Garden Storm

Hmmm....  Well, I missed a week of posts due to being sick and working hard on a mayoral race I'm helping with.  And then came this (see photo).  We had a big storm Saturday night that dropped more limbs and branches than I thought possible onto our backyard.  Note the flattened greenhouse.  I was going to start digging and sampling some of our perennial root crops, but things are bit hard to get to right now.  Hopefully the sun will shine, the air will warm up, and the snow will melt just enough for me to get at some more tasty treats before winter really settles in for the long haul. 

We took the opportunity to hack back the banana trees for the season.  While we were at it we found a couple figs that were ready.  So we enjoyed the fresh figs while looking out at snow and ice.  How strange!

Enchanted Bottle Gourd

This year we experimented with growing a Bottle Gourd, or calabash.  We planted one out front, and one in the greenhouse.  The one in the greenhouse grew so big it exploded out of the greenhouse and draped down, out, and over our blueberry bushes, like a green lava flow.  The one in front chose to grow up a pole, so we gave it a string and it grew across it and back down the other side to make a beautiful arch over the sidewalk. 

The arch became a fixture in our neighborhood this summer.  I would often see teenagers walk by, stop under the arch, and show each other the flowers.  People enjoyed walking under it, and it lent some enchantment to the street, encouraging people to stop for a minute in their travels and admire this vibrant plant.  We ate its shoots this spring and they were quite tasty.  This one in the picture was growing a great, large gourd this fall.  Someone cut it off and took it over the weekend.  I hope they are enjoying it!

The Persimmon Needs No Recipe

The persimmon is my favorite fruit in the whole garden.  It is a full gourmet dessert in and of itself.  Have you tried one?  It tastes like brandied caramel apricots on butterscotch-vanilla pudding.  No joke.  They are fabulous.  Exquisite.  AWESOME!!!!  They are in season right now and each morning I creep out to see if any have fallen from the tree.  You have to time it just right.  If you get impatient and try to eat them before they're ripe (before they've fallen) beware!  As a friend said, if you eat them when they're under-ripe you'll feel like your face is turning inside out.  Astringent!  And if you wait too long, the squirrels will have eaten them first.  That's why I check for them daily.  Eating a persimmon is one of the great joys in life.  I savor it and remember that life is good.  It's like eating a sunset.

Last Hurrah Pesto

Fall is certainly here.  It's 6:00 right now and almost dark!  Today we harvested some lingering greens to make a pesto for tomorrow's Edible Forest Garden Workshop.  I used a variety from the garden: Thai basil, perennial arugula, parsley, and kale.

Thai basil, perennial arugula, parsley, and kale leaves for pesto

I rinsed off the greens and then put them in a plastic bag and beat them with a rolling pin.  I've read that roughing them up like that is a good way to release the cracken.  No, I mean to release the flavor.

Releasing the flavor (how often do you get to hit something with a rolling pin?  Fun!)

Then I combined the greens with some roasted garlic cloves, olive oil, and salt and blended them up, traditional pesto style.  Put the green awesomeness in a bowl and mixed in a healthy dose of parmesan cheese (I do love parmesan, as some of you know.)

Finished product: Last Hurrah Pesto

Tomorrow the guests for our workshop will have this for lunch and we'll find out how it turned out!  It tasted pretty good on a spoon, so I'm expecting good things.

Chestnut Puree

Sunday night I tried my hand at the famous Hungarian Chestnut Puree (Gestenyepure).  It wasn't the same as my host mother used to make it, but it was quite good!

First I roasted a pound and a half of chestnuts.  We had four people helping to cut "X"s into the shells so that the nuts could expand without exploding (yes, we have had explosions before).  I spread the nuts out on a cookie sheet, sprinkled some water on top, and roasted them for about 25 minutes at 425 degrees.  When they were done, I took them out of the oven and we cooled them briefly before peeling the shells off.  I put the shelled, roasted nuts in the food processor and chopped them up as finely as I could.  The way I had this dessert in Hungary the nuts must have been ground nearly to a flour consistency.  My chopped chestnuts ended up in bigger chunks than that, sort of like ground walnuts. 

I set the chestnuts aside and mixed 1/4 cup water and 3/4 cup sugar in a saucepan and set it on the stove to simmer and create a simple syrup.  When the syrup was ready I combined it with the ground nuts in a medium sized bowl.  In retrospect I would use less syrup.  It was very sweet, and my sweet tooth is rather small!  Then I added some whole milk, maybe a tablespoon or two, and a tablespoon or two of rum.  Stirred it up and set it in the fridge while we ate dinner.  After dinner I made some whipped cream, and served the chilled puree with whipped cream on top.  We ended up mixing the whipped cream into the puree, and a few hardy souls added even more rum and said it was great. It was a delicious, filling, chestnutty dessert.  So good!

Roasted Yam Berries

Jonathan's parents are visiting and we just had a foraged lunch.  Gwen and Ralph brought boiled peanuts from the south, we supplied some homemade pear juice from our neighbor's pear tree, and we roasted up some chestnuts and the yam berries (aka Chinese Yam or Cinnamon Vine)!  (Oh, and there are some huckleberry chocolate cordials in there for good measure.)

Today's foraged lunch

In the past we've boiled the yam berries, or "air potatoes" as we like to call them.  But I thought roasting would be a good idea, and they came out great!  It was so easy.  I went out the door and harvested them, just shaking the vines slightly and collecting the little guys in a bowl.  Came in and separated the berries from the other dried leaves and flowers and stuff that got in the bowl.  Then I added some olive oil to coat them, and sprinkled a generous amount of salt on top.  I spread them out on a cookie sheet, and popped them in the oven that was heated to 425 degrees.  After about 12 minutes I tested them with a fork and they were completely tender, even though they were hard like marbles when I put them in.  They tasted great!  What a fun party food, perfect for a foraged lunch!

Roasted berries from the Chinese Yam (Dioscorea batatas)

Jonathan's mom, Gwen, with the roasted yam berries

PawPaw Wine

Yes, we made wine. Or actually, mead. Jonathan started it a few months ago. We got inspired by Sandor Katz's Wild Fermentation, and used his honey wine recipe.  Jonathan combined frozen pawpaw fruit pulp from the previous year, honey, and water, and started it fermenting in a wide mouthed container with a towel on top. After a few days he moved the concoction into a gallon jug with an airlock on top. It took several rounds of straining to get the taste just right. Sweet, fruity, with a little zing. Just delightful. We had some last week and it was perfect. We had some last night and it had gotten a little yeasty. There is clearly an art to making homemade wine.  We'll just have to try it again!  Here we are with the wine and one of the pawpaws.