But I looked it up later on the internet and said to the spouse “Damn, we should have stopped.” It turned out to be the west coast headquarters of Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. They opened in 2009 in the renovated Sonoma County National Bank building, originally built in 1926. So we returned the next day, and it was well worth the detour. The store sells not just seeds, but books, magazines, tools, gifty-type stuff, etc. A vegetable gardeners’ paradise. I was too overwhelmed to even take pictures, but here are a few that other people have posted on Flickr.

I was not too overwhelmed to shop, however. We spent quite a while oohing and aahing and then picked up some pepper seeds, radish seeds, melon seeds, cucumber seeds, flower seeds, magazines, and one bulb of Thai Red garlic. The seeds are awaiting spring, but the garlic is now growing under a row cover in the Tangled Branches kitchen garden.

More about edible alliums and row covers in the next post.

We traveled to California in September for a wedding and a few days vacation and I just couldn’t get the blog restarted when we got back. But not because I don’t have anything wonderful to report – I do! We have happy memories of the trip – lots of fabulous food, wine, beer, cider (is there a theme here?) and even some plant-related tourist stops. More about those later. This post is about the beautiful bride’s interesting, lovely, and sentimental bouquet.

Lovely is obvious.

And so interesting upon closer observation. How many wedding bouquets have you seen that feature cabbage, kale, and succulents? And garden flowers like Love-Lies-Bleeding (Amaranthus caudatus)? As a person who is expected to know something about plants, I often get asked to identify things. So when someone inquired what was that turquoise flower in the bouquet, I was stumped by the question because 1) I didn’t notice any turquoise flowers, and 2). I can’t think of any turquoise flowers. But my reputation may still be intact because it wasn’t a flower and only sort of turquoise – leafy gray/blue/green (does that color have a name?) rosettes of some succulent which I’m guessing is an Echeveria. Anybody want to help me out here? However, I was truly stumped by the cabbage and kale. The brain is expecting flowers and it will find them even if they aren’t there. Here’s a better view of the cabbage (top right) and fringy kale (just below and to the right of the cabbage).

But I think the sentiment behind some of the choices is the nicest of all. Callas and cabbages were two prominent and fondly remembered plants in the bride’s grandmother’s garden.

Footnotes:
[1] Everything you ever wanted to know about the song “California Dreamin’”, courtesy of NPR.

It’s native to south Asia, where it’s a weed (of course) of rice fields. That reminds me that the Lantana standard I so admired at Monticello is also a weed in India (and probably not trained to a standard there).

Thomas Jefferson may have acquired his Pentapetes seeds from Bernard McMahon, the Philadelphia nurseryman. There is apparently a range of red-to-pink shades. I only saw the red one, but pink is mentioned on the Monticello website.

Some links:

• Monticello: Scarlet Pentapetes
• Monticello: Pink Pentapetes
• The Flowers of India: Midday Flower

Some of the vendors/exhibitors were already well-known to us, so we concentrated on some we had not done business with before. But first we stopped at the Tasting Tent set up by Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, the driving force behind the festival. Can you believe that I’m actually a little tired of fresh tomatoes just now? It’s true – the garden has been good to us this year – but I saw some on display that I wanted to sample. ‘Long Tom‘ is now on my list for next year. And due to a lot of pickle-making this summer my garlic harvest is already dwindling, so I bought some ‘French Red’ to supplement what I grew. Huge cloves on this one. I’m not sure if it’s the same as the one listed as ‘Mild French’ on their website, but it looked interesting.

The spouse and I went our separate ways for lunch. I had a bratwurst from The Rock Barn, a caterer and farmer’s market vendor, and the spouse had a pizza from Primo Tuscan Wood Oven Pizza. We would happily eat either one again.

Hard cider seems to the trendy new thing. Albemarle Cider Works is the local veteran, having produced several vintages now (if that’s the right word when talking about cider), but we noticed a booth from a newcomer so stepped up for a tasting at Castle Hill Cider. We liked what we tasted, and especially enjoyed the stories behind the names of their ciders. Although we didn’t buy any bottles, we plan to visit their beautiful tasting room sometime and buy then.

Then we headed over to the Edible Landscaping booth for a talk by owner Michael McConkey about growing figs. You know, I hadn’t really considered growing figs before, but now I’m totally sold on the idea. He made it sound fun, but the bullet points were that the hardiest varieties (i.e. best chance of success locally) are ‘Chicago Hardy’ and ‘Celeste’, and they’d probably be happier if we sweetened up our acid soil for them with some lime.

Although the Heritage Harvest Festival would be worth attending at any location, it was not in just any location. We’ve toured Monticello a couple of times, but never during the growing season. So on our previous visits, at the end of the house tour, we’d just walk through the bare gardens and imagine what they’d be like in summer. Now we don’t have to imagine. I wish I had taken a picture of the lantanas trained as standards. One of them had a trunk about 2 or more inches in diameter. I’d love to start one, but don’t have a good place to keep it in the winter. Someday, when I get my greenhouse………but then again, how long would it take to grow one that big?

But anyhow, one of the neat things about touring gardens is discovering new plants. How many of you reading this know this plant?

Do you recognize....?

I now know what it is because it was labeled, but if it hadn’t been labeled I’d still be in the dark. If you recognize it, please leave a comment. I’ll update this post with the name later. (Update: it’s Scarlet Pentapetes, Pentapetes phoenicia)

The vegetable garden at Monticello was mostly green in an end-of-the-season kind of way, but a few spots had been recently replanted to fall crops. The mature pumpkins and winter squashes in the garden emphasized the harvest theme. I wonder if the Monticello gardeners resort to 21st century methods to keep the squash vine borers away, or do they know some 18th century secret?

All in all, a very pleasant and informative experience, but as I was writing this I thought of an improvement I’d really like to see. Where I’m from in the Midwest, county fairs have extensive horticulture competitions where the gardening public raises and enters their best tomatoes, dahlias and just about anything else you can think of. I’ve written before about the Sandwich Fair in my home county, but if you missed those posts, here’s one photo from 2009. Sandwich is the name of the town, by the way. There’s no sandwich competition that I’m aware of, but hey, maybe they should have one.

Mixed Vegetable Competition, Sandwich Fair, 2009

In fact, here’s all the photos I took in 2009. (That’s why I didn’t attend the Heritage Harvest Festival in 2009 – I was back in Illinois to see the Sandwich Fair.)

To my knowledge there are no agricultural exhibits from members of the gardening public on this scale anywhere in Virginia. The county fairs have a very few poor exhibits, most from 4-H kids. Maybe the state fair (which I haven’t been to) has something good, but not any of the county fairs I’ve attended here. I’d love to see something like that added to the Heritage Harvest Festival. It wouldn’t even have to be a competition, just a tent or two where gardeners could show off their harvests.

Harvest, September 4, 2011

A couple weeks ago I wrote about the Easiest Okra Recipe Ever. Or so I thought when I wrote it. Since then I’ve found an Even Easier Okra Recipe. Like the other one, it isn’t so much a recipe as an idea, but here goes. Preheat oven to 425°F. Wash okra, dry thoroughly, and cut into large chunks (say 1½ to 2 inches long). Toss the okra in a bowl with some olive oil. Place okra in roasting pan (or casserole dish, or ovenproof skillet, or whatever.) large enough to hold it in a single layer. Roast for about 20 minutes, stir, and then roast for about another 20 minutes. The okra should be cooked through and starting to brown. Remove from the oven, sprinkle with seasoning of your choice, and serve.

Ripe Chimayo Peppers

Since I was serving the roasted okra along with leftover Baingan Bharta, I seasoned it with a mixture of salt, coriander, cumin and our own freshly dried and ground Chimayo chile peppers. If you google “roasted okra”, you’ll find more suggestions for seasoning, but we really liked this one. I hate to sound like a broken record, but you really should try okra cooked this way even if you think you don’t like okra. It might change your mind.

Dried Chimayo Peppers

This is my first year growing Chimayo peppers, but it won’t be the last. I thought they might sulk in our hot, humid summers but they were very productive and very tasty – a sweet, almost berry-like flavor with a good kick of chile heat after they’re ripe. I tried one while it was still green and didn’t like it at all then, so as far as I’m concerned this is a pepper for drying only.

I missed last week’s Garden to Table Challenge, but mostly because I’ve been too busy harvesting and cooking to write about it. I’m actually looking forward to the coming of fall, so we can get out and do other things…..today we went to the Heritage Harvest Festival at Monticello, which deserves a blog post all its own.

1. An earthquake and 22 officially recorded aftershocks, close to Tangled Branches South in central Virginia. As I wrote before, we had no serious trouble even though we were less than 10 miles from the reported epicenter.
2. A hurricane. No real problems with this either. Some downed tree branches, a few broken stems in the vegetable garden, but no power outages, no flooding, and no damage to buildings.

Things related to gardening since the last time I wrote anything about gardening:

1. Eggplant! I picked several on the morning of the earthquake.
   

   Beans, eggplant, peppers, okra

   And another dozen since that. We love eggplant and this has been the best year for it so far. I switched varieties again, keeping ‘Pingtung Long’ from last year but adding ‘Listada de Gandia’ (the striped one above) and ‘Rosita’. I’m very happy with all three varieties this year. So far, I’ve made Baingain Bharta, Roasted Vegetable Panzanella and Baba Ganoush.

2. It’s a good year for bell peppers too. I’ve made Pepper and Egg, Pepper and Egg, Pepper and Egg…. I’m much happier with my results since I started making it following Clara’s directions.
3. The day before the big earthquake, we bought a freezer. The bush beans and the pole beans are all producing at once. And since we were so rattled by the earthquakes, we haven’t been there every day to pick them. So I blanched the best of them and packed them into freezer bags. The big, somewhat overgrown beans weren’t a total loss though. I turned them into Southern-style green beans, braised for about an hour and a half with bacon and a little chopped onion. I fry the bacon first, remove it and some of the fat from the pan, saute the onion in the remaining fat, then add the beans, part of the crumbled bacon and a small amount of water. Keep checking during cooking to see if more water is needed. When the beans are very thoroughly cooked, add the remaining crumbled bacon and salt and pepper to taste. I happen to really like beans cooked this way, but it’s not to everybody’s taste.
4. Speaking of “not to everybody’s taste” – okra. I think people who say they don’t like it just haven’t had it cooked properly. Okra requires some finesse in cooking. But that doesn’t mean difficult, just observant. So here is the Easiest Okra Recipe Ever. Slice okra crosswise into ¼ to ½ inch thick rounds. Slice chile peppers. Heat olive oil in a large skillet. Place okra in skillet. Stir to coat with oil. Let it cook for a bit, then add chile peppers. Stir periodically, so the okra browns on both sides. When it’s mostly brown and crispy, sprinkle with salt and serve. Keys to success are to keep the okra very dry, as moisture will make it slimy; slice it thick enough so that it doesn’t disappear in cooking (it shrinks a lot), but not so thick as to negate the brown crunchiness; do not cover the pan during cooking; do not add salt until the end. You may need to add more oil – okra absorbs a surprising amount.
5. Yard-long beans. These are cool. Beautiful vines with dark glossy leaves, and very productive too. I want to make Wendy’s stir-fried long beans, but haven’t been able to find Chinese dried olives. Can anybody point me in the right direction in the Asian market? (I tried to find them at the various big Korean supermarkets and at Great Wall in Merrifield.) Are they shelved with the other dried stuff – mushrooms and the like? What sort of packaging am I looking for?
6. Drying tomatoes. One plant of ‘Riesentraube’ is going to give me enough dried tomatoes to last the winter and beyond.
   

   Tomato 'Riesentraube'

   I had read great things about the taste of Riesentraube, but mine are sort of sweet and bland. Fine for drying though.

That’s not everything that I could include for this very belated Garden to Table Challenge post, but I’m headed into the kitchen now to make Pepper and Egg again and after that back down to central Virginia to see what’s been going on in the garden while I’ve been away. Hoping for no more aftershocks…

Oh, and right now we have a Severe Thunderstorm Warning. The thunder made me jump.

Tuesday, August 23, was a beautiful day in central Virginia. Clear skies, cool temperatures (even a bit cold in the morning), low humidity. A good day to work in the garden and catch up on some housework since the spouse was away working in northern Virginia. While I was in the garden that morning, I noticed how quiet everything seemed but chalked it up to the time of day, time of year, whatever. I came indoors, made myself some lunch, put some towels in the clothes dryer and sat on the deck trying to even out my tan. Came back in, started to run water in the sink to clean up the lunch dishes and went to the dryer to get out the towels. I opened the dryer door and suddenly heard a loud rumbling noise, soon joined by rattling, sounds of things falling, breaking glass. I thought something was wrong with the dryer, but it swiftly dawned on me that something was wrong with the whole house, or the whole world. I ran outside to the deck. Not the smartest move, perhaps, but I felt better than staying inside waiting for the house to fall down on me. The shaking went on and on and on. I really have no idea how long, but it seemed like a long time. It wasn’t a steady shaking but seemed to subside only to resume just as intensely. The sound wasn’t a constant rumbling either, but with sharper booms fading away to rumbling. My impression was of a series of explosions. I assumed it was an earthquake, but was not certain, as I had never experienced anything like it. Eventually it seemed to be over. I ventured inside. The water was still running in the sink (it didn’t overflow). The electricity was still on. There was glass all over one counter in the kitchen. Some glass bottles I keep on the windowsill had fallen onto the counter and broken a drinking glass into a zillion sharp pieces. The bottles didn’t break. Strange. A board that was on a shelf in the laundry closet had fallen onto the floor. The vent cover above the fireplace door was hanging by one corner. Those were the things I noticed immediately. I looked around at the walls and ceilings but didn’t see any cracks. All windows were still intact. I tried to call the spouse, but didn’t get through. I texted him, but received nothing back. The internet connection was working, so I emailed him and my mother. I kept trying to call the spouse, but got nothing, not even ringback tone. My mother had been trying to call me all this time and eventually got through. While I was talking to her I got texts from the spouse and from my sister. And during all these frantic attempts at telecommunication, there were many, many aftershocks. Eventually the spouse and I were able to communicate in realtime and he decided to drive down to central Virginia as planned, although he asked me if I was sure I wanted to stay there. I said I was fine, had to clean up the kitchen, etc. etc. Everything would be OK. So he arrived around suppertime and we tried to have a more or less normal meal, although there were still frequent aftershocks. One especially large aftershock sent me hurrying back outside. We went to bed and fell into a fitful sleep hearing and feeling the earth rumble. Thing seemed to be calming down somewhat the next day and by bedtime we had not felt any aftershocks since midafternoon. Then as I was sort of awake around midnight, another rumbling started. I hadn’t really gotten back to sleep when there were two more aftershocks close together. I don’t know whether I was asleep or awake when the rumbling and shaking started anew, only longer and more intensely than any since the initial event. I would have run outside again, except the spouse was holding on to me. Another smaller aftershock occurred a few minutes later. And I said “Enough!”. We had planned to go back to northern Virginia on Thursday anyway, and it was technically Thursday, even if it was only 2 AM. So we packed up and headed back to northern Virginia. We’re still here – currently waiting to see how much Hurricane Irene will affect us.

I know how fortunate we were that nothing was really damaged at our house except my psyche. And that there were no serious injuries in the entire event, even though all of the 6 county schools were damaged, 3 of them badly, while school was in session. And that the nuke plant was as safe as it can be.

The list of aftershocks on the USGS website is far from complete. We heard and felt dozens up until the time we left early Thursday. Some time in the next couple of days, we’ll go back to central Virginia, but I think it’ll be a long time before I feel comfortable there again.

Garlic Chives

One year ago today, I posted the exact same thing we ate for lunch today – Garlic Chives and Pork. That’s the long version, but to summarize,  the recipe came from Saveur magazine in a feature on Taiwanese home cooking. It’s ground pork, garlic chives flower buds, chile peppers and soy sauce.

I served it with a cucumber salad containing garlic, chile peppers, rice vinegar, sugar, salt, sesame oil and sesame seeds.

Tonight, I’m making the Potato-Tomato tart I wrote about in August 2007. I didn’t post any visuals at the time I wrote it, but in August of 2008 I posted on Picasaweb a series of photos showing the process of the roasting the tomatoes for the first part of the dish. If I wrote anything about it in 2008, I can’t find it…..so, here are those photos. When I make it again today, it will look almost the same.

Step 1: place cut-up tomatoes in roasting pan with olive oil, salt and pepper

Step 2: after 45 minutes in a 400F oven, add coarsely chopped garlic

Step 3: after 45 more minutes in the oven, this is the finished product

The roasted tomatoes are good all by themselves, but we dug the potatoes on Friday and there’s nothing better than fresh potatoes, so I’ll spoon the tomatoes on top of a roasted potato galette, which is nothing more than spiral layers of thinly-sliced potatoes drizzled with olive oil and salt and pepper roasted in a 400F oven for 30 minutes.

The recent rain has made for fast growth in the garden. I swear the okra has grown 2 feet in the last week.

Okra 'Emerald'

Eggplant plants are making eggplant fruit.

Eggplant 'Listada de Gandia'

Lemongrass is thick.

Lemongrass

There are more peppers than we can use fresh, so I’m going to start packing them into plastic bags in the freezer.

Pepper 'Chapeau de Frade'

This is my contribution to this week’s Garden to Table Challenge at Greenish Thumb. What’s cooking in your garden?

Update, August 15: a photo of the actual finished Potato-Tomato Tart, just before we ate it.

Potato-Tomato Tart

First attempt at fermented pickles.

Refrigerator Pickles

This is another pickle recipe that doesn’t involve canning – Dan Koshansky’s Refrigerator Pickles via Margaret Roach at A Way to Garden. When the fermentation is well underway, the jars are put in the fridge where they will keep several months. I tasted the brine today – it’s sour (and fabulously garlicky), but I think I’m going to leave the jars on the counter for another day or two.

First Pimientos de Padrón.

Pimientos de Padrón

I probably picked them a little too soon, but they were still delicious. Cooking is easy. Heat olive oil in a frying pan. Add peppers. Turn them over and over until all sides are blistered and starting to brown. Sprinkle with salt. Serve. Pick them up by the stem and eat. You can eat the seeds or gnaw around them. Just be ready in case you’re the lucky person who gets a very picante one. Yesterday’s batch was all mild, except the largest one had a trace of chile heat.

Revisiting some issues from last week, the Lime-Mint Freezer Pickles were great (at least before freezing), but the purple color in the peppers started to fade around the cut edges. You’d really have to use quite a lot of hot peppers to detect much heat through all the sugar (1½ cups), but the lime-mint flavoring was intriguing. Sort of reminded me of the cucumbers served with Satay in Thai restaurants, but with the flavor volume turned up. I made a similar batch (another recipe on the facing page of The Joy of Pickling) last night, but this time the seasonings were dill, garlic and hot peppers. I haven’t yet thawed any of the containers I put in the freezer and that will be the real test of this technique.

The cucumber harvest has slowed and the vines are dying down, so I don’t think there will be many more batches of cucumber pickles, if any.

I’m working on codifying some of my mother-in-law’s recipes. I’ve made her fried okra twice recently, but I’m still fiddling with the proportions of the spices. If you like Indian food and think you don’t like okra, this recipe might change your mind – there is absolutely no slimy texture at all.

Okra is doing well this year (so far hasn’t been eaten by deer), so there should be plenty to experiment with. I’m growing six different varieties this year to see if I can find one that we like and that the deer don’t like.

Top row: Jing Orange, Beck's Big Buck Horn. Bottom row: Emerald, Cherokee Long Pod, Silver Queen, White Velvet

In the last two previous years, I grew ‘Emerald’ which tastes good and remains tender even when the pods are rather long, but just as soon as we would begin to harvest, the deer started to chow down on it. Last year I even wrapped the plants in plastic mesh and the deer still ate the parts they could get at.

That’s all from here for this week’s Garden to Table Challenge, hosted by Wendy at Greenish Thumb. Please visit and taste what others are cooking from their gardens. And if you’re cooking from your garden…join the fun!