Maintaining My Amateur Status

Despite the post of my Mid-Winter’s Lament a few weeks back, I didn’t until just this week really understand just how much of prior years’ canning we’d been using. Sure, the jars were piling up, but since I’m not one of those canning types who catalogs and indexes my output – which is strange, considering how much of a control freak I am in nearly every other aspect of my life – I don’t have any kind of metric or tracking tool against which to check our usage. If I don’t know that I made, say, 40 quarts of applesauce last fall and I don’t know that I just opened number 39, I have no way of knowing that I’d better slow down with the counting on having more around. Clearly, I’ve got what we business-minded types call a process gap, one that is only just now making itself known.


I opened the last jar of tomatillo salsa last night and nearly forewent adorning the dinner burritos because, hey, it was the last jar and you can’t just use that on anything. The aforementioned applesauce is actually long gone and the peaches are not far behind. For plain old tomatoes, I’m down to a few pints which, given the cold winter’s impact on domestic tomato production, I am treating as part of my 401(k). Blackberries? History. Brandied apples? No more. Preserved lemons? The way of the Dodo. Spiced honey? Holiday gifting took care of that one. I still have plain cherries, raspberry jam and one jar of tomato salsa. There’s also a jar of apple butter (which I don’t even like and cannot remember what possessed me to make it), a quarter pint of pickled jalapenos and a few more half-pints of pickled mushrooms. That’s it, that’s all she wrote after years and years of canning activity.

Even if I don’t keep records of pantry inputs and outputs, it’s not hard to understand what happened. Life and stuff, that’s what happened. Leaving aside blights and weather and the price of whatnot, my rate of canning slowed as the children grew and developed lives of their own at the same time as my professional life ramped up a bit. Since I am disinclined to use my small amounts of leisure grocery shopping for basics (shopping for party food or stuff to put into jars is completely different, although I don’t do much of either for other reasons), well, here we are.

Since we have, quite literally, been dining on past years’ productivity and industriousness, if I am ever again to enjoy meal-related leisure I need to get back to work, canning-wise. True planning is difficult to do this far in advance because we never know how weather, bugs and diseases will affect crop production. It's all well and good to commit oneself to 50 pints of peach ketchup but no bets should be made until the crop is in hand, so to speak.

It wouldn't do at all to set your heart on the peaches only to find out that, this year, you're more gifted in the hot pepper area. Better instead to focus on ideas - maybe you could use more jam or sandwich enhancers or fruits suitable for side dishes. Focusing on concepts allows you to bop and weave with your canning - you'll get your jam, but maybe it'll be blackberry instead of strawberry. Pickles might end up as green cherry tomatoes rather than hamburger dills. See what I mean? Bop and weave right around whatever the garden, the weather or your mood throws at the affair. For my part, I'm focusing on finished items rather than ingredients - salsas over plain tomatoes, brandied fruits over plain berries, for example, things I can use more or less as-is without further massaging after the jar is open.

We'll see. It's clear that I need to do something in the way of planning and this is pretty much as far as I'm willing to go. I don't know what I'll put on the pantry shelves this year, but I do know it'll be something great.

I'm sitting here on our very uncomfortable futon, shivering, with a cup of tangerine-mint tea by my side hoping against hope that I'm not coming down with round 2 of the noro virus that's sweeping through town. The cats are asleep on my feet so at least part of me is toasty. I simply cannot be sick - I've got Sunday school tomorrow (note to self: find bag of feathers for discussion of the Holy Spirit) and all the get-ready-for-the-week stuff that goes on Sunday afternoons. Besides, if I'm going to be sick I insist it be on a work day.

It's precisely these kinds of days - cool gray and feeling unwell - that turn my mind to garden plans. Anyone whose ever bought so much as a ball of twine from a garden supply firm finds themselves buried in catalogs this time of year and I am no exception. Inevitably, I fill out order forms with all kinds of exotic flora - achilliea!, Liatris spicata - and just as inevitably end up doing the same old thing. I have neither the time nor the inclination to coddle a lot of decorative gardens, however much they're appreciated, so the usual purchases of bulkpack impatiens, petunias and alyssum usually suffice while any growing from seed happens in the vegetable patch (beans, zucchini, radishes and so on - all reliable workhorses).

This year I'd like to try something new, something not enabled by the mere completely filled-out order form, something that requires more heart and less cash. But what? I'm tempted in a thousand directions by three books intended to introduce children to the joys of gardening. Turns out they're just as handy for stuck-in-a-rut adults.

Roots, Shoots, Buckets and Boots by Sharon Lovejoy includes some very clever ideas for gardening with children, emphasizing plants that grow quickly and produce some "consumable" result - bathing with an herbal blend, making musical instruments from gourds, and so on. I've made bean pole tee pees before but her sunflower house variation is so sweet and so much of the kind of summer magic I'd like my kids to remember that I literally started hopping up and down in my seat, eager to begin sketching out just how to do it. Lovejoy's directions for growing potatoes in galvanized buckets is nothing short of miraculous - I've read how easy it is to grow potatoes but every direction I've ever ready left me scratching my head, wondering what "magic happens here" was left out. Lovejoy is clear and concise and perfectly understandable.

The Children's Kitchen Garden by Georgeann and Ethel Brennan is a more traditional garden book, less moonbeams-and-magic than Roots. It's charm to me is that it describes an actual garden, grown by actual children - no theory, in other words. The bulk of the text discusses the requirements of a host of vegetables and herbs and the included recipes could be well understood by children older than, say, six or seven (with grown-up help).

The Enchanted Gardening Book by Alice Herck rounds out my current garden inspirations. The projects are more basic than those in Roots and it includes much less practical information than Kitchen Garden - it's magic is that it seems to call to an older time, when people did such things as make rose petal beads, when they memorized poems at the behest of the governess, and give tea parties using real china for dolls and teddy bears. I'd love to know more about the author and her motivation for producing this lovely, nostalgic book but neither Google nor authorsearch turn up anything.

With these three books by my chairside I am motivated to do things differently at last. I don't need more seeds, I realize. I've already got bean seeds for tee pees and sunflower seeds for a house (with pumpkin - I have those seeds, too - furniture). I've already got seeds for 4 O'clocks and snow peas and Easter Egg radishes and patty pan squash - not to mention everything I need to make sure that the cherry tomatoes grow within reach of snacking kids' hands or that there are ample paths between rows of strawberries. All I needed was to see what I already have in a new light, the garden equivalent of those people who will come rearrange your furniture, showing you the new decorating options you were too hidebound to see (or, my favorite, those fashion experts who come to your house to show you new ways to wear your own clothes).

Like with so many things in life, what I needed was exactly the same as what I already have. Funny how that works out.

"Uh, Hon," began Brainiac as I peeled veggies for last night's dinner, "There will be a frost tonight. Would you like me to pick the remaining peppers? T'would be a shame to lose them."

I mumbled a distracted sure and expressed my belief that I didn't really think that there were all that many peppers left in the garden, that certainly somewhere in the haze of applesauce and pumpkins and whatever else it is that I've been doing I managed to get them all. Whatever, I thought as I poured milk over a casserole of flour and sliced potatoes, if there's a few more we can dry them for pepper flakes for pizzas and pastas. Or maybe I can cover them in chocolate like I saw in that commercial for...what is that commercial for, anyway? No matter. Peppers, fine, whatever.

I was wrong.


This is what Brainiac brought into me. I guess you could say that that it was a pretty good year for just about every kind of pepper that we ever thought of growing. Can we agree to describe this as an embarrassment of peppers? We will dry some, I think - a few the old-fashioned way of stringing them through their stems and hanging in a window and more in the dehydrator OUTSIDE in the mudroom (you know that oft-repeated warning about not wiping one's eyes or lips or nose just after handling hot peppers? Well, drying something in a machine means quickly removing the water and transferring that moisture into the air. YOU DO NOT WANT SPICY WATER RELEASED INTO YOUR HOUSEHOLD AIR for breathing and walking around in. Seriously. Ouch.)

I may also make a bit of hot pepper jam. As a rule, I don't care for spicy-sweet combinations but pepper jam has a nostalgic hook for me in that my paternal grandmother used to make a batch here and there and always remembered to send a jar "back east" in her Christmas box. With a bit of cream cheese on a cracker and a sprig of cilantro, pepper jam makes a nice canape and can serve as a bit of a pick-me-up for an otherwise plain grilled steak. Although it's not something I'd want in the same quantities as, say, strawberry jam, a couple of jars would be nice to keep around. Especially since, clearly, I've got the peppers to spare.

The advent of fall weather found me matching capless acorns with acornless caps and hot gluing the pairs together. What nature won't provide, I am happy to create in a way that seems to me to be closely related to what my decision sciences professor explained as the brute force method.

These are meant, along with the intended purchase of a couple dozen Jack B Little pumpkins, will comprise some sort of activity for the scout meeting we're hosting next week. It'll be too dark for a nature walk so I had the idea to bring a bit of nature inside and let the boys create little autumn dioramas. Really, what could be more natural than hot-glued acorns? With the nuts and pumpkins and perhaps some leaves, grasses and seed pods from elsewhere around the yard I think we'll be in good shape for a perfectly respectable scout activity.

The entire family spent a good amount of time cleaning out the garden today, too. The kids were delighted to pick the remaining green cherry tomatoes and dried bean pods and take down the bamboo poles while their father mulched the plants with the mower and I did my best impression of a porcupine after falling butt-first into a totally new (to me) kind of burr-plant thing. Fun for all.

The bean pods held more than enough seed for next year (to the Girl's amusement, "Mommy! It's food in here!") and there are enough green tomatoes (cherry and otherwise) that I am looking about for canning recipes to use them and which don't involve anything that could conceivably be though of as sweet-n-sour. Maybe a nice mincemeat? Not a clue what I'd do with it after making it, but it sure does sound intriguing, eh

A few quickies:

- Today is the first day of first grade. Despite the familial roundabout over homeschooling, the Boy reported for duty this morning at our neighborhood elementary. He asked to attend, a fact that weighed heavily against our inclination to pull him out. Actually, what he asked for was to 1) go to school and 2) still have "family school". We figure we can learn something from his view of these options as being not of the zero-sum nature that most grown-ups would assign. He would miss his buddies, we know, and that he had such a cheerful aspect in looking forward to the start of the school year must surely count for something. As I pointed out to a friend recently, the television show Family Ties had years of good ratings based on nothing other than the notion that sometimes kids will desire to create almost exactly the same kind of life that their parents would have rather not had. Go figure.

- You know I had fun packing his lunch, right? I am addicted to Cooking Cute and the thousands of Bento pics available from Flickr and have happily shared my addiction with both kids. Hello Kitty silicon cups? Yes! Lightning McQueen fruit picks? Of course! It's not consumerism, it's Bento! This morning I placed a BBQ pork sandwich, apple slices (some cut thin and then made into rocket ship shapes with a cookie cutter), a diamond-shaped Rice Krispie treat (a fun, sticky project with kids) and locomotive-topped skewers of alternatiing black and green olives into his little lunch carrier. Bliss. Lunch packing may just be the salve that gets me through my kids' schooling.

- The apple was from one of our backyard trees. Brainiac is consumed with apple picking lately and seems to have rather high expectations with regards to my ability to deal with them all. He has constructed an apple picker out of an empty coffee tin and some extenda-pole thing that is able to reach all but the very highest samples. Luckily, the kids don't hold their unsprayed and not-ready-for-Superfresh looks against them and eat them by the dozen.
- I am sick of tomatoes. You will remind me of this, won't you, when come February I yearn in poetic terms for last month's bacon and tomato sandwiches? I still have about 20 pounds to deal with and I am fighting my preference to fling them into the compost and turn my back on the whole affair. But, no, I am a responsible sort and will manage another dozen pints or so. I swear, I am NOT picking anymore other than the cherry varieties that I've been drying. Oh, but I might pick some of the remaining unripened for fried green tomatoes (use bacon grease for the frying and salsa for topping). That I could cope with.

- The geese have been flying the last few days and there's a distinct chill in the morning air. Since I am not among summer's biggest fans these are cheering developments. September is pleasant and happy month, being as it is the time when both my wedding anniversary and the birthday of my oldest fall, but its real purpose is to serve as the gateway to October.

Zucchini time, it appears, is upon us. In the course of a little over 48 hours last week I was gifted with five quite large specimens. I added these to the two that I had already purchased from the farm market and wondered how and why it is that nature finds the states of either/or to be so amusing. My own plants have only the tiniest little fruits - having lost the first blooms to an unknown nibbler - so it's with only the smallest amount of sighing that I approached my gifts this weekend. Luckily, we don't find anything particularly off-putting about a large zucchini and find them just as delicious as their smaller siblings.

The first thing I do when faced with a zucchini (or yellow squash) glut is grate and freeze a number of them. They'll add fiber and color to winter muffins (or pancakes or quick breads), and the abundant juice they give off after thawing can be combined with whatever liquids called for in a recipe - not an unhandy thing.

For day to day enjoyment, I stick to the usual suspects - raw spears dipped in peanut butter, stir fries and sautés in combination with whatever else is available, coins coated in cornmeal and fried, battered oven "fries" and fritters. It's not a huge repertoire as these things go, but it works and by the time we can't face any of them again the zucchinis are gone and we're on to getting sick of something else.

The last of the list, fritters, are particularly nice. They're quick to make and can take on whatever condiments you have around - I like a nice homemade mayo or salsa, but regular old ketchup is perfectly fine.

The recipe is sort of along the lines of "mix all this stuff together and then cook it" - but in a good way - and so is easy and quick if you get everything ready before you start to actually cook. Get yourself a pound or so of zucchini and grate it (on a box grater or with a food processor) and mix in a teaspoon of both salt and pepper, a chopped garlic clove, and maybe a few tablespoons of something herby - parsley is nice, and so is fresh thyme or maybe bit of rosemary (but not a lot, perhaps mixed with something else?). Mix it all together and add in two eggs, lightly beaten, and 1/3 to 1/2 a cup of all-purpose flour. Be sure to mix the flour in very well, and smoosh up any lumps. Heat two tablespoons of olive oil in a large frying pan over medium-high heat. When the oil is hot enough to sizzle the zucchini mixture, drop 2 tablespoons of it into the pan, leaving an inch or so in between fritters. Cook 2 to 4 minutes on each side (until golden), turning carefully. When completely done, remove to a warm plate. You may need to add more oil to the pan in small amounts as you work through the remaining mixture.

I stayed at home on Friday to give the kids and myself a nice long weekend in which to finish some long-standing projects. Normally, this kind of planning doesn't really pan out for us because we get distracted by the sudden desire to spend two hours running around a playground or there comes an overwhelming need to lie around looking at clouds or we fail to ignore the siren call of Zingo and before you know it - poof! - an entire weekend has come and gone.

This time we managed not only to read about three dozen books (must look into getting a bigger library bag) and watch the latest Bearnstein Bears delivery from Netflix, but we also completed one toile dress, one apron (a gift for my sis-in-law - don't tell!) and two enormous reading pillows (stuffing fluff into pillows is a very fun activity to undertake with little ones, even if the process requires infinitely more time and patience than might otherwise be required), planted four rooted tomato suckers, enjoyed the first of what we hope will be a bumper crop of Sungolds, tried a new restaurant that's been on our list for a while, set out some Japanese beetle traps (which filled almost instantaneously), replaced a couple ball joints on one of the cars (more of a Brainiac operation, with extra emphasis on the aforementioned "infinitely more time and patience", not to mention a fair amount of muscle cream on the resulting sore shoulders), caught up on laundry (the kids love to "fold" and I am happy to let them experiment with the process under the "whistle while you work" clause in the parenting manual and because having them master the "GAP fold" is something in which I have no intention of investing time or energy so I suck it up and live with whatever they manage) and just generally had a great time.

The only thing I ignored was weeding. I am in full-on weeding rebellion, something I know that I will regret and for which I have no excuse other than I Don't Feel Like It. I meant to put down more newspaper last night but totally forgot, becoming engrossed instead in a biography of Sister Parish, someone who - I am quite sure - probably never thought so much about weeds. But it was nice to check out for a while, snuggle in with a Brainiac-poured (and hence quite strong) cocktail and enjoy the satisfaction of jobs well-done. This week will bring more canning (various kinds of pickles and possibly the long hoped-for blueberry pie filling), more laundry (with homemade laundry soap? more on this in another post), and, yes, the weeding. But I suppose even the weeding brings satisfactions of its own, if looked at in the right way.

I read somewhere recently an old farmer's advice to plant triple of whatever it is one wants to produce and thinks one ought to plant: one third for the weather, one third for the critters and one third for the grower. This seems like sound advice to me, although I only followed it with tomatoes and bush beans this year. Oh, and the hot peppers. Hm, and basil. I actually planted less squash (three zucchinis only) and I'm having a bit of an anxiety attack about it, despite knowing that I've never had a squash shortage in any year I'd planted at least one.

There remains a bit of planting to do. I want to get another eight or ten bean seeds in the ground, and perhaps a couple butternut squash (I've never grown them, but I'd like to experiment with storage veggies this year). The Boy Wonder would like to try carrots, which I've never done, and although I fear it's a bit late I'm willing to give it a shot. Once that's done, we're solidly into "we'll see" territory, with watching and waiting as the primary activities.

In the meantime, I've been doing a bit of canning (tomatilla salsa, mango jam and pickled okra) and experimenting with the dehydrator that a pal gave me after she unearthed it in her basement and had no recollection of how it got there. I dried the last of our apples (until this fall) - they were getting a bit soft - with great success and have also made some cherry "raisins", taking advantage of the season. I can't say as I'll ever be a jerky and fruit leather kind of girl (as we eat neither of those foods in the first place) but being able to dry our excess of what we *do* eat has been nice.

And so there we are, in this neither here-nor-there time food-wise. I'd like to make up a batch of marinated mushrooms and perhaps even a bit of strawberry jam if I can get enough berries next week at the market. Oh, and chocolate sauce. It's definitely a good time for chocolate sauce so it will be matured and ready for gift-giving come the winter holidays. (Yes, it's true, I'm one of those people who thinks about Christmas in June. But I also think about my garden in January, so this doesn't strike me as inconsistent with my general behavior.)

It appears that someone at my local library has recently developed an interest in food issues outside of how to cook dinners in thirty minutes or less or creating a gour-may meal with a carefully chosen selection of boxes and cans. I know this because the complete works of Morgan Spurlock have materialized on the New Arrivals shelf, alongside any number of items by Michael Pollan and something called The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved, which I could not put on my wait list fast enough (alongside another new offering, Food Not Lawns). Somebody at the acquisitions desk, it seems to me, is trying to make a point.

In addition to essay and theory a number of cookery books have also appeared, books which focus on what I think of as real cooking of the kind that my great-grandmother might have done. Among these are a number of canning books and I was thrilled, before my overdue fines became too high for me to do so, to check them all out at a go.

As it turns out only one of them really interested me, Frances Bissel's Preserving Nature's Bounty. And even it I was prepared to dislike upon reading the author's declaration that the book was about "[using] what friends might bring you from their country home." (Note to self: acquire better class of friends, see also: country homes.) In the end I came to appreciate the books despite the annoying introductory material because the recipes are unique and straightforward and sound really delicious. The organization is good, too, with recipes pertaining to a given food item gathered together - the mango section, for example, has mango ketchup (!), mango lime jam (!!) and mango salsa all together instead of all the jams in one place, all the salsas in another and all the ketchups off by themselves somewhere. I love this because if one finds a great buy on mangoes it will be easy to find things to do with mangoes without having to page through the entire book looking for mango recipes to compare. Genius.

When not reading canning or food theory books, I've been gardening with the kids. Spring gardening in particular is great with children because so much of what I can plant right now in my zone comes up really fast. We planted radishes, lettuce, beets, and spinach and will do more of each of these in a week or ten days or do. The rest of my garden plans are complete - tomatoes, squash, green beans, scarlet runners, peppers, strawberries, some new blueberries - and are nothing glamorous, but still enormously satisfying.

Today Entropy Girl and I put a few more plants into the garden, another example of hope springing eternal. We haven't had rain in forever and I fear for my ability to keep things watered. Anyway, because hope really, really springs eternal we went out today and bought a few more starts to tuck in and around here and there. I think I've covered most of the local garden centers and a few of the big box places on my way to getting cool stuff I can now say that I am, more or less, satisfied. True, I never did get any okra or tomatillos, and I'm still very interested in trying to grow ground cherries, but for now I am at as much gardening peace as it's probably possible to be.

In addition to the radishes and lettuce planted a few weeks ago (and coming up nicely, I might add), we now have: 3 yellow squash, two zucchini, one eggplant, three purple cabbage, three watermelon, three cuke, one canteloup, three pumpkin, six green bean, six basil, two dill, two cilantro, one rosemary, one thyme and one sweet woodruff. Oh, and about 18 tomatoes of varying kinds and three hot peppers and three sweet peppers. With some luck and attention, at least some of this will result in actual food.

I'm still working on the front patio and the slope of yard that leads down to the house. The front of the house is almost entirely shaded all day long (which makes me very cold now, but which I'm sure I'll come to appreciate in mid-Summer) so I've got a lot of pots of things that can stand the limited sun. It looks as if previous residents have put some hydrangeas and peonies at rather random locations. The hydrangeas I'm not so worried about but the peonies in the shade, while leafing, don't have the large buds that their sunnier siblings have produced. Ah, well. Not much can be done until the fall, I guess. I like the idea of putting a row of peonies along the driveway and if I can divide and transplant the underperformers already on-site that would be grand.

As for the hydrangeas, propogation time is coming (generally in June) and they're so easy to root that it would a shame not to make myself a whole mess of babies. Oh, and I also need to trim around the roots of a bunch of rose bushes out by the barn wall. Farmer Newell (the man who leases the production fields here and who keeps the cows) told me that the roses have been here "forever" but that they took a beating from the last service to maintain the grounds. Well, not on my watch. I told him that I'd trim around them and give them a nice mulch, basically to clean them up and give them a perimeter of protection. I don't see any buds yet, and if they're that distressed I guess I might not. Hopefully a little TLC will carry them through to a bloom next year. What was that about hope springing eternal?

Do something for me, will you? Sometime this summer I will mention - I am sure of it - that I am planning to go buy some canning jars. When I do, yell at me. Forcibly restrain me if necessary. I do not, by any rational definition of the word "need", need canning jars. Lids, perhaps. Jars, no.

I just opened what I'm pretty sure is the third very large moving box filled with nothing but jars. These are in addition to the five or six never-opened boxes piled in the kitchen corner. Where could these have been hiding in the Charlottesville basement? I swear I had no idea that I owned so many. The pressure is on, certainly, to use them wisely and make their ownership worthwhile.

To that end, I contacted the manager of the community garden and asked if would be possible to lease the last remaining 19X20 plot, providing it was still available. No one had come forward with an interest so I now have two plots. This second one I will likely plant up with primarily tomatoes, peppers and herbs. So this may be the first year ever when it will be possible to preserve a year's tomato supply. Plus, the first plot I can now give over to some squashes, which will likely keep on the enclosed back porch quite nicely through the fall.

To add to my food-related joy, I have recently discovered what I am hoping are blueberry and blackberry brambles in the backyard. I've not much experience with small fruits so identification is underway, but if I'm right and we can keep at least some of the harvest from the birds it will be a beautiful thing. I don't need any jam, since I have plenty from last year, but a little syrup and some nectar wouldn't be a terrible thing to have on hand. And I've never dried fruits, although a little experiment might be fun.

So. Onward. Little lettuces are sprouting up, as are radishes. No germination yet on chard, zucchini or green beans. I planted back-ups of the last two but no sign of even them. I don't want to resort to starts, but I suppose I can't rule it out at this point. Why can't I grow stuff from seed? So enormously frustrating...

I was cranky today and invested a lot of time is just being so, time which took me away from other pressing concerns like making cookies for my cousins graduation party, sewing the dress and top for Entropy Girl (both of which have been cut for weeks), changing sheets, conducting research on Optical Character Recognition for a client, and eating anything other than tortilla chips and salsa. Perhaps industriousness will be bestowed upon me tomorrow.

Tonight's weather forecast carries a frost warning for tomorrow morning. Lovely. So the (few unplanted) petunias will need to come in tonight - because they'll be needed to replace the ones I've already planted!, along with the tomatoes, peppers and herbs that the Boy Wonder and I (perhaps over-) enthusiastically purchased on Monday. All week I've been bemoaning the lack of time that prevented us from getting them in the ground but now, of course, our busyness is like a gift designed to keep us from wasting a not-insignificant sum in veggie starts. But then there are the seeds. The Boy wanted desparately to plant some melons and pumpkins and so we did, and now may end up having to reseed them. Of course, if it comes to that I'll probably reseed with out telling him. I'd hate to have him discover at such a tender age the frustration that gardening can bring no matter how much you love it.

The open house went well. We enjoyed meeting some new people and have time to visit with those neighbors we had already met and the kids behaved beautifully - so an all around successful afternoon by my count, despite the gloomy weather. I ended up making one extra dessert from a recipe given to me by my sister in law just the night before. I don't know where she found it, but it bears sharing here because it's not often that one encounters a cookie so easy to make and which offers such great results with so little effort. I don't know if there's an official name for these, so I'll just call them...

Nutella Crisps - Place about a teaspoon of Nutella in the center of a dumpling wrapper. Fold the wrapper corner-to-corner, forming a triangle and encasing the Nutella. Seal with water or beaten egg. When you've made as many of these as you want, heat about half an inch of veggie oil to the point when a small piece of wrapper sizzles right away when put in the pan. Then begin frying the triangles a few at a time, taking care to avoid crowding and turning each after 20-30 seconds so that each side becomes golden. When done, remove each crisp to a towel-covered plate to drain. When cooled completely, remove to another plate and cover. The crisps may be made a day ahead and reheated in a 250 degree oven. To serve, pile on a pretty plate and sift powdered sugar over all.

Yet another squash-and-tomato dish.

Yes, it's that time of year, when you neighbors won't answer the door for fear of having a wiffle-ball-bat-sized zucchini thrust into their arms, when the receptionist at your local chiropractor's office says thanks, but no thanks to the lunch sack of tomatoes you thoughtfully brought to your appointment (most assuredly not to influence the favorable timing for future visits) pointing to the three already taking up valuable desk space, when even your resident rodent and deer pests tire of the offerings and repair back to the forest to browse on wild berries and seeds.

If you are, as I am, experiencing diminishing results in your efforts to share your garden surplus now is the time to reach for your great-grandma's recipe box. Because it has been only fairly recently that it's been possible to eat produce out of season, older cookbooks and recipe collections are a treasure trove of use-it-or-lose-it ideas for whatever vegetable or vegetables is most vexing at any given moment.

I remember my paternal grandmother making a dish similar to the one above. I couldn't have been more than 8 or 9 when my family visited her at her home south of San Francisco and I learned what tomato surplus really means. She and her husband planted probably a hundred or more tomatoes of varying kinds on their farmette (along with all kinds of nut trees, fruits, berries and more - a great place to visit as a kid, and all the better with a grandmother who loved to cook and preserve) and every night we ate some variation of this, a kind of tian.

The basic procedure is simple and one I've remembered for these decades after my grandmother's initial lesson, and even better it can be utilized with virtually any vegetable. For the dish pictured above, I sliced up two largish yellow squashes and a number of roma tomatoes and layered them in the gratin dish along with maybe a quarter cup of fairly finely diced red onion and a couple cloves of diced garlic. Next, I poured a bit of chicken broth over and topped with about half a cup bread crumbs (I'm one of those cheapies who make my own with the stale remains of my bread, biscuits and pizza doughs) seasoned with a good amount of black pepper, some salt and basil and a few tablespoons of grated parmesan cheese.

Baked in a goodly hot oven (maybe 375 or even 400) until the veggies are soft and the topping well-browned, this is a delicious addition to any summer meal or even a meal in itself with a salad and a glass of decent white wine.

We've had tian in one form or another several times a week all month. If you've got eggplant, potatoes, squash, onions, herbs, tomatoes or, you know, whatever, you can do what you like and it will still be delicious.

In other news, we've fired the realtor and the new prospect for representation is here so I've got to run. A friend once told me that selling a house is the most painful thing you can ever do yourself willingly and for which there is no "it was all worth it" ending. At first I thought she was being a bit dramatic, but lately I'm definitely inclined to believe her.

The first tomato salad.


But not the last! The yellow pears are coming in fast and furious now so every night sees us with some kind of salad on the table. This one had a bit of plum tomato, mozzarella and green bell pepper dressed in black pepper, salt, olive oil, red wine vinegar and basil. Last night's had no pepper, but more red tomato and an addition of very finely diced red onion. What tonight's will bring remains to be seen. Brainiac thinks I ought to save some for pickling. Perhaps.

I don't think I'm ready for canning the tomatoes just yet. I like to save that until I simply cannot fathom eating another fresh off the vine, which probably won't happen for another two weeks or so. Then I will start to can as a defense mechanism.

In the meantime I've got a loaf of white bread in the oven. I'm so not a good bread baker, but I gladly suffer through for a tomato, mayo and basil sandwich. One a year is usually enough. And then there are tians, fresh tomato pastas, tomato pies (there's a great sounding tomato pie in one of Laurie Colwin's books that I've meant to make for years), tomatoes just eated with a sprinkling of salt, fresh salsas and so much more.

In addition to tomatoes I seek out other signs of long, hot summers.



I'm kind of suprised this and its twin bloomed. We bought them at the very tail end of last summer from a local nursery's scratch-n-dent shelf. They looked wretched all winter and through the spring but I think the payoff is worth a bit of unsightly foliage.