Category: Food

The elusive okra bloom


An okra flower. Click here for high-resolution version.

I have been trying to get a photo of a fully open okra flower, but I still have not succeeded. Okra is a relative of hibiscus, and its flowers are much like hibiscus flowers. The photo above, of a not-yet-fully-open flower, was taken at 9 a.m. two days ago. At 8 p.m. the same day, I returned with the camera expecting to see a fully open flower. Instead, the flower already had wilted. I’ll keep trying. Okra flowers, I think, are the most beautiful flower in the vegetable garden.

I’m also doing my best to understand the morphology of how the okra flower relates to the okra seed pod (which is the edible part). That, too, is going to require more observation.

A note on flower photography: A tripod is almost always necessary, otherwise blurring occurs when maximum sharpness is needed. Wind is often a problem and also can cause blurring, because narrow apertures (and therefore longer exposures) are often necessary to manage depth of field. I usually shoot flower photos at different aperture settings, then determine in Photoshop which aperture setting worked best. The idea is to get the objects of interest sharply in focus, while blurring secondary objects that are closer to, or farther away from, the camera.


Blooming elsewhere at the abbey. Click here for high-resolution version.

Two theories of gardening


A thriving squash plant, with lots of room and some pampering. Notice how dry the soil is.

I’ve already learned a lot from my experiments with this year’s garden. As I’ve mentioned in other posts, my plan this year was to plant sparsely, leaving plenty of space between things for cultivating and for weed control. This type of gardening also is water-frugal.

One of my favorite gardening books is Gardening When It Counts: Growing Food in Hard Times, by Steve Solomon. This sparse, water-frugal type of gardening is what he recommends when life depends on your garden. I believe I am sold.

That’s not to say that a hard-working gardener with irrigation cannot pack a garden densely and get great yields. But I’m not a hard-working gardener, and this year I resolved to not do any irrigation.

May was a wet month with 8.69 inches of rainfall. June has been dry, with only 1.29 inches of rain in the last 17 days. Gardens really ought to have an inch of rain or more per week. So we are on the dry side. But, so far, nothing in the garden is showing signs of water stress. Weed control has been easier now that the weather is dryer. The plants, with little competition from weeds and from other plants, seem to be pulling enough water from deeper in the soil without any problem. My yields have been terrific. And insect pests, so far, have not been a problem.

I think I’m also realizing that a productive garden is not just about soil and water. It’s also about sun. No plant can make a lot of vegetables without a lot of leaves and a lot of sun to do the metabolism. So sparse gardening also gives plants plenty of room to spread their leaves and get their sun. Soil, sun, and water: the sparse-garden theory is all about not forcing plants to compete with other plants for what they need. That makes sense to me.

Roasted okra

Okra roasts beautifully. The seeds are tender, but with a slight crunch. They’re a bit like fresh corn kernels, or fresh peas. If seared and not overcooked, I think okra would be great in curries. I also want to experiment with using okra as a thickener in sauces for stir-fries, avoiding the dreaded cornstarch.

Refrigerator pickles

It takes 10 minutes or less to make a quart of refrigerator pickles — just long enough to heat some vinegar and sugar, throw in some spices, and pack the jar. Three days’ worth of cucumbers from four flourishing cucumber vines yielded enough surplus cucumbers for two quarts of refrigerator pickles.

If you Google, you’ll find plenty of recipes for refrigerator pickles. It’s an easy way of preserving cucumbers that are meant to be eaten within the next couple of weeks.

I cut the first okra this morning. The squash are just getting started.

The squash kicks in


Squash-tofu curry, cucumbers in sour cream

I picked the first yellow squash today. I already had decided that it would go into a squash-tofu curry.

The abbey’s cucumber plants are climbing high and producing excellently. Unless one has enough cucumbers to pickle, cucumbers have to be eaten fresh every day. I decided on cucumbers in sour cream. That’s a Polish dish, I believe — cucumbers dressed with sour cream, a bit of vinegar, a bit of sweetener, and salt. But the concept is the same as an Indian cucumber raita. It’s a cooling dish, and so it’s a nice contrast with a spicy curry. Sour cream or yoghurt — let your conscience be your guide.

When the garden is making lots of cucumbers, I like to stay one day behind. Today’s cucumbers get washed, wrapped in moist muslin, and stashed in the fridge. Tomorrow, they’ll be nice and chilled and ready to eat. Garden cucumbers are like garden tomatoes. It’s impossible to have too many.

First pesto of the season


Cucumber-pasta pesto. Click here for high-resolution version.

In the summer garden, the basil and cucumbers won the competition for who gets to the kitchen first. The yellow squash will be about one day behind, the first tomato about five days.

It has been an excellent gardening year, at least for the summer garden. The rainfall has been generous and well timed.

Life is good when the garden is doing well.


Click here for high-resolution version.

Garden report


Click here for high-resolution version.

I’m not the sort of gardener who does everything the same from year to year. I experiment. I try to learn from my failures. After all, gardening is an exercise in adaptability, since conditions are never exactly the same.

This year’s garden strategy was to plant sparsely in such a way that every individual plant can be pampered. I made the rows very wide so that I can use the tiller to cultivate between rows to keep down the weeds. For the remaining weeds, I’m hoeing, or pulling weeds by hand. I resolved that there would be no irrigation this year. Partly this is because the long-range precipitation forecast looked good, and partly it was because the old piping had gotten leaky and worn out, and I had to discard it. I was planting during a period of heavy rains, and washouts were a possibility. So I planted in raised rows (shaped with a hoe) and mounds (also shaped with a hoe). Everything that can climb must climb. Climbing plants such as cucumbers greatly prefer to climb, rather than to sprawl. I made cucumber trellises and tomato supports from rebar and heavy string. Weeds are much easier to manage when things don’t sprawl. There’s also my snake phobia. I don’t want to leave any places where snakes can hide.

So far, the result has been good. My primary weakness as a gardener is to let the weeds get away from me after the weather gets hot and miserable. So far, I’m well ahead of the weeds. The squash are blooming. The first green tomato has formed. There are lots of tiny cucumbers. The basil is vigorous. The onions seem a little slow, probably because I got them planted a little too late. I’m growing lots of okra this year.

So far the outlook is good for a productive summer garden.

Old Salem farmer’s market

I don’t get out much. But spring weather and the prospect of food are pretty good motivators.

One of the best farmer’s markets in this area is the Cobblestone market at Old Salem. Old Salem is the Salem half of Winston-Salem, a place with colonial roots going back to the Great Wagon Road from Pennsylvania to Georgia. Salem was on that road (which also passed just half a mile east of the abbey). The settlers were Moravians, a communal Protestant denomination with roots in Germany.

The market opened just last week. There were plenty of greenhouse items, including starter plants, lettuces, and spring greens. If you walk two minutes down old Main Street from the farmer’s market, you come to Salem Tavern. George Washington slept there. They offer a traditional cuisine, competent but also tourist-friendly. Going there is always a treat.


This is a hostess in one of the restored colonial buildings in Old Salem. Her costume is handmade and authentic — silk taffeta and linen.


Salem Tavern


Al fresco under the arbor behind the tavern


I did not order or eat this burger! Another guest did. Photographed by permission. That’s sweet potato waffle fries.

Chow mein (approximately)

As I mentioned in the previous post on Polish pierogi, if you can’t make things authentic, at least you can make things good. The fact that we don’t have either the skills or the ingredients to do exotic cuisines authentically doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t take inspiration from those cuisines and do the best we can. There’s an analogy to musicianship. The fact that we’re not all professional musicians and didn’t go to Juilliard should never stop us from making the best homemade music that we can make.

But back to the kitchen.

For the chow mein, I used whole wheat linguini for the pasta. The vegetables are broccoli, carrots, cabbage, onion, red pepper, celery, and garlic. The sauce is a combination of soy sauce, rice vinegar, honey, vegetable bouillon paste, and harissa sauce, which is a Tunisian pepper sauce that I always stock. I always have soy sauce and rice vinegar, but that’s about all I ever have that’s specifically Chinese.

No wok? A big skillet will do.

Just from experimentation, I think I have at least partly figured out the secret of wok cooking (using a big skillet). The reason you need high heat is to quickly boil away the water that leaks from the vegetables. The presence of water being converted to steam greatly lowers the temperature. But once the vegetables slow down on leaking water, you must be very careful and work quickly lest things get too hot. Once the wok starts to dry out, the browning process begins. You want the vegetables as dry as you can get them without overcooking them, and you want as much brown as you can get, because that’s where the umami is. Practice is required. It alls happens very fast. But this chow mein left no vegetable water in the bottom of the plate (or in the wok). The shiny brown color comes not only from the brownness of the sauces (which also must be largely boiled off by high heat), but also from the browning of the vegetables. The cooking oil makes everything shine.

Tofu would have gone very nicely with this. But I had roasted peanuts as a second course.

Pierogi (approximately)

I have never seen a filled dumpling or a filled pastry that I didn’t like. Have you?

Earlier today, I came across a list of comfort foods from every American state. What a list! Here it is. The one that kept my attention, though, was Ohio — pierogi.

The only thing holding me back was that I didn’t want to eat all that dough — white dough, anyway. It so happened that I’d been grinding wheat this morning. So why not try to make pierogi from fresh-ground whole-wheat flour? (For my post on how easy it is to grind your own flour — with the right machine, anyway — see here.)

I know absolutely nothing about Polish cuisine. I wish I did. But in the spirit of intrepid cooking, I’ll try anything, keeping in mind the principle that, at least you can make it good even if you can’t make it authentic. For basic instructions on pierogi-making, I consulted this. I steamed the pierogi in the steam oven rather than boiling them, and after steaming them I gently browned them in butter.

For the filling, I used potatoes, peas, browned onions, and celery. From English cookery, we know that a certain kind of alchemy happens when peas, celery, and other savory things are contained inside a crust. The filling was delicious. My sauce — a sweet and sour pepper-paste sauce — was probably more Asian than Polish. But from a bit of Googling it would appear that there are absolutely no rules about what to serve with pierogi. The limit is your imagination and what you happen to have in your kitchen.

Pastas and dumplings have a lower glycemic index than bread, so pierogis would be a good way to get your grains.

The other two photos, below, are recent makings in the grain department — whole wheat banana bread, and a cornbread luncheon sandwich of peanut butter and onion, made from leftover cornbread.