Adopt a Crop 2009: Lemon Cucumbers

I have learned a new thing about you folks that my analytics data can't tell me (Hi Australia! I see you!) - y'all like pickles.

A lot.

Enough to vote them into the garden two years in a row. Crazies, I tell you.

That's something, especially given your other choices, which I thought were good ones. Especially the black tomato/Scary Salsa option - I thought that'd get you for sure - and it would have, if it weren't for those pesky kids and their dog, Pickle Chips.

Wait. Did that make any sense?

Anyway, what I'm saying is that your Adopted Crop for 2009 is the mighty and round Lemon Cucumber and the final product we're shooting for, here, is the burger-ready Pickle Chip.

Don't believe me? This chart snagged on 3/2/09 tells the tale:

So, we had fewer votes this year, but that's OK, I think it really means that there wasn't anyone forgoing their lunch hour for surreptitious voting from coworkers' laptops like I'm sorta sure there was last year.

Not that I minded growing pickling cucumbers last year, we had some tasty renditions at the season's end and I'm still reaping the benefits during our White Trash Hot Dog Dinner nights. We also had some not-so-tasty renditions, but I've since burned those recipes at the stake and warned everyone in my household against muttering their name.

Nonono, I am not dramatic at all.

So, I'm much more ready to attempt to take Lemon Cucumbers from seed to jar than I was at the start of last year's season. In the sense that I finally triangulated the totally illusive but always referenced Pickling Spice. Thank you, Bubba, for pulling this off the shelf at Lunardi's while I was hunting down the other illusive yet wildly popular Vietnamese Cinnamon.

REALLY PEOPLE, why do all these recipes insist on calling for shit I can never find? And it's not like I live in a small town with only a little general store and one donkey or something. I live in the friggen' Silicon Valley for godssake! I should be able to find eye of newt at Safeway on a weeknight is how I see it, but no!

Moving on...

I now have pickling spice. And I have decent pickle recipes that can achieve acceptable pickle-y flavors without the use of pickling spice. And I have jars. And I have verified that my food processor came with an attachment that will slice things into chip form. And seeds for the cucumbers on the way. And the frost date has passed.

Which can only mean one thing - I am behind.

Already.

Because I haven't turned any soil or even accepted delivery of all the seeds that will go into this year's garden yet.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

By 3/10/08, I had the garden turned, planted and watering. And I was also wearing shorts and flipflops and, apparently, leading an amazingly charmed life because I can hardly imagine having all that done in a week's time since right now it is raining (this is good), cold (meh) and I'm wearing 4 inch heels (barf).

Not important! I have seeds coming! And I know what I'm planting in the rest of the garden this year and don't you just want to know?!

Of course.

We're going for a more focused garden experience this year. Specifically, I will not be fucking around with bizarre varieties of melon, falling victim to the allure of plentiful (and buggy - gross) squash, taking up space with ill-fated beets and a few measly radishes or tempting fate by reintroducing bastard chard.

No, this year we're going with a Quantity Over Variety approach.

Bed 1: Silver Queen corn
Bed 2: Kentucky Blue Lake Green Beans, Black-seeded Simpson Lettuce (under the beans), Lemon Cucumbers
Beds 3 + 4: 4 Better Boy tomato plants (twice our typical planting - watch out) and sweet basil

I've never grown corn before, so we'll see how this goes. Thankfully, Kristin gave me some sage corn (sounds weird) advice about soil amending and planting strategies, so perhaps I'm off to a more promising start than, say, last year when I set my cucumber seeds out unsupervised to be mercilessly chewed by mystery bugs while I sat at the computer and blabbed about pickling as though I knew a thing about it which I did not.

*Sigh*

I certainly hope not to repeat that incident because I was so mad I had to make up extra mean swears and I do believe some neighbors decided to steer clear of me after that. Their loss! I'm fun!

Anyway, your crop has been chosen and now the fun and swears can begin.

What the F I do with leeks. [RECIPE]

Our farmshare started up again last week after a two week hiatus that fell between the end of the winter share and the beginning of the regular (spring/summer) share. 

That two weeks gave me some time to anticipate happily the upcoming barrage of vegetables and also start dreading the inevitable Mystery vegs and how I would possibly manage to get them all into our bodies in a satisfactory and, perhaps, even enjoyable way.

If at all possible, I prefer to not compost anything from the weekly box, but sometimes we get too much of some things (BASTARD CHARD) or some amounts of things we just don't like (collards) or a bunch of things that only one of us likes (beets) or we get Mystery vegetables that have never been prepared by my hands so I just am at a loss as to how to make them good (Brussels sprouts, fava beans, fennel bulbs, celeriac, turnips, leeks) and they end up getting hauled out to the compost pile at week's end or when they've turned goopy and nasty in my crisper.

Typically I feel incredibly guilty and malign myself enthusiastically while walking to and from the composter and sometimes I make a promise to Nature that I will do better to get these precious green (red, white, yellow, etc) things into our bodies instead of into the composter.

I've been better with some things more than others.

Like, you know how we now have a love affair with Brussels sprouts, fava beans, fennel (Wait? have I told you about the fennel? Soon. Trust me.) and celeriac/celery root. 

These are things that I look forward to in the farm share rather than dread as though they are Death Itself and even like cooking because they taste amazing and make me feel like a super hero cook since some of them were previously hated by Bubba (brussels sprouts) or feared by me (fava beans  - it's the Chianti thing. You know.)

Like I'm winning the battle against the box, you know? Just trust me. It's a good feeling.

But, even after all my battles last year, there are still some Mystery vegs that confound me and have yet to be conquered to the point where I no longer fear seeing them in the box.

Until last night, leeks were one of those Mystery vegs. 

Is it an onion or an iris? WHO CAN TELL? Not me.

Thankfully Kris and I were emailing on some random topic and she made mention of her recent (or upcoming? I can't remember.) leek planting and I took the opportunity to ask her what the F she did with leeks. 

Well, Kris is more of a "teach them how to fish" kinda gal, so sent me off to read up on leeks. All this made me want to do was find a way to eat them so that I didn't continue to feel like the ignorant American loser who is too dumb to understand what the French see in this green onion-like staple of amazing greatness or whatever.

Those French can really make me feel like shit, you know?

And with some stereotypical American bullheadedness welling up inside my person, I marched off to figure out what the F to do with these things so that I could feel better about myself, this country and The Mystery Leek of Greatness.

It might have gotten a touch dramatic in my head, I'll admit.

Well, thankfully my neighbors, who have been well-documented here as excellent chefs, casually passed along their easy going way of making leeks, and when I tried it last night, I was hooked.

The world of leeks has opened up to me, people, and so now I shall open it up to you. If only slightly, seeing as I have only made them well once and lord knows there's other shit you can do with them, but still - OPENING UP THE WORLD OF LEEKS! 

Here we go...

I wish you could smell this. FROM HEAVEN.

Mushroom Leek Saute with Wild Rice

Recipe by Awesome Neighbors

My changes in bold

Ingredients

1 Amazing leek, rinsed thoroughly, chopped 

2 cups of roughly chopped oyster mushrooms (or whatever kind)

1 clove garlic (minced)

1/2 cup wild rice

2 T unsalted butter

1 T fresh ground black pepper

Please ignore the compost bag back there and don't include it with your recipe.

To make

Start the rice cooking per package instructions. Of all food things to which I pay closest attention to package instructions, rice is #1. Fucked up rice is no laughing matter, so don't get all "I know how to make rice, loser!" because you might fuck this up and that would be shameful.

Moving on. 

In a good sized skillet (I think I used the 9"er), melt a T of butter over medium heat and toss in your garlic and chopped leek to cover. It will look and smell delicious like a mellow onion and this is AOK with me. Throw some salt on there for good measure and toss occasionally until it starts to soften.

Add your other T of butter and toss in your mushrooms. Mix this all up in the pan and let the smell take you away. Not like Calgon, but more like when you walk into a restaurant and you're super hungry and suddenly you smell something that you MUST HAVE because that's kinda how this smells. To me.

I should have taken photos of the oyster mushrooms. Hotness.

Add some more salt and the pepper, stir and then turn the heat to low. 

It looks like it was all made to be together, no?

When your rice is ready (DO NOT BE HASTY OTHERWISE YOU'LL BE EATING CRUNCHY RICE EW), pour it right into the skillet with the leeks and onions, stir it up real well, sprinkle with a little more salt (to taste, of course) and serve with some totally unmatching bbq brisket because that's what you have and, well, it's good no matter what you eat it with.

Everything goes with bbq brisket. Even leeks. AMAZING fucking leeks.

Next on the Mystery what the F do I do with this list: TONS of beets. Not, like, 6 beets, but more like 20 beets. And don't just say "cook them" because that's not going to get rid of a lot of beets when I live in a house where only one of us eats them (me). I need creativity from you, folks. Help a sister out.

Adopt a Crop update: I'm a cheater + Big Moment

As you may recall, I had to do a second sowing of the corn seeds because, well, the first sowing was more of a serving than anything else. A snack size serving for, what I now believe to be, a very annoying raccoon.

I think, at last count, with the two sowings under the protective cover of the Supah Technical frost cages, I was up to 17 germinated seeds. Of 27. That's not too bad, but with corn, you really need all the rows full and accounted for, otherwise there can be pollination problems and other mysteries that exist with corn and about which I'm totally ignorant.

Blissfully so, I might add.

So, still wanting to have a full house of corn but not wanting to roll the dice on more seeds, I went the Big Fat Cheater route and bought some corn seedlings at the nursery while my mom picked out her Mother's Day squashes. Nothing says, "Thanks for not killing me during my terrifying teenage years!" like an eight ball squash, I say. Thankfully, the nursery had Silver Queen seedlings, and so I didn't have to cheat AND compromise - that would have been awful.

Can you imagine? Let's not.

Anyway, I planted the corn seedlings yesterday afternoon and then spent some quality time admiring how the bed no longer looked like a balding middle-aged man anymore. Yay! No corn comb-overs!

Don't my plugs look natural?

And then this morning I went out to do some more Not a Bald Dude Corn Bed admiring only to find that a Bastard Raccoon had spent some clandestine moments tromping through the bed crushing everything in sight while surreptitiously dropping a load over the edge right into my path.

THANKS, ASSHOLE.

So, sadly, I had to do some propping up of remaining plants this morning and will have to go back to the nursery to fill in the holes he left with his giant STUPID JERKOFF paws/ass/tail. And then I had to get out the shovel to deal with the special coiled pressie he left steaming and collecting flies in my garden path.

*sigh* If only we embraced firearms in this house...

In happier news, he was a lazy raccoon and stuck to the thoroughfare, not meandering into any of my other beds to, say, take a nap in the lettuce or climb around on the bean lines. If that were the case, I'd be writing this post from the loony bin because that kind of scenario would get my brain to snappin'. Or I'd be up on charges for discharging a firearm in a residential area. Not that I own a gun, but still Crazy makes you do things...

Hey! Speaking of those plants I love with insane devotion:

You just try to tell me this doesn't warrant a crime of passion.

I brought in the third lettuce harvest already last night. Lettuce = Teacher's Pet.

And don't you fear, my chickens, the Adopted Crop of Lemon Cucumbers is alive and well over there away from the Hwy 101 of veg beds.

I predict that soon there will be photos of cucumber blossoms right...here -----> X.

I opted to put cages up around them this morning in case the Bastard Raccoon decides to make a reappearance and also because, with four seedlings per mound (there are two), growing at the rate they're maintaining, those leaves are starting to need some support. So, support I will.

*Patience*

In other FABULOUS AND EARLY news, we have our first tomato.

That's all I'm going to say. I don't want to clutter this perfect moment with a lot of chatter.

Go on, then, just relish the moment with me...

Reeeeeliiiiishhhhh iiiiiiiit...

Ok, I'm back. Isn't he huge and buttcheek-ish? I'm in love. The thing is the size of a marble. I'm thinking he might be the biggest Better Boy to grace my yard ever, but we'll see. No pressure or anything.

Oh, and lest I forget everything else in light of this beautiful buttcheek tomato, we also have ripening cherries,

Bubba tasted one and says they're still too sour.

artichokes,

I'm eating four for dinner tonight. You know, just to prepare.

and the tiniest hope of cilantro. Guess those seeds were a mite old. Oh well. It'll bolt in, like, three minutes anyway, so I'm not sure why I bother at all.

It might be bolting right now.

Also under the header of, Why Do I Bother, the last bed of tomatoes and basil looks like hot crap. Something's chewing on all of them and they aren't really growing. So, while I technically have four tomato plants and a dozen basils in the ground, I *really* have two tomato plants and six basils growing. The rest are busy sucking wind over there where I suspect they don't get enough sun and/or the "Bug Buffet" sign is drawing too much attention.

The sunlight may be the reason that the lettuce did great here last year, but not so much with the tomatoes. Sad.

For comparison's sake, see I'm The Mightiest Tomato Plant in All the Land, here:

I'm sitting on a nuclear waste site. Don't tell.

And, I guess, that's all the updating I'm ready to do right now. But I do have a recipe to share with y'all soon that'll take care of some of those greens (collard, chard, kale, totsoi, etc), let you play with your pasta machine AND include bacon. It's purty good. And if I hadn't had pupusas and beans for breakfast this morning (technically it was 10:30, so is that even breakfast?) I'd be eating those leftovers right now.

Instead, I'm going to be full until lunch tomorrow.

Adopt a crop update: Magic garden that heals my cooties

I was sick this week, y'all.

Like sore throat, blow my nose one million times, cough in a scary way and then sound like a man kind of sick.

In the middle of fucking July, folks. Excellent timing!

That is such a ME thing to do. No, don't get sick when it's 40 degrees out in January when I can bundle myself in blankets and all my ugliest warm clothes and drink tea in front of a hot fire all day.

NO.

I get sick when it's hot July summertime and I can't be in the house in more than flip flops and my smallest shorts. Also, this is the best time to get the sick sweats because, you know, the heat isn't making me sweat enough.

PRETTY!

Anyway, this is a garden update, not a Finny is So Gross update, so let me bring this home for you now.

(Feel free to skip down to Adopt a Crop update begins here if you don't want to hear about Magic Tomatoes. But why wouldn't you? I mean, they're MAGIC. Come on, here we go...)

The garden is Magic.

I know it is because Kelli told me so. And, well, she's usually right.

See, I'd gotten to Wednesday afternoon with my Super Cooties and had peeling sore nostrils from all the nose blowing (sorry, my grossness just comes through no matter what) and still felt like total shit even though I'd had this evil cold since Sunday and shouldn't it be gone by now.

Then I realized that I'd barely eaten anything since Sunday due to the feeling crappiness and also the fact that I had Sick Mouth which makes everything taste like a horse's ass and that all my nutrition and caloric intake was coming from Airborne, Robutussin, Healthy Choice Fudge bars and apricot jam.

At this point it dawned on me that my lethargy and declining health could possibly be attributed to more things than just the Super Cootie and may, in fact, be due in great part to lack of normal food in my body.

Idea! I'll eat a normal meal!

So I had to dig deep and think about what kinds of things always taste good no matter what. And in my sicky state, this was a challenge. My normal mind montage of food porniness was at an uncharacteristic standstill.

So I asked my brain in a different way: What is my favorite favorite food that, if I were being dragged into a solitary cell buried deep in the earth's core never to return, I would name The One Food to Last Me for All Time?

DING! Warm summer tomatoes.

Yes, we have those here.

So the one benefit of getting stupidly sick in the middle of summer is that when you're on the verge of collapse from lack of nutrition, you can force feed with Summer Tomatoes. Which, if you're me, is a lifesaver.

Adopt a Crop update begins here.

I am magic. - Tomatoes

From a handful of warm tomatoes picked fresh from my plants, I made my favorite pasta dish, Mellowed Tomatoes for Pasta and also a tomato salad, because I just have that much basil and that many tomatoes to frivolously burn. Delirious with fever maybe!

And even with my Sick Mouth and not being able to breathe and having to take breaks to blow my nose, I managed to eat a nice sized bowl's worth of pasta and a good amount of the tomato salad, which incidentally is just the pasta recipe without the pasta but whatever it is SO good that even when my brain cells are dying from high fever and I'm sick to the bone I can still eat them.

Thankfully my plants are getting into the swing of producing, so my gluttony didn't devastate the plants.

How many ripening tomatoes do you see?

How about on this plant?

Anyway, I made one more veg-a-licious dinner the next night and went to bed crossing my fingers and chanting "feel better feel better feel better achoo" and when I woke up Thursday morning I didn't want to die anymore.

MAGIC.

I could breathe from both nostrils and didn't have to spend the day with Kleenex's shoved up in my nose. Again, MAGIC.

So, the garden is magic and that is all there is to it.

I also have enough cucumbers to start Round #3 of pickling, which is fun.

Try to find all the cucumbers in here. Challenge!

And the Bell Pecker is growing into something that doesn't look like a bell pepper to me. Weird.

There a may have been a mixup at the hospital.

Surprise Pumpkin is getting more ambitious by the day and actually producing more little pumpkins which I am pretty sure are actually pumpkins now and not some freak form of squash. Maybe if I get lucky a bastard creature won't gnaw through the back of them and I'll be able to Jack-o-lantern one for Halloweens.

These leaves are big like a toilet seat.

And if you remember back to the time when I told you of the legend of Midget Cantaloupe, this is the one Midget I've actually harvested and eaten. In summary: decent, small and cute. But with the amount of recovery the plant is having to undergo after nearly falling victim to the Evil Squash Beetles, I'm having to cross my fingers extra hard hoping that this plant's Rebuilding Season of July will actually produce some real fruit this year.

I'm more of a a nice idea than anything else.

I'm such a tease with all these flowers.

This is just for show.

In a surprise turn of events, the marigolds are actually making the blog because I decided that they've grown so impressively from seed that I might actually not think they're ugly long enough to take a picture and show you.

Ugly marigolds.

And because no crop update is complete without a scary shot of the Chard Forest to send you all into hysterics (or maybe just me, I can be dramatic), here you are:

I can smell fear.

So, to sum this update - I am on the mend and ready to do battle with this chard while eating a lot of tomatoes and getting ready to go on vacation.

Oh yes. Finny goes on vacation, people. To sunny, warm places where there are ocean waves and people saying things like, "Buenos Dias y quieres algo que tomar?"

But I'll get all excited about that later. For now, I have a big weekend ahead of me, which I'm sure I'll spend some time reviewing/complaining about next week. Ooh! And I made another bacon thing I'll share with you and maybe a craft.

Ha - I'm so not sick anymore. Take that, Asshole Cootie!

Adopt a Crop update: Alive and random

I was getting all verklempt, y'all.

I mean, on one hand my last Pickling Cucumber seedling was still alive and putting out new leaves and didn't show signs of bastard bug devastation - which was RAD. I wasn't yet having to write the "I suck and all my plants are dying" update, which makes us all that much happier.

But on the other hand, the runner up crops, which I'd so whimsically planted thinking "oh won't it be nice when everyone (almost) gets what they wanted" were really sort of languishing. Wilting. Not thriving. And just generally sucking the bag.

And, of course, I was hearing Thimbleanna in the back of my head going, "you're not loving the beets enough Finny! LOVE THEM MORE! MAKE THEM GROW!" and I was getting worried about disappointing her because she seems dangerous and enthusiastic - a combination known to be frightening. (Wuv you Anna!)

Until I realized how wonderfully random beets are.

Hello, random and misplaced thriving beet:

See, this guy started springing ahead a week or so ago and I thought (forgive me) it was an ugly marigold making its ugly but welcomed and necessary entrance.

No no.

It is apparently a beet out of water because I just don't know how it got from one bed to another but it's likely that I can thank my haphazard seed sowing technique for this fun and random surprise.

I can also confirm that there are, indeed, some ugly marigolds making their entrance somewhere (finally, Uglies!) since I found them in a different bed than where I thought I'd planted them which was with the damn lettuce.


What DID happen when I was planting this year? Lord I must have been hammered.

Anyhoo - the update is good this time and since I have you all here under the guise of The Adopt a Crop Cucumber is Alive and everything, I am going to do an everything update because that was my intention in the first place: to yammer endlessly about the garden.

Sorry, too late now - you're already in.

Basil: WOO! The snails haven't destroyed you with big yucky holes. And that is because someone (Ginger - wuv you!) is a genius and reminded Finny the Forgetful about the joys of beer baits. Take that drunkard snails and slugs. I WIN! For now anyways.

Beets - Randomly alive and one is thriving! The rest look the same and it's baffling me in the most annoying way.

Jalapa jalapeno: Not good. It looks droopy and sad. It might die and I have no idea why. It gets water. It gets sun. It has a nice spot in the new bed. Mystery.

Lettuce - Don't be fooled by this angelic looking lettuce plant. The other HUNDRED or so seedlings are nowhere near this impressive or glorious. This one will be a feast though.

Midget Cantaloupe: Um, it's about the same. But alive, which is good.

Tomatoes - There are more of the aforementioned fat feeling blossoms, which is great! But the plants aren't producing a lot of greenery which sort of worries me. However, I'm reserving real worry for warmer weather. If they still look stunted, I'll panic then. Don't you just want to (gently) squeeze around the blossom base there? Where it looks kinda fat? That's a future tomato! Be excited with me so I don't feel like a loser, k?

Radishes (Perfecto) - You are not so perfecto. I mean - what is this? Like JUST putting out your second leaves? Lame. I *may* not be watering you enough and I'm trying really hard to care right now.

Rainbow chards: Slow growing but good. They firmed up a bit after the warm weather and regular water. I have some hope, but thanks to our CSA, I'm eating my fair share of chard and not *super* worried about getting extra from the garden.

Ronde de Italia Squash - Holy hell this plant is going to take over my yard. I thought it would be small and compact as indicated on its lying tag, but it appears to have its eye on the better part of my yard. So far there are no fewer than half a dozen squash set and nearly ready for picking. Whoa.

Snap peas - Kicking ass. Soon I will have snap peas and I can tell you the story of Bubba and Snap Peas which you will like because it's gross.

Strawberries - Oh how I love thee. Let me count the ways...Specifically, I have been able to pick about half dozen a day and have even offered some up to Bubba who has forgotten them on the kitchen counter a lot, so has had his special Strawberries from the Garden Just For You privileges revoked.

So, in a shell: the cucumber is alive, as is its big brother (seedling with tendrils already woo!) and the rest of the garden is coming along slowly but surely.

The weather here has been swerving wildly from cold and windy (50 degrees) to hot and dry (90 degrees) over the last few weeks, so it's likely that the garden is just as confused as I am and doesn't know whether to wear shorts or a parka.

So who can really blame it for acting weird. I mean, I was wearing shorts with a cashmere sweater the other day - it makes no sense.