Save the beans! Won’t someone please think of the beans?

In the great bursting forth of the summer growing season, the last thing anyone wants to think about is winter. But winter will come this year, people, just like it always does. “So, Mr. Smarty Vegetable man…” you may say to yourself, “what am I supposed to do about eating local fresh produce during the other 8 months of the year when the only vegetables around come from a can, the freezer isle, or some hot, scary, South American country?”

Well, that’s a tricky one. Obviously, unless you or a friend operate a hydroponic system in the basement or have a huge greenhouse, you can’t reeeeaaally get fresh local vegetables when they are long out of season in the dead of winter. That means if you want the best stuff, you’ll have to get it now, and figure out a good way to preserve it.

Get thee to the farmers market. Our local-est market (one of two that run all summer in Wheeling) always has a great selection of stuff, though I find great joy in the seasonality of the foods available there. One stand I always visit is the East Wheeling Community Garden vegetable booth. It is a well-run community garden, in an otherwise kind of desolate part of town, an unassuming collection of raised beds on a barren hillside under the overpass of Route 250 that raises some of the finest produce you’ll ever have. I have the greatest respect for the volunteers—largely young people—who work the garden, run the stand, bring the neighborhood together and generally kick ass in the name of providing a better food choices for their community. They are also raising money to build a greenhouse, to extend their growing season (see paragraph 1 for information on why one would want to do so) and as a nursery for seedlings which the organization can sell for fundraising purposes in the community. All in all, these are stand-up people, doing great work and all of us could learn a thing or two about what a community really is from them.

Find more about the EWCG, it’s mission, and how you can help: www.eastwheelingcommunitygardens.org

Anyway, once you go and procure your veg, how to go about preserving it? Most people immediately think of canning. Canning is a great option because once canned, food requires zero energy to preserve, and massive quantities can be prepared at once, making it a pretty efficient process. But for some, eating canned vegetables is just a sad reminder of how far off summer is. Canned veg is sometimes soft and mushy, less flavorful, and boiling can undo some of the great nutritional benefits of eating fresh vegetables. Much of this has to do with PROPER canning, and knowing how to get good results. There is an art to canning, and though I’ve tried it, it still escapes me. I will try again, but it does take a little finesse. It’s also a pretty labor-intensive business. Not that I mind working hard at something, it’s just that sometimes I don’t want to.

If you’ve got the resources (a big-ass freezer and some bags) freezing fresh veg is an option. Freezing is thought to cause less damage to the food, preserving it’s nutritional value and making it taste better than canned. Freezing vegetables usually involves blanching, a process in which the veg is plunged briefly into boiling water, then into an ice bath, and then frozen. I’m not sure what this process does exactly—something to do with killing enzymes— but everybody on the internets seems to do endorse this principle, so I figured I would give it a try.

First I needed a batch of veggies to experiment with. On our weekly trip to the Wheeling Farmer’s market, we noticed that EVERYONE seemed to have a ton of green beans. Since beans are only ready for a relatively short time, they seemed like a perfect candidate for preservation. We bought several quarts of roman, wax and regular old green beans, from a few different stands, along with our other regular market booty.

Once home, I thought I would engage in some warm and fuzzy memory-making by inviting Alice to sit on the porch and snap beans with me—which she did for about 3 minutes before something urgent, likely princess-related, required her attention inside—to get them ready for processing. One thing I hate is how little finished product you seem to have after cleaning 3 bazillion beans, or peas, or whatever. What I imagined would be an entire winter’s worth of green beans fit into one big pink bowl when all was said and done. Oh, well, I guess it depends on how many times we eat green beans, eh?

Anyway, here’s the procedure for freezing green beans. I’ve read that it also works pretty well for asparagus, cauliflower, carrots and broccoli, and I intend to try it with cut up bell peppers as well, once they start pouring into the markets.

Save the Beans: Papa’s guide to Green Bean Preservation

Step 1. Get some beans. We bought an interesting mix, because so many varieties are available. Get what you like. Preserved food is only useful if you actually eat it later.

Step 2. Clean the beans. Snap the ends off, or snap off bad spots, bug-bitten areas, etc., then wash gently in cold water.

Step 3. Blanch the beans. I did some research, and there seem to be a range of recommended boiling times, but the consensus is about 3 minutes. It apparently (hopefully) can also be done with a steamer, which is what I opted for, since it reduced the risk of spilling boiling water in the kitchen, where I’m largely wearing flip flops. While the steamer did its thing, I prepared my big bowl of ice water for the plunge. The ice bath stops the beans from cooking too much, just enough to get the job done. After steaming or boiling for 3 minutes, strain the beans and dunk into the cold water for a while, until they are nice and cool to the touch. Put them back into the strainer and let them dry a bit.

Step 4. Freeze the beans. Spread a piece of wax paper over a cookie sheet, and arrange the beans in a single layer. It may take more than one sheet. Put them in the freezer. Once they were frozen, I bagged them in small portions, just enough for a side dish, or to add in a recipe. I keep the bags small because you can always open more bags, I would rather have too few than waste any precious beans.

Step 5. Wait for winter. Then eat the beans. Smile and remember how awesome summer was.

It’s CHOWDA!

Thanks to the bounty of the season, it’s time again for a perennial favorite in our house, the storied Potato Corn Chowder! (Heretofore known as PCC) It’s Beth’s favorite soup, maybe one of her favorite foods period. She had me send the recipe to the caterer for her baby shower. When she’s eating it, nobody ought to talk to her (well, you COULD talk to her, but there is no guaranteed response or cognition). She describes the act of eating it as “having a relationship” with it. What I’m getting at is that she likes it… with good reason.

PCC was born of the excess garden product we were trying to make use of last summer before it went to waste. By this time of the summer zucchini, most other summer squashes, corn, onions, and carrots are going nuts, and this is one recipe that takes full advantage. It’s bursting with fresh flavors, it’s creamy, it’s chunky, it’s a little spicy, and it’s very satisfying. Even Alice (known soup-hater, and general vegetable detractor) will eat a few spoonfuls with the promise of impending dessert.

This chunky chowda is also one of my first cooking creations, and may well be responsible for my climb to the lofty position of head cooker in charge at our house.

PCC is by no means a light dish (it uses almost an entire stick of butter and half a sack of potatoes) but it is packed with lots of nutritious vegetables, which makes you feel a little better about eating a second bowl. As for the grilled cheese that went with the first bowl... can’t help you there. (More on the grilled cheeses at the end of the post)

This is also not a quick supper solution for you busy, worky types. There is a lot of chopping and dicing, a lot of cleaning veggies, a lot of boiling and waiting and boiling and preheating and boiling and stirring and boiling, so forth and so on. From the first scrubbed spud to ass-in-seat suppertime, we’re talking about roughly 2.5 hours, especially if you don’t have any pre-cooked spaghetti squash just lying around like I did when I made the recipe.

So it’s fattening, it’s a ton of work, and it takes forever. What DOES this soup have going for it? Flavor. It tastes like the whole garden crammed itself into your mouth and kicked your tongue’s sorry ass. Fresh sweet corn, garlic, onion, rosemary and squash? Come on, awesome.

The key to the flavor overload is, of course, the fresh veg. Try to use ingredients that were in the dirt as recently as possible. Personally, I will cheat the cooking times a little to add a little more veggie crunch to the mix. Boil it only as long as it takes to get the potatoes and other big chunks soft enough to blend up without ruining any appliances. And while frozen food has its place, The Green Giant bag isn’t gonna cut it here, so don’t do it.

All things considered, this is one of my favorite things to make. It’s delicious, always well-received, and it makes me feel like a culinary badass because it requires me to spend all afternoon sweating in the kitchen. But like most things that take a little sweat, it is sooooo worth it.

Papa’s Garden Orgy Potato Corn Chowder

6 cups diced red potatoes (with skin is ok)

1 Large Chopped Onion

2-3 medium stalks fresh diced celery

2-3 medium carrots, chopped

3 ears fresh sweet corn from someplace you trust (the importance of the quality and freshness of the corn cannot be overstated)

2 Cups cooked and shredded (with fork) spaghetti squash (appx 1 small squash)

1 Small zucchini, cubed (about 2 cups)

About a quart of veggie stock

6 tbsp Butter

2 Cups Organic Whole Milk

3-5 cloves crushed and diced fresh garlic (depending on your relationship with garlic)

1 tbsp onion powder

1 tbsp Sea Salt

1 tsp fresh ground black pepper

1 tbsp thyme

1 tbsp fresh rosemary (adds a great summery flavor, and looks nice floating around in there)

In a large soup pot, melt butter and sautee onions garlic and celery until they get soft. Add diced potatoes and carrots and turn to coat with the butter/onion/celery/crack mixture. Cover the potatoes with veggie stock or plain old cold water and reduce heat to medium/high. Add seasonings and let cook for 20 minutes. Stir often so it doesn’t stick to the bottom of the pot.

Add zucchini, cut corn from the cob, add to pot and cook for an additional 20 minutes. Keep stirring.

After corn is in for 20 mins, check potatoes. If they are soft enough, blend soup with a handheld mixer or egg beater, or do what I do and spoon the big chunks into the food processor, blend them up and return to pot until you have about 50/50 smooth goodness and chunky awesomeness.

Add milk and cooked squash. Cook for an additional 10 minutes. Never ever stop stirring. Take a couple of tastes to test the seasoning, then take it off the heat and let it sit for a while. It will thicken up a bit, and give the flavors some time to meld. Not to mention, if you eat it now it burn the inside of your mouth into to those weird little gross shreds, because it has been boiling for over an hour.

Sometimes I garnish with some shredded cheddar and parsley, but mostly not.

Ladle it up, devour, repeat.

Sidebar: How to Cook Spaghetti Squash

Preheat your oven to 375. Put about an inch of water in a glass baking dish. Using a big, sharp knife, split the squash in half, lengthwise. Scoop out all of the guts and place the halves rind up in the dish of water. Bake for about 30 minutes. Take it out and let it cool off, you will need to handle it, and nobody likes squash burns. When it’s cool enough, take a fork and scrape the insides lengthwise into a bowl. It should shred into long spaghetti-like stands. If you like the added texture in the soup, leave them long and toss it in. If you get freaked out by weird, crunchy noodle-y things in your soup, chop it all up before adding to the pot.

Sidebar 2: Making and saving veggie stock from your scrap stuff

We live by a “use the whole buffalo” kind of code around here, so instead of just heaving all of the scrap from this meal into the compost pile, I like to make veggie stock with it, which I can then freeze, and use again in another soup. The circle of life! Well, the circle of soup, at least.

Keep all of the onion bits, carrot ends, squash rinds, celery greens, etc. in a bowl while you prepare the chowder. After all of the veg is in the pot, get another pot, put your scraps in, add some salt, and fill with water. Bring it to a boil, then reduce the heat and let is simmer the whole time you are cooking and eating the rest of the meal. After you guilt your guests or beat your children into clearing and doing the dishes, strain off the fluid and freeze it in quart Tupperware containers. Thaw it out on the next soup day, and there you go!

Thanks to my Mama for this bit of wisom, she looked horrified last time she was up and saw me crack open a can of stock when I started a soup. She then quickly whisked about the kitchen and threw this together, making me look like a schmuck with my fancy organic-eat-fresh-don’t-buy-stuff-from-the-store ass.

Sidebar 3: Grilled Cheese!

No soup is complete without a gooey grilled cheese sandwich cut in half and wedged jauntily under the bowl. After the milk goes in the soup, I fired up the griddle (because I was making 5 sandwiches for extended family supper) and started the sandwiches. I used some nice wide cracked whole wheat bread — buttered, of course— and filled with swiss, provalone, sliced tomato and onion. Grill 'em up golden brown on each side ( I set my electric griddle to 350, it only takes a few minutes per side) cut and serve. Regular American slices on white bread works too, just ask Alice.

Sidebar 4: Enough with the sidebars!

I apologize for all of the sidebars, and upon proofreading, for the somewhat more frequent than usual use of swear words in this post.