The Agony & The Ecstacy

It’s that time of year again. Gardening time.

I’ve got all sorts of things coming up in the garden which means, during the week, I’m glued to wunderground.  Did it frost last night?  Will it frost tomorrow?  Why has it only rained a tenth of an inch this week?  Gardening from afar is stressful (I’m kind of obsessed with the idea of this PlantCam, at least it would help me feel like a little less of an absentee gardener).

We have a few big projects going on this year.  Two weekends ago I dug-out the compost pile. I think it dates back to both of the two previous owners of our house.  I found lots of unusual things in there: the film of green grass that keeps sushi separate from wasabi, pencils (yes, plural), chicken bones and a ceramic snail.  I sifted it once on a wide grid.  The pile is, no lie, the size of a Smart Fourtwo, and now I’m working on sifting it again through a finer sieve.  This is hard work, but it is good work, and once we’re done with projects two and three, all that shaking will have really paid off.

Project two is creating what we’re calling the Plumpkin Patch on one of the lumps our land is dotted with.  We covered the area with a tarp over the winter which not only killed the grass but also served as a nice warm spot for our mice to escape the snow.  We’re hoping that by giving the squash some room to run wild that we’ll actually get some squash this year (winter squash I mean, there was no shortage of summer squash last year!).

A Leite Dinner

I’ve been thinking a lot about my colleague‘s recent conversion to what he calls “mostly veganism.”

Now, before we go quibbling about his choice of terminology I should tell you that this gentleman is an older, highly conservative Republican, red meat-eating, god-fearing capitalist and that he came to this state not out of any sense of environmental obligation but rather through sports physiology.

But, no matter the route, the destination is the same: A diet that is better for him and for the world.

I’ve been thinking a lot about vegetables too and how much I miss them and can’t wait to start pulling them out of our garden again.  This is the season that tries my soul.  I want to eat lots of unhealthy things like beef and pork and cheese and Christina’s Mama’s lemon sour cream pie, while I know I should be eating vegetables and grains and fish.  I want to be planting plants and digging around in the dirt but rather I’m stomping through slush and standing by the sink and staring at the fluffy, puffed-up birds while clutching a cup of tea, absorbing every last hint of warmth from it.

It’s a hard season to eat, and despite the insistence by the journalist and author Tom Standage at the AMNH’s recent lecture on curry economics that at some point getting your food from half-way around the world costs less in terms of carbon than raising it locally in a greenhouse, I still find eating at this time of year difficult.

It was all these complex thoughts that were rattling around inside my head as I was thumbing through David Leite‘s excellent cookbook The New Portuguese Table.  It was a Christmas gift from Isaac’s  mom and had sat sadly neglected on the ottoman since its unwrapping.  But on Saturday morning I was finally able to give it a good look.  And boy is it a beauty. So many wonderful recipes for interesting meats and creative ways to cook fish, but I was looking for simple, vegetable-centric ones.

Auspicious, Delicious

Well, hello there! Happy 2010 to you!

I hope your New Year started well, in fact, I honestly hope your New Year started with as delicious, and auspicious, a meal as ours did.

I decided that this Christmas was going to be the Christmas of beans.  It was a bold choice, I know, but much like any other person who has been touched by zeal, I felt the need to spread the gospel even if it meant giving gifts of dubious motivation.  So since my stepsister was getting a new crockpot from us, it was full of beans.  And since both of Isaac’s parents hail from the South, they got beans too.  Plus, both my stepsister and Isaac’s mom are trained anthropologists.  I figured that despite initial skepticism, they would come to see the beauty, cultural significance and, most importantly, the deliciousness of my gift.

I’m still waiting.

But, really, this is all just a long-winded way of saying that I kept a bag of beans for myself.  I mean, a girl needs to gift herself at Christmas too, right?  I had ordered a bag of Yellow-Eye beans to give to my stepsister, but when they arrived, they were so beautiful and so full of promise I just had to keep them.

And so we found ourselves on New Year’s Day watching the snow and the birds and boiling a ham hock and soaking beans.

Cooking With Wood

Our electric oven caught on fire.

I didn’t even know this was possible.  But there I was, standing in the kitchen staring at a giant fireball in our oven which was emitting noises I have only ever heard in a sci-fi film.

I was preheating the oven so I could roast the half-dozen free oysters my fishmonger had given me (free oysters!) and then I was going to make clam chowder.  I quickly shut it off and watched the coil cool from white to blue to yellow to orange to red and then back to black.  It was obvious to me that we would not be using that stove to make dinner.  I looked around at all the perishable seafood sitting on the counter: Oysters, clams, scallops and a brick of frozen flounder.  I called to Isaac and we came to one conclusion; we still had to cook. So Isaac started a fire in the wood-burning stove and I pulled out my gorgeous, fire-engine red Emile Henry dutch oven.

With a small hesitation I set the pot down on the stove and added a few shards of bacon.  And then we waited.  Ever so faintly we heard a soft, sibilant sizzle, and then it turned into a roar.  It was working!  The bacon cooked!  Then I added leeks and garlic and potatoes and carrots and herbs, and it cooked, too! And then the clams opened and the stock came up to a boil! And then I added the frozen flounder and, well, yeah, things ground to a halt.

The Rollercoaster

I’m on furlough right now.

This means I get a week off from work, but no pay.  I’m quite happy with this arrangement if it means I get to keep my job, and those around me get to keep theirs, too.  Isaac and I are spending the week up at the house.

I had planned to mention this last week, but failed to finish that post, which I had planned to do over the weekend, and then on Monay and then on Tuesday and then on Wednesday, yet somehow I find myself at Thursday already!  Time has a way of slipping past me without my hardly noticing.

What I have noticed in the six days we’ve been here so far though, is the rain.  It has rained nearly everyday we’ve been here.  And then there was Monday. The day started bright and sullen with me discovering a deer had made its way into the garden and through my peas and sunflowers, and ended with 2 1/2 inches of rain and an inch of large pea-sized hail.