Promise

It’s a typical January, in Walnut Creek - chilly at night, but around 60 and sunny during the day, which allows for some hope that spring will soon be here. Actually, it may as well be spring, despite the frosty nights: All the California native plants have had lovely soaking rains, which is their trigger to start growing. If we’re lucky, the hills will soon be full of color, with blooming poppies, tidy tips, clarkia, lupine, mule’s ear, and Chinese houses, making a sort of natural mosaic painting out of our landscapes.

And in my own garden, promise is definitely lurking.

It lurks in the chicken egg (or two!) that we are now getting every afternoon, signaling longer days.

It lurks in the pollinator gardens, in which thousands of seeds have germinated and are starting the push to grow and flower.

It lurks in the buds on the perennials.

It lurks in the native bulbs, like this elegant brodiaea, about to bloom.

It lurks in the vegetable beds, where whorls are tightening to make flower heads, which we will eat, soon.

an Italian variety of cabbage

It lurks in the greenhouse, where early summer flower seeds are germinating.

It lurks in the beehive, where pollen is steadily being collected, to feed the babies.

And promise also lurks in the fruit bushes, with budding flowers and fruit.

Huckleberry

Strawberry

It’s heartwarming to walk around the garden and see these promises of spring. Have you seen any signs of it in your garden, yet?

"Announcing your place in the family of things"

I’m sure you’ve all heard that Mary Oliver, the acclaimed poet, died this past week. Upon her passing, I was surprised to see such passionate and vehement opinions (all favorable) about her work, expressed by various nature writers whom I admire. I came across her poems once or twice and enjoyed them, but had never dug deep. So, encouraged by all these wonderful comments, I attempted to do so now.

Shelling pea blossoms

And, WOW. Her work is really inspiring. I wish I had discovered her earlier. All of it is deeply spiritual, deeply nature-loving, and wonderfully understandable (not the case with many poets). I have ordered her latest book, ‘Devotions,’ which is a sort of best-of. It’s a book I think we should have around, and should be read by anyone who appreciates nature.

A honeybee foraging in the fava bean blossoms

I read an essay about her in the Washington Post, by Maggie Smith, that really hit home for me; here’s the paragraph that made me truly tune in: “I learned from Mary Oliver how attention is a kind of love, how shining your mind’s light on a thing - a grasshopper, a bird, a tree - is a way of showing gratitude. I learned that poems do not need to be ‘difficult’ to be intelligent, that poems can be both inspirational and investigative, that poems can be tender without being soft. I learned from her to own my wonder and to stay open to uncertainty.”

Late-season narcissus

Does that sound familiar? Isn’t it sort of a theme of ours, those of us who appreciate nature, and who want to mark its processes in some way? Haven’t we talked about, over and over, the need to pay attention, to tell the story? Mary Oliver was one of us.

the first starflower

Her most famous poems are famous for a reason - they resonate. Here is one I love:

“You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.”

— Wild Geese, by Mary Oliver

growing in fresh wood chips

I think there is probably no greater epitaph - no greater appreciation of this poet and her life - than to go outside this weekend, no matter the weather, and pay attention.

Always a Trade-off

I have a confession to make. For the past many years, we’ve been using paper napkins. I don’t know why we had this disconnect…. perhaps it has something to do with the transition from having kids to young adults, and we’re behind in making that transition. Neither Tom nor I grew up with paper napkins, but when kids are little, it sure is handy. And I would comfort myself that many of those used napkins would go in our compost, to be reborn in our garden. But many went in the trash. What a waste of resources.

Likewise with paper towels. I tend to reach for them more than for the cloth towel that is hanging on the oven door.

Recently I somehow woke up to the fact that this was happening, and set about making a change. My mother has bins upon bins of unused cloth napkins and was happy to gift me a pile. I found cute napkin rings on Etsy which makes it more fun. I started putting cloth napkins in the kid’s lunch bags. And I asked my dad to figure out some kind of cloth towel rack that would sit next to our sink, in place of the paper towel rack. He immediately adapted an old Shaker design for a quilt rack and made me this beautiful thing.

I have a million cloth towels, so changing it out every couple of days is not an issue. And we won’t forgo paper towels entirely, I imagine. But just putting this in arm’s length, right next to the sink, will eliminate most of our paper towel use.

I recently, also, cleaned out our linen closet, and we had so many old towels and rags. There’s only so many that need to be saved for cleaning or painting; and so, when I packed up the Thanksgiving and Christmas items, I used these to cushion breakable things, instead of replacing the old ratty packing paper with fresh packing paper. It felt good to find a purpose for those cloths.

Tom also goes through undershirts; you know, those white t-shirts, and has to buy new ones a couple times a year. I had a pile of them that I wasn’t sure what to do with, and finally realized that I could spend 15 minutes cutting them into strips and storing them for summer, to use as tomato or pepper ties. And at the end of the season, they can be composted, since they are 100% cotton.

So all of this was making me feel pretty good! Maybe a little self-righteous… walking around like I had my stuff together, man. Then I went to do laundry. And I realized: All this stuff has to be washed. Which is fine, I don’t mind washing and folding (by the way, I love the Marie Kondo way of folding, I’ve become a convert), but WHAT ABOUT WATER? Isn’t that just as precious a resource as trees (which make paper)?

And so, chastened, I was newly cognizant of the fact that there is always a trade-off. Sure, you can argue that I’m doing laundry anyway, so adding these little towels and napkins isn’t that big a deal, and you’d be right about that. But it IS still using resources. No method is perfect. I mean, you can find this everywhere - like my seed starting mix from the other day. I’m not using peat, because it’s not renewable, but I AM using coconut coir, which comes from palm trees, which are a by-product of the coconut water and milk industry, which has it’s own BIG issues, not the least of which is shipping those coconuts to the United States. Or how about our electric car? It doesn’t use any oil, true, but it does use electricity, which in CA is partly wind-powered, partly water-powered, but also coal-powered.

I think, therefore, that we can’t be perfect. All we can do is make a better choice. And honestly, that takes some pressure off. We weigh our paths, our goods, our consumerism. And we make a knowledgable, conscious choice. That’s all we can do, really.

In other news:

I think we may have a skunk living under the train shed with the opossum.

My dad has a new website for his woodworking. You can access that site HERE. There are dozens of furniture plans available, along with step-by-step YouTube videos instructing you how to make them. Tom redesigned this website to make it more user-friendly, and I hope you’ll stop by and check it out, if for nothing else than to view the gorgeous period furniture.

Today is the 15-year anniversary of our son, Adam, being diagnosed with leukemia. He’s the healthiest person we know, now.

Soil Blockers

I do a lot of seed starting, beginning now with spring flowers, and then in March all our summer veg, and then again in August for winter veg. I go through a lot of seed mix and I have used and re-used those flimsy plastic seed trays for years. There’s a lot of problems with those seed trays; they tear and break easily, you have to dig out the seedlings to pot them up which often hurts the roots, and they don’t sit well in the flats that are made to go with them. They’re standard: Everyone uses them, but everyone rather dislikes them. Me especially.

I’ve experimented with other ways of starting seeds. You can put them in half an eggshell, you can make little paper pots for them, you can buy ‘cow pots’ made out of manure. You can start them in peat pellets, but peat is a very unsustainable medium. I just wanted a better way. And then I started hearing about soil blockers.

image credit: Lee Valley Tools

People seem to have great luck with these little machines. I figured it was worth a try and asked for them for my birthday. Tom ordered two sizes for me - one is a block of 3/4” squares - there are 20 of those squares in the block. The other is a block of 4 2x2” squares. I experimented with them today to start Iceland Poppies, along with some other seeds. The tiny blocks were good for the poppies because I just scattered the seed over the whole block, those seeds are so tiny. The larger blocks are good for bigger seeds, like sunflowers or beets.

The trick is to really saturate your soil mix. I used an organic seed starting mix made of shredded coconut coir and perlite, with organic worm castings mixed in. You really add a lot of water and let it sit awhile to hydrate. This makes it easier to form the blocks. I have to say that the larger blocks were MUCH easier to make than the small ones.

My examples are not terribly good because I need to put the soil blocks closer together. Otherwise when you water them, they spread all over the place. I’ll just use a spray bottle on these, but in the future, the soil blocks will cover the trays with no gaps between blocks.

One really nice thing about these soil blocks is that you don’t disturb the roots when you transplant them, as you lift the block of roots out whole. No digging, no pricking out, no separating roots.

A lot of folks make wooden trays in which to hold these blocks; three sided trays so the water can run out the other side, and you can slide out the blocks to plant them in your beds. I knew we did not have a lot of time to be building wooden trays; hopefully we’ll make some in the future. Meanwhile I bought some trays I had seen at the Heirloom Seed Festival in Santa Rosa in September. They are made by Bootstrap Farmer. They are super sturdy and will last for years. Plus, they come in fun colors.

The ones on the left are called ‘microgreen trays’ - see how they have a slight bit of drainage in the bottom? These are good to put the soil blocks in. Then I set that tray on top of a regular tray, like the ones on the right, to catch any water, which I reuse. I’m really happy with these trays. Not cheap, but certainly will last longer than those cheap ones.

I seeded a bunch of different flowers today, and those trays are in the greenhouse. It’s really to early to do much of anything, but I wanted to see if I could get those (notoriously difficult) Iceland Poppies to germinate in the next month, so I can plant them out as soon as it starts warming up in February. I also sowed-in-place a million California poppy, Clarkia, Phacelia, and California bluebell seeds all over the pollinator gardens. Hopefully we’ll have a good show in a month or so.

January Cooking: Using up a Stored Supply of Goods

January can be a depressing month in the kitchen, especially if you aren’t growing anything in your garden. Since we’re lucky enough to live in a mild climate, January in our garden means all-you-can-eat greens, with kale, lettuce, and chard the star of the vegetable beds, and we love picking them for sautéing, salads, gratins, and frittatas. But man cannot live by greens alone (or at least this one can’t). The broccoli, cabbage, and cauliflower are just starting to produce heads and are still a month or so off. The parsnips are just about ready. The peas that are flowering and producing are getting eaten by me straight off the vine; there aren’t enough to pick for the family. Carrots have lovely foliage but not enough root to pluck out for a meal.

Fortunately, we’ve got plenty of food we dried, canned, or stuck in the freezer back in the summer and fall, as well as stores of winter squash, shallots, and garlic that we’ve got hanging about in cool places. In the busyness of harvest, it’s hard to fathom why we stand over a hot canner or dehydrator, but January makes those days worth it. And even if you haven’t prepared ahead, these things are (mostly) readily available in the store for you to purchase.

BEANS

One of the best things I did this summer is allow a good portion of my ‘Rattlesnake’ pole beans to dry on the vine. I finally pulled them all up and spent a good week shelling them, yielding about a quart of dry beans. Not only do I have enough to plant again this spring, I’ve also been doling them out a cupful at a time in the kitchen. If you don’t have dried beans, you can buy very fresh dry beans from a reputable place. I like Rancho Gordo, as they sell only the previous season’s beans, and they are local to me. Soaking dry beans requires some preparation (remembering the night before, and then cooking them in the morning before preparing a dish), but they taste great. However there is absolutely no shame in buying canned beans - they are easy and fast and delicious and good for you. I prefer the organic brands with lower salt, but get whatever you can in a pinch. Beans have that special thing that’s hard to describe: They satiate. They make your stomach satisfied. They ‘stick to your ribs.’ This is a quality that’s necessary in winter food, whether you’re in deep snow in upstate New York, or soggy, foggy Northern CA.

We’ve had two bean recipes lately that were simply delicious, and I include them below. A lot of bean recipes also include canned tomatoes, which brings me to…

TOMATOES

We just can’t get enough tomatoes. No matter how many I preserve, we always run out long before the first fresh cherry tomatoes make it into our kitchen in June. I put up tomatoes in numerous ways: Canned, as crushed, as sauce, in salsa; frozen, as chunky tomato-basil sauce, tomato paste, or whole; and dried, in slices. I like to add the dried slices to grilled cheese sandwiches (while the men in my family prefer to add dried or frozen jalapeno slices). The chunky tomato sauce from the freezer is used for either pasta or shakshuka. All the other tomatoes get used up mostly in our dinners. I recently found a recipe for a roasted tomato soup that blew us away. See below for that recipe.

WINTER SQUASH

All winter squash varieties can easily be stored in a basket or bin in your coolest room. They will keep for months this way. We grow a good amount of butternut squash, and enjoy eating them for months after harvest. Still, we run out before we stop wanting to eat it, so it’s brilliant that there are still squash available in the stores. Acorn and delicata are also usually available in January, as well as other heirloom varieties like kabocha.

I usually resort to roasting squash with olive oil and salt and eating it that way (with ricotta on toast, as a side dish, as a hash with eggs and any other veg), but it’s nice to have a fancier recipe on hand for company or events. The one below is delicious and satisfying.

PEPPERS

I mainly freeze or dry peppers (both sweet and hot) to use throughout the year as a seasoning. But we do also use frozen strips of pepper for fajitas all winter, as it’s a quick and easy dish that we all love to eat, and makes great leftovers for a packed salad lunch the next day. We especially love fajitas in the summer with fresh sweet peppers, but it’s not unpleasant to eat frozen in the winter as well. You can use any color sweet pepper for this, and if you haven’t frozen any from your garden, you can easily find them frozen at your grocery. Recipe below.

I also make romesco sauce in the summer and stash it in the freezer. This makes a zingy sauce for steaks or roasted veg all through the winter. Recipe at the link.

Hot peppers, whether dried, frozen, or pickled, make an excellent condiment for many meals in dark months. Adam and Tom like them on sandwiches, sprinkled into soup, tossed with pasta, and with charcuterie like salami or prosciutto. To that charcuterie plate, they also add other pickles, which brings me to…

CUCUMBERS

Tom makes oodles of pickles over the summer, mostly from cucumbers but also from carrots, beans, and hot peppers. You couldn’t imagine, honestly, anyone eating this many pickles, but eaten, they always are. Tom and Adam especially like to eat them as a side at lunch with a sandwich and chips. They like them all - spicy, dill, garlic, bread n’ butter, sweet. I prefer them fermented and always make a jar of half-sours, but those go fast and early with my own lunches. The rest of winter is filled with the crunch of canned pickles. Tom says that using ‘pickle crisp’ (calcium chloride) is the best way to keep them crunchy.

GARLIC/SHALLOT/ONION

Except for this past year (in which we had a crop failure for alliums), we always have abundant garlic and shallots hung in braids on every available Shaker Peg Rail. Nothing will make your meals taste better than a good addition of some sort of allium. Having plenty about (organic, if you can find it) is a sure-fire way to make your dinners taste even better. I also freeze some cloves each year so I can take those out as needed. I add garlic to nearly everything, but it also tastes wonderful roasted and spread on toast or added to soup. And we’ve already talked about using caramelized onion.

CITRUS

The only fresh fruit we consume this time of year is citrus. We have several neighbors with trees and they are generous in sharing, but the stores all carry wonderful seasonal oranges and grapefruits. It’s fun to try all the different varieties as they become available. I always love the first Satsuma mandarins, and Cara Cara oranges are also favorites of ours. Fresh lemons are squeezed into several pints of juice for the freezer, and if I get a chance, I dry some slices and some zest for cooking and baking the rest of the year. Usually we make some sort of marmalade with any excess citrus given to us from neighbors, or lemon curd, or any kind of orange or lemon loaf cakes, which brighten up cold nights.

OK! Below are the recipes I’ve talked about. If you try one, let me know how it goes. I’d also love to hear about your favorite meals for wintertime, using what you’ve preserved or are growing - I always need new dinner ideas!

All of these recipes are geared for four people with 2-3 servings as leftovers. So I guess you could say each recipe is for 4-6 people. It just occurred to me that most are vegetarian. We are not vegetarian, but have consciously been trying to eat less meat. Some, like the squash recipe, is more a side dish but could be pumped up with the addition of a little marinated tofu.

“Chunky Tuscan Bean and Kale Soup (made pasta e fagioli style), adapted from ‘Salt Fat Acid Heat’ by Somin Nosrat

Olive oil
Pancetta or Bacon, 2 oz (or omit for vegetarian)
Yellow onion, medium, or two shallots, diced
2 celery stalks, diced
3 carrots, diced
2 bay leaves
salt/pepper
2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
1 pint crushed tomatoes in juice (or 15 oz can)
3 cups cooked beans (about 1 cup fresh), with cooking liquid included
I oz grated parmesan (plus more for serving) plus the rind
3-4 cups chicken stock (or veg stock for vegetarian)
2 bunches of kale (or spinach, or chard, or whatever you’re growing), stems removed, chopped
3/4 cup uncooked pasta (small shape)

Heat a tablespoon of oil in a large Dutch oven or stockpot over medium-high heat. Add pancetta or bacon and cook, stirring, until just beginning to brown. Add the onion, celery, carrots, bay leaves, salt and pepper. Reduce heat to medium and cook about 15 minutes. Stir frequently. Add garlic, cook 30 seconds. Add tomatoes. Simmer for about 10 minutes, then add beans and cooking liquid, the pasta, the parmesan and its rind, and then enough stock to cover. Add some splashes of olive oil. Bring to simmer and stir frequently. Add kale (or whatever) and bring to simmer again. Cook until tender, about 20 minutes. Add salt if needed. Add more stock if needed. Fish out the parmesan rind and the bay leaves, and serve with extra grated parmesan and a fresh crusty bread.”

“White Bean and Mushroom Gratin, adapted from Cook’s Illustrated

1/2 cup olive oil, divided
10 oz mushrooms, trimmed and sliced
salt and pepper
4-5 slices of thick country bread (something you’ve baked, or a French boule, etc), cut into cubes
1 cup water
1 T flour
1 small onion or large shallot, finely chopped
5 minced garlic cloves
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1-ish teaspoons of thyme - fresh or dried
1/3 cup dry white wine or sherry
2 15-oz cans white beans (or make your own fresh, about 1-1/2 dry beans or maybe 2 cups, and save cooking liquid)
3 carrots, chopped in 1/2 inch peices

Heat oven to 300. Heat 1/4 cup oil in ovensafe skillet over medium high heat. Add mushrooms, some salt and pepper, and cook, stirring occasionally, until mushrooms are well browned, 10-12 minutes. While they cook, toss bread, 1/4 cup olive oil, and some pepper in a bowl (you can add parsley if you like it, I don’t). Set aside. Stir water and flour together until there are no lumps; set aside. Reduce heat to medium, add onion, cook until onion is translucent, 5 or so minutes. Reduce heat to medium-low, add garlic, tomato paste, and thyme. Cook, stirring constantly, until bottom of skillet is dark brown, 2 or so minutes. Add sherry or wine to deglaze, and scrape up brown bits. Add beans and their liquid (maybe 1/2 cup of water if you made the beans yourself), carrots, and flour mixture. Bring to boil on high heat. Then remove from burner. Arrange bread mixture on top in even layer. Transfer skillet to oven and bake 40 minutes. Then turn on broiler and broil until crumbs are brown, checking frequently (4 minutes or so). Remove from oven and let stand 20 minutes before serving.”

“Roasted Tomato Soup with Broiled Cheddar, adapted from Smitten Kitchen

3 lbs tomatoes (I let whole tomatoes from the freezer defrost and used these, with the liquid that comes off them in the defrosting process)
2 tablespoons olive oil
2-4 cloves of garlic, or more, don’t peel
fresh or dried thyme, 1/2 to 1 teaspoon
crushed red pepper to taste
4 cups chicken stock (or veg for vegetarian)
thick country bread, four slices or leftover cubes
raw (chopped finely) or caramelized (slices) onion
grated cheddar, 1-2 cups

Heat oven to 400. Wrap garlic cloves, with a drizzle of oil, tightly in foil. Place tomatoes whole in a casserole dish with liquid/juice from defrosting, or if using fresh (summer only!), cut in half and place on cookie sheet. Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Put both tomatoes and garlic in oven and roast for an hour. Let cool slightly. (Then turn down oven to 350.) Unwrap garlic and pop out cloves, add to blender ( I used about six cloves). Add tomatoes and juices to blender too. Puree. Transfer to medium pot, add crushed red pepper and stock, and bring to boil. Then simmer for about 25 minutes uncovered. I then added just a splash of heavy cream but you don’t need it. Put four ovensafe bowls on a cookie sheet and add soup to bowls. Then top with raw or caramelized onion, then bread. Smitten Kitchen makes it into rounds, butters them, and outs it on the soup that way, but we all agreed it would be better toasted or even as stale cubes, to give some texture to the soup (butter unnecessary). Then top with shredded cheddar. Put in 350 degree oven and bake 15 minutes. You can broil if you want a darker top.”

“Roasted Butternut Squash with Goat Cheese, Pecans, and Maple, adapted from Cook’s Illustrated

@3 lb butternut squash
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
salt/pepper
2 tablespoons maple syrup
pinch cayenne
1-1/2 oz goat cheese, crumbled
1/3 cup chopped and toasted pecans
2 teaspoons fresh thyme (or a little less dried)

Heat oven to 425. Peel squash and remove seeds. Then cube. Toss with melted butter, salt, and pepper, and arrange in single layer on cookie sheet. Roast until the squash on the back side of the sheet is well-browned, around 30 minutes; then rotate the sheet and roast another 10 minutes. Flip pieces over and roast another 10-15 minutes. While squash roasts, stir maple and cayenne together in small bowl. When squash is finished, transfer to a large serving platter and drizzle maple mixture over it. Then sprinkle the goat cheese, pecans, and thyme over the squash, and serve.”

“Fajitas, our way

2-3 lbs flank or skirt steak
olive oil
lime juice
soy sauce
garlic cloves
a good amount of fresh (only in summer) or frozen sweet peppers, any color
flour or corn tortillas (handmade if you have time, but store-bought are fine)
salsa (off your canning shelf? or store-bought)
guacamole (homemade if you have access to ripe local avocados)
caramelized onion or shallot - more than you think you’ll need

Marinate the meat in a good amount of soy sauce, lime juice, olive oil, and garlic. Overnight is best, but just do it for as long as you are able. Then take meat out of marinade and grill or broil. Slice against grain.
While meat is cooking, saute or roast peppers with olive oil and salt, and caramelize onion or shallot. Warm tortillas in foil in oven.
Let everyone assemble their own fajitas at the table. ”