Gardens, recipes, and travels in Seville Spain

 I recently travelled to Seville, Ohio as part of my "Grand Tour" of Ohio cities named after European capitols.  You can read about my trip on my "BrightMeadow on Bicycle" blog.

I was blessed to be able to visit Seville, Spain during my junior year abroad in college back in 1977.  My friend and I travelled by train to Andalucia during Holy Week.  This was during the era of Instamatic cameras, and I was a student on a limited budget, that did not include a lot of money for film and processing.  Nevertheless, I managed to get a few photos at "La Plaza de Espana", which was built in 1928 for the Ibero-American Exposition (like a World's Fair).  

I looked a lot different then! 

Seville is in the heart of Andalusia, and  Sevilla is the most important inland port of Spain. The port’s principal exports are wines, fruit, olives, cork, and minerals.  I visited a cork tree farm during the year I was in Spain, but it was further to the north.  Seville is famous for its bitter oranges.  Winter is the orange season in Seville, Spain. The trees are beautiful, but the Spanish don’t eat the bitter fruit. Instead, most of the oranges grown on local farms are exported to Britain to be made into marmalade.  According to an article on Springwise.com, the municipal water company, Emasesa, collects wasted fruit that falls on city streets, and uses it in an existing facility that generates electricity from organic matter. 

Sherry is produced in nearby Jerez de la Frontera and in the region.  

If you are interested in gardens and you go there, one not-to be missed place is the  Reales Alcázares and Gardens: In 1364 King Pedro I built his palace upon the site of a fortress dating back to the Moorish period. It took just two years to build including the surrounding gardens. Over the years different monarchs added to the palace and gardens. The Alcázares gardens are made up of different types of trees, pretty flowers, ponds,fountains, pavillions and terraces. The Patio del Yeso is an exquisite garden in which the flower beds and water channels dating back to the original 12th century fortress have been preserved.  I visited this garden during my travel.  

My little Instamatic photo does not show nearly the detail as the no-doubt professionally photographed image above.  Or perhaps, I have gotten a reflecting pool from Granada or Cordoba instead! 

Typical dishes in Seville include gazpacho, Andalucian stew (chickpeas and vegetables), Flamencan eggs, Sevillan style beef (which may be presented as a bull's tail), Sevillan style duck, prawn salad and spicy potato salad. 

I tried the Andalusian potato salad recipe from "The New Spanish Table" cookbook.   It consisted of boiled potatoes, mixed with peppers and onions and scallions and tomatoes, dressed with a sherry vinegar and olive oil.  I used white wine vinegar from my pantry, and it came out well.   There is also a recipe for gazpacho in this cookbook.  

Gazpacho is a cold tomato-based soup.  It is similar recipe to the tomato salad, but take out the potatoes and put in a cucumber and some bread crusts.  Here is a link to a typical recipe provided by Cooks Without Borders.  

One thing both recipes have in common is that they call for tomatoes.  Tomatoes were unknown in the "Old World" until they were introduced by the Spanish conquistadores exploring Peru.  The word "tomato" comes from  "tomatl," an Aztec word that is a very clear influence for the word tomato.  Additional history of how the tomato came to be used in the old world can be found on this web site on epicurean culture.   

I had high hopes for the "Matina" variety of tomatoes for my garden this year.  Matina is very early, salad sized tomato with heavy yield, good taste, and good disease resistance.   I started 72 plants from seed.  Unfortunately, only one survived the night of frost when I neglected to bring the seedlings in from the deck.   I am currently nursing the one plant along. I bought a few other tomato plants to replace the ones that were killed by frost, but I will not find "Matina" variety plants, I am sure.  I will try again next year.  I am going to have to be more careful, at my age I will not get too many more chances to replant next year. 

 There are going to be a few cold nights, into the 30's again, this week.  

Grand Tour - Rome countryside and fava beans

The next stop on the Grand Tour of Ohio is Rome.  There are at least three villages in Ohio named Rome.  My first stop will be in Richland County, since it is nearby.  

The traditional and modern cuisines of Rome, Italy is very typically what we think of as Italian food.  Pasta in all its shapes and variety, especially spaghetti.  Fresh vegetables abound.  Fava, or broad, beans are very typical and have been for centuries.   The specialty meats such as cured jowls, tripe, and oxtail were widely available due to the slaughterhouses of Rome, along with fish and seafood from the Mediterranean.  Cheeses such as the famous Peccorino Romano are eaten. 

Many of these foods were produced in the Roman Campagna (Italian: campagna romana), which is a low-lying area surrounding Rome.  In the Middle Ages, it was also a source of malaria, and so was abandoned for farming, supposedly also because the water supply was not adequate.  During the 17th through the 19th centuries, it was a source of inspiration for many landscape painters, and was a "required" stop on the Grand Tour.  

By Claude Lorrain - Unknown source, PublicDomain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1739828

The quality of the light in this picture reminds me of a photo I took in early October, 2019,  of my front lawn.  So, it's not impossible to think that I might be able to grow foods similar to those grown in the Roman countryside. 

A traditional Roman meal consists of five or six courses.  

Antipasto - an appetizer, perhaps a bruschetta or cured meats and marinated or fried vegetables in bite-sized pieces

Primo - usually a pasta dish. Rome has four : cacio e pepe (pecorino and pepper), carbonara (pecorino, guanciale, and egg), gricia (guanciale and pecorino), and amatriciana (guanciale, pecorino, and tomato).

Secondo - A piece of meat or fish, with vegetables ordered separately

Dolce - a sweet dessert. Perhaps tiramisu, a gelato, a piece of fruit

Coffee - no doubt an espresso or latte, my favorite, followed by a

Digestif - a liqueur such as amaretto, frangelico, grappa, limoncello

Martha Stewart offers us a recipe  for bruschetta with mint and fava beans. 

According to Johnny's Selected Seeds, fava beans like cool weather, like peas do.  I planted peas this year and the weather changed from cool to hot in a matter of a few days.  My peas withered on the vine faster than I could pick them.  The pods shattered later in summer, and when the weather was cool again, the pea seeds germinated and grew more plants.  The days are getting shorter and I doubt whether I will harvest any at all from this second crop.  

As hope springs eternal for a better garden success next year, I will order some fava bean seeds.  This is a crop I have never grown before. 

 

Related - why are Italian women so slim, compared to their American counterparts?

Strasburg Mecklenberg-Vorpommern, Germany vs. Strasburg, Ohio, USA

 If you follow my bicycling blog, brightmeadowbicycle.blogspot.com, you know that I am doing a series "Grand Tour of Ohio on Bicycle" where I visit cities in Ohio that are named after European cities. 

This week I rode a loop starting in Strasburg, Ohio.  The town was settled by German immigrants and may have been named after Strasburg, Germany, although there is also a chance it was named after Strasbourg, France, which is a much larger city on the border with Germany.  

Agriculture and Wildlife preservation - there and here

In researching Strasburg, Germany, I found a link to the Deutsche Wildtier gut Klepelshagen.  This is a model farm run by the German Wildlife Federation that intends to demonstrate that wildlife preservation can co-exist with agriculture, and can be economically feasible.  

The sustainable practices that are followed there are late mowing, high mowing, and limited mowing on a daily basis, so that disturbed wildlife can find new homes.  Wide strips of non-cultivated land are left among the grazing organic German Angus beef cattle. They are managing the forests and woods by leaving fallen trees to rot and provide wildlife habitat, and managing the predator species by allowing sustainable hunting. 

"The German Wildlife Foundation manages almost 700 hectares of grassland as part of organic farming, which is expanded with additional requirements such as a late mowing date. The areas are mainly located in Fintel (Lower Saxony) and Klepelshagen (Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania) and are grazed with cattle or mowed for hay and silage use. Economic and ecological goals are linked to one another on these areas. The German Wildlife Foundation has received around 300 hectares of grassland from the federal government as part of the national natural heritage. The aim here is exclusively nature and species protection. The areas are mostly tended by organic farmers in terms of nature conservation. This benefits a variety of species: from the brown hare and the skylark to wild bees and butterflies. The areas are often characterized by special natural conditions, such as nutrient poverty (poor meadows) or high humidity (wet meadows). In addition, the German Wildlife Foundation has already converted arable land back into grassland at individual locations." - from the website. 

Near Strasburg, Ohio,  just outside of Dover, the Tuscarawas county Soil and Water Conservation organization runs the Norma Johnson Center, which is a wildlife preserve that offers opportunities to birders, naturalists, hikers and fishermen. Notably, bicycles are not allowed on the trails.  The preserve is located on Ohio State Route 39.  I am only a few miles away from this highway, I presume I could follow it all the way east to Dover. 

"As a young adult, Norma Johnson saw the beauty and impact of natural areas for all to enjoy. While farming and learning she realized that as the years go on highways and people would swell into the Brandywine Valley. She saw the need that “acres of trees, ponds, and wildlife would be most refreshing for people to wander over now and in the future”. With this vision and the efforts of the community the 303 acre Norma Johnson Center Conservation Center and Nature Preserve came to be for now and future generations."

Cuisine

Both Strasburgs, the German one, and the Ohio one, share a similar cuisine.  The Ohio region was settled by German immigrants and they brought their food heritage with them.  There is one difference, the German village is not too far from the Baltic Sea, so favorite saltwater seafood items like pickled herring and eel are not as common in Ohio,  although freshwater fish are widely available in lakes and rivers.

The website German Food Guide has this to say: 

The cuisine in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania (Mecklenburg Vorpommen) is rich and hearty. Meat is used abundantly, as well as bacon and butter. Ham and wurst also play an important role in the cuisine here. Plums, pears, raisins, and apples are used as seasonings and side dishes for roasts.

Given the state's large amount of water from its lakes, rivers, and coastline, fish plays a large role in the cuisine. In the coastal regions, herring, mackerel, and flounder are the favorites, while perch, walleye, trout, and eel are the favorites inland.

The state's large forest areas provide its cuisine with a variety of game. Among the favorites are venison and wild boar.

A real Mecklenburg meal always includes potatoes, which is the favorite side dish here. Rice, dumplings, and noodles are usually only made from a package and then only when there is little time to prepare a "real" meal. But the locals would take pan fried potatoes made with bacon over these other side dishes in a heartbeat.

Other important vegetables here include kale, cabbage, beets, mushrooms, and beans.

On her website, Oma Gerhild mentions several favorite foods from Mecklenberg-Vorpommern. 

"Fish is popular, especially carp (Karpfen), eel (Aal), flounder (Flunder), pike (Hecht), bream (Brasse), roach (Rotauge), tench (Schleie), trout (Forelle), and salmonide (a type of German trout).

Cabbage (Kohl/Kraut)

Turnips (Rüben) and beets (Rote Rüben) used in salads, soups, and stews. The juices are used to make syrups and sweeteners.

Geese (Gänse) considered the best of poultry with apples, prunes, and bread stuffing.

Hotchpotch a meat, turnip, carrot, and cabbage

Eintopf ("onepot")

Tollatsch a sweet black pudding made with pig's blood, raisins, and sugar. Of Swedish origin, it is eaten sliced, fried, and sprinkled with sugar."

And the website Germanfoods.org lists other favorites. 

 Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (Mecklenburg-West Pommerania) is Germany’s most agrarian state with an abundance of farms producing dairy products, fruits and vegetables, fish and cereals.

Aal in Dillsosse (Eel in a Dill Sauce) -A common dish from the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern region of Germany with marinated eel.

Gebratener Hornhechte (Fried Horn Fish) -This fried dish is one of many welcoming summer to the Ostsee coast.

Klopfschinken (Breaded Ham)-Crispy breaded ham is a favorite in the northeastern region of Germany.

Labskaus (Corned Beef, Potatoes, and Onions)- A traditional meal that is simple, yet sophisticated.

Marinated Fried Herring -A perfect Fish-Fry-Friday dish!

Mecklenburger Fischsuppe (Fish Soup)-Greatly paired with dark bread and a beer!

Rote Grütze-A summer dessert with delicious berries. Top with whipped cream or serve over ice cream for extra sweetness.

Sanddorn-Mandel-Kuchen (Sea Buckthorn Berry-Almond Cake)- A sweet orange marmalade glaze completes this cake.

Schweinebraten gefüllt mit Backpflaumen (Roasted Pork with Prunes)-The sweet and sour flavor typical to Mecklenburg-Vorpommern is show-cased in this heavenly dish.

Königsberger Klopse (Kaliningrad Meatballs)

Räucherfischbrötchen

Geräucherter Lachs mit Forellenfilets

Deutscher Käsekuchen

 I found "arme ritter" listed on Wikipedia's page about Mecklenberg cuisine.  Since my maiden name was Ritter, I wondered what this food was.  Translated literally, it means "poor knight".  The wikipedia article links to an article on French toast, fried bread slices dipped in egg!  Evidently that is what poor knights ate!  

Paris kitchen garden

A couple of days ago, I visited Paris, Ohio.  I wrote about it on my bicycling blog.  There is no comparison to Paris, France.  As part of my research, I looked up kitchen gardens near Paris and I stumbled on The kitchen garden of Saint Jean de Beauregard, supposedly one of the most beautiful gardens in France. 

The website for the garden describes it "This kitchen garden, completely walled like most 17th century kitchen gardens, is one of the few castle kitchen gardens to have survived intact. A masterpiece of the art of the flowering kitchen garden, this garden of delights covers two hectares and houses a whole host of rare and forgotten flowers, fruit and vegetables in a series of beautiful, continually renewed compositions. Among the paths branching out from the central pond hide glasshouses for grapes, a fruit cellar and an astonishing grape storage chamber. The restoration of this garden in 1984 was made possible by the discovery of its original plans in the chateau’s archives. Classified Historic Monument in 1993 and recognized as Jardin Remarquable in 2005, this outstanding garden is a choice destination for garden lovers from all over the world and a source of constant inspiration for many gardeners."

While you plan your trip, you may also consider visiting the "farmer's market" in Paris on a Saturday, the market of Batignolles.  

After you pick up some vegetables at the market, you may want to cook something French.  I highly recommend making a Quiche Lorraine, or as this website calls it, an onion tart. Bacon is optional. 

Garden getting ready for winter

 

We had an early frost last week.  I had intended to take some cuttings from the tomato plants to see if I could overwinter them, but it didn't happen. The predicted frost did happen, though. I pulled up all the landscaping fabric pieces that were between the rows of my tomato plants,and removed and untangled the tomato cages from the vines.  Ed helped me by stacking the cages and removing the remaining fence posts from the deer fence we took down a few weeks ago. 

I put the tomato vines into my compost pile, as you can see, the vines dwarf the composter. There were hundreds of yellow jackets hovering around the composter. They did not bother me, but Ed got stung twice.   Ed suggested putting the vines through the chipper/shredder, which is in the garage at the bottom of the hill.  I did not relish fighting to bring the chipper uphill.  He evidently didn't, either. I found a few thistles which I pulled to garnish the top of the pile. 

I draped the landscape fabric pieces over the pea fence, since the larger deer fence was gone.  The fabric was quite wet with composted weeds and soil on top of the fabric, which I shook into a pile at the edge of the garden.  The wind should dry them out in a few days. Then I can roll them up and put them away for the winter.   I am debating whether it is too late to plant lettuce, or at least microgreens, in the weedless soil that was under the fabric.  

My second crop of peas is doing well, was not damaged at all by the frost. They self-seeded when the snow peas I planted in early spring ripened and dried up in the space of a few days during our early summer heat.  The plants are starting to blossom.  Hopefully the weather will stay nice long enough to harvest some snow peas.  I have had fancy restaurants serve the tender tendrils on salads, so that is still an option. 

I noticed that the blueberry bushes could do with some pruning.  That is next on the list. 

The King's Vegetable Garden - Versailles, France

 On another of my blogs, Brightmeadow on Bicycles, I am writing about my latest goal of planning and executing bicycle rides through the cities in Ohio that are named after European cities.  The Grand Tour, if you will.  In the 1600's and 1700's, wealthy young men, and some young ladies, were encouraged to complete a year or two travelling through the different capitals of Europe.  If you have a mindset more like my husband's, you may also be familiar with the British TV show, The Grand Tour, where three journalists take trips to various globale locales to drive cars (and sometimes wreck them) through tortuous terrain. My journeys will not involve the wrecking of any bicycles. 

My most recent bicycle Grand Tour trip was to Versailles, Ohio.  I researched the city of Versailles, France, for contrast.  Versailles is a suburb of Paris, and has much of the same cachet.  Versailles was the site of the French Court during the reign of the monarchs Louis XIV through Louis XVI.  And it was also the birthplace of the French Revolution. 

One of the monuments of the French Palace of Versailles, a UNESCO World Heritage site,  was the King's Vegetable Garden,   "Le potager-du-roi" in French. It was opened to the public for tours in 1991. It's gardeners perpetuate the art of pruning and cultivate a wide variety of fruits and vegetables in a French garden.

"Louis XIV commissioned Jean-Baptiste de La Quintinie to develop a kitchen garden on the site of a swamp known as 'stinking pond'. Construction lasted from 1678 to 1683 and it had to demonstrate ingenuity to overcome the swampy terrain. This explains the use of an underground aqueduct, rubble drains and raised beds. Over time, the kitchen garden has pretty much retained La Quintinie's original design – so you will still find a succession of gardens surrounded by walls and dominated by terraces" - Versailles Tourism site

"The soil was bad but luckily, there were plenty of horses in the King’s stables to provide tons of manure. The open land didn’t provide enough protection to heat loving fruit and vegetables. So, La Quintinie designed the garden as a series of large rooms. He dug down, improved the soil and separated areas with high stone walls and terraces to trap the sun and keep the heat in. It was innovative and exciting gardening and enabled him to grow plants that usually only thrive in the far south.

It was said he could provide up to 4000 figs and 150 melons a day. Lettuces were grown in January. Strawberries were ripe in March. Coffee beans and bananas were grown, as by 1685 glass making techniques meant greenhouse conditions could be created. The underground heating kept roots healthy even in the dead of winter. Louis would show off the area to foreign visitors, it became one of the most famous gardens of its time. " from the website The Good Life France.

A fellow blogger, Jill Colonna of Mad About Macarons and Teatime in Paris wrote about her experience there. It inspired her to make a red onion Chevre Tartin.  The link to her recipe on that page is no longer working, but I found her recipe elsewhere on her blog.   I do not have prepared puff pastry dough on hand, but I do have flour and butter and lard.  I have previously and successfully used this recipe from Penelope Casas for puff pastry, and I have some fresh black walnut meats from trees in our yard that I painstakingly picked out earlier today.  I will serve with pears from our orchard. 

At the moment I have two dozen or so quart canning jars in the dishwasher.  Ed was able to source some jar lids from China for me.  I am still waiting for the ones I ordered from Lehman's hardware. I will be canning apples picked last week in Michigan as soon as the cycle is finished.  

 

Marigold Seeds

 I rode my bike on the Marion Tallgrass Trail yesterday.  At each intersection along the trail, there were flowerbeds in the center of the trail, instead of the traditional bollards which warn riders of an intersection. 

At the trailhead, there were some really beautiful marigolds of three different varieties. Or perhaps one variety with three different appearances.   I collected a couple of dried blossoms with the seeds.  I'm afraid I lost some when I took my phone out of the case, but I have  put the rest in an envelope for planting next spring.  I hope that some are viable!  Perhaps they will hybridize and I will get something completely new. 

 

These seed packets were waiting for me when we arrived home last night.  I recently read an article about Matina tomatoes.  I've been planting Bloody Butcher and Fourth of July and Independence Day salad tomatoes for the last 15 years.  They are all early, small tomatoes.  I rarely harvest any by the actual fourth of July, but usually have some by mid-July.  I suspected that they were all really the same variety, so I did a google search to look for comparisons.  Instead, I found this Matina variety that had rave reviews.  Since it is so late in the season, I was afraid I would not remember the name for next year, so I went ahead and ordered this year's seeds.  This is a new seed company for me.  Service was fantastic, I received the seeds two days after I ordered them.    

From their web site: 

"We don’t want to make crazy, bold proclamations after so short a time of getting to know a new variety (which, as you can tell from the intro, means we are going to anyway) but Matina might be our best all-around slicing tomato. It’s nice to be a small family company where we can write something like that and not break down into staff fistfights. It just checks all the boxes for us and exceptionally so: sets very early but with sustained harvests through fall, strong vigorous growth, beautifully organized and prolific trussing, perfect blemish-free and very uniform fruit, and a great flavor balance of sweet and acid. I reckon we harvested about 400+lbs of fruit from 30 field-grown plants in the summer of 2016! At 4-6 oz, the fruits are a little larger than Stupice,  slightly flattened, and just the flawless ideal of a tomato in appearance. One of Carolyn Male's “100 Heirloom Tomatoes for the American Garden” it hails from Germany, where our seed was originally sourced. This should be a nursery standard in the PNW.  (Crowned taste test winner at two Organic Seed Alliance trial events of early red slicers in 2017)

Indeterminate/Potato Leaf. 65-70 days. UO"

As far as the zuchini variety, it is also new to me. This year I planted Burpee's Best zuchini, Of the five hills I planted, two were excellent and healthy, the others did not do so well.  I picked about 20 zuchinis, then the plants just fizzled out, dried up and turned brown.   

This is the first year gardening in this garden, so I haven't added a lot of soil amendments yet.  I learned that the previous owner "salted" her asparagus patch to kill weeds, and I had planted the zuchini downhill from the asparagus, so perhaps that accounts for the poor performance.  From the seed company, Dark Star description: 

"(C. pepo) Market growers take note. Here is a zuke to rival all the corporate-owned hybrids currently hijacking the zucchini market. Bred by Bill Reynolds of Eel River Produce in Northern CA & John Navazio, Dark Star was selected in part for vigorous root growth to excel in dry farming conditions.  What struck us though is the quality of the fruit, by far the most refined OP zuke we’ve seen with very uniform long, dark green, angular fruit. While not as productive at its peak as some (though certainly no slouch), it sustained its productivity over a longer period than others we’ve grown. Open habit makes it easy to pick. Recommended for the home garden or by the acre. The best OP standard zuke on the market. (Update: during the freakish frosts in Baja in the winter of 2011 Dark Star was likely the only organic zucchini in grocery stores. Just a degree or two more cold hardiness kept it alive amidst a sea of frost killed neighboring fields)

50-55 days. SR" 

Back to your regularly scheduled programming.

Life on the farm.  Or at least the suburban garden.  This year I planted a full tray of 72 tomato plants of several different varieties.  I neglected watering them a few times, because my plant starting stand is in Ed's garage and I was in the warm house.  So I planted the ones that survived in the garden.  It turned out mostly the new variety of grape tomato (cherry-sized) plants survived.  I also had a few Bloody Butcher/Fourth of July tomato variety plants survive.  And I went to the garden center for a Better Boy plant.

I've been picking a lot of tomatoes.  Over the course of the summer and now fall, I have harvested at least eight of the big round containers.   I also had some hot wax peppers survive my neglect.  I have canned over 50 pints of salsa. As usual, each batch has a different degree of hotness depending on the variety of pepper I use.  

It was an interesting experience to make salsa out of cherry tomatoes instead of the large Big-Boys I usually use.  I gave them a turn in the food processor with the onions and the peppers and they diced up very well. 

 

I have also been canning apple sauce.  Early in August before I started my bike ride, I made a batch of applesauce from the Yellow Transparent apples I picked in Michigan.

  

Yesterday, Ed helped me can 20 pints of applesauce from a bushel of Jonathon apples.  I am labelling the jars with the apple variety.  It is almost like fine wines.  You can see the difference in color between the yellow Transparent apples and the red-skinned Jonathons. 

I still have some Grimes golden apples in the garage to process, and also a bushel of Crimson Delicious. I don't think the Delicious apples hold up to cooking well, so I will see what I can find about how to use them.    

I also made a batch of hot pepper jelly.  I had never tried this before until at a church luncheon in Michigan, when someone served a brick of cream cheese with hot pepper jelly spread on the top.  The combination was fantastic, the spiciness and creaminess set off all kinds of buzzers in my taste buds!  I hope my jelly sets up, right now it is looking a little bit runny.  I understand it can take up to 24 hours to set.  I used fresh pectin and apple juice left from the apple sauce process, so there should be plenty of pectin to make it set.  I added a few drops of red food coloring to make it interesting. 

I'm not an affiliate, but here is a link to a recipe from Kraft-Heinz for a similar appetizer in phyllo cups. 

Now that I have labelled the jars, all I have to do is clean up the kitchen.  

I have set up a separate page on the blog to record any future bike riding adventures.  

You CAN go home again. But it won't be the same. And neither will you be!

Just moved back to my hometown in North Central Ohio.  It is wonderful being back.  Thomas Wolfe said "you can't go home again", but one of my very favorite authors,  Gene Logsdon said you can.  It's only been a couple of months, but so far it has been a voyage of discovery as there are many new businesses started and many old ones that no longer exist.  In particular, finding a place to eat out has been an adventure.

Last night, for my birthday celebration, my spouse and I visited a well-loved (and fairly expensive!) local restaurant.  In general, the service was excellent and the food was too.  However, for my meal, the sauce was "broken", meaning the solids had separated from the fat.  I asked the server if this was the way it was supposed to be.  She indicated that this was typical in the summer, but in the winter, it would be fine.  I persisted, and told her that the chef needed to research food science about curdled or broken sauces.
She went to ask the chef, and the reply came back that nothing could be done about it.

I know for a fact that yes, a broken sauce can be fixed.  Here are three links that explain how to do just that.

https://www.thekitchn.com/quick-tiphow-to-fix-a-broken-s-46403
https://www.tasteofhome.com/article/how-to-save-a-broken-sauce/
https://food52.com/blog/14876-kitchen-rescue-how-to-fix-a-broken-or-curdled-sauce

And I have recently made mayonnaise from scratch at home, using olive oil and egg, so I know about this from first-hand experience!

Makes me wonder if it is a new chef in an old and venerable restaurant,, or an old chef who no longer cares about the food that comes out of the kitchen.

Old Age and Health Issues

I read a post today from an aquaintance that she and her husband would like to give up the farm due to "old age and health issues."  Unfortunately, I think she is younger than I am!

My DH had a hip replacement last Tuesday.  The weather in our area has been snowstorm after snowstorm after snowstorm.  We have been waiting on spring to come.  Finally, on Saturday, the snow ceased and the temperatures soared up to the mid-60's.   He was riding down our dirt road on the tractor, with a walker up behind the seat in case he had to walk home.  I could say something here about being irrepressable, but I will refrain.  After his joyride on the tractor, he insisted that I rototill our garden, so that I could plant the onion sets/plants that had arrived in the mail two days prior. 

I think he has cabin fever from being confined in the hospital. 

He needed to move a car out of the way in the garage in order to get the rototiller out.  He started walking out to the garage with his walker.  Having two replaced hips myself, I knew that he was overdoing it already, just to walk through the uneven ground to the garage.  I knew I could not dissuade him, so I got the other set of car keys and walked quickly to the car to take it out.  After I got the car out of the garage, he started the rototiller (I have a hard time pulling the starting cord.)  I walked it over to the garden.  Luckily the ground was smooth in the section I rotated into onion plants this year, having been tomatoes under a weed barrier last year, and the tilling was smooth as I walked through the garden.  We have a Troy Built "Pony" model tiller, and when I bought it, the seller demonstrated walking alongside it and holding it with one hand.  I was able to do this in the garden plot.  The problem was, that when I reached the border, the tines found the sod of the lawn, and the tiller lurched out of my control, before I released the controls.

After he watched me running twice through the garden, he said "Get out of the way!" and grabbed the tiller controls.  I knew this would be too much for his healing hip joint.  I started screaming at him "NO! NO! NO! and turned the control to "Stop", but he immediately turned it back to run.

He took a turn through the garden up and back.  Then he stopped the tiller.  I knew this was going to be a problem.  It is the eternal battle of the sexes, brawn versus wisdom.  Wisdom won out, or maybe it was pain.  He ended up staying in the chair on Sunday with ice pack on his hip.  The tiller is still in the yard, since I can't start it to move it.

My own knees were swollen on Sunday. I have already had two hip replacements, and I am pending knee replacements, they are bone-on-bone.   I did not feel like planting onion sets on Sunday. But today, I took a couple of arthritis-strength Tylenol, and some Alleve, and I braved the elements to actually plant the onions. 

I used a long twine attached to a staple to mark my row.  The first row, I tried to get on my knees to plant, but it proved to be too much.  I stretched out prone on the ground, and used my fingers to create planting holes for the onion sets.  I scooted along with my leg, as if I were swimming along the lawn.   It took a long time, and it was uncomfortable.  I decided to try a different method for the second row.  I set the twine marker over about 8 inches, then used a hoe and a rake to create a furrow.  I set the plants about three inches apart in the furrow. I used a lot of my yoga poses to bend over and set the plants in the furrow.  After I completed the setting, I used the hoe and a rake to firm the soil around the plants.

This was fairly successful, less painful and took less time than scooting along the ground.  I repeated for the third row, just as it started to rain. 

Hopefully some of them will survive.

St. Patrick's Day 2018

Today is the traditional day to plant peas and potatoes in my part of the world, if it is warm enough. Here is the view from my window - there is still snow on the ground.  Although it is sunny today, the ground is still frozen, so I will wait a little longer.   The last frost date here is the end of May, counting backwards 6-8 weeks for starting seeds indoors, would be the first two weeks of April.  Early season crops like radish and lettuce might also be planted earlier.  I am getting anxious!  Haven't ordered any seeds yet, I guess that is the next step.

Invasive Species Awareness Week

This is Invasive Species Awareness Week - and I have noticed the garlic mustard in my flowerbeds, drawing in the warm spring sunshine and building up sugar in its roots.  Time to get these plants is now, while they are small.  Don't wait for them to build up root systems and potentially spawn off new plants! 

The good folks at Ohio State University Extension service have created a number of Buckeye Yard and Garden Line bulletins about invasive weeds.  Here is a link to one on bittersweet, which many people like for interior decorating. 

This year's garden

Since I spent six months recovering from a hip surgery and a hip surgery revision, my husband refused to till up the "big" garden in the back of our yard this year and only tilled a small 25 x 20 space closer to the house.  

I've got tomatoes, cabbage,  peppers, zucchini, yellow squash, potatoes, green beans, radishes, a few beets, some lettuce, snow peas, and onions.    They are planted pretty intensively.   But somehow the weeds still manage to come up!

The Michigan soil is very sandy.  The water table is high, but any water I put on the garden runs through it because of the sand.

I had some landscaping done around the house, and I took all the old dirt, full of weed seeds, to the vegetable garden.  Because the landscaping had been repeatedly mulched, my reasoning is that the mulch has broken down over the years and will provide beneficial organic material to the sandy garden soil.

I am anxious to start my seeds. It has been a cold, wet spring and I think it is high time to get the seeds either in the ground (radishes and peas) or in the seed-starting trays (tomatoes and peppers). 

Due to medical condition, I am restricted from many of my favorite vegetables.  No more rhubarb, swiss chard, spinach, kale, strawberries, raspberries or blueberries for me.   I am debating whether to put them in my garden anyway.

Yellow Transparents are ripe!

I picked two half- bushel baskets. Yellow trasparents are the best apples for pies, in my opinion.  Plus they always remind me of my childhood, climbing the apple tree in my grandmother's yard.  Not sure if I will have time to bake an apple pie tomorrow.  Tonight we are going to watch The Hundred- foot Journey.  Maybe I will be inspired.

Well, maybe they are a little bit overripe.  Good thing I talked Ed into coming up to now the lawn! I just wish someone could explain why the biggest and nicest fruits are always at the top of the tree beyond the reach of my picking pole.

When we arrived last night this little guy was stuck to the picture window, I guess he was catching flies attracted to the light.  I rarely get an opportunity to observe frogs so closely!

Orchards

Apples

We have an orchard. It was a long journey, and I am still on the road.  We have an orchard and yet, I do not manage the orchard. I am 57 years old, and it is still an orchard dream.

  I dreamed of having an orchard when I lived in Johnny Appleseed country in Richland County, Ohio.   Unfortunately for me, like Johnny Appleseed, once I planted an orchard, I moved on.  

I lived in an apartment, just out of college, and with a good job.  No room for a garden, only pots on the fire escape in a downtown apartment.   I lived there a few years, until there was a murder outside my window.  I scraped together my assets and moved on. 

I had enough money for a down payment on a mobile home (almost).  I borrowed the rest from my grandmother.  My grandmother had a lot of money in the bank, the result of having been parsimonious during the Great Depression and afterwards.  She lent me the money I lacked, and I paid her the going interest rate of 4%, knowing that she and my grandfather had worked at jobs for $.25 an hour or less to earn that money. I made sure I paid her on time and with the full amount of interest that she might have earned in her savings account. It was proud day for me when that debt was paid off in full.

I lived in the mobile home for a few years.  I paid my “mortgage”, and I paid my grandmother, and I paid the lot rent, and I paid the utilities. Unfortunately, I learned about the “rule of 78”.  That means that you pay all the interest up front, and when you are halfway done paying off the mortgage, you still owe the original amount of the mortgage, in principal.  My naivety.  Their profit.   My kids came along.  I paid my husband’s credit card bills, my naivety. His profit.  I paid the grocery store.  All the time I longed for a patch of land to call my own, where I could have an orchard.

My new husband and I bought a house on 2 acres.  I rented the mobile home to a coworker.  She was a great renter, paid on time every month.  The new house was next door to a home with established apple trees, and had 2 young trees already planted. I was really looking forward to my orchard.  The neighbors were great, they were friendly, and the property backed up to a private park, with ATV trails to the lake.  We got a membership at the lake club and life was good for me and my kids.  Maybe not so good for my husband and his girlfriend.  They went through a lot to convince me that I should not be married to him anymore.  OK.  So it is. I get the house (and the apple trees) and he gets a reduced amount of child support.  My renter moves on to a new job, and I sell the mobile home.

A job change means I get to move to Michigan. No fruit from the apple trees in Ohio yet.  OK.  I will move, because I need the job to survive with my kids.  We move.  Michigan is different.  Way different. We are in a “metropolitan area” instead of a small town.  The neighborhoods are measured by “Mile Roads” and the further north of 8-Mile, the better the neighborhood.

My back yard is really small.  It backs up to the middle-school track, and is just around the corner from the park, so the kids learn to live in a metropolitan area.  My oldest daughter was in elementary-middle school and the youngest was just starting kindergarten. There is no room for an apple tree, but a family of skunks make its home under our porch.

 A job opens up back in my hometown (same company.) With only a small hesitation, I take it.

We move back home.  Thomas Wolfe said “you can’t go home again” and I fear he was correct. My friends from high school and previous school activities had moved on.   I planted three trees, one Liberty, one Enterprise, and one Freedom.  All three are disease-resistant varieties. 

I start dating again, and fall completely in love with the love of my life.  Unfortunately for the apple trees in my back yard.  They were just starting to bear fruit, and I had to move again. 

 But, as it turned out, he owns an orchard in Michigan!  There are Northern Spys, Grimes Golden, MacIntosh, Steel Red, Yellow Delicious, Red Delicious, Greening, Yellow Transparent, Jonathon, one Wagner, and one Red Astriken. There are also pear trees and a single Damson plum tree.  The trees are old, and haven't been properly pruned for many years. 

His back yard in Ohio had a MacIntosh apple tree.  For some reason, it did not bear well.  He said it is because MacIntosh is a variety that has a heavy crop one year and a light one the next.  We never got the heavy crop. 

Fast forward, the factory closed.  We move to Michigan.  There are two Cortland apple trees in the backyard.  I did not even realize they were real fruit trees until 2013, when I harvested a bushel of apples from each tree!   It was the first time I got a real harvest from an apple tree that I owned!

 
I am looking forward to learning more about how to manage the orchard.  There is poison ivy everywhere, and I am wondering if goats would be advisable.  

A little Logging

May 16 - Trespassers on the farm found about a pound of morels.  The neighbor kept them talking until Ed arrived.  The nice young men apologized and said that their uncle "Brian McCarthy" had told them it would be OK since he knew the owners and the owners lived in Indiana. Ed confiscated the morels.

I do not know that Brian McCarthy, but his nephews are good morel hunters.  We enjoyed them. 

May 17 - spent the morning looking for my own morels.  I found a few more.  It was interesting, I noticed May Apples near where they were found, but I also noticed Purple Deadnettles very close to most of them.  CLICK HERE for a photo.  Saw a pickup truck high-tailing it off the property when I got close to him. 

I found morels along the edges between woods and fields for the most part.  Limited ingredients on hand at the farm, I cooked spaghetti, asparagus (from my garden in metro Detroit), cream sauce made with cornstarch and milk, and some mushrooms

May 18 - spent the morning tromping around the woods again.  Found NOTHING.  The weather was a little warmer, in the 70's. A couple drove into the driveway and asked Ed for permission to hunt mushrooms.  Nope!  Came home.  Ed mowed the lawn.  He found a morel in the front yard.  Menu for dinner: fried mushrooms (a little flour/breadcrumb, dip in egg/milk, dip again in the flour/breadcrumb mixture, fry in butter, turning frequently) as an appetizer, chicken thighs in gravy and broccoli.   Watered neglected tomato seedlings which look dessicated.  Spent some time reviewing morel-hunting procedures in Michael Kuo's excellent book.

May 19 - After eating at a pricy restaurant, came home and picked about 10 stalks of asparagus here.  Looks like maybe I could pick a cup or two of rhubarb later this week.  Tomato seedlings have recovered some, but some will not revive.  Checked on the elderberry plants from 2 years ago, cannot find them.  Checked on last years blueberries, they are growing.  Put a couple of stakes near them so that Ed does not mow over them.  Weeded flower garden a little, pulling those persistent sow thistles or whatever they are and some bindweed.  Realized that pulling stinging nettles without gloves was not a good idea.  Retreated to the house!

Expecting rain

We are expecting rain today, it has been quite windy all day.  On the way back from the post office I drove by a gold mine of compost material- three bags finely chopped and stacked by the curb.  I scooped up two of them since that is what would fit in my car.  When I got home I drove back to the compost pile and emptied them, some of the loose material blew away to enrich my neighbor's fields. Even something is better than nothing, though. 

 After returning the car to the garage, I found one of my cole plant trays had caught the wind and was scattered across the front yard.  Once again, I scooped up the tiny little plants, put them back in the trays, gave them a watering, and put that tray back in the garage.  I left the other three trays outside, they seemed to have a little more water weighing them down.  When the rain comes it will keep them from blowing away.

We had a power bump a little while ago,  the TV came on upstairs all by itself, the wireless printer made some noises, and the light in the living room came on.  Gave me quite a creepy feeling to go upstairs and find out what the noises were.

On another note, I have been enjoying the Canada geese who seem to be making a nesting area in my pond.  They take turns with the heron who comes and fishes from time to time. 

Resilience

The cole crops are up in their seed trays and I have been taking them outside most days for hardening off.  Unfortunately earlier this week, I had an unfortunate accident.  I was trying to hurry and place the four trays outside to catch some sun before I left for work, when I made a wrong move and dumped all four trays at once on the ground. 

I was able to pick about two-thirds of them up and scoop the tiny little plants back into the trays.  Unfortunately they all look the same, so I may have mixed up the cauliflower and the Brussels sprouts and the Bok Choi.  It will just be a surprise!  From now on they are staying on the ground, I am not toting them around any more. 

We had a light frost this morning, temperature was 28 degrees, and I did not cover them.  It looks like they are going to be OK anyway.

Last weekend I started four trays of pepper and tomato plants.  The circuit breaker in the garage tripped some time a couple of days ago and the lights and heating mats did not come on.  I noticed the temperature inside my plant stand apparatus was in the 45-degree range.  I won't get much germination at that temperature.  Dear hubby reset the circuit breaker and the timer on the lights, so hopefully everything was caught in time.  Today the temperature is showing 65 degrees.  A few of the seeds had already germinated, but still waiting on most of them.

Today I planted herbs - Sage, basil, oregano and coriander. Have not planted any trays of flowers yet.  Maybe later tonight, maybe next weekend.  

I should really go out and plant some radishes, peas and potatoes. The temperatures are supposed to be in the 50's or higher all week this week.