Port Potager

After nearly losing our whole beet crop earlier this summer, we were so happy to harvest pounds and pounds of beets this weekend. We left some in the ground, where they should be fine as long as the ground doesn’t freeze. The first thing we did was roast a couple of pans  of beets with shallots, rosemary, and olive oil to get them ready for pickling : We also roasted a couple more pans without the seasoning, so we could peel and freeze them. The frozen beets can be used throughout the winter for tarts , brownies , and other goodies.  We also still have a whole crisper drawer full of beets that we haven’t done anything with — yet. After clipping some rosemary for the roast beets, I dug up our plant and potted it for the winter. In the past I have always held out hope that enough mulch would help it through, but it’s just too cold here in the winter for rosemary. It will sit in a sunny window until spring. By the way, if you attended my wedding you...

Between last weekend and today, we made our final push to clean up the garden for the winter. Though the veggie beds and winter tunnels have been ready to go for some time, we still had to take care of the perennial border: This is my least favorite task of the whole year, the trimming back of all the perennial plants and the raking of leaves for the winter clean-up. I am always sorely tempted to call it all mulch and let it go, but it is much harder to clean up in the spring before the bulbs come up. So here we are, out in the cold getting it taken care of before what looks to be a week-long nor'easter heads our way. Also crossed off the list was some plant protection: This is our little fig tree. Last year we corralled it in a box of leaves, but it was such a harsh winter that that it died most of the way back anyway. Over the summer it did put out two new shoots, and it looks like we may have a fig bush instead of a tree. Because it is so small, we wrappe...

That's "Happy New Year" in Pennsylvania Dutch , the fast-dying dialect spoken by the frugal Germanic oldsters where I grew up. The tradition, which I've written about before , is to ring in the new year with a big plate of pork and sauerkraut for good luck. Judging by my Facebook feed , I am not alone in maintaining the tradition! Here's what we ate last night: Das ist gut! If you could use a little luck to start 2014 off right, you can't go wrong with this dish!  On the plate: Sauerkraut (fermented and canned —  here's how ) Applesauce (also homemade and canned —  more how-to ) Smothered Pork Chops (Kirk uses an excellent recipe from America's Test Kitchen , but we also modify it with whatever herbs and veg we have on hand — I believe chopped apples and some mincemeat were added to the sauce this time around. One part you should never, ever change, though, is the crumbles of bacon for garnish.) Mashed potatoes (You don...

Last Saturday we hosted our Iron Bartender contest using dandelion wine as the required (and, I must say, challenging) ingredient. We had a total of eight original drinks, and when the voting was done, we ended up with a tie for third place, a tie for second place, and a clear champion. Today, we'll take a look at the second place cocktails. The Drink of the Lion Fairy Presented by Linda and Eric Getz 1 lemon's worth of juice and zest 1/2 bunch fresh parsley, rough chopped 6 springs of mint 5 1/2 ounces water 1&1/2 cup sugar 1 large spring of fresh mint 3 dots of aromatic bitters 1 oz. absinthe 1/2 oz. Bison Grass Vodka 1/2 oz. dandelion wine 1/3 oz. fresh squeezed lemon juice crushed ice 1. First, prepare an herbed simple syrup by combining lemon juice and zest, parsley, 6 sprigs of mint, water, and sugar in a saucepan. Heat on low until sugar is dissolved and syrup thickens slightly. Strain into a jar after syrup cools and comp...

When it's my turn to cook, I often go for a vegetarian dish. Tonight I went down into the root cellar (ok, it's really just the cold, drafty basement) and grabbed a couple of butternut squash to stuff. First, they need to be pre-baked, so cut off the stem end, slice lengthwise, and scoop out the seeds. Then place cut-side down on an oiled tray (I used peanut oil, but it doesn't really matter): Bake for a half hour at 350 degrees. As you can see, I picked a big one for me and Kirk, and a small one for the kids. While that's cooking, you can make the stuffings.  For the kids, I went with an Italian filling. The measurements below made extra, but you might need it depending on the type of squash you use). 1/4 cup pine nuts, chopped (I used a food processor) 4 sundried tomatoes, finely diced 6 cloves of garlic, minced 1/3 of a small leek, diced 1/2 cup grated mozzarella 2 Tbs. grated parmesan 1 cube frozen pesto , thawed (it's about...

I'm trying to savor my very last days of summer vacation this weekend — a break that was extended into the first week of September this year, thanks to Rosh Hashanah. This past Thursday and Friday I was able to enjoy some peace and quiet around the house while the kids were at school (their classes started — gasp! — before Labor Day this year). I used the time to dry some tomatoes, for starters: Once these were in the oven (directions to make them are here ), I celebrated by eating up the remaining sundried tomatoes from last year's supply. We had been using them sparingly throughout the spring to ensure that they lasted until we had tomatoes again. Now that day is here, so here's a sundried lunch: This sandwich is sundried tomato and goat cheese on roasted garlic ciabatta. (The bakery at Market Basket is not too shabby!) The sandwich (which gets put together to eat, of course) is dressed with olive oil, salt, pepper, fresh basil, and fresh rosemary. T...

A portion of yesterday's harvest: In this basket are (what must be) the very last of the snap peas, tiny "Paris market" carrots , a pair of red onions, and beets. The onions aren't quite ready to be picked, but I needed some to fulfill a promise to Tiegan. This summer she is planning to make dinner for us once a week (supposedly with help from her brother, but his enthusiasm for this project remains to be seen). She has gone through Kirk's old " Meals of Many Lands " children's cookbook and decided on Scandinavia. Thus the request for pickled beets. So that these would definitely be ready for next week's dinner (I convinced her to do France first), I am going with a quick refrigerator pickle rather than a ferment . I used Alton Brown's recipe  with a few modifications: After washing and trimming a dozen small-to-medium beets, I drizzled them with olive oil and added a couple cloves of peeled garlic (instead of shall...

Now that the sun is out, it's time to add some sunscreen to my homemade lotion . To do this, I ordered some zinc oxide from soapgoods.com :  This could well be a lifetime supply — I have a pound, and I only used 1/4 cup. (This in a lotion batch that usually takes me about three months to get through.) The 1/4 cup amount of zinc oxide is to get to roughly a 30 SPF. This obviously isn't lab tested, but there's a chart that gives amounts to help approximate. I went with 20 percent of the total added in, which is 1/4 cup.  I made the lotion as before (you can check out details in the first link above), but when I measured out the aloe gel, I added 1/4 cup of zinc oxide and stirred it up to make a paste: This is way easier than trying to get the powder mixed evenly with what ends up being a cup of water, once you add it to the gel. Hold off on the water until the last minute, stirring it into the aloe and zinc paste right before you are about to emulsif...

Now that the ground has softened up, we can get to our parsnips again: They are still alive and perfectly well under the straw mulch. After frost and freezing, they are much sweeter, so if you can wait — and don't mind working in the cold and chipping through some semi-frozen ground at times — it's worth it. Fall crops like kale, arugula, turnips, and parsnips create a lot of sugar when the temperatures drop because sugars keeps the plants from freezing — and therefore from dying. Think of how juice just gets slushy when you put it in the freezer, and you have an idea of how this works as a natural protection. All of that extra sugar makes these crops worth waiting for, especially if you protect them further in a cold frame, tunnel, or under mulch. Nothing from a store tastes like these: If you've never had one, parsnips taste kind of like a cross between a sweet potato (ours do anyway — that's how sweet they've gotten), but with the texture and aro...

It's New Year's Eve! Not my favorite holiday, but at least it comes with a strong tradition of finger foods. My favorite thing to do with bite-size treats is to dip them in something, so that's what I was working on this afternoon. First up: some roasted garlic. Many of our Spanish Rosas have started to sprout in storage, so I grabbed those for this project: That may have been a mistake, since the flavor is a little greener once they sprout, but using these didn't make me sad about cutting off the tops, since that part is messed up now anyway. The cutting-off-the-tops thing seems to be pretty standard for making roasted garlic in the oven, although this is news to me. I never bothered with that when we roasted some heads on a wood fire back in the fall . I thought using a muffin tray seemed inspired, though, so that's what I did:   Next step is to coat them with olive oil. I kind of just drizzled it on. I guess the point is to keep the d...

With the holidays fast approaching, this week kind of got away from me, and I realized I never finished this post about the excellent dinner that Kirk made last Sunday. We've been doing our Advent Sunday celebrations up right this year, with really excellent dinners to enjoy while we light the week's candle and reflect on hope, peace , love, and joy. Last Sunday was the Sunday of love, and we observed it with a December turkey dinner. Along with turkey comes stuffing, and it's easy to see why that's a traditional food at this season of the year. The things we have from the late fall garden are exactly what we need for stuffing: Here we have the dried out ends of bread, and a pan of diced carrots, leeks, and the last of our celery. Kirk cooked them a bit to soften them up, then used his hands to mix it all together in a big bowl. Also in the mix: That’s thyme, sage, and rosemary. Although we cut large bunches to dry before frost, we still have these h...

Even with a pretty nice afternoon , it's hard not to feel some serious winter blahs when the sun sets at 4:09 p.m. We're working on just over nine hours of daylight here, and that's nothing short of terrible. One thing that did help make that early nightfall better was a really great Sunday dinner. First, a tray of vegetables ready for roasting: This is full of fresh-picked carrots and leeks, plus potatoes and garlic from winter storage. They were cut into pieces, drizzled with a bit of olive oil, and given a generous helping of rosemary leaves and whole sprigs of thyme. After an hour of roasting veggies and the beef, the house smelled great, and it was time to eat. Green salad to start: Fresh from the cold frames and greenhouse tunnels are lettuces, mache, and arugula. There are also some slices of fennel bulbs that we pulled last weekend. Non-garden ingredients are thinly sliced Granny Smiths and pomegranate seeds. Yum! Then the main course: ...

I finally used up my old shampoo, so it's time for another go at recipes for the shower. This recipe is based on one from Rosemary Gladstar, and you can check out the original recipe here . I made a few tweaks based on what I had handy. Step one: make a strong tea with 1 ounce of dried herbs in 8 ounces of distilled water. Turns out an ounce of dried herbs is a LOT: I used (more or less from left to right) sage, rosemary, and comfrey. The rosemary and comfrey are supposed to be good for hair (more about this in Rosemary Gladstar's book , if you are interested). The sage is mostly for its darkening properties. I ended up doing a modified version of what was recommended for brunettes. Now, I actually have naturally light-to-medium brown hair, and it gets lighter in the summer. Aside from some misguided Sun-In use in junior high school, I have never colored it. I thought I'd give the darkening version of this shampoo a go, knowing that it is gentle, natural, and ...