Archive for June 2006
The Farm (Shares) Report, 6/27/06 (Peas!)
You may crown the month of May with lilac, put in her ears ear-rings of cherries, dress her in tender young leaves — all very well, but it will be nothing without a neck-lace of green peas. — Author unknown
May is already over, June is nearing its end, but last night we received a pound of peas in the shell. Well, it’s New England, it takes a while for the growing season to get going. Whoever wrote about peas in May must have lived somewhere else.
We got other things, too (list below), but the peas were the best. Fresh green peas are nothing like frozen ones, or, heaven forbid, those grayish yellow mush balls in a can that I grew up on. Green peas, picked off the vine today and eaten tonight, are the closest thing to culinary heaven on earth.
My only complaint is, giving two people a pound of fresh green peas in the shell is like handing each of them a thimbleful of Champagne and then whisking away the bottle – it’s enough to arouse desire without satisfying it.
I shelled them, put them in just enough cold water to cover, added a pinch of salt, and brought them to a boil. When they’d boiled for exactly three minutes, no more, no less, off the stove they came, to the sink to be drained, back into the pot to be shaken a bit over the flame to dry the last of the water. Then I tossed in what the English call a good knob of butter and a little fresh parsley from my herb garden.
I wanted to cook them as the French do, with a little shredded lettuce instead of water, so they could steam in the lettuce juice, but the Red-Haired Boy couldn’t bear to cook the beautiful lettuce we received this week. Too bad, I’ve always wanted to try peas that way.
Still, lightly cooked fresh peas with lots of butter aren’t exactly a disappointment.
RHB made salmon, or something. (At least, I think it was salmon. Who cares, when you have peas?)
We also got:
1 bunch red leaf lettuce
1 bunch of fava bean tendrils
1 bunch of chard
1 bunch of baby carrots (the greens smell wonderful, spicy – I wish I could make perfume from them)
1 bunch of baby beets
1 bunch red Russian kale, which is actually green with purple veins and is shaped like oak leaves
Speaking of green with purple leaves, why are so many plants that are purple not called purple? Red cabbage, red Russian kale, black tulips, even the fancy blue potatoes – they are all purple. What’s wrong with purple, anyway?
Here’s another recipe, which I sent to E., who also gets farm shares, though not from Farmer Steve. It’s a way to cook tough greens quickly without heating up the kitchen.
1 bunch of greens, preferably something sturdy like kale or collards, though anything will do
1/4 cup of chopped onion, more or less
lots of oil
salt
pepper
Trim off the stems, but don’t bother trimming out the veins, even if they are tough. You’ll be slicing them so thin that toughness doesn’t matter. In this dish, a very thin slice of the vein adds a nutty crunch.
Sharpen a nice long knife, unless you, like me, keep your knives sharp at all times. You really need a sharp knife for this.
Chop some onion, maybe even some of those green ones that probably come in your farm shares during the spring.
Roll up a stack of greens, cigar fashion. Slice them across in thin slivers. Did I mention you need a really sharp knife for this? A nice long knife is best, like an 8-inch chef’s knife, or a longish carving or utility knife. What you really need is the super long, super thin knife I inherited from my housemates 15 years ago, but I don’t know what it’s called. A chef’s knife will do. Make sure it’s sharp. Keep your fingers out of the way.
(If you are Mr. or Ms. Language Person, you might enjoy knowing that the name for this way of cutting leafy stuff is chiffonade. You can do it with broad-leaved herbs like basil, too. Chiffonade of basil makes a pretty garnish for Thai food.)
Sauté the onions in lots of oil for a few minutes. Add the greens and sauté until they are bright green, then maybe a minute or two longer. You MUST keep stirring – employ a child, a spouse, or a passerby to help you. Add a couple of tablespoons of water to help them along. (The greens, not the helper.)
Add a little salt and pepper at the table. Twirl them on your fork like noodles. They will get stuck in the gaps in your back teeth, but who cares? That’s what dental floss is for.
Add comment June 28, 2006
Miss Manners Is the Smartest Lady on Earth
During an e-mailed discussion of seating arrangements for the wedding, E. asked:
I don’t suppose we could just pick out our own seats? Is that not “done”?
My reply, edited slightly for grammar and style:
Nope, no picking one’s own seats. It’s Not Done, and there’s a good reason. Somebody always ends up looking lost because they are shy or they don’t know anyone or because someone doesn’t like them or they don’t like someone or they’re not very agressive or they can’t move very fast or the last available seat is next to someone who hurt their feelings back in 1980 or …
Look at it this way. The Red-Haired Boy and I know where the speakers will be placed, and who doesn’t like loud music. We know who is super friendly and who needs drawing out. We know who, bless their hearts, can tolerate the intolerable for a couple of hours and who, damn their eyes, will never speak to us if they have to sit next to so-and-so for even a second. We know who’s bringing children, who simply adores children, and who can’t stand them. If there are two single people of the appropriate mutual orientations who might enjoy the opportunity to get to know each other (unlikely, but we haven’t analyzed the guest list), we know that too. We know who’s a Democrat (most of our friends, and most of Mat’s family) and who’s not (most of my family). We know who is easily offended and who is likely to insert a foot into his mouth.
None of the people coming to the wedding know as much about the other people coming to the wedding as we do. So if we assign seats, contrary to all usual democratic notions of freedom of choice and so on, people are actually likely to have a better time than if there’s a mad free-for-all once the hors d’oeuvres are gone. And since people aren’t strapped to their seats for the whole reception, if there is someone they particularly wish to speak with who is not seated at their table, they can get up after dinner and do so.
So, as usual, Miss Manners is pretty smart about all this stuff.
Add comment June 27, 2006
Driving Unfamiliar Routes
My wedding seems to involve a lot of an activity that I don’t usually do very often and don’t enjoy very much, namely: driving.
The first time we drove up to Salem, I wondered if I was making a big mistake getting married there. The route is complicated, involving interchanges onto I-93, from I-93 to I-95 (which is the same as Rte 128) to Rte 128 (which stops being the same road as I-95 somewhere before Salem) to State Rte 114, around a busload of twists, turns, and rotaries, to an area with LOTS of parallel parking.
The on-ramp from I-93 to I-95 is about one car length long before it becomes the off-ramp from I-95 to I-93. It is possible to get on that ramp and never ever get off until you run out of gas or starve to death, whichever comes first.
And I don’t own a car. We rent them, either from standard rental car agencies or from Zipcar, when we need them. I have probably been behind the wheel less than 200 times since I got my driver’s license twelve years ago.
The trip to Salem makes me crazy. And no matter how we schedule our visits, it’s always dark and always raining cats and dogs for at least some portion of the trip.
Still, driving back and forth between my home town and Somerville this weekend, I was astonished at how calm I felt. True, the route is simpler, and true, the traffic was mostly light, and true, most of the trip was taken in the daylight hours, and true, there was only a little rain for about a half hour. But still, why is a 40-minute drive to Salem a harrowing series of missed exits, lost time, and scariness, while a 7-hour drive across two turnpikes and an interstate highway is easy and almost relaxing?
The clue came at the beginning of the return trip home. The route is utterly familiar; I’ve driven it a dozen times, and so I know, when I come to the I-81 junction, which ramp is north and which is south.
Good thing I know it, too, because I couldn’t read the signs, until we were almost on top of them. NORTH and SOUTH look mighty similar if your vision is a little blurry, as do EAST and WEST. If you can’t tell them apart in time, of course a trip that is somewhat unfamiliar is going to be nerve-racking.
Sheesh. I should’ve figured this out months ago, when I noticed that I couldn’t read the clock on the VCR from the couch.
Today I scheduled an eye appointment. I expect the next trip to Salem to be a little easier. Either that, or I am moving the wedding from Salem to our living room so I don’t have to get into a car again.
Add comment June 26, 2006
Too Many Balls in the Air
Family stuff, wedding stuff, work stuff, more family stuff, more work stuff.
Every morning I go to work with this very small list of things to do, and every day at 4:30, after barely having time to go to the bathroom, I realize I’ve gotten none of those things done. I love my job, but something is very wrong here.
Mood: tired and exasperated.
Add comment June 20, 2006
My New Favorite T-Shirt
A couple of weeks ago I acquired a shirt with the following slogan:
She wanted to be beautiful but found the maintenance process to be slightly tedious.
I think about this shirt each time that, armed with the same hair dryer I’ve had since junior high, I attempt to tame my unruly, frizzy locks into the sleek hairstyle all the fashion mags tell me I’m supposed to sport. Or each time I sleep for an extra ten minutes and skip the makeup, which is, frankly, most days.
You can check out other T-shirts by the same person at http://www.nathanlovesmary.com. My second favorite:
Sorry about your chicken.
I don’t know why, but I think my friend LP would really like this.
Copyright 2006 by psipsina. If you are reading this on the scumbag blog, you should know that they are using my work (and the work of many, many other people) without attribution.
Add comment June 18, 2006
The Farm (Shares) Report, 6/13/06
Couldn’t go again, drat! Had an appointment on Tuesday night. So the Red-Haired Boy went without me again. Too bad – I understand that Farmer Steve has a different system now – instead of handing you the stuff from the back of the truck, he puts out baskets and has you pick up the stuff yourself, on the honor system. I guess it’s OK, but it sounds like there are fewer opportunities for chatting with Steve.
This week we got:
1 head broccoli
1 head of some Chinese cabbage type stuff that Steve called “Chinese Spinach”
1 bunch of mizuna
1 head of red lettuce
1 head of green leaf lettuce
1 bunch of cilantro
1 bunch collard greens
Last year being our first, we wondered all winter if Steve grew different crops each year, or if we would get the same stuff this year we got last year. Well, of course, some things are old standbys – lettuce is a reliable spring vegetable – but last year we didn’t get broccoli, or pea greens.
I am delighted by the broccoli, by the way – since we buy very little produce at the supermarket in Steve season, just garlic, onions, avocados, and lemons, I went 5 months without eating broccoli last year. It’s nice to see it in our bag this spring.
RHB made a salad last night with the red lettuce, garbanzo beans, bacon, Parmesan cheese, and some leftover homemade Italian dressing I’d made last week. He also threw in a head of Boston lettuce from last week that he had forgotten about and I hadn’t even noticed. Thing is, Steve’s week-old lettuce is still fresher than that California crap in the grocery store, which is at least a week old when it arrives on the East Coast.
I couldn’t have asked for a yummier salad – even if you don’t have any “just picked today” lettuce or homemade dressing, do try this at home some time.
Add comment June 14, 2006
Shhh!
This morning I received the following e-mail from my friend J.
Wikipedia informs me that today is the 40th anniversary of the Miranda warning. So go out there and remain silent. It’s your right.
Too bad there isn’t also a duty to remain silent. Wouldn’t it be nice if we didn’t have to hear casual acquaintances talking about their finances, their nagging health problems, and their years of therapy?
Add comment June 13, 2006
Clueless, Part 2
Another in my continuing series on people who are unaware that they share the planet with six billion other people.
What do you suppose possesses a school teacher to bring a large group of 2nd graders on the subway during weekday morning rush hour? I mean, can’t their field trip to the museum wait until 10:00 am?
Add comment June 12, 2006
The Farm (Shares) Report, 6/6/06
On Tuesday, the Red-Haired Boy walked over to Orchard Street to pick up the first batch of this season’s farm shares. (I was attending a relatively good performance of Shakespeare’s relatively mediocre play Love’s Labor’s Lost with E. and wasn’t able to join him.)
I wrote quite a bit about farm shares and CSAs last summer, and may write more this year. For those of you with voyeuristic tendencies, I hope a mere listing will suffice:
1 head red-leaf lettuce
1 bunch spinach
1 head some sort of Chinese cabbage
1 large bag of mixed baby greens
1 huge bunch of pea greens
1 bunch of red Russian kale
1 bunch of mustard greens
(The very cool, very rainy Massachusetts spring is extremely conducive to leafy vegetables.)
We tried the pea greens last night, and for the first time, Deborah Madison’s excellent cookbook Local Flavors failed me. She mentioned that pea greens should be stir fried in olive oil with garlic; she failed to mention that the STEMS are tough and stringy, so only the leaves should be used. (Local Flavors is a cookbook about all the strange stuff you find at farmers’ markets, so it seems that Ms. Madison should expect that her readers haven’t the faintest hint of a clue what to do with pea greens.)
I cooked them, stems and all. After the first bit of stringy stem got wedged into those gaps that we both, coincidentally, have between our back teeth, RHB and I threw table manners to the wind and pulled the cooked leaves off the stems with our fingers.. It was fun – playing with your food, but without any adults to scold you.
I’m excited about the kale and the mustard greens, both of which are good cooked into a quick soup with some sort of spicy sausage (kielbasa, chorizo, linguiça, even hot Italian sausage), a little onion, and some canned tomatoes. Sometimes a tiny splash of vinegar or lemon juice is nice, too. Boston’s cool, rainy springs are interminable – the current 10-day forecast calls for 9 days of rain punctuated by one sunny day – and even though in most parts of the country, it’s summer, soup still sounds good to this Bostonian.
Add comment June 8, 2006
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