Home Grown Tobacco - Part 1

So I have taken up to smoking a pipe; this is not unusual in my family. Most of the men have smoked a pipe at some time or other. I have actually inherited my fathers pipes & my great-great-grandfathers from Sweden. I have been shopping for my pipe sundries at Leavitt & Pierce in Harvard Square, Cambridge, Mass. And is the best smoke shop & men's sundries shop I have ever seen. Anyway, after trying 3 tobaccos now (Cherry Cavendish, Cavendish, and another) it occurred that one could grow tobacco. Or can one…

Apparently tobacco is not hard to grow, but to make it palatable to smoke the leaf needs to be cured for 1 to 6 years. Goodness, at least gardeners are supposed to be patient. Not just that the leaf can't just be hung next to the oregano & thyme and just dried. Curing requires the right condition, and the first article I read recommends construction an appropriate building. Blimey, I’m not against constructions, but just wanting a couple ounces of extra leaf is looking like it ain't going to be a cake walk.

Many years ago, grew some tobacco plants along with a bunch of Artemisia to make homemade insecticide, but in that case just dried the young plant as needed and made the deadly potion. I think I figured it was to hard to cure tobacco then because one of my roommates has worked picking tobacco in Georgia for a couple years.

There were references to tobacco in “Buffalo Bird Woman's Garden” by Gilbert Livingstone Wilson, Ph.D. (1868-1930) that would be another good place to start. However, there are a couple of problems with references to tobacco before the 1900’s. Firstly, they are not always talking about tobacco, often references are talking about cannabis. Secondly, they cured the tobacco in their hurts near the fires and the huts have the correct environment for curing smoky, humid, and warm. If I remember the old men stored & cured the leave for years in leather pouches too.

Some open quests are:
o Where do I get the tobacco seeds?
o What species of tobacco do I want to raise? There are several variations.
o How will I cure the tobacco? Apparently temperature, humidity, & time are major factors.
o Are there any easier methods for curing tobacco that tastes good? There is probably reasons that no one I knows grows their own tobacco.
o Could one learn from cooking on how to pre-treat the tobacco before it cures. Perhaps soaking it in a base or acid solution and then hanging it to cure.

Assuming that curing time is going to be an issue (1 to 6 years), I had better start next year. I just don't want to spend 3 years curing some tobacco only to get something that tastes like a Russian cigarette.

Canapés of Grey Squirrel

A top restaurant is serving up free grey squirrel pancakes to hungry diners.

Nuts: Grey Squirrel is served in canapes
Peking duck-style squirrel wraps are being offered to diners at The Famous Wild Boar Hotel. The restaurant at Crook, near Windermere, in Cumbria, is giving diners the chance to try the canapes free of charge. The grey squirrels were caught in the hotel's 72-acre woodland grounds and have been prepared by head chef Marc Sanders.

Nibble: Wild Boar Hotel head chef Marc Sanders with the Peking duck-style squirrel treats

I couldn't make this stuff up... thank you, I'll pass, vermin makes me queezy... Although I like the angle that it helps endangered brown squirrels.
Or, "Sometimes you get the nut, sometimes the Nuts get you."
Or, even better, "This doesn't have a fly-squirrel's chance in Hell of catching on in Boston!"

To bad we have lots of fat grey squirrels in Beantown, and they are TRASH feed. I'm not knocking it I'm just saying this is out there for you culinary enjoyment. It's nice to see British Cuisine coming into it's own with historical dishes like this. In Maine where I grew up this Grey Squirrel Pancake was also know as "roadkill". You needed a spatula and burlap bag to collect it thats all. My favorite line from the article is "I haven't tried grey squirrel but people I know who have say it tastes like chicken used to taste when it tasted like chicken."

Food Don'ts

Don't eat the green ones that’s for sure, it has been my observation that most crustaceans such as lobsters, crabs, crawdads turn reddish when cooked. ("dish", get it! ) I agree that eating things out of the sewer is to be avoided, I think that is above the rule don't eat the yellow snow. Yup, I don't even need to call my mother on that one...

I'm trying to eat my way through the animal kingdom; I’m up to 147 critters, although I have a couple rules.

1) Don't eat things from sewers.
2) No primates or above, this includes chilled monkey brains.
3) No German shepherds
4) No octopus' unless it would be rude; squid are fair game (they are predatory bastards); cuddle fish are marginal.
5) Avoid vermin; i.e. rats, door mice, and wild caught urban rabbits.
6) Cannibalism is only allowed if the other person is dead first and there are no alternatives as grubs, ants, aunts, cats, dogs, or birds around. Don't eat random frozen corpses you find in ice.
7) Pigeons, seagulls, and squirrels count as vermin.
8 ) Don't eat clowns they taste funny.
9) Don't eat the brains of ancestors they could contain sub-viral diseases similar to mad-cow-disease.
10) Always ask what exactly is in the dish if ordering in a foreign country such as France, Spain, China, Japan, or Malaysia. Although last time I was in France I added about 15 critters to the “Ate List.”
11) Never eat the "meat-on-a-stick" severed in a Korean Beer tent, or any beer tent as far as that goes. Actually, avoid meat on a stick in general especially where hygiene or meat suppliers are suspect.
12) If it doesn't smell right don't eat it.
13) Lettuce should be green; shades of olive or yellowed-green don't count. Beige is to be composted.
14) Avoid things that are described to you as "wafer thin" when you are stuffed. (ref: Meaning of Life, Monty Python)
15) If you have to choke something down request one of the following: a) it be smothers with butter or oil and garlic (snails, grubs, etc) b) it be covered in chocolate (grasshoppers, bumble bees, crunchy-frog), and/or c) a cold beer be supplied (oysters).
16) Worms are for the birds, unless you are on a morning show with a worm-do cooking expert .
17) Don’t eat the green ones, this includes Soylent Green.
18 ) Peas are a fruit not a mortar, avoid them if they are not green.

There are a few other things on this list but they are mostly contextual.

Ouch!!! Orchid Thief

At least one could say “I am an Orchid Thief”… of sorts. . I was in Florida last week for a little R&R and spent some time flip-flopping to the beach to-&-fro. Along the way I spotted a cactus growing out of a ornamental mangrove tree. After a day or two I figured out it was an Orchid Cactus (Epiphyllums) of which my house has two already. Plus, have been trying to convince a friend to trade me cuttings of his white midnight blooming variety.

The Florida cactus had a ton of bloom buds and the flower is impressive 4 to 8 inches across and lasts for a day. So I swiped a pad from the rundown empty summer rental and have brought it home to Massachusetts (Zone 5). I usually ask for cutting from people gardens and am hardly ever refused. I’ve found gardener’s like to share their plants and garden knowledge. Even if they are a curmudgeon normally.


Have let the cut scab over and will place it in a sandy loam pot with some wood chips to hold moisture. And hang it in the sunniest widow and pray that it lives. Then next May I will put it out on the sunny porch with the others and let the sun bake it; this effort might reward me in 3 years with a bloom… ah!... gardening the teacher of hope and patience.

Epiphyllums, commonly referred to as Epis, or Orchid cacti, have tremendous blooms - in size, color, & FRAGRANCE! Fragrance is the one aspect of Epis that is simply not admirable unles you own one. A single bloom on an 'orchid cactus' has the ability to incense an entire house. Though they don't bloom often, and in many cases blooms only last a single night, stunning beauty and ease of care make Epiphyllums a wonderful plant that can suit many lifestyles. Attractive and for themost part disease free foliage also makes them brilliant plants when they are not blooming!

For more info on orchid cactus take a look at these sites & pictures:

San Diego Epiphullum Society, Inc.
Wikipedia - Epiphyllum
Albert’s Greenhouse
Epiphyllums Orchid Cacti Pictures
GardenWeb - Orchid Cacti

“A human being isn't an orchid, he must draw something from the soil he grows in”

~~ Sara Jeannette Duncan quotes

Falling for Compost

Fall is one of the best and worst of seasons for me. David Letterman once quipped “Fall is my favorite season in Los Angeles, watching the birds change color and fall from the trees.” Which are sort of my sentiments; I can’t wait for the leaves to fall and dry so my feet can drag through them and hear the crunch in the crisp cool air. However, gardening time is finishing up, I might get some peas out of the garden and some late lettuce, but basically, it’s over. No fresh produce in the garden, no watering chores at 6am in the morning. I get to rest like the ground until spring.

Well sort of… there is the compost pile, my pride & joy. I have been composting all the kitchen scraps, cutting, and flower deadhead all summer. Plus the score of the lawnmower bags that neighbors give me. The thing is we will have to do something with about 12 bags of leaves that always seem to accumulate around my apartment. My bin is already three-quarters full so I need to use some of this ASAP and make plans for the incoming material. Many towns in urban areas offer discounts on compost bins call your park & recreation, or waste disposal department, or department of public works. If your town doesn’t offer this ask why not, because they are missing out on federal grant money, and see if they have a reciprocal agreement with a neighboring town. This is a perfect time to get a compost bin started in your own back yard. Composting is easy. Add dried leaves (brown), fresh grass clippings (greens) and food scraps (nutrients) to the bin or pile, water and let nature take its course. You can create a choir for the kids to go and turn the compost bin every couple of weeks, but it isn’t necessary. I like to add a shovel full of dirt to the pile every layer of so, this adds grit to the pile so that it breaks down and helps retain moisture.

Why do you need green and brown layers of material in a compost pile? That is a good question and you can find lots of info at http://www.epa.gov/compost/ or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composting . These sites will help you get started. BTW: you don’t need to buy a bin if you don’t want to; you can just dig a hole and fill it, or make a compost pile. It all depends on the amount of room you have and your sense of ascetics. And perhaps you neighbor senses.

Anyway, next spring you will probably not need to buy as much compost or mulch to amend and cover the flower & vegetable beds and you will have to save perhaps a hundred cubic feet of space in the local landfill. You will have recycled the material into your own environment and it will do a lot of good.

If you just don’t want to compost may I suggest to find out where your yard waste can be sent to be made into mulch or compost? Most towns can help you with this too.

Mission: Seed Saver

Did you know that there's are thousands of vegetables such as onion, pumpkin, potato, tomato, carrot, and every thing else that have been common for all of history, but t would disappear if it wasn’t for the work of the seed savers?

A Seed Saver is an agricultural defender of bio-diversity to whom it falls to protect and share all kinds of seeds in order to protect variety. This is a none nonprofit organizations since the 1975 and for about ten years ago there's an Italian organization, called Civiltà Contadina, that defends bio-diversity through seed savings.

Plus there is a website that gives information about the ongoing projects, the kind of seeds which are in peril. The organization has a news space where in the field of seed saving & bio-diversity post their relevant news.

I simply enjoy any kind of fruit and vegetables, and find the news quite interesting. Go and read up on all the fights and effort that are going into preserving the legacy for humanity and the planet. Most countries in the world have agencies that work on keeping seed stocks including the United States. Although the farms, labs, & vaults have been shamelessly under funded since the Reagan administration. Norway is building a international seed vault for the Global Crop Diversity Trust up in the arctic circle inside a mountain. It’s so 007…

Vacation Burndown

So I returned from vacation on Monday, and am full of ideas for the garden & the kitchen. Visited the Louisbourg, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia with it’s restored 17th century French kitchen gardens, a friends garden in the woods of Cape Breton, picking wild mushums in the wilds, having a Texas toast BLT with chanterelle mushrooms, trying to trap crawdads in main, farmers market shopping, fermenting tomato seeds, and picking my garden produce when I have been gone for 2 weeks. Plus the automatic watering system worked while I was gone. Lots of stuff happened garden, culinary, and otherwise…

chantrelle mushroom

Jiving with Chives

The other day I had a discussion at my community garden plot on humble Chive. You know that innocuous, tough, grass looking, purple flower and interesting herd. Our garden plots have a lot of chives, almost to the point of weeds depending where you go. The guy next to me is using his plot to do some sort of garden scape that relies heavily on chives. He kind of has a veld of chives… Anyway, he is nice enough to let me pick some of the blooms in spring, and here we get to the beginning of the list of uses of chives that apparently only I have put together.

Let me start at the beginning, I use chives in cream cheese or on the rare occasion when I actually eat cottage cheese. You know just mix some pepper, salt, a pinch of sugar and some chives to taste into the dairy; let sit for a half hour if you have the time & enjoy. Also, I use chives on baked and mashed potatoes. I used to chop chives up with a knife, but now I just use my kitchen sheers to cut them into the perfect length.

Chives (Allium schoenoprasum) are great on salads and mixed into vinaigrette dressings. And when available I used the fresh blooms of chives in salads they add a lot of color, and some light chive flavor. I’m always looking for new flowers to eat in salads, so add chive blooms to the list of nastrums, roses, and borage blooms you can eat on you greens. And the blooms can be used in one other fun way; in vinegar. Use an old Patron tequila bottle (large opening and ability to cork it is why I like the bottle) stuff about two dozen freshly open blooms into the bottle and add some nice white vinegar. In about 15 minutes you’ll see some of the color of the blooms leaking into the vinegar; let this sit in the sunny widows for 2 weeks to age & flavor the vinegar. The vinegar has nice onion flavor and a nice reddish color. Great for cooking or making more vinaigrette.

I usually keep the chive plant bloom-free, because the stalks get harder and I have been told the chives get more bitter. However waste is not good so before the blooms open I pick all the budding stalks, and stir fry them in oil and splash them with sherry or sake before I serve them. They are great on top of meat or another veggie. This is just like serving Chinese onions which are a larger Allium.