For salsa
-2 plum tomatoes, coarsely chopped
-1/3 cup chopped white onion
-2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro
-1 to 2 tablespoons chopped pickled jalapeño chiles
-1 tablespoon fresh lime juice
For fritters
-2 ears corn, shucked
-1 large egg
-1/2 cup milk
-1/3 cup yellow cornmeal
-2 1/2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
-1/4 teaspoon salt
-2 to 3 tablespoons vegetable oil
Accompaniment: sour cream
Make salsa:
Stir together all salsa ingredients and season with salt.
Make fritters:
Cut corn kernels from ears and scrape cobs to extract juice, then discard cobs. Whisk together egg and milk until smooth and stir in cornmeal, flour, and salt. Stir in corn, including juice.
Heat 1 tablespoon oil in a 12-inch nonstick skillet over moderate heat until hot but not smoking, then drop in 2 tablespoons batter each for 4 fritters. Fry until lightly browned, about 2 minutes per side, and drain on paper towels. Make more fritters in same manner, adding oil as necessary.
Serve fritters with salsa.
From: Gourmet Magazine, 2000. Epicurious.com
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Grilled Herb Potatoes
Ingredients:
• 2 pounds large Yukon Gold or other yellow-fleshed potatoes
• 1/4 cup chopped mixed herbs such as parsley, chives, rosemary, and oregano
• 2 garlic cloves, smashed
• 1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 lemon wedge plus additional for serving
To Prepare:
• Prepare a gas grill for direct-heat cooking over medium-high heat; Cut potatoes into 1/2-inch-thick slices and cook in a large pot of well-salted boiling water 10 minutes (potatoes will not be cooked through).
• Meanwhile, stir together herbs, garlic, oil, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 1/4 teaspoon pepper in a large shallow dish.
• Drain potatoes well and transfer to herb oil, tossing gently to coat.
• Transfer potatoes to grill, letting excess oil drip into dish (reserve oil in dish). Grill potatoes, covered, turning once or twice, until tender, about 5 minutes total. Return potatoes to dish and toss again with herb oil. Squeeze lemon wedge over potatoes. Season with salt and serve with additional lemon wedges.
• Cooks' note: Potatoes can be cooked in a hot grill pan 10 to 12 minutes.
From: Maggie Ruggiero Gourmet Magazine 2009. Epicurious.com
• 2 pounds large Yukon Gold or other yellow-fleshed potatoes
• 1/4 cup chopped mixed herbs such as parsley, chives, rosemary, and oregano
• 2 garlic cloves, smashed
• 1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 lemon wedge plus additional for serving
To Prepare:
• Prepare a gas grill for direct-heat cooking over medium-high heat; Cut potatoes into 1/2-inch-thick slices and cook in a large pot of well-salted boiling water 10 minutes (potatoes will not be cooked through).
• Meanwhile, stir together herbs, garlic, oil, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 1/4 teaspoon pepper in a large shallow dish.
• Drain potatoes well and transfer to herb oil, tossing gently to coat.
• Transfer potatoes to grill, letting excess oil drip into dish (reserve oil in dish). Grill potatoes, covered, turning once or twice, until tender, about 5 minutes total. Return potatoes to dish and toss again with herb oil. Squeeze lemon wedge over potatoes. Season with salt and serve with additional lemon wedges.
• Cooks' note: Potatoes can be cooked in a hot grill pan 10 to 12 minutes.
From: Maggie Ruggiero Gourmet Magazine 2009. Epicurious.com
Vegetable Facts
This graphic was created by Amanda Bonacci, one of our Saul High School summer interns. Amanda will be in 12th grade next year.
Stuffed Zucchini or Summer Squash
Select 5 medium squash. Cut in half crosswise, and hollow out. Chop 1 medium onion. Saute in 2 Tb. olive oil until soft. Remove pan from heat and add ½ c. raw white rice, 2 Tb. chopped straight leaf parsley, 1 ½ Tb. chopped fresh dill, ¼ c. dried currants, and 2 Tb. squash corings, chopped finely. Also add salt and pepper to taste, and ¼ c. pignoli nuts. Make a “broth” by mixing 1 t. tamari with 1 c. water, and moisten the uncooked rice with a few tablespoons of this. Stuff zucchini with rice mixture. Place in pan and add “broth” to ½” deep in pan. Cover with foil and bake at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for ½ hour. Serve with plain yogurt on top.
From: The Political Palate by the Bloodroot collective.
From: The Political Palate by the Bloodroot collective.
A Perspective on Late Blight
By Nicole Sugerman
Not fixating on late blight is difficult for me this season. As a young farmer riding an upward-trending high of local food enthusiasm and growing popular support, the late blight is a hard reality check. No matter how strong the local foods movement, chemical-free farming is risky work. Seasoned farmers, while struck by the severity of the late blight this season, have seen widespread blights and diseases before. For me and my young-farmer peers, this is our first. Sure, I have lost crops each season I have farmed, to insects, to diseases, to fungi. But this is far scarier, and while I have always known that farming is unpredictable and risky, this really proves it, rather unpleasantly.
Late blight travels fast and does devastating damage. Everyone can, and is, getting it, regardless of the health of our plants or the alertness of our watch for it. I keep fighting urges to whine unproductive accusations of unfairness at the natural forces that made this late blight possible; why did the blight have to be on tomatoes, the single most popular and highest grossing crop for so many small farms?
The story of late blight, though, is not just a story of “natural disasters happen to organic farmers.” Like most ‘natural’ events in the 21st century, this one was shaped and constructed in fascinating ways by human-made systems and set-ups.
Late blight usually does not get the chance to thrive quite so favorably. In the North, it is killed by cold winters, and in the South, the summers are too hot and dry to allow its spread. The story of 2009’s Late Blight is a story of large-scale agriculture; the blight was mainly introduced through transplants that were grown in the South, where the blight lived over the winter in warm greenhouses, then infected plants that were shipped and sold through Loews, Home Depot, K-Mart, and Wal-marts in the northeast. Only by raising transplants on a very large, centralized, scale could the late blight infect so many transplants at once, and only through an agriculture that has normalized the practice of shipping these transplants hundreds of miles could they have then been dispersed to so many different areas much farther North, therefore spreading quickly and efficiently.
The Late Blight tale is also one of large corporate chains versus small, local, nurseries and shops. Corporations’ critics have long noted that high turnover rates, low pay, and little skill-training often results in chain store staffs who have considerably less in-depth subject knowledge than the staffs of the stores’ independently owned counterparts. In a local nursery, plants with late blight would have been quickly identified and destroyed. In a Wal-mart or a Home depot, however, the breadth of products sold is so wide that many of the stores have no collective staff knowledge of plant pathology. Because more and more of the items we buy come from the same few chain stores, stores that often foster low worker wages and high worker turnover, specialized knowledge of many of the goods we purchase is lost. Thus, the late-blighted transplants were sent out to gardeners unnoticed, where the spores proliferated and infected more plants.
The last stage is the only ‘natural’ stage of the late blight saga. The summer of 2009 has been unusually cool and wet, creating a perfect climate for the Late Blight to flourish. This confluence of factors has led to an unfortunately damaging situation for vegetable growers. So far, we are successfully keeping our tomato plants alive by spraying with an organic-approved copper hydroxide fungicide. I hear differing accounts of the long term efficacy of copper sprays, so the best we can do is keep our fingers crossed.
The feeling I most associate with my thoughts of late blight is an overwhelming thankfulness to all of you for agreeing to support the “Henry Got Crops!” Farm in a way that is uncoupled to direct crop sales; while I hate the possibility of disappointing you, the shareholders, with a lessened yield of tomatoes this season, it would be far worse to go out of business in our first year of operation, as we might have if we were relying on strong tomato sales to carry us. And the best news is that for now, there are still plenty of big, juicy, heirloom tomatoes to go around.
Further perspectives on Late Blight:
Dan Barber, New York Times Op-ed. “You Say Tomato, I say Agricultural Disaster”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/opinion/09barber.html?pagewanted=1
MK Wyle, Civileats Blog. “Tomato Disappointment”
http://civileats.com/2009/07/28/battling-late-blight-in-the-north-east/
Not fixating on late blight is difficult for me this season. As a young farmer riding an upward-trending high of local food enthusiasm and growing popular support, the late blight is a hard reality check. No matter how strong the local foods movement, chemical-free farming is risky work. Seasoned farmers, while struck by the severity of the late blight this season, have seen widespread blights and diseases before. For me and my young-farmer peers, this is our first. Sure, I have lost crops each season I have farmed, to insects, to diseases, to fungi. But this is far scarier, and while I have always known that farming is unpredictable and risky, this really proves it, rather unpleasantly.
Late blight travels fast and does devastating damage. Everyone can, and is, getting it, regardless of the health of our plants or the alertness of our watch for it. I keep fighting urges to whine unproductive accusations of unfairness at the natural forces that made this late blight possible; why did the blight have to be on tomatoes, the single most popular and highest grossing crop for so many small farms?
The story of late blight, though, is not just a story of “natural disasters happen to organic farmers.” Like most ‘natural’ events in the 21st century, this one was shaped and constructed in fascinating ways by human-made systems and set-ups.
Late blight usually does not get the chance to thrive quite so favorably. In the North, it is killed by cold winters, and in the South, the summers are too hot and dry to allow its spread. The story of 2009’s Late Blight is a story of large-scale agriculture; the blight was mainly introduced through transplants that were grown in the South, where the blight lived over the winter in warm greenhouses, then infected plants that were shipped and sold through Loews, Home Depot, K-Mart, and Wal-marts in the northeast. Only by raising transplants on a very large, centralized, scale could the late blight infect so many transplants at once, and only through an agriculture that has normalized the practice of shipping these transplants hundreds of miles could they have then been dispersed to so many different areas much farther North, therefore spreading quickly and efficiently.
The Late Blight tale is also one of large corporate chains versus small, local, nurseries and shops. Corporations’ critics have long noted that high turnover rates, low pay, and little skill-training often results in chain store staffs who have considerably less in-depth subject knowledge than the staffs of the stores’ independently owned counterparts. In a local nursery, plants with late blight would have been quickly identified and destroyed. In a Wal-mart or a Home depot, however, the breadth of products sold is so wide that many of the stores have no collective staff knowledge of plant pathology. Because more and more of the items we buy come from the same few chain stores, stores that often foster low worker wages and high worker turnover, specialized knowledge of many of the goods we purchase is lost. Thus, the late-blighted transplants were sent out to gardeners unnoticed, where the spores proliferated and infected more plants.
The last stage is the only ‘natural’ stage of the late blight saga. The summer of 2009 has been unusually cool and wet, creating a perfect climate for the Late Blight to flourish. This confluence of factors has led to an unfortunately damaging situation for vegetable growers. So far, we are successfully keeping our tomato plants alive by spraying with an organic-approved copper hydroxide fungicide. I hear differing accounts of the long term efficacy of copper sprays, so the best we can do is keep our fingers crossed.
The feeling I most associate with my thoughts of late blight is an overwhelming thankfulness to all of you for agreeing to support the “Henry Got Crops!” Farm in a way that is uncoupled to direct crop sales; while I hate the possibility of disappointing you, the shareholders, with a lessened yield of tomatoes this season, it would be far worse to go out of business in our first year of operation, as we might have if we were relying on strong tomato sales to carry us. And the best news is that for now, there are still plenty of big, juicy, heirloom tomatoes to go around.
Further perspectives on Late Blight:
Dan Barber, New York Times Op-ed. “You Say Tomato, I say Agricultural Disaster”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/opinion/09barber.html?pagewanted=1
MK Wyle, Civileats Blog. “Tomato Disappointment”
http://civileats.com/2009/07/28/battling-late-blight-in-the-north-east/
Reflections from August
August 10th, 2009
By Nicole Sugerman
When it’s my week to “bottom-line” writing the newsletter (Nina and I take turns), I usually like to write the most substantial article first. Usually, I sit down at my computer and free-write about whatever has been on my mind in the last couple weeks. Today, I sat down and stared at my computer rather blankly for close to half an hour. “That’s funny,” I thought to myself, “is there really nothing on my mind at all?” And then I realized, of course not. It’s August.
Perhaps I am being just a bit dramatic. Of course I still think in August. But I definitely think less. As a couple of us farmers were discussing over lunch today, August is the hardest month for many of us. August tests my determination, my tolerance for monotony, and my ability to keep the big picture in mind. In August, farming’s romanticism wears thin, revealing underneath dripping sweat, and endless, endless, harvests.
I think that’s really what precipitates the August lows. The harvests just keep getting bigger and bigger. Of course this is an exciting, glorious thing—to harvest vegetables is why one farms, really—but the harvests grow to an overwhelming extent. The farm’s fecundity becomes almost unmanageable. Harvest times creep earlier into our mornings and later into our afternoons, until we have maybe two or three portions of time in each week to devote to the entirety of the other farm tasks. It’s not that harvesting is an unpleasant task. Harvesting is actually really fun. Collecting and preparing the products of our labor is deeply satisfying, and big harvests are what we live for; if the harvests were not big, something would be very wrong. However, the harvest also becomes amazingly repetitive. I crave the chance to do another task—“how nice it would be to prepare the bed over there for planting,” I think, “or to weed those carrots, or those beets, or those leeks, or those rutabagas, or that chard. . .”
The entire farm, as a matter of fact, starts to have a little bit of a weed problem in August. There is this aspirational myth in organic farming of the “weed-free” organic farm. The weed-free farm is supposedly possible through the diligent, on-the-ball removal of every weed on a farm before a single one drops its seed back into the fields. If this regimen is (heroically) maintained over a long enough time, a farmer can exhaust the bank of weed seed in the soil, and effectively eliminate weeds on the farm. My farmer friends and I admiringly cite names of farmers reputed to have attained weedless status. I have yet to see such a farm, but I stubbornly hold onto the possibility of its existence. That is, until August comes each year. In August, the possibility of our farm ever attaining anything close to a weedless state is dashed, as weeds flower and spread their seeds liberally throughout the entire farm. I watch the three-foot spiny amaranth drop seed in the peppers as the perennial grasses contaminate the blackberry beds. “No time to deal with that now,” I think wistfully, “I have to harvest 200 pounds of tomatoes.” And 140 ears of corn. And all of the potatoes. It really does not stop.
Our ability to push through August, though, proves humans’ resilience and endurance, as well as farmers’ deep love for what we do. I really do think less, and let my stamina take over, carrying me through the late summer by the sheer will to farm and the mutual support of the crew. Last year, Nina and I would take turns listing off what we were thankful for and what we loved about our jobs when we felt the mid-season lows. We try to keep morale high, by taking a slightly longer lunch break, or letting one crew member get ice cream sandwiches for all. We start daydreaming about what we will do this winter.
My most successful tactic for pushing on through August is keeping the macro-picture close in my mind. Even though it seems to me like I am just picking and washing plants most of the day, I remind myself that what I am also doing is building community, fostering local self-sufficiency, and taking power from globally destructive industrialized food systems toward the creation of creative, empowering, alternatives. Plus, I get to be outside for twelve hours each day. How can I really complain? And sooner than I think, I’ll be brushing snow from the turnips as I harvest, and I’ll think excitedly toward next spring.
By Nicole Sugerman
When it’s my week to “bottom-line” writing the newsletter (Nina and I take turns), I usually like to write the most substantial article first. Usually, I sit down at my computer and free-write about whatever has been on my mind in the last couple weeks. Today, I sat down and stared at my computer rather blankly for close to half an hour. “That’s funny,” I thought to myself, “is there really nothing on my mind at all?” And then I realized, of course not. It’s August.
Perhaps I am being just a bit dramatic. Of course I still think in August. But I definitely think less. As a couple of us farmers were discussing over lunch today, August is the hardest month for many of us. August tests my determination, my tolerance for monotony, and my ability to keep the big picture in mind. In August, farming’s romanticism wears thin, revealing underneath dripping sweat, and endless, endless, harvests.
I think that’s really what precipitates the August lows. The harvests just keep getting bigger and bigger. Of course this is an exciting, glorious thing—to harvest vegetables is why one farms, really—but the harvests grow to an overwhelming extent. The farm’s fecundity becomes almost unmanageable. Harvest times creep earlier into our mornings and later into our afternoons, until we have maybe two or three portions of time in each week to devote to the entirety of the other farm tasks. It’s not that harvesting is an unpleasant task. Harvesting is actually really fun. Collecting and preparing the products of our labor is deeply satisfying, and big harvests are what we live for; if the harvests were not big, something would be very wrong. However, the harvest also becomes amazingly repetitive. I crave the chance to do another task—“how nice it would be to prepare the bed over there for planting,” I think, “or to weed those carrots, or those beets, or those leeks, or those rutabagas, or that chard. . .”
The entire farm, as a matter of fact, starts to have a little bit of a weed problem in August. There is this aspirational myth in organic farming of the “weed-free” organic farm. The weed-free farm is supposedly possible through the diligent, on-the-ball removal of every weed on a farm before a single one drops its seed back into the fields. If this regimen is (heroically) maintained over a long enough time, a farmer can exhaust the bank of weed seed in the soil, and effectively eliminate weeds on the farm. My farmer friends and I admiringly cite names of farmers reputed to have attained weedless status. I have yet to see such a farm, but I stubbornly hold onto the possibility of its existence. That is, until August comes each year. In August, the possibility of our farm ever attaining anything close to a weedless state is dashed, as weeds flower and spread their seeds liberally throughout the entire farm. I watch the three-foot spiny amaranth drop seed in the peppers as the perennial grasses contaminate the blackberry beds. “No time to deal with that now,” I think wistfully, “I have to harvest 200 pounds of tomatoes.” And 140 ears of corn. And all of the potatoes. It really does not stop.
Our ability to push through August, though, proves humans’ resilience and endurance, as well as farmers’ deep love for what we do. I really do think less, and let my stamina take over, carrying me through the late summer by the sheer will to farm and the mutual support of the crew. Last year, Nina and I would take turns listing off what we were thankful for and what we loved about our jobs when we felt the mid-season lows. We try to keep morale high, by taking a slightly longer lunch break, or letting one crew member get ice cream sandwiches for all. We start daydreaming about what we will do this winter.
My most successful tactic for pushing on through August is keeping the macro-picture close in my mind. Even though it seems to me like I am just picking and washing plants most of the day, I remind myself that what I am also doing is building community, fostering local self-sufficiency, and taking power from globally destructive industrialized food systems toward the creation of creative, empowering, alternatives. Plus, I get to be outside for twelve hours each day. How can I really complain? And sooner than I think, I’ll be brushing snow from the turnips as I harvest, and I’ll think excitedly toward next spring.
A Girl's Garden by Robert Frost
A neighbor of mine in the village
Likes to tell how one spring
When she was a girl on the farm, she did
A childlike thing.
One day she asked her father
To give her a garden plot
To plant and tend and reap herself,
And he said, "Why not?"
In casting about for a corner
He thought of an idle bit
Of walled-off ground where a shop had stood,
And he said, "Just it."
And he said, "That ought to make you
An ideal one-girl farm,
And give you a chance to put some strength
On your slim-jim arm."
It was not enough of a garden
Her father said, to plow;
So she had to work it all by hand,
But she don't mind now.
She wheeled the dung in a wheelbarrow
Along a stretch of road;
But she always ran away and left
Her not-nice load,
And hid from anyone passing.
And then she begged the seed.
She says she thinks she planted one
Of all things but weed.
A hill each of potatoes,
Radishes, lettuce, peas,
Tomatoes, beets, beans, pumpkins, corn,
And even fruit trees.
And yes, she has long mistrusted
That a cider-apple
In bearing there today is hers,
Or at least may be.
Her crop was a miscellany
When all was said and done,
A little bit of everything,
A great deal of none.
Now when she sees in the village
How village things go,
Just when it seems to come in right,
She says, "I know!
"It's as when I was a farmer..."
Oh never by way of advice!
And she never sins by telling the tale
To the same person twice.
Likes to tell how one spring
When she was a girl on the farm, she did
A childlike thing.
One day she asked her father
To give her a garden plot
To plant and tend and reap herself,
And he said, "Why not?"
In casting about for a corner
He thought of an idle bit
Of walled-off ground where a shop had stood,
And he said, "Just it."
And he said, "That ought to make you
An ideal one-girl farm,
And give you a chance to put some strength
On your slim-jim arm."
It was not enough of a garden
Her father said, to plow;
So she had to work it all by hand,
But she don't mind now.
She wheeled the dung in a wheelbarrow
Along a stretch of road;
But she always ran away and left
Her not-nice load,
And hid from anyone passing.
And then she begged the seed.
She says she thinks she planted one
Of all things but weed.
A hill each of potatoes,
Radishes, lettuce, peas,
Tomatoes, beets, beans, pumpkins, corn,
And even fruit trees.
And yes, she has long mistrusted
That a cider-apple
In bearing there today is hers,
Or at least may be.
Her crop was a miscellany
When all was said and done,
A little bit of everything,
A great deal of none.
Now when she sees in the village
How village things go,
Just when it seems to come in right,
She says, "I know!
"It's as when I was a farmer..."
Oh never by way of advice!
And she never sins by telling the tale
To the same person twice.
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