Great Aunt Elva's Zucchini Relish

Zucchini is something that gardeners often get in abundance.  We'll get so much that we don't know what to do with it all.  Your partner will get sick of zucchini bread.  Neighbors will start saying no to spare zucchini.  It gets ridiculous.  I was whining about this problem a few years back and my mom shared my Great Aunt Elva's recipe for zucchini relish.  It's a bit of work, but it's a great way of using up the extra zucchini in a way that you can use during the winter, gift more easily, and just enjoy in a different way!  Thanks, Mom!

Great Aunt Elva's Zucchini Relish

10 cups ground (in a food grinder) zucchini squash (usually 4 large zucchinis, peeled, sliced in half, seeds removed--then put though food grinder, raw)

4 cups ground onions (about 6 onions)--peel and wash good and put through food grinder

4 cups green bell peppers (6, clean out seeds and cut in half)

1 red bell pepper (cleaned out seeds and cut in half)

Grind all of the above and put in 6 Tablespoons canning salt.

Mix all of the together and set overnight in refrigerator (cover with dish towel).

In the morning, the water will have come out of the veggies.  Rinse well through a wire collander and push out all the liquid.   Then rinse well again and push out all the water/fluid (Aunt Elva says this is really important or else the relish comes out too liquidy).

In a large bowl combine:

1 tsp tumeric

1 tsp dry mustard

2 tablespoons cornstarcdh

1 tsp black ground pepper

1 tsp celery seed

1 1/2 cups apple cider vinegar

4 1/2 cups sugar

Mix the above first, then add the zucchini mixture to it.  Put in a large pan, stir well.  Add a pinch of salt.  Boil for 20 minutes, stirring constantly.

In the meantime have your jars ready and sterilized.  I won't reiterate all the normal canning precautions, but follow them.  Put the relish into the jars and wipe around the edges to make sure they are totally clean for a good seal.  Don't touch the lids and process in boiling water for 10 minutes.  Anyway, that is basically the recipe. Follow the regular canning stuff from there and enjoy!

the first of the season

Today I harvested the first greens of the season—baby spinach and pea shoots.  The garden has started off lovely.

There are days when I can't believe it's not June yet, and then there are days I feel stuck in March.  But mostly, I just feel tired, and the date doesn't mean anything.

I started teaching seminary in January.  For those unfamiliar, it's a 6am religion class for high school students.  At first, it was very fun, but as time drew on, my excitement turned to exhaustion.  I love deep study of religious texts, but getting up early is not my strong suit.

Combine that with working in the youth program (a second church job), along with something about finishing my PhD in 2016, and you get a stressed, sleep-deprived woman. When I'm not worrying about implementation bugs in my statistical inference algorithm, I'm worried about teens cutting themselves.  It's fun.

I'm trying to find some balance now.  N is helping me so much; one thing he's doing is teaching seminary two days a week.  I need to start doing more things that aren't work and church. Gardening qualifies.

when kale freezes over

I was wondering when my kale would stop producing, and tonight I got my answer: when the plant freezes solid.  We're having our last garden kale meal of the season tonight, with nature-wilted kale.  After two continuous days of where the afternoon high was in the low 30s, I can't say I'm surprised.

onion maggots

I recently brought in my herbs from the garden and planted them in a cedar planter box under our living room window.  My rosemary was too dead to bring in, but my thyme and chives are doing alright after a week or so, or so I thought until today.

I was grooming my chives by pulling away dead leaves when I accidentally brought up a bunch of live ones.  After doing so, I noticed that the base looked a little bit like the green onions you buy at the store with stubby white roots, and thought Huh. I didn't know that.  And then the roots started moving.  For a moment I thought I was hallucinating, but quickly realized that there was something living in my chives and it looked like maggots.

After inspecting and disposing of the chive saboteurs that I had uprooted, I went to the internet to identify them as onion maggots.  My current approach is going to be keeping the chives warm and dry, but I'm curious to hear if other people have more direct remedies for this pest.

Worst case, my chives die off and I start new ones; they're easy to grow, so I won't be heartbroken.  If something like this happened to my beautiful little thyme plant, however, I would be very agitated.

garden photos

Forellenschluss Romaine Lettuce.

A pair of shell pea blossoms.

Snap pea blossoms.  I love the veins.

More snap peas.  I munch on the pods now when I'm in the garden.

Water droplets on my black Barlow columbine.

I bought seeds for the others from the Seed Savers Exchange, but the columbine I bought spontaneously at a farmer's market when I heard that it was a Barlow variety.  It must be destiny, I thought. Plus, I had wanted to try columbines for a while, but they don't flower their first year.  Solution for my lazy self: buy a year-old plant.

garden to table: spinach on pizza

One fun thing about garden-grown spinach is that you get the blossom pods (I have no idea what they're actually called) if your plants start to go to seed.  Steamed, these have a great texture, with each of the little would-be blossoms popping between your teeth.

Today I made a pizza (one of our favorites) with garden spinach and my other two favorite toppings: sun-dried tomatoes (the kind stored in oil), and artichoke hearts.  My thin pizza crust is pretty simple, as it's purpose is to hold all the good stuff on top, but if I'm feeling fancy, I'll throw in a few spices.

There was once much household angst about thin vs. thick crust, as NWC favored the former and I the latter, but I've slowly converted to thin crust because then the toppings drive the show.  Don't get me wrong, I love a good Chicago deep dish, but thin crust is much easier to manage at home.

Thin Pizza Crust
1.5-2 cup flour, preferably 1 T whole wheat

1 teaspoon baking powder

salt, garlic salt, and/or oregano to taste

water

Mix dries first, and then add water until just combined—the dough should be tacky or very slightly sticky.  For best results, let dough sit for a few minutes before rolling out.  Flour you surface generously and roll the dough out very flat, turning regularly to maintain an even thickness.  (I love my dowel rolling pin for this.)  Drizzle oil generously in a jellyroll pan, and stretch the crust into place; bake at 375F for under 10 minutes—enough to solidify the form, but not enough to start browning.

Thin-crust Pizza

serves 2

thin pizza crust (above)

8 oz fresh mozzarella cheese (small ball)

1/4 cup tomato sauce

spinach, sun-dried tomatoes, and artichoke hearts (or other toppings) to taste

Other favorite toppings: thin-sliced onions, red bell peppers, sausage (pre-cook)

Steam and drain spinach while crust is cooking, and grate cheese.  Spread sauce on crust, sprinkle cheese, and arrange toppings on top.  Bake at 400F until cheese has melted and is beginning to brown.  Slice and serve!

garden hands

In general, I prefer to work without gloves in the garden, unless I'm doing some seriously muddy work.  I just worry about the clumsiness of my hands handling tiny seeds and pulling weeds whose roots are intertwined with those of my flowers and veggies.

This preference, combined with my desire for clean hands when returning to our apartment, means that I've spent time thinking about some good hand-washing strategies.  I used to just wash my hands repeatedly and carve out the dirt meticulously with the nail-file end of a pair of fingernail clippers, and then wash some more.  But, Lo! There is a better way: use a brush.

I just lather up my hands, and then use my bath brush to get at the fingernails, and rinse.  (If I had a mudroom with a sink or something fancy—namely multiple bathrooms—I'd get a fancy nail brush.)  I'm not for advocating unnecessary stuff, but I feel like I have clean hands all the time and don't spend nearly as much time washing them as I did before getting my brush.  However, I refuse to feel silly that it took me this long to figure it out; there are always tricks like this lurking for any hobby.

Also: why is my spinach bolting in May?  It should at least have the decency to wait a few more days until June.

baked rosemary chicken

This week I was able to use some of the rosemary from my garden in baking some chicken.  I've been slowly expanding my meat repertoire, and was delighted to discover bone-in chicken breasts recently.  I'd imagine most grocery stores don't have them, but we've been buying meat from local Cartilage's recently, thanks to a friend.  Anyway, they cook up with the feel of whole baked chicken, but they're much faster and serve two better—a whole chicken would be a little much for us.

Baked Rosemary Chicken
Serves 2

1 bone-in chicken breast
2 large carrots
1 large onion
4 medium potatoes
fresh rosemary
salt
olive oil

Set oven to 425F.  Drizzle olive oil generously in a 9 inch square baking pan (I love my Le Creuset). Place chicken breast in pan and turn to coat.  Chop onions, carrots, and potatoes into bite-size pieces and throw them in the pan.  Dice rosemary and add, with salt to taste.  Mix everything with your hands, making sure vegetables, salt, oil, and rosemary are evenly distributed.  The pan should be fairly full, so nestle the chicken into the vegetables, skin-side up.  Bake until golden and temperature registers 170F and potatoes are cooked through.

going green

This weekend, I bought tomato, pepper, and herb plants at the Trenton Farmer's Market. The plants went directly into the ground and have been faring well despite the recent strong winds.  I also put the rest of my seeds in the ground, and spent some substantial time weeding.  The unused plots are starting to be more green than the occupied ones, and NWC has offered to track the greenness of the plot via earth-science satellite data voodoo.

Aside from weeds, my first plantings of lettuce and spinach are up, along with the peas.  The kale has a tiny trail across its row, but everything else is pretty freshly planted.  This year, I'm focusing mostly on greens (lettuce, spinach, kale, and swiss chard), legumes (peas and snap beans), nightshades (peppers, tomatoes, tomatillos), and I'll also have zucchini and cucumber.  I'm trying to make it more fun and less work than last year by keeping my plot size down and only growing things I've grown before (except kale, but I think that should be easy).

Last year was just too much, with too many new species and too large of a plot.  If I'm feeling adventurous again after this year, I'll stick to incremental experiments, and not try to grow a year's supply of garlic.  Actually, last year's garlic was pretty successful, and I'm still using it! So maybe not try a year's supply of carrots?  I didn't get a single full-sized carrot last year.  Roots are beastly.

Lettuce sprouts!

An albino pea plant.

Garden Day!

You know the little clean-up song that goes something like this:

Clean up! Clean up!

Everybody, everywhere.

Clean up! Clean up!

Everybody do your share.

Well, change each clean up to garden day, and you have the anthem of my garden starting season.  (I believe thanks to NWC.)  It's one of the rare days where I wake up early, jump out of bed, and don't feel any sluggishness.  (I like most days pretty well, but my bed is just mighty comfy.)

Like last year, I'm the garden coordinator at our apartment complex's community garden. The university has tilled the soil and delivered mounds of mulch and wood chips.  I've laid out the main pathways with twine; we still have to carve them out, but other than that, we're pretty much good to go.

Today, I also spotted a mysterious large egg by the mulch.  I presume it's a Canada goose egg.  I would have taken it in, but it was too cool to still be alive.  Plus, I know NWC would not have been happy about my hatching a wild goose in our apartment.

Anyway, tomorrow is garden day!  The start of the season!  The grand opening!  Ladies and Gentlemen, start your engines!

the parable of the peanuts

It was an all around unprofitable year in the garden, but mostly due to my taking a huge plot and then working a full day in the city, commuting for 3 hours, and then prepping for generals in the evenings and on weekends.  (That last part is still happening...)

Anyway, I experimented with peanuts this year, and I learned that they need to be babied a bit more than I had time for; as a result, they produced fewer peanuts than I planted.  Thus, the parable of the peanuts:

For the garden is as a woman travelling into a far city, who called together her vegetables, and delivered unto them her seeds.

And unto Peas she gave a two hundred seeds, to Zucchini fifty, and Peanuts twenty and five; to every vegetable according to his several ability; and straightway took her journey.

Then he that had received the two hundred seeds went and made them other four hundred.

And likewise he that had received fifty, he also gained other hundred.

But he that had received twenty and five went and digged in the earth, and hid his lady's seeds.

After a long time the lord of those vegetables cometh, and reckoneth with them.

And so he that had received two hundred seeds came and brought other four hundred seeds, saying, Lady, thou deliveredst unto me two hundred seeds: behold, I have gained beside them four hundred seeds more.

His lady said unto him, Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lady.

He also that had received fifty talents came and said, Lord, thou deliveredst unto me fifty seeds: behold, I have gained hundred other seeds beside them.

His lady said unto him, Well done, good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lady.

Then he which had received the twenty and five came and said, Lady, I knew thee that thou art an a busy woman, reaping where thou hast not sown, and gathering where thou hast not strawed:

And I was afraid, and went and hid thy seeds in the earth, where squirrels did findest them and did eat many: lo, there thou hast that is thine, the remaining ten seeds.

His lady answered and said unto him, Thou wicked and slothful servant, thou knewest that I reap where I sowed not, and gather where I have not strawed:

Thou oughtest therefore to have put my seeds to good growth, and then at my coming I should have received at least mine own.

Take therefore the seed from him, and give it unto him which hath four hundred seeds.

And cast ye the unprofitable vegetable into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

winter to spring

Last week, the weather was gorgeous, so I spent a bit of every morning prepping the community garden for spring.  And then, in an attempt to be as contrary as possible, mother nature gave us snow this weekend. Now, we have a strange wintery mix going on as I type. Inside, my poor little tomato seedlings look out at the snow and shudder.  Don't worry my dears, it'll be warm soon.

the things I didn't write about

It's been a while since I posed anything.  I got stuck on my diatribe about digital barbarism, and then a bunch of stuff happened, personal and otherwise.

In the personal arena, I attended NIPS, drowned in coursework, and was elected garden coordinator for our apartment community.

Then there was the hullabaloo about Mormon women wearing pants.  I participated in a cowardly manner by wearing my baggy skirt-like harem/jeanie/Aladdin pants.

Locally, Sandy has still displaced way too many people, and we're still working on gutting homes so mold can be prevented before they start to rebuild.

And then Newton.  I cried several days in a row.  I know that there are worse things abroad and to some degree it's selfish to focus on how terrible it was when other equally bad things get very little attention.  But it felt more personal; it's a two-and-a-half hour drive from where I live and the states are all so close culturally, it felt like it could have been my own town.  An emotional reaction, rather than a logical one, I know, but I'm not a robot.  A lot of people are suffering, in Newtown and elsewhere, and they have my prayers.

thank you, garden

It's looking like tonight will be the first hard frost, so I need to say thank you to my garden and harvest everything that's left of my peppers, which are really the only thing still producing right now.  It's a shame because there are still several tiny peppers that will never make it to full size.  I'll have to start them sooner indoors next year.

I haven't really posted much about the fall harvesting season.  We got under 2 dozen ears of corn of varying sizes, two tiny butternut squash, several heads of sunflowers, coriander seed, lots of basil, tomatillos, and a good supply of peppers.  It was certainly another learning year, though.  Mostly, I need to have a better schedule, so that I know when I'm planning to harvest things (not just when to plant them).  Then I can plan for second season crops--I could have easily had fall beets and lettuce.  I also need to do a better job keeping the bottom of the fence buried, since rabbits are really, really persistent.

I'm doing the best I can for now, but I really, really want a decent piece of land.  That way, I can build a proper fence, have a greenhouse, and start long-term plants like artichokes, asparagus, fruit trees and berry bushes.  In time.

I also finished planting and mulching the elephant garlic this week.  I might keep an eye on it for the next few weeks and then just let it rest over the winter.  With any luck, I'll have a good crop in the spring.

garlic, sort-of

I got permission from the coordinator of our community garden to plant garlic this year. Permission is required because they usually rototill the entire garden in spring, but garlic needs to overwinter and be harvested in the spring.  Thus, it needs to be in a spot that won't be rototilled.

I wanted to do a soft-neck garlic, so I can make braids and hang them, but I was drooling over the various hard neck varieties at SSE as well.  But then, as I plotted and ployed, I read a notification on SSE that midwestern garlics had been effected by a blight and that, while there would be heads of garlic for sale, their number would be greatly reduced.  There is also no guarantee that the garlic you bought wouldn't be infected without showing symptoms.

My imagination concocted the following scenario: I beat back five-foot tall weeds, till a small area in the corner of the garden, lovingly plant various species of heirloom garlic, and protect them with a substantial layer of compost.  They sprout their fall shoots, and everything's going well.  Then, in spring, they sprout and whither as expected.  After much anticipation, I dig them up to find decaying heads of garlic unfit for consumption or replanting in the fall, resulting in about an hour of crying.

New Plan!  I've ordered only elephant garlic this year.  It's technically a kind of leek, so it wasn't effected by the blight.  As far as I can tell, they have soft necks, so they're braidable. If all goes well, I can replant from the harvested heads and will never need to buy garlic again!  (Hint: "all goes well" never happens.)  I'm hoping that I'll at least have enough left over to replant some of them, and then I can buy species of real garlic as my skills, time, and access to land permit.

Edit: After looking into it a little bit more, my hunch is that elephant garlic is not braidable. And it's probably for the best: they're huge.  One clove can be as big as a whole head of regular garlic.  Huge.

tall corn

The corn, it is tall.

garden days

N loves to tease me by saying "It's garden day!"  But, of course, almost every day is a garden day right now.  The corn is twice as tall as I am--no joke, pictures soon.  Then the weeds are constantly growing anywhere they can, and tomatos are rolling in like crazy.

I let the cilantro go to seed ages ago (right); we'll see if I'm capable of harvesting coriander.  Zucchinis were prolific for a while, but they've settled down.  I'm thinking of doing a second season of beans and maybe lettuce since those are done.  The few beans we had were delicious, but a mouse (I think) kept eating straight through the base of their stalks leaving us with long, withering stems with half-formed beans wrapped around our corn.  Something also attacked our eggplant, but I don't know what.  We've only had one blossom, and then it was silently gone.

A few lessons for next year: I want a tomato that's good for drying (I adore oil-soaked sun-dried tomatoes), and currant tomatoes are too tiny.  Yellow pear tomatoes are fun, but I think we'd be better off with a good red cherry tomato.  The Halliday's beefsteak tomatoes are a keeper, though.  Delicious, easy, and I'm betting that they're good for salsas and canning because they are relatively low on seeds.  The are kind of pinkish, though, but I think most good tomatoes are.

Below: one day's harvest.  Then below that: a harvest of tomatoes the very next day.

up for air: a beautiful, but messy, life

The are too many adjectives for this summer so far; so many that they end up contradicting each other and ending up saying not much at all.  (Kinda like the line about the new macbook pro at WWDC12 that cracked me up: "It's incredibly powerful, and yet remarkably portable."  Too many modifiers.)  Anyway, I'll try to spare you the adjectives and adverbs as best I can, lest this post read like a wordle.

Here's what's been going on, in roughly chronological order:

I've been back to work at hunch, playing with (messy and massive) eBay data.  I'm reading a lot on the commute: 84 Charing Cross Rd and sequel, Growing up Amish, Nudge, a fairy tale book.  I'm working on Cryptonomicon and The Blind Assassin right now.  I don't have a lot of time in the day--it's almost 12 hours from the time I leave until the time I get home, but I've learned scala, cascading, and hadoop, not to mention delving deeper into probabilistic modeling.

N went for a 10-day research-ish trip to Kenya (Drought Monitor installation, etc.).  I missed him, of course, but I got to make the house extra nice for his return, which was fun.  I'm trying to keep it nice too, but that's a bigger challenge.  I've yet to find the perfect balance between anal-retentive and slovenly.

I went to a wedding of two dear friends from college; it was a perfect day and a beautiful wedding.  I also liked seeing so many of my college friends.  I'm working on a wedding quilt for them, but at this point it'll be more like a 1-year-anniversary quilt.  I've got another wedding this month--thankfully it's a low year for weddings.

I caught a baby bunny.  It was much like last year, except the bunny was even smaller (and more stupid) and had a sibling the same size.  It was running in circles in the common garden area and it tired itself out; all I needed to do was bend over and pick it up.  And it ended up outside the community garden this time.  A week later I saw them again, and boy were they a lot faster in running away.

I harvested my first zucchini--10" long.  And then a slew more of them.  And then I made five and a half pints of zucchini relish, my great aunt Elva's recipe.  I tried canning once before--unless you count freezer jam, in which I've done it twice.  Anyway, I tried making pickles, but I was too afraid to eat them, so I just threw them out, even if they were probably alright.  This time, I was obsessive, and I'm sure the relish turned out non-lethal, but I'll have to wait a few months to find out.

I stopped having headaches from my concussion.  And then got a handful more, spaced out.  I think they had more to do with my commute and not eating as regularly those days than the concussion.  At this point I'm pretty much 100% back; even the scar on my cheek is starting to fade nicely.

I learned that lisianthus are called lisianthus.  I've liked these flowers for a while, but I never knew what to call them, and I bought a bouquet of them a flower wholesaler in NYC that's on my way to/from work.  They didn't last cut as long as other flowers have, but that might have been due to my lugging them about NY and on the train, all in hot weather.  I might get some flower seeds for my garden next year, lisianthus or otherwise.

My sister-in-law had her second child, so I have a niece!  I'll get to see their whole family in about two months, so I'm excited for that.

Productivity-wise, I've been playing with a bunch of new things: ActiveInbox and Timing, both of which have free variants that don't expire.  I've also played with Delicious Library 2 to organize and catalog my books.

As I said, lots of stuff going on.  And we've got over half the summer to go...

frost vs. freeze

About two weeks ago, we claimed our garden plot.  We fenced it, carved out and mulched two walking paths, and added some topsoil.  We've planted all of our seeds at this point, though we probably should have waited on some of them, and are in the process of hardening off the indoor-grown plants.

If you look close at the picture to the right, you'll see the stems of the plants are purplish.  That's a good sign that the plants are hardened off.

I have a three-phase system for hardening this year: first, I bring a tray out into the "tube," which is some spare fencing wrapped with plastic to provide windbreak and shade.  (It can only fit one tray at a time, so the process is pipelined.)  The next day, I move the tray outside the tube, but next to it, so it has some shade/windbreak, but less than before.  Finally, I move it out into the open, where it will be planted eventually.

While it's a great system in theory, there have been a few frost warnings recently, so I've had to bring the trays indoors some nights.  I want to wait until we're out of the woods on frosts before finishing up the process and planing everything.

We did plant a few tomatoes as a test, and they're still going strong!  We did a second wave as well, so there are about 30 little tomato plants living it up in our garden right now.  While that sounds like a lot, it's less than a sixth of the total number of tomato plants we currently have.  And there's no way we'll be able to fit them all in our plot.  There are still some open spots, so we might take them over if nobody's claimed them by planting time.

When there's a frost warning, like tonight, I need to cover these plants that are currently in the ground.  I've been covering them with plastic cups and putting a rock on top of each (they're still small enough for that, but barely).  One lady across the garden did nothing for her tomatoes a few days ago, and they went from beautiful, mature, and probably expensive plants to withered, black wraiths.  Another sad story impending: I noticed a plot with freshly-planted tomatoes today, about the same size as mine.  I almost ran home for more cups, but decided that people probably didn't want me to micromanage their garden.  I'd put money on the poor things being dead in the morning, though.

N loves explaining all the hydrological elements of gardening, and was kind enough to explain to me why a frost can happen when the temperature is above freezing, which happened this week.  Basically, while the general air temperature can be around 40 degrees F, pockets of air can dip down to freezing.  If the dew point is right, the dew will freeze, and it's the frozen dew that can rupture the cell walls of sensitive plants, killing them.  Nice bed-time story, no?

green things growing

Behold.

 peppers (poblano).

tomato (yellow pear).

group shot.

(The uber-leggy ones at the bottom are tomatillos.)

I've done almost all of my thinning now; only a few rows remain (the ones in the upper-left of the last picture).  I've replanted some leggy seedlings (with more care than before).  The cabbage is mostly in control, but I don't know what to do about the tomatillos.  They seem to survive anything though, based on last year (in which I got a decent crop despite not hardening my plants off, extreme heat, hurricane, and flood).  My gut says to just let them do their thing.