The End of Something or Kale's Last Stand

I love fall, even though it means the end of garden season. There is a cold edge to the morning air, pregnant with the smell of the fallen leaves. It's the time of year when hand-traced-turkeys are hung on refrigerators, children bound into carefully raked leaf piles, and EVERYTHING has pumpkin in it.

While making the weekly menu, I struggled to come up with something new. It had to be delicious, somewhat healthy and inoffensive enough that a chance in hell existed that the children might actually eat it. And no pumpkin. Enough with the pumpkin already.

Pasta is usually a good place to start, because I know the kids will eat it, mostly. Stuffed pasta is a sneaky way to get vegetables and other things into the children, so I decided to stuff manicotti, but what with? A scan of the cupboard and the ghost of my garden revealed little but a butternut squash, some onions, a few small crowns of broccoli and some kale. I had the feeling something could be done with all this, but wasn't sure what or how.

INTERNET! The internet is wonderful because if you are considering doing something, just about anything, chances are someone else has done it, blogged about it, posted a video of themselves doing it, and has been reviewed by a dozen people that think they could do it better. The internet is sort of like the magic computer on a sci-fi spaceship, you just tell it what you want and BWWWWAAAANG, it appears in the little holo-cubby thing. Google came back with something like 1100 hits on "vegetable stuffed manicotti," so I sorted through a few of the first page, got a couple of ideas, then plugged in to my other source of deep knowledge, the Wife.

"Try cauliflower, you know how it gets all creamy when you..." GENIUS! See, this is why I ask. Cauliflower would make the perfect base to the stuffing, healthy, mild in flavor, and moist enough to hold it all together.

Now to sort out the rest. The squash and broccoli were no-brainers, just steam with the cauliflower, toss in the food processor, and bingo, ready to go. But what of the kale?

A word about kale: kale is a versatile green leafy vegetable, dark, tough and hardy, with a strong flavor and a shit-ton of vitamins. If you pick it early, and near the crown of the plant, the leaves are tender enough to eat in a salad. Otherwise they will need to be cooked in some way to be digestible. Kale is the last man standing in my greens bed, long after even the second planting of lettuce, and with hardly any care or intervention by me. A few weeks ago the little green silkworms that decimated most of my broccoli started chewing the kale, so I figured it was a goner. But lo, after a solid week of frost that killed everything else in sight (including the worms) here come some lovely new leaves on the top of the embattled kale plants! So in closing, kale is one tough bitch. Worms, frost, neglect, whatever. Kale does its thing. I was just about to pull everything in the beds and compost them all for winter, but now I must know how long the kale will make its stand.

Lovely new kale leaves. It's freaking 30 degrees out.

I decided to cook the kale as I normally would, in the cast-iron skillet, with salt, butter and lemon juice, but in the interest in keeping the calorie count low substituted a small splash of olive oil and a little veggie broth for the half-stick of butter. It was also a good way to get the onions in, as well as the kinda soft red pepper I found in the crisper. Beauty.

I must say it all worked out beautifully, and with little difficulty, though it did take a long time from start to table, which with 2 children underfoot is trouble enough. The kids devoured the manicotti, and the Wife gave the dish very high marks.

It was a great meal, cobbled together from the last hangers-on of a great season. So there you go, even when the time changes, the frost comes, and everything turns brown, nothing is over until the kale says it's over.

Papa's Garden Stuffed Manicotti

You will need:

1 box manicotti (get the high-end stuff, it really holds up much better)

For the stuffing:

1 head of cauliflower

2 or 3 crowns of broccoli

1 medium butternut squash

1 medium yellow onion, chopped

4 or 5 cloves of garlic, chopped fine

kale, spinach or other fresh greens, 4 or 5 cups

1 red pepper

appx. 2 tsp course ground salt

¼ cup lemon juice

½ cup parmesan cheese

½ cup feta cheese

For the sauce:

2 cups milk

a little splash of olive oil

½ cup of flour

½ cup parmesan cheese

Salt

Pepper

Oregano

Garlic powder

Let's cook!

Halve and clean squash, clean broccoli and cauliflower and chop into florets. Put 'em in the steamer (if you have one) for about 25 mins. If you have no steamer you can blanche for about 5 minutes and fry it up in a wok or large pan, but steaming is best.

While the veggies are steaming, heat up about 2 Tbsp of olive oil in an iron skillet or big frying pan.

Sauté your garlic and onions until they begin to get soft, then add greens and chopped red pepper.

Once the greens start to cook down a bit, dribble lemon juice over it, and ad a few pinches of salt. Repeat and taste to test. I like my greens to be nice and tart, and have a savory kick to compliment the sweetness of the rest of the veggie mix.

Greens are done when everything is soft enough to be blended up in the food processor.

Set the pan off the heat to cool a little while.

Check the steaming veggies for softness. When they are done, put them in a colander and rinse them with cold water, so you can handle them without hurting yourself. I learned the hard way. Pour off the collected steamer water from the little tray (which has lots of veggie goodness in it) into a glass measuring cup or bowl and save for later.

Put the sauté mixture into the food processor and give it a whirl. I like to do this first so that all of the tough fibers from the greens get cut up very fine. One little hard green thing in their dinner and the children will certainly abort.

Scoop the mix into a large bowl.

Cube the steamed squash and throw it into the food processor and process until it's pretty smooth. Add a little of the saved steamer water if it is too dry and chunky.

Add the cauliflower and broccoli to the food processor. Chop it up, but don’t liquefy it. Leave some nice little veggie chunks. You will certainly need to add some of the saved water as you blend. My food processor is kind of small, so I had to do this in 2 loads.

Combine all of the veggies in your mixing bowl.

Mix in feta and about ½ of the parmesan, then salt and pepper to taste. At this point, I put it in the fridge, mostly because I had to go get the kids at school, but I think the stuffing probably benefits from setting up a bit.

Preheat your oven to 375

Boil your water and cook pasta until al dente, or about a minute less than the directions on the package. Drain and rinse with cool water, again to avoid serious injury, and again, learned the hard way.

The Sauce

Just about any kind of pasta sauce would work here, tomato, or cream, any variety you like. I decided to go for a white cream sauce, just a basic alfredo style, but that was because I hadn’t been to the store, and I didn’t have the stuff on hand to do anything more adventurous, like the kooky yogurt cheese sauce I was thinking of.

Put a little splash of olive in a small sauce pan.

Add garlic, oregano (fresh of course, if you can get it) and pepper. Heat up a bit on low heat.

Add milk and whisk in flour. Stir pretty much constantly over low heat until it thickens up.

Mix in parmesan. This should thicken it up very nicely.

Add salt carefully, to taste.

If it gets too thick and starts clumping, thin with a little water.

Let cool a bit then coat the bottom of a large glass baking dish with a thin layer of sauce.

Back to the pasta!

Stuff the manicotti carefully with a small fork or spoon. They split really easily when they are cooked, which isn’t the end of the world, but they look so nice with their pleasing tubular shape, it really is a pity to bust them up.

Arranged the stuffed pasta in the baking pan, then pour the rest of the sauce over top, coating them well. I put a leave of basil on the top of each piece, partly to be fancy, partly so I knew where each one was when I go to dig them out with the spatula, in the hopes of keeping them whole and nice on the plate. Feel free to sprinkle with a little more oregano, or pepper at this point. Again, the appearance of anything that looks like part of a plant or a spice can jeopardize the whole mission when kids are involved, so use caution.

Put it in the oven and bake for 30 minutes.

Let cool, dish out with a nice salad and a glass of wine. You deserve it, this was kind of a pain in the ass.

Two-Minute Lunch... or Tomato, tomaaaaaahhhto.

It seems like today, everybody's time is comes at an absolute premium. We've got more work, less money, more responsibilities, and less time. In the spirit of time-saving, this will be a quick post, about a quick lunch. It's actually what I just had for lunch 5 minutes ago, that's how quick we're talking here. Like just about everything I make in the summer, it includes stuff from my garden, but good produce can be had from many places, especially this time of year. So let's waste no more time eh? I present:

Papa's Two-Minute BLT (Big Lovely Tomato) Sandwich

You will need:

1 glorious ripe tomato, the fresher and riper, the better. My sandwich was made of a big fat Roma I picked this morning.

2 tbsp cream cheese

A few leaves of lettuce

A squirt of yellow mustard

2 pieces of the lovely whole grainy bread of your choice

To make:

Pop the bread in the toaster. This is the most time intensive step, depending on how long your toaster takes to toast some toast.

Wash and slice up the tomato, wash your lettuce, etc.

When the toast pops up, spread the cream cheese while the toast is still hot, so it gets all gooey and creamy.

Add tomato slices over cheese, then pile on lettuce.

Top with a little mustard and CHOW DOWN.

You will likely have more tomato slices than will fit in one sandwich, but if you are anything like me, you will simple repeat these steps until it's gone. (2 sandwiches for me.)

Let The Vegetable Orgy Begin! or The Return of Gary the Toad

Crops Arise! All of the planning, digging, mulching, watering and weeding I’ve undergone since May is about to pay off big time: the vegetables are coming! I’ve been enjoying lettuces and herbs for a few weeks now, but the advent of the big veg really feels like pay dirt. This week I plucked the first good-sized zucchini from the squash beds. Granted, zucchini is so prolific that in a few weeks I’ll be begging neighbors to take the stuff off my hands, but for right now it tastes like sweet, crunchy victory. Without a second thought I knew just where this sweet little zuke was going to end up. On the top of a pizza.

Lacking the free time that afternoon to make dough from scratch, I made a quick request from my noble breadwinner, and on her way home from the office she procured a beautiful loaf of French bread to split into quickie pizzas for dinner.

Another trip to the garden produced some basil, spinach, arugula, and a few red onions—all we would need for a delicious garden pizza that would only take a few moments to make after Mama got home. This is super easy to replicate, I hope you do it right now.

***Please note: no photos exist of these pizzas because we were very hungry, and devoured them so quickly that all was left was a dirty baking sheet and a heavenly smell.

Papa’s Quickie French Bread Garden Pizza

You’ll need:

1 big long huge loaf of crusty French bread, the fresher the better

1 medium onion, or a handful of small young onions that you keep eating, though they aren’t fully grown, you just can’t stay out of ‘em.

1 medium zucchini

Handful of fresh basil leaves

Handful of baby spinach

Handful of arugula

About a cup of shredded Mozzarella cheese

A sprinkling of grated Parmesan cheese

Garlic powder

Oregano flakes (my oregano isn’t up yet. Boooo.)

A cup or so of pizza sauce. Use the kind from a can, or just mix up some tomato paste with garlic powder, oregano and salt.

To make ‘em:

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.

Cut the loaf into thirds, then split the sections lengthwise, lay crust down on a baking sheet. Keeping the pieces small helps you not drag all of the cheese off of the whole thing when you take the first bite, scalding your chin and wrecking the aesthetic of the beautiful, gorgeous pizza.

Spread on the pizza sauce liberally, the bread will soak up a lot of it, use two coats to make sure there is still a little on the surface.

Sprinkle with garlic powder and oregano.

Chop up spinach, arugula, and basil. I saw this sweet technique on TV where you roll the leaves up, then slice them crosswise, to make nice little shreds of the leaves without bruising all the flavor out. Totally works. Lay the shredded greens on, except for the arugula, which we’ll put on later.

Sprinkle the Mozzarella all over. If it doesn’t look like enough, USE MORE. There is no such thing as too much cheese. I firmly believe this.

Slice up the zucchini and onion, place over the cheese.

Sprinkle the Parmesan cheese over the top.

Pop in the oven for about 8 minutes, or until the cheese is melted and starting to get all brown and crispy on the edges (salivating while typing)

When it’s done, toss the shredded arugula on top. For some reason it tastes better if you don’t heat it up.

DEVOUR.

Sidebar: The Return of Gary, the Not-So-Suicidal Toad.

I’m sure you all remember the saga of Gary, the toad who tried to end it all, way back when the garden was just a pile of mulch and a dream. Well, needless to say, Gary did NOT go through with it, I like to think partly because of my intervention. Well, it seems Gary is back, living it up big time in the moist humus under the protective leaves of the potato patch. I caught a peek of him when I tripped as I wheeled Alice’s new big girl bike past the patch and nearly fell on the plants. He hopped out from under the plant I jostled, gave me a stony glance (the toad equivalent of the middle finger) and hopped it right back into the shadows of the patch. Some gratitude, Gary.

How to know if you're a jerk: Sisyphus, the passivist, and dandelion soup

Usually it's easy to tell if someone is a jerk.

I would say that generally, I am a well-meaning, honest person, who intends no real harm on anyone. Sure, I get angry at people sometimes; litterers piss me off, tailgaiting makes me insane, and I have very little patience for telemarketers, proud idiots, or anyone who is willing to put common decency aside to get in line ahead of me at the Target checkout. But for the most part I’m a nice guy. Imagine my distress when evidence comes to light that suggests I may actually be a jerk.

Please provide an example you say? Ok.

My neighbors are ridiculously nice retired people. They are avid readers, gardeners, church-goers, hard workers, and have raised a clutch of well-adjusted grown children, who in turn spawned a bevy of grandkids, each more sweet and wonderful than the next. There is NOBODY who doesn’t like this family. Especially the patriarch, who I will call Joe, because it is the only name I could think of that would suit him as well as his own. Joe is kind and patient, generous but firm, wise, handy, and actually shares many of my own interests. He built his home and impressive family with a lifetime of hard labor in a coal mine. He is a good man, a veteran, one of the old guard, the kind of guy who has had a standing appointment with the same barber for the last 35 years, the kind of guy who changes his oil exactly at 3000 miles and NEVER forgets. And he could also definitely still kick your ass.

Joe takes care of his lawn with near-religious fervor. It is never too tall, too dry, too weedy or all weird and spotty. It is a point of pride, and he wears it like a medal from the war. But even Joe is no match for nature. Every spring, after the first few lawn cuttings, the dandelions appear. This is a fact of nature, and no amount of human interference will stop it. They are coming. But Joe fights them. He fights and fights, and always loses, and I always laugh. Today, as I write this, Joe is out in the lawn with a tool, (possibly homemade) kind of like a little flat spade on a long handle, stabbing at the dandelions, one by one. He slowly kills them all. I watch from my kitchen window, giggling quietly because I know that in 2 days or less Joe will be there again, doing exactly the same thing. He looks over toward my lawn, which is easily 40% fat, happy dandelions and shakes his head. Joe labors long, conducting his ritual killing for a solid 3 months, and for the life of me I can’t understand why. Maybe this is how people who don’t drink cope with their own smallness in the universe. I don’t know. But I think it’s funny. So why, with all his admirable qualities, do I enjoy watching this man suffer this indignitiy? Because, I am a jerk. And if you think any of this is funny, so are you.

"But why, jerk?" you may ask, "are the dandelions such an invincible enemy that a gifted writer like you could use them as an allegory for the endless, pointless, Sisyphean struggle for life on our planet?"

Mostly because Joe will never defeat the dandelions. Why? Because nature HATES his lawn. You see, nature abhors an empty space. And lawns, though humans find them soothing and attractive, are basically a wasteland, ecologically speaking. To make a lawn, the ground is usually marked off into rigid, squarish shapes, stripped of it’s thatchy, loamy surface layer, impregnated with a single species of grass, squirted with chemicals to kill anything that already lives there, then fertilized, weeded, fed, watered and mechanically brutalized to keep it looking just right. Without human intercedence a lawn is not really sustainable, it would just die. Then nature would quickly reclaim it, via little green storm troopers, like the dandelion.

Dandelions are pioneer plants. Mother nature sends them bursting forth into any ecosystem where there is room for biological improvement. They are sentries, pilots, an elite occupying force. They take root in immature or badly damaged ecosystems (like Joe’s lawn, and yours, btw) and never let go. They germinate almost instantly, grow quickly, flower and produce a bazillion seeds in a matter of days, and drill a foot long taproot as thick as your thumb (that you will never be able to remove all of) through even the hardest ground, seemingly overnight. They are bad emmer-effers, at least among flowering annual varieties.

So what’s to be done? Nothing, as far as I’m concerned. I actually think the dandelions are kinda pretty, and interestingly enough, most of the plant is edible! Dandelion leaves, when young and tender (before flowering) make a delicious salad green. Hell, you can even get them in bag salad at the grocery store. The root can be roasted and ground to make a weird, chicory-like drink, which is weird, and I doubt anybody really does this anymore, and the flowers are edible too, though they can be put to much better use in one of my favorite hobbies, making booze at home!

While you may have never heard of dandelion wine outside of a bluegrass song, it is a real thing. My grandpa, a homemade wine legend (in Sebring, Ohio) made it, as well as wines from blackberries, watermelons, and pumpkins — pretty much anything that would ferment, and was easy to grow in great abundance. Sadly I do not have grandpa’s recipe for homemade dandelion wine. It's probably for the best, as I'm not sure about the health (and legal) implications of doling out booze-making advice on the internet.

Instead, I found another old-timey favorite to share with you. While researching dandelion-based fare, one writer quipped: "Only the very poorest and the very richest people eat dandelions." Which I like. I was able to talk to a few neighbors about eating dandelions in the old days, and the only thing I heard repeatedly, aside from the Grandpa/Uncle/Cousin/Best Friend/Preacher who made wine, was dandelion soup.

Indeed most of the recipes I found online were of the fancy-pants french cuisine variety, so I had take a few of the best and drag them through the holler a little bit, hoping to conjure something your granny might cook up when the seasons finally began to turn, at the forefront of the great bursting-forth.

So all jerkiness aside, enjoy this recipe, I did.

Spouse review, quote — Dandelions? from the yard? —endquote.

Papa’s Dandelion Green Soup

You’ll need:

2 tbsp butter

4 cups dandelion greens (pick the nice light green leaves near the crown of the plant, and pick from plants that haven’t flowered yet, otherwise the leaves will be too bitter and rubbery)

2 carrots, peeled and chopped

8 or 10 ramps, wash, cut off greens and roots, dice. (If you don’t have ramps where you live, use a few cloves of garlic and a little extra onion.) More on ramps later this spring!

1 Medium onion, chopped

1 head of fresh cauliflower, chopped (or 2-3 cups frozen)

6 cups veggie stock

2 cups milk

2tbsp Dijon mustard

1 tbsp chopped parsely

Salt and pepper to taste

What you do:

Sautee the onions and ramps in butter in your big soup pot over medium high heat until they begin to soften. Add carrots, cauliflower and greens and cook for another 5 minutes.

Add stock, bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 10 minutes or so, until all the veggies are nice and soft.

Use stick blender, or transfer big chunks to the blender with a slotted spoon and blend until its all nice and smooth, return to soup.

Mix in milk and cook for 5-10 minutes until it begins thickening up.

Add chopped parsely leaves

Add salt, pepper , then Dijon, a little at a time, until it’s just tangy enough for your taste. The tang shouldn’t overpower the dandelion greeny flavor.

Serve with crusty bread, or grilled cheese sandwiches.

Wait, Watchers: Wasting time, losing weight and how I met Gary, the suicidal toad.

Egad, the first blog post since when? Oh dear. Well you know how it is, I could drag out a dozen excuses why my blog fell off the face of the earth for an entire season, but you would probably enjoy reading them even less than I enjoy imparting them to you, so let us move on! FOR THE LOVE OF GAWD, SPRING IS ALMOST HERE!

And with it comes a blush of new energy on the cheeks of my creativity. Work, of late has been humming through the mac, songs are born of the echoing womb of my guitar on nearly a weekly basis, and maybe most exciting: seeds, mulch, trellises and tools are stockpiling themselves across the grounds of the Hughes compound in anticipation of THE GARDEN. Oh, even writing the word makes me happy. Truly spring is springing, and a young man’s fancy turns to decomposed organic matter.

However, winter hasn’t passed us by without noteworthy events, just without notation. Perhaps most important to the scope of this blog is my wife’s subscription to Weight Watchers, and the practices and theories bundled within. Both of us have tried many diets, programs etc., with largely the same result. PTHHHPT. That is how I imagine one could spell a fart sound made with mouth and hands. But you get the idea, no? WW, however is a different animal altogether, so far. Therein lies more emphasis on healthier eating, not just less eating. The points system has allowed Beth to change the way she thinks about food, as well as the way she eats it, and really has resulted in a pretty impressive lifestyle change, not to mention a substantial weight loss. (Go baby!, you are awesome!) The best feature, from my perspective is the massive archive of WW recipes, which members (subscribers? devotees?) can readily access to make healthier eating easier for the entire family. Many of these (very tasty, and very copyrighted) recipes feature clever ways of substituting veggies and purees for eggs, sugar, oil and so forth. Before this becomes an ad for WW, let me just say that the key, at least in Beth’s experience, seems to be based on the fact that fruits and veggies are worth zero points, and therefore add nothing to your daily points limit. This means you can eat as much as you want, which is awesome. I shan’t run down the myriad reasons why you should eat more fresh veg, but I will say this, you really should. Since Beth (and the rest of us, by virtue of the WW recipe archive) began eating more vegetables, we’ve lost weight, had more energy, and generally feel better. And it has made my mission for this summer clear: GROW MORE VEGETABLES, PAPA.

Indeed. Though we are weeks away from planting time here in the Ohio Valley, my brain is bursting with new growth. Over the winter I’ve done much research and have decided to take a more ecological approach to gardening this year. Where in years past, I’ve spent countless hours tilling, watering, weeding and otherwise busting my ass trying to scratch a few vegetables out of a half acre or so behind my in-laws’ place, this season, I’m keeping it local. Producing my veggies, herbs and flowers in carefully designed boxes, beds and trellises right outside my door. This should make maintenance simpler, save water, and prompt me to actually be a more effective gardener, as I will have to walk right through the middle of the garden to go anywhere at all. I’ve also learned much about how soil works, how to make it work better, and how to get the most food production from a small growing space. Which brings us to Gary the toad. In a sec.

The key to better soil, in a word, is mulch. Mulching is basically the practice of composting in place. You add organic material in massive piles, right where your plants will grow. It rots, deposits nutrients in the soil, the plants use them to make wonderful veg, and so forth. A simple idea, and certainly not a new one, but just one of those things I’d never really considered. Gardening tends to be learned on a personal basis, from friends and family, traditions passed long through generations, some good, some, well… less good. At any rate, I’m big into mulch now. Ask anyone. It’s my new thing. And while gathering leaves, dead grass, and other yummy, decompos-ey stuff from the yard to add to my growing mulch beds, I met Gary.

I can only assume Gary had been harboring suicidal thoughts for some time, laying, half frozen under the bushes, as I’d never met another toad so bent on his own destruction. I first saw Gary when he fell out of a big load of leaves I had scooped up and flung into the wheelbarrow. In the cool of the morning, his lethargic body made sort of a dull, squishy thud as it hit the turf. I thought to myself, this toad is out rather early, or maybe it’s that I’ve just compromised his cold-weather home with my eager raking. I tried to gently urge Gary to move back under the bushes, where I promised I would disturb him no more, and he went. But not for long. Next trip, I returned with my wheelbarrow and filled it with more much-fodder. As I turned back toward the garden, I noticed a slight movement and heard a desperate “UUUURP.” There was Gary, pinned under the fat pneumatic tire of the wheelbarrow. Again, I gently escorted him to the safety of the bush, and went about my business. Two more loads came and went, and I’d figured Gary had learned to stay where wheels and rakes and big black boots entered not. I dumped the last load of mulch into what will be the new potato/broccoli/carrot patch, and grabbed my freshly sharpened spade to ventilate the sod a little so that all of the mulchy juices could get down into the soil. As I raised the spade to make my first stab into the dense ground, out hops Gary from the pile I’d just deposited, right under the falling blade. I just barely avoided slicing him cleanly in two, and resolved to let Gary be wherever he wanted to be for the rest of the day, and go on to a different project. When I checked back a little later, Gary was nestled, snug as a bug in a little pocket he’d burrowed for himself in the mulch.

It was then I gave him his name, and decided that he should be the keeper of the mulch bed, and act as a sort of health gauge for the soil there. As long as I was doing a good enough job keeping the garden healthy, the soil should always be so moist, warm (due to decomposition) and crawling with tasty bugs, that Gary should never want a better home. If Gary relocates, I shall have nowhere to look but in the mirror. Unless he jumps off the garage in front of the moving car. Then I’ll know it was just that Gary had problems all along.