Food

Round and lonely survivors

| Green Card Gardener

Calamities are part of gardening reality but I still cannot get used to it, and probably never will. Last year there were no eggplants due to flea beetles. This year, several dozen cucumber, summer squash and melon seedlings died on me, either chewed into oblivion by the striped cucumber beetle, or killed later by the bacterial wilt that the beetles transmit. The latest victim to the disease were the Hubbard squashes, which had grown as tall as the fence and just started to set fruit. I pulled the entire patch last week. Don’t mention it. Two cucumber plants are just hanging in there. I am trying not to get my hopes up too high for cucumber salad.

None of the gardeners I spoke to around here seems to have the same troubles. Driving by a pumpkin patch yesterday and seeing that field of healthy verdure made me jealous. Yet I should not forget that unlike many other parts of the country, we had plenty of rain here in northeast Pennsylvania. We are very fortunate; there could be many more failed crops.

And, there is a consolation prize in my garden! A friend of a friend had given me two plants of Tondo di Piacenza, an Italian heirloom zucchini. Although the beetles are populating them as well, the plants seem to be resistant (so far) and I am picking one or two beautiful round zucchini every other day. They are great for stuffing but now that I have more than just a couple, I can finally make my Zucchini Quiche with Goat Feta that I have been craving all summer.

Maybe I will switch to growing Tondo di Piacenza next year. But next year there might be no trouble with striped cucumber beetles, and some other calamity will hit a different crop. You never know.

Bark bag

| Green Card Gardener

As much as I like my vegetable garden to be neat and tidy, and as fiercely as I fight unwanted visitors there, I can also let things go and tremendously enjoy the areas where nature takes its course: the meadows where turkeys like to nest, white from Queen Anne’s lace right now, a hillside filled with Staghorn sumac and pokeweed for bird food, and, of course, patches of milkweed for monarchs.

We gave up on growing fruit trees a long time ago because deer were running them over or devouring them. The only survivors are two pear trees. In the last few years, some animal, most likely a groundhog, was faster than us and picked the loaded trees clean just when the pears were starting to ripen. This year we decided to take action and try to keep the critters away with Epsom salt and Plantskydd, a deterrent that has worked well so far.

On my pear protection mission today I found a bunch of pears on the ground that the wind must have knocked down. Before I could lose myself in fantasies about what to make with them, I had to find a way to bring them back to the house. It was sweltering hot and I had no intention to walk up to the house to get a basket or a bag. For a brief moment I considered taking off my T-shirt to carry the pears but the idea of bugs eating me alive made me discard that idea quickly. When I looked around at the edge of the woods for some suitable receptacle such as giant leaves, I found a large piece of bark – perfect for the purpose.

The pears will go into my favorite Spiced Chocolate Pear Cake.

Bread and butter (definitely bread)

| Green Card Gardener

I could live without many foods but not without bread. I could even skip the butter but not the bread. Real bread that is: baked from scratch and not par-baked and frozen. Maybe it is because I spent most of my life in Germany, which boasts endless varieties of wholesome bread, that good bread is so essential for me.

When it comes to bread we live in a sort of no man’s land; there is no place to buy decent bread within at least a 30-mile radius. I wish I could like phoebe’s pure food in neighboring Berks County declare some place the best gluten-free bakery but there is no such bakery around here, let alone a gluten-free one…

For a short time I ordered bread by mail but that was decidedly too costly, and the loaves did not become fresher from traveling cross country for several days. Then I started baking our own.

Baking bread is a bit like gardening. The outcome is unpredictable. Working the soil and working the dough both feel great. Watching the dough rise is like watching plants grow. And, finally, pulling a loaf of bread out of the oven is as utterly satisfying as pulling a bunch of radishes out of the ground.

I have a few basic rules for bread baking. If I am not in the mood, I will not do it. I never start the process when I am rushed and have to be out the door within the next few hours. Working from an office in the house certainly helps a lot, as I can run upstairs to the kitchen to punch down the dough etc. as needed. While I think quality ingredients are important, I am not religious about it – not everything has to be organic. Home-baked bread must be stored in the fridge or frozen because it does not contain any preservatives and molds much quicker than store-bought bread.

Not every loaf is great but the bread is always edible. As good as it gets for an amateur, I am telling myself and try not to fret about air holes and other imperfections. The problem that occurs the most is that the final product is a bit dry. That’s why this chewy no-knead bread baked in a cast-iron Dutch oven is one of my favorite bread recipes: the dough can be really sticky because it is not shaped into a loaf. I often experiment with different combinations of flours and grains. Here is my first attempt with amaranth.

Whole Wheat Amaranth Bread

This makes a large loaf in a 5.5-quart cast-iron Dutch oven. For a small loaf I use a 3.5-quart oval Dutch oven.

1 cup amaranth

1½ tablespoons dry yeast

3 cups lukewarm water

1 tablespoon salt

4 cups bread flour

1½ cups whole-wheat flour

1 tablespoon gluten

You also need:

A large Tupperware container with lid

A cast-iron Dutch oven with a heatproof lid up to 450 degrees F

Parchment paper

Spray bottle

1. Toast the amaranth in a large ungreased skillet over medium to high heat until it starts to pop, stirring and shaking the skillet often. Make sure not to burn it. Set aside to cool.

2. Mix the yeast with ½ cup of the water in a small bowl. Stir well and set aside for 10 minutes until it foams. If it doesn’t, the yeast is not active any more, then you need to discard and try with a new batch.

3. Mix the cooled amaranth and flours with the salt in the container. Add the remaining 2½ cups water and the foamed yeast mix. Mix well with a wooden spoon until the dough is evenly moistened and no flour pockets remain. Tightly place the lid on the container but leave one corner of the lid unattached (if you close the whole container tightly, the lid will pop off). Let rise at room temperature for 2 hours.

4. Line a tall bowl or a container that is the same size as the Dutch oven, or slightly smaller, with a large piece of parchment paper.

5. Knead the dough briefly in the container and dump it into the the parchment-lined bowl. The dough is rather tacky and moist. Do not add any more flour, otherwise the bread will be too dry. Transfer the dough to the bowl and cover loosely with a kitchen towel. It should not touch the dough even after the rise, so I place some taller objects, such as a pot or a cookbook holder, on both sides of the bowl and place the towel on top like a tent. Let rise for 1.5 hours.

6. About 1 hour into the rise, preheat the oven to 450 degrees F. Adjust the oven rack to the middle of the oven.

7. Once the oven has reached its target temperature, put the empty Dutch oven covered with the lid in the oven and leave it in there for 20 minutes. If it sits in there longer, no problem, the crucial thing is to have it hot when you put the bread in it.

8. Remove the Dutch oven from the oven and place it on a heatproof surface or trivet. Take off the lid and place it out of reach so you don’t risk touching it.

9. Carefully lift the dough with the parchment paper out of the bowl. This is best done by grabbing onto the four corners of the parchment paper. Hold onto as much of the paper edge as you can. Plop it into the Dutch oven. Carefully cut off with scissors any parchment above the rim. Spray the surface of the dough with a bit of cold water. Cover with the lid and place it in the oven.

10. Bake covered for 30 minutes, then remove the lid and back for an additional 10 minutes. Remove from the oven and lift the bread out of the Dutch oven right away. Peel of the parchment and cool completely on a cake rack.

Garden foes, garden woes, and a broken toe

| Green Card Gardener

Whenever I grab the sledgehammer to drive a bamboo stick into the ground in order to secure something in the garden, like I did this morning, I must think of the time when I paid my attempt to protect the tomatoes from predators with a broken toe.

It was a few years ago in August. The tomatoes were heavy with fruit and just starting to ripen. One morning, I found the first fully red tomato on the ground, a big bite taken out of it. The next morning, the same thing. And the day after that, two tomatoes.

As my husband and I were having coffee that morning, I must have given him the “if-you-want-tomato-sauce-this year-you-better-do-something” look before heading out the door. When I pulled up the driveway at midday, I found him in the garden, sweating in the hot sun, putting the finishing touches on a 2-foot wall he had built around the entire tomato patch, using every single piece of plywood and scrap wood he could find in the shed. I gave him a big hug and called him my tomato hero.

The next day I found… another chewed tomato. My husband had gone with our son to his baseball game so they could not hear me scream and curse. By afternoon, and after some frantic research, I finally had a plan. Since the damage most likely occurred at night, I was going to nail a blinking bike light to the inside of the wall, which would deter whatever munched on the tomatoes.

I hastily kicked off my garden shoes at the door and rushed into the garage in socks to fetch the bike light, a nail and a hammer. Not waiting for the light over the workbench to turn on completely, I reached into the shelf for the hammer… and pulled out the sledgehammer sitting on top, which crashed on my foot.

When my husband and son came back a couple of hours later, they found me in the kitchen, my foot in a bucket with ice, wailing. I prefer not to repeat their comments, and neither the comments and looks I got in the following weeks when all I could wear was sandals and someone saw my bruised foot and I had to tell my story.

After I was somewhat able to move around again, I hobbled down to the garden and angrily tossed the bike light into the tomato patch. I left it switched on even during the day and gave a damn about the battery.

The chewing stopped. We had a bountiful tomato harvest. A few more years of critter warfare followed before we turned the main garden into a real fortress that only humans with two free hands to lift the gate, winged insects, and an occasional chipmunk can access. Now I grow everything that has a remote chance of being eaten (including tomatoes) in that fenced-in area, and all the perennial plants that critters usually leave alone (raspberries, blackberries, red and black currants, gooseberries and rhubarb) are outside. This year I boldly snuck a watermelon into the outside garden too. So far so good but maybe it has just not been discovered yet.

After I drove the bamboo stick in the ground this morning, I pulled the last spring beets – beautiful striped Chioggia and Crosby’s Egyptian. It is amazing how happy an arm full of beets can make me. This would have been unthinkable in the days of bunny warfare – the tender beet leaves were one of the first things to be chewed down to the ground by rabbits.

I made Amanda Hesser’s fabulous Gingered Beet Pickles but used my own Elderflower Vinegar instead of white vinegar. Any other fruity vinegar will do as a substitute.