Saturday, December 5, 2009

It's 1942! And I'm hacking up the Victory Garden for winter.

The winter garden is coming along nicely! Just a few weeks ago I'd let it go all to hell, and due to my laziness, I can see I'm going to have a hard time eradicating all the Oxalis that's made itself at home in my garden. I used to eat the stuff when I was a kid. My friends and I all called it sourgrass, and we'd pick a flower, put the stem in our mouth and chew to release the sour juice. It wasn't until years later I learned that the lovely sour taste was oxalic acid. A toxin.


That lush greenery in the middle of the picture is the oxalis. Not so long ago, the entire yard looked like that, all four quadrants of the garden were just FILLED with the stuff. I couldn't poison it - that's a TERRIBLE idea when you're just about to plant vegetables - and I couldn't just whack off the tops with a weed whacker. That would leave the roots and bulbs belowground to regenerate. So I had to deal with it the long, slow tedious route. I had to pull it all out by hand.

After the first few handfuls, I noticed that only the tops were breaking away, so I sprinkled the area with water and let it soak in for a few minutes, then started plucking them again. This time not only did it go much faster, but the entire root came out with every pluck. Only about 10% of the plants broke off at the top, so I'll still have to go back every week and yank any newbies that have grown in, but that's 90% less work than I'd have to do otherwise, so I'm fine with that.

From this angle you can see some of the pepper plants that are still producing, even though they're starting to look scrawny. They go from left to right, straight through the middle of the picture. The brown thingys against the fence are the remaining summer cornstalks that I have to throw out.


After I'd plucked out all the weeds, I raked up the debris, then went back over and yanked out any strays I might have missed the first time around. I added roughly an inch of compost all over my area and tilled the snot out of it, until the earth was nice and fluffy down to about a foot deep. I used to do this part of the work with a pickaxe and hoe, but I finally splurged this year and bought the smallest tiller I could afford. It cost me $200 and it's paid me back in vegetables and the cost of aspirin ever since. Its paid for itself. I highly recommend using one. So anyway, I tilled it all up (that's why it looks so dark and rich in the picture) and ran my furrows. I planted one long row of multicolored beets along the outside edge, followed by a slightly shorter line of multicolored carrots on the inside. In a week I'll add another line of carrots (I'm trying successive plantings this year) , a line of Parsnips, and a new mystery plant called Salsify. It looks like a skinny white carrot but tastes like oysters when you roast it. There's a black verson and a white version, and right now I'm just trying to decide which one I want to try.




To the left of the dark wedge is the onion patch. I already have reds and yellows growing there, but I left just enough room at the outside for two more rows of Leeks and shallots.

On the right of the wedge is the cabbage patch. I only seem to have enough room for red cabbage this year, but maybe I'll pop in a green cabbage seed if a red doesn't make it. A friend from Hunary just gave me her wonderful recipe for sweet red cabbage. My mouth is just watering thinking about it! I can't wait until I can sacrifice one of these cabbages to my pot!

Directly across the point of this dark wedge of soil is where I'll be growing another heirloom oddity, Romanesco Broccoli. It looks beautiful, doesn't it?
All those marvelous little turrets and spirals, and it's lovely apple-green color. I'm sure it would be wonderful steamed and dipped in gravy, or stir-fried. There are lots of recipes I'd like to try. But most of all I think it will look mysterious and exotic in the garden.


Park Seeds, The Victory Seed Company, and Botanical Interests all sell high-quality heirloom and organic seeds. Renee's Seeds have always been a favorite because I'm a very indecisive person. I want five different kinds of peppers or beets in my garden, but I don't want to buy five different packets of seeds. Renees sells wonderful mixed seeds in a single packet, all color coded so you don't pay for five and yet wind up with only two in your garden anyway. Botanical Interests does the same thing but now to the degree that Renee's does.

Friday, December 4, 2009

It's 1944, and I'm hungry!


...As I'm sure my counterpart was in 1944 after a long day at the factory getting metal shavings down the back of her neck. A few days ago I made a batch of corn chowder from a recipe in one of my rationing cookbooks, but as I was flipping through it I thought the sandwich fillings sounded equal parts bizarre and intriguing. In the spirit of rationing, I'm trying to make do with what already have in the house, since years ago no matter what you wanted, it was tough to get, even if you had the proper number of ration stamps.

I have some cheese, plus salad dressing, plus some green peppers still growing on the leftover plants in my garden, so I settled on cheese filling for my experiment tonight. You can see it at the top middle of the page above. I've accidentally cut off the top of the recipe, but the name of the recipe is the only thing missing. The ingredients begin with cheese and end with Worcestershire sauce. If you're trying this at home, don't accidentally add carrots or Tabasco just because I was too lazy to rescan my page. Those belong to another recipe.

Soybeans are pretty easy to get these days, but I'm not certain how they were packaged in 1944 when this recipe came out. They might have been dried like pinto beans, and cooked in hot water to reconstitute them, or they might have been fresh green edamame pods. I haven't seen advertisements either way, but I have a can of coked soybeans in my pantry, so I figured that would split the difference. In the future, I'll probably work to keep fresh-frozen edamame around the house, since they'd add a good flavor to whatever I put them in.

I cut the cheese into slices to facilitate chopping, then bundled up everything in my food pocessor and pulsed it a few times until everything was even.




My camera gives everything a green tint, so this sandwich filling was just about the color of pimento spread in real life, and a nice thick texture.


Again, forgive the green tint on the pictures, it was a very tasty-looking orange in real life.

And the verdict? It was surprisingly good! I used Thousand Island dressing, and TI plus cheddar cheese is always good on salads, so I guess it should have come as no surprise that this spread would come out so well. The green peppers gave it just the tiniest tang and the soybeans gave a little bit of a crunch to it. I'd say I have enough for four sandwiches, maybe six if I spread it thin. I already ate one sandwich before I wrote this, and I think I'll go back and eat another. In a day or two when I run out, I'll try its neighbor on the right: Carrot Filling.

Thursday, December 3, 2009

It's 2009!

Oh, Lovely, lovely loaf! How tasty you are with butter!

A short break from my time travels today.

A few days ago I read an article about a book, Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. I love making bread, but yeah, it takes a long time and I'm not too crazy about that part. The article, in Mother Earth News, stated that all you have to do is make dough, keep it in the fridge, and then whenever you want bread you just break off a chunk, shape it, let it rise once and bake for 30 minutes. In this way you can have hot, fresh bread in less about two hours, you never have to knead, and the cost is amazingly low. This appealed to my Rationing mindset, so even thought the technique was not in use during wartime, it SHOULD have been. I had to give it a try.

My first experinemt was the basic bread: Flour, yeast, water, salt. That's it. No sugar, no kneading. I baked up a batch and put the rest of the dough in the fridge for later. My first loaf was so golden and beautiful that my husband and I ate it al at once that same night. Luckily, I could shape another loaf and have a second helping within two hours of the first. And there is still abunch left in my fridge for later! For an investment of six cups of flour, I'll be getting at least 5 loaves of bread. And THAT is GREAT!


Mother Earth News is an invaluable magazine for those brave people who want to go to the next level of retro and actually try their hand at living the lifestyle that gramma (or great-gramma) lived. It's also handy for people who are tring to become more self-sufficient, or those who are becoming disillusioned with modern life. There are always articles on organic gardening, raising various kinds of livestock, cooking, and making things like barns or rainbarrels. For the moderns, there are articles on how to put up solar panels and windmills so you can finally tell the power company to shove it. Give it a peek, I think you'll like it.

Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day and its new sibling, Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day, can be purchased at Amazon.com , and you can also visit their website and see what they're experimenting with today.