Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Summer Peppers
It did.
So we roasted our peppers outside. My forearms turned pink for lack of long tongs to turn them with. Once black, they were packed into bags to steam before Mom and Brad scrapped the blackened skin and seeds away. Dad watched, drank wine, and offered suggestions. A large laundry basket of peppers becomes a good sized bowl of roasted peppers, and Brad and I left that evening before they had all made their trip through the pressure canner. But we were forgiven and given 5 jars of bright red to get us through the winter. So yesterday it snowed, and then got slushy and officially became winter, and I cleaned out the refrigerator and found a half used jar on the shelf. I made corn soup from an icy bag of kernels found in the very back of the freezer and the sad, limply forgotten scallions in the crisper became scallion cream biscuits. They were both lovely, and the soup was especially warming thanks to the roasted red peppers I stirred in right before serving.
Corn and Roasted Red Pepper Soup
(Adjust measurements to fit what you have, I'm just guessing at them anyway.)
2 and 1/2 cups frozen corn
1/2 white onion, chopped
1 potato, peeled and cut into medium dice
4 cups broth (I used both veggie and chicken)
1/2 cup cream or milk
2 tbl butter
Saute onion in 1 tbl butter until translucent.
Add corn and saute for a few minutes.
Add potato and stock.
Cover and simmer briskly until potato is tender.
Use an immersion blender to puree until only slightly chunky.
Add milk or cream as desired to enrich.
Before serving, stir in roasted red peppers.
Saturday, November 28, 2009
A New Start
1. I needed a nap.
2. Vegetables are horrible and the work of the devil.
3. I needed another nap.
4. The garden and the blog would have to wait.
Amidst all that sleeping, queasiness, and eating only white foods with no odor, a few minor miracles occurred.
I rallied long enough to make a perfect raspberry tart with vanilla pastry cream.
Mom, Dad, Brad and I roasted and canned a laundry basket of red peppers.
My New York friends stopped by and worked for their dinner.
and these,
and way too many of these.
And this...
Now that the garden is frosted and gone (except for the beats, turnips, Swiss chard, an exuberant bunch of oregano and a solitary artichoke) and the parasite in my belly has changed first into a squirming baby kicking away at my internal organs, I’m finally hungry again. So I thought I should resume posting--more cooking and less gardening as the ground begins to freeze--but still tasty things to share. And a baby by mid-March, just in time for the next round of planting.
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Blooming
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Rain...
It has been raining daily for what feels like weeks and Mom warns me that I need to check the cabbages because this is the kind of weather that makes them split. Apparently if they split they must be eaten right away. I'm not quite sure I see the worry of this but her voice was very serious as she said it, so twice a day I check my cabbages for cracks. This also gives me a chance to pick the cabbage worms from them and the broccoli. Twice now I have watched a wasp wiggle its way out of the heart of a cabbage with a worm in its mandibles, and each time it has made me happy that we have chosen worm holes over pesticides. The garden needs weeding but the constant rain has made it too muddy, so I pull what I can from the sides. I had forgotten about this weather--days that start hot before the sun even rises. Walking feels like moving through warm damp velvet, and then out of nowhere the sky goes black and it rains like a bucket being emptied. It's shocking how quickly the warm air peels open to cool shards of rain. This is when you open windows on the lee side of the house and sit on the porch tracking the storm's progress by the nearing and then receding lighting and thunder. When I was little we would put on bathing suits and play in the street until the thunder and lightening were almost simultaneous and the storm was directly overhead. Then our parents would make use retreat to the safety of our house and the lightening rod on the roof. Then it is over, the storm gone as quickly as it came. The garden ticks and glows green as the sun returns, the corn straitens up and it all grows, grows.
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Berry Picking
Thursday, May 28, 2009
The limits of kindness
Our peas are blooming and green pods are beginning to dangle from the vines.
They have only made it a third of the way up our overly ambitious trellis, but the plants look great twining around the strings, their bottom leaves going brown as they direct all their energy into flowers and seeds. I’ve been checking our cabbages for worms every day. They are hard to spot--lovely little green things, perfectly matching the leaves and nothing moving but their jaws as they nibble. They are soft and often still chewing when I picked them off the cabbages and put them in the bird feeder.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
The neighbors wonder...
I have fallen in love with an ant colony that lives in the pea patch, in the evenings I give them the crumbs from my after work snack and ignore Brad when he wonders it they are nibbling the roots of our plants. They are red and vicious looking, the bullies of this bit of ground, busy piling crumbs of earth on the low leaves of my peas.
I squat with my chin on my knees, watching and drifting, pulling the occasional weed. I always thought it would be lovely to be tiny and live in the garden, making my home under a mushroom.
This past weekend our garden partners came over and we put top soil on the half of the garden that the plumbers had turned to clay. Then we planted the rest of our seeds and some plants from the farmers' market. Now all we have to do is wait...