Finger-lickin' Everyday turkey pot pie

(Recipe for tonight's supper of Pot pie below.)

So, I've been thriftily getting an average of 3-5 meals each out of three pound chickens for our little family. I don't buy meat every week, and we try buy ethically and stretch it a good long way when we do. But the boys are getting bigger and eating more! On a whim, Paul and I decided to try a turkey, still frozen in the store, leftover from thanksgiving. It was almost eighteen pounds. I brined it for a couple days while it thawed, roasted it up just like I do with my usual chicken, except with loads of stuffing, which I think helps keep the bird nice and moist because the cavity isn't all full of hotted air.After the first meal, of stuffing and fresh meat, we had:
meals of:
-mashed potatoes and gravy (make potatoes extra and save for winter cheese and potato pie; my favorite)
-turkey pasta salad with almonds and dried cherries in a creamy poppyseed dressing. (Gib's other favorite)
-Turkey teriyaki over rice with steamed broccoli
-lots of cold turkey for lunches
-turkey soup with big fluffy dumplings. every one's other favorite. The secret is to not to boil the broth hard--ever. Simmer like you know it's going to be delicious.
-fresh turkey baby food
-Turkey omelets
-and, tonight, finger-lickin' turkey pot pie. it was so gratifying. everyone enjoyed this simple dish so much. no herbs or fancy flavors. just pure goodness.
And, as I still have a nice jar of broth and two containers of meat, later this week, I'm planning: -on using more broth in a pineapple fried rice dish
-turkey sandwiches with kitchen sink sprouts
-using the broth to float my gnocchi in tomorrow
-some kind of yummy salad?
-maybe turkey-black bean burritos. Burritos are great to make a handful extra and stick in the freezer for lunches.

That's a very reasonable 13 meals. It was expensive, this no-hormone, no cages, pastured, bird, but we've also been so enjoying not being so scrimpy with meat--I wasn't stretching the turkey thin in these meals. So I consider this very economical. It certainly was less pricey than an equivalent amount of chicken. A perfect focal point for our winter menus where we want good simple food, but not as spare as it will get come Lent in a month here.
Oh, and there's been not a whisper of anyone being sick of turkey. It's juicy and good. We've been so enjoying. We don't really eat much meat usually, and, never hosting the big holiday meals, never have large-scale leftovers of roasts. Heck, we wouldn't anyway. The family's big and hungry enough that there aren't many leftovers to speak of when we get together!

Finger-lickin' Pot Pie
easily, many other meats could substitute in here just fine. Also, parsnips, potatoes I would have tossed in if f I had had on hand. The crust I just made up, and we all loved it so much. We ate up every morsel and for once I'm not sorry there were no leftovers because I think it would get soggy.
2 cups pieces turkey meat, white or dark
2 stalks celery, chopped thinnishly
2 chopped, peeled carrots
1 1/2 cups peas
1/3 of an onion, finely minced (for most kids don't like the feel of onion in their picky little mouths) I would have used a whole if I hadn't just happened to have a part left over from another meal
1 1/2 cups broth
2/3 cup milk
good grinding of black pepper

Boil the celery, peas, and carrots 10-15 min, until just tender.
Saute the onion in turkey fat skimmed from the broth jar. Just to golden.
Heat the broth and meat to a simmer. It had been in the fridge for a week, after all. Mix veg, onions, meat, broth, milk, salt and pepper to taste. If Paul hadn't been around to keep an eye on the brood, I would have done the above, and prior chopping and washing of the above, ahead of time, and just assembled the pie and popped it in the oven an hour before dinner. Maybe. Okay today I would have put the baby on my back and cranked some loud music for the boys to jump around to and done it all as I did in the hour before supper.

Now the fun starts: biscuit-pie crust
3-4 cups flour, pile in a heap on butcher block or big bread board
stir into it with a fork:
1/2 tsp baking soda
two good pinches of salt
now I took my dough knife and chopped a quarter cup (half a stick) of butter into the flour. I just chopped until all the pieces were pea-sized or so. I suppose a chef's knife or butter knives or fingertips could do the same thing. I did chop, not knead or rub. The butter was just out of the fridge.
Now-- I made the flour into a little mountain and made a hole in the center. Quick as can be, I stirred 3 Tablespoons full of good plain full-fat yogurt in. I incorporated as much flour as possible, then take the soft dough out and set it aside and do it again until most of the flour mixture is dough. Maybe three times. I stop before all the flour is incorporated so I won't have to add more for rolling out the crust. I took half of this crust, and rolled it out. This makes a big flaky, floury pile that doesn't seem like it's ever going to hold together at all. That's good; it will, though. All along I'm dusting the excess flour over and under the crust to incorporate it; I roll the crust out as big as my pie pan. I take my dough knife and scrape up the edges on the four sides all around and fold them inward, like folding it in half and in half again. Roll it out again. As soon as possible, I set that crust into the deep dish pie pan. I do the same with the second half, and fold the finished crust in quarters to rest a minute.
Pour the filling into the bottom crust. If there's too much, (I want to leave an inch of room so it doesn't boil over) I put the extra aside for another meal or an extra little pie or hand-pie for Paul's lunch. Best not to overload!
Now I take that folded crust and unfold it on top of the pie. There's a good bit of over-hang. I seal the top crust to the bottom crust all the way around the edges by pressing with my fingers. I fold the excess under against the inside of the pie, because we like crust so, double thick is great. I crimped the edge with my fingers. I slit the top with a knife to let the steam out, and pop it into the oven, which is preheated to 425 F.

It was all cooked in 25-30 minutes, just goldening on top and around the edges. Rested for 10 minutes. Served nice and hot but not scalding! Everyone was so happy.
Our six year old adds, "make sure to say that kids like it too!"

Whew. That sounded like a lot of work, but that crust took just a couple of minutes. Really. Like, less than five. I've made a lot of fussy crusts with taking in and out of the fridge, and ice water and vodka and whatnot. They were so fussy I never made anything with a crust! I'm not sure vodka and ice water weren't just trying , and failing, to make up for my not knowing how to just do this quick and with a light touch. I don't think Grandma used ice or liquor in her crusts, and I don't think she just always served tough or heavy crusts! But as I get the hang of it, it's not so hard. Just making one every once in a while was so worth it, I think I'm getting the knack now, and I can just bang these out!
The crust was between a biscuit crust and a pie crust: crisp outside; flaky, light, and soft inside.

Wild Plum Harvest

I found some wild plums, a blushing golden treasure hanging drooping under the trees near a small lake. I have been watching this thicket for three years, and have missed their ripening, or been beaten to it. I now know one does not see plums and come back next week! I was so excited to finally get a few. When I found them, I didn't delay, but filled my skirt. They were enough to can a small batch of jam! Funny how once I finally find a fruit, I find it everywhere; I found another thicket in a park we frequent, also ripe. Seeing the spot where they grow, what kind of a place with what companions, how the plants actually look, touching the branches, is so much more instructive than the field guides! Having seen, I can think of many similar spots to check next year around Labor Day.
Even with a fully laden tree, from twenty feet it mostly just looked green. The one visible plum I had taken for a stray yellow leaf, and all the rest were hiding, back under the leaves. I once was blind to wild plums; but now I see.

The Art of Picnicing

Okay, we are such picnic-ers we find ways to picnic in the winter even: on a blanket in the snow, for school lunch, a meal after church, on any friendly floor--but the real fun starts when we can have outdoor picnics!
Now that it's really summer, we pack a picnic everywhere we go.This lovely basket, pictured late last fall, was a gift that came filled with small metal dishes and cups as a child's toy set, but we've put it to hard real use. Most often I leave all the dishes at home, pack it with whatever foods we have on hand, and toss in a few of our everyday cloth napkins, maybe a knife to cut up fruit, or a spoon if needed for serving. We bring along a big water bottle or two, and make sure they're full before lunch for drinking and washing up. For our picnic, we use the napkins as plate, tablecloth, napkin, and towel all in one. When biking, the picnic blanket can double as a pillow for the kids, or be snugged around them if it's chilly.
For us, this is a great alternative to the waste of fast food and the expense of a restaurant. It takes little time to put together in the morning, but this small forethought saves us from ending an otherwise nice morning with tears and distress from tired hungry little ones, creating instead a little island of rest and nourishment in our busy day.
Ideas to fill a lunch basket, pail, or bag:
-any kind of leftovers, in a screw-top jar, with a spoon or fork. Paul found tiny wood sporks for a couple bucks apiece at our co-op.
-hummus mix: we get it in bulk at our coop. Stir in the water at the picnic spot.
-dried fruit
-powdered drink mixes: I also keep a few in a corner of our bag always, just in case we get stuck somewhere hungry and need a hold-over to stave off falling apart till a meal.
-cheese, salami, hard vegetables.
-sandwiches. Peanut butter and honey is a family favorite. At one time in my life, I ate tortillas filled with cheese and sprouts every day for a year.
-hard boiled eggs (don't forget the salt shaker or egg slicer!)
-a small jar of soup or yogurt. Hot soup, cider or cocoa can go in the classic thermos, or try a coffee travel mug if you have a convenient holster for it on car, bike, or backpack!
-ants on a log (celery spread with peanut butter, dotted with raisins. kids like to help make)

For more picnic ideas read the fabulous Best Friends for Francis by Russell Hoban.

Wild Rice Soup for a Minnesota Winter: a Tangential Recipe

Winter Wild Rice Soup
The key to wild rice is letting it blossom. I put several handfuls of wild rice (this is real wild-grown stuff, hand harvested by Ojibwe people on Mille Lacs Reservation! Just another local treat from the co-op!) into my little sauce pan, and a kettle of water on the hob. When the kettle whistles boiling, I pour the hot water over the rice, cover it and leave it. This can be done the day before, or hours in advance of the meal. Before cooking with it, I rinse the rice a couple of times. Then all the rice is softened and each grain opens up. Wild rice seems expensive, but expands a lot more than white rice, so it's not really more pricey. If I don't let it blossom, all the other veggies get mushy while I wait for my rice to soften. You then end up cooking the soup for four hours into flavorlessness, or having chewy wild rice soup.
Heat a jar of broth or stock in the bottom of a nice deep pot. I make stock from leftovers of all kinds. Lacking this, just use water.
Put into the pot chopped carrots, wild rice, chopped potatoes, or other firm winter veggies.*
In a saucepan or frying pan, saute in a few glugs of olive oil:
chopped onion, garlic, parsnips**
Have I yet mentioned my new love of parsnips? You can dig them out of the garden all winter (theoretically. this might take advance planning if you live in the frozen north, but if they can be extracted from that hard ground, they will be sure to please!) I love their tart sweetness. Roasted, they carmelize and become a snacky pleasure food. cooked, they are sweet, soft, and tangy.So, saute this high-flavor matter till it becomes fragrant. I let it brown a bit, and toss in a splash of water. For some reason, this makes it all the sweeter. Transfer to the soup pot. Here I also added a fistful of sweet farmer's market corn frozen from the summer bounty. Slosh in some white wine, if you've got it.
Saute some chopped fresh mushrooms and put in soup.

When the veggies are almost all cooked, add a chopped stalk of celery or two.
I don't bother to wash the saucepan before making the roux. This is to be a cream soup. The flavors from the carmelized parsnip and onions are so good I don't want to wash any away. To make the roux, I put two spatches of butter in the pan until melted. Turn off the heat and sprinkle in an equal amount of white flour. This is not the time to use whole wheat flour for this one! Stir with a fork or wooden spoon till smooth. Then I slowly mix in a cup of real (whole) milk, little by little so as not to get doughy lumps of buttery flour. Stir this white sauce into the soup and season to taste: salt, pepper, parsley***, maybe basil or thyme, as your fancy takes you.

*Winter Veggies
I'm thinking about what people who didn't have supermarkets, cheap gas, and cheap refrigeration would eat, here in Minnesota all year long? Think pioneer suppers, think long Lakota winters. It just doesn't make sense to eat food shipped from South America, Fuji, or California for so much of the year that we don't have a fresh harvest here. Oranges at Christmas are one thing, we don't need this kind of expense and consumption to get good food here. (Joan Gussow articulates the concept of local eating quite well in her readable book, This Organic Life: confessions of a suburban Homesteader. I recommend the book as an intro to the local, seasonal table)
There is so much we can grow when it's warm and keep through the winter right here in Minnesota! I'm hoping do do more and more food preservation myself in the coming years, but for now we're just enjoying the few foods we have put by in the last year, and trying to buy foods that come from good, small, concientious farms as close to us as possible. Shopping at the co-op makes this easier, as they label where each offering hails from. Paul does most of the shopping, so I just ask him to look for the closest state possible. I know he also considers cost. Who wants to pay for shipping refrigerated, gassed spinach and tomatoes from California when parsnips are dirt-cheap?
Another factor is food durability. As in, beets are more durable than spinach. Foods that have to be eaten within weeks of harvest, that bruise easily, or need refrigeration or chemical treatment to survive until they hit the store shelf, we just avoid in the winter. We can eat green salads April through November, right out of our backyards. We're not super strict about this--we're in no danger of scurvvy, but as I learn about the whole history of the foods we eat and its implications for us, our neighbors, farmers, and children, I find it very satisfying to plan our meals around real keeping crops. Not to mention, I don't know anyone who actually enjoys grocery store tomatoes in February. As our friend Liz Fleming says, they should have a different name from the tomatoes one grows and picks in the garden, as they are an entirely different and vastly less enjoyable vegetable.

This really isn't as limiting as it might sound:
Parsnips, carrots, turnips, beets, potatoes, winter squash, cabbage, kale. (I found a variety though Seed Savers that is hardy to ten below, Farenheit and then when picked keep forever in the fridge,)
Grains: Barley, oats, rice, wild rice, cornmeal, quinoa, amaranth, pastas, etc.
Legumes, dried
And for fresh foods: Sprouts! Alfalfa! Mung bean, wheat, fenugreek, etc. Mary Jane Butters has a fun section on growing sprouts in her Ideabook, Cookbook, Lifebook.
Mushrooms
Dried fruits: apples, cranberries, currants, raisins, etc.
Wine, hard ciders, vinegars
Dried Herbs, spices
Meat and Dairy: cheeses, cream, milk, puddings, broth, eggs, etc.
All that stuff can either be produced and sold right here all winter long, or stored from earlier production here.
I don't have qualms about getting spices, coffee, tea, etc from distant ports as they don't require refrigeration during shipping and aren't fresh; these are dried products, relatively lightweight, ship quite efficiently as compared to fresh, canned, or frozen fruit.
There is also a beauty in seasonality. Roasted root vegetables, thick soups, fresh bread, puddings, and stews feel good these cold months. Rather than feeling limited, I almost wish I had more time before spring to try all the recipes in my head for these foods. There will be plenty of time when it's too hot to even think about the oven. Luckily, in those months, fresh salads and fruits abundant will grow wild just outside our door!
**Cabbage would also be good
***I would like fresh parsley. If we had a good south-facing window for it, I would try growing more windowsill herbs through the winter. Some things take dried herbs better than others. In this soup, I felt the flavors of the veggies, especially the parsley, corn, and wild rice, along with the creaminess of the roux gave a full, rich taste that didn't need extra herbs. No sense in making bright flavors dusty with last summer's dried herbs. I don't go in much for buying them at the market. At ours, they come in plastic cases and are expensive. You get this paltry bit of greenery, more plastic case than herbage. I say, skip that!

For the love of Pastie Pies!

I have a new cookbook that I love. It was a gift from sister in law and brother, Natalie and Robert, and it's just great: Savoring the Seasons of the Northern Heartland, by Beth Dooley and Lucia Watson. It doesn't have sumptuous full-colors images of the dishes, like so many trendy cookbooks, but unlike many of those mouth-watering , celebrity-studded tomes, this one has great recipes!

It's highly readable and contains a lot of fascinating history of our area. Many regional cookbooks don't go very deep, and aren't very interesting, or truly regional. Sure, we grow blueberries up here, but blueberry turnovers just don't ring Minnesota for me; you can get them anywhere. Dooley and Watson use not just the droll berries, but feature a range of wild game and wild ingredients I love Minnesota for, without just substituting for their all-American counterparts.

What's more, let's talk old-fashioned small-town holidays! Spaetzle? Pastie Pies? Now we're talking Midwestern church picnic goodness! Mostly, I must say, it focuses on northern European immigrants to the Midwest, but it also includes tidbits of Hmong and other more recent groups, as well as acknowledging some native culinary traditions and influences. The groups they focus on, they do a pretty good job with.

I've used several recipes. One for a Norwegian toast flavored with my new favorite spices, cardamom and mace turned out highly satisfactory. I merely substituted cream for most of the called for butter. There is a kickin' brownie recipe. I've made a lot of unsatisfactory brownies lately, but these were so good, they didn't even make it to our neighbors' houses. And the pastie pies!

I have always loved firm little pastry crust hand pies stuffed with savory meat fillings. Paul thought I was crazy and maintained they didn't exist till now. Ha! (I also found a whole article on their history in the Iron Range in a recent issue of Edible Twin Cities.) The idea is to make a sturdy complete meal; so the crust is meant to be strong, while the interior juicy. I altered the filling recipe, using what I had and made a filling with potatoes, sausage, and fresh pears, seasoned with fennel, coriander, and caraway. That might all sound far-flung, but they turned out great. Gibbie spontaneously raved about them, "these are really good, Mama. Thank you. These are so good." And they handled magnificently as lunches the next day.

Many of the recipes are truly authentic old-fashioned recipes. Where realistically, almost no one would make the old-fashioned item authentically, there are variations. I like doing laboriously authentic things, but realize not many people do. For instance, there aren't recipes for Lutefisk or home made lefse. They've also made a few changes for health, lightening up a dish. Usually I don't like that so much, but the authors here alter with aplomb. They do well at maintaining what is memorable about the dish. There are also plenty of stellar original recipes by small-town cooks and big-city chefs. They've really pulled together the best of the best.

Butternuts and Black Walnuts

I had hoped these were butternuts, but I think they are black walnuts. They are closely related. Butternuts are supposed to be football-shaped and these are pretty round. I am looking for butternut trees everywhere, but haven't found any that can be confirmed as such, alas.

I really want to eat the nuts! Both butternuts and walnuts can be used to make dye or ink from the black stuff in the husks--see it above? Pretty yucky.

We (Gibbie and Mama) cracked open these husks with a hammer. That was fun. They break open and you can take the nuts out. Then you let the nuts cure for a few months and shell them. When I open the nuts, it will be undeniably obvious whether they are butternuts of walnuts. Butternuts are threatened by a black canker that kills the trees. Pretty sad.We were not very smart about this, however. After whacking the husks off, we left our little pile of nuts just next to our car. Not very surprisingly, when we returned from our walk in the woods, a squirrel (or other enterprising creature?) had carried off half of them. I thought they were too unappealing for anybody to take them, but forgot about our little beasty neighbors.

Butternuts supposedly have a sweet banana-vanilla-nutty flavor when they are let to cure without their husks. I figure if I keep looking I'll find a good butternut tree eventually. If you have one to recommend, and are sick of all those pesky, wormy, nuts falling in your yard and staining your sidewalk and patio, hey--let me know and I'll come clean them up for you!

Woodstoves, Purlieu Stew, and Carmelized Onions

One of the things we most love about Purlieu is the rawness of it. I realize I have some romantic ideas about farming, simple living, poverty, and the "olden days", but man, do I ever love cooking on a woodstove! Really, there's nothing pretentious about this cabin; it's very simple and practical and I think those things make it beautiful though it's not fancy at all. Of course, I also grew up coming here and can't remember not loving the cabin and everything about it. Unknowingly, growing to love the same land my dear Paul does.
Chris, who built this cabin, has two woodstoves. The little one in the pit is the primary heat stove. Paul stoked it several times each night to keep us cozy. It is great to put a big kettle of water on top of this stove for dishes, bathing, or hot drinks. We also cooked potatoes and squash right on the coals inside. Yum! We fuel it with wood that Chris mostly chops from downed trees on the property, and the ashes go into the outhouse, completing the cycle. If we lived here, I bet we could use those ashes to make soap and fertilize the garden.
There is nothing like sitting in front of a roaring fire on a chilly rainy day, which we had plenty of.

I don't think of it as roughing it, though we sure have more amenities at our home in the cities, because if I could, I would prefer to live like this.
This range has gas burners, powered by a propane tank, plus an oven and hot plates heated with a fire box. I loved cooking on it! We had hash browns, pancakes, and a killer squash stew:

Bake squash (we used a small butternut) and potatoes in the oven or fireplace if the fire's going.
Dredge lamb stew meat in flour (pancake mix also works just fine!) Saute in olive oil or butter with chopped onions till onions are tender and meat is brown.
Continue to saute gently whilst seasoning with whatever's around: I used dried tarragon, parsley, garlic, salt, pepper, and bay leaves.
Add squash, potatoes and water and continue cooking and tasting until it's just right.
For a vegetarian version, I would simply omit the meat and use a bunch of fresh basil.

Another smashing success I had on the range was the carmelized onions. These would be a fine garnish for a plain soup or stew, and are great on burgers, vegetables, or baked potatoes, and are very simple to make.
Carmelized onions:
Saute chopped onions (they're in season right now here, and available from local farmers) in butter, without browning until tender. Pour a decent glosh of water in the pan and stir as the water evaporates. Repeat until onions are brown and delicious.

This works like magic. I don't know why, but pouring water on the onions makes the sugars in them carmelize. It seems counter-intuitive that they would get all brown and sweet with the addition of cold water, but it works! They are especially good for giving depth to mild foods, useful when converting a meat recipe to a vegetable-only one, or when cooking a soup or stew without a good broth base.
I've only ever cooked these, like I cook almost everything, in a heavy cast iron skillet. I don't know if it would work as well in an aluminum pot.

Sweet Corn!

These are from a few weeks ago--we had the summer's best sweet corn! For sweet corn, there's no substitute for getting it juicy-fresh from the farmers' market. What's the phrase? You pick the corn and run--don't walk!--to the kitchen with it?
Yeah, we do love our corn. Look at the fine, thorough job he's doing on that cob. Ezra sure can clean off an ear too.
They both can't stand waiting for it to cool off after it's cooked. We've taken to dunking half an ear in cold water for a minute, as it can take a mouth-wateringly long time to cool otherwise.
When it's good, it doesn't even need butter or salt.

Local Grape Juice!

Grapes are one of the easiest fruits to pick; it goes to fast! As Samuel Thayer says, you can pick gallons in an hour without taking a step. Now, these aren't from our own yard, but they are pretty close to home.This is Gibbie and I sorting grapes. We carefully rinsed our hands regularly as we plucked the grapes from their stems.
We picked the grapes in a local alley. They grow all over around here in St. Paul, fecund and forgotten. Unlike table grapes, these grapes (small, seedy, with a rather alarming flavor and texture to the unsuspecting) aren't really for eating raw. Best for making juice (or wine, cordial, etc, for those more knowledgeable than I) and jelly.

With a full pot of grapes, I added some water and turned the heat on. When all this rain dries up, I can't wait to try juicing in the solar oven! Anyway, on our regular gas stove, I simmered the grapes till the skins burst. The juice is dark, bright purple. An important step to note, that I often try to bypass, is letting this cool off a bit before moving on!
After boiling the grapes until they release their juice, I took a big mixing bowl, set it in the sink, and lined it with a clean dish towel. Into the towel I poured the grapes. Then I bound up the corners of the towel and tied it to the dish drainer, right above my bowl. When the dripping had slowed to almost nothing, I squeezed and mashed all the extra juice I could out into my bowl.
Here we see the drained juice getting strained a bit more in my homemade jelly bag.

As suggested by my guide, Mr. Thayer the forager, I let sediments settle to the bottom before decanting my lovely grape juice into a pretty pitcher. About two quarts of grapes made well over two quarts of grape juice. I mixed it with sparkling water, though I could have diluted it even more, it was so strong. Really it was grape juice concentrate! With just-ripening apples on my brain, I'm thinking that apple juice would make a superb sweetener for our next batch!

I hope to bottle a batch in those re-sealable German beer bottles, maybe also freeze a batch as concentrate, as part of our hoard of local goodness against the winter blues.

The juice was rich and delicious. Also made tasty popsicles!

Summer Rennaisance

Hello! Sorry for the big gaps in posts lately. Summer is just, well, summer; we've been busy living it instead of documenting it. I do hope that some of these snippets will turn into more complete posts, as we have more photos, stories, recipes, and such to go with each. Let us know if you want more details! We would also love to hear about all your summer adventures!
We've been having a bit of a musical renaissance in our home. The kids have a wonderful new drum and a resurgence in interest in the piano. All the excitement has inspired the adults in the house to revisit our love for music as well.The birthday house we made for Ezra has been continuing to see lots of play. I do hope I get a chance to show pictures of the beautiful artwork Gibbie has made all over it in the last week. It's pretty great. These things stick around until they fall apart, you know. We'll be taking bets on when the birthday house bites the big one and lands in the recycling bin.
A vignette from our kitchen table. Gibbie has begun to love picking flowers. Recently he told me, "You can't like flowers. Just me. I like to pick flowers." He makes lovely bouquets of uprooted plants, flowers, and weeds, as well as being a charming helper when picking tomatoes from the garden.

If anyone else is disappointed in their garden yields, we're in the same boat. I'm just not very experienced at the whole garden thing, and keep making very basic mistakes, like not planting tomatoes in full sunshine, or not pruning. Due to recent heavy rains, the bulk of the crop is finally ripening, and all bursting their skins from the excess water. Not to worry, we're picking and using them anyway!

We are supplementing with beautiful produce from our lovely farmers' markets, and have really actually overdosed on fresh fruits and vegetables recently.
This is a little garden fantasy of mine: a willow withe house. I read somewhere that willow is really easy to propagate; you just stick cut ends in the ground. Sounds too good to be true to me, but we found a fairytale-perfect willow house at the farm where we picked our blueberries, Rush River. The willow wands compose the frame, and the lovely leaves grow in thicker every year.

In our own garden, I have moonflower growing all over a big, rainbow-shaped frame. It's finally covered in lush greens! Maybe soon spread a quilt underneath and read a pile of books in our little bower. I'm still hoping for flowers before it gets too cold! Moonflowers are big, white, beautifully fragrant, and open up at night.

Here we go round the Mullberry Bush

Picking fresh berries in the woods is a delightful way to spend a morning hour! When looking for mulberries, note that they tend to grow on not bushes, but very tall trees. (If you have a mulberry bush, or think you may, and don't eat every last berry, please invite us over, so we can come pick them for you!) We did, however, find some medium-sized mulberry trees on a steep hill, which helped us pick them. I used a long stick to pull down high branches to my low hobbit-height, and for Gibbie to reach.

The berries did "color my han," as Gibbie put it. For a day or two the evidence of our forage-ery remained.

The best part about berrying was simply being in the woods, pulling berries off a tree and slipping them in our baskets. There is something so beautiful about gathering. This abundant surplus of the tree; her gift to us. Finding our food, delicious fruits, in a place so beautiful. We also had the joy of being together, of helping one another, and of using what would otherwise fall to the ground. (for any conservationists, don't worry-- we left plenty of fruit for the forest animals, etc!)

I put plenty of red mulberries in the pie, but they're best when almost black. Their flavor is sweet and mild, not tart at all like most berries. Perfect for children. Very unripe berries are white. As they ripen, they turn creamy, pink, and red, by turns, finally darkening into a deep purple.
Mulberry leaves come in different shapes on the same tree. Some leaves are plain, like the one above, while others have one lobe, like a mitten, and some have two lobes. I'm watching sidewalks for purple stains as I try and locate unloved trees; I want more berries. We first found ripe berries on this tree almost a month ago, and this week there seemed to be many more berries left unripe than ripe, so they seem to have a long season this year.

Qualification: I mentioned Samuel Thayer's book, Forager's Harvest, a few posts ago. I am still enamored with it; he writes so well, and the information is so practical and thorough. In no way do I want to set myself out as a teacher on wild foods; I'm just sharing here my enthusiasm over our foray into the forest. The aforementioned book doesn't cover mulberries, but my tools for harvesting were inspired by him.

A few days after berrying, Gibbie randomly asked, "Who is God?" Knowing I wouldn't be able to give even the beginning of a complete answer, I started by talking to him about how God made everything. He offered, "the Sun?" Yes, we listed some more things, "...and Mulberries?" Yes! He was getting excited now, and danced around the room a bit, "and Dibbie and Mama and Evra!!"
Yes, Gibbie, I too am so glad that he made berries for us to pick, and made me and you and your brother. Such good good gifts.

You visit the earth and water it,
you load it with riches;
God's rivers brim with water
to provide their grain.

This is how you provide it;
by drenching its furrows, by levelling its ridges,
by softening it with showers, by blessing the first-fruits.
You crown the year with your bounty,
abundance flows wherever you pass;
the desert pastures overflow,
the hillsides are wrapped in joy,
the meadows are dressed in flocks,
the valleys are clothed in wheat,
what shouts of joy, what singing!
from psalm 65

Adventures in Vegetables

Cabbage and Beets: Despised vegetables, right? But Oh my Goodness, do I have a good recipe for them! I didn't even know I liked cabbage!
This comes from my friend Christy, who learned it from her mother in law, Nadine, although she makes it with romaine lettuce and tomatoes. It being still winter here, we don't have good tomatoes, so I thought to try it with more wintry veggies. Lo, it worked!
-Mash a few cloves of peeled garlic in a mortar and pestle. (If you don't have one, mash them on your chopping block with the bottom of a jar or a meat tenderizer, and run out and buy a good mortar and pestle tomorrow.)
-Sprinkle garlic with salt: in Christy's words, "more than you think" I used about 1 tsp.
-Squeeze in a puddle of lemon juice; several Tbsp.
I did this all in the mortar and pestle. The key is to make a nice mashy paste. Taste to see if the flavor balance is good
For Cabbage: chop up. Heat a few spoonfuls of butter and/or olive oil in a frying pan on Med-Low. Saute the cabbage, stirring casually until it is partially wilted-- a little crunch is nice. I used a whole cabbage, which quite filled my pan, so I stirred using a wooden spoon and a spatula to turn it without overflowing the pan. Toss with dressing just before serving. Eat hot or serve levtovers cold with rice. When I made Paul taste a forkful of the cabbage, he actually said, "what did you do to that to make it so delicious?" Imagine--delicious cabbage!
For Beets: Boil beets whole. When they are soft if you stick a big one with a fork, put the pot in the sink and rub the skins off with your hands under a slow stream of cold water. (Warning: if you have bare hands, they will turn pink!) The skins and cooking water are great for the compost pile. Then loosely chop or cube the beets and toss with dressing. Beets are so rich and sweet I don't think they need added butter or oil. Adjust flavors to taste. It also works to include the beet greens; just chop and wilt as with cabbage, tossing before serving hot or cold. Happy eating.