Sustainable living – Page 6

Squash and cucumber Kung Pao

I think of cucumbers as a vegetable to be eaten raw. But a little Googling reveals that many people use cucumbers in stir fries. Because I’m rich with summer cucumbers from the garden, stir-frying cucumbers had to be tried.

To make Kung Pao dishes too often would risk getting tired of it, and I wouldn’t want that to happen. Kung Pao treatment is one of my favorite ways of saucing stir-fries. I would never claim that cucumbers are the most thrilling ingredient to which I’ve applied the Kung Pao treatment. But they’re not a bit bad. They come out of the wok a little firmer than squash similarly wok’ed, and they blend in nicely with the other ingredients. I certainly wouldn’t buy cucumbers in wintertime to use them in a stir-fry, but when cucumbers are in season, I say bring them on.

As long as we’re talking about Kung Pao, I should mention that I never buy ready-made Asian sauces. They’re easy to make, much less expensive, and healthier if you make them yourself. If you keep in stock certain basic ingredients, you can always cook up a nice sauce in just a few minutes. You want to keep a variety of vinegars, of course. Increasingly often, I reach for the malt vinegar, which is what I used in this Kung Pao sauce. Authenticity is less important to me than good. Malt vinegar imparts a kind of Old World, ale-like, pub-like taste to whatever you use it in. You’ll want soy sauce, of course. Also: pepper paste, Better Than Bouillon (because who keeps stocks on hand?), toasted sesame oil, garlic and garlic powder, and corn starch. Pepper oil is a good thing to have, but I usually reach for pepper paste. Even ketchup or tomato paste sometimes find their way into Asian sauces, and generally the vinegar wants to be offset with sweetener. And, as long as you can avoid snacking on them, one should always have roasted peanuts on hand.

Today I picked the first two tomatoes from the garden. I picked them green and put them in the kitchen windows, but fresh tomatoes, both ripe and green, will soon be on the menu.

Squash puppies

Squash puppies with pesto

While eating squash fritters a few days ago and thinking about other things to do with squash, the idea of squash puppies occurred to my wicked mind. For all I knew, I was the first to think of such a thing as squash puppies. But a little Googling showed that I was late to the game. There are many recipes out there for squash puppies.

If you want to make them, and you come across a recipe that calls for precooking the squash by boiling it or something, move on. I’m sure that you’d prefer a recipe in which raw grated squash is used in the batter. The squash will cook just as quickly as the other ingredients in the batter.

Deep-fat frying is one of my least favorite things to do. But for squash puppies I just had to do it. The squash puppies will cook very fast and will puff up like marshmallows, so watch them carefully. As you cook them in small batches, put the finished squash puppies onto a paper towel on a baking sheet in a warm oven, about 175F. The finished puppies will be very light and soft. They will want a sauce or a dip, whatever your conscience allows.

I made a smallish batch and couldn’t eat them all. Mrs. Possum will have squash puppies tonight.

Squash fritters

When squash is in high season (and it is), squash in every way imaginable is on the table. Squash fritters sound like a lot of fuss, but actually they’re quick and easy.

Coarsely grate the squash (and some onion) in a box grater. Add egg, flour, and seasonings. Drop the mixture into a skillet with enough oil to cover the bottom of the skillet.

Runaway squash and cucumbers

I had the good sense this year to plant a sparse garden for easier maintenance. Even so, when the garden kicks in, you can’t turn your back on it even for a day. I had skipped a day of harvesting, and this morning I picked five pounds of squash and cucumbers from four squash plants and four cucumber plants. Some of the squash and cucumbers had already gotten a little too big.

Unlike tomatoes, which love to sit and look out the kitchen window, squash and cucumbers start to lose their freshness the instant they’re picked. I pick them in the cool of the morning, wash them in cold water, dry them, and pop them in the fridge.

I’d have fried fresh squash every day in summer if it weren’t for the calories. Curried squash is probably the lowest-calorie way to fix them. When I fry squash, I like to not use egg. I slice the squash and let the slices sit for about 10 minutes. A sticky dew will form. That stickiness helps the flour stick. Roll the slices in seasoned flour. Then roll them in a mixture of flour, seasonings, and water, about the same thickness as you would with an egg mixture. Then roll them in semolina flour and pop them in the skillet.

It’s day lily time again

Click here for high-resolution version. The photo was shot with an iPhone 12 Max Pro.

The day lilies are about a week late this year, because of the cool spring. I have some day lilies in the front ditch by the road, but most of my day lilies are on a bank above the driveway. I call it the day lily bank. Twelve years ago, a few weeks after the bank had been graded and was nothing but exposed soil, I planted 300 day lily sets. Now those 300 have multiplied into thousands. The bank is dense with day lilies.

Unfortunately, the deer like the day lilies as much as I do. For the past two years, they’ve eaten the buds and blooms as fast as they would grow. So far this year, the deer seem to have forgotten the day lilies. Or maybe they have something better to eat. Just before I took this photo, I saw a hummingbird visiting the day lilies.

The day lily buds and blooms (as the deer well know) are edible. If the deer will leave some for me, some of the buds will find their way into salads and pestos. Unfortunately, day lily season is short. And each bloom lasts only one day.

The princely hoe

The new hoe

I confess that I ruined my old hoe. I left it out in the weather too often. That weakened the handle, and the handle separated from the blade. The blade fell off while I was hoeing a row of tomatoes. To wear out a hoe would be an honorable thing. But to neglect and abuse a hoe is a crime and a shame that would have shocked our ancestors.

I know better than to leave garden tools outdoors, but I plead guilty to doing it. Wooden handles deteriorate. Blades rust. As I reflected on my cruelty and guilt, hoping that my contrition will ensure that I never harm another hoe, I realized how ancient the hoe must be. The hoe is a kinder blade than the sword and the ax, but no doubt it changed the world just as much.

The Wikipedia article on the hoe describes some of the history. Hoes are mentioned in the Code of Hammurabi, about 1750 B.C. Even today, Third World subsistence farmers with no ploughs get by only with hoes. When there is no iron or steel, wood will do. The Wikipedia article includes a photo of an Egyptian hoe made of wood. The Roman hoes, of course, were made of iron.

In European culture, there can be no doubt that hoes were introduced across Europe in the migrations that brought agriculture, the wheel, the horse, milk animals, and the Indo-European languages. How could I be so thoughtless as to leave out in the rain an instrument so royal? I vow to never treat a hoe with disrespect again. I should be able to salvage the old hoe and put a new handle on it, though replacing handles on hand tools is becoming a lost art.

My new hoe has a fiberglass handle. That was the only kind of hoe the hardware store had. I’ve made a hook in the shed for it to hang from, away from the rain and sun. Fiberglass won’t decay like wood, but it hates ultraviolet from the sun.

One of my favorite gardening books, Gardening When It Counts, emphasizes the importance of keeping hoes sharp. I find that to be true. I use a hoe in the garden not so much for loosening the soil but for cutting weeds. It’s remarkable, really, how efficient hoes are for that. As long as the weeds don’t get out of hand, I can hoe my garden in not much more than 30 minutes.

The new hoe (and probably all new hoes) came with an angle on the blade, but the blade is not truly sharp. I took a file to it. I’ve also ordered a sharpening tool from Amazon that attaches to a drill. The rotary sharpener is made for lawn mower blades, but I’m pretty sure that it will do a good job of sharpening the hoe.

When I was a young’un growing up in the Yadkin Valley of North Carolina, I wasn’t made to work as much as some young’uns were. But I was sometimes made to hoe. I didn’t like it. But I’m glad to have acquired some hoeing skills early in life. And since this post is an obituary for my old hoe, I want to mention that my old hoe never harmed a living thing that wasn’t a weed, not even a snake. Many a hoe, like pitchforks, have been used as weapons.

When I lived in San Francisco, I learned that people who grew up without any farm experience did not even understand the expression “a long row to hoe.” That is sad. I have looked down long, long rows of weedy tobacco on hot summer days.

Rest in peace, old hoe. If I can find a new handle for you, I’ll bring you back and never mistreat you again.

A summer project: Italian cooking

A friend who lives in the south of France asked me yesterday in email what plans I have for summer. I couldn’t think of a thing, other than trying not to hide too much indoors in a bug-free, air-conditioned house. Then I remembered one thing: That, with the riches I hope to get from the garden, I plan to work on my Italian cooking.

It was about ten days ago, upon observing that though the early garden was 90 percent a failure because of the cold, dry spring, the summer garden looks promising. I will have yellow squash next week. The cucumbers and tomatoes are blooming. The basil and onions are coming along, but slowly. I planted okra from seed today.

Like most Americans, I grew up with spaghetti. Every few years or so I’ve made lasagna at home. I put some effort into improving my pizza skills, especially with crusts. I’ve had a few incredibly good dinners at proper and properly Italian restaurants in North Beach in San Francisco. But I have never made an effort to concentrate on authentic Italian cooking. I realized that I needed a book for that.

Cookbooks are available from Italian cooks with current TV shows, but I wanted something classic. The classic work on Italian cooking for English-speaking cooks was easy to identify. It’s Italian Food, by Elizabeth David. It’s one of the most beautiful cookbooks I’ve ever seen, illustrated with excellent color prints of Italian paintings of food. The book was printed in Verona.

Italian Food. Elizabeth David. Barry & Jenkins, London, 1954, 1987, 1996. 240 pages.

First published in 1954, this book satisfies my curiosity about what any culture’s cuisine was like when the cooks had experience and memories that went back to the 1800’s. What I saw in my grandmother’s kitchen in the Yadkin Valley of North Carolina in 1954 (she was born in 1896) was nothing like what one sees in even the best kitchens today. New developments in cuisine, such as the ideas of an Alice Waters or a Michael Pollan, are very important. But cooking also has roots, and some knowledge of those roots is a must-have for any cuisine.

I ordered this cookbook through Amazon. It was shipped from the United Kingdom. There must be a good many copies in print, because the book is not hard to find. Booksellers don’t usually say what edition they’re selling. Mine is the 1996 edition, in very good condition.

I’ve a lot of good reading ahead of me, but the part about basil convinced me that this is indeed the cookbook I want:

“Nothing can replace the lovely flavour of this herb. If I had to choose just one plant from the whole herb garden I should be content with basil. Norman Douglas, who had a great fondness for this herb, would never allow his cook to chop the leaves or even to cut them with scissors; they had to be gently torn up, he said, or the flavour would be spoilt. I never agreed with him on this point, for the pounding of basil seems, on the contrary, to bring out its flavour.”

By pounding, I assume she means pounding in a mortar and pestle, which is now the only method I will use for making pesto.

Italian cooks, she writes in 1954, go to market twice a day. That’s a beautiful idea, but no American can live that way anymore. Some of us can, however, go to the garden twice a day.

Elizabeth David, who died in 1992, is an important figure in the history of cooking and cookbooks. The Wikipedia article is a good starting place for information about her.

Click here for high-resolution version

Lettuce pesto with lettuce from my garden

Pesto from lettuce?

Lettuce pesto sounds bland and watery. In truth, it is a little bland and a touch watery. But if lettuce is what you’ve got, then lettuce pesto it is. It will be three weeks or so before I can expect any summer basil from the garden. The winter basil from the kitchen window is almost gone, but I had enough of it to season the lettuce a bit.

Defending against ticks

In the best of all possible worlds, there’d be no need for insecticides. But permethrin, at least, seems to be pretty benign. Permethrin is a synthesized version of pyrethrin, an organic insecticide made from chrysanthemums. The most scary thing about permethrin is how persistent it is. Clothing treated with permethrin can remain effective against insects (and ticks) through up to six washings. Still, it’s not very toxic to humans, especially after it has dried.

Each year, the tick situation seems to get worse. When I was a kid, I knew of only one kind of tick, the kind of tick that dogs got. But now there are several varieties, and I can’t distinguish one from another. I do know, though, that these days we have very small ticks, especially in the spring and early summer. They’re harder to detect because they’re so small, and their bites are just as offensive as larger ticks.

I have found that treating clothing with permethrin is very effective against ticks. It actually kills ticks — slowly, but quick enough to keep them from biting. On most summer days, two levels of defense are needed — permethrin for things that crawl, and Deet for things that fly.

The Center for Disease Control recommends the use of both permethrin and Deet. Also, here’s a nice article from NPR on permethrin. According to the article, it was the U.S. military that developed the method of treating clothing with permethrin.

Permethrin in liquid form is said to be toxic to cats. It’s best to treat clothing outdoors on a clothesline and leave things hanging until the permethrin dries. Don’t forget to treat your shoes and socks.

Peace of mind, and the weather

The basil in the garden is just getting started. This pesto was made from the last of the winter basil, which I grew in the kitchen windows. More about the mortar and pestle below.

Living in the woods as I do — reasonably secure, healthy, and retired — my stress level isn’t very high. I feel for those who are still in the world of work, living in heavily populated places, with heavy responsibilities and heavy demands. For four years with Donald Trump in the White House, peace of mind was tough even in the woods. Now, with Trump gone and on his way to prison, what’s the biggest threat to peace of mind for woods-dwellers? The weather, I would say. (Because it was so easy for me to isolate, Covid-19 never felt very threatening here.)

For several years, the rule for the weather here was warmer and wetter, with occasional and minor deviations. The spring of 2021 broke that pattern. Spring this year was strangely cool and dry, with late and destructive frosts. It hasn’t been raining. Some of the grass is turning brown. The birds are looking for water. They notice within minutes when I start the drip system in the garden and flutter down for a drink. A big part of my disquiet is witnessing the stress of the plants and animals around me. The trees should be fine, though. Only a prolonged drought (which does not seem to be in store for us in my location) is hard on the trees. It’s the smaller things that suffer.

The cold spring was a big setback for the garden. Things that I planted from seed — radishes, lettuces, kales and chards — just never germinated. Water was never a problem, though, because of the reliable streams just down the hill and a neighbor who hauls water up the hill with his tractor for our irrigation systems. Even ten years ago in this area, drip systems for garden irrigation were not the rule. These days, just about everybody with a serious garden has a drip system. I’m water rich, in that two streams come together at the lower end of the abbey’s five acres. One stream is fairly sensitive to recent rainfall, but the other is fed by nearby springs that no one remembers ever going dry.

The forecast is looking a little better. With luck there will be a modest rainy spell here starting in about five days.

Basil and pesto

When I was Googling for help on improving my skill with pesto for the 2021 basil season, I came across several articles saying that the old-fashioned way of making pesto — with a mortar and pestle rather than a food processor — makes a big difference. I’m hardly an expert on Italian cooking, but so far I can find no reason to disagree. It’s not just the basil leaves that like to be pounded with marble rather than whizzed with a stainless steel blade. The garlic and nuts also like it. The old-fashioned pesto ends up looking more textured, with the different ingredients more visible. And I do believe that the taste is sassier and somehow more complex. The large granite mortar and pestle (ordered from Amazon) has earned its place in my kitchen. The Cuisinart food processor has been with me for more than 40 years. Unless someone convinces me that hummus should be made with a mortar and pestle, the food processor is in no danger of being donated to a thrift shop.

Trump

Though I admit that I am far too preoccupied with politics, I’ve avoided posting about it. Trump is history. He does not deserve our attention except insofar as the law continues the slow process of sending him to prison where he belongs. Though the media have finally started to foreshadow Trump’s trials and imprisonment, they still cater to the Trumpian notion of Trumpian invincibility and the idea that Trump will get away with everything. My view is that Trump & Co. will be held responsible for everything they have done. Let’s not feel guilty about the schadenfreude. The payment, at last, of Trump’s debt to justice (and his dollar debt to Russian oligarchs and oil oligarchs and therefore his final bankruptcy), will be tremendously satisfying and healing to those of us who have had to live with Trump and his insufferable supporters. They are more insufferable than ever, actually, as their gloating has turned into threats, insane denials, and a doubling of their rage.

The weather

According to the Climate Prediction Center, the entire western United States is in for a serious drought this year. If the forecast is accurate, the eastern United States will squeak by. Still, summer is now a scary time, as scary as winter must have been for so many of our ancestors.

Making peace with summer

Every year, I think about how I might overcome my dread of summer, with summer defined as the hottest parts of July and August in the American South — temperatures well over 90F, high humidity, bugs, weeds, and indoor air conditioning as the only escape. Should I get a canoe for the Dan River? Nah. The cat wouldn’t enjoy canoeing. One idea I had today is to focus on improving my competence with Italian cooking. After all, I’ve got a garden, and if I can keep the garden going against the heat, humidity, the weeds, and the bugs, then I can be as rich with summer produce as anyone in Tuscany. We shall see. Tomatoes, squash, basil and cucumbers do an awful lot to ease the discomforts of summer.

An international recipe for progress

Scotland 2070: Healthy, Wealthy, Wise. Ian Godden, Hillary Sillitto, Dorothy Godden. College Publications (London), 2020. 218 pages.

What would it take for Scotland to attain the same level of wealth and wellbeing as the Nordic countries? This book lays out a fifty-year plan for accomplishing that. What’s remarkable about this book, though, is that its ideas easily translate to any country looking to the future.

I first became aware of this book from an article April 17 in the Guardian, “An independent Scotland could turn to Denmark for inspiration.” I ordered the book from Amazon.

Though one of the book’s subtitles is “An ambitious vision for Scotland’s future without the politics,” it’s not entirely true that there is no politics in the book. It’s pretty clear that the authors’ view is that Scotland can optimize its future only by breaking with the United Kingdom and becoming independent. The authors, though they are highly educated, are not scholars. They’re businesspeople. In the U.S., it’s generally safe to assume that businesspeople believe in conservative notions of small government, low taxes, keeping working people on the brink of starvation with no safety net so that they’ll work for cheap until they drop dead, crummy education, health care as a profit center rather than a means of keeping people healthy, and a manipulative and deceptive politics that ensures that people are preoccupied with cultural grievances and thus never figure out who is really eating their lunch. These Scottish businesspeople are the opposite of that. The central principle — a principle at last being advocated by America’s Democratic Party — is that government exists to serve the people. This is in opposition to the neoliberal principle that has reigned for decades, that government exists to serve private profit.

Twenty-five years ago I fell in love with Ireland on my first trip there. But Ireland has changed in the past 25 years, and not for the better. Ireland chose a low-tax, low-productivity, low-knowledge, low-education, low-equality neoliberal strategy. Global money thus poured into Ireland. The authors of this book use kinder language about Ireland’s mistakes. I’m more blunt. The way I’d put it is that Ireland greatly damaged itself and its people by becoming a global tax whore. But I’ve also been in Denmark a couple of times, where I admired the contrast between Denmark and Ireland and how Denmark has developed a prosperity that serves its people rather than the global rich. Scotland, on the other hand, has been pretty much in stasis, largely because Scotland is a tail wagged from Westminster. The United Kingdom — or should I say England — seems too inclined to waste time and opportunity by nursing its cultural hurts, which is holding Scotland back. If Scotland does become independent in the future, the power of global money would do everything possible to turn Scotland into another Ireland. The authors of this book understand that. It would be up to the people of Scotland to choose a better path by looking north rather than south, and that’s the point of this book.

Though it’s tempting to list the key points of this book’s vision, I think I won’t, because it’s a book worth reading no matter where one lives. I will say this, though. That vision of the role of government and the demands of the future have a great deal in common with the vision that President Biden has brought to Washington. California, America’s most progressive state, just announced a $75 billion budget surplus. Voodoo economics has had its day. It’s time to get serious about a sustainable green economy, with major new investments in education, health, and infrastructure broadly defined.

Go for it, Scotland.