vegetable heaven

I shall try to keep this within some kind of reasonable control, but it's been a long time. I apologize in advance for the lack of specific blog answering. I see now that I haven't written for more than three weeks!

First of all, the garden. It has changed radically since the last photos I sent. Let me take it in geographical order, moving north to south. All beans are thriving. The Kentucky blues finally are climbing, but not as enthusiastically or thickly as the meraldas. They aren't as dense, either, and will be easier to pick. I think we have about two more days before beans knock on the door and take over the house. None big enough to pick yet, but many visible. This will take several hours a day until we get tired of picking and freezing them. The bush shell beans, little reds and canellinis, (as well as the pintos, in the lower garden) are coming along nicely. Should have a good crop of little reds and pintos, particularly.

Peas are done, vines pulled out, pea fence down. 45 packages in the freezer. Potatoes are finally dying back, though not fast enough for Charlie. One should really wait until the plants are dead to do the major digging, giving the potatoes enough time to develop a good skin. We've dug 2/3 of the Yukons anyway; Charlie wants to rescue them from the mice, who are legion in that area. The Yukons are beautiful (we hope they'll keep o.k.), and we've dug enough russets to have eaten some of them, too. They bake wonderfully, even when slightly young. We are holding off on any more digging, but it's hard. I saw a stripy snake down near the potatoes today; it may eat some of the mice (though the only thing we've seen one eat was our resident toad last year). Charlie has also set some traps. Puss spends some time mousing down there, but we've seen no evidence of success. She prefers to catch mice near the house so she can leave the guts on the deck.

Edamame may fail. Covered with aphids, discovered too late, we believe.

That's the upper garden. In the lower area, the onions are huge and will be picked in a couple of weeks. They're beautiful, as big as we've ever had. Leeks continue to grow. They'll be harvested sometime around late September or October. Broccoli all picked. 35 packages in the freezer. Boy does it ever take up freezer space. (Note: we eat these things every day for a couple of weeks; don't think that we just bring everything up and pop it in the freezer.) Cabbages all harvested, a total of eleven heads. Five were big like the one we gave Mom and Marty. We've eaten all but two of the small earlier ones. They keep for a long time in the fridge, but I'll eventually blanch and freeze some. Cabbage makes a nice change in the endless round of beans, peas, corn, and broccoli of the winter.

The fennel is wonderful. What a great thing to grow. We've been eating it almost since it came out of the ground. It started as feathery leaves to cut up and add to salad. Now it's about the size of asparagus. I used six small ones in a FC recipe (more when I get to that category). Tonight I'll make some braised baby fennel from Mario's cookbook. As we thin it, the remaining ones get bigger and bigger. We anticipate some nice big bulbs before this is over.

Let me interject here that one should not even think of lettuce. Too hot. I've started some little ones under lights, hoping to get some late in the summer to have with tomatoes.

Zucchini, green and yellow, suddenly abound. Made an odd Mario zuch concoction for lunch today, fried in slabs and then marinated with a dry mix of basil, a little hot pepper, salt, black pepper, and a little vinegar. Very good, very intense. Peppers of all kind are blooming. The only production yet is a few bells (made shish kebobs the other night using onions, green peppers and zucchini along with some nice local beef). I did pick one jalapeno and use it, but the peppers come slowly. Eggplants are producing (ichi ban, a small thin Japanese one, about 10 inches long) and we eat them a couple of times a week. I just split them, coat them with olive oil, and cook them at 450 degrees until they're done, about ten minutes. Ambrosia.

The garlic has all been pulled (over the weekend) and is drying on screens in the shed. Before the onions can be harvested, the garlic has to be cleaned up, edited, and hung on nails in the shed so there's room for the onions on the screens. A wonderful garlic harvest this year. Last year's was mediocre (though we still had garlic until we started using this year's). Tomato plants are HUGE. Making tomatoes, but none ripe yet. Cucumber plants are growing, but we will remain cuke-free for a couple of weeks more. We planted one cantelope hill, and it looks like it'll give us a dozen small melons. If that happens, it'll be a first.

Then there's the corn. It's about seven feet tall (I really need to take a picture of it), all tasseled out and beginning to show silks. I'd say that Corn Day will be early this year, probably in two weeks. Often it's the end of August before we get corn. We're fighting aphids there, too, with lots of water (the soaker hose is nearly constantly running, in one spot or another) and with insecticidal soap.

The weather continues hot, wonderful for making things grow, but of course we have to water. The real farmers, who do not have the luxury of irrigation, are suffering terribly. It's depressing to drive around through the fields of dying corn.

That's more than you really wanted to know about the garden, but there it is. It is the most wonderful time, because I can pick recipes by what's available, then head down there with a sort of shopping list of what I need. Forgot that the shallots are now usable, too.

Mainly, it's amazing how much happens in just a few weeks in the middle of the summer! The season goes so quickly!

FC 80 looks good, but it's not the wondrous, legendary #79. Yesterday I made the Mexican-style slaw (p 47), which is quite good. I happened to have a big chunk of jicama left over from making one of the #79 chopped salads last week; the rest came out of the garden. I'm in a cilantro moment, but they come and go quickly, since the stuff goes to seed so fast. It reseeds itself, but then it takes a while to get more. I can't keep up with planting it, though I always have good intentions. Anyway, the slaw is quite good. I think it has too great a proportion of jicama, though. I suggest seeding the jalapeno. It's plenty hot.

I also made the potato and fennel salad yesterday. Doing them both was a lot of cooking, but we were watching the British Open Championship, so this kept my hands busy as I monitored the golf. This was quite a good salad, and also used a lot of garden stuff. That's where the bottoms of the six small fennels went. One recommendation, for anyone out there who's actually going to make one of these potato salads: I cooked the potatoes early, and of course just wanted to eat them all when they came out of the oven. Then they sat around for three hours, and were not particularly good in the salad. Tasted like old cold potatoes, when a few hours before they'd been glorious. I suggest making them just before putting the salad together. Let them cool some, but put them in warm. I'll try this with one of the others (waiting for tomatoes and corn for the first one, beans for the fourth one) and report.

And there's Ben. It was his idea to spend the night, because he wanted me to make him French toast for breakfast. I also think he wanted to see if he could do better and not cry for his mom and dad. So he was wildly excited about this all week (according to both Marty and his daycare lady). I picked him up at two on Friday afternoon. We paid a short visit to Oma, and then he was ready to go to the farm. He really loves it here. We spent some time running around outdoors, and then he watched the first LOTR for about half an hour while I prepped dinner. Then he wanted to go to the basement, and we did some exploring down there. After that he asked to go to the "upstairs basement." I finally figured out he meant the attic. Funny how kids can figure such things out: places where there is stuff, but where you don't live. I told him he had to wait until Charlie got home. When Chas arrived, Ben immediately wanted to go to the ALLIC (we'll probably call it that forever). Charlie took him up; you will see in a photo what he brought down.

It was always a special treat for Julia to go up there, because it's old toy city. Ben had not been enthusiastic the one time he was up there; it's dirty and buggy; now he loves it. But he was also very excited about looking out the allic window: "It's a tall building up there!!" In the morning Charlie showed him the "tall building" window from outside, and he was very pleased.

Dinner was home-made french fries, which he devoured, broccoli (he likes to eat the blossomy part off, giving the broccoli a haircut), and some chicken fingers (which I devised from Julia the Child's fish stick recipe, something she still makes every time she comes here) which he would not touch, even though he'd requested chicken. I'd tried to make it kid friendly, but failed. He filled up on ketchup.

He took a long bath, playing intensely with the two bath toys I have here, I read him some stories (including his first runthrough of Cotton Cat and Martha Mouse, a favorite of Marty's and Julia's). He wanted to sleep in his clothes, since he did last time, but there was no problem, no weeping. My house rules for kids' bedtime are simple. One can stay awake as long as one likes as long as one is in bed reading. They can read all night if they want to. And no one is ever forced to sleep in the dark. They can have as much light as they like.

He was up with us at six in the morning, wanting his French toast. He likes little French toast, so I make a quarter of a slice at a time. He ate three. After breakfast he and Charlie fed the cows some small limbs Charlie had cut.

Then we went to the garden to work, and he held out for about 45 minutes. He and I came back to the house, and he watched cartoons (good ones) until Marty came at 9:30. Anyway, it was a very successful visit. At one point Charlie asked him what would make him (Ben) get big enough to be an astronaut (this part of a discussion we were having). Ben said: "Exercise. And eat healthy fruits."

And last bit of news. I am buying a new car, which I'll pick up on Wednesday afternoon. The gas for the suburban was killing me, and really, now, we don't need to have three full-sized trucks. So I'm getting a red Chevy HHR, very whippy. I fell in love with the PT in CA, but it's really too small. The HHR has a lot of the same cachet, but a little more room. I am very excited about this. I'll be glad to be driving a car again! I'll post a photo when Red comes home.