Canning and Pondering

Can-Do Canning

The clock has struck 11:00 pm as I write this and it is truly the first time that we have stopped all day… and I have just been told I still have a clog in a downstairs sink to deal with--hooray!

I can’t really put a finger on the moment that we lost control of our life here at the swamp farm, but I still have whiplash from being propelled from 0 to 6000 in no time at all! It has been this crazy for so long I can’t remember when it wasn’t. I suppose it started in the early spring? Or was it after the monsoons of the late part of April and May? Or wait, could it have been when the first chicken eggs hatched or perhaps the quail? I just don’t remember and this frenzied pace has become so much a part of my life now that it seems freakishly normal.

We canned green beans today. We didn’t get near as many done as we would have liked but I did get a real cool burn on my arm and that will surely leave a scar, and that is a very manly thing. When it comes to guy-cool, give me a well-placed scar over having a tattoo any day. Scars just say “I am reckless, that’s right, I reach for the farthest rung on the monkey bars, my car had 5-spoke Cragar wheels and Cherry Bomb mufflers, and I don’t wait no danged 30 minutes after I eat to go swimming.” Scars always indicate a tough man. Or at least a foolish man who hopefully knows better next time?

So back to the beans… Sherry and our intrepid helper Tracy picked, tipped, tailed and snapped what I would guess amounts to 2 bushels of long, straight, thick and tender new-growth Jade-variety green beans. Bless their little hearts! They worked like dogs to the end.

As they worked and talked together at the kitchen table with beans flying right and left, it felt good to me as I readied the pressure cookers. Somehow our farm-life canning activity made me feel like we still have a foot dangling, albeit precariously, in old-fashioned tradition while the rest of us is caught up in the modern world. We as a country are dangerously close to forgetting about the value of doing old-fashioned work together, such as putting food by, tilling the earth, tending some chickens or maybe a pig or two. I fear we will be caught some day with no one left to pass on the skills needed to thrive if ever the power grid goes black. Oh, we could adjust, but it would take awhile and we simply are not set up with the raw ingredients or tools to thrive in the case of a long-term blackout, or worse, a food and water shortage.

We could probably figure out how to make a candle, but what about wicks or the wax? How about a making crock pickles? Could you make corn meal or flour? Even if you grow the wheat and corn, could you grind it? And more importantly, where would you get the seed to even start?

I’m just saying that for me to see those girls keeping a tradition alive, and at this point not a cost effective one, makes me feel our grandparents would say, “Well done kids, you make us proud.”

It also makes me feel unbridled from the mega-marts, big corporations, and to some degree, the government. All of these are, to some extent, enabling us as a nation to be nothing but consumers--not innovators, not producers, not self-sufficient self-reliant citizens. For a brief moment this afternoon I felt unshackled from relying on other resources; I was making my own.

I don’t want to be broke, bridled, and branded; I’m a wild Cayuse and have the burn on my arm to prove it.

Now, where did those monkey bars go? I’m feeling dangerous right now and I’m done talk’n, --Matt

Farmers Market Day and How They Regulate My Hamburger

(Bolting cilantro pictured above)

Our 1^st Farmers Market Day This Season

Last Saturday was our first time this year to set up and offer our wonderfully fresh home-grown produce to the patrons of the Minnetrista Farmers Market over in Muncie, Indiana. There’s so much work getting ready for the event, starting early Friday thru Saturday at noon, it’s like your hair is on fire and you are trying to put it out with a fly swatter. After it is over, though, we always look back and say how much fun it was.

I loved seeing and visiting with customers that we had the good fortune to make friends with last year, and to make some new friends, one of which was Daniel and his lovely family. Food friends are wonderful.

Wondering what we took to market? We offered, for the customer’s consideration, Quail eggs, three types of green beans, baby pattypan squash, Swiss chard, Thai basil, cilantro in two styles; mature with roots and young leafy bunches, tomatoes (cherry and standard red), and some beautiful cut flowers. The cilantro sales always surprise me. I’m taken by how much of it we sell. I think we are the only farmers that sell it at the market! Thankfully, the quantity we grow allows us to pick over an extended period of time.

Cilantro is a bit of a rascally herb to grow. Oh, it starts out simple enough. Just till the earth, throw in some seed and wait impatiently for growth. Normally, growth is a good in the garden, but in cilantro’s case, it’s a bit too precocious about it. It matures, flowers and sets seed way too quickly—in other words, it bolts. Most of the time if a leafy green bolts, like a lettuce, it’s finished, done for, kaput, and cilantro in our part of the world is no exception. You can try to stop it from reaching this stage by pinching it back, but like pimples on a pubescent teen, that thick stalk is returning in no time. This is not a problem in Pan Asian cooking because they often time prefer to use a more mature plant, including the stem, root and all, referring to the herb as coriander. (See, you learn something in our blog!)

If the soil around cilantro’s roots gets to 70 degrees and stays awhile, the plant is going to bolt. If you read this and are not familiar with Indiana summers, let me just clarify that they’re hot, hotter than 70 degrees. Short of air conditioning the soil, I don’t have a clue as how to keep cilantro from bolting, so you have to plant in succession to have young growth all the time.

Anyway, we had a great time at the Farmers Market, and our good friend and CSA helper, Tracy, got to tag along and see exactly how inept we are. It's always a joy to share your fallibility's with others. Thankfully for us, she likes cilantro.

I Just Want a Nice Burger

After the Farmers market on Saturday, we head out for lunch to sit and rest awhile. This time we chose to eat at Scotty's Brewhouse, a restaurant not too far from the market. In general, I have enjoyed all the meals I have had there and this one was no exception. Scotty’s is not a five-star restaurant; you can kind of know that just by their name. Brewhouse, to me, conjures up pub food, not a French Michelin-starred restaurant. The restaurant is clean and the wait staff this day was excellent. I ordered the make-your-own-burger entrée, choosing to partner the half-pound of ground chuck with Jalapinos, onion, BBQ sauce, and mozzarella cheese. I also wanted and could not get a fried egg added on top. (Yes, I said a fried egg. Don't knock it till you've tried it--it's a bit of sunshine on top of your burger!)

Now this is where I could easily start to rant royally, but I shall not. I will spare you in today's blog. But I cannot understand the reasoning behind the answer I was given upon asking my waiter who was so gracious in trying to accommodate my special request. To fry an egg on the same grill as the other food, I was told, is a matter of health regulation, some blather about the transference of salmonella to the food that would follow behind the 1000-degree scorching that this hen egg would have endured. Please correct me if I am wrong, but wouldn’t this heat kill any trace of Sal’s Manilla anyway? And isn’t raw ground beef one the biggest carriers of this and about ten other deadly or at least make-you-wish-you-were-dead bacteria? It must be because I was also told of some other health regulation that I wasn’t allowed to order my fried cow carcass any less done than medium.

So let me get this straight. You can join the military service and let bad guys shoot at you and through you, you can run into burning buildings as a career as everone else is running out, you can make a traffic stop all by yourself out in the middle of nowhere in the silence of the night, but it would be way too foolhardy to let you eat a piece of meat cooked to your preference of medium rare on the same grill after having, horror upon horror, a egg fried at the same temperature as that of a Dwarf Star?

In all fairness, I don’t know whose regulations these are, but I really did enjoy my burger and our server was great and a good sport. But these regulations to protect us from ourselves have got to stop! Enough already. Some folks are going to get sick, some are even going to die, but that’s the thing about life--no one gets out alive. Can the bureaucrats just get out of our way so we can get on with living the way we see fit for ourselves? To say one is “living” but is afraid to put this or that food cooked this or that way in their mouth, well, to me that ain’t living. 

And while we're at it, stop hindering the small farmer with bizarre regulations that are insurmountable for a small scale operation and favor the big corporate operations that produce 100 percent of the food-bourne problems that in turn cause the implementation of all these crazy regulations to begin with! Okay, maybe I did rant a little bit again.

Well I’m done talk’n. Remember, play with your food. --Matt

 

A Rooster Harvest

A Rooster Harvest

Well, more a reckoning, really. Nobody likes a surly rooster, or a surly person for that matter. But for now, until the law changes, here at the Gunter farm it’s only the roosters that pay a heavy price for their I-will-do-whatever-I-want-and-to-whomever-I-want-to attitude. If there was a way for you to smell the aroma emanating from the pot on my stove at this very moment you would not have to be told what that price was!

“Just doing what’s natural” my eye. Let’s see any one of those wannabe Romeos gather 45 hens up in the wild and keep them in a 150 by 50 foot area just for their entertainment. It can’t be done, especially while keeping an eye out for critters that like to eat chickens more than I love a hot dog, all the while trying to scratch out food to keep themselves alive. There’s no free lunch in the wild. And here at the farm, there’s no pinning down and dragging your fellow detainees around the barnyard just cause you can. I learned this the hard way here at the swamp, soon after my marriage to Sherry Darl’n, that this rule is enforced with a heavy hand. The point is--you can’t always act like an ogre just because it seems natural; I’m still writing this on the chalkboard 5000 times.

What started out as one rooster acting out of hand quickly spread to three as it seemed to be a timed event among the boy’s to see which one could tick off the farmer and his bride the quickest. With all seeming equally good at it, I saw no reason they couldn’t all be crowned king, or should I say de-crowned? Had it not been so hot and late in the day we wouldn’t have any singing Casanovas left at all in the barnyard as they are all past due for their date with the freezer for a long winters nap. As it was, only the most troublesome three were dispatched this day.

Moments from writing this, we will be enjoying our first young chicken with noodles and freshly dug Yukon Gold potatoes, mashed and covered with real sweet cream butter. These will be joined with garden fresh Roma green beans freshly picked, tipped, tailed, and broken into bight size pieces, cooked with some baby Cipollini onions and fried bacon pieces and maybe a little lard for good measure, served piping hot with about five squares of butter melted over the top. Six ears of Indiana sun drenched sweet corn should do a nice job of rounding out the plate with a generous slathering of butter, and a pinch of salt and pepper for me, each corn kernel dripping sunshine. Of course we will have to have a plate of vine ripened Indiana tomatoes sliced thick and anointed with salt and pepper. Sliced white bread or maybe biscuits hot out of the oven topped with blackberry jelly will finish things off. Isn't it amazing how one unruly chicken can make such a lovely dinner?

So there you have it, try to be nice to everyone you meet or someone may have you over for dinner, if you know what I mean.

I’m done talk’n, Matt  

Who Cut the Cheese?

(picture from their website)

First, the Rant

We had the opportunity on Thursday to be in the Carmel area and to be more specific, visit the Whole Foods grocery store. Whole Foods is one of the stores with which I have a love/hate relationship. I am, admittedly, kind of creeped out by the whole hippie-vibe thing, the whole “I’m cool, you’re cool, dress however you want at work, if you find your dad’s tackle box open and you see something in there that’s shiny just stick it in your lip or ear or some other excruciatingly painful place” thing.  Under the whole hippie-vibe attitude, it’s team this, team that--no real boss names, just team leaders and assistant team leaders. There are no workers at Whole Foods, just “team members.”

Okay, I get it and I know that some of you are saying “Matt, you are kind of a non-conformist/activist yourself at fifty years of age with kind of long hair, goatee, flip-flops and seeking self-reliance on that little organic farm out there in your swamp.”  I agree. Heck, I came perilously close to getting a very masculine “MOM” tattooed on my arm while serving in the Marine Corps, “Ooh-Rah,” but I can’t stand the look of pain on my face, so I drew the tat on with a Bic and called it a day… that and MOM said I couldn’t get one.

But, here’s the rub for me--why does Whole Foods have to be so danged expensive? You know they’re paying these poor young “I’m just expressing myself,” Mohawk-wearing folks better than minimum wage, but not much. I did some checking and it looks like salaries range from around nine dollars an hour to twenty five dollars, with most falling in the lower ranges.

Someone’s getting rich and it’s not the environmentally-organic-friendly kids who work there. And I think that’s great that someone’s making money, I really, really do. I support capitalism. But it’s not the farmer making money in this grocery store gimmick, and it’s not the young people working there.

Whole Foods has packaged themselves as this earth-shoe-wearing-just-want-to-make-enough-to-get-by, but I’m-glad-to-do-it-cause-I-care-about-the-earth-and-the-people-that-live-in-it organization. To this I say, hogwash--not at the prices they charge. $4.99 a pound for hot peppers? I can’t get by charging a dollar a pound for my peppers. I should be able to get a dollar a pound or more for my peppers because I’m doing true organic growing which does cost more to produce, but I can’t take advantage of people for it, not like Whole Foods can. With real organic gardening you can’t spray for weeds and must spend hours hand pulling them, and you rack up a lot of loss to bugs and others pests and problems. It’s a lot of work. Organic gardening costs more, I get that, but it doesn't mean you can take advantage of people just because of the "organic" label.

Listen, it’s not sour grapes for me. I am a full-blooded-make-all-you-can-capitalist myself. I want to be rich, also. But I don’t want to take advantage of people to do it.

Make no mistake; the people behind Whole Foods are capitalists, too, just like me except I don’t soft-sell it. It’s the same reason I don’t care for Steven Segal action movies. I’m sure Mr. Segal is a wonderful fellow and as tough as a hogs nose, but come on--it questions my intelligence (or is that entalagance?). I have never gotten a gun to shoot 47 times with a 9 round clip. How do you get 47 shots with 9 bullets? And this is just a guess on my part, but if you fought six guys and they all had guns, wouldn’t one of them shoot you rather than go through all the physical activity of kung-fu fighting?

My point is it’s misleading! I hate that, and I don’t think real hippies like it any better than I do. If you’re an expensive organic chain store just say so. If you’re Wal-Mart with a twist, own it.

After having exercised my bottled- up rant by saying all this, I must also confess that I find a lot to love about Whole Foods. Their stores are bright and inviting. The product is stacked and displayed in a very inviting fashion. They have really cool stuff, stuff you can’t really get any place else. And I really dig the bulk bins of grains and cereals. I also like that they employ a lot of people and they pay a lot of taxes. Not that I like taxes, I hate taxes, but if you are going to attack corporate greed, you have to remember how much they contribute to the federal budget in taxes.

On To the Cheese

Now to get to my topic, Who Cut The Cheese. Sherry and I did. Sherry Darl’n and I found ourselves at the cheese counter of the Whole Foods in Carmel, Indiana. Man, what a great place for a foodie! Cheese, cheese and more cheese, and they will let you sample a lot of it. Sample we did, and we bought more than we could afford seeing as how my ship is evidently floundering at sea and hasn’t come in yet. We bought about five very small pieces of different exotic imported cheeses. This group included the following: Asiago Fresco Italian (11.99 a pound, we bought 3 bucks worth), Roth Kase Private Reserve Raw Milk Cheese (10.99 a pound, our cut about 4 bucks), Pecorino Toscano Fresco Sheep’s milk cheese (17.99 a pound, we snagged a chunk at $2.70), Ewephoria sheep’s milk cheese from Holland (17.99, our piece totalled $4.14), and Parrano Uniekaas Dutch Cheese (10.99 a pound, we bought about 4 dollars’ worth).

The next day, we had a little blind taste-test of our pressed and aged curds. We liked them all, loved a couple and wouldn’t you know our favorite was my all-time favorite cheese, the Parrano. Keep in mind this was a blind tasting. Sherry also voted it number one. Parrano has a very buttery, somewhat sharp taste. It dances on your tongue and makes your taste buds sing. If you ever stumble across it, give it a try.

Our second favorite was the Ewephoria. It was not as sharp as the Parrano, but it’s no wimp ether; nice and creamy.

The others were good too, but I don’t think I would buy them again, especially not at that price.

Well, I’m done rant’n and talk’n for now. President Obama, if you’re reading this blog, could I please get some bailout or stimulus money? I made a bad business decision and shopped at Whole Foods, and now I’m broke.  I ate all the cheese, too.

--Best regards, Matt

From Itchin' to Kitchen

Back to the Briar Patch

Mom only raised one fool in my family, so on this trip into hells fury I outfitted myself with armor suited for an encounter with such a capable adversary like this herbaceous hydra—the blackberry patch. I looked like I was ready for Thunder Dome and had the confidence to go with it. Today I would match wits with my multi headed nemesis, the blackberries!

Oh, in my mind I would ride up to the field of battle on a steed of great strength, about 19 hands tall. He would be the color of the sun, with muscles bulging beneath his sinewy skin and nostrils flared out like the ram air hood scoop on a 1972 Ford Gran Torino, and his feet as big as platters. He’s a mount fitting of the noblest of gentry.

I would announce to all in the field, “surrender, your fate has already been cast, nothing but doom for all who resist.” As the trumpets cried their last note, I would take the bounty of the land. Ballads would be sung and legends of the battle would be passed on for generations.

All of this would have to wait, of course, until I had a nap. It was nearly noon after all.

Truth be told, I was goaded into the horrible picking process again by my delicate flower, my wife Sherry. Oh, there was no malice on her part. She just mentioned she was going to pick berries and she did. I was taken without a shot being fired; guilt is my kryptonite when it comes to her. I would never want her to think I didn’t support her, so I soon found myself head high in the bramble patch.

She and I did capture a sizeable amount of berries, seven pounds to be exact. They shall be enjoyed throughout the winter in some form of jam, cobbler or pie.

This Week’s Garden News

In this week’s CSA harvest bag was a curious little item called a Mexican sour gherkin, also known as a cucumber. I snapped a picture of them so you could see what these cucumbers look like. These little cuties taste a bit sour with a hint of lemon. They are no bigger than an elongated grape and have the very appealing look of a teeny tiny striped watermelon. I’m sure they would be great pickled but I like to just pop them straight into my mouth.

Sherry also included, as a gift for our members, a beautiful bouquet of fresh cut flowers from her flower garden in this week's harvest bags. The flowers are not a normal part of the weekly share, just a gift from us to them. We sure appreciate their support.

Favorite Kitchen Things

I also want to share with you three of my favorite kitchen things. These are things that I have found to work as advertised. There is so much cheap stuff being made today and being hocked by such skilled pitchman that it isn’t always easy to get the real scoop on something that really works and works well.

So here are three of my favorite kitchen items in no particular order:

Number 1-- My 20+ year old, fire engine red, KitchenAid, orbital, stand mixer. No, not because it’s fire engine red, although that is way cool. It’s because it works, and has worked without fail for 20 some years. It will mix cookie dough like a regular mixer handles eggs. It’s like an Atlas Ready Mix cement truck, mixing a four bag mix. It’ll get it done. So, you’re gonna need one of those. And don’t go for any that are smaller than 300 watts.

Number 2-- A Forschner, Fibrox 10 inch chef’s knife made by the Victorinox Company, Model Number 40521. The Victorinox folks make the Swiss army knife. You can pay a lot more for a knife but you will be hard pressed to find a better one. Cooks Illustrated magazine consistently rates it a best buy. It still sells for a bit less than 30 bucks. Oh, don’t give me that, “you spend more than that at the movie, and that’s just for snacks!” Buy it--you’ll like it. Besides, it will last you a lifetime and wouldn’t you like cut yourself with a good knife for once?

Number 3-- is a cookbook, “50 Chowders, One Pot Meals-Clam, Corn and Beyond.” The author is the famous chef, Jasper White. I know it’s kind of a one trick pony with chowder, the specialty, but what a great collection of make-you-want-to-hug-yourself-it-feels-so-good comfort food. Man, if you don’t like a nice thick chowder on a cold gray winter’s day, your bobber don’t go all the way down. The New England clam chowder with its inclusion of cumin powder is to die for, in my opinion.

Along with great recipes in the first 57 pages, Jasper White teaches you chowder history, about broths and ingredients, and it’s packed full of chef’s notes and tips that help you understand the process. You will be a better all-around cook for it.

Have you ever heard of pilot crackers? Me either. I found some once after Jasper mentioned them in this cookbook. They are really fun! They’re a big, thick cracker about the length and width of a football field. Just kidding, they’re really about the size of Graham cracker except real thick.

I have cooked many of the soups and haven’t found a stinker among them. If I could afford to buy a gift for all of my family and friends, this book would be one of those things, and I would be grinin’ like a Cheshire cat knowing how good it is and how much love will be given and taken from it.

Well I’m done talk’n, --Matt

Blackberries and Pickled Quail Eggs

This Week’s Happenings at Gunter’s Gourmet Garden

Berries

Blackberries are wicked little berries that do not want to be found and harvested. When found, they will fight with the tenacity of a world heavyweight champ that has the benefit of a thousand switchblade knives trying to keep from being taken alive. I don’t know if this holds true with cultivated varieties as I have only been violated by the wild variety. As I write this, I am cut from top to bottom. I even have scratches on the bottom of my feet.

Sherry and I ventured into a thicket at the farm this week and had we not maintained constant verbal contact, which consisted mostly of “ouch” and “wow that hurts,” one of us surely would have been lost to the berry thicket monster. Little shop of horrors had nothing on these plants.

We did manage a respectful 8 pounds of berries before our assault was turned back. We will soon turn our hard-fought plunder into a sweet jam that will grace the tops of warm buttermilk biscuits with sweet cream butter.

Quail

The quail have certainly been a learning experience, most of it fun and some of it definitely not expected. Who knew that when the male Coturnix quail matures in a very rapid 6 weeks he becomes very amorous, even to his own ilk? It is disturbing. On the flip side, the female also matures at light speed and are already providing us with a steady supply of the dandiest little eggs you have ever seen.

Now there is another thing I wasn’t aware of… quail eggs have a very thin shell but have a thick membrane. This makes the old, whack-the-egg-on-the-side-of-the-skillet-and-empty-the-contents technique a practice best left to chicken eggs. The quail shell just shatters into a thousand small fragments that I find offensive in my sunny side up’s.

You have to adjust your strategy for opening quail eggs to include a small knife or a particular instrument built for just such a task that looks like a cross between a cigar cutter and a scissor.

I really enjoyed my first plate of fried quail eggs and toast just the other day. They taste, to my palate anyway, just like a chicken egg. I used a ratio of 3 quail eggs to one small chicken egg for my breaking of the fast (breakfast).

I also made pickled eggs using the quail eggs. To do this, you boil a bunch of eggs for a mere three minutes and cool quickly with cold water. Now the tricky part is next… remember the thin shell, thick membrane spoken of earler? Well here’s how you deal with that issue. You place the now cooled boiled eggs in a pan of vinegar covering the eggs to one inch above them. This next part is really cool, those eggs will start rolling and shaking and rocking like they are possessed and in no time the brown spots on the eggs will roll off like a decal for a model car. That’s cool yes, but in about 4 to 12 hours the shell will dissolve all together and leave that thick membrane rubbery and easy to get a hold of that makes pealing it off much easier, leaving you with a bite size hardboiled egg.

If you can refrain from popping all of these little quail fruits into your mouth, you can use your favorite chicken egg pickling recipe to make a jar of gourmet pickled quail eggs.

Well I need to go and dress my wounds now. I’m done talk’n, Matt.