Look What's Coming Out of the Ground

Excuse me while I gush over my fava beans. They are one of the first plants to emerge in the spring and they also happen to be one of the most interesting. As they grow, favas assume an architectural yet almost prehistoric looking structure. You would hardly know they were a bean. Yet these are the original beans of the Old World, the so-called broad bean. We love to smash them with peas and Romano cheese and smear them on bruschetta.

The peas are coming up. There's a long row of them in a bed where I plan to plant mostly beans this year. As they get taller, I will drive wooden stakes into the ground and tie string to give the peas something to hang on to with their little tendrils.

The leaf lettuces have all germinated, along with the radishes and all of our brassica greens: arugula, mizuna, tat soi and mustard. We are seeing the first signs of the new Swiss Chard as well as beets. Carrots take long time to germinate and we are still waiting to see the parsnips and burdock emerge.

Some weeks ago I planted seed trays with four heirloom varieties of tomatoes: Cherokee Purple, Mortgage Lifter, Dr. Carolyn (a golden cherry tomato) and Roma. They've already been moved into larger pots and are towering over the bell peppers and eggplants. We have a few broccoli plants and kohlrabi, as well as many little parsley, cilantro, dill and chervil. They will be strategically placed in the garden so that we have a steady supply of fresh herbs. The cilantro will bolt quickly, of course. That's one herb that doesn't take very well to our hot summers here in the District of Columbia and needs to be planted repeatedly.

And for the first time we've planted onions from seeds. In the past, we always started our onions from small sets, but they never seemed to get very large. Every day lately I've been carrying the trays of onion plants outside for sun, but it's been a cool and often dreary spring this year. (Great for the spinach, another favorite that's quick to bolt in the heat.) We've seen frequent rain and wind. We should be transplanting the onions soon.

This is one of those traditional times when the garden isn't yielding much in the way of ingredients for our kitchen. But there is great hope and lots to keep an eye on. Meanwhile, we are still eating last year's pickles.

Food Lessons for Hard Times

To hear the economists tell it, times may be getting even worse before they get better. Some people have already been forced to tighten their belts. For others, it's time to think about tightening belts even further. Still, there's a silver lining to these austere developments: Less consumption by us humans is better for the planet. It might even prompt people to start thinking of ways they can consume more wisely and tread lighter in the process.

For those of you looking for ways to eat smarter for less, here are some thoughts accumulated over the last two years writing this blog:

* Eat less. Not only will you pay less for food, your body will reward you with better health. With all the different kinds of diets admonishing you to eat that but don't eat that, we lose sight of the fact that the easiest way to lose weight is to cut back on portion size. The latest studies confirm that it's not carbs or proteins so much as the number of calories we consume that influences our waist lines most. Slimming down and keeping the weight off relieves all kinds of stress on vital organs, prolonging life.

*Stop eating processed and refined foods. There are many reasons to reject food from factories. First, they contain all kinds of chemical additives and industrialized oils that previously were never part of the human diet, such as corn and soybean oil. Processed foods also contain too much sodium, which contributes to high blood pressure. Refined grains raise glycemic levels, a cause of diabetes. Despite these health consequences, corporations such as General Mills and Pepsi think of all kinds of ways to persuade you buy their products because the extra money you pay for them earns profits for their shareholders.

* Buy from the bulk section. The previously mentioned processed foods all come in packaging, much of it plastic made from petroleum, that just ends up in the landfill. Even if you recycle paper and cardboard packaging it's still more environmentally friendly to purchase foods that don't have any packaging at all. And you pay extra for the packaging. These are all good reasons to buy your foods from the bulk section whenever possible. If your local store doesn't have a bulk section, talk to the manager and urge her to start one.

* Buy whole foods whenever possible. Unfortunately, the federal government does not subsidize the growing of healthy fruits and vegetables the way it subsidizes the growing of corn and soybeans. That means the most nutritious food at the grocery store is the most expensive, while the foods that are most harmful are the cheapest. Still, the best source of nutrition is food that has not been adulterated in any way, the stuff you find in the produce section. Potatoes and sweet potatoes, broccoli and cabbage, carrots and parsnips--they are all loaded with good nutrition. So are whole grains of all kinds and dried beans. If you can afford it, start buying your produce from the local farmers market. Not only will you know exactly where your food is coming from, you will be helping to support your local agricultural economy, not some giant agribusiness a thousand miles away.

* Eat less protein from animals. Our bodies must have protein, but we've grown too accustomed to getting it from beef cows and pigs and chickens. Feeding these animals in order to deliver them to your dinner plate is expensive and it has environmental consequences. Most animals for consumption are now raised on huge feedlots that produce tons of pollution that ends up in our waters and in our air. They and all the fuels used to feed and transport them contribute mightily to global warming. Try getting more of your protein from eggs--especially the kind produced on pastures instead of giant hen houses. Eggs are still a nutritional bargain, even when they're $4.75 a dozen at the farmers market. Also work more dried beans and whole grains into your diet. Together they make a complete protein and they are much cheaper than meat. The next step up would be chicken. Chickens (look for "pasture raised") are much more efficient producers of protein than cows or pigs.

* Stop buying wild-caught fish. Have you checked the price of tuna or swordfish lately? Prices have gone through the roof because there are fewer and fewer fish to be caught. Humans are rapidly destroying the oceans. If you must buy wild-caught fish, check first with a reputable rating agency such as the Monterey Bay Aquarium's "Seafood Watch program to make sure you are buying only fish that has been sustainably harvested. Otherwise, look for fish raised on farms in the U.S., such as catfish, tilapia, striped bass or shrimp. These have the further advantage of being cheaper than most wild-caught fish. Another excellent protein source is farmed shell fish such as clams, oyster and mussels. For my money, farmed mussels are a great seafood bargain. Just make sure they carry a U.S. or Canada label. If you are pregnant, breast feeding or otherwise concerned about having enough Omega 3 in your diet, be assured that there are other sources besides fish.

* Stop drinking bottled water. Bottled water is outrageously expensive and Americans throw away something on the order of 80 million plastic water bottles every day, to say nothing of all the fuel being used to make the bottles and transport them from factory to store. In most places, ordinary tap water is just as good if not better for you than the bottled variety. If you must drink water out of a bottle, save your last bottle and fill it from the tap.

*Stop drinking soda. Whether it's Coke, Pepsi or Mountain Dew, sodas are loaded with sugar that rots teeth and helps make people (especially children) fat. Americans consume way too much soda. Plus, sodas are a major contributor to our plastic bottle and aluminum can nightmare. Diet sodas are only marginally better, in that you eliminate the sugar. But in the process you consume industrialized chemicals posing as sweeteners. Is it possible we could grow to like water again?

* Don't eat out so much. It may not help your local fast-food restaurant if you start eating more at home. But the fact is food from restaurants and especially fast food joints is not particularly good for you and typically the portions are much bigger than what you need. It just helps put on unhealthy poundage. If you are using whole ingredients and healthy oils such as extra-virgin olive oil or canola oil, just about anything you make at home is bound to be more nutritious and likely cheaper than what you get eating out. Making food at home and sitting down to a meal at the dinner table also teaches valuable lessons to children and helps strengthen the family unit. Get your kids out from in front of the TV and into the kitchen helping you make dinner.

* Start a kitchen garden. You can solve many of your budget and nutritional issues by growing your own food. A package of broccoli seeds costs less than $3 and typically contains 300 hundred or more seeds. That works out to about a penny for every head of broccoli you grow. How does that compare to what you are paying at the store? There is very little in the produce section or at the farmers market that you cannot grow yourself, including all your most expensive favorites: strawberries, blueberries, asparagus, rhubarb, artichokes. There's nothing tricky about growing mounds of your own potatoes or sweet potatoes. Or beans and tomatoes. You can fill your pantry and your freezer with enough food for the whole year. Don't have a yard you can turn into a garden? Join your nearest community garden. And if there isn't a community garden in your area, start one.

Or perhaps you have some other great ideas for shaving the food budget? Feel free to leave a comment....

Breakfast II

A previous commenter suggested adding toast to fill out our breakfast. Well, we can do lots better than toast. We can add homemade corn bread.

This is the "Company Cornbread" from Bill Neal's classic tome, "Biscuits, Spoonbread, and Sweet Potato Pie." I made it using stone-ground white cornmeal and buttermilk from our South Mountain Creamery delivery. I had also made a big pot of smothered okra the day before (the okra are going crazy producing new pods on a daily basis this time of year) and when breakfast time rolled around walked out out the front door and picked a big, ripe Mortgage Lifter tomato.

Preparation time: 5 minutes

Shopping: none

Breakfast

Sauteed beet greens and sliced tomato.

Preparation time: 15 minutes

Shopping: none

Our favorite part of harvesting beets from the garden is eating the beet tops. They must be fresh, fresh, fresh. Then simply give them a rinse and toss them wet into a hot saute pan with extra-virgin olive oil. Season with salt and pepper and maybe a splash of red wine vinegar. They are meaty and delicious. A big, fat Mortgage Lifter tomato seasoned with grated Parmesan makes a great side.

Catching Up

We had great fun during our week off in Pentwater, Michigan. But the gardener has to ask himself whether he can really afford a summer vacation.

While we were away frolicking in the sun, our vegetables were working overtime. I returned home to a big bowl of Roma tomatoes. Another bowl of okra. Another bowl of cucumbers.

Granted, a bowl of this and a bowl of that doesn't amount to much in the grand scheme of things. But we are not about to waste food. There was nothing to do but put our heads down and start canning.

In the picture above, you see the Roma tomatoes after 15 seconds--in batches--in a boiling water bath, then stripped of their skins. After trimming the stem end, I chopped them all into medium dice, boiled them for five minutes then canned them in two quart jars with 45 minutes processing.

The okra also made two quarts of Texas-style pickles with garlic and fresh jalapeno pepper. The cucumbers made two quarts of "crock" pickles--quartered, seeded and put away in a brine of cider vinegar and powdered mustard.

The next task was start start weeding some of our overgrown beds. In the process, I collected close to 10 pounds of potatoes and enough beets to make a large quantity of our favorite garden salad: beets, tomatoes and red onion with a splash of red wine vinegar.

By this time, daughter was anxious to get in on the act. (We're into that dreaded zone of 10 days between camp and the re-start of school. What's an 8-year-old to do?) We used the forked spade to dig up carrots, and went on a tomato patrol. The Mortgage Lifters and Cherokee Purples are hitting their stride now, producing some giant-sized fruit that lines up on the kitchen counter for final ripening.

Finally, we have some panty hose to start putting our storage onions away. We need to figure a system for keeping potatoes in our space-challenged pantry. We are eating pickles like mad, but not fast enough to prevent a pileup of filled jars.

And it's almost time to make room for fall plantings. The fun just never ends.

Great Big Vegetable Challenge: The Book

A package arrived from Great Britain yesterday and look what was inside: the cooking adventures of our friends Charlotte and Freddie at The Great Big Vegetable Challenge blog, in three-dimensional book form.

It's been great fun watching the blog unfold with A to Z recipes aimed at getting children to partake of the vegetable kingdom. Charlotte must be ecstatic to see this brilliant concept materialize in book form, complete with recipes and photographs.

As Charlotte explains in the introduction, dinner with Freddie frequently had been the nightly battle that so many parents experience. But instead of allowing the food fight to degenerate into a complete meltdown, Charlotte decided to turn mealtime into an adventure, with Freddie helping to devise clever dishes and then grading the results. As many adults discover, bringing kids into the process often succeeds where all the arguing and haranguing fail.

I would also like to point out that the recipe for slow-cooked green beans was borrowed from yours truly, and that Freddie rated it 8 points out of 10. The book's other recipes are all worthy of consideration. We are not talking Jello molds with smiley faces or other dumbed-down kiddy stuff. Charlotte and Freddie did their homework to come up with real food made with serious ingredients. But you might want to start with "Veggie Lipsmackers," which translates as vegetable and fruit juice popsickles.

Meanwhile, as if to underscore the point, here's a picture of daughter last night preparing to run away from home after rejecting a dinner offering quickly assembled from the contents of the refrigerator: hamburger, broccoli and sweet potato salad. Daughter normally likes broccoli, but last night it was, "I never liked broccoli!" Her plan was to seek asylum at a friend's house, but she turned back when she realized she would have to cross the street--something she does not yet do on her own.

Apparently "The Great Big Veg Challenge" is still looking for a U.S. publisher. Meanwhile, you can find it at Amazon UK, along with a more complete description. And you can visit the original blog.

Congratulations, Charlotte and Freddie! What's next?

I'm Not Sure I'm Ready for My Closeup, Mr. DeMille

Would somebody please shoot me next time I agree to do a film about growing a vegetable garden?

Yesterday I spent seven hours in the sun without a break with a cameraman from MonkeySee.com trying to tell everything there is to know about growing vegetables in 12 three-minute clips.

The clips are entirely unscripted. I work extemporaneously from a bare outline and there is the constant threat that I will leave something vitally important out of the footage.

The format seemed to work alright last year when we filmed a series about composting. (It is available for viewing in the column on the right under "videos." MonkeySee is all about posting how-to videos on the internet.) I felt pretty comfortable talking about one of my favorite subjects. I felt I could have used another month of preparation and rehearsals before taking on the whole world of vegetables. But the folks at MonkeySee were anxious to get this thing in the can NOW and there wasn't a lot of advance notice.

Funny, I don't remember being interrupted every five seconds by passing cement trucks and helicopters overhead last year. I can't count the number times we stood idle yesterday, waiting for the traffic light to change because a car was stopped at our intersection with a Bob Marley tune playing at ear-splitting decibel levels. Or the worker across the street welding a fence and grinding away with his metal grinder. Or the neighbor out trimming his lawn with his electric lawn trimmer. Or the passersby passing by on the sidewalk, shouting into their cell phones.

At one point, a curious postman walked into the middle of us filming a clip. "Are you on TV?" he asked.

Come to think of it, there's a lot of noise we just grow used to living in the city that makes a cameraman on a film shoot want to tear his hair own.

There was a scene transplanting a tomato plant that I completely muffed. I bought this tall, lanky thing at Whole Foods and after explaining that it was a perfect candidate for laying on its side in a trench, I went ahead and tried to dig a deep hole for it anyway, explaining that the hole would be a great way to get compost down deep into the soil. Well, when I put the tomato plant in the hole, it was still too tall and lanky and just flopped over. Dang.

And how are you supposed to film the seasonal movement of the sun across the garden plot? The point is, you really do have to think about where the sun is going to be at any point in the growing season. It can easily be shaded out by a big tree that was bare in December, but now is casting a long shadow over your squashes.

There I was, waving my arms at our tall house, trying to explain how it figures into our planting scheme. The cameraman trained his lens on a row of peas that runs east to west. The easternmost plants are in bloom, the westernmost plants several days behind, all because of the hour's difference in sun they receive when the sun disappears behind our roof.

And what kind of vegetables do you film the first week of May? Well, my mustard greens have come up in a riot of greens and reds. I've got patches of lettuces, incredibly tall garlic, some very happy potato plants and blooming favas and chives. But you won't see any big, juicy tomatoes or record-size zucchini. That's all months away. Instead, we filmed me planting a tomato seed in a peat pot for a section on starting seeds indoors.

Being a garden guru is physically gruelling. There's me on my hands and knees harvesting rhubarb. There's me on my hands and knees spreading mulch. There's me on my hands and knees transplanting a jalapeno pepper. Filling buckets of compost. Digging holes. Running after tools and the water hose. Up, down, up, down, up down.

And that wide-brimmed hat that was supposed to keep the sun out of my eyes? The camerman never ceased to remind me to push it back on my head. It was creating too much shadow on my face, he explained. So now I'm squinting into the sun, feeling like some sort of gardening Pancho Villa.

By the end, the cameraman and I were both a little loopy. Three Ibuprofin later, I'm still aching all over. And this is all done on a volunteer basis, mind you.

I'm counting on digital editing to perform a miracle.

Time To Clean Up And Plant

Daughter heard I was working in the garden and rushed out to help. We're calling eight the Age of Enlightenment.

This area of soft, loamy soil is designated for parsnips. (And, no, we don't use Kirkland brand laundry detergent. We scavenged the bucket from a local dumpster.)

Winter Garden Miracle

It's the middle of February and we've experienced some of the coldest temperatures of the season. The garden should be dead, or at least dormant, right?

Not so.

As I walk around our kitchen garden here in the District of Columbia, the signs of life are everywhere. Some of that is new: the rhubarb we planted last year has begun to send up new leaves. They are bright green, nearly flourescent, and crinkly fresh like a newborn these rhubarb leaves. One wonders what on earth the rhubarb plants are trying to prove, sprouting in the middle of winter. Obviously, this is what makes rhubarb a dish we look forward to in the spring.

But much of the greenery I see in the garden now was planted last fall. It has not gone away. Turnips, rutabaga, beets, Swiss chard: all are holding on, even thriving. There are mustard greens as well, and arugula, sorrel and parsley. I would have given them all up as a lost cost months ago, except this morning with the temperature just above freezing I plucked a mustard leaf and it exploded in my mouth with fresh, peppery flavor and a wonderful, icy juiciness. How can this be?

Certain plants not only tolerate cold temperatures but have an incredibly strong will to live. I've noticed these plants actively respond to the weather with their own coping mechanisms. When the temperature drops below freezing, the turnips and rutabagas and beets go supine. Their stems droop and the leaves fall to the ground. They will remain that way as long as the freeze continues. But then, as the temperatures climb, the plants reach for the sun and become erect again. The leaves regain their structure and glossiness. They look good as new.

I notice that the turnips are swelling. The rutabagas, too, but more slowly. Even the lettuces that I thought had expired some time ago appear to have some life in them yet. And the chard are absolute champs. They keep coming back and coming back, although more slowly. I have already harvested them more than once.

I am not alone observing this phenomenon. Each week I look forward to a detailed e-mail from our farmer friend Brett who also provides our winter CSA box. Brett was a pioneer, one of the first in our area, I think, to grow and provide fresh produce throughout the winter. He has spent years breeding winter-hardy arugula and other greens. He seems to love nothing better than suiting up in his Carhartt overalls to pick greens in the depths of winter.

Every once in a while we receive a notice like this in one of Brett's e-mails: As indicated in last week’s email, there will be NO farm delivery this week. The crops need time to recover from the bitter cold of 8 days ago, so I am using this as an off week.

Notice Brett's use of the term "recover," for when the temperatures have been dropping to 14 degrees overnight, the plants do eventually recover and are harvested--even in January and February--for our CSA box. Brett recently wrote that he is beginning to plant fava beans and peas and carrots for harvest in June. In other words, life for the produce farmer continues straight through the winter. This is no time to turn out the lights.

So I am keeping a close eye on our own garden greens. The turnips appear to be ready for another Dark Days meal. Likewise much of the chard has grown large enough for one of our favorite braises. There is plenty of mustard and arugula to add to the salad bowl.

Even in February, the garden soldiers on, and life is good.

January Farmers Market

I try to visit a farmers market at least once a week to see what's being offered here in the District of Columbia in the depth of winter. The tone of the market changes when the temperatures rise above freezing. There is more bustle, more chatter--the food seems to come alive. This display of salad greens--no doubt greenhouse grown--would almost have you believe spring is near.

Maybe I'm imagining things, but it seems there are more vendors every week offering finished products. Besides the breads and breakfast croissants, there are pies and cookies.

We are near the Chesapeake Bay and that means crabs. They aren't really in season this time of year. But on Sunday mornings at the Dupont Circle farmers market--probably the trendiest market in the area--you can order a fried crab cake for breakfast.

There are several cheese vendors from Virginia and Maryland. Customers line up to taste the product. Here's a cream cheese dressed with hot pepper jelly.

The meat vendors were particularly busy yesterday. There was a line in front of Eco-Friendly Meats, where the coolers were jammed with roasting chickens, pork chops and a jumble of other cuts from locally raised livestock.

The mushroom vendor always seems to draw a small crowd of admirers.

The display yesterday was particularly yellow and gay.

The market is full of boutique goods at boutique prices. I'm always happy to see staple items for sale at more down-to-earth prices--onions, potatoes and these cabbages. I love braised red cabbage. These were $3 a head.

But I wonder who bought the carrots at $5 a bunch. Too precious for me.

Farmers Market Deep Freeze

There was a noticeable thinning of vendors and customers at the Dupont Circle farmers market as temperatures dipped into the low 20s. Everyone was bundled up against the cold. Even the vegetables were wearing their heaviest woollies.

You have to feel for vendors forced to stand for several hours when the wind is trying to bite off your ears. But some of us just have to have our weekly fresh yogurt fix. Me included.

I stopped by FreshMeadows, one of my favorite meat purveyors, for some pork shoulder. I have in mind a slow-cooked sugo for pasta later in the week. No pork shoulder here, I settled for ground pork. I should have known there would be several other vendors elsewhere in the market happy to sell me pork shoulder.

There are still fresh vegetables to be had in the middle of January. They've been covered with heavy mover's pads to keep them from freezing. One thing to be said for the cold: You don't have to wait in line to pay for your purchases.

Turkey Hash

You thought we were done with turkey?

We are coming to the end. But it turns out a 31-pound bird such as the one we butchered and served for Thanksgiving produces lots of meat, enough for several meals. I had frozen one of the wings and a drumstick together and recently defrosted them and spent a leisurely half-hour at the kitchen table picking off all the tender morsels.

The result is this hash, which started with some diced onion and a number of the crudite vegetables we displayed at a cocktail party last night, especially the baby purple potatoes and Brussels sprouts. After sauteeing the onion, I tossed in the other vegetables, cut into small pieces, and tossed over high heat with extra-virgin olive oil to achieve a little browning. Finally, I added the turkey, seasoned with salt and pepper and finished with some chopped parsley out of the garden.

To top it off, I poached an egg--a very fresh farm egg is best--and garnished with some grated Parmesan. This would make a fine meal anytime, breakfast lunch or dinner.

Kids Make Middle Eastern Garden Pickles

Kids love to prep vegetables. I mean the peeling and slicing and chopping. So I wondered if there was any way to construct a lesson for my "food appreciation" classes that might combine a mess of vegetables with my urge to pickle, pickling being a very seasonal activity right now, and we are all about being seasonal in our "food appreciation" classes.

I found the answer in a book called Quick Pickles, a kind of global survey of pickling techniques and recipes. There are pickles from China, Japan, Thailand, India, Central America, the U.S. and of course the kind of Old World pickles we are all so familiar with. There are also some fascinating pickles using ingredients you might not have thought of before--pickled peaches, mangoes, pineapples, turnips and cranberries, squash and sage. There's a wealth of ideas in Quick Pickles, and perfect for hour-long classes because these pickles don't involve canning or processing or any kind of exotic equipment.

The ingredient list for Middle Eastern pickles sounds a lot like the minestrone we made last week: carrots, green bell pepper, green beans, radishes, cauliflower, green cabbage, red cabbage, garlic cloves. The brine is a simple mix of white wine vinegar, water and kosher salt. Trim and cut the vegetables into bite-size pieces, then combine with the brine. Let everything sit for three days, then refrigerate. How simple is that?

One drawback to pickling is there's nothing after the lesson for the kids to eat. So I also brought some broccoli along for them to play with. Broccoli has such a bad reputation, but I find that most kids really like it, especially if they get to help with the preparation. I let them cut the broccoli into florets, which my assistant cooked in boiling salted water while we were reading this week's story.

I wanted to read Pickles to Pittsburgh, by the same authors who wrote Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. This is the story of two children who, inspired by a postacard from Gandpa, take off in a plane and find themselves in a strange land where the forests are made of broccoli spears and fruits and vegetables rain from the sky.

I suppose it's hardly surprising that the library here in the District of Columbia is not exactly overflowing with story books in which pickles play a central role. But I did find Pickles to Pittsburgh last year for our pickling session and hoped to do so again. The librarians searched high and low but could not find the copy of Pickles to Pittsburgh that was supposed to be on the shelves in the children's section. I had to improvise and ran across something called The Incredible Book Eating Boy, which does make some fascinating culinary connections as well as teaching the value of reading, as opposed to eating books.

Afterwards our broccoli was waiting for us, fresh out of the cook pot. I served it very simply, with just a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil and a dusting of parmesan cheese. Some of the kids balked at the cheese, but otherwise they agreed this was a most excellent snack.

Kids Love Minestrone

Sometimes I am utterly surprised and dumbfounded by what tickles the taste buds of the kids in my "food appreciation" classes. Turns out they are wild for minestrone.

This lesson concludes our study of fresh, seasonal summer fruits and vegetables. In the last month, we covered peaches in a peach cobbler, tomatoes with a fresh hand-made pesto sauce, zucchini carpaccio with goat cheese and cucumbers in a simple salt and vinegar salad.

It's a pretty sure bet that kids will love anything that smacks of dessert. They had mixed feelings about tomatoes and zucchini (they definitely like the zucchini sauteed more than they do the raw version) and they are more open to cucumber.

So who would have guessed you could mix those vegetables and more in a simple soup and they would fall crazy in love?

Minestrone, the classic Italian soup, incorporates so many of the vegetables we associate with summer harvest that it is a perfect match for a trip to the farmer's market this time of year. Onion, carrot, celery, zucchini, green been, potato, tomato, cabbage--this soup has it all. I can't think of a more healthful soup full of flavor and vegetable goodness.

I can recommend it even for the harried cook because it is so easy. Just cook the vegetables until tender in a heavy pot, add broth, cook a bit longer and it's ready to serve with a nice shaving of Parmesan cheese over the top. Of course, there is the matter of some vegetable prep, precisely why I chose it for my classes. The kids were all begging for a chance to use the peeler, to slice carrots and zucchinim, to help clean up.

With this lesson, we read a book called Soup for Supper, about a little old woman who lives alone with her vegetable garden, then one day encounters a giant who unwittingly steals all her vegetables for his soup pot. It's a bit dated, but fun for me to switch voices from wee little woman to big hairy giant.

Minestrone to serve 4 - 6 persons:

extra-virgin olive oil
coarse salt
1/2 small onion, peeled and diced small
1 carrot, peeled and diced small
1 stalk celery, diced small
1/2 zucchini, diced small
1 medium white or red potato, peeled and diced small
handfull of green beans, trimmed and cut into 1/4-inch pieces
1 cup cabbage, cut into 1/2-inch pieces then measured
1 quart chicken broth (preferably homemade)
1 cup water
1/2 14-ounce can cannellini or Great Northern beans, rinsed
1/2 14-ounce can diced tomatoes, drained
Parmesan cheese

Heat about 3 tablespoons olive oil in the bottom of a heavy pot. Add onion, carrot and celery, season with coarse salt (about 1 teaspoon) and cook until onions begin to soften, about five minutes. Add remaining vegetables and continue cooking a few minutes longer. Add chicken broth and water, bring pot to boil, then reduce heat and cook gently until the vegetables are completely cooked through and the flavors have melded, about 30 minutes. Add beans and tomatoes and bring back up to heat.

To serve, divide into warm bowls and grate Parmesan cheese over the soup. Serve with a thick slice of hearty bread.

Note: you can also stir pesto sauce into this soup.

Seasonal Vegetable Soup

People automatically think of soup as cold weather food, but this may be the best time of all for making a vegetable soup. The flavors of freshly harvested vegetables are brilliant and there are so many to choose from. Use the ones you have grown yourself, or check the awesome displays at the local farmers market.

I prefer to use chicken stock with my soups rather than plain water. There's so much more flavor in a good stock and I was so pleased with the way the stock I made a few days ago turned out. It was like Jello, and that is always a sign that you've incorporated plenty of flavorful collagen into the stock.

To get at the collagen in the chicken, I first divide a whole, free-range bird into pieces, then use a cleaver to cut those pieces even smaller through the bone, or at least give all the bones a good whack to crack them open. This exposes the interior of the bones where the collagen resides. The collagen oozes flavor and gives the stock a rich, unctuous feel in the mouth. Simply procede to make the stock as you usually would, including aromatic vegetables, thyme, parsley, bay leaf and a few peppercorns.

For the vegetables in our soup, I used several small- to medium-sized carrots from the garden, both yellow and orange carrots. I have quite a variety growing, so it was just a matter of cleaning and peeling whatever came out of the ground. They were incredibly fresh tasting. I also used two medium leeks, cleaned and thinly sliced, three stalks of celery sliced thin and a couple of cloves of garlic, smash and then chopped.

My favorite way to clean a leek is to first trim the dark green part, whittling it away as if I were carving a spear point until I start to see white. Then I slice the leek lengthwise all the way through, leaving some of the root end intact to hold the two long pieces together. Then wash the leek under cold running water, separating some of the layers to remove any sand or grit.

Cook the vegetables gently in a heavy pot with a couple tablespoons of extra-virgin olive oil. Season the vegetables generously with coarse salt (a teaspoon or a little more) to draw out their liquids. Cover the pot and continue cooking, stirring occasionally, until the leeks are soft. Now add 8 cups of stock and 1 1/2 cups chopped tomato, either fresh with the skins and seeds removed, or canned diced tomatoes.

Bring the soup to a boil, then reduce the heat and continue cooking until the vegetables are all cooked through and the flavors have melded. Add a bit more salt to taste if necessary. I did not add any pepper to this soup, preferring it just the way it was with the clean, bright vegetable flavors. You could also add green beans or potatoes. In fact, I had some cauliflower left over in the fridge and added that, broken into small florets.

You could serve this soup with a good rustic bread, sliced thick and toasted or grilled. But we had made a trip to the farmers market to check out the peaches and while we were there saw squash blossoms for sale. We had to have them, so we made squash blossom quesadillas with some fresh mozzarella we had just waiting in the fridge for such an occasion. It reminded us of some of the meals we've had with our friends in Mexico, very simple and casual but extremely satisfying.

Runaway Garden

A garden waits for no man and that should be perfectly clear. I wasn't sure exactly what to expect when we arrived home after two weeks in Mexico. Our friends Helen and Tomeika have been doing a great job of watering through the depths of summer in Washington, D.C. So everything is lush and green.

As I suspected, the tomatoes are already growing out of their cages. They are like wild animals, almost impossible to contain without constant attention. There were many cucumbers that had grown to almost enormous size, but not too big that they can't be pickled. (Wave for the camera, dear.)

The bush beans I planted obviously are not bush beans at all but climbing string beans with nothing to climb on. Otherwise the beans have been a bit of a disappointment this season. Not much production there.

More than anything, though, I am ticked at the okra. I planted burgundy okra for the first time and haven't been able to eat any of it. There were many pods on the plants this morning and I organized a meal around them. But when I began to slice them it was apparent immediately that they were old and tough and sinewy, even though they looked great. (The plants themselves are no more than 18 inches tall, very strange, since I am used to looking at okra at least a foot over my head).

I can't imagine a summer without okra, yet this may be one. Shame on me for not planting some of last year's seeds.

But enough whining. I pulled up several edamame plants loaded with beans. They could have been picked a week ago but still there was a ton of them. I blanched them in salted water, saved some for our drive to Maine and placed the rest in the freezer for later. Our daughter loves edamame beans, and so simple. She just pops them right out of the pod into her mouth.

The potato plants have wilted and nearly disappeared, many of them. So I fetched my forked spade to see what might be going on under the surface and sure enough scooped up a load of potatoes in all sizes, red and purple mostly. We have a 20-foot-long bed of potatoes so I figure we will be eating them for quite some time.


Dinner was supposed to be smothered okra with onions and corn, but since the okra was a bust I quickly changed course and opted for some dark Italian kale. We have plenty, and where I was once worried whether it would survive it is growing gangbusters.

To make a meal for four persons, or a side dish for six to eight, Start by sauteing some sliced onions out of the garden in extra-virgin olive oil, then lower the heat and add some minced garlic that has been "curing" the last three weeks since we harvested it, maybe four cloves. Cover with a 14.5-ounce can of diced tomatoes, including juices. Then remove the ribs from about 8 ounces of dark kale leaves, such as Lacinato. Slice these finely and add to the pot with some salt, pepper and apple cider vinegar. Cook over low heat until the greens are tender, at least an hour.

Remove the kernels from two ears of corn and place these in the pot as well for a few minutes. Meanwhile, cook separately a pound or so of freshly dug potatoes cut into chunks. When tender, drain these. To serve, spoon some of the greens over the potatoes, drizzle with extra-virgin olive oil and dust with Parmesan cheese.

Lawns into Vegetable Gardens

Food & Wine magazine this month awards an "Eco-Epicurean" award to architect Fritz Haeg, who has been bringing an artist's eye to transforming front yards into vegetable gardens.

In 2005, the Salina Art Center in Salina, Kansas, asked Lang to contribute to its show on food and society. Lang's response was to turn the front yard of a local family's home into a vegetable garden, complete with corn, okra and herbs. He called it, "Edible Estate."

Since then, Lang has established three more edible estates in Los Angeles, New York and London. The garden in London was commissioned by the Tate Modern.

Haeg places his gardens not among hippies or tree huggers, but in neighborhoods where they are guaranteed to provoke a strong reaction (as where people are obsessed with property values, perhaps?)

The Edible Estates manifesto at Haeg's website states: "Edible Estates is an attack on the American front lawn and everything it has come to represent.
Edible Estates reconciles issues of global food production and urbanized land use with the modest gesture of a domestic garden."

"I want kids to see these gardens and start to ask questions about where their food comes from," Haeg says.

A book about Edible Estates is scheduled for publication next year.

The Slow Cook is starting to feel even more proud of his own front-yard vegetable garden. Could it be that we are simply ahead of the curve?

Will Kids Eat Salad?

Looking for inspiration for the "food appreciation" classes I teach at a private elementary school here in the District of Columbia, I need have searched no farther than my own front yard.

There I have 15 different varieties of lettuce at the peak of Spring growth. All different colors. All different shapes.

But I was plagued with some doubts. Would the kids, who range in age from 4 to 13, eat my salad?

Naturally, there had to be more to this lesson that just throwing a bunch of lettuce in a bowl. I incorporated a quiz (we've been rehearsing for several weeks) about what, exactly constitutes a spring vegetable that might also be a candidate for our salad.

In other words, what would you put in your salad?

Tomatoes were a popular choice. We had to fudge a little on tomatoes, since they really aren't in season until at least July.

Cucumbers!

Nope, I said. Not till summer.

Corn!

Nope, not till summer.

Pumpkin!

Pumpkin?

Carrots!

Now that's more like it.

So what I brought to put in the salad were, in addition to four different kinds of lettuce in a variety of colors, and the aforementioned carrots, were:

Radishes
Celery
Fennel
Endive
Vidalia onion
Red cabbage
Cherry tomatoes
Goat cheese

The skill sets we'd be working on were not entirely new, but excellent to practice: peeling, grating, slicing.

Classes were divided into teams. Vegetable washing, peeling, grating and slicing commenced.

I'm happy to say that all of the kids in my classes are by now fairly comfortable with knives and graters, although the younger ones still need to be watched. Turns out they do an excellent job with a little guidance. Consistency of slicing still needs some work.

After all the vegetables were prepped, the kids took turns tossing them in a large bowl. Then on to something entirely new for them, a classic vinaigrette.

Nothing fancy. This is a lesson, after all, not a competition. Just a dollop of mustard, juice from half an orange, a squirt of white wine vinegar (But I don't drink wine! one of the boys lamented), a little salt, pepper, some sugar. Then for the really important part--incorporating the extra-virgin olive oil.

I explained what an emulsion is, how oil doesn't like to mix with water (or vinegar), how you have to start with just a tiny drizzle of olive oil and beat it really well until the liquid starts to shine. The mustard helps bind everything together. Once that's done, you can add lots more olive oil and continue beating really well until what you have in the bowl thickens and looks like salad dressing.

Everyone got a plastic spoon, tasted, and made suggestions for adjusting the seasonings.

Too much salt!

More sugar!

More mustard!

I don't like mustard!

Ewwww! What's goat cheese?

I was so pleased at how the kids then proceeded to gobble up their salad (only one 5-yeaer-old boy declined) that I decided to try this on my daughter at home. Surely she would gobble up her salad as well, right?

Well, she leaped at the chance to grate carrots and cut radishes. She buzzed right through the Vidalia onion. She was a little frustrated by the red cabbage (This is too hard for me...). Then, as I started to make the dressing, she began to complain.

"I don't like tomatoes!" she whined. "I don't like onion! I don't like mustard! I want pasta!"

It was the usual dinnertime struggle. And no amount of me saying how much the kids at school liked the very same salad made an ounce of difference. We were back to the same old argument.

"No dessert if you don't eat salad!"

We sound just like our own parents...

So I admire Charlotte at the Great Big Vegetable Challenge blog even more for tackling this kids vs. vegetables thing. What I'm thinking, though, is that it may not be so much the vegetables as the parent-child dynamic.

The kids at school eat their vegetables with hardly any complaints. There, I'm just the teacher. But as soon as it comes to our own daughter, the fighting starts. At home I'm The Dad, The Foil, The Adversary...

I'm starting to think it's more about a 7-year-old trying to establish her own territory than it is about food. Vegetables are not so much a food substance to be negotiated over as a trigger for the inevitable, generational power struggle.

What do you think?

Youth Garden Chef

That's our friend Helen showing baby Hazel some of her garden moves. Apparently, years of team shuffleboard back in West Virginia left Helen with a solid right-hand raking arm...

All kidding aside, Helen and I spent our first "action" morning at the Washington Youth Garden, located in the National Arboretum here in the District of Columbia, tending the soil and planting seeds for our "chef's garden."

I recently recieved an invitation from the good folk at the Youth Garden to join a rather select group of chefs who also grow vegetables. Wait--it gets even better. At some point we will actually be turning our vegetables into meals we can share with some of the families who also are involved with the Youth Garden.

The Youth Garden has a great program reaching out to local elementary school children with its gardening and cooking programs. It also opens its doors each spring to a certain number of families with children (22 this year) who are given their own garden plot to tend.

Then every so often a chef visits the Youth Garden to help prepare a terrific feast with all the vegetables that have been growing there.

This year, I will be one of those chefs, and Helen agreed to help. (Not only that, the Youth Garden found out Helen is an expert vermicomposter and immediately signed her up to talk to the kids about worms. In exchange, Helen gets a garden plot of her own. Today she planted some of her peppers.)

An object of this exercise is to envision a menu and plant vegetables accordingly. For some reason, I chose a Southern theme. My tastes just run in that direction. Plus, I already had a packet of peanut seeds at home. So we started talking about peanut soup, smothered okra, sweet potatoes, succotash...

Before you know it, we were raising a teepee (made of bamboo poles) for the lima beans. We also filled three newly constructed planters with the most excellent soil that the Youth Garden has only been amending for the last 35 years. We thought the planters would be just the thing for root vegetables, so we planted beets, carrots, parsnips, rutabaga, radishes.

I also planted some dill. I think we must pickle some cucumbers at some point.

There is also watermelon and possibly sweet corn in our future.

Oy! Smothered okra, cornbread and watermelon. I think Edna Lewis must be looking down on us and smiling...

P.S., for a great take on chefs working with kids, read Kevin Weeks' post at Seriously Good.

And for more information about programs at the Youth Garden, contact Courtney Rose, Educational Coordinator and Kaifa Anderson-Hall, Program Director at 202-245-2709.

Spring Bites for a Small Crowd

My assignment for today is to prepare "snacks" for at least 18 people.

The event is Day One of a two-day clinic for teachers who either preside over a school garden or would like to start one. Since building a large container garden at my daughter's charter school last year I've been roped into a leadership spot in an organization called D.C. Schoolyard Greening. There I mingle with several environmental activist types who mull ways to increase the number of gardens in D.C. schools.

And since I cook, I was nominated to put food on the table for the Powerpoint fest and tour of the U.S. Botanical Gardens scheduled for this evening.

I am impressed with the "Penny-wise Eat Local" challenge currently underway. And if I had any ready sources of local spring vegetables close at hand I would leap at the chance to put them into play. Absent the local stuff, I'm thinking seasonal. And since this is a gardening crowd, I will be leaning hard on the vegetable side.

Are you thinking of your own menu? The one that's coming into view for me starts with some poached asparagus and possibly blanched baby carrots. I would serve these with a green aioli spiked with garlic, mint, tarragon and dill. (I also make this with anise hyssop, but later in the season).

Secondly, I like the idea of artichokes, probably marinated artichoke hearts beaten into a spread with sauteed leeks, garlic chives from the garden and feta cheese. I would serve these with some kind of artisenal cracker.

Finally, I'm going to make our friend Larry's famous sweet onion sandwich rounds on brioche. I do believe Larry stole the recipe from James Beard. They are terribly decadent, these little tea sandwiches, with a dollop of mayonnaise inside, then rolled in finely chopped parsley. They are addictive and disappear like popcorn.

I inquired about brioche at Whole Foods yesterday and thought the clerk in the bakery section was going to take me home with him. He was so happy to talk about his brioche and how much he'd enjoy making a loaf for me. So I placed an order for one loaf (who knew you could order bread at Whole Foods!) and am scheduled to pick it up today at 10 am.

My wife, the baker, has offered to make heart-shaped brownies for this event, which will no doubt be the most popular item of all. Now we have to decide how we will be transporting this food to the Botanical Gardens, which of our glass and ceramic platters we might use to display our "snacks" and how to ensure everything makes it back home in good working order.

Catering still make me nervous. I don't care how many times you have done this, whether dinner for two or hors d'oeuvres for 1,000, feeding strangers is always like jumping into the abyss. There are so many things that can go wrong. They usually don't. Usually, you find a way to make everything turn out fine in the end. Still, there's always this anticipatory panic leading up to the event. I think most caterers, like busy restaurant chefs, relish the adrenalin rush. I don't. I am only a reluctant caterer. I would much rather have friends come to my house to eat so I can relax.

I will let you know how this turns out and tomorrow we can take a closer look at these onion sandwiches. If they turn out anything like the ones Larry makes, you will want to make these soon.