Posts from — July 2007

It was a good year for peas. We planted snow peas with the intention of eating them with stir-fries and other Asian dishes. That didn’t happen very often. Instead we devoured most of the snow peas raw, in salads and snacking them on their own. They were that good.

All good things come to an end, though. Peas are one of the first seeds we planted, one of the first plants to germinate, one of the first ready to harvest. Their spring cycle is relatively short. By mid-summer, the pea plants wilted and scorched under the hot summer sun.

This was our last meal of snow peas.

It’s not the end of the garden however. We’ve got miles to go. Thank heaven.

As a sign of goodwill, the last of the peas coincided with the first of the green beans. We have two favorite ways to prepare green beans. One is stir-fried green beans with garlic. It’s simple to make and zestier with a splash of soy sauce added to the pan in the last minute.

The second method is new to me. On a dvd of Julia Child’s long-running pbs television series The French Chef, she prepares green beans in the French method: clean the beans and leave them whole; plunge them into a large pot of boiling water for 2 or 3 minutes; rinse them in cold water immediately; then just before serving, saute them in butter for a minute or two. This method makes a fabulous dish.

Gardeners should know better. When you turn your back, things grow out of control, so you should know better than to dare to go out of town.

We answered the siren call of friends and went to Toronto for 2 separate couple day visits in a two week period. We enjoyed seeing our friends and catching up on the years that have passed since we all lived in the big city. We had some great times. We shopped, we ate in restaurants, we saw the sights.

And we came home to a garden that had gone wild in just a couple days.  We have to relearn this every year: plants always grow faster when you aren’t looking.  If you should dare to go on a vacation, you better be prepared for the consequences.

The sunflowers are out in full force now. We probably have three dozen good-sized blooms. I love their happy, smiling faces. They are lovely and unique! Because I cannot resist taking pictures of sunflowers, here’s today’s stars:

Hey, how’d that last one get in there?

The raspberry harvest was a little anti-climactic this year because we were out of town for the last pickings. When we returned the berries were clearly past their prime. No point grumbling too much however since this is a “building” year, so to speak. Around this time of the year I start preparing for next year’s harvest and the first step is to weed out any plants that have poked through the mulch. To be honest though the mulch we applied last fall will have nearly broken down by this time of the year so there are lots of little plants to deal with. For instance, about seven years ago, a sweet pea from next door hopped the fence to elope with our raspberries and they’ve been together more or less ever since. I keep trying to pull them out but they so persistently return, it must be love. I spent my time today weeding - and swatting at a cloud of little bugs that kept dive bombing my face.

The next step after finishing all the weeding, will be to prune off this year’s dying/dead canes, prune the green canes so they’ll split and make a bigger harvest next year and then spread the whole area with mulch. This year I’m trying a thick layer of straw. But since it looks like rain, those are all tasks for another day.

One of the occupational hazards of solar cooking in Michigan is the weather. We really can’t count on sun every day. Nor can we depend on the brightly shining morning sun to stick around for the afternoon.

The other day, I prepared my so-easy-it-makes-you-blush Salsa Chicken. This dish consists of Salsa and Chicken. First I place the chicken in the round black pan. Then I add enough salsa or a can of tomatoes with green chilies to cover it. Put the lid on. Voila! That’s it. Into the solar cooker with the pan.

A half an hour later, the sun disappeared behind some substantial clouds, where I guessed it planned to spend the rest of the day. Potatoes, onions, garlic– I could have left in the cooker to eek out whatever rays they might capture. Raw chicken, I knew however, would not fair so well. So the chicken went into the refrigerator until closer to dinnertime. I then poached the chicken– not my favorite way to cook chicken, but a pretty good save under the circumstances.

The episode reminded me that, for me, solar cooking is an adventure, not a complete necessity. The almost invisible appliances of our kitchen are easy to take for granted. Having to resort to using the stove didn’t mean less fuel for heating or cooking over a fire because of a power shortage. Solar cooking is one option for us.