What to do with that eggplant

Many people shy away from eggplant, that very strange vegetable.  My kids take one look at it and run.  Bob and I love to slice, coat, and cook it in a little oil as an appetizer, or even grill large slices outside.  It is the steak of the vegetable world.


This year the garden yielded an incredible amount of eggplant--the largest amount it has ever delivered!  I started out making eggplant parmesan and frying the slices like I normally do, but that wasn't using up the amount being produced.  I peeled, sliced, blanched and froze a gallon bagful but was still searching for more ways to cook up my supply.


Today I found this delightful recipe from Smitten Kitchen.  Her recipe uses zucchini but it works just as well with eggplant.  I salted and drained the eggplant slices for quite a while (two hours, probably) just because it took that long to get back to cooking after chasing kids around the house.  Make sure you take paper towels and soak up as much liquid as you can from the eggplant slices after they sit in the salt for a while.  This keeps them from being bitter and soggy.  I also used half white flour, half white whole wheat flour (King Arthur Flour sells white whole wheat) for the dough, and it passed the Bob test (he hates anything made from whole wheat flour--says it "tastes like dirt".  I think next time I'll top it with thinly sliced shallots or caramelized onions.  

T double E double R double I . . .

It's feeling like fall in Upstate NY--nights are cool and morning dog walks require a sweatshirt.  The days will still warm up to the low eighties, but it just doesn't feel as muggy as June or July.  The garden is dying down while the apples and wild grapes are ripening.  I love this time of year.


When walking the dog the other morning the laneway looked like it was ready for Halloween.  We started out having to break through a few single web strings that crossed our path, but then I saw this:

I don't know if it is just timing--I'm walking the dog at the right moment when the sun shines through the dewey webs--or if spiders work like crazy when the temperature starts to drop.  These were along the brush next to our path, all the way down the path.  

If you didn't get too close, the spider would be sitting in the center of their masterpiece.  Otherwise as soon as you approached they would drop out of sight.

This picture has two webs with a spider in each if you can see them

We have a healthy respect for spiders in this house.  It must be from growing up seeing the original Charlotte's Web in the movie theatre.  The kids are told not to kill them (our nemesis is the cluster fly) but also not to get too close.  I have witnessed what a spider bite can do, thanks to a coworker's unlucky encounter.  So, as long as these guys keep in their spot and do their job, we can coexist.


This morning a line was crossed.  As I was walking the dog, looking for webs, I found a Monarch butterfly motionless, seemingly suspended in the air.  A closer inspection revealed its wings being stuck in a web.  Luckily it seemed the spider had not yet approached its prey.  I had a Wilber moment, took a stick and broke the web.  The butterfly quickly flew away and I was elated.  Sorry Charlotte--you'll have to try again for a more ugly dinner.  Meanwhile the dog and I continued our walk, looking for more webs.  I have yet to find one that spells "Terrific" but I'm still looking.

Shrimp Fra Diavolo

This is a wonderful way to use up that half bag of frozen shrimp in the freezer, if you happen to have shrimp in the freezer.  If not, go out and buy some because shrimp cooks so quickly it makes a nice work day dinner.  I made it this week, using up my last jar of whole tomatoes from last year's garden.  However, you don't need home grown tomatoes to make this.  It will still be delicious with store bought canned tomatoes.

-1/2 to 1 pound of shrimp, or whatever you have in the house
-5 tablespoons olive oil
-1 tsp crushed red pepper flakes (this makes it a little hot--adjust the amount to the level of heat you like)
-4 to 5 cloves of garlic, minced or pressed (even more if you really like garlic)
salt
-1 (28-oz) can diced tomatoes (drained), or whole tomatoes (drained and cut up), or crushed tomatoes, it really doesn't matter but it is good if the tomatoes are still chunky, as opposed to tomato sauce
-1 cup white wine if you have it, or 1 cup chicken broth, or water really
-1/4 cup fresh cut up parsley leaves, or a tablespoon of parsley flakes
-linguine or spaghetti

Cook the pasta in a large pot of water while you are cooking the shrimp.

For the shrimp:
Heat a large skillet over medium high heat.  Toss the shrimp with half of the pepper flakes and 2 T oil.  Cook the oil and shrimp in the skillet until shrimp is opaque, maybe about two minutes, stirring to get both sides done.  Transfer the shrimp to a medium bowl and take the pan off of the heat to cool it down for 2 to 3 minutes (you want it cooler so the garlic doesn't burn when you put it in).  Have the tomatoes, spices, and wine ready to go.

Put the skillet back on the burner and turn the heat to low.  Put in 3 T oil and the garlic and cook while stirring until it is aromatic (maybe 4 to 5 minutes).  Watch the garlic so it doesn't burn.  Burned garlic will look brown and taste bitter.  Now put in the tomatoes, wine, sugar, 1/2 t salt, and the remaining pepper flakes.  Turn the heat up to medium and simmer until thickened slightly, about eight minutes.  Dump in the shrimp and heat through about a minute longer.

Serve the shrimp and sauce over the cooked pasta.  Yum!

One Man's Trash . . .

Between birthday parties and Christmas I spend a lot of time sorting out toys and getting rid of clutter.  It is such a comfort to me to see a tidy bedroom and a playroom with everything in the proper bin, on the shelf.  Sometimes I have to sneak the old toys out of the house to get them to the donation box.  My kids tend to want to hang on to everything--even broken old McDonald's toys.


As much as I enjoy a de-cluttered house, I a have a huge weakness--rummage sales. I can't hold back.  There is an adrenaline rush when walking in, wondering if or when you will find that awesome item, only for a dollar or two.  K & E feel like they are in toy heaven--who cares if the toys are used, they are still cool.


So, with a little trepidation, the three of us (Bob was out of town, the poor soul) went to the 40th Annual St. Mary's Lawn Sale.  Yes, it is quite an event.  A month before the sale they park a full size semi trailer on the lawn and collect donations.  Usually after a few weeks people are turned away because they run out of room for all of the stuff.  It runs over two days and I typically wait until the second day because everything is half price and most of the treasure (and crowds) are gone, preventing me from going crazy and bringing home a bunch of junk.  However, the kids and I went on the first morning because we had a mission--E desperately needed a bigger bike.  I wasn't sure if they would even have bikes, but who was I kidding?  This was the 40th Annual St. Mary's Lawn Sale--they had bikes of all sizes and colors!  Our mission was complete in five minutes and E was the proud owner of a spiffy if slightly rusty 20 inch Huffy, complete with two flat tires.  Now, if only I could find a bike pump . . .


K and E went to look at toys and were soon bouncing back with their treasure:  a Mousetrap Game (complete with instructions) and a skateboard, both for $1. 

I haven't played Mousetrap in 30 years, but it looks cool

 Bring on the clutter!  I worked my way through the crowd to peruse the toys with them.  Here is where I get into trouble.  I have this compulsion to want to purchase anything remotely connected to my childhood.  So, when I saw the box covers to the Capsela 1000 and 500 and saw their late 70's grooviness, there was no holding back.  

Bubbly building tools with motors for land or water.  Awesome!

Seven dollars later those kits were mine, baby!  With those came another groovy robot kit, a Jotto word game (circa 1972, never used, and only a dollar!) and E found an old Etch A Sketch (says patent pending on the back, so I assume it's and older one).

This robot guy looks like a Star Wars Imperial Walker, so we were psyched!

Look at those people.  They are having so much fun playing Jotto.  Who says the  70's wasn't cool.

A few Barbie and puzzle items later I was lugging around a box full of our junk treasure.  The kids took a break for hotdogs and I used that time to stroll through the tent--the main part of the sale, full of old plates, decorations, appliances, and my favorite--old electronics.  Now, I don't buy anything from that table, but I love to look through the items and reflect on how much and how quickly technology has changed.  This year the table was full of cordless phones (it's been years since we've had a regular phone in our house, so those looked strange to me), CD Walkmans, and a few Kodak slide carousels (OK, I admit it.  I was tempted to buy one of those just for nostalgic purposes, but held off).  To the left of that table was one labeled "Items for Men", and the curiosity got to me.  This was a table full of tools, and it took not two seconds for me to spy a not-so-rusty bike pump for $2!  I was winning!  If that bike pump actually worked then our morning outing could be considered a huge success.


We took our loot home and the kids spent the afternoon assembling mousetraps, puzzles, and building mechanical machines from our treasure.  

E bought a bag of these puzzles, eight of them for a dollar.  Win!

I used the pump to air up the bike tires and it worked splendidly--the little locking mechanism even functioned so no one had to hold the nozzle--and I also used it to air up the several deflated soccer balls around the house.  Success!  I gave Bob a call and told him about the triumphant bike mission.  "And I found an awesome bike pump!"  Pause.  Bob, the neat freak, doesn't get quite as excited as I do over used treasure.  "Um, we have an air compressor we can use for that."  Oh.  Well, what I didn't tell him is that I'M DEATHLY AFRAID OF THE AIR COMPRESSOR AND THIS LETS ME FIX THE TIRES USING NOTHING BUT MY MUSCLE STRENGTH.  So there. Besides, it was only two dollars!

The awesome bike with the more than awesome bike pump

Alas, as I looked around the basement last night, it is once again a cluttered mess. The toy shelves, newly sorted and cleaned of old puzzles and games, will be once again stuffed full of the day's booty.  And so the declutter cycle repeats.  I don't know if I'll ever be able to resist the St. Mary's Lawn Sale, or that rush of finding a most useful (or totally un-useful but exceptionally groovy) item for only a dollar.  And I guess in the end if the worst thing that happens is a little mess, I will trade that for a few days of K & E ( and me) having fun with the things they found.

Gardening

I started gardening back in 1992 after buying a house in Rochester.  It already had a vegetable garden space, so all I had to do was figure out how to plant.  Knowing nothing about gardening and not having the internet (how did we survive without it?!) I bought gardening books to help me out.  


There are many things you obtain throughout your life that are pretty much tossed aside.  Then there are the few items that actually become so useful you would freak out if it got lost or broken.  One of the first garden books I purchased back then was called Vegetables by a guy named Derek Fell.  I just googled it and found it available as an ebook on a website, and this is what my book looks like:

This dude really looks like he knows what he's doing.  I also like his grooviness.

Turns out this little paperback book was the only gardening book I ever needed.  Its corners are now tattered and the front cover is about to rip off, but I still refer to it every year.

Garden books are good at telling you all of the things to do to have that perfect garden.  Between laziness and lack of time I've chosen NOT to do several things, but the garden still survives year after year.

Things I don't do:

1.  Test the soil.   Every gardening book tells you to test the soil and adjust for nutrients.  I know darn well that even if my soil is tested I will never make adjustments, so I don't bother with that.

2.  Turn the dirt over every year.  I used to till, back when we started with all nasty clay.  However, most of the Mother Earth News types today say that tilling isn't necessary and could actually mess up the soil structure.  I just don't do it because it takes time.  Instead, just keep piling compost on top of the old dirt.  It's so much easier.

3.  Weed, very often.  I will weed a little here and there when the weeds are easy to pull, but there is a dead zone between where the garden ends and where Bob stops mowing that is full of some giganta-weeds.  

giganta catnip weed

scary giganta weed with giganta leaves

If they don't pull out easily then I just step on them to smash them down.

4.  Spray with chemicals.  At the beginning of the season and maybe once in August I will spray plants with Pyola to get rid of flea beetles--they will totally destroy eggplant.  Other than that, I don't spray.

5.  Plant the plants with the recommended spacing.  My plants are crowded together.  This actually blocks out some weeds, but the tomatoes become a crowded mess by August.

6.  Wait until the frost free date.  For Upstate New York this is usually around Memorial Day.  This year I planted a month early because it was so warm.  I lost plant tops due to a freak snow / frost storm, but the plants recovered and now I have tomatoes in early August.  This lets me process them when I am home full time, well before getting ready for the start of school.

Things I will do:

1.  Plant in compost.  Every year I get a load of compost and apply two to three inches on top of last year's dirt.  You have to make sure the compost has set out for a few weeks so it isn't too hot, but my plants have really thrived. 

2.  Use a drip irrigation system.  I won't water by hand, so a simple drip irrigation system has been wonderful.  I've used one for fifteen years.  Irrigro is very easy to set up, although it takes some tweaking to make it work right.

The white line in the middle is the drip line.  You can see the darker dirt around it from the water.

3.  Put cardboard down between the garden rows.  Thick cardboard helps reduce the weeds between rows and creates a great walking area.  It degrades within a season so every spring I put more down.

Hooray for big fat cardboard!

4.  Start plants from seeds.  You can't get the variety of plants from the local store as you do with your own transplants.  I have had tremendous success with Pinetree Garden seeds.  Their seeds and shipping are dirt cheap, which was why I went with them, but the sprout rate and strength of plant is wonderful.  They are an excellent find!  

5.  Use an automatic watering system for starting seeds.  Eighteen years ago I bought a few seed starting systems from Gardener's supply and I still use those same ones today.  I love them!  They are perfect for a lazy gardener like me who forgets to water seedlings.  They do seem expensive, but like I said, I've had mine for 18 years and only replaced the capillary matting once or twice.


As you can see by the pictures, my garden is not pretty!  I'm blessed to live in the country so no neighbors are affected by the ugliness of my garden.  However I also think the ugliness is due to the fact we live in the country and being surrounded by fields of giganta-weeds.  


So, if you have a little piece of unused yard, you can easily start growing a few things on your own.  You don't have to follow all of the gardening rules.  Just grow some stuff and delight in picking your own tomatoes!

Why change the name?

I had originally called this blog The Imperfect Gardener, but wasn't really happy with that because there were soooo many other blogs, books and websites with that title. I didn't want to steal anyone's idea.  So, I considered the general topics in my head that will get out by writing and two thoughts came to mind.  I get my ideas while walking the dog, so Staring at the Dog's Rear-end was one, but there was no way I would use that.  The other thought that is frequently in my head is with kids, gardening/cooking/canning and pets, my kitchen floor is almost always sticky.  Five minutes after I mop, someone will go into the kitchen and spill something on the floor.  I googled sticky kitchen floor and ha! no one uses it for a website or blog (most results were people asking how to clean a sticky kitchen floor.  I'm amazed that people need to google that question, but oh well).  So, there you have it.  Perhaps to celebrate I'll go clean that floor.  Then again, I do have email to check.  And Facebook.  And Twitter . . .

Cooking

Some people scrapbook for a hobby; others might fish, or sew, or read.  When I find myself with an empty Saturday what I like most to do is cook.  I'll peruse my supplies, or collect treasure from the garden, then surf the net to find recipes to try.  Sometimes what I make is a complete flop, but often I'll end up with something new and delicious.


My kitchen skills have evolved slowly over the past twenty years.  I started out as a terrible cook.  Granted, in eighth grade I was awarded "Homemaker of the Year", but I believe the home economics teacher took pity on me as I frequently would enter her class in tears over some middle school drama.  (That is a story for another time, if I choose to write it at all!).  It certainly wasn't because of my fine cooking skills.  During high school the most I could make was chocolate chip cookies or food from a box (Party Pizza, frozen disgusting stir fry, Steakums--eek!).  In college, if it wasn't dorm food or pizza then ramen noodles ruled.  Eventually I was bold enough to try grilled cheese, but often I would just eat Cheerios for dinner.


It took a few years of living on my own for me to finally develop an appreciation for cooking, and without detailed instructions my skills were still mediocre at best.  I remember one attempt in my early twenties of making pumpkin pie from scratch.  The recipe I used called for pumpkin, but did not go into specifics on how to use a fresh pumpkin.  Back then I thought the pumpkin pulp was the stringy stuff you got when you scooped out the seeds.  That pie was pretty much the scariest item I have ever attempted. 


What finally worked was practice and a decent cookbook.  Between a Cook's Illustrated subscription and the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook I was able to learn a little more detail behind the recipes.  Don't overbake chocolate.  Don't cook garlic too hot or it will brown and get bitter.  Cook the pumpkin in the oven for 45 minutes, then puree it in a blender before you make the pie (or, better yet, just buy a can of pumpkin).  With the detailed information and lots of practice I can now take pride in the dinners served.


I tell my students that one skill they need to learn before they go on their own in this world is to cook with real food.  That means starting with fresh ingredients--leave the boxes on the shelves.  Those boxes are filled with so many preservatives and salt that it would be difficult (and expensive) to live a healthy lifestyle by cooking from them most of the time.  A vegetable garden is helpful but not necessary--there are plenty of farmer's markets and decent produce sections around.  Start of by simply stir frying some vegetables in a pan, or make a salad.  Eventually you will gain experience and confidence in the kitchen.


This week I was into baking, and really into chocolate!  A few days ago I cooked up the tomatoes into spaghetti sauce and made some Italian bread to go with it.  I use Dominique's Italian Bread recipe which has worked out well.  The key is when you roll up the bread to roll it tightly so your bread will have a height to it.  Too many times I didn't roll it into a tight log and ended up with very flat and wide bread.  Here's what my tightly rolled bread looks like in the end:

It's great for dipping into spaghetti sauce or eating with roasted garlic.

To deal with my chocolate cravings I made chocolate bread.  Not everyone will appreciate chocolate bread--it's not a sweet bread, but is great with cream cheese or marscapone.  My kids ended up liking it:

The chocolate bread ended up giving me a craving for chocolate cake, and it just so happens this week someone on Twitter posted a link to a nice recipe for everyday chocolate cake.  This woman has a beautiful blog with lovely pictures.  My cake turned out delicious, although I can't take food pictures the way she does:

It didn't sit around very long before we inhaled quite a bit of it.  Yum!