Quote of the Day: Joe Eck & Wayne Winterrowd
Americans are fondest of the foods of summer. Peas, beans, corn, and tomatoes are most people’s first choices among vegetables, regardless of the season. Modern agriculture, modern trucking, and the freezer allow us to have them even in the depths of winter–beets, carrots, parsnips, turnip, cabbage and winter squash–were popular then because they kept with little trouble in the cellar all winter long without much loss of flavor; and they were, in any case, sustenance when nothing else was available.
Joe Eck & Wayne Winterrowd in Living Seasonally: The Kitchen Garden and the Table at North Hill
Personally I much prefer the flavors of most of the other seasonal vegetables above the typical summer ones. Perhaps it comes from a childhood of eating canned green beans, frozen corn and applesauce all winter long. Perhaps I’m just older and learning to appreciate a wider variety of vegetables for the many flavors and textures that they bring to my table. Or perhaps, I just love being able to garden over a longer season because of these vegetables.
This winter I’m looking forward to my root cellar full of potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, beets, turnips and celeriac. In the coming years I hope to add chicories and other brassicas to my stores.
What’s your favorite non-summer vegetable?
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Friday Favorite: The Fair
I grew up going to the Wayne County Fair in Ohio every year (at least when we were in the country). It was a BLAST, one of my favorite things. You can see what that fair is like in the post I wrote about it a LONG time ago. Last Friday we attending the Windsor Fair with our neighbors. It was just what a fair should be. There were animals of all shapes and sizes, foods both fried and sweet (though we didn’t have lobster rolls at the fair in Ohio), there were quilts and vegetables on display and many wonderful educational items as well.
The fair is such a great way to bookend the summer, it’s always something I’ve really enjoyed. Perhaps some year I’ll enter a few of my veggies into the fair.
Do you attend your local fair?
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Mushrooms
This past Sunday, Mr Chiots and I attending a mushroom identification class at the Hidden Valley Nature Center. We spent the morning inside, learning about mushroom identification features. The class was taught by Greg Marley who wrote the book Mushrooms for Health: Medicinal Secrets of Northeastern Fungi.
After class room time we went out into the woods to forage. We picked every mushroom we saw and identified them as either edible or not edible. It was a real hands on class about mushrooms, which we really liked.
Overall it was a great day and we learned a lot. Mr Chiots and I love mushrooms and are looking forward to finding more wild ones on our property. When it comes to mushroom hunting, a little direction from a professional will certainly give you the peace of mind you need!
Have you ever foraged for wild mushrooms?
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Quote of the Day: Melissa Coleman
Fall arrived with its honey light and cool evenings, and the maple leaves brightened to match the reds and yellow of ripe apples. It was time to put away the bounty of the warm months for fortitude during the cold ones, as humans had done for centuries.
Melissa Coleman (This Life Is in Your Hands: One Dream, Sixty Acres, and a Family Undone)
I don’t do a lot of canning, but I do love to ferment things. Over the coming weeks I’ll be making batches of fermented cucumber pickles, sauerkraut, kimchi and other fermented goodies.
These will help augment the root vegetables in the cellar and the bitter winter greens from under the hoop house in the garden throughout the winter. The full-sour dill pickles are probably my favorite fermented food, we gobble them up quickly, eating them at every meal if we have them.
What’s your favorite kind of pickled food?
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Quote of the Day: Robyn Griggs Lawrence
“I know we’d be nuts to patently give up the machines that permeate our homes and make our lives so much easier. But what if, everyone in a while – especially when the world around us seems crazy and uncontrollable – we submerge our hands into warm, soapy water and hand a towel to our significant other. Or we take ten minutes to sweep the floor, focusing all our attention on that simple task with its ancient symbolic reference to sweeping away the bad spirits and the stale energy that may be lurking in the corners. What if?”
Robyn Griggs Lawrence (The Wabi-Sabi House: The Japanese Art of Imperfect Beauty)
My dishwasher died many years ago and I’ve been washing dishes by hand ever since. It forces me to slow down and enjoy the moment, to think about what I see outside my window, to appreciate the things I have, to cultivate simplicity. Sometimes doing our chores the old fashioned way helps us cultivate mindfulness and it can help us appreciate what we have.
What is one chore you like to do by hand?
