Insanely Great Pasta Sauce

It was the continuous supply of eggplant that led to B.'s latest culinary breakthrough. Even though the season is just about over (after all, it's November!), the memory lingers on and will provide inspiration for next spring's planting decisions.

Two plants of Hansel eggplant and two of Fairy Tale produced gorgeous platefuls of glossy purple fruit that sat around on the dining room table, just asking to be made into something wonderful.






It wasn't the best season ever for tomatoes but there were still enough on hand (Early Girl, Black Trifele, Sun Gold, Yellow Pear) to fill their own plates and provide their own entrancing palette of color.







Since they were meant to be together -- like moonlight and music -- it was only a matter of time before they ended up simmering together in the same pan with some olive oil and crushed garlic. The little Fairy Tail teardrops didn't even need peeling, they were so tender. They disappeared completely into the sauce. The Hansels were peeled and sliced up and cooked until soft along with the tomatoes.

Sometimes B. would blanch the tomatoes first to get the skins off, and sometimes just quarter them and set them in the pan, skins and all. Pictured above is a skins-on batch. Whole basil leaves, just picked, were added towards the end of the cooking time.







Voila! A sauce that is so utterly simple yet subtle and rich with the tang of fresh tomatoes and the smokey undercurrent of eggplant, so silky it coats the noodles with flavor that lingers in the mouth and in the mind.






Another approach that draws out of the savor of the eggplant even more is to roast them whole for an hour in the oven. Just cut off the tops and prick them with a fork, coat lightly with olive oil and set them on an oiled baking sheet. Take them out when soft and collapsing into themselves, slit them open and squeeze out the yummy paste.






The eggplant is then combined with oven-roasted tomatoes. These were cooked for half an hour in an iron skillet with a layer of olive oil and some crushed garlic. When done, set the skillet on the top of the stove, add the eggplant paste and simmer gently until the mixture forms a sauce.







The roasting method produces a smoother sauce because all of the eggplant disappears into the magical meld of mouth-watering goodness.

Whatever route you take to get there, it's an insanely good pasta sauce.

Easy Refrigerator Pickles

As of early October we had a goodly pile of lemon cucumbers in the refrigerator, the last survivors after our one very prolific plant had succumbed to mildew and been removed. For months we had been eating the cukes fresh and giving them away. We were tired of them and so were our neighbors.

I had never made pickles out of anything but it seemed worth a try if it didn't take too much time. As usual, a little internet sleuthing yielded some good suggestions.

The recipe I ended up following was compiled from several sources. It had to be easy and not sweet -- no sugar. Mostly it had to be easy.







The cucumbers sliced up nicely into six cups worth. To this was added some chopped cilantro and some chopped green onion.






I brought to a boil two cups of vinegar, plus spices (1 tablespoon each of celery seed, mustard seed, and turmeric) and pickling salt (2 tablespoons), and let it cook for a minute or two.

However, this ended up being way too little liquid to fill the seven pint jars I had crammed the cucumber slices into. Perhaps I hadn't packed in the cucumbers tightly enough, or perhaps removing sugar from the recipe reduced the volume of the mixture. Anyway, I just boiled up four more cups of vinegar with more spices and salt and hoped for the best.

The filled jars were allowed to cool down and then put into the refrigerator where they will stay until all used up. Supposedly they will keep for months, but we won't get a chance to test that out since we are going through them pretty fast.

They are crunchy, spicy, and delicious, although a bit strong for eating more than one or two out of hand. (Next year, I will try diluting the vinegar mixture with water or packing the jars better.)






We've been enjoying them in salads, cut up into small pieces, or, best of all, as a garnish for veggie burgers along with garden tomatoes and lettuce.

Mmmmmm. And so easy. Even with the mistakes, making the pickles took not much more than an hour.

Harvesting the Halloween . . . . . . Eggplant????

Our normally sedate town goes crazy for Halloween. The iconic vegetable of the season -- the glorious pumpkin -- is displayed everywhere. It's been fun seeing those reassuring bright orange globes appear on porches around the neighborhood. People don't hold back. Some houses have all sizes and shapes lined up along railings or sitting on each step of their front stairs.

I have to go out to see pumpkins. We don't grow them and don't even bother putting one on the porch because the trick-or-treaters never seem to make it to our cottage behind the hedge at the end of a dead end street.

Despite the dearth of pumpkins here at our hidden homestead, we have been reveling in summer bounty even as the seasons shift: picking eggplant in the autumn rain, plucking peppers and tomatoes on chilly, foggy mornings.

But there are plenty of pumpkins to admire wherever I go. On the outskirts of town I drive by fields of them swarmed by hordes of school children as the farmers make the most of their brief window of profitable time. By tomorrow those fields will be left to rot, along with the pyramids of hay bales and tee-pees of corn stalks, as the inevitable processes of decay take over.

Maybe, deep down, that's what this holiday is all about: coming to terms with the encroaching darkness. We conquer our fear of the dying of the light and take control of our worst nightmares by dressing up like them or by inviting them onto the porch and into the light so we can bribe them into playing nice and thereby harness their power.

Gardeners know that darkness and the sometimes gruesome progression of rot and decay are regenerative forces that eventually bring about surging new life. Still, there is sadness when, at the end of a productive lifespan, the pepper plant topples over because its stem has rotted or the eggplant succumbs to mildew or a sprawling zucchini plant has to be flung onto the compost pile.

So light up those Jack-O-Lanterns, folks, and lift a glass of cider to the turning of the year.

What Would Mendel Do?

Conducting field trials of peas has never been on my lifetime list of must-do endeavors. In fact, growing peas shows up repeatedly on the "tried-it-and-it-didn't work" list. Yet in the garden one thing leads to another in unpredictable ways.

To start with, this year's pea crop was, by previous standards, a success, meaning we ended up with enough peas at one time to build a meal around them. One cup of Caseload Shelling Peas was harvested and one fabulous dinner of Peas Alfredo was enjoyed.

Then I forgot all about the pea patch until the space was needed for something else. While pulling out the dried up vines I discovered that the plants had made one last desperate effort to leave something for the next generation -- which, from their point of view, is their reason for being. There were several well-rounded pale beige pods with wrinkled seeds inside.

It seemed rude not to collect them. So I did.





When storing the gathered peas I noticed there were still some seeds left in the original packet from Natural Gardening -- larger, more uniform, and shapelier than the ones I saved. This was the parent generation of the plants I had pulled out.

Hmmmm, wouldn't it be interesting to see if one set would do better when planted out? The time was right, the space was available, why not try it?






So I divided a bed down the middle and planted my homegrown Caseload peas on one side (to the left) and the leftover Natural Gardening seeds on the other. The seeds were planted out on September 11.

The Natural Gardening seeds were older, of course, but they had been professionally grown and looked a little better. My seeds were younger and might have an advantage from being more adapted to this particular growing space. Let the trial begin!

The photo above shows the bed on September 26. In general, more of the homegrown seeds came up and appear to be growing faster.






Here's what the bed looked like on October 24. Both sets are growing well, but the homegrown seeds on the left are still ahead.





The tallest plants from the Natural Gardening seeds have cleared the third wire of the support frame. They are nice looking and would count as a success by previous standards.





The plants from homegrown seed have cleared the fourth wire and there are more of them, making a nice lush row such as I have seen and admired in other people's gardens. Criteria for success will have to be adjusted.

A Confederacy of Worms

The first time I encountered solider fly larvae in my compost bin it was as a slowly heaving mass of damp leaves. The whole surface of the bin was creepily undulating up and down. When I used a trowel to push aside the thin layer of leaves, uncovering the recently added kitchen scraps, I saw the huge, whitish, maggoty creatures pictured above. Ewwww! Backing slowly away from the bin with a sick feeling in my stomach, I ran into the house and googled "huge maggots in compost!!!!"

That's how I found out about BSF, the black soldier fly, a great friend to lazy composters everywhere, we folks who never turn the pile, just add new layers and let it sit. Now, instead of recoiling in horror, I gaze fondly on the hard-working worms and urge them on.






BSF, you are my BFF.

The black soldier fly is an attractive large flying insect that looks more like a wasp than a fly. It has no mouth parts and lives briefly in order to mate and lay eggs. It does not bite, swarm, come into houses, or carry disease. The eggs are laid in wet, organic matter in the first stages of decomposition -- such as the layer of kitchen scraps in my compost bin.

The eggs hatch in just a few days into ravenously hungry larvae that start chewing their way through any nice juicy stuff they can find. They work so fast and wiggle around so much, aerating the pile where they are working, that there is no time for nasty smelling bacteria to get a foothold and create bad smells which attract the less desirable kinds of flies.

What's not to like? No smells, no flies, and very fast breakdown of organic matter, including materials usually not recommended for compost piles, such as dairy products.

They will eat anything, including manure, sewage, roadkill, etc., and are being studied for use in municipal waste systems. Although the thought of acres of undulating worms going after a city's worth of discarded organic matter is a bit nightmarish, it doesn't diminish my admiration for these first responders of Mother Nature's breakdown team.

When the larvae are ready to pupate, they crawl away from their feeding grounds, leaving behind a dark residue that is just right for the next set of responders.





Red wiggler worms like their organic matter a bit more aged than the greedy BSF larvae. When I see masses of red worms in my bin, I know the breakdown process has moved into the next phase. When the numbers decrease then it's time to add the compost to the garden beds. If I'm impatient to add some fertility ASAP I can use the compost at the red worm stage, adding some extra organic nitrogen to make up for the nitrogen needed to fuel humus making.

When the garden variety earthworms appear, it's a signal that the compost has now become soil. I have never seen earthworms in the compost bin, only in the garden. These worms, honored by Darwin for their soil building capacity, go after the tiny broken down bits of remaining organic matter and transform them into the castings that nourish good green growth.

This confederacy of worms works together to produce the rich medium needed for continuous vegetable production in our backyard.

Hollyhock Lore

The hollyhocks along the fence are finally coming into their own. These are the second growth stalks that came up after I cut down the towering (ten or twelve feet) spring flagpoles that were not blooming and had acquired a layer of rust, due to the relentlessly cool weather.

This is a popular gathering spot for all manner of bees. Once, I saw a hummingbird inserting its tiny beak along the base of a partially opened blossom -- not inside the flower but outside. It reminded me of the deft skill of my favorite dental hygienist probing my gums. Not the most poetic image, but it does capture the expert precision of the hummingbird at work. Perhaps there are pockets of nectar hidden in the showy blooms even before they open wide?






Here's a wide open blossom, a stunning pink banner unfurled to the sun. Rose pink is thought to be the original color of these ancient medicinal plants. The botanical name, Althaea rosea, comes from the Greek "althos" for "healing."

In medieval Europe, a related plant was used to treat horses. Ailing hocks, the part right above the hoof, were wrapped in the leaves. When crusaders came back from the Holy Land, bearing the botanical cousin of this hock plant, the new arrival came to be known as the "holy hock."






The dramatic knob in the center of the blossom contains both stamen and pistils and the plant is self-pollinating. Bees love the abundant pollen so cross-pollination occurs. I have often watched the giddy buzzing things burying themselves in one blossom after another.

Maybe cross pollination accounts for the range of colors that have evolved from the original seeds from plants with dark red blooms given by a friend from the south Bay. They grew in our yard as dark pink at first, then diversified into a range of dark pink to pale pink to white.






Pale pink and white blooms showed up this year for the first time -- the third season since the original planting.

Supposedly the "holy hock" brings good fortune and abundance to homes where it is planted nearby. Planting some certainly brings an abundance of hollyhocks, since they grow back from the base and also produce myriad seeds. In our yard, the row along the fence is well established and seedlings are popping up here and there.

Feasts of the Season

A feast for the eye; food as art. This is the best example of Eggplant Expressionism I've ever seen: the dynamic, almost careless composition, subtle range of color, and energetic play of light across the textured surface make it a real museum piece. Too bad about that. Roasted Hansel Eggplant and Sun Gold Cherry Tomatoes lasted less than a half-hour.

Tomato Sauce with Fairy Tale Eggplant and Basil, even more colorful and dynamic, was just as short-lived.

Our dining room table has become an art gallery of seasonal creations, fleeting but delicious, showcasing garden-fresh feasts for the eye and the palate almost every night.

There is hardly room on the table to display the artistic creation du jour because the clutter of work-in-progress material hogs the space: bowls of produce, jars of seeds, lables and pens.

But we persevere.

Middle Eastern Still Life. Eggplant caviar (roasted eggplant and peppers with chopped olives), lemon cucumbers with yogurt, humus and pita bread.

Tomato Puff with French Beans. The puff is one of B.s inventions: a kind of Yorkshire pudding creation of eggs, cottage cheese, and cheddar cheese with a little flour. I'll take credit for the Haricot beans. The variety is Nickel and they are a breeze to grow.

Composition in Brown and Beige. There was nothing from the garden in this loaf of rye bread with corriander seeds, but it's worth sharing for sheer artistic merit. (Recipe from Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day.)