A Quick Update: The Garden is Popping

SO much has been going on in life and the garden since March that I'm just going to jump right into things where we are now then backfill other details when those opportunities present themselves.

Before Jack and I ever planted a garden, I envisioned arranging a beautiful still-life of colorful vegetables on the tailgate of our truck and taking a picture to share here on the blog, and look what just happened a few days ago.

Pretty as a picture. 

Here's another.

This was YESTERDAY!! Look at that cabbage!!! Red AND golden beets. Kohlrabi. 

I've super excited because we've finally been able to grow snap peas!!

This variety is called Magnolia Blossom, and it's called a "tendril pea," because of the copious structure the vines build as they grow. The blooms are all a lovely shade of bright, cool pink, and they form bright, hot green snap peas with sweet, crisp edible pods. 

I'm in love with these peas.

They've quadrupled in size since mid-May.

The second week in May, the garden looked like this.

This was last week, June 16. 

Bounty from the Garden

These pictures are from a few weeks ago when the fall garden was living its best life. 

We grew a GREAT crop of broccoli and expected to just "eat some along" throughout colder weather until the temperatures really dipped, but our weather was amazingly warm - in the mid-70s for the stretch of days through Christmas - and crowns started rotting on the vine. Boom! In a matter of days, our nearly perfect broccoli overshot ideal ripeness and started getting soft and mushy in the middle. DOH! We picked every bit of it, sharing with Mom, Dad, the Vernons, and the neighbors and eating lots of it ourselves. 

Steamed. Soup. Sheet pan dinner. 

We'd hoped we'd get another picking or two of sideshoots, but as quickly as the temperatures rose to the 70s, it plunged to less than 15, and the broccoli was finito. 

The bok choy was a slightly different scenario and tolerated both warm and cold better than other things in our garden, and was cold hearty even through a dusting of snow. We did finally pick the remaining dozen or so heads last week before the super-cold weather and still have a handful in the fridge. 

Our "regular cabbage" never grew that well but is hanging in through whatever weather we have in heads ranging in size from tennis ball to softball. They're mild and tender and taste great quartered and roasted on a sheetpan. 

Baby Turnips

 Despite the disappointment of the peas, the fall garden DOES have some really nice things happening, and turnips are among them. 

These are some baby ones we pulled to thin our row of purple-topped globe turnips. Jack cooked these whole in the InstantPot with a double-handful of ham-hock flibberts, and they were delicious.

With cornbread.

Peas of Mine

 

(Peas may or may not be shown actual size)

Get it? Peas of mine... peace of mind... 

No? 

Maybe I'm not as clever as I tell myself I am, but it's a better effort than I expected when I sat down to type this brisk fall evening. 

Y'all might remember when I planted about a thousand peas on the hottest day of late August - the 27th to be exact - and predicted the first harvest on or about October 20th. Well, this is it. 

This is actually a third of it, because somebody called ME kept eating precious tasty pods as soon as I picked them, because they are 100% as delicious as I want them to be. These are little, but I had to have something to show for myself for the on-time harvest, right?

I'm trying not to brag too much or be too proud of the way the fall garden project is coming along, because deer, rabbits, raccoons, groundhogs, squirrels, and stuff I don't even know to worry about could eat it all to the ground in a single evening. 

Aside from that, the garden is on the edge of a walnut grove and might be susceptible to jugalone poisoning, which I'd never heard of until we had a bunch of stuff planted already. Here's an article about it from The Morton Arboretum if you're interested:

https://mortonarb.org/plant-and-protect/tree-plant-care/plant-care-resources/black-walnut-toxicity/#!

Back to the peas, though. 

After I picked those, I harvested the last bit of okra - six tiny, blotchy, mildew'ish pods - and said goodbye to the gigantic stalks Dad and I grew over the summer. Some were more than 2 inches in diameter at the ground and grew tall - 7 to 8 feet tall and were GENEROUS with the pods they gave us. They were beautiful in their prime but had gotten spindly and piddling in recent weeks with a frosting of powdery mildew on the larger plants. I worried about that stuff spreading to the pea plants before I could get them whacked-out and dragged-off.

This sheet pan dinner included both, so I guess you could call it a transition in seasons with the last of summer and the first of fall on the same plate. The peppers were from the garden and the other things, carrots (always carrots), mushrooms (ALWAYS mushrooms), and broccoli, from the store, it was perfectly delicious over some brown rice.

(Peas were added at the end to keep them lively. Throw them on, cut the heat, wait 5 minutes, PERFECT.)

Fall Garden, Dr. Jason Martin, and Everything is Fine

Happy fall, y'all! 

It's here, too. I stepped outside with Josie a little bit ago, and it's downright chipper. The harvest moon from earlier in the week still looks mostly full, and I had a hard time getting back to sleep at 3:00 this morning because so much moonlight was streaming into our bedroom. There were moonshadows on the wall! Aside from the insomnia and the cats all-hours playfulness, it's a cool experience. 

Since the last time I wrote anything here, Jack and I have jumped head and ears into planting a fall garden. For years now, October comes around, and I'm sad that we have no snap peas planted. This year I got on the stick and planted a BUNCH of peas the last week in August. Four varieties. Some are doing better than others, but all-in-all, I'm pleased with the outcome of the ones that are making it and determined to have make the best of the situation. I ordered seeds from two different sources and am pleasantly surprised to have almost 100% germination of the seeds we purchased from Botanical Interests, a newish company in Colorado. If you need seeds, check them out.

In addition to peas, we have turnips and beets, radishes, broccoli, cabbage (we think - it may have been mislabeled), carrots, collards, bok choy, more broccoli, turnips for greens, fennel, and all kinds of salad greens.

Ambitious, yes. Hopeful, yes. Vulnerable, yes. To weeds, which are growing like freaking gangbusters and maybe rabbits, because half of the beets are MIA already, and the first round of radishes look spindly. Dad says we may not have used enough fertilizer, so inexperience is another weak spot, but before the next rain, I plan on getting some close consultation from him about fertilizing specifics for  whatever is still kicking when the garden dries out enough for us to at least walk across it.

I tried to do some assessment and planning today, but yikes, the earth stuck to my hoe and I nearly got the truck stuck in the earth. 

It's fine, though, I tell myself. Everything is fine. 

I also tell myself that same stuff about the COVID pandemic, which continues to rage, especially in red states like Tennessee with governors like Bill Lee who are fine with letting their people die, because they know they can use it against Democrats in the mid-term elections of 2022, but again, 

it's fine. 

On Wednesday of last week, I joined some DeKalb County friends and neighbors in welcoming Dr. Jason Martin to town. He's an ICU physician from Hendersonville who's announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for Tennessee governor next year. His main priority is moving us past the pandemic into solid economic territory for the benefit of middle, working class folks and families with children. He supports Medicaid expansion and is outraged that since Bill Lee was elected in 2018, fourteen rural Tennessee hospitals have closed leaving thousands of people without a place to go for emergencies in their home communities. He and his wife have three school-age children, daughters, so both strong public education and abortion rights are important to him. He talked about the importance of rural broadband and providing infrastructure services to people in counties like DeKalb and talked knowledgeably and respectfully about the effectiveness of rural phone and electric cooperatives. 

The only thing I didn't like about him were his pants. 

  

A Few Words about These Vegetables

How gorgeous are these veggies?

Dad and I grew some of them, too. The squash and okra are homegrown. So are the tomatoes, but I forgot to put any of them on the board for the photo. I'll have to share some of those on a different post which reminds me that I DO need to tell you about tomatoes. Not today. 

The beautiful red pepper is from Griffin's Produce in S'ville. The beets and brocco are from Food Lion, and everything else is part of a minor haul from Aldi last week when I had business in Cookeville. 

Note: Aldi always has the deal on Brussels sprouts. They're always a dollar a pound cheaper than the ones and WalMart and a heck of a lot fresher.

The beautiful knife is from New West Knifeworks of Jackson Hole, Wyoming and a splurge I bought with Christmas money. It's all handmade, perfectly balanced, and what can only be described as surgically sharp. It's fancier than any kind of knife I ever thought I'd want, and I honestly don't know when in 2020 I started wanting it, but I did. The 25% off after-Christmas sale got my attention and my money for the last blue utility knife they had in stock. 

It came in a box within a box with a strip of warning tape across the top which read "VERY SHARP - USE EXTREME CAUTION" and was serious enough that the first thing I encountered inside was a 4-pack of complimentary bandaids printed with the same warning. Knock on wood, I haven't had to use them, because I'm super careful about my fingertips and everything else while slicing and dicing with this sharp guy. 

Truth be told, though, when it comes to cooking dinner every night, my go-to knife is a Tramotina all-metal 8" chef's knife which, along with a paring knife and a slicing knife, came as a freebie with our cookware. It sharpens easily with one of those things with the slits and has a nice wide blade. I can hack up a pile of veggies and not worry about a repeat of the mandolin incident. 

The mandolin incident, in case you're wondering, is exactly what you think. Jack got a mandolin slicer for Christmas, and the first time I used it, I immediately whacked my thumb and was bleeding all over the kitchen by the time Jack yelled, "Be careful, it's sharp!" from the other room. 

What you see here became a delicious, nutritious sheet pan dinner one night last week. 

COVID19: Fresh Veggies and a Winning Chicken Dinner

Our friend and sort-of neighbor, Michael Kingsbury, grows a great little organic garden. His place is between us and almost everywhere else, so stopping by for bags of homegrown, freshly-picked vegetables is super convenient, especially this year with our pandemic precautions. 

Michael's set-up is very safe and appropriate for social distancing. His elderly mother lives with him, and he is clearly taking no chances with either of their health. Aside from the safety and convenience of buying form him, his prices are more than fair. 

His lettuce has been beautiful this year, and we've had delicious salads from his patch all spring. Our little rows of romaine mix and black-seeded Simpson have been fun to grow and tasty to eat in handful-sized salads, but Michael has kept our biggest bowls full of crisp, clean, organically-grown greens.

When Jack came home from a quick trip to the farm Friday afternoon, he had bags from Michael's. Lettuce, beets, green bell peppers, jalapenos, green beans, zucchini.

For dinner that night, I thawed boneless, skinless chicken breasts, sprinkled them with salt and pepper, and pan fried them in a couple of big blops of duck fat. If you aren't familiar with duck fat, it's a kind of liquid gold that will make your baked potatoes taste better than anybody else's and gives incredible richness to any pan sauce you might want to make

Duck fat, like most animal fats, has a high smoke point, so you can get it hot and keep it hot without burning your food and smoking up your house. It also tastes incredible. If you don't have it, don't worry - canola oil works GREAT and also has a high smoke point. 

When the chicken had browned on both sides over high-medium'ish heat and was "right at" done, I deglazed the pan with rough-chopped green pepper and onion and a splash of liquid from the rest of a can of artichokes we'd had lingering in the fridge for a few days. I threw all of that together with a handful of all purpose flour and another big dollop of duck fat and was off like the wind on a thick delicious gravy. I used homemade stock and low-fat milk to liquidize and thickenize everything. Another sprinkle of black pepper and fifteen or a hundred more grains of salt later, the sauce was silky-smooth and not too rich - like the filling of a perfect chicken pot pie. I placed the chicken back on top and let everything just stay hot on the stovetop while I boiled a pot of pasta and finished the green beans, which I cooked in the Instant Pot and deserve their own blog post. 

There were also roasted beets a la Jack, roasted zucchini slices a la Pam, Great Value brand white bread, and patriotic M&Ms for dessert. 

We had such a lovely meal, I wish I'd taken a photo, but by the time it was done, people were hungry, so we ate. Sometimes there's simply not time to find my phone and realize it's not been charged in three days. 

From the Fridge and Hissy Peas

I can't believe I'm showing a photo of the inside of our refrigerator, but here's the inside of our refrigerator. 

What better time to share than during the semi-quarantine of COVID19 to show how we're faring in our tiny kitchen with very limited trips to the grocery store and limited availability of some important things? 

Cold pasta in a big Ziploc bag is a great thing to have on-hand. A serving of that plus some pickled peas and onions with a serving of sesame peanut butter Asian dressing (in the jar with the red lid) is a delicious lunch.

Jack and I are both big fans of cold pickles, and we took advantage of dollar-a-pound asparagus and readily-available snap and snow peas to load up the fridge with enough "fresh" veggies to last for several weeks. 

The peas I do two ways - two quart jars of traditional cold pickles made with an easy brine of 2 cups water, 1 cup white vinegar, 2 tablespoons kosher or pickling salt, 2 teaspoons sugar, and 2 tablespoons spices - peppercorns, a bay leaf or two, a couple of dried Thai peppers, some dill seeds, some caraway seeds. The larger jar is a low-temp ferment and contains only peas, water, salt, and a handful of spices. They get tangy over time by the same process as a sauerkraut or kimchi ferment, just slowed way down in the refrigerator.

Over the weekend, Jack called to me from the kitchen to announce that my peas were "hissing."

They were. And they're delicious. If you've never eaten an effervescent sugar snap pea, you are missing out on something extra special. Here's a little video. Please pardon my narration. Next time I will leave it up to the professionals and keep my mouth shut. This is better than the video I am not letting you see in which I proclaim, "They're BUBBLIN'" 

I used the same brine recipe for the asparagus, because I'm not sure how well it would do with a ferment, and we love it so much pickled traditionally, there's no reason to start any funny business in the middle of this pandemic.