Garden's Harvest Begins

This was the first year in a few that I have put in a garden. Three tomato plants, early variety and an heirloom German of some sort. About a hundred green ones now and three that are showing red. Hurrah. Eight bell and hot pepper( jalapeno and habenero)plants that I am harvesting already. I will freeze the hot peppers whole and dice the bells and freeze, and I will make some salsa either to can or freeze, and can whole tomatoes. I have never canned, so it will be interesting.

I don't like paying pepper prices thru fall/winter/spring and no longer want to risk being poisoned by mass produced and distributed fresh off season produce. Keeping it local. Planning also to take advantage of the late summer harvest of others' gardens to lay in alot for the winter. Potatoes, onions, carrots, squashes.

If all goes as planned I will have plenty of local healthgiving food for the winter. Fish too, and game this fall to harvest and store. I will be providing recipes and ideas as I proceed.

Anybody else doing more of this kind of stuff this yr?

Summer Grilling

A great marinade/basting sauce for almost everything grilled but beef is balsamic vinegar, orange marmalade( or orange juice concentrate), jalapeno peppers, and plenty of garlic. You could add cilantro and lime juice as well. Make it as sweet and hot as you wish. I used some very hot whole pickled jalapenos - La Morena brand from Mexico( spiced and pickled).

Imagine it on chicken or shrimp or pork cooked on a wood fired weber and have a beer like a Blue Moon Belgian Style Ale w/ it. A little bitter, a little sweet, along w/ the heat.

The St Croix Open

Just back from the exceptional Lake St Croix in NW Wisconsin - headwaters of the Brule and the St Croix Rivers.
Exceptional eating was involved as well. Pizzas and Porterhouses off the grill, a cuban style paella w/ black beans and rice, onions, bell and jalapeno peppers, grape tomatoes cut in half ( sweet and luscious), cilantro, plenty of garlic, and lime juice( v-8 juice, too) - w/ largemouth bass, a crappie, and a walleye poached in the bouillabaisse like liquid. We served the rice on the side, so it wasn't really a paella.

I picked a quart of wild blueberries up there too, and today made a galette( a rustic free form tart - a lazy cook's fast pie) which was sweet and tart w/ lime juice and sugar and cinnamon. It's almost gone and it's just me.

Sink your putts.

Better Not Bigger

Bigger is not always better when it comes to fish and game. The young and the small of the species are usually the best eating.

It's a twofer when it comes to fishing. You get to catch your trophy fish and let them go, and you get to catch and keep the little ones to eat.

Not so with hunting big game. You have to decide, usually ahead of time, if you are meat hunting or trophy hunting. Ten points or bigger, though, and ego wins out. It's the hunter /warrior part of our past.

A rainy day after a few perfect sunny summer days is a good day to make soup. I got a 16 bean soup mix, just the legumes - don't buy the kind w/ the seasonings included because they cost more than twice as much - and added chicken base, garlic, bay leaf, crushed red pepper, gently boiled for an hour and a half , and added tomatoes, carrots, onions, and celery and cooked for another hour. Add bratwurst or Italian sausage or chicken( already cooked - we are using leftovers from supper for this) for the last 15 minutes. Just before serving add fresh herbs like parsley( for sure)and thyme or sage or basil. and probably more garlic. It has great depth of flavor and nutrition which is to say it tastes good and is good for you. Love those legumes. Most soup bases generally have a lot of salt, so don't add salt of your own.

A Small Matter of Life and Death

It's green to be green and to buy local and it doesn't get any more local than your own garden. It is also politically correct, which usually turns me off. But, beyond that, in light of the recent and ongoing poison tomato/pepper scare, the previous spinach one, and the numerous ground beef recalls , it has become a matter of life and death.

Grow your own or get it from local growers - friends, neighbors, farmer's markets, co-operatives. Those of us in rural Mn do have a real advantage. Turns out that bigger isn't better, huh, just like the hippies were proclaiming back in their day. Off season will be the challenge. My new small garden of this yr will certainly be bigger next yr.

Catching, shooting and growing works for me. How about you?

Shore Lunch Continued - The French Way

This is more of the shore lunch - sweet corn, spinach sauteed in olive oil w/ plenty of garlic, and baked beans w/ jalapeno peppers.

My kids just love the sauce of the fish - scatter fresh ( or dried as necessary)herbs( chopped parsley and tarragon) over fish for the last minute of cooking. Remove fully cooked and browned fillets from your frying pan and plate. Pour excess oil out of pan - don't scrape, as all the stuff( debris) left and stuck in the pan impart flavor to your sauce. Add a cup of white wine( chablis, sauvignon blanc, pinot blanc, chardonnay - any dry white) to the pan, strew lots more fresh herbs, reduce by half, and stir in 3 or 4 pats of cold butter. Remove pan from heat and swirl pan until butter is melted, and then pour over fish.

Shore Lunch

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Not always, but I am going to start including photos in this blog.

This is pan fried largemouth bass that had been simply floured and fried in olive or vegetable oil, which was then finished off w/white wine, parsley, tarragon and butter. Do not shy away from bass - wonderful eating even in walleye country - it has a clean depth and a just this side of mild mushroom flavor - try it also w/ wine and sage and garlic. Not fishy at all as walleye can sometimes be. I think that the bad rap on bass came from muddy lakes in the south. They are exceptional when prepared fresh from our clean and cold Mn waters.

Buffalo, Dark Chocolate, and a Gathering of Loons

Buffalo,... dark chocolate are laden w/ umami, I think.

There was a gathering of loons on Platte this morning - 8 or so in the center of the lake and then they all flew off in pairs in separate directions, singing. Now that the little ones are nearly half size and are adept at swimming and diving, did the mom and dads get together for a little party, to catch up on news, to just hang out? It was brief and then back home I think for each of them.

The single loon family that I've watched this summer includes 2 little ones. Mom and dad are feeding them minnows out front this morning. Mom is a little smaller and seems to be the better minnow catcher.

Science Catches up With What We Already Knew

For a hundred years we/ve been told by food scientists that we taste only sweet, sour, salty and bitter. For thousands of years before that we knew that we tasted more than just those those four. How do you fit an herb into one of those categories? Or bacon, or coffee? Or a pork roast ( Boston Butt) on a cold winter's eve after you've been out in it ? Or ripe real tomatoes simmering on the stovetop? A good cognac,or a complex red wine, or various teas? Eggplant? Almost anything fried in butter, like fish finished off with wine, parsley and tarragon?

Maybe it is partly semantics. Smell and taste combined make flavor. We have known that forever. We sniff and breathe deeply thru our nose, taking it all in. We swoon to aroma. The Japanese have long added a fifth taste - that called umami, which is a savory meaty taste, that adds richness and depth and completeness to taste. Msg is the artificial version of it. That works. It really works.

Food scientists, acording to an article in this month's Gourmet Magazine, have recently discovered, as a spinoff of the human genome project, that we have about 40 taste receptors located everywhere in the mouth. Yes, finally. Also that we have about 300 olfactory( smelling) receptors. If you do the math you will now discover almost limitless combinations of taste and smell, hence flavors. Chefs, of course, and grandma, and many more of us have already known that.

It's like, duh.

New York City

Apparently an elderberry liquer is all the rage at swanky hotel bars in NYC. It is icluded in specialty drinks( tinis, etc) at $16 a pop. Beers are $12. That's ok, says a writer for the NYT, just pretend that you got two. If you're from Mille Lacs & area, you'd have to pretend that you got four, which is a stretch. Happy 5th. Have a good picnic.

Homemade Schnapps

I've recently made schnapps from Tina Nordstrom's recipe. A teaspoon and a half of sugar for a fifth of vodka( Absolut, of course, as I'm still working a Swedish theme - Midsommarsdag), and a half dozen long sprigs of fresh garden mint - mine is a chocolate mint - got it at the farmers mkt in Brainerd- a chocolate and mint aroma, but no chocolate taste. Add the sugar and mint to the vodka and put it in the fridge for a day. It is so good and mellow that you can sip it instead of doing it as a shot.
It is really good as a side w/ the Summit Summer Sampler 12 pack. Especially good on the patio on the lake on a hot summer day( finally). Salud.