Ragweed and other saints of nature

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Ragweed. Note the brown grass behind it. The wildflower patches did poorly this year, but water-frugal species grew valiantly.

One of the good things about living in a place like the abbey is that, instead of fighting with nature, one gradually begins to cooperate with nature and to learn from nature’s experience. This summer has been miserably dry, the driest summer since a La Niña summer a few years ago. I haven’t cut the grass for a month, because the grass isn’t growing, and much of it has turned brown. The clover shriveled up, and rabbits that were young enough to squeeze through the garden fence ate the tops off young sweet potatoes. I forgave them. They have to eat.

Drought is hard on everyone. The day lily bank usually makes an extravagant show. This year, because of the drought, the blooms were scant, and a doe and her fawn ate most of the bloom buds, returning nightly. I put up with it. They have to eat. Last year’s 70 inches of rain produced a huge crop of rabbits and deer. This year, I’m sure, the populations will be way down.

Ragwood is one of the most hated of weeds, not least because its pollen is a powerful allergen. But this year I saw the virtues of ragweed. Where the grass was brown, ragweed sprang up. I would not dare to cut it until we’ve had some good rain and the grass is growing again. Roots in the soil and green leaves in the sun are always a good thing. In a drought, one can’t be choosy.

The chickens had done a lot of damage to the orchard during the winter, scratching bare spots in the grass. With good rain, the grass would have quickly recovered. But this year, it was only ragweed that could step in to defend the soil. The ragweed completely covered the worst of the bare spots. The chickens left it alone. Not only was it roots in the ground, it also was dense enough to shade the soil and keep the soil a little cooler.

Driving around the foothills, one frequently passes plots of land that were timbered during the winter, leaving a Mordor-like plain of barrenness and disruption. But who shows up to hold the soil and get life going again? Weeds, the tried-and-true native species who have had a million years and more to learn their job.

I haven’t been here that long. What do I know? One learns to let things live and seek their own balance — weeds, rabbits, deer, even the snakes. The abbey has a no-kill rule. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

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The chicken is standing in a patch of ragweed. A couple of months ago, the area was bare dirt, scratched clean by the chickens during the winter.

More garden pasta

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It’s spooky how much tomatoes like cream. This is linguini with fresh tomatoes in a creamy parmesan sauce.

Flash-sautée the tomatoes in a hot skillet (but not hot enough to smoke). Cook the tomatoes for only one to two minutes, just until they’re hot. Put them in a bowl and set them aside. Add some butter to the same skillet. Add cream, salt, pepper, and about a teaspoon of vinegar. Boil gently and stir with a whisk until the sauce thickens. Add grated parmesan and stir with the whisk until the parmesan is melted into the sauce. Add the cooked pasta and the tomatoes and toss it in the skillet until the pasta is covered with the sauce.

I did not peel the tomatoes. The skins curl up when the tomatoes are heated. I skinned the tomatoes at the table, as though I was peeling shrimp.

I still don’t know what I’m going to do with all the tomatoes. I ought be in the garden right now picking yet more more of them instead of sitting here in front of the computer.

Next surplus: tomatoes

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For the new gardener, just getting things to grow is a triumph. But an art of gardening that must take a lifetime to refine is stretching out the seasons. That is, not only does one want the earliest possible fresh food in the spring and the latest possible fresh food in the fall, one also wants to stretch out (say) the tomato season for as long as possible, instead of having all the tomatoes come ripe at once.

If the object is canning and freezing, then having everything come ripe at once is not a big deal. But, for a kitchen garden, it’s a different matter.

The abbey tries to stick to old-fashioned ways when the garden is in. If it’s not in the garden, you don’t eat it. And if it’s in the garden, you eat it. In the spring, if the garden is going well, I pretty much stop buying produce except for things like garlic and bananas. In the early spring, we ate so much lettuce that it’s a wonder our hair didn’t turn green. By the time the squash crush arrived, the lettuce was gone. The tomatoes came a couple of weeks behind the squash. Soon there will be corn, though I’ll have to fight the raccoons for it, and the raccoons will almost certainly win.

I had pasta two nights in a row. Tonight’s linguini was made with fresh tomatoes. There’s a lot more where that came from. Maybe the tomatoes will turn my hair red.

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Squash again (and again, and again … )

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A couple of days ago, I sent a friend home with about eight pounds of squash and other garden vegetables (which he thoughtfully picked for himself in the brutal heat). He has been reporting on his use of the squash, and he made a great observation. That was that onions in his squash casserole was a kind of cliché. His squash casserole was very good, he said, but the onions reminded him of all the bad, runny squash he’s ever had.

I thought that was a brilliant insight. The trick is to look for different, unexpected flavors to go with squash. I’m still thinking about that, but while thinking about it I used tarragon.

A standard sauce at the abbey is what I call faux Bérnaise sauce. True Bérnaise, of course, is made with Hollandaise. I am very much out of practice with Hollandaise, and it’s a peck of trouble. Faux Bérnaise is much easier. I use it often for salmon. It’s astounding over mashed potatoes.

If possible, use a skillet that was just used to cook something else, so that there is some glaze and flavor in the pan. Deglaze the skillet with a little vinegar or lemon juice. Add some butter. When the butter is melted, add some cream. Stir it with a whisk and boil it gently until it thickens into a proper sauce. Add salt and pepper and a pinch of tarragon.

The squash in this dish I cooked according to the quick-sear method described in a post a few days ago. Stir the linguini, the squash, and the sauce together at the last second, just before serving.

I confess that I always have heavy cream in the refrigerator. Both Ken and I had our cholesterol checked a few months ago and it was excellent, so the heavy cream is not a problem if you otherwise eat sensibly.

First tomato sandwich of 2014

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One of holiest of white trash sacraments is the first tomato sandwich of the season. Around here, that means that certain nasty foods are temporarily allowed into the house. For this year’s bread, I chose Merita Old-Fashioned, just because it had a better squeeze on the store shelf than Bunny. The chips, as always, are Wise chips. Wise once made a New York Times top-10 list of best regional potato chips. Mayonnaise on both sides of the bread. Milk would be a proper accompaniment, but this year I had Coke from a commemorative bottle, over ice.

The remaining bread will go to the chickens. I hope it doesn’t hurt them. I’ll finish the chips.

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Peter Rabbit: As of 2014, he belongs to all of us


Beatrix Potter’s work is now in the public domain

Authors write to make a living. Eventually, authors get old and die, but their work lives on. Books, paintings, even movies — all become part of our historical and cultural heritage. Imagine how we’d all lose if someone still held a copyright on Shakespeare’s plays, or Beethoven’s music, or the paintings in the Louvre.

But how long should an author’s heirs be allowed to profit from an author’s work? On that there is no agreement. In past years, it is profit that has been winning, and copyrights have been extended for longer and longer.

This year, the work of artists and writers who died in 1943 came into the public domain. That included the work of Beatrix Potter. Current copyright law in the U.S. keeps copyrights alive for 70 years after the author’s death. Peter Rabbit was first published in 1902, so that means that Peter Rabbit was private property for about 112 years. That’s a long time.

Copyrights were extended again (by the U.S. Congress) as recently as 1998. Mickey Mouse, Gone With the Wind, and Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue are still private property. Those who opposed copyright extension complained that the intent of the law was to protect lucrative franchises such as Mickey Mouse that corporate owners want to keep locked down.

This is a major conflict in our culture at present — the conflict between private property and “the commons.” For example, owners of beachfront property are in conflict with those who maintain that beaches are a natural resource that belong to all of us. For years and years, defenders of the commons have been losing. This means that a few people are much richer. But the rest of us are poorer.

Why is this on my mind at present? Partly because I wanted to use an excerpt from a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay after the title page of Fugue in Ursa Major. I waited too long to check on the rights to Millay’s work, assuming that her work was now in the public domain. I was wrong. A foundation owns the rights to Millay’s work. To avoid any pesky legal risk, I had to apply to the foundation for permission, and I had to include a special credit line on my book’s ISBN page. This held up the publication of Fugue in Ursa Major. If I’m doing the math right, I believe we have to wait seven more years for Millay’s work to enter the public domain.

However, the publication of Fugue in Ursa Major is getting close, and I will be able to keep to the July 14 release date. The revisions are done, the type is set. Everything is in the pipeline. I’ll have much more to say about Fugue in Ursa Major as July 14 approaches.

P.S. If you haven’t seen the 2006 film “Miss Potter,” about the life of Beatrix Potter, I encourage you to put it on your must-see list.

Squash: make it a sin

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Squash is coming out my ears. I couldn’t bear another bit of it without turning it into something sinful. Solution: pizza.

The sauce is a pesto sauce made from garden basil. The squash is masquerading as pepperoni. It didn’t fool me. There is — no joke — half a cup of garlic in the pesto sauce. At the abbey, garlic is a vegetable, not a seasoning. The crust is homemade, though I have to admit that I have never learnt the knack of making a truly sophisticated pizza crust. I need to study up on that.

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Making the most of squash

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The abbey garden is cranking out squash faster than the abbey kitchen can handle it. Squash has been on the menu almost every day. Squash can be one of the most boring vegetables in the world, so preparing it is a big challenge.

Everyone’s favorite squash dish, of course, is sliced squash dipped in batter and fried. That’s a great treat, but it’s a bit too high carb and high fat to have too often. Not to mention that it makes a big mess in the kitchen. The healthiest way I know to make good squash is to sear it in a skillet. Done poorly, the squash becomes hopelessly watery. However, if done carefully, the squash can be very appealing. It won’t turn to mush, and browning it adds a lot of flavor.

Use a hot skillet with a little oil. Olive oil can’t take higher heat, so I use sesame oil, sunflower oil, or even grapeseed oil. Salt makes vegetables release their water, so I don’t salt squash while it’s being cooked.

You want the pan to be not quite hot enough to smoke, but hot enough that the squash will brown in only a few minutes. Any water released by the squash (which won’t be much if you give it just a few minutes of high heat) will dry up in the pan.

To make up for the lack of salt, serve the squash with some sort of salty sauce. One of the abbey’s favorite sauces is what I call “cucumber sauce.” That’s a chilled sauce made of about 3/4 sour cream and 1/4 mayonnaise, seasoned with salt and pepper.