Food--It's What I Planted in the Back Garden

Any Pagan foodie worth the name knows the ineffable joy of growing your own. Whether is a balcony windowbox, some containers on the deck or tilling up the Back 40, the pleasure of growing your own food cannot be oversold.

I began gardening as a child. My father's family had been country folk and he was itching to move to the country and try his hand at farming. We had a cow at some point, a goat, chickens, ducks. And a sloping south-facing garden that was tilled each spring and planted with corn and green beans and tomatoes.

Back then, western North Carolina was blessed with good amounts of rainfall in the summer and we hardly ever had to water the garden.

Now, I catch water from the roof of the house and water my garden with it. I garden organically--well, not certifiably organically--and have the pleasure of wiping soil off radishes and eating them in the field. I eat tomatoes warm from the sun, and perfectly ripe.

There is nothing fresher than food that comes from the back garden. The taste is different, the nutrition is better.

Win. Win. Win.

If you don't have a backyard, you might consider herbs in the window or containers at the front door.

So many articles are being written about knowing where your food comes from and how it was grown. May I suggest doing some of it yourself?

A Slight Chutney Obsession

I made a delicious pear chutney yesterday, with a bag of dented and scarred pears from the produce department at my local grocery. Pears, onions,walnuts, currants, sugar and vinegar. Cooked for an hour, slowly. The house still reeks of it.

It is rich and exotic and will be delish with meats or beans and rice.

Or on a spoon, which is how I had some this morning. Wonder how it would be with oatmeal?

I love the mix of sweet and pungeant.

I made a mango chutney a few weeks aho and it was gone in a hurry. This bag of pears (3-4 lbs) yielded rather a lot, including 3 pints to give away as gifts.

Vegetables Everywhere

We do try to eat healthy around here but February can be a trying time. We've mostly eaten what little we froze from last season's garden--it was devoured by groundhogs, except for the peppers and tomatoes. There are pickled peppers left but one can't live on pickled peppers alone.

The grocery store was filled with vegetables from far away. But they are somewhat fresh and looked very tempting.

For supper, I made a big pot of collard greens/ Then I sauteed peppers, napa cabbage and garlic in olive oil. We ate the last of a big piece of nan bread from Stick Boy in Boone. Good meal. Tasty.

But it's reminded me that gardening season should be upon us here in the mountains of WNC. But it isn't. We still have snow--more on its way tonight, we are told. The ground is too wet and too cold. Usually by this time, I have onion sets in the ground.

But not this year. I'm a little worried.

I cooked those lovely peppers in a relatively new cast iron pan. I have several old ones, ones I use all the time. I can't recall where I got this one--maybe on sale at Lodge. It hadn't been properly seasoned and as a result, I didn't use it. With all the recent snow and cold, it behooved me to do the job right and so I did.

Now it just needs a job of use and it'll be fine.

I love a good cast-iron frying pan. Everyone ought to have one. Or two. Or four.

They take a lot of attention--they are high-maintenance cooking tools. But treat them right and you will pass them down to your grandchildren. Perfectly seasoned. Ready to use.

Wonder how much family cookery DNA gets passed down that way. Does my oldest pan have a molecule of my grandmother's stewed potatoes and cabbage? The same dish I make now for comfort food when life is too hard?

I like to think so.

Yeah, You Heard Me. I Said "Livermush."

Here in the South, we eat all sorts of interesting things. Squirrel, okra, head cheese. Don't ask. One of the things we eat is called livermush.

Bear with me a moment.

You see, Burns Night was a little over a week ago. That got me thinking about haggis...of course. Now, friends, I am not a haggis hater. I have had some quite delectable haggis in Scotland, in fact.

So I checked out cookery books and Google and could find not so many easy haggis recipes. So I gave up on it and simply drank Scotch instead.

Quite the celebration.

But I was at the grocery store a few days ago and found myself inexplicably drawn to the bologna and hot dog cooler. Why? Why am I standing here amongst things I rarely eat?

My eye caught the unappetizing grey square over to one side. Livermush.

Livermush.

Thanks for your patience--here's the point. Haggis is a bunch of animal (sheep or pig usually) bits chopped up and cooked with oatmeal. Livermush is pork bits chopped up and cooked with cornmeal.

Except for the casing, they are remarkably similar. Even in taste.

So, I am experimenting with an Appalachian haggis for next Burns Night. Next step is to find some proper casings.

Then I'll post some pictures.

Fingers crossed, dear foodies. This could either be brilliant or a total flaming disaster.

Snow and the Full Moon

What is it about being snowed-in that requires baking? I made some dreadful cornbread yesterday, when the snow first started to stick outside.

I should tell you about my cornbread fixation. As a good Southern woman, I naturally love cornbread. But I can't stop experimenting with it--trying new recipes, tweaking recipes that I know work.

Last New Year's Day, I had a cornbread tasting. Plain, made with buttermilk. Bread with cracklins. Bread with whole wheat flour and niblet corn. Bread with extra eggs to make it rich.

We had a good time. In addition to corn bread, we had black-eyed peas and collards.

Yesterday, I discovered some white corn meal in the freezer and tried out the recipe on the back of the bag. It's very cake-y and tangy.

Not bad, exactly. But not corn bread.

My favorite recipe for cornbread is called Perfect Corn Bread and it's in the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook that I've had since grad school.

Crispy on the outside, moist on the inside, draped with fresh butter.

Maybe I'll go make some right now.

Tsk, Tsk. Neglectful Wench

Greetings, all. And welcome to a glorious new year of Pagan gardening, cooking, eating and food preservation.

Most of us are doing our bit for Haiti relief but I really must commend one of our local vegetarian restaurants. Rosetta's in Asheville does a marvelous cauldron of soup benefit most Sunday evenings. There's an enormous cauldron on a tripod, set over a gas flame. And there's fresh cornbread.

All of this is for a donation and it is an odd and wonderful group of folks, never the same from week to week.

Last week and this week, Haiti relief was the recipient.

So it is possible to do good, eat right and have a happy tummy.

I am sorry to report that the sub-zero weather here destroyed my fall-planted greens a couple of weeks ago. And now we are having The Deluge. So my dreams of early spinach, kale, collards and lettuce are a little thin on the ground--quite literally--these days.

Still, we soldier on, don't we?

What are you cooking and/or eating these days, hmmm?

Ginger Creams: a lovely holiday cookie

I just shared this recipe with a friend on Facebook, whose partner tried it this summer and raved about it. These were my favorite cookies growing up, and that says a lot, considering how often my mother baked cookies from scratch.

She made the usual chocolate chippers (that was what the recipe in the Better Homes & Gardens Cookbook called them), and her roll-out sugar cookies at holiday time are still the best recipe I've found (it's flavored with fresh lemon juice and nutmeg,a nd so not bland like many sugar cookie recipes). She also made chocolate crinkles (my younger brother's favorite, and pressed cookies, and bow-ties (a bit like fried dough rolled in confectioner's sugar), and cookies known as Never Fail Cookies, a vanilla cookie with cinnamon-sugar sprinkled on them.

But Ginger Creams were my favorite. So here's the recipe. It comes from my mother, but since it's Scandinavian in origin (a Finnish bakery in Boston sold them for a while and they tasted identical to what I remembered from childhood), I think she may have gotten it from a friend of hers who was Swedish. In any case, I hope you will try baking them and enjoy them.

Ginger Creams

Dough should be chilled for at least one hour before baking.

Mix together thoroughly:
1/4 cup shortening (butter or margarine)
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg
1/2 cup molasses (light or dark, not blackstrap)
1/2 cup water

Sift together and blend in:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. ginger
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
1/2 tsp. cloves
1/2 tsp. cinnamon

Chill dough.
Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Grease cookie sheets.
Drop by spoonfuls about two inches apart on cookie sheet.
Bake for about eight minutes (do not use bottom rack or cookies may burn).
While still slightly warm, frost with lemon or vanilla frosting. (I make a simple vanilla buttercream).

This wonderful cookie blog has a Raw Ginger Cream recipe that looks worthwhile.The photo above is what they more or less look like before frosting; thanks to food blog Two Frog Home for the nice photo.

By the way, I have been compiling my mother's dessert recipes (mostly cookies) and am going to put them into a cookbook. I also want to include some of my Dad's recipes (though most of his were not written down). A sort of memoir with recipes (wish I was the first person to thin of this, but apparently it has already been done before I got off my ass. Still, it's a good format for what I want to do, which is tell the stories of the prominence of food and food-related activities (cooking, growing, gathering, fishing, hunting) in my upbringing. Tentative Title: Pickled Garlic and Sweet Milk.