Eat the New Year

Whether you're eating black eyed peas in Hoppin' John, eating grapes or sauerkraut for a cleanse, or trying to swallow a long noodle without breaking it, celebrating New Year's Day with foods that are superstitious or traditional, depending on how you look at it, can't hurt!Here's a recipe for veggie Hoppin' John:

• 1 cup dried black-eyed peas
  
• 6 garlic cloves, divided
  
• 1 dried hot pepper
  
• 1 bay leaf
  
• 1 c uncooked brown rice
  
• 2 c vegetable oil
  
• 1 Tbsp olive oil
  
• 1 large onion, chopped
  
• 1 jalapeño pepper, chopped
  
• 3 celery ribs, chopped
  
• 1 big bunch collard greens, large ribs discarded and leaves sliced into thin ribbons
  
• Juice of 1 lemon
  
• Sea salt and fresh ground pepper to taste

Soak peas in cold water for 4 hours or overnight. Drain. In a large pot, bring 3 cups of water to boil over high heat. Add peas, 2 whole garlic cloves, hot pepper and bay leaf. Skim off any floating peas. Reduce heat and simmer, uncovered, until peas are tender but not mush, about 1 1/2 hours.

Add brown rice and broth to pot. Cover and simmer 20 minutes. Turn off the heat, but leave the pot on the burner.

Meanwhile, heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add onion, jalapeño, celery and the remaining 4 garlic cloves, chopped. Sauté for about 5 minutes, stirring, until the vegetables soften. Reduce heat to medium. Add greens by the handful, and cook until wilted, stirring occasionally, about 10 minutes. Fluff rice and beans. Remove whole garlic, dried pepper and bay leaf. Stir in collard mixture, lemon juice and salt and pepper. Makes 6 servings.

Have a happy new year!

*Please note, no feet or rubber boots were used in the making of your sauerkraut. However, happy older people may have enjoyed themselves while pounding.

Distribution - December 27, 2009

We've made it through the holidays, and are ready for new beginnings. Yes?

Remember that the farm market is closed this weekend, and distribution will take place at the Beacon Bagel from noon to three. Skip breakfast and join us for a schmear (yep, they've got tofu cream cheese). We'll toast with wintergreens' own bubbly: homemade ginger kombucha. Here's what your distribution holds to help you with your local eating and healthy self promises:

• 2010 calendar tea towel by Claudia Pearson to remind you what's in season when.
• A scattering of radishes, rutabagas, beets, and turnips, because a bit of spiciness and earth brought up from the cellar are excellent defenses against the cold. Huguenot Street Farm.
• Fermented garlic dill pickles and sauerkraut to get your body back in balance. Cukes from Madura Farm and cabbages from Huguenot Street Farm.
• Frozen mulberries to help you get your days started right, with smoothies or sunshine muffins. Mulberries grown wild on the streets of Beacon.
• Butternut and delicata squash. Vitamin C! Antioxidants! (Here's a tasty recipe that's not soup.) Huguenot Street Farm.
• A smidgen of ginger. Local ginger! If you're sick, put in tea with your pear honey. If you're me, put it in everything. Huguenot Street Farm.
• A few more tasty apples, to keep you, um, on schedule. Fishkill Farms.

I guess this new year (new decade!) is about belly and digestive health!
Lucky for you, there's not much to rattle on about today, except that the weather fluctuations are crrrraaaazzzzy and the weather in the root cellar is SO consistent. Amazing. If I weren't so addicted to light, I'd live underground with the veggies.

Oh yeah, and the fact of local ginger. I have tried and tried and failed and failed to grow my own ginger because the stuff they sell even in the health food store comes all the way from China. China! But Huguenot Street Farm grew some this year. It was only enough for inspiration but I'll be sure to be pestering them to do more next year. Have you tried growing ginger?

Stay tuned for new year's recipes for prosperity and happiness. Get your black eyed peas ready....

*Pickle print also by Claudia Pearson.

Figs and Other Fruits I Don't Have

2009 is the year my fig tree died. It was given to me as a gift many years earlier, because I love the fruit and also love those big floppy elephant ear leaves. I think fondly of the short and stout fig tree that grew in my backyard "on base" (Davis Monthan Air Force Base, that is) when I was kid. It was a grand climbing tree, for me, since I'm scared of heights and was terrible at climbing trees. It thrived there, with no t.l.c.

I still don't know what I did wrong with my coddled fig: it survived last winter (pouting) indoors, by a cold, drafty window with a lot of southern light. She'd shed all her leaves in a tantrum in about March, and then come back strong. Soon after she made the transition to the porch in May, she up and died.

I work in an Italian neighborhood in Brooklyn, and I've spotted several figs there that fruit year after year. I made friends with some of the neighbors, and helped them pick the fruit this year and planned to use some figs for the C.S.A. We decided that their cool cellar was a good place for storing them. I'd checked in a couple times, and they were holding up just fine. When I stopped by this week, I was told they all had recently spoiled. I'd waited one distribution too long, thinking because of the association of figgy pudding with Christmas, that these delicate fruits would last until the end of the month/year/decade. This lack of judgment goes in the annals of failures and mistakes.

Because of losing my fig tree, losing the figs harvested in Brooklyn, and having missed Southern Arizona's fig season, I'm taking this opportunity to pout about fruits I don't have.
Oh yeah, 'tis the season for want-want-want, so let's start with hardy kiwis. I'm reading the kiwi (a.k.a. Actinidia) chapter in Uncommon Fruits for Every Garden. Reading about them and their edible skins and their pop-in-your-mouth deliciousness is making my mouth water. Oh, I have plans to plant them, on a side of my house that needs its ugliness covered by pretty plants, where there's enough room for them to grow like crazy, as it seems they do, and in a place with lots of sunshine. But I have to build mega support for the vines, and house projects tend to back up around here. People get distracted by starting up C.S.A.s, by pickling for farm markets, by train commuting to paying jobs. Thus, walls that are halfway torn down stay only halfway torn down. So, though I feel very determined to get these kiwis going (soon, soon), I wish planting them were going to be as easy as walking down a shady road where the mowers never come and shoving pawpaw seeds one inch under the soil, all along that road.
So, even though I was just complaining about the California Rare Fruit Growers teasing me, part of me suspects I should turn my mid-winter fruit blues toward fruits I can't grow. Just look at them, pet the pages, drool, dream, and move on. (This month's mag features kumquats, which I will be eating in four days. But last month's cover showed Ecuadorian mystery fruits.) What fruits will 2010 bring?

Homeward Bound

One week from today I'll be sniffing desert air. Yep, I'm going to be a tourist in my own hometown, because I've been away too long. I'll be checking out the sites (bat caves!), eating Mexican food that tastes like Mexican food, taking long walks in the desert (secretly looking for jackrabbits and javelinas), and seeking out all of Tucson's local food. I've been reading Tucson bloggers and bloggers headed for Tucson in preparation. Tucson farmer's markets, here I come!

What's in season foodwise in the Sonoran Desert right now? Olives. Citrus. (Oranges and grapefruits and lemons and tangelos and kumquats, oh my!) Pecan, oh, pecans.

I've missed some things, too, like chiles, nopales, prickly pear tuna, and pomegranates, but maybe just maybe I'll find preserves. I've also missed the season of organized mesquite millings, but know I can still get my hands on some mesquite flour to give it a try. It's a little silly to think I have to taste my way through my visit, but fresh orange juice and green chile tamales won't make terrible guides.

Last time in Tucson I attended an animal rights demo, and ended up at Earth First! HQ having dinner and stuffing envelopes with my eighties activist hero, Rod Coronado. Who knows what this visit will hold? Except, of course, plenty of gorgeous food, gorgeous scenery, and gorgeous weather. And that smell...

Beets, the New Eco Graffiti Tool

I'm a fan of some of the illegal arts. I get, grudgingly, that gorgeous, bright colors of spray paint and mop markers are toxic. That's what makes moss graffiti, botanigrams, clean tagging (literally erasing grime), and other, newer forms of graffiti interesting.
As if beets aren't delightful enough, their gorgeous color calls out for brine reuse. And there are uses. If you're not drinking it as a tonic, or dyeing paper, clothes, or food with it, consider beet tagging.
Note that it does take some practice to get both your method and message right. Consider this grossness:
While you're practicing, why not be digesting this lovely Mediterranean Beet and Yogurt Salad? Here's how to make soy yogurt so that you can get the tang without the dairy.

New York Raisins & Prunes

"Sun Mad" is by Esther Hernandez, 1982.

New York grows grapes, New York grows plums. Where are the raisins and prunes? If you know of a NY (or close) farm that sells raisins or prunes, would you let me know?

When searching for my little wrinkled friends, I did come across the very interesting raisin tree. Ooh, those pesky Rare Fruit Growers!