Garden Notebook: 8/6/2008

Thanks to squash borers, I pulled the last of the squash vines today. The potatoes have all been dug (about 7 pounds).  The harvest would have been much better had I done a better job hilling them up as they grew. I have started some new squash vines in hopes that they will have time to produce before frost. I picked my first two sweet peppers today (at the green stage) and a handful of cherry tomatoes. This afternoon I’ll be drying more parsley and basil. The green onions and seeds I started a week or ago are off to a good start. Still no cucumber. The one that I thought would develop first has shriveled and died. I don’t think pollination is the problem as I have lots of bees and other flying critters visiting.

Book Review: Home Grown Indiana

This afternoon, I posted the following as an Amazon review but wanted to share it here as well.

Home Grown Indiana by Christine Barbour and Scott Hutcheson

I have been eagerly awaiting the release of this book for a few months.  My copy arrived this morning and I can enthusiastically say, “The wait was worth it and the book is even more than I had hoped it would be!”
Unlike many of the books published today, the quality of the book far exceeds the price in terms of both the quality of the book itself and the content.

The book is divided into seven regions.  For each region Christine Barbour and Scott Hutcheson introduce the reader to Indiana places where food is produced with a personal and local touch.  They go far beyond the basic facts (e.g., address, website URL, hours, etc.) and introduce the reader to the people that put heart and soul into their product and the places that make that food homegrown.

This personalization and connection is sometimes accomplished through stories and biographical snippets.  For example, the entry for Cook’s Bison Ranch begins, “In 1939, Everett Cook invested $5,000 in 83 acres with a house and a barn.” Sometimes the entries are made personal through the inclusion of a recipe such as that for “Wild American Persimmon Pudding” which brings back childhood memories for Duane Smith of Walnut Grove Spring Water Persimmon Valley Farm.  In other cases it is the observations of the authors that add spice to the entries.  The combined effect is the feeling you might have at the end of an evening that included an excellent meal and even better conversation and laughter shared with good friends.

In some books the extra stories and observations might come at the cost of depth or breadth in covering the subject matter.  This is NOT the case in Home Grown Indiana.  Along with sharing the specifics about the producers of everything from caviar to cheese and popcorn to bison, Scott Hutcheson and Christine Barbour offer additional information on topics such as: ideas for eating local year round, the meaning of the label “organic,” what is meant by a CSA, and some of the issues surrounding raw milk.  They also include lists of farmer’s markets, wineries, microbreweries/brewpubs, places to eat local while dining out, and food festivals that can be found in each region.

The book feels polished and complete in large part because of the way it is indexed.  The book closes with a list of recipes, a index by county, and an index by product.

I was pleased to see several producers I know and rely on listed for Northwest Indiana but I found several new places to explore here in Northwest Indiana.  The book’s size is small enough to carry easily or keep in the car for unexpected foodie adventures and making the most of local foods when I find myself in other parts of the state.  I expect that like my nature field guides this book will soon be well-loved and personalized through notes and much use.

While the content of the book would have been reason to celebrate in any form, I appreciate the actual quality of printing as well. The paper is crisp and the clarity of the typeface is clear and easy to read.  The text fills the pages but with adequate space in the margins for making notes.  The page edges are coded to make it easy to locate the section pertaining to a specific region of the state.  Within each region the main entries are arranged alphabetically making it easy to look up the hours of a favorite producer.

Thank you Scott and Christine for creating this wonderful resource.  Now if someone would just do the same for Southwest Michigan.

One Local Summer Week 9

My one local summer meal for the week is a simple meal that started with local ingredients both old and new and a crockpot.  I started with:

• 1 whole chicken purchased from Farm Direct Meat at the Chesterton European Market that was taking up fart too much needed space in my freezer.
• the last of the garlic (two heads) purchased last season from “The Garlic Guy” at the Chesterton European Market
• 1 onion grown in Michigan City, IN and purchased at Chesterton European Market
• a handful of parsley, sage, rosemary, parsley, and spicy oregano from my own container garden
• the last half a cup container of tomato sauce that I frozen last summer (tomatoes from my garden)

I covered the bottom of the crockpot with onion slices, placed the chicken on top, added a a pint of water and the tomato sauce.  Next I  tossed the whole garlic cloves and freshly picked herbs (left as whole stems of leaves) on top of the chicken and set the pot to cook on high for 3 hours.

Yesterday I dug my potatoes and I had a few handfuls of smaller than golf ball sized spuds.  After the chicken had cooked for about 2 hours, I gave the mini potatoes a quick wash and tossed them into the crockpot. After that it was simply a matter of cooking until the chicken was done and the potatoes tender.  The hardest part was having to wait when it smelled amazing.

To accompany the chicken I sliced a zucchini squash from my garden and sauteed it it lightly.  Just before it was done I added some halved cherry and grape tomatoes and let them warm through.  The squash and tomatoes were from my garden.

Things were so tasty that I didn’t even need to add salt, pepper, or other seasonings which means I managed a 100 percent local meal.  Local as in less than 40 miles for the chicken , less than 20 miles for the garlic and onion and less than 100 feet for everything else.

No photo this week.

Independence Days Challenge Week 14

It was the final week for the two online classes I have been teaching.  That combined with some extra time spent in volunteer related activities and I didn’t accomplish much. Here is what I remember doing.

Plant:  Chives, more beans, sunflowers, more squash (not sure it will produce but I had the seeds), parsley, spinach, and two kinds of kale.

Harvest:  Chives, basil, chard, parsley potatoes, lots of small tomatoes and the first of the larger paste tomatoes, a couple of summer squash, a few green beans, two eggplants plus snippets of other herbs for use in cooking

Eat Something New: Can’t think of anything

Preserve:

• dried: chives, basil, parsley, rosemary, and sage
• dried tomatoes
• dried chard

Managed: Spent several hours tending my container garden. Pulled out some things that weren’t working (e.g. beets were only a inches tall and showing no sign of growing; squash that was fading), moved all the pots and swept the deck, rearranged a few things, trimmed, weeded, staked, and generally tidied things up well for the first time since before leaving town for two weeks back at the end of June.  Working on using up odds and ends of things from the kitchen so there will be more space for storage.

Prepped: I haven’t made much progress on personal preparedness this week in part because I spent all of one and part of a second day involved in community level preparations by helping with create a new disaster response plan for my county Red Cross chapter.

Learn Something New: This is more of an accidental discovery than intentional learning.  Early in the spring I cut a couple of kale plants that weren’t doing well back to the ground so that they didn’t waste space in the containers where other things were also growing.  They have sprouted back from the base. I need to remember that kale will do this.  It has potential for intentional use.  I also learned in the hard way the importance of being more diligent about hilling up potatoes.  The vines had a growth spurt while I was gone to Rockford and I never got back on top of covering the stems.  As a result my harvest is much smaller than it could have been.

Reduce Consumption and Waste:

This will sound wimpy but given how hot it was an how much I didn’t want to eat much less cook, I am giving myself credit for it.  I made a sort of clean out the fridge curry in the crockpot.  I used up some vegetables that were dangerously close to becoming compost.  I have overstocked brown rice given its shelf life.  Eating the curry for a few days will put the veggies to use and help use some of the rice.

This afternoon I’ll be making stock to use “every last scrap” of some things I have been preserving.  The stock will be based on the bones from a chicken used in my One Local Summer meal for the week, the cobs from a dozen ears of corn that I put into the freezer last week (after removing the corn, I stuck the cobs into the freezer to wait for cooler weather to make stock), the stems from the rosemary, basil, and chard that I have been drying and other assorted veggie ends and scraps.

Otherwise the usual recycling, composting, using cloth bags, etc.

Local Food System:  nothing this week; I didn’t NEED anything and had things I needed to use so I even skipped the market this morning.

One down and thirty to go

Days in the August Challenges that is. In addition to continuing with One Local Summer and Independence Days, I signed up for Chile Chews’ End Discretionary Eating challenge, Crunchy Chicken’s Buy Nothing challenge, and the Quit Now challenged being hosted this month by Jennifer of Veg*n Cooking and Other Random Musings.

So first the “rules.”

We are in Week 9 for One Local Summer.  This one is pretty straight forward.  Each week you cook a meal entirely from local ingredients with exceptions made for spices and oils.  You write a post in your blog about it and each week the Coordinator for your region does a recap.  I am in the Midwest Region; Debbie over at Rites of Passage is doing a wonderful job as our coordinator.  I am doing okay if not great on this challenge.  I missed a couple of weeks while gone for disaster relief, I resorted to some Ohio noodles one week, and in Week 7 I snacked but didn’t make an official meal.

Sharon’s Independence Days is focused on being better prepared to be self sufficient.  The goal is to try and make consistent progress in each of these categories: plant something, harvest something, preserve something, cook something new, work on local food systems, manage your reserves, learn something new, prep something (e.g., storage, buying tools, making space for storage, or other things not covered by the other categories), and reduce/reuse/recycle (I interpret this as anything that reduces what I consume and dispose).  This challenge is in Week 14 and it has nudged me toward making considerable progress.

The goal for the Buy Nothing challenge is to buy nothing in August that isn’t essential.  Crunchy explains it this way:

Food, medications and other essentials are okay.  If you must absolutely acquire something non-edible or not essential to growing your own food, preserving or storing food for the off-season or for your survival, then you must borrow, barter, or buy it used (please note: canning equipment and supplies like sugar, pectin and jars are okay). If you end up buying something new, then spill your sins at the Sunday Confessional.

The Buy Nothing challenge includes meals eaten out among the no nos.  This dovetails nicely with the Quit Now challenge.  For the Quit Now challenge participants choose one or more energy intensive habits to give up.  The End Discretionary Eating is about limiting the surplus in what you eat.  To move toward eating what is needed not what is wanted.  For the End Discretionary Eating there are six categories to choose as quitting goals.  They are CAFE (no eating out, deli food, and frozen dinners), LITE (refined & processed foods), SUGAR (desserts, sugars, sweets), SOW (second servings when not hungry),  (BUZZ alcohol, caffeine, chocolate, coffee), and VEGAN (giving up animal food products).  Participants choose whether to aim for 100 percent compliance or as little as a 50 percent reduction.

For the End Discretionary Eating I committed to 50 percent on Vegan and 75% on LITE and SOW.  For Quit Now I am quitting the lazy choice of buying lunch in the cafeteria on campus as it is expensive, usually disappointing, non-local/non-organic, and served on disposable dishes.  I am also giving up magazine purchases and working on giving up my excuses for not going to the gym.

Now that the challenges are laid out, how did the first day of August go?

I wasn’t on campus so it was easy to not buy lunch there.  I did have to pass on going to lunch with two other volunteers when I was at the Red Cross chapter doing some work; I even explained why.  I didn’t buy anything today though in the interest of full disclosure I should say that I moved a couple of purchases I had planned for this month to last night; I honestly did need shoes before I have to return to classroom teaching; I ordered replacements for a pair that is about 18 months old and no longer providing the support and cushion necessary for being on my feet several hours a day.  I didn’t do such a good job on eating related things today.  I let myself get way to hungry this morning.  As a result I wanted fast for lunch so I grabbed some Birky Farms hotdogs from the freezer.  Though they are far more natural and sustainable than the average hotdog at the grocery store they hardly count for LITE and they obviously don’t help in the VEGAN category.  I had the weiners on store bought whole wheat hotdog buns. To make matters worse I had two of them. The only redeeming point with the hotdogs is that they were locally produced.

My carbon footprint was further expanded today as I have been running the air conditioner in my bedroom and camping out there.  :(   All told, I would give myself a C-for the day.  Only standing my ground on going out to lunch  and having chives and rosemary dehydrating Independence Days front this afternoon save me from a D.

On the subject of eating out, I wonder how others are handling lunch meetings when it comes to no eating out.  I have a Breakfast Convocation, a volunteer meeting over a meal, a likely committee meeting that will be held at a cafe, and a celebratory dedication luncheon for a board on which I serve to complicate the next couple of weeks. Anyone care to share how they handle such situations?

Garden Visitors

The root may be in plastic containers but my garden feeds not only my body but also my soul and a fair number of visitors — some welcome and some not.  Here is one of the welcome guests.

Actually these are not part of my intentional garden but part of a bed of day lilies growing at the end of the deck. I have thinned them and if I owned rather than rented they would be replaced with something less invasive.

Independence Days Update Week 13

Not a particularly good week but I did accomplish a few things.

Planted something — more parsley and cilantro, another wave of beans, more pumpkins, transplanted strawberries to ground, transplanted sunflowers to ground, another wave of onion sets for green onions

Harvested–a few potatoes, tomatoes including the first Roma tomatoes of the year, summer squash, basil, sage, lemon balm, mint, a few chard leaves, a few beans

Preserved

• froze more blueberries, corn, rhubarb, string beans
• dried more summer squash, dried more herbs (lemon balm, sage, basil, mint)

Eat something new:

Prepped/Managed: not directly related to IDC but I took care of some odds and ends (e.g., some overdue lab work, getting a new driver’s license, etc.) that were wasting mental energy.  Made some more notes about changes for next year’s garden.

Reduce Waste and Consumption: Car pooled to campus rather than driving alone; not always possible but doing so when I can. Used my thrift store find stock pot to blanch the corn; it was a very good investment.

Learn Something New – researched curry plants and fall gardening in my area

Local food systems — The usual trips to the local European market and a trip to Johnson’s for corn.  Started some notes about trying to have a seed and plant swap next spring.  Inquired about the availability of fall vegetable plants at the local Feed & Garden shop.  Made my Week 8 One Local Summer post.

OLS Week 8

Corn season is underway in NW Indiana; I picked up a dozen ears from Jackson Farms in Hobart, Indiana. Most will go in the freezer but it was also the star of my OLS meal for Week 8. To accompany the corn I had a salad of halved cherry and grape tomatoes (my garden), two types each of basil and parsley (also from my garden), an onion grown in Michigan City and purchased at the Chesterton European Market, and a cucumber from Jackson Farms.

Along with the corn I cooked a few new potatoes purchased from the same grower as the onion in the salad. I rounded out the meal with some cantaloupe from Southern Indiana melons which was purchased at the Chesterton Market. The corn was tasty but the melon was not as good as they will be in a couple more weeks.

The real joy of this meal isn’t captured by simply describing what I had to eat.  The real joy is in the story of much of the food.  Sure I could have bought corn already cleaned and ready to drop into the pot; perhaps even more cheaply.  But had I done so, I would have missed the quiet contentment of sitting on my deck, peeling the back the husks and silks as I inhaled the earthy scent of the corn.  While cleaning the corn my eyes wandered over my container garden  and watched a ruby-throated hummingbird and bees flutter about the blossoms and feeder.  My thoughts were filled with the satisfaction of gardening successes and ideas about what to do differently in the future.  The onion and cucumber came from the Chesterton European market where I buy from vendors who recognize me and some who even seem as happy to see and chat with me as I am to see and chat with them.  I have shopped at some nice grocery stores and I even miss living near a couple of them but food from the corporate food stream doesn’t provide the sense the place, the sense of season, or the sense of community provided by local foods — not to mention the difference in taste.

So if you are thinking that dipping to your toe into the waters of your local foodshed, don’t stop there. Dive on in — the water is wonderful.

Local Snacking - No official OLS meal for Week 7

I don’t have a OLS meal this week. Between deadlines looming and oppressive heat humidity and no air condition, meals have not been appealing and cooking them has been unbearable. I am existing on snacking which has included some local goodness this week. My local grazing has included:

• Blueberries and sweet cherries from Lehman’s Orchard in Niles, Michigan
• Tomatoes and dried zucchini slices from my own garden
• Hard-boiled eggs purchased at the Chesterton European market
• A hotdog from Birky Farms of Valparaiso, Indiana
• Grilled cheese sandwiches with bread from Marilyn’s Bakery of Hobart, Indiana, and cheese from Fair Oaks Farms of Fair Oaks, Indiana
• Tonight there will be cantaloupe from Remus Farms of Hobart, Indiana but grown in southern Indiana.

I’ll do better next week.  The heat and humidity are forecast to ease. I found a source for localish grain pilaf, new potatoes are available. A luscious steak from Farm Direct Meat awaits my grill and fork.  My garden is picking up steam with squash, beans, and tomatoes being ready to pick almost everyday.  The first pepper is pickable if small.  Sweet corn is making an appearance.  Cucumbers should be available soon. The herbs and chard are abundant.

Curry Plant (Helichrysum Italicum)

Earlier this season I looked at but did not buy a curry plant.  When I stopped at the nursery and the herbs were had been reduced for clearance, I could not resist the smell of the last one they had.  Of course, I have no idea what to do with said curry plant other than smell it and dream of Indian food but a few finger strokes and the world wide web provided me with ideas.

General Information:

First the plant is a perennial though not hardy here in zone 5.  In zones 8-11 it could overwinter.  According to the Mountain Valley Growers website it likes it warm and dry and thrives on sunny slopes. Information over on Henriette’s Herbal Homepage suggests that it does not tolerate humidity well. The plant has yellow flowers in the midsummer to early fall. Flowers are born on 12 - 18 inch plants that resemble something between lavender and/or rosemary.

Culinary Uses:
The folks at Mountain Valley Growers do not seem impressed with the taste of the curry plant. They say:

“With Curry Plant the million dollar question is, “What does it taste like?” Why do you think we gave you the medicinal value first? While not very tasty, Curry Plant smells strongly like Curry spices. But, Curry Plant is not where Curry Seasoning comes from. Curry is actually a blend of many different herbs. The herbs used in real Curry vary from region to region. When Curry Plant is mentioned with food, it is always used sparingly, a few leaves in a mayonnaise or a sprig tucked in a cavity of a chicken. The flavor is not Curry but is strong. It is also difficult to describe.”

Comments over on the Garden Web are even more dismissive of the uses for the curry plant.  A commenter here describes the culinary use of the plant as:

“It is edible, but it tastes nothing like it smells: it’s grassy with a bitter aftertaste (or sometimes just bitter), and in my opinion it’s best used for flavoring meats before roasting. I have also seen it recommended for salads, sandwiches (especially with cream cheese), and for boiling with vegetables or rice. I wouldn’t consider it valuable as a herb; it’s mainly grown as an ornamental. In other words, it isn’t grown because it’s used as a herb; it’s used as a herb because people are growing it anyway.”

Medicinal Uses:

The Anada Apothecary has a detailed entry listing the properties and uses of the oil of the flowers.  Here the plant is also referred to as “Everlasting Oil” and is referred to as “one of the most important essential oils in aromatherapy because of its healing properties.  Of special note to me was mention of the oil in treating joint pain.  Additional aromatherapy uses can be found at Nature’s Gifts, A Healing Essence, and Lavender Notes.

A more simplified entry is provided by Rocky Mountain Oils, where 15ml of the oil costs $35.00, lists the uses and properties of helichrysum italicum as:
“This species is much less expensive. Anti-inflammatory, analgesic, antiseptic used for cuts, wounds, bruises, ulcers, herpes, rheumatism, gingivitis, pyorrhea, gastritis, sore throat, and typhoid fever. Induces menstruation, aids painful menstruation and headaches, and induces milk formation.”

Additional Uses:

• Oils in flowers appear to be useful as moisturizers according to one of the comments here and in reducing scarring as noted on A Healing Essence’s website.
• The plant tolerates low water and is useful for xeriscaping.  It is also said to be deer resistant
• Can be trimmed into a small hedge-like border at the edge of an herb garden.
• Flowers can be dried for use in arrangements.

Propagation: methods include division, stem cuttings, and seeds.

Additional Information Sources:

• Mountain Valley Growers
• Dave’s Garden
• The Anada Apothecary
• Rocky Mountain Oils
• Nature’s Gifts
• A Healing Essence
• Lavender Notes