CertainSeason

Kitchen Garden 2012

Got the kitchen garden planted for the most part this weekend. It sits in the circular drive and Bill did just an amazing job edging it. A nearly perfect round. We featured an herb farm as the food purveyor at First Friday and I got most of the herbs from them. They're all organically grown (as is our land.)

I layed it out as a compass...North / South / East / West...with deep purple pansies for the North, yellow for the South, white for the West and bi-color blue for the East. The center is a yellow rose.

Each quadrant has different herbs in it...chervil, sage, chives, French tarragon, English thyme, oregano and parsley. We want some dill and basil of course, but I will put the basil in the main garden and the dill hasn't sprouted yet. The whole is ringed with multi-colored French marigolds which I am hoping fill out and create a border flower hedge. Of course they're also edible.

The picture is taken from due North. That's Missy Girl posing in the background.

 

Red Time

I had the most amazing experience this afternoon as I drove down Rte 149 into town. I was making all the turns and curves just like always, when this shadow shot over my windshield. The next thing I knew I was looking at the backside...in flight...of a redtail hawk! He was practically hovering over my car, and following it as I drove. I must have been traveling at just about the speed limit on the road, which is 55 mph. And this raptor was shooting ahead of me. He remained about 5 to 10 yards ahead of me and then shot off to the side of the road where he alit and I whizzed by. I wish I could say this was my photo, but it's not. It's just the closest I could find to indicate the perspective I had on this particular bird. Mine had a very distinctive red fan tail as he floated above me.

On another note altogether...it's kimchee time. Love making the ginger/garlic/pepper paste with my mortar and pestle.

The Long Cyber-Winter is Over!

For months...some of you remind me it's been since November of last year!...I have been able to post writing to this blog, but no photos. Alas, some, nay most and possibly all my inspiration to write comes from the illustration and the lack of that, at the very least, took the fun out of it for me.

So though I attempted to post photos by sending them to my friend Dan (with whom I do GayWisdom.org) that was pretty much an unworkable solution. Dan has many better things to do than to post my photos.

As it happens, it turns out that the reason I was having problems had to do with the server I was using. At one time I had three different servers on my machine (which I am told simply clogs the works in the end)...Internet Explorer, Firefox and Google Chrome. I almost never used Internet Explorer, was pretty wary of Google Chrome and stuck pretty close to Firefox. But when I had a PowerBoost done by Norton, the technician removed all of them but Internet Explorer.

And Internet Explorer was the problem. I can't tell you why or anything, but the moment I switched over to Google Chrome, I was, once again, able to post here.

Harrumph!

So I missed posting the chrysanthemum turnips Pat and Barb served us for New Year's Eve dinner in Maine...I missed posting about my little health scare in December when I went down to NYC for routine bloodwork and ended up in the hospital for three days!...I missed the holidays altogether (including my mother's quadruple bypass, open-heart surgery) and I've all but missed the weird winter we've had in which we've had more rains than snow and those rains nearly washed away our drive.

Worse, the lack of ability to write about what life is like here in the country (and anyone that tells you it's quiet and peaceful is crazy!) made taking pictures less fun and less urgent in my priorities. 

That's all over now.

It's been a long frustrating winter, blog-wise. I am pretty sure some people who had been following have given up on me. But we're BACK! 

Bulb Issues

We ordered a boatload of bulbs from Breck's and planted them all earlier this fall. The weather has been so warm, our lilac bush has started to leaf...and even more problematic: these bulbs started to sprout!

I have a photo...but I am still unable to post pictures here.

Putting Up Herbs

It's a cool, gray Autumn day...the sun breaks through occasionally. Good day to have eggs shirred in cream (actually creme fraiche) and toast for breakfast and to start drying and preserving the herb garden for winter.

Drying some lemon thyme, sage and tarragon. Freezing some chives. The system won't let me post a pic. So I'll just leave it at that.Tore out the tomato plants and the undergrowth that took over in the monsoons. Took up most of the pepper plats (one is still fruiting!) and cleaned up most of the rows. And then I planted about 30 garlic plants ((German white garlic from Evening Song Farm.)

Apple (Buddha) Time

Well I guess it's no surprise that I just got tired of writing about rain. It has finally stopped, for now (and we are already holding our breath for winter and what all this precip would look like in white!) But if the rains did one thing right, it is that it grew our apples to a new level.

We've had apples since the day we moved in. The first weekend I was here, almost two years ago (as of 10/31, officially) I gathered apples and made applesauce. But the apples are not "pretty" and they were always small. This year, however, they are nearly twice the size, if not three times the size of that first year's crop. Don't know how sweet they will turn out to be. Rain = size...sun = sweet...but now I need to start getting some apple butter ready.

Bean Baking Weather

Well it's finally turned to Autumn here...at least temperature-wise. Precipitation-wise it's still monsoon season and I've just about had it.  Can't get in the garden. Can't mow the lawn. At least the mosquitoes seem to have abated with the temperature. Leaf raking has entered the To-Do List. Not that it does much good...as soon as you rake up what's there, more fall with the rains.

But it's nice and cool, so what do we do? We pull out mom's beanpot and we bake beans, of course. Yellow Cap beans from Rancho Gordo to be specific. Big meaty beans. We used this opportunity to clean out a good part of the fridge, too...in addition to the normal ingredients we added mango hot sauce, harissa and boiled cider to the beans. And just for good measure, instead of using ketchup, we used Stadium Sauce (a secret Milwaukee ingredient, usually found on brats). Had some nice chunks of salt pork in the fridge, too. I'm rather excited about these beans.

 

 

B&B (Bo & Bill) Baked Beans

2 C beans

4 oz salt pork or bacon

1 onion, finely diced

3 T molasses

2 t salt

¼ t ground black pepper

1/4 t dry mustard

½ C ketchup

1 T Worcestershire sauce

¼ C brown sugar

1. Soak beans overnight in cold water. Simmer the beans in the same water until tender, approximately 1 to 2 hours. Drain and reserve the liquid.
2. Preheat oven to 250˚
3. Arrange the beans in a 2 quart bean pot or casserole dish by placing a portion of the beans in the bottom of dish, and layering them with bacon and onion.
4. In a saucepan, combine molasses, salt, pepper, dry mustard, ketchup, Worcestershire sauce and brown sugar. Bring the mixture to a boil and pour over beans. Pour in just enough of the reserved bean water to cover the beans. Cover the dish with a lid or aluminum foil.
5. Bake for 3 to 4 hours in the preheated oven, until beans are tender. Remove the lid about halfway through cooking, and add more liquid if necessary to prevent the beans from getting too dry.

 

The Adirondack Monsoons...cont'd

I don't remember living any place that has had as much rain as we've had in the past month. Hurricane/tropical storm Irene notwithstanding, there has been more rain that I have ever seen. That was the reason Irene was as damaging as it was here...there was, and is, simply no place for the precipitation to go. We were already having a record-breaking season for precipitation (following a record-breaking winter snowfall). So when Irene gently dumped her nine or ten inches, it just exacerbated an already tenuous situation.

It started raining late last night, around 10:00 p.m. and continued on and off through the night. A nice sound for sleeping, to be sure. But this morning it continues.

I'm tired of rain. Very tired of rain. The dogs are bored and looking at me like I can do something about it. And when they do get out, they come back all muddy (a nice rain rinse does wonders for Missy's coat, though.)

What's more...I am afraid of what this portends to the coming winter. If this rain was snow...!!

And did I mention how muggy it is?

Adirondack Monsoon Autumn...It's Apple Chutney Time

Our weather has been wet wet wet...and still more wet. It is so muggy...more like July/August than September/October.

The garden is un-enterable because it so so muddy. We can't mow the grass because it never has a chance to dry out between the rains.

It's monsoon time in the Adirondacks!

Fortunately, our apple harvest is better than the last two years. Our Golden Delicious tree is infected with the apple-cedar fungus (pictured on these pages earlier this year). So it isn't doing too well. But the Cortland has always given us at least a small harvest (the first thing I ever cooked off our land the first year was some applesauce from that tree) and this year the apples are bigger and better than they have ever been! The apples look better (though they will never win any beauty contests) and are larger and better shaped than we've ever had. Oddly, the first batch of applesauce didn't turn the lovely blush color it has in the past. 

So I put up several quarts of Apple Chutney yesterday. The nice thing about this recipe, from my perspective, this particular year, was it helped me use up some of the good tomatoes I had left. Didn't get to do much in the way of sauce or stewed tomatoes at all. First, we didn't have the right kind of tomatoes this year (all Romas, some red, mostly yellow) and the ones we had, as I said, all burst on the vine with the rains.

The recipe is quite explicit that I am not allowed to taste it now for another six weeks.

Mrs. Robinson’s Apple Chutney

[with a special thanks to Hilary Robinson, who calls this "my mum's chutney"]

3# apples

1 lb brown sugar

2 t salt

1.8 pints malt vinegar

8 oz sultanas

½ t ground cloves

1# ripe tomatoes

1# onions

¼ t cayenne

2 oz crystalized ginger, chopped (or 2 t ground ginger)

all spices are approximate – adjust for taste.

1. Core and peel apples, chop, along with onions and tomatoes. Put all into a pan with the dry ingredients. Add vinegar, stir with a wooden spoon.
2. Bring to the boil, reduce heat until the mixture thickens – at least an hour – stirring occasionally.
3. When thickened and moisture reduced, dish into hot sterilized glass jars. Cover and seal. Leave to cool. Store in dark space for 6 weeks before using.

Dinner for Tom and Diane

My brother Tom and his wife are driving up from NYC enroute to a wedding this weekend in Connecticut. It's the first time they've visited us here, so I wanted to make a nice dinner. The menu:

Individual Cherry Tomato Tarts

Lemon-Garlic Marinated Chicken Breasts stuffed with Chicken and Spinach Sausage

served on a bed of

Creamy Stovetop Corn with Poblano Chiles and Creme Fraiche

Flourless Chocolate Cake with Gilded Raspberries