Category: Food

Planting pumpkins

I’ve written here previously about the nearby farm where I’m buying most of my summer vegetables this year. They sell the vegetables for $1.50 a pound (mix and match) from the shade of an old barn right beside the fields. You can see in the upper right of the photo that the corn will be ready soon. The crew (they are from Mexico, and they are very good) are planting fall crops — three varieties of pumpkins including what I call pie pumpkins, and sweet potatoes.

I first observed this planting protocol from commercial strawberry fields. The plastic, of course, keeps down the weeds and preserves moisture. A drip irrigation pipe runs under the plastic in each row. The water for these fields is pumped from a pond just below the fields, but rainfall has been good here this summer. The soil look pretty terrible, doesn’t it? But it is typical of the soils in the North Carolina piedmont and foothills — very red. The high white fence is to keep the deer out.

The mountain in the background is part of the Saura mountain chain. It’s the location of Hanging Rock State Park here in Stokes County, maximum elevation about 2,500 feet.

An 18th Century cooking show

Delicious has a remarkable 100 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It was released in France in 2021 as Délicieux and is now available for streaming at Amazon Prime Video.

It’s set in 1789, just before the Revolution got violent. A duke’s chief cook, humiliated by the duke’s obnoxious dinner guests, leaves the duke’s household and returns to his family home, accompanied by his teen-age son. The place is a shambles. But as the cook recovers from his depression, he begins to cook again. Encouraged by his son and a mysterious visitor, he turns the place into an inn and stagecoach stop. Whether it’s historically accurate or not, the story is a parable about how fine cuisine — and dining out — became available to everyone, not just to a pampered and bored aristocracy.

Not only is Delicious visually beautiful, it’s a highly entertaining comedy.

Squash and walnut fritters


Squash and walnut fritters with pesto

Especially if you have a garden, you’re always looking for ways not to get tired of summer squash. I made squash fritters a few days ago and noted that they were just a bit too mushy. They needed something to give them some extra substance and a better bite. Walnuts worked. The fritters were greatly improved.

Grind the walnuts in a food processor. Grate the squash and some onion. As a binder, I’ve been using potato starch. An egg would work, but using egg as a binder would require an ingredient to offset the liquid. Potato starch works well. Add just enough to get the fritters to hold together before frying. After the potato starch sets in the frying pan, they’ll be fine.

The walnuts somehow made the fritters a bit reminiscent of crab cakes. How you season them would make a big difference. It occurs to me that a little crab, or small shrimp, would work well in squash and walnut fritters, and a little bit of crab would go a long way.

A haul from the farm stand


The vegetable gardens are to the left behind the tractor.

Here in the middle of nowhere where some people consider Dollar General a grocery store, the best thing that has happened in years is the new farm stand. Two years ago, they started with strawberries. This year they expanded to include summer vegetables. Strawberries and vegetables are picked in the morning. The farm stand, which is right beside the fields, opens at 10. They sell all their produce into the local market. People flock in to buy it. By sometime in the afternoon, everything for that day is sold out. The fields are irrigated from a rain-fed farm pond. Vegetables are all $1.50 a pound. The tomato crop should start coming in next week. The produce is not organic, but they promise no pesticides.

The economic model makes so much sense that I don’t understand why it took so long. We have plenty of land here and lots of ponds for irrigation. We have the odd farmer’s market or two, but those are poorly attended, the prices are too high, and with some items such as tomatoes I’m skeptical that the sellers actually grow what they sell. In the past, though most have gone out of business, we used to have produce stands that sold trucked-in commercial produce. The quality was poor, and nothing was ever fresh, partly because it was never refrigerated. A farm stand eliminates all sorts of expenses and impediments to quality. There are no transportation costs and refrigeration costs. When you sell out every day, there is no waste. Everything is fresh. Not only do you meet the farmers, you see the fields. I hope this is a trend that is growing, nationwide.

The farming work here is done by a crew from Mexico, on visas for seasonal farm workers. The farm provides the workers with housing. From the quality of the strawberries, which were perfectly cultivated and perfectly picked back during May, I knew that the summer vegetables would be good, too, because the farm workers know what they are doing, and they work the fields every day. For example, a common mistake in gardening is to pick vegetables such as cucumbers and squash after they’ve gotten a little too big. Late picking increases the weight of the crop, of course. But the vegetables aren’t as good because they start to turn dry and seedy. These vegetables are picked on just the right day for maximum quality in the kitchen.

The blueberries come from a nearby farm. While peaches are in season in South Carolina, they’ve been sending a truck to South Carolina once or twice a week to bring a load of peaches. The peaches, they say, sell out almost immediately. The best peaches in the United States (sorry, California) come from South Carolina and Georgia.

The fall crop will include pumpkins. They assured me that, in addition to those horrid bright-orange pumpkins that people use these days for Halloween, they’ll also have “pie pumpkins.” That’s a huge deal for pumpkin lovers like me. I haven’t had much luck growing them, and besides they need a huge amount of space. For years, it has been difficult to find pie pumpkins in the fall — a terrible cultural failure if there ever was one. Even most country folk these days make pumpkin pies from canned pumpkin. Never in my life have I done that, and I never will.

I still have my garden, but this year I’ve reduced its size, given how much easier it has become to get fresh-picked summer vegetables at a reasonable cost. I’m growing tomatoes, basil, and cucumbers.

If you’re in this area, Manuel Farms in on Stewart Road northwest of Walnut Cove, North Carolina.


My haul, after I got home

No basil yet, but pesto season begins


Romaine pesto with walnuts

After weeding the garden this morning and telling the young basil to grow, grow, grow, I couldn’t get pesto out of my head. So I made pesto from Romaine, because Romaine was what I had.

That means that the pesto was still what I would consider a winter pesto. Though the Romaine was surprisingly good, only a basil pesto made from just-cut basil at the height of summer is a proper pesto, to my lights.

This year I have the smallest garden I’ve ever had here at the abbey. My reasoning is that, this year, a nearby farm is going to be selling summer vegetables, all varieties $1.50 a pound, with discounts when you buy in canning quantities. The vegetables will be picked the morning they’re sold from fields within sight of the farm stand. Each morning on Facebook, the farm puts up a post to say what they have that day, and how much of it. Within the next couple of weeks I’ll have photos of my garden and of the farm stand. I’m going to eat well again this summer, and I’ll do some canning, too.

Cooler summer cooking, outside

Even if cooking on the deck didn’t keep the heat out of the kitchen, cooking on the deck would still be worth doing. Cooking outdoors is as much fun as eating outdoors.

I have long used my gas grill for cooking on the deck. But not everything wants to be cooked on a grill. Today I tried out an iron Dutch oven on an induction hot plate. It worked great. The Dutch oven serves perfectly as both an oven or a frying pan, depending upon whether the cover is on it.

I bought the induction hot plate a couple of years ago as an audition for an induction range. I ended up liking it far less than I expected and easily made the decision that an induction range is not for me. Part of the decision was related to the kind of cookware I use. I have several well-loved copper pots, as well as glass cookware. Only steel and iron, of course, will work on induction stoves. So the induction hot plate ended up abandoned, at the bottom of the pantry. As for the Dutch oven, that’s an essential kitchen item. I have a both a glazed and an unglazed Dutch oven, both made by Lodge.

In the photo above, the chicken nuggets are Impossible’s vegan chicken nuggets. You can get them at Trader Joe’s, and they are very good, probably the best of the new fake meats that I’ve tried. Potatoes like nothing better than hot cast iron. The broccoli likes it, too, as long as you give the broccoli some steam during part of its cooking time.

I could have done a better job of regulating the heat. The Dutch oven got much hotter than I expected, even with the induction plate set for 400 degrees or lower. But that’s OK. The slightly burned bits gave everything that mysterious campsite flavor, which I suspect can only be achieved outdoors.

Strawberry preserves

… Or maybe it’s more like strawberry syrup. Though I reduced the sugar a bit, which is probably what made the preserves too thin, I did cook the preserves until they reached 220 degrees. I greatly prefer preserves that are slightly runny, even if this batch is a bit too runny. To my taste, it’s a crime to use pectin in preserves. Runny preserves are better than any recipe that uses pectin. Many store-bought preserves contain not only pectin, but added water as well. Homemade preserves are much better and much cheaper.

A gallon of strawberries made just over five pints of preserves. If you’d like to make strawberry preserves now that it’s strawberry season, there are many recipes on line. The recipe I used called only for strawberries, sugar, and lemon juice. After boiling the mixture until it reached 220 degrees, I put the preserves in jars and used the water-bath method. That is, I boiled the jars for ten minutes. All of the jars sealed nicely.

Agricultural entrepreneurs: Yes!

Here at my latitude, strawberry season has started. As of last year, acquiring strawberries got a lot easier for me. A new strawberry farm started up last year only a 10-minute drive from here. They pick the berries in the morning, then sell them for $10 a gallon under the porch of an old barn right beside the fields.

But the situation is getting even better. The strawberry operation has been so successful that they’re putting in 10 or 12 acres of summer vegetables, watered, like the strawberries, from a nearby pond. They’ll sell the vegetables the same way — pick them in the morning and sell them at the barn. The price, they say, will be $1.50 a pound for all varieties of vegetables. They’re not organic, but they promise no pesticides.

Strange as it sounds, even though I live in farming country, the northern part of this county is considered a food desert because of the distance to grocery stores. Few people have gardens anymore. For me, a source of reasonably priced just-picked summer vegetables changes things. I’m planning to downsize my garden and concentrate on things that the farm won’t sell, such as basil (of which I use a great deal).

The investment this farm has made is considerable, and it’s obviously paying off. Not only is it a highly appropriate form of economic development for this area, it also supplies fresh food to the locals while saving them money. The family who own the farm work alongside a Mexican crew that obviously is experienced both at cultivating the crops and at picking them.

Progress! Now if we only had broadband.

Julia


HBO Max

Who could have guessed that one of the most unforgettable Americans to come out of the 1960s would be Julia Child? And who could have guessed that we’d be as interested in her life as in her cooking? I’ve watched only the first episode so far of this new series, but clearly it’s going to be a romp — smart, funny, and a very nice period piece as well.

In spite of her popularity, though, I can’t help but wonder just how much Julia Child ultimately affected American cooking. So many Americans can’t (and don’t) cook. City chefs struggling to distinguish themselves look much farther afield than Julia Child for inspiration. And what’s offered in provincial and backroads eateries, I would testify, has been going steadily downhill since our grandmothers’ time, with cheap ingredients and untrained, poorly paid cooks who have no concept of what good food is like and what to aim for. I don’t know if it’s true, but a friend once told me that Americans spend more time watching cooking shows than they do cooking. I can believe it, though.

Judging from the first episode, in this series we’re more likely to find Julia at the dinner table with her guests than slaving over a hot stove, the better to support the very cosmopolitan dialogue. And the English actress Sarah Lancashire very much conveys one of the important things we learned from Julia Child — that cooking is playful, fun, never fussy, and is best done with a glass of wine close at hand. By the way, what happened to conviviality in America? Once upon a time, people actually tasted each other’s cooking and could say who made the best biscuits or fried chicken.

Don’t overlook the typewriters! Take note of her cherry-red Volvo, which she washes in her Cambridge driveway because “it won’t wash itself.” Her collection of copper pots is impressive. And what a diplomat she was (like her husband).

Julia can be streamed from HBO Max.

Everything is turning green

The lettuce actually was planted by Ken last fall. It wintered over in a cold frame. Yesterday, during a cold rain, I picked it while it was at the peak of perfection. I washed it, chilled it, and ate it 40 minutes after it came in out of the rain. Who knew that lettuce could be so good? Lettuce may seem watery and light, but when you cut the stalk of good homegrown lettuce, a rich milky juice bubbles out.

Most of the winter’s mustard was crushed by a heavy snow because I foolishly left the top of the cold frame open. But enough mustard survived for one potfull for later this week.

I could happily live off of bread and cheese and wine. With the addition of fresh fruit and some super-green salad, even pizza probably would be healthy.