Happy birthday, Emily Dickinson!

Yesterday was Emily Dickinson's birthday. Not many folks that I know of celebrate her birthday. We did. I read two of her poems ("of bronze and blaze" and "I started early - took my dog") to the children. And we had corn fritters with dinner. Not everyone associates corn fritters with Emily Dickinson, either, and I understand that. But my research on what Emily Dickinson would have eaten was limited to a cursory glance at her poems which revealed several mentions of bread. And the discovery of this awesome site, Feeding America. In glancing through the cookbooks on that site, I learned that

1. women struggled with finding meaning in their lives even in the 1870s. It may sound stupid that I thought that women were content with their lot back then. Why should women be happy with cooking, cleaning, birthing babies and occasional writing and charity work? That's what I do all the time and I have moments of doubt about whether I'm fulfilling my potential.
2. In the 1870s folks ate corn fritters which is significant because I happen to have the America's Test Kitchen Family cookbook which has a recipe for corn fritters and Emily Dickinson's life spans the 1870s. Mission accomplished. Where is my flight suit?

It turned out that photographing the corn fritters was the biggest challenge on a gray evening in winter. But the fritters were good.

nibbling on granola bars

 

Made these granola bars with a recipe from the Good to the Grain cookbook. They are quite tasty, very sweet (which Kim Boyce warns her readers about in the directions) and extremely chewy  - but maybe I overcooked mine.
Amendments: I used golden raisins and fewer than she suggested because that's what I had on hand. And they are still awesome.

I also ventured into the healthy flours section of the supermarket today and found all the flours I needed to make Boyce's multigrain mix. Bob's Red Mill is prolific in its production of flours and I'm set to mix batches of multigrain flour mix as christmas gifts.

Can't wait to try this ...

I just got this book from the library. I'm planning to add it to my christmas wish list, too. There's no way I can bake all of these good foods in just three weeks.  Strawberry Barley Scones, Five Grain Cream Waffles, Graham Crackers, Onion Jam and Huckle Buckle all vie for first recipe to try.
I admit I haven't hunted for the flours used in the book yet. Some may be diffficult to find and some may be prohibitively priced which would put a damper on my enthusiasm.
But at first blush, this book has revived my hope for home baking. A friend and I had recently been bemoaning the demise of homemade baked goods because 1. no one takes the time to do it, 2. most of us can easily hop over to a bakery when we want a sweet treat, and 3. no one needs more sugar and refined white flour. I know these treats still use flour, which is, by nature, a refined food. And some of these recipes still use sugar. But the emphasis is on flavor, not sweetness. The author, Kim Boyce, incorporates a lot of fruits and vegetables in the recipes (sweet potato muffins, carrot muffins, quinoa and beet pancakes, pear and buckwheat pancakes). And she has used the ultimate taste-testers - her children.

I could wish that there was a photo for every recipe, but the photos that she does show are beautiful and I am so grateful to her for putting out a book that I can use to make fairly healthy treats for family and friends. She even has a recipe for a multi grain flour mix that I think would make a great gift for my friends and family members who like to bake.

Chicken Feet and other Stories

Turkey bones are picked clean, leafy tops of celery have waited in the hydrator since I chopped the crisp stalks into bite sized bits for my cornbread dressing (a tradition I cling to because 1) It’s not Thanksgiving without cornbread dressing; 2) it’s one of the ways I celebrate Dell Marie, my grandmother’s maid who cooked our family’s cornbread dressing from the time my mother was a child until Dell Marie’s retirement when I was in grade school; 3) No offense here (maybe I just haven’t sat down at table with the right stuffing), but stuffing usually tastes like canned dog food smells.)

So. Armed with turkey bones and leafy celery tops, I have at my disposal some of the fundamentals of good turkey broth. What more than turkey bones, celery and water does a good stock need? Onions. Check. Carrots – a precious commodity in my house. I’m down to only one bag full of carrots from my own garden and to cook all the flavor out of a perfectly good carrot when I have so many other uses for them, is a sacrifice I’m not willing to make, even if carrots are the secret to perfection when it comes to chicken stock (which is debatable in my world but is vigorously maintained by several cookbook authors, including Hugh Fearnly-Whittingstall.) So. Skip the carrots, but that’s okay because I have a secret ingredient up my sleeve. Chicken Feet.

(Hindsight reveals that I should have actually put them up my sleeves and done my own version of a Saturday Night Live Lawrence Welk skit a la Kristen Wiig, but that would have involved holding them, perhaps letting my sleeves brush them and freaking my children out to an unforgivable degree and I couldn’t get myself there.)

Like a witches brew, minus the eye of newt and toe of frog, my broth pot has an unsettling effect on my family.

What, for example, is the black patch on the pad of the chicken foot? I have no idea. But I cooked it anyway, because my farmer assured me these were clean chicken feet. (My farmer looks like Qui Gon Jinn, so the question arises: is he using the Jedi mind trick on me?) And is it really right to cook the talons? I think not, but I didn’t know it at the time. Subsequent research has revealed that some folks cut the chicken’s toenails prior to eating the feet. But if I’m not eating the feet, just boiling them for many hours, maybe it’s okay to keep the claws untrimmed? Well, all I can say is we’ve now eaten turkey pot pie made from leftover turkey meat and my turkey/chicken feet stock and we have experienced no ill-effects from supping on talon broth. And finally, what about that membrane that is peeling off the shank? I think I was supposed to remove that, too. Didn't, but lived to tell about it.

What inspired this leap into what I will call backwoods culinary sense? Well. Thrice in one week I encountered the idea of chicken feet. First in a column by longtime Texas writer and reporter, Leon Hale, who mentions the use of chicken feet in his mother’s chicken-and-dumplings preparations during the Great Depression. Second in a cookbook I’d brought home from the library and have since returned and because it is not within reach I cannot confirm which cookbook it was, but I bet that it was Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall’s Meat book (and even if it wasn’t, I put that book on my recommended list for his thoughtful approach to meat eating, meat preparation and animal husbandry). Third, while picking up my delivery of local meat, cheese and dairy, I opened a cooler of frozen grass-fed beef and pasture raised poultry and pork and beheld (and here is where, in the movie version of this story, a dramatic choir of voices should sing out and a hallowed aura should appear indicating a mystical confluence of universal forces) a bag of chicken feet. I interpreted the choir of voices and shining aura as a sure sign that the universe wanted me and my family to embrace the nose to toes to tail philosophy of meat eating. So I ordered my own bag of frozen chicken feet for the next week’s pick-up.

As if I needed further proof that this was my rightful path, my months-long wait for Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon ended. During the intervening week, the library notified me that the book was on hold for me. So when I picked up my chicken feet, I was armed with not just a mystical faith that this was right, but with nutritional information about the trace minerals and boost to bone, joint and digestive health provided by a stock made from chicken feet.

And thus ends my story of chicken feet, except to add that

• I added only 3 or 4 feet to my stock pot with my turkey bones, onions, celery and water to cover and simmered it for a couple of hours
• yes, my broth was gelatinous when cooled in a way that my broth hasn’t been in years 
• no, I haven’t found it to be a fountain of youth, revitalizing my skin, hair and fingernails. But that’s not to say I won’t keep hoping. 

P.S. This post is part of the Fight Back Friday carnival of renegade food links. Read more good ideas for cooking Real food at Food Renegade Fight Back Friday.

garlic and marigolds

According to the U of M extension folks, I'm about two weeks late on planting garlic. It should be done within one to two weeks of the first frost, so that roots are developing and shoots are growing, but not above soil level, by the time of the first hard frost (28 degrees - so that answers that question for me. Thank you U of M).

Having adopted the stance of my father-in-law ("try it and see"), I planted my garlic today (adding compost to my bed, digging 1" deep holes, spaced 8" apart with rows 1' apart, (which took up 2 rows of my 10' bed (bed #5))), despite being off on my timing. Then I mulched with straw and I'm about to go water (knowing that water is fundamental to all life, I forgot that part until now) and maybe it will work and maybe it won't. If I get to the point where I can harvest garlic, I'll know the time is right when the foliage dies back. Then dig up bulbs, dry in the sun and store in a cool, dry well-ventilated location (which I don't have).

Does it work to save marigold seeds? As I was digging out the frost-bitten marigolds, it seemed worth a try to save the seeds. I'm drying them out now and then I'll tuck them in an envelope and and see how they do come spring.

fall action plan

Since I learned from Bob Flowerdew that I don't have to dig my vegetable beds in the autumn, I'm working on a new checklist for "putting my garden to bed" for the winter.
1. Pull out vegetable plants and annuals.
2. Pull out little metal stakes that hold the soaker hoses in place.
3. Move hoses to the side. (This is the first time I've not rolled them up and put them in the shed - is this laziness or an example of "working smarter, not harder?"* We shall find out come spring.)
4. Rake up debris (see elucidating photo above).
5. Hoe to get any pesky weeds that have survived my eternal vigilance.
6. Rake debris up again.
7. Replace hoses in beds.
8. Cover beds with mulched leaves (I ran out of mulched leaves, so most of my beds will be bare. It feels wrong, but my mower having played out, I have fewer options than normal. Apparently taking the mower to the fix-it shop is not an option.)

I also pulled out my elephant ear bulb and have it drying out for a few days before I put it in sphagnum peat moss or garden vermiculite. But before I settle it in for it's winter storage, I'll trim the top growth.

Friend or foe? I saw several of these guys while I was cleaning my veggie beds. I left them until I could learn more.

*A phrase that I understand is used in the corporate setting and which must be a number one contributor to work-place dissatisfaction and stress-related heart disease.

hard frost

I don't know the exact definition of a hard frost, but my understanding is that below-freezing temperatures that last for more a few hours qualify. At 5 a.m. my husband told me it was 23 degrees and when I checked at 7:30, the temp was still 23 degrees, so I'm calling this a hard frost. Plus a visit to the garden beds revealed rock hard ground - rock hard when rapped with the knuckles, but still diggable (the technical term) with a shovel.
(Fortunately for me no whistles sounded alerting me to the freezing temperatures and routing me from my bed so I could take the only blankets in the house outside to cover my precious, tender tomato plants on whose survival hinges my entire livelihood. See Eudora Welty's "The Whistle" for a stark portrayal of a night in the life of tomato farmers in Mississippi during the Depression).
I have been anticipating a hard frost and hoping I'd have straw on the premises in time to mulch my lettuce bed (see Bud Markhart's advice in Norther Gardener, sept/oct 2010 issue).
And lo and behold I got straw yesterday. But did I put it on the lettuce bed before temps dropped below freezing? Hmmm. As my kids like to say when they are on the defensive, "why would I?" And really it's a great defensive stance because usually, as in this case, the reasons why one would are so numerous there isn't time enough in the day to go into it.
So... the lettuce froze and I put straw on it anyway and we shall see what we see come spring.

This truly dynamic photo enlightens the viewer as to what straw looks like and how dead my marigolds are (upper right).

I dug out my scarlet nantes carrots, too, by the bye. They are now stored in a plastic bag in my hydrator. Potatoes - last plant - are still in the ground.