Overwintered Carrot Cake

My wife, the baker in the family, took one look at our recent harvest of overwintered carrots and knew what she had to make: carrot cake.

I know what you are thinking: There could hardly be anything more mundane than carrot cake. But trust me: once you've made it with carrots you've grown in your own garden, carrots that have been storing themselves in the ground and getting sweeter all winter long just waiting for you to think of something to do with them--once you have some of those carrots to work with your carrot cake will rise to something special indeed.

Plus, my wife does not make ordinary things. Her baked goods invariably are extraordinary. This particular carrot cake is infused with the flavor of ginger and topped with an orange-cream cheese frosting. We liked the first one so much (meaning it lasted until maybe the next day) that she made it again and cut it into these cheery little morsels to serve at our recent chilaquiles brunch. It wasn't long before the only thing left on the buffet were a few crumbs.

Here's the recipe as found in The New Best Recipe, from the editors of Cook's Illustrated:

For the cake:

2 1/2 cups (12 1/2 ounces) unbleached all-purpose flour

1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/8 teaspoon ground cloves

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 pound carrots, peeled

1/2 cup finely chopped crystallized ginger

1 1/2 cups granulated sugar

1/2 cup packed light brown sugar

4 large eggs

1 tablespoon grated orange zest

1 1/2 cups canola oil

Place an oven rack in the middle position and preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray a 13 by 9-inch baking pan with nonstick cooking spray. Line the bottom of the pan with parchment paper and spray the paper as well.

Whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, spices and salt in a medium bowl and set aside.

Shred the carrots using the shredding attachment in a food processor(there should be about 3 cups). Add carrots and crystallized ginger to bowl with dry ingredients and set aside. Wipe out food processor and fit with metal blade. Process granulated and brown sugars with eggs and orange zest until frothy and thoroughly combined, about 20 seconds. With machine running, add oil through feed tube in a steady stream. Process until the mixture is light in color and well emulsified, about 20 seconds longer. (Note: these steps could also be done using an ordinary box grater, a mixing bowl with a whisk and some elbow grease.) Scrape the mixture into a large bowl. Stir in the carrots and dry ingredients and mix until everything is fully incorporated. Pour mix into prepared baking pan and bake until a toothpick or skewer inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean, 35 to 40 minutes, rotating the pan from front to back halfway through the baking time. Cool the cake to room temperature in the pan on a wire rack, at least 2 hours.

For the frosting:

8 ounces cream cheese, softened but still cool

5 tabelspoons unsalted butter, softened but still cool

1 tablespoon orange juice

1 tablespoon grated orange zest

1 1/2 cups (5 ounces) confectioners' sugar

When the cake is cool, process the cream cheese, butter, orange juice and orange zest in a clean food procewssor until combined, about 5 seconds, scraping down the workbowl with a rubber spatula as needed. Add the confections' sugar and process until smooth, about 10 seconds.

Run a paring knife around the edge of the cake to loosen it from the pan. Invert the cake onto a wire rack, peel off the parchment and invert the cake onto a serving platter or cake stand. Using an offset spatula, spread the frosting evenly over the surface of the cake. Cut into squares and serve.

Overwintered Carrot Salad

When you've got carrots, make carrot salad.

We pulled about five pounds of carrots from the garden the other day, just getting ready for spring planting. Some of those carrots were roasted with parsnips. I turned some more into one of my favorite salads with dried fruits, nuts and a curry dressing.

This salad is so adaptable. I usually throw in some raisins and walnuts, but what I found in the pantry were dried cranberries and sunflower seeds. You could use almost anything.

For the dressing I like to mix mayonnaise with a mild vinegar such as rice vinegar. I was out of that, too. So I substituted champagne vinegar. Instead of sweetening it with sugar, I used mirin, the traditional Japanese sweet condiment.

Grate five medium-sized carrots to make about 3 cups (I use the large holes on my box grater). Add about 1/2 cup raisins or dried cranberries and 1/3 cup chopped walnuts or sunflower seeds.


In a separate bowl, mix 1/2 cup mayonnaise with 1/4 cup rice vinegar, 1 tablespoon mirin (or substitute your favorite sweetener to taste), 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil, 2 teaspoons curry powder, 1/2 teaspoon salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste. Whisk until smooth and adjust seasonings.


Stir just enough dressing into the carrot mix to coat. Serve at room temperature or slightly chilled. This salad will brighten up a casual dinner or a lunch next to a sandwich. I confess: I can't help snacking on it till it's gone.

February Harvest Dinner

Here's some of the venison we recently received in trade with one of the neighbors for pickles and other preserves we put up in the summer.

Apparently the neighbors have family with a farm in southern Virginia and have been plying us with venison in exchange for our home-grown produce. What they are most interested in are tomatoes. So this year we will be installing a couple of tomato plants in the garden that they can harvest from any time they like. In the bargain, we get a steady supply of the venison they harvest on the farm.

Call it town meets country.

I didn't do anything special with these venison tenderloin. After defrosting them a few days ago, I just wanted to make sure they got eaten. Season with extra-virgin olive oil, salt and pepper, grill on the Jennaire. I did have some leftover sauce from one meat dish or another to put a smile on that venison when it came to the table. The carrots and parsnips you see in the background are some of those recently harvested from the garden, roasted with thyme. Mashed potatoes round out the picture.

And I still have three portions of that tenderloin left over.

February Harvest

Carrots have stored very nicely in the ground. And since we've been experiencing a bit of a thaw the last week I went out and started preparing beds for planting. While I was digging around, I pulled up this lovely bunch, about five pounds worth.

We've been pulling occasional parsnips through the winter. These were planted last spring and were starting to show new growth on top. Time to pull them before they get too tough to eat.

Lots of beets as well. Some will go into our favorite beet salad with red onion and red wine vinegar. The rest we'll try to store. But not to worry. No chance they'll go bad. We love beets too much.

Winter Roots

It's true what they say: root vegetables only get sweeter when they've been frosted over.

For our cholent dinner over the weekend I foraged carrots and parsnips from the garden. They were planted last spring and have fully grown. I left them in the ground to make their own storage. The soil here in the District of Columbia is only modestly frozen, mostly near the top as a result of below average temperatures, down into the single digits at one point. For the second year in a row, I broke the handle on my forked spade prying the vegetables out of their beds. Last year I broke it trying to bury some kitchen scraps in my frozen compost pile. I have ordered a steel-handled spade.

Cleaning up my carrots and parsnips was somewhat more involved than usual, since the garden hose has been turned off pending a thaw. I have to fill a basin of water in the sink and scrub by hand. They clean up pretty nicely. Then they are peeled, cut on an angle, tossed with extra-virgin olive oil, salt, pepper and thyme and roasted in a 325-degree oven.

I swear, you will not find better root vegetable on any menu.

Homegrown Cholent

So many methods of making pot roast are disappointing. The meat too often comes out of the oven dry and tough. I've settled on traditional Jewish cholent as our preferred method of cooking a piece of beef shoulder for a long time, braising it in a heavy pot with beans and barley.

The result is something much more than pot roast, a gooey unctuous stew that goes straight to the soul and lifts the spirits on a cold winters night.

Traditionally, Jewish cholent was placed in a low oven just before sundown preceding the sabbath so there would be a warm, hearty lunch to serve the following day, when cooking was forbidden. I don't cook mine nearly as long--only five hours.

Last night we had friends over to help us eat a big pot of cholent made with chuck roast from our dairy--South Mountain Creamery--as well as cranberry beans from our own garden. On the side were roasted carrots and parsnips pulled in the morning from the soil where they are overwintering. They are even more sweet and delicious having been touched by the cold. For dessert, my wife served an intoxicating, flourless clementine cake.

Proof again that the simplest foods are the most satisfying.

Lunch

Assorted leftovers from the fridge, constituting a vegetarian feast:

Roasted parsnips and carrots, boiled potatoes, chopped spinach, sauteed mushrooms, canned baby peas. Drizzle with extra-virgin olive oil. Season with coarse salt and freshly ground black pepper. Dust with leftover grated parmesan cheese.

Preparation time: 5 minutes

Shopping: none

Season's First Choucroute

Choucroute as a recipe is less important than the people you invite to eat it with. So thank you Linda, Tom, Larry, Valca, Pete and Steve for joining us last night. Since we were all basking in the glow of Tuesday's election results, this also constituted our Kumbaya moment.

Choucroute is a classic Alsatian dish of sauerkraut and pork products but there is no single agreed-upon way to make it. In other words, don't feel you have to make it exactly as written in your picture book of French cookery. My own method starts with home-made sauerkraut, shown in the photo at left beginning with about 10 pounds of shredded cabbage and six tablespoons of pickling salt packed firmly in a heavy plastic bucket so that the brine that leaches from the cabbage rises over the top. Give it a month or more to finish.

I then hop on the subway to Capitol Hill to select my pork products from the local butchers: a smoked hock or shank, bacon ends, smoked chops, fresh pork belly if they have it and Kielbasa sausage and bratwurst. Then I get back on the subway and head downtown to the Cafe Mozart where the deli case holds weisswurst and lots of other goodies. Being made of veal, I'm not sure how traditional weisswurst is in choucroute. But we love it and so do all our guests.

The day before the event, I saute a large onion with some bacon grease at the bottom of our biggest and heaviest cookpot. Cook it until it is soft and lightly caramelized. Then I grate two Granny Smith apples (with skins) directly into the pot before adding about six cups of fresh sauerkraut. I stir in a teaspoon of caraway seeds and about a dozen crushed juniper berries. Then I push my smoked ham hock deep into the middle of the kraut, pour in a half cup of Riesling wine and bring the whole mess to a boil. Reduce the heat to the lowest setting, cover the pot and let it simmer for an hour or more until the kraut is soft, aromatic and unctuous.

But for this particular choucroute, there was something special: sauerruben, or fermented grated turnips, that have been mellowing in our refrigerator for the last year and a half. They have an other-worldly nutty flavor to go with the mild tang of fermentation. I added about two cups of that to my pot as well. The results were beyond anything we've ever experienced from mere sauerkraut.

While the pot is simmering, brown all of your other meats in a heavy skillet with a little cooking oil or bacon grease. These can be wrapped and refrigerated until the following day, when the sausages, the bacon ends, the smoked chops and the pork belly are all packed into the pot to wait until the guests arrive, when we turn the heat up to a gentle simmer and let those kraut and wine juices steam everything for about 45 minutes.

We loaded the finished kraut and meat onto a big platter and served it buffet-style with roasted parsnips and carrots from the garden, mashed potatoes and homemade apple sauce. All of the guests had brought various German wines and the libations did flow. Conversation was lively, interrupted by exclamations over the turnip-infused kraut.

For dessert, we plated a stunning sweet potato pie made by my wife the baker from sweet potatoes grown just outside the kitchen window. More about that anon. I am still recovering.

Lunch

Salad greens from the garden with grated carrot, cherry tomatoes and leftover hard-boiled egg.

Preparation time: 10 minutes

Shopping: none

Season with extra-virgin olive oil, white wine vinegar, a little salt, freshly ground black pepper.

Here's a question: Why are brown eggs more expensive in the grocery store than plain white eggs? The only difference between brown eggs and white eggs is that brown eggs are laid by brown chickens. My wife thinks this is simply a marketing scam perpetrated by the egg industry. Usually, we buy our eggs from a local farmer.

What do you think?

Ready! Set! Peel!

My idea for our final "food appreciation" classes of the year was to treat the kids to angel food cake. But if you read my earlier post, you know how that turned out. I needed a replacement concept, fast.

It occurred to me that we'd spent so much time peeling vegetables in recent months that it had become a sort of theme for the semester. Why not a peeling contest?

Before it was over, I would purchase 10 pounds of carrots and 15 pounds of potatoes. This is how it works: first, the carrots. Each kid gets a carrot and one chance to peel it while the rest of the class looks on and keeps time. One-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, three-one-thousand. And so forth. We work our way around the table.

There are skill as well as safety issues involved. Our first rule, above all else is, Don't get blood in the food! Surprisingly, after four classes completed the carrot peeling, we only had one nick. The kids have learned. Peel one half of the carrot first, peeling away from your fingers. Then turn the carrot and peel the other end in the same direction.

I think our fastest time peeling a whole carrot was seven seconds. Peeling potatoes is a different story. Only one contestant out of all four classes was able to peel a potato in less than 20 seconds.

Each winner received his own personal peeler. Then we served pound cake from Whole Foods with strawberries and vanilla ice cream. That's one way to end one heck of a year in "food appreciation."

Heat Wave Breakfast

Leftover quinoa pilaf with peas, fava beans and edamame, plus leftover chicken casserole with carrots in peas.

It's peas squared!

Preparation time: 5 minutes

Shopping: None

Just the thing to heat in the microwave after spending the very early part of the morning harvesting the rest of our peas, removing the pea plants and getting the vegetable bed ready for bush beans and climbing lima beans. It's forecast to be near 100 degrees here in the District of Columbia for the next several days. But with the humidity it will feel like 110.

Oh, we are pining for those cool, wet days of April and May. Seems like we have skipped right into August.

Stay cool, everyone. Be sure to wear a hat and sunblock if you must be outside. Otherwise, do your gardening at first light, before things heat up.

A Frugal Dinner

Rummaging through the freezer the other day, I came across snack bags stuffed with last year's carrots. They'd been cooked, stored and forgotten. I pulled some out to defrost and discovered they make a wonderful meal, simply heated in the microwave. The carrots are still tender and sweet--hard to tell they were harvested 8 months ago.

Toss the carrots with some leftover brown Basmati rice and fresh cilantro. Dress with red wine vinegar, extra-virgin olive oil, a little salt, some freshly ground black pepper. Voila: dinner.

Preparation time: 5 minutes

Shopping: none

Kids Make Carrot Salad with Toasted Soy Nuts and Asian Flavors

Here's a lesson in how guacamole turns into carrot salad.

I had every intention of showing the kids in my "food appreciation" classes how to make a classic guacamole. The plan was to use some of the ripe avocados that have been on prominent display at the local Whole Foods lo these past few weeks. But of course when I arrived at the Whole Foods to purchase the ripe avocados--oh, maybe an hour before class was scheduled to begin--that big display of avocados had completely disappeared, replaced by a new display of utterly green and rock-hard avocados usable maybe next week.

Quick! Think of something seasonal, something we can make in less than an hour! I scanned the produce department and my eyes landed on carrots. Carrots have many virtues, one of them being they don't have to be cooked to be good. They also get the kids involved in peeling and grating. So a carrot salad seemed the logical choice.

As the idea of a carrot salad began to take shape, I decided this would also be a good opportunity to find some sort of substitute for the walnuts I normally put in my carrot salad. We don't use nuts at school because of allergies, and I've been talking with the kids lately about things we might use to add a healthful crunch to our dishes that won't send anyone to the hospital. A visit to the bulk section turned up toasted soy nuts. To be honest, I have never used toasted soy nuts before. This was good a time as any.

I had already planned to use lemon in the salad, then started to lean Asian because I like the way lemon and rice vinegar go together. I picked up a bottle of mirin, to add sweetness. And when I arrived at school and scanned the contents of our pantry, I found a wee bit of toasted sesame oil in the cupboard. From there we tentatively improvised our carrot salad dressing, measuring some of this and some of that, and finally tossed it all together.

1 pound carrots, peeled and grated
1/2 cup toasted and salted soy nuts
1/2 cup black raisins
1/3 cup mayonnaise
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon rice vinegar
2 teaspoons mirin
1 teaspoon toasted sesame oil
1/2 teaspoon salt

Toss carrots, soy nuts and raisins in a bowl. In a separate bowl, whisk together mayonnaise, lemon juice, rice vinegar, mirin, sesame oil and salt. Pour dressing into carrot mix and toss thoroughly. Serve room temperature or slightly chilled.

Note: Mirin is a classic condiment and seasoning in Japanese cuisine, typically sold in the Asian section of most supermarkets. It is very sweet, and usually contains alcohol. The version we used contains 8 percent alcohol.

The Thing About Carrots

Last night I was making the simplest possible dinner, but of course daughter is eating off an entirely different menu--no salad for her--so I put on a pot of carrots to boil.

"No, Dad!" she screamed in horror.

"What's wrong?" I inquired.

"You know I don't like carrots!" she stormed.

"Since when do you not like carrots?"

"I mean, I don't like carrots cooked," she said in her most didactic tone. "I only like them raw. How many times do I have to tell you?"

She's awfully bossy for an 8-year-old, that daughter of ours. I just threw up my hands. So Mom stepped in, quickly drained off the carrots and we sat down to our dinner: potatoes smothered in coq au vin sauce, for us, potatoes not smothered in coq au vin sauce--and raw carrots--for daughter.

Truth is, I had originally thought of grating those carrots raw and turning them into a carrot salad. A mental picture of the salad--a little mayo, some raisins, a little curry powder--had flashed across the back of my brain pan for a nano-second. And that, for some reason, was enough to send me on a carrot jag from which I still have not fully recovered.

We plant a lot of carrots. In my usual fashion, I had to have one of every kind and my first efforts consisted of mixing all the carrot seeds together and sealing them in a paper envelope. A snipped off one corner of the envelope and whenever I needed to plant more carrots, I would simply remove the envelope from its place in the crisper drawer, pour some of the seed mix out of the snipped-off corner and scatter the seeds in the garden bed.

As you might imagine, I had some pretty ungainly growths of carrots. There were fat carrots, skinny carrots, thumb-sized mini-carrots, orange carrots, yellow carrots, red carrots. You could spot the yellow carrots from a distance: They sent up incredibly thick, robust foliage and seemed to grow twice as fast--and big--as the other varieties.

But it turns out no matter what color or which size, carrots all taste pretty much the same. I am starting to think variety is not as important as the seed catalogues would have you believe. Maybe focusing on making really good soil for the carrots, planting them on a regular schedule and harvesting them before they get woody and tough would be a better use of my time.

We don't give carrots much thought, yet they are so important to so much of what we cook. Onions are ubiquitous (can you imagine cooking without onions?) Carrots come in close behind. Two days ago I made a split pea soup. The soup would not have been complete--would have been terribly lacking--without onions and carrots. It cooked for a long time, that soup, and I could not help admiring the way the carrots held their shape--cut into little dice--to the very end of the cooking process. I scopped one up with a spoon and even after four hours on the stove it still had the sweet, fresh taste of carrot, as if I'd just pulled it out of the garden.

Yesterday I made a pasta sauce with ground pork. After the pork browned, diced onion and carrot went into the pot. You don't always see carrot in pasta sauce. But I wanted this one to have it. Maybe I've just had carrots on the brain. But somehow a sauce with friendly bits of carrots in it puts a smile on my face, as if the garden were speaking to me through my pasta.

Yes, we take carrots too much for granted. We toss them into the mix of our roasted root vegetables with hardly a second thought. We dice them up for our mire poix as if they were just another aromatic. We unconsciously slice them on an angle for a stand-alone side dish or as a vegetable buddy for our beef stew, knowing but not consciously acknowledging how handsome they are sliced just so, and how pathetic they would look cut into silly little rounds.

But now that it is January, the worst that could happen has come to pass: There are no more carrots in the garden. I actually had to buy some in the store. In fact, I had harvested all of our carrots before winter set in, cooked them and froze them in individual bundles. We have bags of sliced carrots the daughter will not eat.

I see carrots in my future. But you know what? I'm not complaining.

Kids Cook Caramelized, Sweet & Sour Brussels Sprouts and Carrots

Preparing a menu for the recent parents night dinner at the elementary school where I teach "food appreciation" classes, I looked over our lessons for the fall and realized I did not have a green vegetable for the entree plate.

Well, the closest thing would have been zucchini. But since the whole point of our work this semester has been seasonal fruits and vegetables, I didn't think zucchini in November really worked.

What did seem to work was my favorite method for cooking Brussels sprouts--searing them in a scorching hot pan, then dousing with red wine vinegar and seasoning with granulated sugar. I wanted to add some carrots for color and variety. Voila, one of my newest most favorite vegetable side dishes: caramelized sweet-and-sour Brussels sprouts and carrots.

Since we'd already served the dish to the parents, I thought it was high time the kids actually made it in class. So that is what we did this week.

I've had the kids in my classes repeatedly practicing their vegetable peeling technique. This is no small matter, since they should all know at a minimum how to properly peel fruits and vegetables. In the case of carrots, I've shown them how to make slow, sure strokes with the peeler--not whack away with the tool getting nowhere--and how to peel one end of the carrot, then turn it around and peel the other end. The first inclination kids have is to try and peel the whole carrot, being ever so careful not to remove the end of a finger in the process. Flipping the carrot end-over-end really does speed things up.

The Brussels sprouts are another thing altogether. I demonstrated how to trim the brown stem end, then cut the sprouts in half lengthwise. But the only cutting tool we have plenty of for the kids is a plastic knife. Have you ever tried slicing a Brussels sprout with a plastic knife? Naturally, it's almost impossible. So the kids get several minutes to saw away at their sprouts, making very little progress, then I take over and slice them with a chef's knife.

Still, I think it's good practice for them.

We then cook the carrots and sprouts--separately--in boiling salted water until they are just done. Plunge them into a bowl of cold water, then dry them with paper towels. My assistant finished cooking the sprouts while we read a book called Herb, The vegetarian Dragon. Then I heat an iron skillet blistering hot, cover the bottom with extra-virgin olive oil and toss in the sprouts, sending a great cloud of smoke rising toward the ceiling.

(At this point, one group of kids was captivated by the aroma of the pot liquor I had been cooking the vegetables in. Before I knew it, they were ladling it into cups and drinking it. Why not?)

We don't have a fan over the stove at school, so the other teachers at this point are in a bit of a panic. The kids think it's the best thing since the circus came to town. More exciting is when the sprouts have browned and I douse them with red wine vinegar, which creates a giant hissing noise and a cloud of steam. Then season the sprouts with granulated sugar, salt and pepper. Repeat this process with the carrots, then combine the two vegetables in a bowl and serve warm.

Honest, the youngest of the children--those being the four and five year olds--mostly walked away from this dish when it was served. They found a million reasons not to like a combination of browned Brussels sprouts and carrots. In the next age group, the kids were talking about how certain they were the sprouts would make them vomit. I offered a $1 reward to the first kid who actually up-chucked after eating this dish. One of the boys made a great show of being sick, but in the end, they all ate it and some even loved it.

So do make this dish sometime when you want to impress friends with how good Brussels sprouts can be in the middle of winter.

Golden Days

Enough talk. Let's eat.


All told, I've been away from the garden a full month this season. Long enough for the cucumbers to swell to bursting, the okra to get tough as wood, the beans to shrivel on the vine.


But last night we cut through all the whining, determined to make a meal of our labors. First, the carrots. I used to just scatter the carrot seed in patches, but I was never one for thinning the sprouts. So I've gotten smarter and started poking small holes, adequately spaced, in the soil with my finger, then planting the seeds one-by-one.


We have three carrot patches now, planted in succession with many different varieties, and the ripest one was in full bloom. For some reason, the yellow carrots are the first to bolt and the most temperamental where ripeness is concerned. So I went after the flowering carrots first and sure enough that yielded a bounty of goldens. These and the few traditional carrots I cleaned, peeled and grated into a curried carrot salad with apples.


The dressing is simply mayonnaise mixed with some homemade chive vinegar (or white wine vinegar), lemon juice, extra-virgin olive oil (you could use a lighter oil, such as grapeseed or walnut oil), curry powder, sugar, salt and pepper. I usually add raisins as well, and you could throw in some toasted almonds or walnuts, but I was on a mission and forgot.


Note: Harvesting and cleaning carrots is fun but labor intensive. It helps to have a helper.


Next, the beets. I had wonderful success last year with fall Chiogga beets, but darned if I can get the spring-planted beets to do much. They only want to grow so large, then they stop growing and just sit there soaking up the sun. I think I need more organic matter in the soil. But in another area with well-amended soil, I planted golden beets and these have thrived. I started pulling a few of them and some proved to be enormous. After cleaning and trimming, I set them to cooking in a large pot of water until tender.


Remove the beets to cool. When they can be handled, rub the skin off and trim the remains of the green tops. Cut into slices or wedges, then dress with extra-virgin olive oil, red wine vinegar, salt, pepper and chopped chives from the garden. Even better, add wedges of ripe red tomatoes and slices of red onion.


Finally, I have to say I am kicking myself a little over our dark Italian kale. It was doing fabulously--it was far and away the star of this year's garden--even after we'd been gone in Mexico for two weeks. That is, into the beginning of August. But a terrible heat wave descended on the District of Columbia lasting several days while we were away in Maine and the plants suffered a mighty scorching.


The harlequin beetles were moving in for a feed--a sure sign that the Brassicas are done. So I pulled all the plants out of the ground one-by-one and selectively culled the leaves that had not been too terribly affected. What I harvested was a mere fraction of what the plants had actually produced. But such are the consequences of being absent from the garden at the precise moment when it needs your attention. My timing, in other words, is pretty atrocious.


Nevertheless, what we had was enough kale for several meals. To salvage the lot, I just put a large pot of salted water on the stove to boil, trimmed the ribs out of the kale leaves, roughly chopped them, then cooked them at a very low boil until they were tender, about 30 minutes.

Most of the cooked greens I would pack and store either in the fridge or the freezer for later use. For our meal, I sauteed some onions from the garden, then some hand-crafted, hickory-smoked bacon. I then chopped the bacon and put that and the onions and three generous portions of the greens into the skillet with the bacon grease and heated it all through with a splash of apple cider vinegar, salt and pepper.


So much for cooking. Now, time to sit back and enjoy the view. Since starting the garden, we've had a family of goldfinches come to visit, now for the second year. One of them was perched atop the cone flowers, digging for seeds. When we sat for dinner, we noticed out the window that a squirrel had found a way to hang upside down at the top of the 10-foot-tall sunflower stem, and was munching away on the seeds.

Seems there's enough to go around for one and all. Bon appetit, everyone...