Tag Archives: life

Friday Flowers and Pedal Progress

Two weeks ago, the sunflowers in my garden, that the garden planted for me, were just beginning to bloom. Friday, June 26 saw a couple of these:

and a few of these

Also present were some of the following:

Readers of past posts and those who grow gardens will probably recognize these vegetable varieties. For others, who might need a helpful hint or who like a little challenge, here are clues as to what the three plants above are: the names of the plants, provided in the same order as the pictures above, in newspaper comics-page jumble form.

AHIRDS

MOTTOA

MURMES SSUAHQ

(*Unjumbled answers below)

Two days ago, on Friday, July 10, my morning trip to the garden included a show of similar, and greater, color.

Yellow, red, orange, reddish-orange, and more, the full blooms have begun, and the bees are buzzing, about they go.

In the garden, I took a tour, and like walking through an outside room full of sun, the leaves and I are loving, all that grows.

Along with the sunflowers, the three plants above (*radishes, tomatoes, and summer squash) continued on as well. Not pictured are some of the fruits and vegetables already harvested from these plants. The garden also planted some more of the following for me this year (July 10 portraits as well):

Morning glories

and I transplanted in some of these

Cucumbers

The flowers are from my garden back home, but the words come from the road. The petal progess is something to behold, and I’m happy to share it with everyone who loves flowers, color, and life.

Meanwhile, I’m also pursuing some pedal progress, about which I’ll share a bit too.

Today I went for a 74 mile bike ride, from Oswego to Geneva, NY. Tomorrow will be another 60 miles, and then it’ll be about the same in the 70 to 80 mile range each day after that, until on the seventh day I arrive back at our final destination in New Jersey.

Along with 175 other riders and a crew in support, I’m participating in the annual Anchor House Ride for Runaways, which helps raise money for the Anchor House, a nonprofit in Trenton, NJ that supports runaway, abused, and at-risk children.

The Anchor House provides temporary housing, counseling, and other important services for kids in need.

If you’re in a giving mood and would like to join in the support, here’s a link you can visit. Your generosity, whether expressed at home in your corner of the world, or expressed and felt also in Trenton, is always appreciated. If you like, you can also follow the events of the Anchor House Ride through the articles posted this week at Planet Princeton.

Hope you and everyone are having a great and bright week 🙂

-Dave

A two t-shirt day

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Those who know me, and in particular those who have seen my closet, know that I have a fair amount of t-shirts.

I can’t remember the last time I bought a t-shirt, but I sure do have a lot of them. On this one shelf (not all pictured) there are 81. I counted. After tidying them up for the picture.

They have a variety of origins – gifts, giveaways, events, races, and the occasional (way back when) purchase – but mostly they’re from races. Run a race? You get a shirt! You get a shirt? Add it to the shelf! And then you kind of rotate through them, with some getting more attention than others, owing to factors like a good design, a better fit, and that it’s easier to grab the ones near the top.

This past Sunday was a two t-shirt day, as in, I got two new shirts to add to the collection. The reason was that I did a 5K, which naturally came with getting a t-shirt, and then after the race they gave me another t-shirt as part of the award…for winning the race!

Race shirt

Award shirt from one of the race sponsors, a toute heure

I usually don’t make a big deal about accomplishments, and part of me, as I’m writing this, wonders if I’ll actually post this when I’m done, but what the hell :). I haven’t written a race recap in a while, and I felt good and had a good time doing it, as in I was enjoying it while I was running. So here we go!

First as a disclaimer, I would say that yes, my current running fitness is pretty good, but it’s also not at the level that would typically win a race. Usually even in a smaller race like this one, there’s a handful of people who will go faster than the 19+ minutes I did. I also didn’t enter it because I had visions of winning. I entered because my brother was doing it and it would be another opportunity go see him and his family. Running it could also confirm where I was at running-wise; in the past month or two, I feel like I’ve been getting back into it, enjoying it more again and feeling like I want to keep building it up.

All things considered, my finishing position at the end was a highlight, since it’s a pretty rare thing for me end up there, but what else stood out? Mostly it was the process, which is to also say the story, the guts of it.

While warming up and then standing at the start, my mindset this time was actually better than it usually is. I was pretty successful at staying relaxed and not worrying about it. I don’t do too many races, but often there’ll be a time right before the start that involves some focused worries about ‘not doing well’ or ‘not running good enough’ (‘what if I can’t do it?’, ‘what if I don’t go fast enough,’), which are typical and understandable thoughts but also ones I could a little more without. Butterflies are good, but to a point.

A minute or two after the start, the field settled, and the following became clear: there were only two people in front of me, they were at most five seconds in front of me, and we were going about the same pace. My basic, non-winning and relaxing-but-still-pushing-it-a-little plan going into the race was simply to stay calm and collected and go slightly faster than would feel comfortable. And there I was, doing that, and near the front. Which then produced a minute or two of the old worry…what if I keep this up? what if I pass them and take the lead? what if I can’t do it after that???

And then I was like, Whatever, I’m just going to keep doing my thing. We passed the first mile mark at just over six minutes, with me still a few seconds behind and feeling good, and then the guy in second slowed his pace just slightly. I had a brief moment where I thought, I could just hang back, not take a chance, and run with this guy, and then the moment passed, and I passed him. And then I was up behind the guy in front, who now also was slowing. The thought repeated itself, but this time in more of a split-second format, and I passed him. It was about seven or eight minutes in, and I never looked back.

I kept going at my pace and my original plan, and it flew by. I noticed that being in front also seems to get you more cheers, but not considerably more than say, two years ago, when I last did the race and did it at a more modest pace, while pushing my niece in the Bob. I led in the stroller division that day and remember getting a equal amount of “Go Dad!” cheers from the people watching and “Go faster Uncle D! You’re not going fast enough!” statements from the four-year old getting the free ride.

My brother pushed his other, younger daughter in the Bob this time, and a highlight of the race this year came a little over two miles in, as the route made a left turn past the corner where my sister-in-law and my now six-year old niece were standing.

“Uncle D! Uncle D! Uncle D! Uncle D! Uncle D! Uncle D! Uncle D! Uncle D!”

I think that’ s an exact quote.

Plus or minus.

And then before I knew it, I crossed the finish line. And my thoughts went from, I’m doing this, to, I did it 🙂

What if I can do it. What if I believe in myself. What if I keep doing my own thing and keep enjoying it. What if what if becomes more of memory.

It was a good run, and one of more to come.

On time, and in time, in the garden

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The community gardening season is back! Actually it’s been back for a month now, with the recreation department having prepared the plots and let us know we could get started on May 1st. I’ll admit that my initial reaction to the later start was to be annoyed (late March/early April would have been better for peas and other things), but when I did finally make it there on May 9th (yep, more than a week after I could), it turned out alright. Like it always does 🙂

Had I gone right away, I wouldn’t have seen the small plants coming up from the seeds left behind by last year’s plants – sunflowers, morning glories, and radishes! Apparently there were some strong little seeds that made it through the winter and the recreation department’s roto-tilling.

Upon initial inspection, seeing a lot of brown

But then after looking more closely, some green

And some more

And more! Here, a radish seedling.

A cilantro plant said hello as well

It was a reminder that timing is everything. And that also important is how you respond. This time (and lately more times than not, I believe) my response was (and has been) one of more going with it and seeing the beauty and appreciating what’s there. I wouldn’t call it a laissez-faire attitude, which would imply a lack of action and responsibility, but rather more of a forward-moving, active one, with ownership acknowledged. I can control and act on what I can, like getting started in the garden and planting things (tomatoes, basil, hot peppers, summer squash, cucumbers, corn, edamame, and more sunflowers, cilantro, and radishes!, so far), but you never know how it’s going to turn out. So you go with it and adapt along the way. Like, for instance, how it looks like I’m going to be planting some more seeds or buying more transplants (I actually just got some cucumber and tomato transplants at the farmers’ market yesterday) for the places where the cucumber, edamame, and cilantro seeds didn’t come up. And that’s okay. And like, for instance, how I can take more classes, write more, draw more, apply for different jobs, go on dates, meet more people, and do whatever, and we’ll see how it goes and figure it out.

When you have the right mindset, things also seem to happen at the right time. A friend of mine, who read a number of foodnsight posts recently, remarked how a lot of them were about time, and I think he’s right. I’d thought about starting the blog for a while, but it didn’t actually happen…until it happened to be right time.

A coconut falls when it’s ready.

You can’t say your mother’s soup is the best until you’ve stepped out of her kitchen.

Proverbs add spice to language.

I think, but I’m not completely sure, that’s how these three food / life / thought proverbs go. That’s how I remember them at least, having heard them in lecture and in conversation by a bouncing, full of life college professor who was originally from Ghana and who you could tell truly enjoyed what he was doing both in school as a professor and outside of school as a minister, which in general was teaching, connecting with people, and adding a lot of energy and spice all around.

It’s always the right time to do what you want to do, and to do what feels right. The coconut for the inception of this blog fell a little over a year ago, and more have been falling since, at different rates. Sometimes it’s a chance encounter with a special rutabaga (and a day off from work, and the deadline of a family gathering), or sometimes it’s a neighbor’s gift of plantains (and a good run, plus a friend’s general suggestion to let the words come more easily), and then it falls more quickly. Other times it’s the lessening shelf-life of a winter squash, or that the gravity (and levity) simply builds up, and then it’s time. In any case, the cumulative result is also a chronicle of time passing, a certain curated version of my life that also, I hope, comes with bits of art, truth, and beauty mixed in with the radishes, pumpkins, and risotto. It’s also great when the fun, funny, and creativity are all flowing.

Given the timing of this post, more than a month after the last one, I say we also take a little time and a quick look at some of the food highlights and time-points from May.

Plantains – I made them, and they were awesome! I more or less followed my neighbor’s recipe, which in my case turned out to be the following: after letting three yellow plantains ripen (after about a week they softened a bit and the outsides turned somewhat black), I peeled them, sliced them into coins, and fried them for 5-10 minutes (flipping them halfway through) in an oil mixture of 2 cups canola oil and 2 Tbsp palm oil. I also let the oil heat up first before frying them (medium heat), and when they were done I placed them on a plate with a paper towel to dry.

Spinach – This one also deserves an exclamation point. Sauteed spinach with chopped garlic and rutabaga, made in a mixture of canola and palm oil! I could have eaten a plateful of this it was so good. It was easy too: I sauteed the diced rutabaga (about a cup’s worth) in a few Tbsp of oil over medium heat, then added the diced garlic (a few cloves worth) and sauteed that also until it was softened just like the rutabaga (this brought me to about 15 minutes now from the start), and then added the spinach (about 8 oz, but you can add more) and let it cook over low heat for a few minutes until the spinach was wilted (pictured above). As if that wasn’t good enough (though it was, believe me), I also tried the following: 1) adding a handful of chopped raisins and chopped sliced almonds, and 2) adding the chopped raisins and almonds, and also adding some finely shredded Parmesan cheese. Both ways, so good.

If the canola and palm oil mixture sounds familiar too, it should! It’s the same oil that I used for the plantains. And by the “same” oil, I do literally mean the same oil because, really, although plantains soak up some oil when they’re fried, the amount that remains from the original 2+ cups of oil when frying three plantains is…well, I didn’t measure it, but it looked something like 1-2 cups still remaining. So there was plenty left for me to use with everything I cooked for about two weeks afterwards 🙂 And the rutabaga! Like a squirrel saving a food-prize for later, I still had a softball-size piece of rutabaga left over from the original big one, tucked away in the back of the fridge, waiting for me to use. I had just gotten a fresh bag of spinach from the farmers’ market, and something in my head put the two together…spinach and rutabaga. Yes! It was time to cook the acorn. (I used the rest of the rest of the rutabaga, similarly diced and plantain oil sauteed, in a good tomato sauce the same day.)

Asparagus – Spring time means not only fresh spinach, but also fresh kale, lettuce, strawberries, and asparagus! (and more). The picture above is from a few weeks ago, when I stopped at Terhune Orchards one afternoon after a bike ride and picked a few pounds of asparagus and several quarts of strawberries. Mmmmmmmmmmm, fresh local strawberries. I wish I had some right now… Yes, and asparagus too 🙂 Part of me also wishes that I had a good picture of the strawberries to use here, as a nice, sweet, juicy, red picture would look great following the yellow and green ones above. But that’s alright. And in the absence of such a picture, let’s give asparagus a little extra love. If you’ve never seen asparagus growing, that’s really how it looks in the field, the green shoots growing right up out of the ground (followed by tall ferns later if the spears aren’t harvested). To pick asparagus, you just snap the shoots off at the base. And then once you’re home, you can steam them, add them to pasta, put them in risotto, grill them, roast them with olive oil / salt / pepper and then add a little lemon juice right at the end!, and do lots of other things I’ll try sometime. Lately I’ve been steaming them since it’s quick, like 5-10 minutes, and then adding either a little salt or no salt. Easy and good.

In the process of finding the rutabaga, I came across a few other things in the fridge that, shall we say, ran out of time. Usually I’m pretty good at using things up, but there were a few small things I had to toss this time. And in the world where food mirrors life, and combine, so too were there some ideas I thought I would use when I started writing, but that now I know I’m going to have to toss. In the process of writing, and now feeling where I’m at and the writing is at, I’m reminded again that not everything can make it into the soup. Ideas, people, and stories can’t be forced; it’s better when it all flows and happens naturally. As another friend once reminded too, if it’s important and needs to be felt or said, there’s always another post, another time.

In the garden, things are growing. The passage of time, a month, allows me to share the following:

May 9

May 16

May 23

June 5

Projected future outcome

Actual results may vary…

But where there are buds, flowers often follow 🙂

For now, I found some flowers of another kind, from thinning the radishes,

Radish bouquet

and found some color, and neat patterns too, from underground.

How about that for beauty? It’s like looking down at farm fields from an airplane, but with every shade of red instead of green (and with a lyrical inspiration nod to “The Hudson” by Dar Williams). I think I have a thing for radishes.

Friday Flowers

The reason is in the risotto

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There are times to plan, and there are times to just take a step and go. This past Tuesday in the kitchen, it was one of the latter.

I hadn’t thought about what to make for dinner, and as I walked past the pumpkins and into the kitchen, I saw it. There, still sitting on the shelf and still in the box, was the new, Oxo Good Grips shredder that my bother and sister-in-law had given me for the holidays and that I hadn’t opened yet… despite having had numerous cheese shredding opportunities in the past month… because I was waiting for the perfect occasion and dish that would not only involve shredding, but would also taste great and make for a great story. I know, such a burden to place on a kitchen implement!

As I stood in there in front of the box, with the kernel of these thoughts in mind, I made the following decision in a matter of seconds, almost without thinking: “I’m going to make risotto tonight and use the shredder, and however it turns out, I’ll write about, and it’ll be fine. It’s time.”

Oxo box on Oxo spinner

There is simple-risotto, and there is more-complex-risotto, and I decided to try a version more towards the simpler end of the cheesy arborio rice spectrum. Which is to say, I decided to add carrots and red peppers to the mix. Doing so would add some color to complement the peas, a more traditional risotto ingredient (along with the rice, broth, wine, and Parmesan cheese), and it would be something new for me. Here’s the recipe, as I wrote it up afterwards.

Risotto with Carrots, Red Peppers, and Peas

1/4 cup olive oil
2 onions, chopped into small pieces
4 garlic cloves, chopped into small pieces
2 carrots, chopped into small pieces
1 red pepper, chopped into small pieces
2 cups arborio rice
1 cup white wine
32 ounces (4 cups) vegetable broth, heated
16 ounces (2 cups) water, heated
1/2 cup Parmesan cheese, shredded finely
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper

Heat the olive oil in a frying pan over medium heat
Add the onions and garlic, and sauté until soft
Add the carrots and red peppers, and sauté until mostly soft
Add the rice and cook for about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally
Add the wine and simmer until it’s absorbed, stirring occasionally
Add 1 cup of vegetable broth and simmer until it’s absorbed, stirring occasionally
Continue adding the broth and then the water, 1 cup at a time, until the rice is done (you’ll know the rice is done when it’s cooked but still has a slight crunch or chewiness to it).
Add the Parmesan cheese
And then add the salt and pepper

One of the great things about making a decision and just going with it is that it’s a lot more freeing than the alternative. There’s no agonizing over what the ‘right,’ best, or dare I say, perfect, thing to do is. And as it often turns out, that initial instinct or feeling often is a good guide. This is not to say I’m the greatest at doing this, and along the way I will have my share of second-guessing (darn you second-guessing!), but I know it’s there for me to access and to try using when I can.

In the kitchen that night, I wasn’t second-guessing my decision to use the shredder. And even though I was trying something a little new, I’d made risotto before, and I had faith that things would turn out alright.

And with that mindset, I began.

The first step was to sauté the onions and garlic:

Then I continued down the traditonal, basic risotto path by adding the rice, the wine, and the first cup of broth. It was only after the first cup of broth had been absorbed that I added the carrots and red peppers:

How about the early color, right??? Looks good! Color, yes! Correct order, however, no. There was a part of me that wanted to believe that it would work – that I could add the carrots and red peppers at this point and have them cook and soften during the the successive simmer steps, and that’s why I had decided to try it – but almost as soon as I added them to the rice, and definitely while I was stirring them in, I knew I had made a mistake (or rather, we might say, a *learning experience*). I should have sauteed them first. But now they would still be crunchy when the rice was done, and with risotto, it’s more the arborio rice that’s supposed to be the slightly crunchy star.

With nothing to do but smile and chuckle (and if I’m being honest, there may have been some eye-roll too), I then went about picking out, piece by piece, all of the little carrot and red pepper pieces I had just stirred all the way in. As I did this, I also continued cooking the rice, adding 1 cup of broth/water at a time. The piece by piece effort also reminded me of a good ninth grade summer memory of doing a 3,000 piece puzzle of Versailles, most of which involved a picture of the garden. It was steady family work, one piece at a time, and though sometimes it was hard to feel the progress along the way, the progress came, and the puzzle moved forward.

Yes, I picked this much out by hand, one piece at a time.

After sauteing the carrots and red peppers I’d removed – I’ll estimate I got two-thirds of them out – and returning them to the pan, the risotto was almost done. I bestowed the other third of them with ‘soft enough’ status, as they actually did cook a bit, and then I got the shredder out to do the Parmesan cheese. (You can do a vegan version too of course, without the cheese. If you do this, maybe use broth instead of the water, and adjust the salt and pepper accordingly to your liking.)

And then it was all done! And time for some portraits.

The risotto

The shredder, with an interesting risotto color mimicry

A close up

Well, hello

Don’t back the cheese up or you’ll blow a tire

Sorry, can’t talk right now, I’m eating dinner

And on the plate

In the end, the vegetable combination worked out pretty well – the risotto had good taste and good color. And it was the taking of a step, jumping in, and going with the experience that had worked to get me started and got me through. What’s that saying again? Yes. The proof is in the pudding. And the reason is in the risotto.

Three to get ready

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Happy New Year!

2015!

It’s going to be the best year yet!

I honestly believe each of those statements. I also believe in pausing from time to time to reflect on where you’re at and what you might do differently to keep moving forward along the path of progress. What better time to do that than at the turning of the year?

Yes, there are naysayers who may naysay that it’s an arbitrary point in time, or that few people keep the resolutions they make, or that the resolutions made are not specific enough, or something else. I think that any resolution you make is a good resolution, and if it is not completed or is partially completed come the end of the year, that’s okay. We do what we can and are ready for, and then we can reflect and make goals anew.

I’ll probably write some resolutions or goals for myself in the coming weeks, around the general categories of work, blog, personal, and fitness, and I know many of them will sound similar to ones I’ve written in the past. That’s okay. In the meantime, and in the longtime, I actually already have three that I made on New Year’s Eve to keep in mind.

I was hanging out with my brother and his family, and we went across the street to his neighbors’, where they were having some neighborhood families over. The scene was this: a gang of kids, mostly 3-6 years-old but some younger; a group of adults, mostly parents but some who were not; an impressive array of food and alcohol; and toys and confetti everywhere. The kids ran around taking part in mostly self-directed and periodically structured-fun (self-directed: collecting confetti into hats, counting down from ten, and screaming Happy New Year! and tossing the confetti in the air, and then repeating many times; structured: gathering as a group every so often so a few kids could stand under a balloon (and so the other kids could watch) as the host mom did a countdown and then popped the balloon, unleashing a shower of confetti and commensurate kid-delight). The adults, meanwhile, mostly took part in self-directed fun, also known as eating, drinking, talking, and making comments on things like the presence of Pitbull, the absence of Dick Clark, and what Taylor Swift was thinking or not thinking when she decided to wear or not wear what she did and didn’t.

It wasn’t structured-fun in the same manner as the kiddie-confetti-balloons, but the adults also had the opportunity and periodic peer-encouragement to write answers to the following four statements and to then clothespin the separate cards to the line:

The skill I want to learn this year is _________.
The good deed I want to do this year is ________.
The person I want to be more like this year is _______.
The bad habit I want to kick this year is _______.

A sample of some the early responses

By the time the encouragement made it to me, there were about 30 minutes left in the year. It seemed like the options for answering the cards were to think of something funny or honest. Not yet in the mindset of wanting to go real, I tried thinking of funny. The led to my first response:

The skill I want to learn this year is resolution-keeping.

Okay, so not really that funny, but more like a meta-jab at myself and the game. I wasn’t going to give up and not fill the cards out, though. I was going to do all three (I didn’t realize until yesterday that there was a fourth), and I was going to do them before 2014 was over. Five minutes later, after continuing to make little progress on funny, I filled in the second one:

The good deed I want to do this year is donating blood.

I’ve given blood three, maybe four times in my life. The first one or two times were fine, as was the most recent time. But the second to last time, a few years ago… It took me 15-20 minutes to give the pint (twice as long as usual), and it involved, part of the way through, me starting to feel really hot and then light-headed. This was remedied in the moment by being laid back and something cool being placed on my head, and then me finishing the giving that way. But the memory stuck with me and planted a seed of fear that it could happen again. Yes, it probably didn’t help that I had ridden my bike to work that morning and that it was 30 degrees outside, and that I was still feeling somewhat cold when I walked downstairs two hours later to give 🙂 Such are the learning experiences of life. In any case. Donating blood. 2015. I could do that. Actionable and accomplishable. Card number two: done. And then the last card – what should I put? “The person I want to be more like this year is _______.” Pitbull was already taken. So were some other celebrities, including some with additions, like, “A less slutty version of Taylor Swift.” I had the card in my hand for ten minutes, at first still trying to think funny, and then trying to think anyone, when I found the most honest answer:

The person I want to be more like this year is myself.

My brother looked at it and said, “Philosophical.” I said something like, “It’s the answer that makes the most sense.” This one also doesn’t come with lots of ready benchmarks, but it captures a lot. I’ve gotten better at being myself, but I also know I can do more. It all boils down to fear and courage, and listening, knowing, and sticking with it. Being afraid, not being confident, being worried about what other people think, not listening to myself and what I really want to do and what makes me happy in terms of work, play, relationships, goals – all of that is not being myself. The person I want to be more like this year is myself. And that’s to say: not being afraid, being confident, not worrying about what others think, listening to myself and what I want and what makes me happy – in work, play, relationships, goals, and everything. 2015 is going to be the best year yet, and part of the reason is because I’m going to be like myself even more.

On Saturday morning I was walking around town and saw a flier that said, “Blood Drive: Sunday January 4, 2015 – 9:00 am to 3:00 pm.” By the time I saw the flier again later in the day, at another spot, I already knew I was going to do it. I felt a small current of memory fear, both then and the next day, but that was to be expected. When the appointed time came around on Sunday, mostly the good history repeated itself. It took me 10 minutes to give, and I felt good (I only got just a little warm right at end when the machine beeped, saying I was done). So, I may have gone running three hours earlier in the day before giving. But – I did have a lot to eat and drink right after running, and I also got more ready this time. And it worked out.

The forearm selfie: harder than you’d think

Happy New Year! Thumbs up to 2015.

In the garden, looking back, looking now

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I got the call about two and half weeks ago. It was the Recreation Department, letting me know the community garden season would be ending soon. It was time to clean up my plot so they could rototill and prepare the garden for the winter and next year.

Listening to the message, one of my initial thoughts was, I could have planted more, weeded more…written more. There was the basil to cook with and write about, the tomatoes to see ripen, and the sunflowers to watch grow and bloom. But that’s okay. I’m writing now, and right now I’m thinking about the pictures and words that will follow here, from my recent last visits to the garden. I’m also thinking about how later on, should a thought or recipe bring a garden moment to mind, I can revisit the garden at those times, too.

This is not how the garden looked this past weekend, one week into November. But before getting to the present, I wanted to share a little warmth from the past.

The morning glories had a good time with the sun, too. These pictures were all from early September.

The interesting thing about my last visits to the garden – there was a brief stop during a morning run, the day after the call; a longer visit a few days later, to look in again; and two final trips last weekend, for the final clean-up – is that even though it was a more muted scene, with browns and fleeting greens before the final frost, there was still a lot to see and think about.

A week and a half ago, from a few yards away, this is what I saw:

The exterior scene matched my expectations – I knew it would look a little overgrown and tired, and take on a subdued palette – but then, upon walking around, and in, the garden, I realized there was more. It wasn’t from seeing up close the morning glory seeds that I knew I was going to collect, or from considering the collard greens that had leaves yet to harvest. It was the flowers. There were a few persistent flowers yet. There were a few morning glories and some radish flowers.

How often do you get to see a radish flower?

I must have seen some radish flowers earlier in the year, but now in November, with fewer distractions, it felt like I was seeing them for the first time. The novelty reminded me of the obvious – when you let plants grow, whether by accident or design, they know how to take care of themselves. They do what they’re made to do – they flower, produce seeds, and foster the next generation. The radish is no dummy.

In this case, it was a combination of luck and purpose from which the radish flowers bloomed. I didn’t harvest all the radishes initially, and then later when the remaining ones were past their, shall we say, salad days, I had the thought, ‘The plants aren’t taking up too much room…Why don’t I leave them there and see what happens?’

For the radish-uninitiated, what happens is the following: the radish bulb sitting at ground level gets a little bigger, while the rest of the plant above ground grows a lot. In the garden this year, it was as if the radish plants were playing and ultimately winning a game of, ‘Let’s see how many branches and seed pods we can produce by the fall, to make sure there are more radishes next year and to impress curious onlookers.’

The following pictures are all from November, but they convey a sense of the progression.

Flowers,
Green pods,
Dried pods,
Seedlings, and
More seedlings.

I felt a little bad that these little ones wouldn’t make it much longer with colder weather and rototiller to come, but their presence was also reassuring. The radish plants, left to themselves, had produced some good seeds. As I was cleaning up the garden, I collected all of the dried pods. They filled up more than half of a quart-size bag – a decent yield from the four or so radish plants that had been left to grow.

If you’re curious as to how many radish seeds are in this many dried pods, I have an easy three-step process you can use.

1. Consider the yield from a smaller number of pods:

2. Consider the number of pods in the bag. As an aid, I’ll also give you the profile.

3. Use your best math skills to determine the number of seeds.

This actually worked for me in my eighth grade German class when my guess was within 10 and I won the approximately 243 Gummi Bäers in the jar. At a summer picnic this year though, when I tried to guess the number of candy bars in a large jar, I was way off. But radish seeds. And seed pods. And a quart bag. Now there’s a contest!

To be honest, the idea of inaugurating a radish seed contest was not in my head when I started writing this post. But now that we’re here — Let’s do it!

The Ultimate Radish Seed Contest

These will be the rules, and the prizes:

Guess the number of seeds by leaving a comment below.
For a tie-breaker and the second prize, also guess for the number of seed pods.
All seed-guesses must be at least 5 numbers apart.
It’s okay for guesses to go over or under the actual number.
The guess closest to the actual number of seeds wins.

First prize: A packet of radish seeds, plus a small original hand-drawn radish sketch
Second prize: A packet of radish seeds

The last day to guess will be Friday, November 21, 2014 – a week from today. Then I’ll open the bag and start counting. I’ll also draw a few pictures and then announce the results.

This is going to be fun. In fact, it already is. It also brings me back to the garden, thinking of the many different yields and everything the garden has to offer. There are vegetable yields, when you plant vegetables. There are flower yields, when you plant flowers. And along the way, there’s always more. There is a little help from a garden neighbor one day. There is trading extra plants another week. And there is practicing Spanish with some of the gardeners during the year. There are also sunflowers to enjoy. There are volunteer collards to appreciate. And there seeds to collect and play games with.

In addition to the radish seeds, I also collected basil, cilantro, and morning glory seeds during my last visit to the garden. The morning glory seeds are in another quart-size bag, and the basil and cilantro, clipped as dried stalks from the garden, are for now providing household decoration.

And so the garden ends for the year, but it also continues along with everything else. There are stories to write, pictures to draw, and future gardens to plan. And there are also, I will add, seeds to count.

Eggplant Parmesan, Part 3b

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So how much sauce can you make from this many tomatoes?

Let’s find out! And take a look at some pictures.

Part 3: Tomato sauce

So the recipe, as you may know, actually appears in the previous post. I enjoyed writing it, and it pretty much covers the important things. I think part of the art is making it your own – figuring out what you like and also improvising – and for me and tomato sauce, I often just take whatever I have on hand and go from there. The recipe is the process.

Among the many things I like about cooking, one is that that no matter what you do, it usually turns out alright in the end. And if something doesn’t work out, that’s okay too. Only have dried oregano instead fresh, or no oregano at all? It’s still going to be good. Or decide to let it simmer for an extra hour, on purpose or by accident? Still going to taste good. Or want to try a mix of yellow and red tomatoes? It’s going to look and taste good.

This time around, I had a mix of round slicing tomatoes, red plum ones, and a few small tomatoes too. Here are the steps and how everything came together:

Step 1

The first step is cutting the stems out of the large tomatoes. This makes it easier to peel and save the skins later on (after step 2). Because the stems on the plum tomatoes and smaller tomatoes are so small, they’re fine to stay in.

Step 2

The next step is boiling a pot of water and putting the tomatoes in. The purpose here is to crack and loosen the skins and to partially cook and soften the tomatoes.

Some recipes say to leave the tomatoes in for just a minute or two, to only work the skins (in which case more of the tomato-cooking/simmering will happen later), but I’ve been leaving them in longer, sometimes 15-30 minutes, meaning I’ll do some of the initial cooking during this initial step. This also makes it easier to break the tomatoes into smaller pieces later.

I take the tomatoes out of the boiling water when they’re half or more soft, but can still hold their shape. If the tomatoes are at different stages of ripeness and if some are large and some are small, they’ll be ready to be taken out at different times.

How about those cracked skins?

This is how the tomatoes looked after their hot water bath. When I measured the volume of this bowl later using water, I found that the bowl holds 160 oz. That’s ten pounds! That’s also the equivalent, in terms of 28-oz cans of crushed tomatoes, of more than 5 1/2 such cans.

Step 3

The next step is prepping the onions and garlic for the sauce. This means dicing and sautéing them in olive oil until they’re soft.

The onions

The garlic

The sauté

I used two large onions and three cloves of garlic this time. For the oil, I started with 1/2 cup, which might sound like a lot, but there was also a lot of tomatoes, and the olive oil helps to make for a richer sauce. If I were making a smaller batch of sauce, I might start with one onion and one garlic clove.

Step 4

After the onions and garlic are ready, transfer them to a large pot and add the tomatoes (after first having removed the tomatoes’ skins). Some recipes also say to remove the tomatoes’ seeds, but the seeds don’t bother me so I’ve never done that.

With the tomatoes now in the pot, at this point you can also break the them into smaller pieces using a wooden spoon, potato masher, or other kitchen implement that is up to the task. The tomato sauce can then be left to simmer while finishing the rest of the recipe.

Above is how the tomatoes looked (L) after removing the skins (R). I also poured out (and saved for another day) the extra tomato liquid so that the future sauce would be thicker. In this case, the extra liquid amounted to a full 32 oz.

Step 5

To make the sauce thicker, I also dice the tomato skins into a paste and then add this paste to the pot. I love this step.

I usually dice the skins by hand, but this time I used the food processor to save a little time. I measured the volume of the resulting paste above, and it was 13 oz.

Step 6

The second to last step is adding salt and pepper. I usually do 2 parts salt to 1 part pepper, but the ratio and exact amounts are up to you. Add a little, see how it tastes, add then add some more if you think it needs more.

I made a note while I was cooking that I added 1 tbsp salt and 1/2 tbsp pepper, but I think it actually might have been 1.5 tbsp salt and 3/4 tbsp pepper. Either way, it tasted good in the end. I also have a tendency to use less salt than others, so that’s another reason to try things out and see what you like.

Step 7

The last step is adding oregano and basil (or any herbs that you like). This time I used fresh oregano from my CSA share and fresh basil from my garden.

The oregano, diced

The basil, chopped

I usually add the oregano during the middle of the sauce simmering/cooking time. The basil, though, I add just a few minutes before the sauce is done. I think this helps the basil retain its presence in how the tomato sauce tastes.

Looks good, tastes good

And a close-up view of the looks good

In the end, the approximately 60 tomatoes that I started with helped produce 144 oz of sauce.

The tomato sauce

Time-wise, I let the sauce simmer on low heat for about two hours. Cooking the sauce for one hour or even less time also would have worked, but I wanted to make it a little thicker, plus it gave me more time to write 3a. In the end, here was the ingredient list that made it all happen:

60 tomatoes (various sizes)
2 onions
3 cloves of garlic
1/2 cup olive oil
1 tbsp salt
1/2 tbsp pepper
Leaves from 15 sprigs of oregano
1 handful of basil leaves

Next up is a look at putting everything together – eggplant, tomato sauce, and cheese: the Eggplant Parmesan.

Eggplant Parmesan, Part 3a

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I took a lot of pictures, as usual along the way, but first I’ll do words, with a post called 3a. It started with a line – I got inspired and free – and the rest came as I cooked, plus the plans for 3b.

Part 3: Tomato sauce

There are a lot of ways to make tomato sauce,
But if it’s summer or fall and I have the time,
I like to start off with them fresh,
In place of the canned crushed kind.

From the garden, farm market, and CSA,
I’ll get all that I need and be on my way.

Step one is the stems,
With a knife, cut away.
In a pot of hot water,
Place the tomatoes to stay.

For fifteen or thirty,
Have them sit in the boil,
It’s not the minutes that matter,
But the soft flesh from the toil.

When cooled, peel away,
The cracked skins from the rest,
And reserve for yet later,
To pass the use test.

Meanwhile, start the onions,
And garlic together.
Dice and set in a pan,
And sauté till they’re soft, much better.

And now the tomatoes,
Just before set aside,
Have them join the mirepoix,
For the sauce-making ride.

If they’re soft and cooked well,
The next step is easy,
With a spoon that is wooden,
Split them in pieces.

That cooks for a while,
Let it simmer, not quick.
With tomatoes so fresh,
That’s how to make the sauce thick.

And lest we forget,
About trick number two,
Dice the saved-skins really fine,
And add this paste to the stew.

For salt and for pepper,
What you like, you should do,
Also sounds like advice,
Not just cooking, life too.

Still, to note what I add,
When including this pair,
I trust two parts the former,
One the latter, all square.

The last step’s the herbs,
Oregano and basil,
Dice one and chop two,
And we’re done! Let’s make the plates full.

Are you hungry like me?
I could go for a dish.
We’ll save some for the eggplant,
That’ll be our tomorrow wish.

Getting Started with Eggplant Parmesan

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I’ve made Eggplant Parmesan about three times this summer, and I’m going to make it again this week.

Current view of my table

Come and make it with me! It’ll be fun. It’ll taste good too.

This time, I’m going to take it slow, one or two steps at a time (a day), so I can take pictures, write some notes, and fit in all the other great life things I also want to do at the same time, like reading, eating, hanging out, taking a community school guitar class (Tuesdays starting tomorrow!), riding, running, and sleeping and relaxing.

Here’s my plan: bread crumbs today on Monday (done!), eggplant slices tomorrow, tomato sauce Wednesday, and then awesome Eggplant Parmesan for dinner Thursday.

Let’s see how I (and you) do!

Part 1: Bread crumbs

For me, making bread crumbs starts with a trip to the Whole Earth Center to get a quality loaf of bread. Today I went for whole wheat.

Love that ingredient list, five items

The next step is to toast the bread. I recommend the oven for this step.

I did about 15 minutes at 250 degrees, which produces (using my oven) toast that on the outside is crisp and that on the inside ranges from similarly crisp to a tiny bit soft. The pieces towards the outside of the oven-rack nearer the flames are the ones that get crisper. These are also the ones that have a tendency to darken and/or burn, particularly possibly the first few times you try it before figuring out your preferred crispness, timing, and color.

The next and final step is to get out the big knife and chop! chop! chop! chop! chop! chop! chop! until you have lots of bread crumbs.

Actually, that’s what I used to do. And then I realized I could use the Cuisinart.

Before

After

After after

Back in the bag after

If I were saving them for another time, I’d put the bread crumbs in the freezer. As they’re destined for an eggplant date tomorrow, though, it’s in the fridge they go.

And that’s it for the bread crumbs and part 1. Pretty easy, right? Up for tomorrow is the eggplant – sliced, breaded, and lightly fried.

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