Starting To Wind Down The Garden

 This was a hard week, ending a hard month. This week was a particularly hard ending to September as we did a 54-hour door-to-door road trip to Mayo, sliced and diced so thin because of other equally (more?) pressing matters at home, including the Symphony. Oh, we made the trip all right, but I got spectacularly road-sick once we were back home, vomiting with such force that I ended up with a severely swollen face and a black eye.

I'm much better now.

It is the last Sunday in September and the eve of Rosh Hashanah, for which I am not spiritually ready in the least, and it is an intense spiritual holiday, opening the High Holy Days. So perhaps it was not all bad that I just came in from an hour in the garden, cleaning it up somewhat, checking what was going on (peppers now going strong, tomatoes on the wane) and, perhaps, showing some optimism myself in one of the garden tasks I accomplished.

The bees in the agastache 

The bees are still around and I caught a few in the agastache. They were far heavier in number earlier in the summer, usually so many that you could hear the plants hum. As Warren and I looked the bed over (cutting back on agastache bunch that had uprooted in the drought), I looked up at the tall ornamental grasses we had transplanted from a friend's giveaways. 

"Look."

The grasses have gone to seed and are beautiful in a new and different way.

The ornamental grass going to seed 

I picked tomatoes this morning, while Warren deadheaded the marigolds rimming two of the four sides of the garden. This late in the season, the marigolds in are full glory, blazing away, paying no heed to the coming autumn, seemingly impervious to the coming frosts and snows. As for the tomatoes, after I picked (and trimmed back and even pulled out one plant, done for the year), I ended up with a respectable load to share with my family's joint household here in town.

The basil got caught in the heat while we were out in Oregon and Washington, and never recovered. I'm glad I made pesto earlier in the season. I contemplated pulling it up, then figured that task could wait. 

We are clearly moving into the cooler days, with the sun moving along its fall course. With the cooler weather comes the hope of a fall crop of lettuce. So I spent a quiet half hour or so breaking up the dried soil in the planters, remixing the soil, and seeding it again. I'm going with the Black Seeded Simpson and Emerald Jewel for the fall, having found those the most enjoyable of the ones I tried this spring.

And maybe that's my optimism: seeding four planters in lettuce seed, hoping for a fall crop of salad, looking forward to what the autumn holds. 

One of four planters, seeded for salad

And perhaps my thoughts while I prepared the planters was some preparation for the High Holy Days.

The High Holy Days are a time of contemplation and self-assessment. It is a time for soul-searching. What did I accomplish last year? What were my biggest mistakes? What do I want to change for the coming year? What do I need to change in myself?

Mixing the soil, breaking up the clods, adding some plant food, watering it to the right consistency were all concrete tasks with fixed end points. My mind could wander through some of those more intense, personal thoughts: Where am I in my life? What does this year hold? Who am I now?

The Jewish sage Maimonides came to mind: "If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am for myself only, then what am I? And if not now, when?"

And if not now, when?

Let me see what the New Year brings, both inside me and outside in the garden. 

Small Moment: Washing The Loaf Pans

I made zucchini bread Friday night as I had a lot of zucchini that needed cooked, baked, or cut, bagged, and frozen. I ended up making a triple batch of bread: six loaves in all. When I turned them out onto the cooling racks (including yours, Katrina!), I just ran water into the pans and let them set overnight.

[Note: My zucchini-less status lasted until Saturday morning, when my dad brought by another grocery bag of them, possibly, maybe the last of the season. We just finished dealing with them this morning: freezer for some, supper tonight for the rest.]

Saturday morning I turned my attention to the loaf pans. All, even then non-stick ones, had been greased well so cleaning them was not an onerous task. I washed them in groups: the two smaller non-stick pans, the two larger aluminum pans, a small glass pan, and a large pottery one.

I ran warm, soapy water into the first two (while the others still held water from the night before) and started in. For the next 15 to 20 minutes, I cleaned them one by one, pouring the soapy water from one into the next one. There is a window overlooking the backyard at the sink and the sunlight played on the water as I washed.

I paid slow attention to each pan instead of my usual brisk, swipe and wipe pace. You heard of the Slow Food Movement? This was the Slow Washing Movement. As I washed, I thought about the pans. Warren remembered his mother making molded jello fruit salads ("all the time," per Warren) in the glass loaf pan. The two aluminum pans, standard size, were the remaining ones of the eight or ten I bought and used the summer I kept our household (my two sons and I) afloat baking and selling breads and pies at our downtown Farmers Market.

The heavy pottery loaf pan came from a long ago client, a young woman whose divorce I handled for free because she was having a hard enough time keeping her children and herself fed, let alone scrape together the money to pay an attorney. When the divorce was all over, she came into my office and presented me with the loaf pan filled with something delicious she had baked. My client explained that her mother had bought the pan to make her offering extra special. Then she looked at me with tears in her eyes and said, "Thank you. Thank you."

Just her "thank you" was enough. The baked dessert was more than enough. And the pan? Well, I still use it and I think of that long ago client every single time.

The whole washing episode was a peaceful, quiet start to my day. It was a small moment, a routine task. It was a way to be more mindful, more grateful, as I stood there just washing the pans.

The Pie Of Summer

Kim, the blogger at Out My Window, asked me whether I would share the recipe for the corn/bacon/onion pie I references in my blog about August spending.

Absolutely!

Warren is the one who called my attention to the recipe, which appeared in The New York Times under the caption "Is This the Pie of the Summer?" The subheading referred to bacon and corn in a "rich, quiche-like tart."

How was I not going to make that, especially with it being sweet corn season?

The recipe as originally published called for a traditional butter crust with some cornmeal thrown in. I made my own standard water/mayonnaise/flour crust, threw in some cornmeal (by feel) and rolled out a (deliberately) thicker than usual crust, which I baked first and let cool. What I did to make the thicker crust was make the recipe for a double-crust pie, then roll out a single crust.  You can find my crust recipe discussed here; if you are pre-baking a shell using my crust recipe, you heat the oven to 475 degrees and bake it about 12-15 minutes.

The ingredients for the filling for one pie are:
1 small red onion
1 tablespoon fresh lime juice (note: i used bottled lime juice and it worked fine)
1/2 teaspoon salt
pinch granulated sugar (I omitted this one time; it did not make a noticeable difference)
4 ounces bacon (4 slices), diced
1 1/2 cups fresh/frozen corn kernels (2 small ears if fresh)
1 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup sour cream or plain Greek yogurt [I used Greek yogurt one time I made it; sour cream the other. No difference.]
3 large eggs
3/4 cup coarsely shredded sharp Cheddar (3 ounces)
3 tablespoons chopped parsley. I omitted this ingredient because I am not big on parsley and just threw in some dried herbs one time, some chopped fresh basil the other.

I left out one ingredient entirely: 2+ tablespoons chopped jalapeños because I do not eat jalapeños. I will note in the instructions where they come in. Looking at step 2 below, you can also pickle a little of the chopped jalapeños and add them later (step 5).

You make the filling as follows (this assumes the crust is made and cooling or cooled):

1. Preheat your oven to 375 degrees.

The corn/onion mixture

2. Cut red onion in half at equator (not root to stem), then from the center cut out two very thin round slices. Separate the onion into rings and put in a bowl with lime juice, salt, and pinch of sugar. [This would also be where a little of the chopped jalapeños would go.] Set aside. Coarsely chop the remaining onion and set it aside.

3. Scatter diced bacon in a cold skillet. Turn heat to medium, and cook until bacon is brown and fat has rendered: 10-14 minutes. Transfer bacon to plate (paper towel on it) and leave fat in the skillet.

4. Stir chopped onion into skiller with bacon fat and place on medium heat. Sauté until golden-edged and translucent: about 6 minutes. Stir in corn, 1/2 teaspoon salt. [If you are adding the chopped jalapeños, add them here.] Cook until corn is tender, about 2-5 minutes.

Ready to go into the oven

5. Remove from heat and scoop 1/2 corn mixture into blender. Add cream, sour cream, and eggs; blend until you get a thick purée. [Note: I used a hand mixer one time because I did not have a blender handy. Same result and cleanup was about 1000% easier.] Scrape the purée in the pan with the other kernels, add the bacon and 1/2 cup Cheddar. Stir, then scrape into the pie shell.

6. Top mixture with pickled red onion (jalapeños if you did that) and sprinkle the remaining Cheddar cheese on top.

7. Bake until puffed, golden, and just set: 35-45 minutes. Transfer to wire rack, cool slightly. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Out of the oven

And there you have it.

Kim, if you make it, I'll be interested to hear how it turned out and what you thought!

Did someone say bacon? And corn?

August Money Review

As predicted when I last wrote about our grocery spending, the food purchases (groceries, not eating out) made while out west pushed our August numbers way past the $175.00 mark.

Way past.

Just before we left for vacation, our combined food/household spending for the month was $197.13, $174.15 of which was food and $22.98 of which represented household items such as toilet paper and cleaning agents. So we were already past our $175.00 goal, but even so, our year-to-date average still came in at $165.80.

While on vacation, we spent another $111.20 at the grocery on food, nudging our year-to-date average to $179.70.

This is what that corn/cheese/bacon pie looks like. 

Why so much?

Because we bought all the food for two meals for nine adults. (I'm not counting the children, one of whom is an infant.) One meal was a variation on a Cuban pork dish my sons' grandmother used to make; the other featured three bacon/onion/corn pies and two roast chickens. Leftovers went to various homes or made reappearances in the days that followed. Another $20.00 or so went to a sundae bar (Ramona's favorite) when seven adults (and the children) gathered on the last evening. My sons (and their partners) provided the main meal and did all the cooking, but we supplied the dessert. (There were also some smaller purchases along the way, some of which we shipped home.)

Our August food expenditures were worth every penny.

I suppose I could take the position that our August food bill should be the lower amount and not count the vacation. But had all these wonderful people been in my home, I would have bought greater quantities of food and counted those amounts. So I'm counting them here. It will be nip-and-tuck to see if I finish 2019 with a monthly average of $175.00, but, ehhhh, I'm okay with that.

Surprisingly, our vacation eating out (just our portion, not the amounts we spent treating others) came in at a cool $93.29. Before we left, we had spent only $43.64 on eating out, which included our share of a lunch for my dad's 86th birthday and a desperately needed bag of food after a very, very late legal clinic. So the month came out at $136.93, with the bulk of that being the vacation, and I'm fine with that.

 When we got home on September 1 (new month, new totals), we did a major shopping to get perishables and restock some basics that had run low during July and August. I'm predicting September comes in around $175.00, especially if I make a point of turning to the freezer and cupboards. Between purchases at a local family-owned farm market and my dad bringing over zucchini from his garden, our freezer is packed heading into the fall and winter.

I'm eager to see what the last four months of this year bring, and where we end up on our food spending.

Back

We have been back for one week, having arrived back in Ohio last Sunday. I just finished catching up my accounts and am wending my way through paperwork I'd shoved aside before leaving. I'll post my August figures in the next day or two, but dollars take a backseat to these short glimpses.

Here are my sons, preparing a meal together, all grown up:

And here is Ramona, running into the ocean, just on the brink of being seven and beginning second grade (school started while we were there and she had her 7th birthday the day we left):

Lyrick will be three at the end of this week:

And this guy? Almost seven months old, almost crawling, and has an opinion on everything:

For the record, he was thoroughly approving of his sister making peanut butter cookies.

It's always good to be back home, but, oh, how I miss them!