Shirley Poppies grow in my garden, prosaically in the asparagus bed, and next to the row of cabbages, and intermingled with the chicory. They reseed themselves in all kinds of nooks and crannies, next to the chard and the lettuce - so fragile looking yet so tough … and so tenacious. They were bred in the 1880’s, more than a century ago,  from the wild European field poppy - a weed that grow in the wheat fields and the meadows. A beautiful sight when you are lucky enough to come across a field of them; with increased herbicide use, fields of wild poppies aren’t as frequent as they used to be in, oh say, 1915. Yes,  Flanders poppies are achingly beautiful on Memorial Day.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

[...] — Lt.-Col. John McCrae (1872 - 1918)

Les coquelicots ondulent dans les champs de Flandres
Entre les croix, rangs sur rangs,
Qui marquent notre place; et dans le ciel
Les alouettes, chantant obstinément, virevoltent;
On les entend à peine parmi les canons tonnants.

Nous sommes les morts. Hier encore,
Vivants à l’aube, admirants le soleil couchant;
Nous aimions et étions aimés,

Et maintenant, nous gisons

Dans les champs de Flandres.

[...] — Ma traduction

We eat plenty of fast food here - especially for lunch. Don’t believe me? well… take a look at the picture of one of our not unusual lunches.

• Green salad from the garden (Pick early in the morning, wash, dry, refrigerate, ready to go in seconds) with hard boiled eggs from the hen house (hard boil, refrigerate - they will keep several days and only take seconds to chop and add to the salad)
• Various homemade pickles: curried zucchini pickles, dilly green beans, cornichons and green tomato relish. Made last summer. 3 seconds to open each jar.
• Sliced Beef Tongue with really good mustard. Tasty (really! don’t knock it off until you try it), easy, inexpensive. What else do you want? Prepare the tongue up to days in advance, keep it in the fridge, ready to slice at a moment’s notice for sandwiches or just for a cold cut platter with pickled veggies.
• Sun tea: steeped in the sun in 1/2 gallon jar and rebottled in recycled glass bottle for more convenience.

Voila - that is slow food, but it is also fast food. Better: it’s real food.

The how to on cooking beef tongue (or other tongues for that matter like lamb), you may find here at DC-based The Slow Cook. Ed Bruske gives very detailed instructions on how to cook tongue and brine it first - if you want.

But really, it’s easy to cook tongue; in a nutshell, this is what you do: Read more »

I know it’s a little wild looking.

but:

• the raspberries  are very strong and lush despite a very dry April (and I managed to put a netted trellis for them, so the branches stay upright, hopefully making harvesting easier)
• the Shirley poppies are absolutely gorgeous - although they have been allowed to take over the asparagus bed. The harvest may have been a tad affected - something that somebody in the house will not let me forget. I say that April was very dry, and THAT affected the harvest (but next year I plan to give the poppies a bed all of their own) Read more »
  
  Posted in - Kitchen Garden, locavore log - Comments(3)

Aren’t they beautiful?

They are earlier than the last few years, I may be able to pick in late May. While winter was cold and snowy (which currants like), the ground was protected from extreme cold by the blanket of snow - something we don’t have very often in Virginia. So the ground may actually have been a little warmer thanks to the snow cover. And of course, April was warm. So… ripe currants soon!

Soon I’ll be making The Easiest Jelly In The World again. Oh, we’ll be eating them with a sprinkling of sugar and other berries too, a very refreshing little fruit salad, but red currant jelly is an absolute favorite here. I also freeze ripe berries to throw a handful when making jams with low pectin fruit later in the summer (red to go with cherries and strawberries; white currants for peaches and apricots).

Anybody growing currants out there? what do you make with them?

… start a vegetable weekly subscription and make Mongolian-style sauce (lots and lots of it!)

I certainly grow more than we can eat - and we eat lots of veggies! Yet I don’t grow enough for selling at a Farmer’s Market or to a restaurant. But even with all the preserving I do, it’s too much just for us. And let’s face it: some things don’t preserve that well anyway (lettuce sauerkraut, anyone?). Or I have no need to preserve them, because I’ll be growing them through the cold months. Why preserve when you can eat fresh? You know: the mâche, arugula, mustards, lettuces, onions, kale, turnips, spinach, Swiss Chard, and other greens.

So, what’s a girl to do?

Find a few people who don’t have a garden, are interested in super fresh food, and are willing to receive whatever I grow. That’s what a girl does.

So my mini (or rather “nano”) subscription scheme started last year. I am not a professional grower, so I do not want to commit for the entire “growing” season, and I want to give myself, and my clients, a way out if  I can’t sustain it - or if they don’t like it. So I offer the  subscription in 7 to 8 weeks increment (Spring, early summer, high summer, fall) and only to a handful of clients. A chef’s CSA.

So far so good.  We are in week 2 of spring, and that’s what my Thursday subscriber got today:

• Read more »
  
  Posted in - Harvest, Kitchen Garden, Vegetable recipe, herb recipe, locavore log - Comments(4)

Roasting a whole lamb in the spring is the epitome of the outdoor party (although a whole pig comes pretty close too).

We just did that this week-end for the benefit dinner organized by Flavor Magazine to benefit the Rappahannock Food Pantry.

Read more »

Harvesting honey is - I hope - going to become one of our spring rituals. We just harvested out first honey: four medium frames, two people working two hours give 8 pints of honey (4 liters) or 12 pounds.

We are about to start our 3rd year with the bees. Last spring, at the  beginning of year two, we could have/should have had a harvest. We did not - for a number of reasons. Not the least of it was that we had a heat wave just as Keith put in new wax frames - which pretty much melted the wax frames which dripped all over the box, blocking access to the new areas of the hive. There was no room for the bees to expand; so the colony - a strong one in need of more room -  swarmed before we realized what happened.When bees swarm they load themselves with honey so they can start a new home with some food. Our harvest-to-be was depleted. We left the remaining honey to the remaining bees.

Going into winter we had two colonies. Coming out of winter we only had one. We knew one queen was weak, and she did not make it in this cold winter. And so no queen, no eggs, no replacement workers, no replacement queen With that knowledge and  no obvious signs of diseases, Keith gave most of the frames of honey of that hive to the remaining hive and saved four for us to extract. Finally! Long awaited honey….

And so last Friday on a beautiful balmy day, we extracted honey. Which proved surprisingly easy.

Remove the frames from the super (the box). The bees have capped the honey in the cells with wax.

Read more »

Bacon’s my friend (especially the kind that comes from a pastured pig).

A few weeks ago I read Brett Laidlaw’s post on Trout Caviar about smoking bacon. He wrote  it just about 2 years ago, but I only recently read it.

I knew we had to try it.

We did.

It just so happened that I had two pork sides in the freezer Read more »

I simply love this time of the year when the days are clear, the nights are cool, the maples are blooming, the buds are swelling on the trees, and so many green things - good to eat too - are poking out of the ground, or just starting to grow for real.

Witness:

• The acid green of sorrel. Lemony flavor in our salads and tart soups and sauces. Lovely with potatoes.

• The mildly nutty green of mache. Read more »
  
  Posted in - Garden Technique, Harvest, locavore log, vegetable - Comments(9)

Seven weeks old (seeded on January 25), and growing. Transplanted once already and soon again!

Those are my super early batch (The main batch was started on Feb22). They are a reliable tasty and prolific cherry tomato for me (Wetsel Red Cherry) and - cross our collective fingers - harvest should start in June. That’s the only reason really to start things so early: to really extend the harvest season.