Rock Garden...

"I have a rock garden. Last week three of them died."

~~Richard Diran

"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?"

~~Douglas Adams

"Garden: A thing of beauty and a job forever"

~~Anonymous

"Count the garden by the flowers, never by the leaves that fall. Count your life with smiles and not the tears that roll."

~~Anonymous

"Teachers who inspire know that teaching is like cultivating a garden, and those who would have nothing to do with thorns must never attempt to gather flowers."

~~Anonymous

"Criticizing another's garden doesn't keep the weeds out of your own"

~~Proverb

"As is the gardener, so is the garden"

~~Proverb

"To know someone here or there with whom you can feel there is understanding in spite of distances or thoughts expressed that can make life a garden."

~~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"The men of experiment are like the ant; they only collect and use. But the bee . . . gathers its materials from the flowers of the garden and of the field, but transforms and digests it by a power of its own."

~~Leonardo da Vinci

"All these things have you said of beauty.
Yet in truth you spoke not of her but of needs unsatisfied,
And beauty is not a need but an ecstasy.
It is not a mouth thirsting nor an empty hand stretched forth,
But rather a heart enflamed and a soul enchanted.
It is not the image you would see nor the song you would hear,
But rather an image you see though you close your eyes and a song you hear though you shut your ears.
It is not the sap within the furrowed bark, nor a wing attached to a claw,
But rather a garden for ever in bloom and a flock of angels for ever in flight.
People of Orphalese, beauty is life when life unveils her holy face.
But you are life and you are the veil.
Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.
But you are eternity and your are the mirror."

~~Kahlil Gibran

Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy of Gardening Cookbook

Everything I do, I do on the principle of Russian borscht. You can throw everything into it beets, carrots, cabbage, onions, everything you want. What's important is the result, the taste of the borscht. ~~Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Russian poet

Beets, what do you do about a vegetable like BEETS? Answer, grab a copy of Janet Ballantyne’s “Joy of Gardening Cookbook” (10^th Anniversary Edition). Glad I stumbled across this book, it is excellent for turning vegetables into wholesome food that allows you to taste the essence of the vegetable. The recipes are reliable and not to complicated, if you want gourmet recipes, this ain't it. Then again there are some inventive and tasty little gems here.

There are no exotic vegetables covered in the book (e.g Jeruselum Artichoke, Artichoke, Rabi), which would be great for Asian or Latin American veggies that are in fashion now. However, there are basic recipes that are written and encourage you to use them with any veggie you can think of (i.e vegetable cream or essence soups). So if you have a Kolrabi, just adapt one of the basic, Greens, or Brassicaceae recipes. Also, peppered throughout the book are some gardening, harvest, and kitchen technique tips.

I have been collecting cook books for two decades, and this is a great book for anybody with a farm share, a big garden, or a yen to learn to make vegetables more palatable. You won't win Iron Chef with this book, but you will make veggies more interesting at the next potluck. Also, the recipes are adaptable so a green bean pate recipe can be changed to make a combination of flavors with blanched green beans & onion with a zesty sauce. If you have some skills, you can adapt the flavors of one combination and present the taste in a new form. Remember, the quality of the vegetables is key, thus garbage in, garbage out, fresh wholesome veggies in, fresh zesty flavor sensation out.

Finally, the recipes are mostly easy to execute. Janet Ballantyne is an educator, and knows how to present recipes in a fool proof fashion. Go ahead and get this book so you can enjoy your garden fresh veggies more.

More information:

Joy of Gardening Cookbook by Janet Ballantyne
Also, Desserts from the Garden this looks very interesting.

Earthworm

Streamlined to the ultimate for functional performance the earthworm blindly eats his way, riddling and honeycombing the ground to a depth of ten feet or more as he swallows.

~Anatomy Underfoot, J.-J. Condue

Prayer and Potatoes

Pray for peace and grace and spiritual food,
For wisdom and guidance, for all these are good,
But don't forget the potatoes.

Prayer and Potatoes, J. T. Peter

Most Beautiful Landscape

Even within the most beautiful landscape, in the trees, under the leaves the insects are eating each other; violence is a part of life. ~~Francis Bacon

Harissa Xmas...

Manage with bread and salted butter until God brings something to eat with it. ~~Moroccan proverb

"It’s in a' can, it’s got to be good!" is what a friend told me at a dinner party after we had just seen Handel's Messiah performed at the Boston Symphony Hall. It’s rare that I meet a little exotic can with some Cyrillic, Arabic, or logographic script on it that doesn’t appear in my pantry at least once. All are opened and tried, but few stay and become a standard part of the inventory next to the cans of tomato sauce, chipotles, and pineapple juice. And then there was “Harissa!”

This chili based paste is exotic, it used in Moroccan, and other Mediterranean cooking. It appears in roasted meat dishes, in condiments made of tomatoes, and my favorite the Moroccan Carrot Salad. The version I have now is made from red hot chili, garlic, coriander, cumin, and salt. And there are other recipes that include cloves, caraway, and olive oil.



Although you will often see it added to barbeque sauces, smeared on poultry, added to yogurt marinades, and even as a dipping sauce, it shines with carrots. If you have vegetarians coming to dinner and want to spice up there life this is your friend. Just look for an authentic recipe from Morocco, Tunisia, or Algeria. What follows is advice & my smashup recipe;

Go buy yourself a little can of “Harissa Du Cap Bon” at any little grocery that says “HALAL”. Then look for a can about the size of a tomato past can that is typically metallic-yellow & red; the can will feature chili peppers, see picture*.

So start with the following ingredients:

Moroccan Carrot Salad

1 lb carrots
2 Tbl olive oil
1 garlic clove, large, minced
1 ½ tsp cumin, ground
1 tsp salt, kosher
1 tsp honey or sugar
½ tsp turmeric, ground
¼ tsp harissa, or to taste
1 lemon’s zest & juice
2 Tbl parsley, flat-leaf, fresh & chopped
¼ cup feta cheese, crumbled, or any other farmers cheese grated
12 olives, kalamata or others, pitted & halved (black olives in a pinch)

Prepare the carrots to your taste; grated them on a box graters or food processor, or slice & strip on a mandolin. You want to steam them a little to blanch them for maybe a minute; or just micro wave them for 1-2 minutes. In a pan heat the oil, then add the minced garlic for 30 seconds to infuse the oil. Add the cumin, turmeric, and salt to bloom the spices 15 seconds, then add the harissa and the honey; stir until a paste forms, about 1 minute. Add the lemon juice, then the carrots, and the lemon zest, in that order. Stir and mix in the pan, its fine if the carrots brown a little, but just cook for 3-5 minutes. Transfer to a bowl and chill in the fridge for a few hours or overnight; it’s better the next day.

When you’re ready to serve, remove from fridge and bring to room temp; garnish with parsley, feta, & olives.

Variations: Add some 1/8 tsp clove, a tsp of brandy, 1 Tbl sherry, change the cheese to any farmers cheese grated, garnish with 1-2 Tbl fresh cilantro, more garlic, or roast the garlic, roast/broil the whole carrots first, substitute limes, substitute orange, MORE harissa, and/or make your own harissa. You can use cider vinegar or any mild vinegar.

Off the reservation: balsamic vinegar, use some cooked parsnip, first roast or grill everything, balsamic & some beets, add some roasted nuts, substitute other types of sugars such as agave nectar, try some mace, more harissa. hot, hot, hot! Oh, and you could just take it an heat it up run it through a blender and server it as soup with garnishes on top, now that is a mash-up!

Have fun with this, and I hope you add a little can of harissa to you panty. This is a beautiful dish with the orange of the carrots, red tinged harissa, green parsley, white cheese, and earthy olive colors.

Bon Appetite & Happy Holidays!

* In the majority world (used to be 3rd w.) cans picture what’s inside them; i.e. peaches, pig, peppers, goat milk, guava, Gerber babies… lol. And the color patterns of various ingredients tend to be the same across brands for similar ingredients. Just think being a Japanese worker in Morocco, or a Frenchmen in South Africa, or a Moroccan in France.


More information:
Arabesque: A Taste of Morocco, Turkey, and Lebanon This is the BEST cookbook for this cultural type of cooking. Hands-down it will get you started and on your way! This is my recommendation for a Christmas or Hanukkah gift.
Cooking at the Kasbah: Recipes from My Moroccan Kitchen Nice book!
The New Book of Middle Eastern Food I checked this out of the library once, I covet this book.
Mustapha's Moroccan Harissa The gourmet stuff!
Harrissa in Tube - Puree of Dried Hot Peppers More like peasant stuff!

Catching up with Ketchup, Step #1

So here is a little weirdness, I collect old tomatoes. I keep them cryogenically frozen, like little heads. I supposed I might name one Walt once in a while. Okay, I jest, but I do have pounds & pounds of frozen tomatoes. My wife calls them canonballs, mainly because when she opens up the freezer one shoots out at her once and a while and they skitter on the tile floor. Very exciting! The cats hate it.

So WHY!? Well, I love tomatoes and tend to buy 3# weekly at Haymarket. The tomato guy likes me because I always ask for a range of ripeness, so I can use them up before they spoil. But even with this little bit of preparation, I often have a tomato here & there that is to ripe. So I simply freeze them. To make tomatoes soup (no milk, hate milked T-soup, makes me retch) or make sauces. And what is America’s favorite sauce? One guess genius... "Ketchup", or as the English like to say Catsup. Repeat after me give me a K, give me a E, you can finish from there. It’s so good and so well like our government in it’s wisdom has deemed it a vegetable. Several people including me have deemed french-fries as just a delivery system for ketchup. Don’t be ashamed it’s true.

So why make your own ketchup? #1 for me, I like to make everything once & awhile so I know the difference between crap & caviar. #2 why not?! #3 Yeah everyone is so concerned about sourcing local, local this and that, but folks no one is making local ketchup, no one. Just like I am one of 2 people I know making there own mayonnaise & mustard, hey it comes up in conversations. So I want another feather in my cooking cap.

Where to start, where to start okay Google, found some nice Amish recipe during work a few weeks ago. And the Joy of Cooking, of course my favorite general cookbook. Plus I have some books cooking garden veggies & sauces so I am figuring out where to go from there. Oh, I am making smoked spare ribs tomorrow and want to make BBQ sauce for them. Two types one kinda classic hickory smoked & my Mongolian BBQ sauce.

So I will get back to you on how many pounds of cannonballs ah frozen tomatoes I have lurking in the freeze o be reanimated into a Disney Studio HEAD, and figure out a game plan... I’m going to make a plain ketchup, sort of like HUNT’s, maybe with the zest of Heinz, but I want a canvas to make other sauces on. Oh and the best thing is mine won’t have any evil HFCS bleh! (High Fructose Corn Syrup)