 cup cabbage, sliced (I had a very tiny head from the garden. Don't use too much or it will overwhelm the flavor of the brussels sprouts)
small onion, sliced very very thin
1/2 small green pepper, sliced thin
2-3 tablespoons fresh parsley, chopped roughly

3 tablespoons each, lime juice and real mayonnaise
2-3 teaspoons hot or brown mustard
white pepper, salt to taste

Whip the dressing ingredients together (make sure you whip or blend it really well so that the lime juice doesn't separate the mayo. This has to do with emulsion or acid or something. What, you thought I knew what I was doing?) Mix it all up in a bowl, let it sit for a couple of hours.

A garden party

We had our annual Lammas fest this weekend, with a buffet of garden delights, including refrigerator pickles (a big hit), green beans sauteed with almond slivers, basil hummos, a green salad, fettucini with basil pesto and the following delightful cole slaw.

Borage is an old-fashioned plant, used as a companion for its ability to discourage pests and to add micronutrients to the soil, especially potassium. Easy to grow, its flowers can be used as a garnish and to flavor and decorate drinks. Borage makes a clear, delicate honey as well.

Cole Slaw with borage flowers

Medium cabbage, shredded
3 cups borage flowers
1/2 green pepper, sliced very thin
1/2 medium onion, sliced very thin

Dressing:
2 Tablespoons yogurt
2 Tablespoons real mayonnaise
2 Tablespoons white vinegar
1-2 Tablespoons sugar (to taste)
salt to taste
fresh or dried parsley

Whip the ingredients for the dressing with a wire whisk, add to the vegetables, using just half the borage flowers. Chill overnight. Just before serving, add the rest of the borage flowers. A different color scheme for a familiar dish.

Cooking with fresh vegetables

One of the ways I've been dealing with this year's harvests is by unloading some of them on my son and his roommates. I gave them a large bag of snow peas a couple of weeks ago and was dismayed, and somewhat surprised, to hear that they hadn't eaten them yet because "we don't know how to cook them."

This is one of the things that you forget when you've been cooking for more than 40 years. There was, in fact, a time when I would not have known how to do something as basic as cook fresh vegetables. So here's a small tour and tutorial on cooking and eating fresh, and of course, a recipe.

First let me say that I'm not against preserved vegetables. Blanching and flash freezing vegetables is one of the best ways to preserve their nutrition and flavor, and even canned vegetables have their place (one of my guilty pleasures is canned creamed corn). Plus, that's where a lot of the garden bounty goes-- into preservation. But fresh vegetables, even the lip-service fresh vegetables in the grocery store, have better texture, and are more versatile, than any preserved ones.

Really fresh vegetables-- farmers' market or better yet backyard garden are something else again. First of all, if you rinse them, put them damp into a zip lock bag with the air squeezed out and stick them right in the fridge, they will keep longer than you think possible. I've had hand picked lettuce come out of a bag still crisp and fresh after a month. You won't get that from the grocery store. So I'm not too worried that J and his friends haven't eaten the peas yet; they're probably fine.

So what do you do with them? Well, coupla options.

Blanching
Trim them; while you're doing this bring a large pot of water to a rolling boil. Drop the trimmed veggies in, bring it back to a rolling boil, and cook for 3-4 minutes. Green vegetables will turn bright green when they're done. You can then eat them or drain, pat dry and put them immediately into a very cold freezer (0F, -18C). They will keep for months. Do this with greens like spinach, mustard, collard; green, lima, and french beans; peas and snow peas, broccoli, brussels sprouts.

Sauteeing
Again, trim, then put about a tablespoon of oil per every two servings of veggies in a wok or frying pan. When the oil is very hot, throw the veggies on and toss until, again, they turn bright green. Eat 'em. Yum. Try different types of oil-- olive, various nut, sesame. Throw in some toasted nuts (walnut, almonds, or pine nuts). This works with all the vegetables listed above as well as summer squash like zucchini.

You can also throw them in stew or casserole. You can make a cream soup with them (I'll blog my favorite cream soup recipe as soon as I have some cucumbers, a couple of weeks.)

In other words, nothing to it.

Here's what I did with my fresh vegetables today:

Three-bean salad
1/2 pound of trimmed, cut green beans
1 can garbanzo beans (I keep trying to grow them, with no luck)
1 can red or black beans (ditto)
1/2 red or Vidalia onion, medium, sliced very very thinly
Vinaigrette to taste (make it yourself, see below)






Optional:
3-4 medium radishes, cut into strips
any kind of pepper-- green, red, yellow, banana, again sliced very thinly
large handful fresh mint leaves (or any soft-leaf herb like parsley, basil, tarragon, etc.) chopped very fine

Salt and pepper to taste

Blanch the green beans. Throw everything in a bowl and mix. Tastes better the second day.

Vinaigrette
Wine or balsamic vinegar
Water
Olive, nut or sesame oil
Any fresh or dried herbs that strike your fancy, large pinch
Salt and pepper to taste

Mix liquids on a 1-1-3 ratio Vinegar to Water to Oil, add herbs and spices, whisk briskly.

Bounty

Way ahead of schedule, I'm going to have to start preserving vegetables, with snow peas and green beans needing to be blanched and frozen. In the meantime, I'm searching for creative ways to use the same vegetables over and over. Eating from your garden means you eat what's ripe, when it's ripe and if that's snow peas and raspberries six days in a row, so be it. This week I picked everything in this picture-- a pound of snowpeas, two small broccoli heads, about a half-pound of green beans, a sizable bowl of mixed greens, 5 enormous radishes, a quart of nasturtium blossoms, and 2 quarts of raspberries.

Of course, the produce at the market is also spectacular, so I broke my "no store-bought produce" rule today and got apricots, cherries and avocados (all things which I don't grow). The apricots will go in an apricot-raspberry preserve, and also in the salad below, and the avocados will turn into guacamole and sandwich fixings.

My son got a pint of raspberry-mango preserves, and will also get some of the pound of snowpeas I've picked this week. With the rest of the bounty, a lovely summer salad with a nasturtium vinaigrette.

Summer Salad
Garden greens, blanched (chard, mustard)
Lettuce (Simpson and Merlot leaf lettuces)
Wild greens (lamb's quarters, sorrel, purslane and unidentified mache-looking thing)
Radishes
Snow peas, sauteed
Apricots
Uncle Lajos' walnuts
If you simply must have animal protein, throw in some bacon or strips of ham, and/or a hard-boiled egg.

Nasturtium Vinaigrette
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar or red wine vinegar
1/4 cup shallots, finely minced
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1/4 teaspoon dried dill weed
Salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste
3/4 cup chopped nasturtium flowers
1/4 cup chopped fresh chives
2 tablespoons olive oil

Whisk together balsamic vinegar, shallots, 1/2 cup olive oil and dill weed until combined. Season with salt and pepper. Stir in nasturtium flowers and chives. Drizzle on salad.

Thanks to Springfield Illinois' State Journal-Register for the recipe.

Cool dish for a hot day

The spinach, which never really grew, bolted, so I cut it all back. Just enough, supplemented with a store-bought lettuce and potatoes, and garnished with nasturtium flowers and salad burnet, for a lovely nicoise.

Salad nicoise a la Xan

Spinach
Head lettuce
Salad burnet
Nasturtium flowers
Small red potatoes
Olives
Tuna (fresh is nice, but canned is cheaper. Get a dolphin-safe brand)
Vinaigrette

Blanche the spinach and burnet (very quickly-- boiling water, spinach goes in and immediately back out). Arrange artistically (very important) with other ingredients. Drizzle with vinaigrette to taste. If my tarragon and parsley were large enough to cut some fresh, I'd garnish with these herbs, but alas, still no herbs in the garden big enough to bother.

I also must confess, I had no small red potatoes and used roughly cubed Idahos instead. My bad.

I had some nasturtium flowers left over, so I made some cheese and crackers. Something tells me my kids (for whom I ostensibly write this) are not going to be making these.

Cooking, NOT from the garden

"redloon" over at MyFolia made a salad with garden greens and strawberries, which inspired me to try my hand at creating a slaw to go with the crab cakes I had prepared. These ingredients (most of which are actually in my garden) are all store-bought, because they aren't ripe yet out back.

Strawberry-leek slaw

• 1 cup sliced leeks
• 1 small baby bok choy
• 1/2 teaspoon ginger, fresh grated

• 1 tablespoon remoulade
• 1 teaspoon orange zest (fresh or dried)
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 2 tablespoons lime juice (fresh is best)
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper, fresh ground

• 2 cups strawberries, thinly sliced
• 1 cup celery cabbage

Sautee first 3 ingredients until leeks are golden. Toss with thinly sliced strawberries. Add additional ingredients to the remoulade and whip. Mix with vegetables & strawberries and set aside at least one hour. Serve as side dish with crab cakes.

This dish did not keep well, eat it when you make it.