What's for Dinner in the Vegetable Garden? Everything!

In the vegetable garden, the first two rows of beans are sighing their last. The second two rows are just kicking in. Oh huzzah! My goal was to have beans all summer long. That's my goal every summer, but it's always too dry to pull it off. Not this year! I'm so excited to pick them tonight. Nothing like a tender snap bean from the garden, steamed, with butter and salt. I'm drooling as I write. 

I plant a mix of Royal Burgundy, Brittle Wax and Blue Lake so it makes a beautiful sight in the garden trug. I got so carried away I soaked and planted two more rows on August 1. Maybe we'll have an extended warm fall like last year, when I was photographing morning glories in November. I can dream. And what's the worst that can happen? They freeze before they bear. I can take a risk like that, give 100 dry beans to the cause of having fresh snap beans to eat in October. 

I learned a valuable lesson last year when I planted four rows of beans at once. Picking became a chore, and we barely were able to eat them all before they got so big they had to be stewed with bacon. And then when they were all done I missed them, but I didn't miss picking them! Good problem to have, but I'm much happier with two rows of about 70 plants total, followed about three weeks later by another two rows coming in. I'm not a canner any more. I believe in gorging when they're in, and giving away what you can't eat yourself. So far, we're keeping up!

Just behind the beans...

I planted too many Sungold tomatoes and not enough slicers this year. I was all fired up about Kumatos, a tasty little brown tomato, so I saved some seed from some I bought in the grocery store. They're a disappointment, splitting with all the rain and not getting much bigger than a squash ball. The Sungolds aren't all that happy with the cool rainy year, but they're putting out gobs of little sugar bombs. Can't complain! Stewed, fresh, in stir-fries, quiches, soups, I love 'em beyond saying. 

That was my big smile. This is my thoughtful, author jacket look. Where is my meershaum pipe?

I broke down and bought a bunch of glads this spring after losing mine to disease and I don't know what all. They've been such a joy! I can't wait to see how big the bulbs grew when I dig them this fall. Some people don't like digging bulbs. I love it. It's like finding buried treasure. And it kind of beats winter back to pull these freely multiplying jewels out of the soil in November and dream about next June, wondering what colors you'll get. "Blue Moon" mix has been spectacular. 

I'm done hearing about how much people hate glads because they remind them of funerals. Bla bla bla. Tell me something new, something I haven't heard a hundred times.  I'll admit this is a hot button for me because I had a landlady once who scoffed at my taste in flowers and told me why she hated glads oh, about twenty times. As I listened silently to her monologue, I resolved to plant two more rows of them the next spring. 

 Remember, they're called glads!

I've never had a violet like this one. 

Still hatin' on 'em?

And the fresh lavender (Paradise Purple, as garden writer Thalassa Cruso called it, because she contended that all the plants in Paradise started out this color) is such a great compliment to the lime-green bean leaves. Growing glads amongst the vegetables is one of my favorite things to do. They take so little room and they make going out to pick such a pleasure.

Mm, mm. Good.  Happy. Anything but funereal. Besides, they're from South Africa, like about 75% of all the coolest plants on the planet.

Love this sunflower covering her face. 

This same blossom is now hanging down like a showerhead, heavy with seed, and the goldfinches and cardinals have started in on it. 

I haven't grown ornamental sunflowers for years. Oh what fun they are!! Here's Velvet Queen.

Now that's a plant that takes as much room as you'll give it, so I'm glad I planted only a few. The rabbits got all the ones I tried to plant in the heirloom garden where I could see them from the studio. The only ones that survived are inside the 9' tall Jurassic Garden enclosure. 

This is Lemon Queen. Well named! Sunflowers take a lot of room, but they make me and the cardinals, house finches and goldfinches so happy. 

Make a Summer Quiche

Certain foods go with certain seasons, and when the late-summer garden is bursting with cherry tomatoes and sweet peppers, it's time to make a summer quiche.

I like making quiche because it's never the same dish twice. And I love cooking with produce I've grown meself. 

Things I don't grow meself: Pie crusts. I use Pillsbury's rolled up ones, even though I swear they shrink them every time I buy them. Barely enough dough these days to pinch a tiny frill on the edge. Pfft!  Think we wouldn't notice, Doughboy? 

Put a fresh crust in your favorite pie pan, then get to sauteeing! 

Those little sweet snack peppers that come in a zip-top bag at the grocery store are true to seed. I figured that out about four years ago when I took a leap of faith and planted some seeds from the grocery-store ones, and got darling little sweet snack peppers in my own garden. Pick or get a bunch of those and chop 'em up. Add some minced poblanos (green) for heat and color. Sautee up with chopped onions in a blob of butter until they're tender, and the onions are clear.  Set aside.

Toss some chopped Sungold cherry tomatoes in the pan. Cooking with Sungolds is wonderful. They're like little flavor bombs, bringing intense, rich, sunny tomato flavor to anything you make, be it quiche or stir-fry, scrambled eggs or soup. I miss them so when frost comes!

In tonight's quiche, I added tomatillos. One brave tomatillo volunteered this year, right where last year's plants had been. Despite the severe drought, that one plant has made dozens of fruit, small but tangy, which are begging to be used wherever cherry tomatoes are used.

The fabulous tomatillo/Sungold slurry:

With onions and peppers...

Moosh 'em down with a potato masher and you have a flavor-packed base and binder for your quiche. These somewhat unexpected ingredients are what make this a Summer Quiche.  Put that slurry in your unbaked pie crust.

Add generous handfuls of whatever cheese you have on hand. Sharp cheddar, mild cheddar, Monterey Jack, Asiago, even a smattering of feta! All cheese is nom. Mixtures are nom nom.

If you wish, toss in some fresh spinach. It'll cook down in no time. And then you can call it Quiche Florentine, which sounds so nice.

Over it all, pour a mixture of 2 cups whole milk (a bit of half and half won't hurt, either) and 3 eggs, beaten well together.

Salt lightly, and season with fresh herbs from the garden. I like to use rosemary, sage and thyme. Grind a little fresh nutmeg into the liquid pie and slip it into a preheated 400 degree oven. After 10 minutes, cut the heat to 325 and bake until golden brown on top (about 50 min. total).  You're supposed to serve quiche lukewarm. It slices better then. We usually can't wait.

Touch the top lightly, make sure it doesn't jiggle too much. It'll set up more when it's cooler. 

Yep, the clock says 10:22 pm, but I wanted to make a quiche for the morning, to say goodbye to my dear friend Mario Cordoba, who has been visiting from Costa Rica. It's been a joy to have him here taking in all my favorite places, getting to know my little family. If food be love, and I think it is, he's been well-loved.

How lucky can you get, to be able to show your friend your favorite places, to see them through his wondering eyes?

 Ahh, I miss him already. But I'll see him in February, when we take another lucky band of 12 sojourners on a natural history romp through Costa Rica.  That ought to take the bite out of winter.

**Alert readers will notice that there are a bunch of different ingredients going down here, and no spinach in the final quiche. These photos are from several different Summer Quiches. Really, this post is just meant to encourage home cooks to branch out and throw a bunch of different stuff in your quiches, to see what happens. Cherry tomatoes and tomatillos are the only real twist here. Quiches can be anything you want them to be. I've had a Village Bakery quiche stuffed with carrots and beets and it was delicious! So toss the recipe out and have fun!

Spring, and Things Coming Ripe

It's taken awhile to get around to lushness, but spring is finally here. It's about a week late. Maybe more. The trees are still all but leafless in the cooler hollows, but they're catching up fast. Everything's busting out. 

The greenhouse was still crammed with plants as of the morning of May 6. Tomatoes and peppers and hibiscus deeply resent nights in the lower 40's. 

They are waist high. And not only that, but...

the Sungolds have RIPE TOMATOES ON THEM!!!! SQUEEEEE!!! MAY TOMATOES TOMATOES IN MAY. Repeat until it sinks in. Well, why not? The plants are 3 1/2 months old! To them, May is August!

 I grew them. In my greenhouse. And soon they will go out into the garden. And we will eat TOMATOES IN MAY from our own garden. Yes I am SHOUTING.

(I'm reading this over, having written it the day before digging something like 60 holes and planted all those plants,  and I can tell you I'm not shouting now. I'm happy just to be breathing.)

However. If I had it to do over I would NOT plant tomatoes in mid-January. Because I have repotted them not once. Not twice. Three times. All 50 of them, peppers too. I don't have any more pots to bump them up into. I got so desperate for soil that I recycled a bunch of potting soil from last year's planters. I added some Osmocote. The plants didn't miss a beat. Learned something, I did. Learned a lot. You don't have to go out and buy fresh bales of Pro-Mix for repotting. You just recycle the soil and add a little Osmocote. That's what you do.

I also learned that there is a limit to how long you can soak peas before you have to plant them. You have to get them in the ground before the root starts growing, or they rot. They rot fast, and spectacularly. And then you have to soak a whole batch more. So don't think you can soak them for a week or something because it's still too cold and dry to plant them. Get them in the ground. Peas don't mind cold. They do mind being warm and wet...

And if you get them in the ground right before a few days of soaking rain, in the dark of the moon, you come home from working your butt off at a festival to find THIS. THIS!!! EVERY PEA COMING UP!!! promising Peas for Everyone come June!!

EVERY SINGLE ONE!! UP UP UP

and if that is not a sight for sore eyes nothing is. Man. I was energetic when I wrote this. 

Speaking of which, my Christmas cactus (now a spring cactus) just keeps dazzling me. It's like a living prom dress.

From kind of scoffing at Zygocactus, I am now their biggest fan, and I'm rooting pieces like crazy. What a spectacular plant! and all from a tiny grocery store impulse buy. I'm in love. I get it. Sorry it took me so long. Maybe it had to be an electric pink one to flip my switch. Still not mad about the wimpy red ones. This color does it for me. Shocking pink. I'd never wear it, but I like a flower that color.

All right. I think that's probably enough fabulousness for one post. I don't want to overload you. I have a gazillion more Costa Rica posts squawking from the cobwebby recesses of my brain, but spring just barged in the door with both elbows out and demanded her due.

New Things in the Garden

So we've established that I like summer and autumn. Not so wild about the time of dying back, everything croaking. So I'm going to talk about what I like.

What I like is poblanos on the plant. Not storebought. I bought a single poblano plant, potted, for $6.95 this spring, just on a lark, and I bet I've gotten $60 worth of those exquisite big peppers off it this season. The plant is waist-high and about 5' across now. What a deal! Oh, how I hate to see it die. But I've saved its seeds...for it is a champion among pepper plants. The peppers are fairly hot when eaten raw, but they mellow out nicely when cooked, and add a distinct flavor and bite to everything. And I put them in almost everything. Sometimes I put too many of them in. Then everyone turns up their nose. I gamely eat it all.

Overkill, Poblano style. Each one the size of your hand!

There's a fine harvest of sweet snack peppers and fat firm tomatillos this year, too. YUM. From utter ignorance, I am now the world's biggest tomatillo fan. Who knew? 

Like little citrusy green tomatoes in paper husks. So tasty. They cook so well, and add special flavor to everything.

Only two of my six plants made it. Will definitely grow more next year. I throw them in all my soups, chilis, quiches, vegetable medleys, stir fries and lately on homemade pizza and sliced thin over salad. Tangily, citrusly delicious! Tomatillos are in the nightshade family, like tomatoes and eggplant. They're somewhere in between the two--pulpy, a little crispy, with a fresh tangy green tomato taste that adds so much, especially when cooked. Out of this world when sliced thin and put on homemade pizza like green pepperoni. You can use them in salsas, and I suppose that's what most people do, but since I quit eating chips I no longer make salsa. Sigh.

Another surprise find of the summer: the cucamelon, Melothria scabra. Native to Mexico, where it's called Sandiitas de raton or "mouse melon." Thought to have been cultivated long before colonial impact. It grows on a dainty little climbing vine with maple-shaped leaves. It tastes like a slightly limey cucumber, without a hint of sweetness, and has an impressive, nay, epic! crunch. Terrific on salads and in fresh salsas for texture, crunch and flavor. 

The vine takes no room at all--it just goes straight up, is tiny and delicate. You'd never think you'd get much off of it, so weak and spindly it is, but the yield is nice.

Cucamelons are not large. Grape-sized. Such fun to eat and give away.

 Probably the crunchiest thing I've ever grown, including sugar snap peas. And it would make a fabulous dollhouse watermelon. We call them Barbie watermelons around here. Because they're the perfect size to put in a Barbie doll's hands. I need to do that photo shoot. But I have no Barbie.  Phoebe wrapped her Barbie completely up in toilet paper and buried her I know not where when she was about seven. She said she was making a Barbie mummy. Yeah. You go, girl. High use for a Barbie. 

So I've grown a few things I've never grown, and they were all winners. I like plants. I like experimenting with them. I like giving them to friends, sharing seeds, getting and giving recommendations and sharing the results. 

The other huge success were the orange and red sweet snack peppers I grew from seed. Just took seed from the little grocery store ones that come in Ziploc bags and started it in the greenhouse. Next spring I'll start it earlier--maybe in March, because my plants were festooned with fruit at frost. And they grew true to type!! There are almost no seeds in them and you can eat three or four before you can stop yourself. But why stop? High in vitamins A and  C and a lot better for you than cookies. They're deliciously sweet and crispy, thick-walled and juicy. Highly recommended. Here's His Lordship Tim Appleton, MBE, exulting in the crunch of a sweet snack pepper while floating... temporarily... at North Bend.

and of course I love my little darling Sungold tomatoes. I throw them in all my soups, chilis, quiches and stir-fries, too.

The garden, she was very good to me this year. I loved every minute of harvesting and eating our own  lettuce, Swiss chard, snap peas, beans, tomatoes, peppers, tomatillos and cucamelons.

I'm already looking forward to starting next spring's seeds. I'm going to start those snack peppers, tomatillos, cucamelons and poblanos EARLY this time. And I'm going to figure out where those dang chard-eating bunnehs are getting in. Right.