Elderflowers!

/0 Comments/in , /by

Elderflower Recipes

by Sandy Swegel

My favorite foraging is for the elder plant…both the elderflowers now and the elderberries later in summer.  I adore elderberries in jam or sauce and that’s my primary use for the berries (in addition to a medicinal elixir.)  But once I knew the location of sufficient elderberry bushes and trees that I could risk taking the flowers also, I became a big fan of elderflower drinks.  Especially champagne. Who wouldn’t love do-it-yourself-in-a-few-weeks champagne?

Making elderflower cordial or champagne is super easy and has only a few guidelines:

-Find a good plant, preferably not on a busy road where it picks up car exhaust and pollutants.

-Pick the flowers earlier in the day. (I don’t think you have to actually make sure the dew is still hanging from the blossoms.)

-Process the flowers right away.  Experience has taught me the flowers spoil easily. Things that don’t work:  keeping the flowers in the car all day while you run errands; keeping the flowers in the refrigerator (they brown), leaving the flowers in a bucket of water for a day.  Just process them within a couple hours of picking for best flavor.

There are lots of recipes online, but the basic recipe is flower bunches, sugar, acid (either lemon juice or vinegar.) You don’t have to add yeast…there are usually plenty of wild yeasts on the blossoms…although connoisseurs use champagne yeast from the brewing store.

Here’s an easy recipe: http://www.farminmypocket.co.uk/harvest/home-brewing/elderflower-champagne-recipe

Here’s a recipe that uses champagne yeast: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/jun/01/how-to-make-elderflower-champagne

Last year I was very happy making elderflower cordials…which is the same basic recipe but it’s ready in just two days.  But it doesn’t have bubbles, so now that I know I can turn elderflowers into a delightful drink, I’m aiming for bubbles this year.

Elderflower cordial http://britishfood.about.com/od/recipeindex/r/efowercordial.htm

 

 

 

 

Expand Your Vegetable Garden the Easy Way

/0 Comments/in , , , , , , , , , /by

Heirloom Vegetable Seeds

by Sandy Swegel

Two forces collided around the kitchen table this week.  First I was oogling our seed catalog and indulging in winter snow day daydreams about summer gardens and how I might turn my tiny urban yard into a farm so I could grow one of everything. At that moment I wanted to be surrounded by beautiful shiny vegetables. Then the second force came.  I went grocery shopping for my favorite winter recipe:  a very simple roasted winter vegetable dish with squash and sweet potatoes and beets, marinated in olive oil and rosemary. Yum. The winter squash was even on sale.  Then sticker shock hit. A single large winter squash was $5, even on sale!

The force of wanting to buy more seed collided with the force of not wanting to pay retail prices for food.  The only natural outcome is I have to find more space to garden so I can plant more squash.

It’s too late for any of the summer or fall garden expansion methods of either tilling in land or doing some lasagna gardening.  So I will use the easy method my urban farmer friend Barbara taught me.  Out in a neglected corner of the yard where there’s just some old grass, I’ll dig a shallow hole next May and fill it to an overflowing mound with a bucket of compost.  I’ll plant squash seeds there and cover the surrounding grass with cardboard.  The squash plants will grow over the cardboard as it takes another year to make good garden soil underneath.  I can drape the burgeoning squash plants over the fence and maybe up an old ladder onto the shed roof. (I did mention the tiny yard, didn’t I?)  But the key to expanding my garden this way is that I’m not doing all the heavy work of putting in a new 10 x 10 garden bed for squash.  The squash roots and cardboard are going to help do that.  My yield won’t be as high this year as a full amended composted garden, but then the work will be almost nothing to grow a lot of $5 squash for the price of $1.89 seed packet.

The key to baking yummy winter vegetables is to cut them in 1-1/2 inch pieces, marinate them in olive oil, salt and rosemary, and bake them on flat cookie sheets.  The flat baking sheet is crucial to the outcome because then the sides of the vegetable get a nice crisp roasted texture.  Here’s a more formal recipe:

Recipe:  http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/roasted-winter-vegetables-recipe/index.html

Do Be Bitter

/0 Comments/in , , /by

Why to Grow Your Own Bitters

by Sandy Swegel

One doesn’t often go to a plant lecture and find oneself roaring with laughter, but that’s what happened this month when I went to see Amy Stewart at the Denver Botanic Gardens.  She is a gifted and entertaining writer and her stories about her latest book, The Drunken Botanist, could put her on the late night stand-up comedy stage.  You probably recognize Stewart’s name from previous books on earthworms (The Earth Moved) and flowers (Flower Confidential).  The Drunken Botanist is about the botanical origins of our favorite alcohol beverages. Many of her side stories are about plants as flavorings and medicines and I was intrigued by many of her ideas about bitters.

Bitter flavors and foods are coming back into favor after our long consumptive love affair with sugar.  Sweet is great, but bitter flavors stimulate the digestive system and offer depth and intensity to our foods and drinks.

Traditionally, we get our bitters at the beginning or the end of our meals. Amy Stewart starts her salads with an arugula-baby green mix and then adds leaves of other bitter greens and herbs to create a culinary digestive treat. Being a drunken botanist, she also likes to end her meals with bitter aperitifs like Campari or herbal liqueurs or drinks with Angostura bitters which are made from gentian root.

As you’re planning next year’s garden, be sure to include a range of bitters that are easy to grow. Chicory, dandelion, arugula, radicchio, and endive are excellent wildish greens that can be part of salads before meals.  Some bitter herbs you can snip into your salads include yarrow, rue, chamomile and peppermint. It may be just accidental, but many bitter leaves are also colorful (radicchio) or interestingly shaped (arugula). We must whet our appetite with our eyes as well as with bitter flavors.

In Amy’s honor, I served after-dinner drinks of soda water with splashes of bitter liquors. While toasting friends, I remembered that in another time, the enthusiastic toast “to your health” or “a votre sante” wasn’t just a good wish, but really described the medicinal benefit of a good bitter drink.

Amy Stewart’s webpage: http://drunkenbotanist.com/

If you want to learn more about the medicinal value of bitters as a digestive aid and even protector against diabetes and other illnesses, read the Weston Price Institute’s report.  http://www.westonaprice.org/basics/bitters-the-revival-of-a-forgotten-flavor

Photo credit http://the-bitter-truth.com/tag/jerry-thomas-bitters/ http://medcookingalaska.blogspot.com/2009/02/recipe-for-salad-of-bitter-greens-with.html

Linguine Carbonara with Cauliflower, Peas & Pancetta

/0 Comments/in , , , , /by

Heirloom Vegetable Recipe

Linguine Carbonara From the Gardens of Mike Scott of Eagle Rock Backyard Farms

Ingredients:   3/4 pound linguine 4 ounces pancetta or 4 slices bacon, chopped 1 head cauliflower 1/2 cup peas (preferably fresh) 2 teaspoons olive oil 1/4 cup half and half or milk 2 egg yolks, beaten 3/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese Salt & black pepper

Directions:             Bring a large pot of water to a boil and cook the pasta according to the package directions, reserving ½ cup of the cooking water. Drain the pasta and return it to the pot.   Add 1 teaspoon olive oil to a large skillet and brown the pancetta over medium heat, tossing occasionally, until crisp, 5 to 8 minutes; transfer to a plate.   Add another teaspoon of olive oil, cauliflower, peas, ½ cup reserved water, a dash of salt and black pepper, to the drippings in the skillet. Increase heat to medium-high and cook, covered, until the water has evaporated and the cauliflower and peas are almost tender, 4 to 5 minutes. Uncover and cook, tossing occasionally, until golden brown and tender, 4 to 5 minutes more.   In a small bowl, whisk 2 egg yolks and half and half/milk together. Add the cauliflower, peas, egg yolks, and Parmesan to the pasta and toss to coat over low heat. Cook until sauce thickens. Top with additional black pepper. Enjoy!   Fresh from Mike’s yard: cauliflower and peas, and today’s eggs.

What Kind of Holiday Season Person are YOU?

/0 Comments/in , , /by

My Favorite Gift Giving Tips

by Sandy Swegel

Are you the kind who is frantically looking around for inexpensive gifts to bring to a party you’re going to tomorrow night?  Or perhaps you’re the kind of person who had your holiday shopping and decorating done by Thanksgiving evening and now you’re relaxing in your lovely cinnamon and pine scented home.  I’ve always wanted to be the latter person but I still resemble the frantic running late person too often.

So here’s what I’m doing today to meet the needs of the person I am today.

Last-minute gifts for gardening friends who love to cook:

Herb-infused olive oils: 1 bottle of organic olive oil. Fresh Mediterranean herbs: lots of rosemary including the sticks, moderate amounts of thyme, lesser amounts of oregano. Cute decorative bottles. A handwritten label with a note that it needs to age another two months before use. Curly Ribbons in beautiful colors. http://mountainroseblog.com/herbal-culinary-infusions/

Last-minute gifts for friends who like to drink: Limoncello! Same bottles, ribbons and labels as above. Limoncello can be ready in only 20 ish days. So label accordingly or give it as gifts on Christmas Day. Ingredients: Vodka, on holiday sale at the liquor store, organic lemons fresh from warmer places in the grocery.

Last-minute gifts for friends who don’t cook or drink: Calendars with exquisite pictures.  My favorite this year (2013) for gardeners/mystics is the Flower Spirits Calendar.

And Now the Gift for You and Me because We can plan ahead: Indoor pots full of young lettuce and spinach. In only three weeks you’re going to be making New Year’s Resolutions and eating healthy. Right now the thing to do is get your greens seeds and make some windowsill pots of young lettuces and spinaches and kales.  On January 1st you’ll have pots full of organic baby spinach mixed greens that you have to pay a fortune for in the grocery.

Food Swap!

/0 Comments/in , , , /by

Sharing with Other Foodies

by Sandy Swegel

A group of people who really like to eat interesting food has gotten together with a group of people who really like to cook and preserve interesting food and they’ve come up with a simple ingenious way to make each other happy.  Host a Food Swap!

Have you ever noticed that sometimes the people who do the most cooking and food preparation often don’t eat that much?  By the time the meal comes, they’re not all that interested in the final product.  Either they’ve been nibbling along the way, or they’ve already mentally started their next menu idea.  My friend Julia is like that.  Her pantry shelves are filled with rows and rows of preserves or exotic liqueurs and vinegars that she creates from Farmer’s Market produce she buys each week or gathers while out foraging after she does her high-tech computer job all day. Food is the medium for her art.

Fortunately, her friend Eve knew a lot of people like Julia, and other people who had small market farms and other people who simply loved to eat.  So each month, Eve organizes Food Swaps in Denver, Boulder and Fort Collins. Everyone brings what they do best or what they happen to have.  Last month’s swap items included:

Preserves from Julia
Fermented summer vegetable preserves
Winter Squash and leeks from a market farmer
Homemade vanilla extract
Fresh lard from a pig farmer
Crusty artisan breads
Soups:  grass-fed-beef minestrone and vegetarian split pea soup
Chilies preserved in vodka
Homemade tamales
Honey
Eggs

Everyone gathers at a rotating local venue, spends the first half hour eying up each other’s products and swapping recipes or gardening secrets, then they decide what they want to swap.  If you want something from somebody who doesn’t want what you have…you find somebody with something they do want.  It’s a big but organized free for all….and amazingly everybody goes home happy with culinary treasures for the month.

Consider setting something up for your community or there might be something already going on.

Check Out:

Food Swap Network.
http://www.foodswapnetwork.com/

If you’re in Colorado, join us at Mile High Swappers.
http://www.milehighswappers.com/Mile_High_Swappers/Home.html

And here’s a video from an Indiana Food Swap. http://www.indyfoodswappers.com/2011/09/20/90-seconds-inside-the-indy-food-swap-2/

Apple Windfall

/0 Comments/in , , /by

What To Do With Your Fallen Apples

by Sandy Swegel

While I continue to have a good supply of huge zucchini from the four zucchini plants my neighbor is growing, the bounty and surplus this year is from apples.  Talk about a windfall.  Day after day there are dozens of apples that fall on the ground and they are starting to taste pretty good.  The first small immature apples aren’t really good for much besides the compost pile.  And the apples on the tree shouldn’t be picked until they’ve been sweetened by Fall frosts.  But the ones that nature is lobbing (wind, gravity, squirrels) on the ground every day are a true gift from above…if you process them every day.

The problem with a windfall is that the apples aren’t perfect, so you can’t just put them on the counter or in the refrigerator to use later.  These apples have split open when they hit the hard ground.  Or greedy squirrels ate one or two little mouthfuls before throwing them to the ground. Wasps are feeding on the juicy parts. Or, ickiest, codling worms ate through part of the apple leaving their brown crusty frass. Occasionally, there’s even still a codling worm in the apple.

One bad apple does spoil the batch.  One rotting place on an apple will soon spread to even perfect apples…so you have to keep processing the apples.

Here’s what I do:  I hold a formal apple triage whenever I have time.  Perfect apples without splits or bad spots get spread on a counter in the cool basement or in the refrigerator.  With a little humidity (a root cellar and a box of wet sand are traditional) the apples will last through late winter.

Not perfect but pretty good apples can be:

1. Eaten on the spot. Yum.
2. Have the bad spots cut out and made into sauce, cobbler or juice.
3. Pressed into cider.  Some people in town here had a big apple pressing last year where everyone brought apples and they pressed them all together.  That’s when I learned part of the rich flavor of apple cider comes from all the bad parts and cyanide seeds and occasional worms being pressed together with all the good apples.  The final cider is strained so there’s no chance of getting anything visible in your cider…

When I’m in a hurry and just want the apples not to go bad, I make the world’s simplest cider in small batches in my mighty Vitamixer.

I wash the apples.  I quarter them and remove the disgusting and rotten parts.  I start with one cup of water in the Vitamix and fill the rest of the Vitamix to the top with apple parts.  I pulverize the whole container…having to use the plunger to keep the process started.  Then, the secret to this quickie cider is to pour the entire blender-full through a sprouting bag into a bowl.  Actually, I’m too cheap to use the sprouting bag and I buy the five-gallon paint straining bag from the hardware store.  Then with clean hands, you squeeze the bag, not too unlike milking a cow, until all the juice flows out. Repeat.  The pulp goes to the chickens or earthworms. The juice is good to drink or freeze or even let ferment if you want some old-fashioned hard cider.

Now if only I could develop a taste for zucchini juice, I’d have both abundances of food taken care of.

Vitamix recipes

 

Walk on the Wild Side

/0 Comments/in , , , /by

We Can Forage!

by Sandy Swegel

Sometime every year mid-summer, when the weather is hot and the weeds so darn big, I start to think gardening is just dumb. Nature creates beautiful gardens all on her own without requiring WORK from me.  Why do I garden? Why does anyone garden?  Can’t we just go back to hunting and gathering?

The quickest remedy for mid-summer malaise is a nice walk on the wild side.  I head out into nature where, in the nearby foothills, I don’t have to pull thistles or cut dead branches.  It’s all part of the beauty of the natural world.  With 150,000 people in our county, there’s really not enough there for all of us to hunt and gather.  We’d mostly be eating a diet of raccoons and thistles…not an appealing lifestyle.

But we can FORAGE!  I now have three favorite foragers I follow online.  Wendy was the first modern-day forager I met at a local foraging dinner. In my urban mind, foragers were the wild men who lived in the swamps of southern Louisiana and hunted opossum and squirrel. Wendy is a city girl who spends every spare moment hiking and exploring nature all in pursuit of exquisite flavors…a delicate mushroom from secret forests, the explosive flavor of a high-bush cranberry at peak ripeness, or tender nettle and dock greens she slips into a goat cheese spread.  Everything about Wendy is a reminder of how voluptuously she regards wild food.  Her website name is Hunger and Thirst and her handle is butterpoweredbike.  This is just the kind of inspiration I need on a tedious summer day. Check out her “Wild Thing of the Month” purslane.  I know you have lots of purslane growing in your garden?  Do you know it’s high in healthy omega oils? http://hungerandthirstforlife.blogspot.com/

I’m a big fan of one of butterpoweredbike’s foraging buddies, WildFoodGirl.  Her website http://wildfoodgirl.com and facebook page has great recipes and her website has awesome links to other foragers. Plus if you sign up on her webpage she’ll send you a Wild Things Edible Notebook every month (or so) highlighting plants that can be foraged and recipes for them.  You too can make Wild Mustard Potato Chips.

Another great forager, on an epic scale, is Hank Shaw who travels the country hunting and gathering and hosting dinners in local restaurants with locally foraged food. Hank’s handle is Hunter Angler Gatherer Cook. His recipes are beyond compare.  Where else can you find recipes for “wild ginger ice cream” or  “barbequed wild turkey.”  Hank published a great book last year, Hunt, Gather, Cook.  Even his website address http://honest-food.net/ tells you about what it is we all crave:  honest food, wild tastes, vibrant living.

So if the tedium of gardening in mid-summer heat is wearing on you, head out to wild roads near you…or surf some great foraging websites.