Cooking – Deathplow

This is not a food blog

How did I make pasta for decades without knowing I could stop the water from bubbling over by simply placing a chopstick over the pot? I learned this recently from one of our favorite shows, Chef & My Fridge

A wooden spoon works too. A stick would work. The bubbles pop when they hit whatever item you rest on the rim of the pot and it doesn’t boil over onto the stove. My dad lived his whole life without knowing that, and he made a lot of pasta. Is there anything else simple and obvious I should know? About cooking, gardening, parenting, putting my pants on, anything?

Here’s another stupid thing I did. Somehow I mislabeled seeds either when I collected them or planted them, and came out with plants I didn’t expect. A lot of them are cherry tomatoes, which is fine. They taste very, very good and make an excellent sauce. They just don’t impress your friends with their size and aren’t some wacky color, and it’s easier to harvest a few large tomatoes than 100 small ones.

I also have a variety I can’t even identify as one I previously planted or bought seeds for. It’s pinkish and medium-sized; looks a lot like a bald peach.

I wonder if I hybridized something, although I don’t know how. It’s shaped like a German Orange Strawberry but not golden in color and frankly not as tasty. And I haven’t grown those in several years because they were susceptible to disease and not very productive. I won’t give them a bad review, I just might not have the right climate for them.

Lucid Gems are as expected, and a couple Brandywines I didn’t have much hope for are producing. Almost no large tomatoes are ripe yet, and most are still getting larger. We had a party last weekend and I was unable to impress the other parents with a tomato salad, but there are some decent Marketmore cucumbers. These and a zucchini make pretty good, inoffensive low-carb noodles. I recommend eating them raw. They have a nice, crisp texture and that’s about it. They taste only as interesting as the sauce, oil or whatever you put on them.

Here, we’ve had smoke from the California wildfires and several downpours they could use in California. To get an idea of how bad it must be there, this is Boulder, CO on a clear day, which normally means the sky is a saturated blue and mountains are visible:

I am starting to see something like Septoria Leaf Spot on a few leaves but that doesn’t freak me out. I excise the affected leaves knowing it won’t eradicate it completely, but I have seen it this time of year frequently and healthy plants usually overcome it for the rest of the season.

Peppers are doing unusually well. I don’t know what the ones that look like Ancho chilis are – they might be Ancho chilis. The seeds are from a plant a coworker gave me last year, and he didn’t know what it was either. The long curly ones are Jimmie Nardellos , grown from seeds I removed from ripe peppers I bought at the farmers’ market. They are sweet and not spicy at all.

I used about 4 cups grated zucchini to make 2 bundt cakes, which were very good.

Metal Pig made Kolaches (traditional Bohemian pastry) with cherries from my friends’ tree. But I didn’t get a pic of the cherry ones before they were gone. This has poppy seed filling:

Hanukkah in August

I didn’t get any suggestions for different ways to enjoy fresh beans, so I’m posting one. Disclaimer: this is not a food blog.

I batter-fried some beans in a pool of oils – avocado, coconut and sesame. The pool was only about 1/2 inch (2-3 cm) deep in a non-stick pan. My pans are non-teflon, non-stick and I used a smallish one to make the pool deeper and use less oil. I dredged the beans (also sliced peppers, but they are not the subject of this, because I didn’t grow them) in:

-1 cup mixture of Ener-G egg replacer (potato and tapioca starch) and AP flour

-tsp salt

-tsp baking powder

-1/2 cup-ish ice water

Then I fried em in the oil (you saw that coming, right?)

I served them with a dipping sauce of:

-tsp miso paste

-1 or 3 tbs soy sauce

-2 or 3 tbs Thai chili sauce (sweet chili sauce)

They were crisp, sweet and a huge hit, even without the sauce. Part of a complete dinner with baked tofu, Chana chaat (lovely Indian chick pea salad) and naan:

Recommended beverage, smoothie made with seasonal Colorado peaches:

Request for inspiration

How many ways can you prepare and serve these lovely, fresh snap beans that are in season now? I use them raw as a vehicle for dips and treats for the dogs. I also saute them with just oil, salt and pepper or something more complicated, like Old Bay seasoning. And cook them in the canned tomatoes from last year (not really getting ripe ones yet this year). Another fun thing to do is fill the holes in penne pasta with them, when I want a time-consuming manual task.

I’d love to read your favorite ways to enjoy them, whether traditional or weird. I’m not in a rut, I just usually have so many in July and August I can afford to experiment with them.

The purple ones, Purple Podded Pole beans, are very young now. In a week or two there will be some as long as 10 inches. They are green when fully cooked. I love the purple color because not only is it pretty, it makes them easier to find and pick. For the same reason I don’t grow green tomatoes or anything else that matches its foliage when ripe. As far as I know, no peppers are green when ripe, though you can eat them green. If that’s your thing.

About 5 days ago I fed all plants except beans with alfalfa meal and Tiger Bloom 2-8-4 fertilizer (Tiger Bloom isn’t made with animal products except earthworm castings). Then we had several stormy days and they are all really happy.

It’s not just foliage, there’s fruit too, including a few ripe cherry tomatoes. I should have tested my soil but I’m lazy so I just looked at the plants and figure they have a pretty good balance of minerals.

So…recipes, suggestions, inspiration anyone? I’m especially looking at you, chefs and cooks (you know who you are) 🙂

It’s not a food blog but I made these oatmeal cookies…

My family loved them and thought they should be shared. It’s probably like most of the oatmeal cookie recipes out there, though vegan and gluten-free. Came out of the oven lovely, thick and moist, and cooled to be thick and chewy.

Note that my experience is at a mile high altitude, and if you live much lower you may want to adjust your recipe with slightly less flour and slightly more sugar, but frankly I don’t know how much. I just pulled this recipe out of my @ss today and it worked.

Gluten-free vegan oatmeal cookies:

Wet ingredients:

5 tablespoons Earth Balance (or any solid fat, probably)

5 tablespoons peanut butter

1 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup coconut sugar

2 tablespoons chia seeds soaked in 1/3 cup water

1-2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Dry ingredients:

I cup oat flour

1/2 cup almond flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

Ingredients added last:

2 1/2 cups rolled oats

1 cup raisins or chocolate chips, or whatever you like to add to oatmeal cookies

Step 1.

Preheat oven to 375 F.

Step 2.

Cream fat and sugar for about 2 minutes.

Step 3.

Add other wet ingredients to creamed fat and sugar.

Step 4.

Whisk together dry ingredients.

Step 5.

Add dry to wet ingredients and beat until combined.

Step 6.

Mix in the oats and other additive(s). Raisins, dried cranberries or cherries, chocolate chips and any of those things people like in cookies are welcome!

Step 7.

Use an ice cream scoop or spoon to drop batter onto baking sheet. I put parchment on a baking sheet for cookies, but you could just use a little lubricant or whatever on a bare sheet. Bake for 10 minutes.

Step 8.

Share cookies. This is an important step! They will taste much better if you share them.

I like sharing. Sharing’s my favorite.

To be consistent with the theme of my garden, I’ll post a pic of some guacamole made with avocado I wish I could grow, cilantro and a green Jimmie Nardello pepper which I did grow, lime juice, salt and pepper.

Chef friends who follow me: first, thanks for following! Second, I know I’m not a chef so I post my simple, kid-friendly recipes most humbly. Your comments and criticism are welcome.

Screenshot640 2018-07-25 21.03

Holes

Metal Pig is helping me finish the fence. I tried to do everything myself while he worked on projects that actually needed to be done, like remodeling. I got to a point where I just wasn’t man enough to dig the last post hole and I can’t plumb fence posts alone. I was hoping for some child labor but the kids were useless, playing soccer, video games or whatever. Metal Pig, who is twice the man I am by weight and volume, brought his big muscles to the project and it’s finally almost done.

I’m reminded of a book and movie in which boys were forced to dig holes in the desert. This is Colorado dirt and these are the tools I used to dig 2-foot post holes, and the mixture of sunflower oil and white vinegar used to treat the bottoms of the posts to prevent rotting:

Shovels, pick ax, post hole digger and sledge hammer for setting posts

A post hole, halfway done

Shovels, pick ax, post hole digger and sledge hammer for setting posts

A post hole, halfway done

There’s no setting the posts in cement because I don’t want the toxins from it in my garden. They have to be set in packed, hard dirt, which we do have a steady supply of. The O.G. posts were set that way 4 years ago, and are still solid, plumb and level.

This hardly ever happens, in the kitchen, my professional life, my pursuit of being ripped and muscular, but my vision had become real.

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I do need to be small to tend the plants and harvest in the fenced area, so my size is an advantage in that way.

I’ve heard of zucchini races, where kids add wheels to zucchini and race them downhill. It’s a cute and fun idea, but I can’t stand to see food wasted. I love sauteed zucchini. It also makes an amazing cake, like carrot cake, which at my last party was more popular than chocolate cake. There’s also the low-carb noodle impersonators you can turn them into, which aren’t like actual noodles no matter what you read, but I love them. You can use a spiralizer but I don’t usually spend money on unitaskers so I use a knife and vegetable peeler.

A spiralizer would make them look more like linguine. I need a real camera, don’t I.

Stuff to do so I’m not tempted to start seeds too early

I’m a busy parent. There are kids to play with, horses to ride and this Prosecco isn’t going to drink itself. It’s all I can do to fit in a 2-hour workout.

That’s not really me. I would never wear that. Also I don’t really have that much time on my hands. I don’t even have a string of horses. Just access to a string of horses. And I bought several bottles of Prosecco but it was for our holiday party. There were two left over and I made jelly with one and used half the other in risotto (see this blog for risotto recipes and pics). Don’t remember what happened to the other half.

Making jelly is fun. I wouldn’t normally waste a good bottle of wine on a batch of jelly, but it was Christmas and I sent some to family members. I added lemongrass and basil to the Prosecco jelly and rosemary to some I made with Moscato (EG colored it green). That’s not really relevant to this gardening blog, is it. I didn’t grow the wine, it was just left over from a party. But I did make jelly from the raspberries that grow in my front yard, and that got good reviews. I also happened to score a cheap case of blackberries in the fall and made insanely good preserves out of those, which was almost too pretty to eat.

They look like they’re going on a date

My friend Mean Charlene (ironic nickname) grows a variety of hot peppers, which she shared with me. I combined them with heirloom tomatoes, cilantro, lime juice, salt and pepper for a decent salsa.

I would grow peppers, but as long as Mean Charlene does every year, I can just trade with her. I did have two plants outside this year, one I planted and another that was a surplus seedling a coworker gave me. Right before the first frost, I made a last minute decision to dig those up and bring them in. They blossomed in November and have little peppers on them.

And here’s a blurry pic of the owl in my neighborhood, who has little to do with gardening but I was just so excited I got this close and s/he let me take pics, I’m posting one.

20171216_154359

Oh we got trouble.

It is uncharacteristically cool and cloudy today. Summer in Colorado is dry and about 30 degrees F hotter, usually. The weather makes me gloomy (I am too old to be emo). I almost said I was depressed, but checked myself. I rethink using that word now since depression is a topic little EG has had questions about lately.

He was really affected by the deaths of singers Chris Cornell and Chester Bennington. We’ve been fans of Cornell for years and EG liked Linkin Park. He was sad the day he heard on the radio of Bennington’s suicide and wanted to talk about it. I wish I could have protected him from that news. He couldn’t wrap his brain around someone feeling that way and I can’t either, because it’s not the state of my head. I wanted him to understand depression is an illness, not a contagious one, and if you see someone with signs of it to help them…it ended up being a good talk and he was usual cheerful self again. He processed it over a few days and discussions. But as a parent I don’t know if I did a great job addressing it. Such a heavy subject for a little kid.

That didn’t have anything to do with my garden. Let me tell you about the trouble, which is relatively minor and possibly managed.

Squash bugs. Saw these little guys in June when the squash were wee little planties. I thought they were screwed (the plants, that is). I sprayed them every day with soapy water for about a week and they powered through it.

2. Is this some kind of blight? Most plants look healthy but this concerns me. I see some spotting on the Solar Flair with the weird heart-shaped tomato and a little on its neighbor, the Brandywine. My Brandywines have always gotten some kind of issue toward the end of the season, but are usually so big by then it doesn’t seem to spread far. But it gives me a creepy feeling. Still, I can’t seem to cull a plant unless it’s a case of sacrificing the needs of the few for the needs of the many. I don’t even kill ants.

On a happier note, the shotis puri Metal Pig made last night is good. It looks like the real deal to me, but it doesn’t remind him of the breads he ate in Georgia. He needs to lower his standards. Traditionally, as he described to us, it’s made in a kiln-like oven called a tone, which we will not be building or buying. The dough is slapped to the sides of the oven and scraped off when ready. This was made on a pizza stone in a typical residential range.

Yield

I just brought in as many beans as I could pick in a few minutes, which weighed about a half pound. I estimate I’ve picked about a pound a day for a week, and price per pound around here varies but $1.50 is reasonable. So I got a return of $10.50 this week. Kids love to eat them raw and I like them cooked Turkish style.

Here’s a tool to help you price your veg, if you’re a market grower or even a lemonade stand grower.

If I could grow quinoa, wheat and oats we’d save a lot of money. Quinoa is the basis for the meals the dogs and I eat, and 8-year-old EG is into baking with flour made of different grains (mostly wheat and oats). He doesn’t like quinoa, unfortunately. Like many people, we have friends who don’t eat gluten and oat flour is especially useful. Even if you do eat wheat, oats are good, cheap nutrition.

Right now I’m going back to checking on the dough for a home version of shotis puri, traditional ciabatta-like bread Metal Pig remembers from a trip to Georgia. Not the US Georgia with NASCAR and peaches, the fascinating Eurasian country of Georgia. They may have peaches as well, actually.

I love you, little planties

Look at my babies:

Three week old tomato plants

We were out of town for a few days and I left them under a light 24/7 while we were gone. I don’t think that’s normally recommended but I don’t have a timer and without the lights they’d be doomed. Now I’m back to turning it off at night. Still not getting cocky about the plants though.

We were at a family-friendly camp in the mountains we go to twice a year. You can rent cabins, yurts, campsites or stay at the lodge. We always get a cabin, which is far from fancy but comfortable and enables us to prepare our own food. I brought cookie dough and we improvised by using an empty glass bottle to roll out the dough and sprinkling clumpy powdered sugar from a spoon. This is what we came up with:

cookieheart

Our dogs Pixie (right) and Dean (left) made a heart shape with their butts instead of with cookie dough. Pixie might have eaten some dough. There’s no chocolate in it (chocolate is toxic to dogs). Pixie eats everything. Dean eats pants.

pupheart

They don’t provide many kitchen tools, a TV or a dishwasher, but that’s OK with us. We don’t go there to stay inside all day anyway. Right, Pixie?

wheresmydog — Can you find the dirty white dog in this pic?

True leaves, still not counting potential tomatoes

Even though my planties look healthy today, with a few true leaves starting, I’m nervous about the possibility of the damping-off disease that killed so many last year. This time they’re started in a new tray with no residue from previous plants, and are under fluorescent lights. I’ve always been confident that I don’t over- or under-water but maybe I’m wrong about that. The damping-off fungus that strikes early can be diagnosed by the base of the stems becoming skinny and weak near the top of the soil, like that guy at the gym with huge pecs and lats and sad chicken legs trying to support them. So far I don’t see any weakness here:

stems

Still, too early to get cocky. Below are the survivors from last year’s second, maybe third, attempt (the ones I dropped when I tripped while carrying the tray). I don’t think there are ever survivors of damping-off disease – these just didn’t get it.

seedlings2016

And because this post is kind of boring, only slightly funny and not sexy at all, here’s a pic of Mr Waffle (from when my kid used to like his breakfast to be funny) and my waffle/pancake recipe:

2 cups oat flour
1 cup wheat flour (or all oat flour for my friends who avoid gluten)
3 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
2 1/2 cups milk – soy, almond, oat, hemp, cow, whatever you use
1 cup applesauce
1/3 cup oil
1/4 cup sugar, syrup or other sugary substance (I’ve used ginger ale, because I’m not some kind of health nut)

Note that I live at about 5280 feet above sea level. That, and the fact that I don’t value accuracy when measuring ingredients, means your results may vary. Combine first four ingredients in one bowl and remaining ingredients in another. Add the wet ingredients to the dry and mix with a fork; don’t overmix. Leave it for at least 5 minutes so the dry ingredients can soak up the liquid and you can heat your pan or waffle iron. For pancakes, you may or may not thin the batter with more liquid like ginger ale. When I make pancakes, sometimes I sprinkle a few chocolate chips in them while they’re in the pan. I usually make a lot of these and freeze them for quick breakfasts during the week.

And here’s a bonus pic of a cute little horse, not relevant at all but she was in the same folder of pictures. Behind her are stacks of untreated wood including a lot of 2×6 boards. I’ve used some to build SFGs and may use more this spring on that farm to make as many raised beds as I can. I got my friends who own that property excited about growing vegetables out there. They scored those pallets free from a company that makes wind turbines and uses the pallets to transport the huge blades. They’ve used some in building horses’ turnout shelters and there is a lot left. There’s no shortage of horse manure, but a lot of things to consider before using it as fert or soil amendment.