But sometimes, like today, when I’m staring down a 5-day old supply of butternut squash soup,  I remember that soup can be an ingredient. Heck, an entire generation of housewives depended on cans of Campbell’s for making sauces and casseroles.

Creamy, puréed soups can be made into surprisingly good soufflés. But I think just about any soup can make awesome couscous. (Well, except maybe a noodle soup. Then you’ve got semolina-on-semolina action. It might be a little weird.)

Ingredients

• 1 pint (16 oz) soup
• 1 to 1 1/3 cups couscous or whole wheat couscous (use less if your soup is thick, more if it’s thin)
• salt, to taste
• pepper, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, parmesan cheese, other tasty bits

1. Heat soup until it starts to boil. If it’s a cream soup, you don’t want it boiling long at all.
2. Kill the heat and add the couscous. Stir it in quickly just to even it out.
3. Cover tightly (the steam is what’s doing a lot of the work here) and leave for 5-10 minutes.
4. Uncover, fluff, and flavor. Unless your soup was overpoweringly salty, you’ll want to at least add more salt.

Eat the couscous as is, use it to make some sort of delicious couscous salad, or do what I do: drizzle on cream and eat it with a spoon.

I know how this looks. But trust me. It’s goddamn delicious.

Take a dark, non-hoppy beer, and top it with thick homemade whipped cream. I bet it’d be even better with a framboise.

J.K. Rowling may have said that she imagined butterbeer to taste “like less-sickly butterscotch,” but as far as I’m concerned this is what Harry chugged in The Three Broomsticks.

Depending on how well and how long you’ve known me, that sentence might have you guffawing.

I’m not sure how I went from girl-who-freaks-out-when-she-sees-ants to bug-lover. But somehow, every Friday I find myself staring at these big sticky traps, counting the still-wriggling olive fruit flies, soldier beetles, leafhoppers, and other little beasties.

I also maintain a dozen little gardens at three vineyards. These insectaries are full of flowers and a diversity of plants, there to lure in pollinators and provide habitat for beneficial insects like lacewings and ladybugs. I love spending mornings weeding or planting in these spots that are bursting with life of all kinds — not just the plants and bugs, but hummingbirds darting between flowers and blue-bellied lizards doing pushups in the sunny spots.

Omelettes. Manchego cheese. Pita bread.

Also, everything.

To make the yummy green paste that you can spread on just about anything:

Ingredients

• fava beans
• olive oil
• salt

1. Remove beans from pods.
2. Place beans in a pot and add enough water to cover. Bring to a boil.
3. Cook until skins burst open. Drain and cover with cold water to prevent overcooking.
4. Squeeze beans out of skins. They should slip out easily. Do it under cold running water to keep everything from getting too slimy.
5. Purée beans in a food processor. Add oil to reach desired consistency, and enough salt to make it taste great. You can add garlic or herbs too, but it’s easy to overpower the favas’ delicate flavor, so don’t go overboard.
6. Stash it in the fridge, and use it to smear on toast and sandwiches, stir into creamy sauces, fill omelettes or crêpes, make risotto…

My aunt and uncle gave me a bunch of tasty limes from their tree. Despite my best efforts to use them all up, one can only drink so many gin and tonics. Enter sherbet!

I’m happy with how this experiment turned out. The lime and honey flavors are nice and mild, so you can really taste the richness of the cream. It’d be great to serve alongside another delicately flavored dessert.

Ingredients

• juice of 2 limes (about ¼ cup)
• zest of 2 limes, grated or chopped very finely
• 1 tablespoon honey
• ¾ cup sugar
• 2 cups heavy cream
• 1¾ cup milk
• teensy pinch of salt

1. Mix that shit up.
2. Throw it in an ice cream churner.
3. Freeze.
4. Devour with pie or sugar cookies.

The big area for row crops is tilled, and I’ve dug one of the beds (only nine to go). Now that bed is full of turnip, mâche, lettuce, radish, arugula, and basil seeds. Instant gratification crops.

That big patch o’ dirt behind the beds is getting filled in too. I seeded four long rows of calico popcorn on the west side, in hopes that when the plants are big they’ll give the rest of the garden a break from the harsh wind. And the first of the tomatoes are in the ground: sun gold, black cherry, mortgage lifter, pineapple, and Pierce’s pride.

I’m amazed at how much nicer the soil is than when I started last year. It’s soft, it smells good, and I found plenty of fat, juicy earthworms while I was digging the one bed. Last year the ground was as hard as concrete, and it wasn’t until halfway into summer that I started finding good bugs.

My garden to-do list keeps getting longer, but they days are stretching out too. And playing in the dirt is not a bad way to spend one’s free time.

Ernie is mowing and tilling my field over the weekend, so there’s nothing I can do for another few days. But as soon as the ground’s ready for planting, there will be SO MUCH to do: first a frenzy of setting up irrigation, translating my graph paper notes and maps into an actual garden plan, and lots of transplanting and seed sowing. Then there will be six months of daily (well, nearly daily) watering, weeding, harvesting, and attempts to keep up with succession planting. How can I not get nervous thinking about it?

At least this year I have a season behind me, and some solid data to draw from. There is still so much I have to learn, but it’s amazing to think back to all that I didn’t know when I started in my garden last year. (A week or so after I planted my first crop of beets — which I spent HOURS direct-seeding — I rejoiced at the bed full of happy little cotyledons springing up. It took me another couple weeks to realize that they were all weeds.) There were a few areas where I had big problems, so this year I’m trying out some new plans. Lots of them.

Tomatoes

Except for the popcorn (ugh), tomatoes were my biggest source of frustration in the garden last year. The harvest was very late, and almost all of the fruit were unusable because of worms, blossom-end rot, sunburn, mold, and critters eating them. There was only one planting, and only three varieties. What should have been the best crop of the summer was a constant annoyance, and though the shitty weather is partially to blame, it was really mostly farmer error. The much-improved game plan for this year includes:

• Wider spacing – Two feet between plants wasn’t nearly enough
• Succession planting – So the millions of tomatoes are spaced out, not coming at me all at once.
• Trellising/caging/pruning/training – Letting the plants sprawl out on the ground let the gophers get at them, caused the fruit to rot, and made harvesting a disgusting chore. I had planned to cage the plants but never got around to it; this year it’s a priority. I’m going to mess around with a few different methods to see which works best.
• Diversity – You should see my list of tomato seeds to buy. There will be at least a dozen heirloom varieties alone.

Windbreaks

The wind comes screaming through the little valley my garden is in, and on a bad day a couple hours in that kind of wind is enough to make you lose your mind. I’m not sure how much it affects the plants — nothing’s been blown over — but a little refuge would do this farmer a whole lot of good. I’m hoping that planting tall and sturdy plants like popcorn and sunchokes on the northwest side of the garden will cut down the windspeed.

Compost tea

Compost tea is such a weird and awesome idea. You take a small amount of good compost, full of nutrients and happy little microbes, and dump it in some water. You use a pump to aerate the water for 24 hours. The idea is that those happy little microbes swim around, feast on the yummy stuff in the compost, and procreate like crazy. When the time’s up, you strain out the solids, and use the resulting tea to give your plants a dose of microbial goodness. It’s not about giving them nutrients; that should already be in the soil. You’re giving them multitudes of healthy bacteria, fungi, nematodes, and protozoa that will invigorate the soil biology, making the soil’s nutrients more easily accessible to the plants.

You can spend a lot of money on a fancy compost tea brewer, but supposedly all you need to really need is a bucket and a pump. Water + compost + air = compost tea. So that’s my plan.

Gopher-proof irrigation

Those gorram gophers. Last year they treated my t-tape as their own personal water fountains. They easily chew through the thin plastic, creating leaks in the lines and plenty of headaches for me. And I’m sure giving them a steady water supply didn’t help with my general gophers-eating-my-plants problem either. I’m reluctant to abandon the t-tape (mostly because I still have half a roll left), but for the most part I’ll be switching to thicker drip tube for widely spaced veggies and sprinklers for greens.

Using good, hot paprika makes all the difference.

Ingredients

• ½ lb seitan, sliced into ¼-inch strips
• 1 T hot paprika
• 3 T vegetable oil
• ¼ lb mushrooms, thinly sliced
• 1 C broth
• 2 T sherry vinegar
• 4 oz cream cheese
• 1-3 T heavy cream
• salt, to taste
• ½ lb pasta, cooked

1. Toss the seitan in the paprika, so that each piece is coated.
2. Heat oil in a large skillet. Add seitan and sauté for a few minutes, until the first side is cooked. Flip and cook the other side.
3. Remove seitan from pan and add mushrooms. Cook until tender.
4. Remove mushrooms from pan. Add broth and vinegar, and bring to a simmer.
5. Turn off heat and add cream cheese. Stir to dissolve — it’s going to look weird and curdled for a few minutes, but it will eventually melt into the sauce.
6. Add cooked seitan and mushrooms, and heavy cream to pan. Add salt as needed, and serve over noodles. Top with more heavy cream if desired.

(Or: out of beer, and the only thing in your liquor cabinet is rum?)

It’s time for hot buttered rum. This is how I’ve been making mine since I had a great one at Smuggler’s Cove and threw out my previous recipe.

Ingredients

• ¼ C (also 4 T or 2 oz) rum that you rather like
• ½ t ground mulling spices (mine is a mix of ginger, cinnamon, and cloves)
• 1 t brown sugar
• ½ C boiling water
• up to 1 t butter

1. Combine rum, spices, sugar, and water or juice in a small mug, and stir until spices and sugar have dissolved.
2. Ask yourself how much butter you’re really willing to drink, and cut off a sliver of butter the appropriate size. Float the butter on top of the liquid (as in, just let it sit on top) for theatrical effect, or stir it in as it melts if you prefer to hide your gluttony.
3. Garnish with a wee sprinkle of spices. Throw in a cinnamon stick if you’re feeling festive.

1.
Jamie showed me, and I then purchased, the teeniest circular knitting needles I’ve ever seen. I will never (EVER) have to break out a set of porcupine-like double pointed needles to knit a sweater again. Do you know how many sweaters projects I’ve abandoned just because I couldn’t bring myself to finish the sleeves? Never again.

2.
While Sam and I were looking for a place to eat lunch, we walked by Anchor Oyster Bar. I mentioned that after reading a very persuasive article on vegans eating oysters, I’d thought about trying them. His face lit up and he marched us into the restaurant.

I’ve never had oysters before, and aside from some occasional chicken broth, a small piece of fish, and exactly two bites of turkey, I haven’t eaten any animals since becoming a vegetarian eleven years ago. So oysters are sort of a big deal.

A big delicious deal. I had two of the little guys — the first one was on the house since I was an oyster virgin — and they were completely unlike what I expected. They weren’t rubbery or fishy, just flavorful and oh-so-delicate. Though I don’t think I could have much more than two in a single sitting.

3.
For lunch, I had a vegetarian chili cheeseburger at Harvey’s. It was less of a revelation than the oysters, but not by much.

I belong in the excited camp.

Here are mine for 2011:

• Kick ass in school. (Did I mention I’m going back to school part-time in a couple weeks? I’m psyched.)
• Keep the house somewhat cleaner than “completely disgusting and embarrassing”
• Do something creative every day e.g. writing, experimental cooking, guitar, knitting. Inspired by this quote:
  

  When you don’t create things, you become defined by your tastes rather than ability. Your tastes only narrow and exclude people. So create.

  _why_the_lucky_stiff, via Smashing Magazine

• Be aware of the things I do — the dumb habits — that make me unhappy, and consider doing them less.

Anyone else have some good resolutions?

1. When you have nothing better to do — or really, *nothing* to do — creating a new Pandora station and tackling a mess of a closet is not a bad way to spend an hour or so.
2. Holy shit we’ve got a lot of towels.
]]> http://www.fwegan.com/blog/2010/combating-a-boring-afternoon/feed/ 1 http://www.fwegan.com/blog/2010/paprika-glazed-turnips/ http://www.fwegan.com/blog/2010/paprika-glazed-turnips/#comments Mon, 29 Nov 2010 18:09:24 +0000 fwegan http://www.fwegan.com/blog/?p=333 You can’t possibly know how excited I am to have fresh turnips ready for harvest again! I wrote this recipe for a Green String newsletter last winter, but it’s so dang good I wanted to share it again.

This buttery, tasty dish will make a turnip-lover out of anyone. Serve with brown rice and steamed turnip greens for a healthy, satisfying meal. Serves 4

Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon butter
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 4 medium turnips, quartered and sliced ¼-inch thick
• 1 teaspoon coarse salt
• ½ teaspoon high-quality paprika (try smoked)
1. Melt butter with olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat.
2. Add turnips, paprika, and salt, and stir to coat.
3. Continue to cook, stirring occasionally, until turnips are tender but not mushy (about 5-10 minutes).
]]> http://www.fwegan.com/blog/2010/paprika-glazed-turnips/feed/ 2 http://www.fwegan.com/blog/2010/gazpacho/ http://www.fwegan.com/blog/2010/gazpacho/#comments Mon, 11 Oct 2010 17:15:21 +0000 fwegan http://www.fwegan.com/blog/?p=316 When the cucumber glut and the tomato glut coincide, AND there’s a heat wave — it’s time to make gazpacho.

Makes enough for a small army

Ingredients

• 3 medium-large cucumbers, peeled and diced
• 6 pounds heirloom tomatoes
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• more salt than you think you need
• pepper, to taste
• 3 T white wine vinegar
• 9 T olive oil
1. Toss the diced cucumbers with salt and set to drain in a colander for 20 minutes.
2. Meanwhile, prepare the tomatoes: remove skins by blanching for 30 seconds to 1 minute, then place in cold water. Skins will rub off. Cut out dense core, and puree in food processor, blender, or food mill.
3. Rinse cucumbers and dry with towel or in small batches in a salad spinner.
4. Combine tomato, cucumber, garlic, salt, and pepper in a large bowl.
5. Whisk together oil and vinegar, and stir into the soup.
6. Chill for a couple hours in the fridge.
]]> http://www.fwegan.com/blog/2010/gazpacho/feed/ 0 http://www.fwegan.com/blog/2010/bread-butter-pickles/ http://www.fwegan.com/blog/2010/bread-butter-pickles/#comments Tue, 28 Sep 2010 04:06:25 +0000 fwegan http://www.fwegan.com/blog/?p=317 While I was chastising myself for having planted so dang many cucumbers, my aunt sent me this recipe. I’ve only made one batch so far, but we ate a whole a jar in the first day. Good thing we’ve got so many cucumbers.



Makes 12 pints

Ingredients

• thinly sliced cucumbers to pack 12 pint jars
• 1 bag ice
• ¾ C kosher salt
• 7½ C apple cider vinegar (I ran out, so it was 5 C cider vinegar and 2½ C white distilled vinegar — perfectly fine)
• 7½ C sugar
• 2¼ t turmeric
• 1 T whole mustard seed
• 1 T celery seed
1. Combine the sliced cucumbers, ice, and salt in a large container. Mix well and let stand for at least 3 hours. (This will give you crisp pickles!)
2. In a large pot, combine remaining ingredients. Bring to a boil and stir to dissolve sugar.
3. Drain, but do not rinse, the cucumbers. Distribute evenly between 12 pint jars.
4. Pour hot liquid into jars, allowing ½-inch headspace.
5. Process jars 10 minutes.
]]> http://www.fwegan.com/blog/2010/bread-butter-pickles/feed/ 0 http://www.fwegan.com/blog/2010/zucchini-gravy/ http://www.fwegan.com/blog/2010/zucchini-gravy/#comments Sat, 18 Sep 2010 21:37:16 +0000 fwegan http://www.fwegan.com/blog/?p=313 Forget about the carnivores who demand that gravy be made with meaty juices. I say the real litmus test for gravy is whether or not it goes well with biscuits. And in that regard, this one’s a winner (as proven by last night’s dinner and this morning’s breakfast).

Ingredients

• 3 T butter
• 1 large zucchini, shredded
• 3 T flour
• 3 C broth
• 1/3 C nutritional yeast
• 1 T soy sauce
• salt, if needed (depends on the broth)
• pepper
1. Melt butter in a saucepan. Add zucchini and sauté until soft and transluscent, about 5 minutes.
2. Add flour and stir in. Cook, constantly stirring, for a few minutes.
3. Add broth. Bring to a boil.
4. Add nutritional yeast, soy sauce, salt, and pepper.
5. Cook at a low boil until sauce is smooth.
6. Find some fresh, hot biscuits. Smother them with gravy.
]]> http://www.fwegan.com/blog/2010/zucchini-gravy/feed/ 0 http://www.fwegan.com/blog/2010/nine-reasons-to-get-psyched/ http://www.fwegan.com/blog/2010/nine-reasons-to-get-psyched/#comments Thu, 19 Aug 2010 00:42:42 +0000 fwegan http://www.fwegan.com/blog/?p=283 I’m still new enough to farming that almost every part of it is exciting. But today was an exceptionally awesome day at the farm.

1. Baby carrots!


2. Baby beans!


3. Baby melons!


4. Baby heirloom tomatoes!


5. Baby butternut squash!


6. Baby broccoli!


7. Baby cucumber!


8. Ready-to-make-a-baby popcorn!


9. And finally, the height of my day, a sweet little frog chilling in a squash blossom.


Can we get a close-up?


]]> http://www.fwegan.com/blog/2010/nine-reasons-to-get-psyched/feed/ 0 http://www.fwegan.com/blog/2010/brown-sugar-ice-cream/ http://www.fwegan.com/blog/2010/brown-sugar-ice-cream/#comments Wed, 04 Aug 2010 18:05:24 +0000 fwegan http://www.fwegan.com/blog/?p=272 Successful ice cream making requires two things. Most importantly, you need a basic formula that respects the science of tiny delicious ice crystals. Secondly, you need some ballsy ideas about what flavors will work — like Kate’s wildly successful bacon ice cream.

Not that brown sugar is particularly ballsy. But it *is* particularly good. We had it with my caramel-topped birthday cake (from Fremont Diner!) last night and it was like they were meant to be.

Ingredients

• 1½ cup whole milk
• 1½ cup heavy cream
• ¾ cup brown sugar
• ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
1. Combine all ingredients and stir until sugar is dissolved.
2. Pour into a 1½ quart ice cream maker and churn till it’s done.
3. Scoop into a container and freeze at least an hour before serving.
]]> http://www.fwegan.com/blog/2010/brown-sugar-ice-cream/feed/ 0 http://www.fwegan.com/blog/2010/chard-quiche-arugula-pesto/ http://www.fwegan.com/blog/2010/chard-quiche-arugula-pesto/#comments Sun, 01 Aug 2010 19:02:46 +0000 fwegan http://www.fwegan.com/blog/?p=273 Last night’s dinner was quite late, but fancy as heck.

I had planned on (finally) making blackberry pie, but after I finished making the crust I realized that the berries had been sitting in the fridge far too long. After a fruitless search online for chocolate pie recipes that use cocoa powder, no evaporated milk, and no eggs, I remembered how much I used to love making quiche. Thank goodness.

We also had a couple fillets of rock cod that our friend Dave caught. (I’d include that recipe, but really you just dredge the fillets and then fry them.) And the daunting pile of sylvetta that I harvested earlier went into the food processor for a nice pesto.



Chard Quiche

(Adapted from Alton Brown’s Refrigerator Pie recipe.)

Ingredients

• 1 9-inch pie crust
• 1 smallish bunch chard (about ½ lb), tough stems removed and sliced horizontally into ½-inch strips
• ¼ cup onion, chopped
• 2 eggs
• ½ cup heavy cream
• ½ cup milk
• 2 pinches kosher salt
• just a wee bit of fresh grated nutmeg
1. Preheat oven to 350°F.
2. Toss together chard and onion, and spread out evenly in the pie crust.
3. In a bowl, combine the eggs, dairy, salt, and nutmeg. Beat well.
4. Pour the egg mixture evenly into the pie crust.
5. Bake for 45 minutes, or until set.
6. Cool at least 10 minutes before eating.

Arugula Pesto

Ingredients

• ¼ pound arugula (about one very big handful)
• 3 cloves garlic
• pinch kosher salt
• 2-4 T olive oil
1. Place arugula, garlic, and salt in food processor. Process until arugula and garlic are puréed.
2. Drizzle in olive oil until the consistency looks right. Taste and adjust seasoning.
3. Serve over fish, pasta, or use as a spread for bread or sandwiches.
]]> http://www.fwegan.com/blog/2010/chard-quiche-arugula-pesto/feed/ 0 http://www.fwegan.com/blog/2010/lessons-learned/ http://www.fwegan.com/blog/2010/lessons-learned/#comments Sat, 24 Jul 2010 14:00:39 +0000 fwegan http://www.fwegan.com/blog/?p=267 Farming has got to be one of the least defined career paths out there. You can go to school for it, you can grow up with it, but you certainly don’t have to do either. Still, I can’t imagine many farmers out there have gone about it in such a backwards fashion as me. I’ve been running my own little farm (though really, I hesitate to even call it that — usually I tell people it’s between a big garden and a very small farm) for almost a month and a half now, but before that I’d never even had a garden before. No, really. I worked at a farm for a year and a half, most of that time as an assistant manager, helping plan and make decisions, but I’d never seen a plant through its whole life cycle before.

When I got started with my big garden/small farm a few weeks ago, there were several anxious days in which I was sure that none of my seeds would grow. I was amazed when almost everything came up without problems.

It’s been 44 days since I put the first seeds in the ground, and I’m sure I’ve learned at least one new thing each of those days. I’m listing some of them here hoping that someone will find them useful, or at least that I’ll get a real kick out of reading this after I’ve got a season under my belt.

1. Double-digging clay soil that’s never been cultivated is probably not the most efficient use of one’s time and energy.
2. Learning to broadcast seeds evenly is an incredibly useful skill.
3. Shop around for irrigation equipment; prices vary widely.
4. Keep small greens under row cover, or the flea beetles will eat them alive.
5. Write down everything, especially what’s planted where.
6. Skip the meager bags at the nursery and buy compost by the truckload.
7. Set a schedule for irrigating, and stick to it.
8. Plant radishes in the beginning for an early reward. Just not too many.
9. Weed a little bit every day, and for a few hours a couple times a week. Like the guys that paint the Golden Gate Bridge, just keep working through the weeds constantly.
10. Read about growing and talk to other growers. Talk about your problems and ask for help when you’re stumped.
11. Only interplant crops that have roughly the same water requirements. Astonishing that this one isn’t self-evident, huh?
12. If wind’s a problem, plant corn along the side of the garden where the wind comes from.
13. Direct seed instead of sowing in flats unless you’re really set up to take care of the babies.
14. Start planning how you’ll sell produce long before it’s ready.

Speaking of that last one, I’m collaborating with a few friends to open up a produce stand starting next month. Chris, Ernie, Julie, Megan, Ingrid, and I will have all our goodies up for sale outside of Ernie’s Tin Bar on Saturdays and Sundays. I’ll post more details here once we figure it all out.

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