Winter is a comin'

The signs are now too numerous to avoid that winter is on its way. I just picked the last Swiss Chard in the garden. The last five of the tomatoes I picked green in early October are almost fully ripe and will probably be used up within a couple of days. And virtually all of the leaves are down on the lawn except for those on the stubborn Sweetgums, and those on the Post Oak, the tatters of which won't fall until they're replaced by new leaves in the Spring.

Also, the price of olive oil has risen quite smartly to its late Fall, Winter and Spring level in the market. Having carefully observed the annual trends in that market for several years I invested heavily in olive oil futures during the late Summer and early Fall. As of now I have an unrealized 50% gross return on investment. My ROI is even higher on an annualized basis.

In other news: I've learned that bamboo, in addition to its many other uses, makes excellent kindling for the woodstove.

We grew up gourmets and never knew it

The yuppies have discovered weeds as gourmet fare. Nine bucks a pound for dandelion! By that measure there's at least ten thousand bucks worth of valuable gourmet salad out there in the lawn right now.

It's hard to believe the author of this article in The Wall Street Journal missed Chima de Rabe. I remedied that with a comment to the article. As I write this I still have two containers of this Spring's rabes in the freezer. And, I happen to be eating a sandwich of boiled ham, rabes that I thawed the other day and a little mayonnaise on slices of Corropolese split loaf. I generally prefer this particular sandwich on a seeded football roll; but we're out of them right now. It used to make Pop crazy when he would see me putting mayonnaise on a sandwich of rabes and ham; but that's not why I still invariably do it.

Also, she specifies two changes of water for boiling Pokes. I can't imagine that Mom or Aunt Mary R did two changes of water, and I certainly never have; which may explain why there have been incidents of rapid necessary movement to the necessaries room related to the consumption of Poke Salad over the years. It's very difficult to resist the temptation to pick larger and larger and leafier and leafier shoots as one gets tired when picking Polks, which also may explain the incidents.

And, she mentions Burdock but doesn't mention that the leaves are poisonous, or at least that's what Mom believed, although the internet seems not to think so. Mom and Grandmom L only used the thick stems of the leaves which they called Cardunes and prepared by battering and deep frying. Next Spring I'm going to pick Cardunes and try to recreate that recipe. As I recall they had a unique flavor somewhat like, but only somewhat like, the battered and fried celery we do at Christmas.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124338226000356493.html#articleTabs%3Darticle

And, since I'm on the subject of food, I should mention that Linda and I ate our first Swiss Chard from the garden on Tuesday, probably the earliest that it's ever been ready for picking. We've been eating lettuce for a couple of weeks; but slugs are multiplying and ravaging it now, probably due to the very rainy weather we've been having for the past week or so.

Finally, if you are one of the few people who still actually, you know, like, read, like, books, you may find this article by Ann Kirshner in The Chronicle Review interesting. She tried out all the current modes of reading and listening to Charles Dickens' novel Little Dorrit to see which she liked better. I can only wish she had gone further into the issue of the differences between sight reading and audio since I find them such distinctly different experiences.

Most interesting paragraph - "Readers are passionate and opinionated advocates for their preferred formats. Flip announced that she reads only hardcovers; end of conversation. "I get it," said Bill, watching me read on the iPhone: "You like your books little." Bob is no Luddite, but he insists that Steve Jobs has bribed me, since the Kindle is so obviously superior. Just wait for the Apple tablet," advises techno-sage Joe. And Judith derides my affection for audiobooks as "not really reading.""

For the record I will only read a hardback if I can't get a paperback. Something about a hardback book intimidates me and causes me to treat it too carefully. I can dog-ear the pages to mark my place or break the binding of a paperback by bending it back to hold in one hand; but I can rarely bring myself to treat a hardback book so cavalierly no matter how cheaply I bought it. And, I find listening to an audio book so different from reading the same book that I will often read an especially good novel immediately after listening to it and vice versa. Also, she doesn't mention the obvious next step, which is to combine audio with a video formatted somewhat like the succession of still pictures that Ken Burns used in his Civil War series on PBS. Soon technology should allow relatively easy mating of period pictures with text. So you could see a street scene related to a passage of audio or a picture of an animal mentioned in an audio passage as you listened, for instance.

http://chronicle.com/free/v55/i39/39b01601.htm

And, really, really, finally, since I've been on the subjects of yuppies, books, reading and cooking; here's an interesting article by Jennifer Reese on Slate about a book about a whole different way to think about cooking. One suspects that Linda will come home to find something really new and different on the table one of these days; but not 'til after she has endured Lobscouse, which I still haven't gotten around to making even though Alex tried it and praised it pretty highly.

http://www.slate.com/id/2219243/pagenum/all

Mangia, mangia, tuta cosa

Forget about buying cookbooks. Clara Cunnicciari will teach you to cook for free. I'm going to serve Linda her poor man's meal one of these nights, right after I remember to make lobscouse.

The best part about Clara is that she's so absent minded. In her pepper and eggs video she said she never uses a cutting board; in this video she pulls out a cutting board. Also, in this video she tells the same story twice within a couple of minutes. Plus, she makes you cringe from the way she's handling a knife; it's surprising she still has all her fingers at 91 years old.

She'd better hurry and make all the videos she wants to make before the nanny state people take away her knives and disconnect her stove.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OPQqH3YlHA&feature=channel

At least the recent monsoon didn't drive any of these into the house

Little ants are busy making a nest in our mailbox and box turtles are fleeing in panic to higher ground. Both the insects and the reptiles are reacting to the fact we've had over six inches of rain here in the past week or so. Yesterday they could have filmed a Bollywood celebrate the coming of the monsoon dance number on our lawn. This morning they could have filmed a new Godzilla versus Mothra movie down at the creek, co-starring the insane goose that spent an hour or so maniacally splashing under the bridge.

I haven't seen any of these (http://news.aol.com/article/giant-spiders-invade-town/466956?icid=mainmaindl1link4http%3A%2F%2Fnews.aol.com%2Farticle%2Fgiant-spiders-invade-town%2F466956) yet; but I'm keeping a wary eye out.

In other nature news, the bad linear growing bamboo is making an unbelievably vigorous break for freedom this spring. Shoots are coming up all over the place in an area about fifty feet in diameter around the main clump. It's an impressive but, I fear (hope?), futile effort. As soon as the ground dries up, if it ever dries up, I'll introduce those new shoots to my friend John Deere. Hopefully the box turtles will all be wise enough lay low. I really don't want to know if Mr. Deere can beat his existing fifty or so yard record for flinging half of a turtle.

In completely unrelated news, my barber at the Quick Cuts this morning was, I think, Charlie Jiggs great grandson. My unsureness comes from the fact that he was a little confused as to whether his grandfather was a part time barber and he had never heard talk of the Redpeppers or of a cousin Gussie P. So he may be descended from another Charlie P in Norristown. He's going to send me his email address so I can send him a picture of the Redpeppers to show his uncle Steve. There was a Stevie Jiggs in Pop's generation as I recall, brother to Frankie, Louie and Charlie; but I don't think we ever met him.

In still other news, I bought a couple of red sweet pepper plants at the Redners. I fear my garden is going to be as overcrowded as always again this year, even though I've almost doubled its size. I have 16 tomatoes, six zucchinis, four cucumbers and a whole bunch of swiss chard to squeeze in there. And that assumes I give Sam, Jase and Marianne some of the truly excessive number of cherry tomato swiss chard plants that I started from seed as an insurance policy against cutworms, rabbits, groundhogs, rampaging birds, etc. There's no worry about the deer since I'll be fortifying the new larger garden as well as last year's circle.

Update: I just introduced the cute little ants to Mr. Raid. Au revoir little ants.

And, I just opened an email from Don A down in Florida that included this link to the worlds neatest train set. If Naz has access to the internet he will go nuts over this train layout. Well worth the five minutes or so. This train set is as elaborate as the Barbarossa plan.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PN_oDdGmKyA&feature=player_embedded

Give me a lever and a place to stand and I will move the world

Give me a lever long enough and a strong enough fulcrum and I will move the world. . . or at least a wayward tractor.

There is nothing quite so pleasing as a plan that works straightforwardly since plans mostly don't work without a great deal of fussing, if they work at all. The other day my dumb tractor went and got itself stuck over in the sewer easement just before Linda and I needed to get ready to go up to Pottstown to watch the dance demos and then strut our somewhat less impressive waltz, rumba, foxtrot, jitterbug and west coast swing stuff at the Ballroom on High. As a result the tractor spent its first night all alone in the woods in twenty five years, pitched down at about a 40% angle with its front wheels half buried in mud. Why the darn thing let me drive it down that slope is a mystery. It should have known it wouldn't have the traction to pull itself back up that muddy slope.

Anyway, it was the first time I've ever failed to retrieve the thing from its folly on my own. After past incidents I've always managed to get it out of trouble with a mere hour or two, or four, of individual effort, even that time it got itself wedged under. . . well, perhaps I'd best not go into that. . . Linda reads this blog.

Anyway, I went over to Sears while Linda was cooking dinner to get a second come-along. I already have a come-along that's rated at a ton; but that one ton rating presumes a certain amount of arm strength to apply to the 18 inch or so long lever. Back in the old days, when I used to do real pushups instead of sissy from the knee pushups, me and the come-along probably pulled a ton; but now maybe not so much. And I don't have a pipe that will fit over the handle lever. Memo to self - get a 36 inch length of pipe with an inside diameter greater than two inches. Faced with half the arm strength, one must double the lever length. Maybe I ought to look for a 48 inch long pipe. The ability to project future conditions and plan for them is the very height of what makes us human.

Anyway go figure, the Sears Hardware store up on Route 29 no longer sells come-alongs. What good is a hardware store that doesn't sell essential pieces of hardware? They still sell one and two ton car jacks for surprisingly reasonable prices. Even given that I would have also had to buy a second long length of chain to use with the car jack the total would still have been lots less than the cost of hiring someone with a four wheel drive tow truck capable of getting to where the tractor spent the night. But using a car jack in tandem with the come-along would have meant a lot of carrying of stuff out into the woods and a lot of careful fussing with the rigging because of the push rather than pull design of a car jack, and because of its very short working travel. A lot of fussing.

So I bit the bullet and asked Jas to come over on Sunday morning for a try at doing it the straightforward way with the one come-along. By great good luck there was a decent sized tree across the sewer easement directly behind and not more than thirty feet from the rear of the tractor. An easy reach for my existing length of chain and the cable of the come-along.

Lo and behold, with a skeptical Jas working the come-along and me running the tractor after jamming a couple of lengths of rug under its rear wheels, we retrieved the beast from the muck and mire within fifteen minutes or so.

"That's a real lesson in applied physics," Jas commented. When something works cleanly it's really satisfying. We celebrated over coffee and talked of the ballroom dance demos of the night before. Have I mentioned that Jas and Kathy wowed the crowd with their Bolero demo? There were flashier, much more athletic and choreographed pairs; but Jas and Kathy and a few others showed what ordinary people can do if they practice, practice, practice.

Jas and I also talked about our Saturday morning pinochle game with Sam. And we talked about Al R, and Florida home prices, and the news I heard that one of my acquaintances, a seemingly judicious fellow, on the fancy neighborhood side is suddenly facing bankruptcy because he got himself overextended in real estate development, and the upcoming trip to The Villages in late April early May. Sam was meanwhile out on the golf course, no doubt blissfully unaware that the handle of a golf club is nothing but a long lever and all the club heads are wedges of varying pitch.
Later in the day I successfully guided the much chastened and distinctly less adventurous tractor over to the old house on Route 29 where I ran into Dan K. I mentioned to Dan that my third option had been to call him and ask if he has a come-along, which it turns out he does, of course, like any sensible person. How do people get through life without essential tools? What do they do after they pick themselves up and check their extremities and their heart stops pounding to find that the tractor has not been so lucky and is a bit wedged under the tree that perversely fell the wrong way?

Anyway, Dan proudly showed me his growing pile of firewood, maybe ten cords so far. Top quality stuff because he's been cutting big oaks and cherries and chestnuts. He's also been been
patiently splitting, doing real yeoman work, ever since he got laid off a couple of months ago, with the work accelerating since his brother got laid off a couple of weeks ago. He also ripped a few really impressive quarter sawn slabs from the four foot or so in diameter oak at the back of their property. Those slabs should be worth a pretty penny if there is still anyone around here who does real furniture making.

Dan told me cured firewood is already up to over $200 per cord. I reiterated that he's welcome to cut at will along the tree line dividing our properties. There are three pretty big trees, one maple, one cherry and one chestnut, up there along the border near Route 29 that are ripe for taking. I suspect he's going to get even more than $200 a cord next year when the wood is cured, maybe a lot more if the government is insane enough to pass some version of cap and trade in the middle of a recession. Cap and trade will drive up electricity, oil and gas prices maybe thirty or forty percent.

Dan has also increased the size of his garden maybe fivefold for this year. He has me wondering whether I should increase the diameter of my garden. The S's who live in Mom and Pop's old house have a pretty good sized pile of horse manure that's there for the taking. Next weekend I'll retrieve a scoop load for my garden and one or two loads to drop off for Dan. Maybe I'll deliver the loads to Dan first. The tractor route across the marshland will get iffy once we start getting spring rains which are late this year. In a pinch I can take the tractor around the long way to Dan's via the roads; which does have the advantage of irritating and shocking the impatient yuppy drivers, especially when one does it with a load like manure which tends to dribble out of the tractor bucket a bit.

I haven't mentioned my garden lately

I haven't mentioned my garden because I've been too busy picking and hauling.

I just picked about twenty pounds of tomatoes, three zucchinis and a bunch of basil. Fortunately Linda took about twenty pounds of tomatoes with her this morning to give to people at her workplace, and Jas and Sam have also taken some. Otherwise we'd be awash in the darn things even though I've been cooking so many of them so many different ways for dinners that Linda is starting to get that look she got earlier in the season when we were eating Swiss Chard every day. We've had baked stuffed tomatoes, bruschetta, tomatoes and zucchini, eggplant from Sam's garden stuffed with tomatoes, tomatoes in salads, etc., etc., etc.

Yesterday I made fresh gravy (that's sauce to you barbarians) from tomatoes, basil, onions, celery and, I'm ashamed to admit, bought meatballs. I put it on those dried cheese tortellinis they sell in the market. The best part is that I finally tried Molto Mario's trick of cooking the tortellinis very al dente and then finishing them for a couple of minutes in a large saucepan with the sauce. Excellent!

Word has it that Al R down in Florida has a garden as well. I heard that the cartoonists and animators who drew the Charlie Brown Christmas Tree show are heading to Lady Lake to take a look at Al's tomato plants. Seems they may pick one of them to star in a new show called Charlie Brown's Tomato Plant.

At least that's what I heard. . .

A couple of weeks ago I discovered that 32 ounces of ricotta

A few weeks ago I discovered that 32 ounces of ricotta, a pound of penne pasta and a ball of mozzarella combine into a lot more than two people can possibly eat. In this case it made two pretty sizable casseroles. One of those casseroles fed me and Linda for a dinner and then me for lunches for the next three days.

That left the other casserole which I put in the freezer. That one is now patiently defrosting. We'll be taking it over to Sam and Debs place in a half hour or so to eat with Delores who is watching Hobbs and the house and pool.

We've been visiting Delores and Hobbs, and the pool, a lot over the past couple of 90+ degree days since Sam and Deb have been out of town. And I've been thinking of Sam a lot. Last night I thought about him while eating the excellent cucumber I liberated from his garden. Home grown cucumbers really are a lot better than store bought. I may consider growing them next year.

Filched peppers make the best lunch

I don't grow peppers in my garden because the supermarket sells peppers just as good as I can grow at home. But the supermarket doesn't sell peppers as good as ones filched from somebody else's garden. And it turns out my brother and his family left for Florida yesterday afternoon. I was in his garden picking and in his pool floating before his plane landed in Orlando. Not that the pool was quiet for my sister and her family also decided it was a good time to visit.

I considered taking some of his luxuriant Swiss Chard while I was there, but Mrs. Sully has been making rebellious noises about the amount of chard we've been eating from my own garden. So it was just as well Marianne decided to thin that out for Sam.

Sam's peppers made a very fine lunch after I fried them up with oil, garlic and a couple of eggs. And his pool will be very fine this afternoon as soon as I finish digesting. It would clearly be a sin to let that pool lie fallow on a day as hot as this. And he has some cucumbers up there that may be getting too big to leave on the vines.

Have I mentioned that I'm feeling pretty proud of my garden

Have I mentioned that I'm feeling pretty proud of my garden this year. It may not be the biggest garden in Collegeville, but it's surely going to be the most efficiently productive two hundred or so square foot garden in the county, if not the country.

Firstly, the light bulb finally illuminated in my head about efficient layout after decades of having the answer right under my nose at least a couple of times a year when I've flown over the West and seen the round circles of cultivation, each watered by its patiently rotating sprinkler system. Theaters in the Round, stones arranged in henges, crop circles, fairy rings of mushrooms under the trees, and the large example of those ubiquitous bullseyes of crops out west, how have I failed to twig to the utter stupidity of squareness and the utter rightness of roundness for all these years?

Secondly, I've fenced the thing so well that the cute little fawns and their brutish parents have thus far inspected it thoroughly without detecting a weakness within their feeble capabilities of strength and reach. I've fenced the thing so well that my tomatoes are safe short of an escape from the zoo of something as strong as a buffalo or possessed of the reach of a giraffe. It's true there are a couple of minor flaws for correction next year. A patient rabbit has discovered at least three places where it can just reach through the two layers of fence low down to nip at the ends of Swiss Chard leaves.

Thirdly, roundness means that a single centrifugal sprinkler in the center can efficiently water the whole thing with the merest effort of adjustment of the outside tap. It's true the zucchinis have grown taller and more luxuriant than I've ever seen them and they're blocking part of the arc of the sprinkler, but that's a mere detail easy of solution next year. This year it only means that I need to run the sprinkler a bit longer to let those disfavored areas get their fill.

Swiss Chard, Green Bean and Potato Stew

This is the ultimate healthy stew. And super easy to make. Preparation time is about 1 hour but it can sit on the stove for longer and it's great reheated the next day.

Ingredients:
A couple of bunches of Swiss Chard from the market, or as much as is ready to pick in the garden
A couple of pounds of green beans from the market, or as much as is ready to pick in the garden.
Four or five medium sized potatoes
Several cloves of garlic, more is better than less
Salt, Pepper and Olive Oil

Wash and strip the veins from the chard. Cut the stems of the chard into inch long pieces and throw those in a large pot with a quarter cup or so of olive oil and turn the heat to medium high. Peel the garlic, roughly chop it and throw it into the pot. Roughly cut up the leaves of the chard and throw them into the pot and then put on the lid. While the chard is steaming down break the ends off the green beans, wash them, cut them into pieces a couple of inches long and throw them on top of the chard in the pot. Add a level teaspoon of salt and a half teaspoon of pepper. Stir the pot up a bit and put the top back on. Peel the potatoes, cut them into chunks and throw them into the pot. Stir the pot up a bit and reduce the heat to low. Cook til the potatoes are done.

Eaten with good italian bread this is as good a stew as you can make despite the fact that it's healthy and low calorie. It's not quite so healthy if you butter the bread but buttered bread tastes awfully good.

Aunt Mary Raimo and mom once observed me cooking the three vegetables together like this in the same pot and told me Grandmon Luzi always cooked them in separate pots and then combined them just before serving. I've always been too lazy to do that and I think it's prefectly good cooked the way I've described, especially if you're the one who has to wash the two extra pots.

Swiss Chard with garlic and oil

This is the easiest recipe that's worth putting down in print.

Ingredients:
1 bunch of Swiss Chard from the market, or as much as there is to pick in the garden.
3 or 4 cloves of garlic
Olive Oil, Salt and Pepper

Wash the Swiss Chard even if it comes from the garden and looks perfectly clean. Even if your garden is well fenced birds and bugs are doing things down there that you almost always do in a special room in the house. As you wash the chard strip the veins out of the stalks.

Heat a couple of tablespoons of olive oil on medium in the bottom of a deep pot while you peel and chop the garlic cloves. If you want to enjoy this this the way mom and Aunt Mary Raimo made it when they were in a hurry chop the first clove very carefully and fine, then take a few quick whacks at the next clove and at least a whack or two at the last two cloves.

Throw the chopped garlic into the oil and then cut the stalks of the Swiss Chard crosswise into pieces about one inch long. Throw the chopped stalks into the oil with the garlic, hopefully before the garlic starts to get that slightly sweet burned smell that means it's suitable only for the most refined tastes.

Next roll up the Swiss Chard leaves like a big fat cigar, slice it lengthwise once, and slash it crosswise a couple of times before throwing the pieces on top of the simmering stalks and garlic. Sprinkle a half teaspoon of salt and a quarter teaspoon of pepper over the top of the big mound of chard leaves and then cover the pot and turn the burner to low.

The beauty of Swiss Chard is that it's almost impossible to overcook it. It should be more or less done steaming and cooking down in a half-hour during which time you can cook the rest of the dinner, and it won't hurt it to steam in that pot for an hour if you occasionally stir it to keep it from burning on the bottom.

If it seems to have too much liquid in it after it's mostly cooked leave the cover off the pot for a while and the liquid will vaporise and join the great hydrologic cycle of the earth perhaps to fall as rain in the Sudan where they need it.

The other day my brother Sam told me Swiss Chard was recently named as one of the ten healthiest foods by the chard growers association or some other such reliable source. But anyone who has eaten the stuff already knows it's healthy. Suffice it to say that a big Swiss Chard eater today will not suffer from biliousness tomorrow.