Corn

It’s not likely that Woodie Guthrie was thinking of anything like this when he referred to a “golden valley” but this shot brings his song to my mind. I actually took this photo over the top of the hopper on the combine filled to the brim with newly harvested corn. The trees at the edge of the field oddly aligned with the horizon make it surreal.

The crew was in this past weekend harvesting the acres of corn that are the major crop for the farm. I call them the crew because it takes at least three guys; one to drive the large green harvester that chews up the corn stalks eight rows at a time then spits out golden grain, one to drive the tractor pulling the large wagon called a grain cart, and one to drive the truck with the semi-trailer attached that takes the grain to the elevator or storage bin. When working at optimal efficiency the combine unloads the grain into the grain cart as it is harvesting, never having to stop and wait for wagons to unload or trucks to arrive.

I usually hitch a ride on the buddy seat in the cab of the combine for awhile during harvest. After climbing a ladder that puts me 10 feet above ground and going through a glass door I settle in behind the picture-window windshield and watch as the stalks and ears get gobbled up before me while the bin behind me fills with grain. It’s a bit like being in the control room of some sort of ship. In addition to the usual steering wheel, fuel, oil, and temperature read outs there are electronic monitors for yield in bushels per acre, GPS devices, and warning buzzers for I don’t know what. The driver is either my farmer, Fred, or his dad, Dale, the patriarch of their family. I enjoy my chance to catch up on how harvest is going and how their family is faring.

When my grandfather harvested corn he had to cut each stalk with a large knife, carefully stack the stalks into shocks in the field, then go back and remove the ear of corn and shell the grain from the ear. The amount of grain my modern crew harvest in one hour is more than my grandfather could process all winter.

My non-farm friends often ask what the corn is used for after we sell it. There is really no way of knowing what happens to the grain that grew in my field as it is mixed with other local grain at the elevator and sent off by train or barge for destinations unknown. Some of the grain could be animal food, some might become ethanol, some could be tortilla chips, and some could become cornmeal that I use to make bread.

Corn Bread with Bacon

I like to bake this bread in a well seasoned cast iron skillet because it gets a crunchy golden brown crust.

2 strips of bacon, diced

1 cup yellow corn meal

1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour

1/3 cup granulated sugar

2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

¼ teaspoon salt

1 cup buttermilk

6 Tablespoons sweet butter, melted

1 egg, slightly beaten

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Fry the bacon in a 9 inch diameter cast iron skillet until it is crispy. Remove the bacon to a paper towel to drain. Pour all the fat from the pan and set aside.
Stir the dry ingredients together in a bowl. Stir in the buttermilk, bacon, butter and egg. Mix gently until all the dry ingredients are just moist. Pour the batter into the cast iron skillet, set it in the middle of the oven and bake about 25 minutes. The bread is done when the edges start to brown and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

Slated For Sainthood

That photo is --pardon me--was my mother-in-law Dorothy. My husband, Dave, myself, and most of the rest of her family gathered in North Dakota last weekend to say our last goodbyes.

She was a great lady. She was a veteran of WWII. She was an active member of the VFW playing taps at more than 950 funerals. She was an avid tennis player until her illness last spring. She was active in civic groups and her church choir. She was married to a traveling salesman who was mostly home only on the weekends and raised three boys during the 1960s and 70s. The first time I met her, only four years ago, I talked to her about my husband’s stories of the mischief the boys got into growing up.

“You are slated for sainthood just for having three boys in five years and raising them to adults!” I exclaimed.
She just laughed.

Most of the time Dave and I spent traveling to and from North Dakota we talked about Dorothy. The majority of his memories involved food. It seemed Dave was channeling Garrison Keillor as he told me about tomatoes in the back yard garden, fresh raspberries and cream for breakfast at the lake cabin in Canada, Lutheran church lutefisk dinners, and his cousin’s infamous holiday salads of green Jell-O, crushed pineapple, and cottage cheese.

Then Dave went into great detail about his school lunches. He set the scene by explaining that his grade school was four long blocks from his house and did not have a cafeteria. Only the severest of North Dakota winter weather would keep him and his brothers from going home for lunch. I imagine those boys arriving in Dorothy’s kitchen with cold red noses, snowy galoshes, and growling tummies. There they would find hot bowls of Campbell’s soup and sandwiches. I can hear the ‘umm..umm…good’ jingle now.

“Mom let us choose our own soup before we left for school. Tomato soup with Velveeta cheese on grilled white Sweetheart bread was a favorite. There was always chicken noodle and ‘wimpy’ cream of mushroom but I liked the more exotic flavors like chicken gumbo, bean with bacon, and cream of celery. Sometimes we would have Dinty Moore beef stew or Mary Kitchen corned beef hash.” Dave explained. Dave also tells me homemade chili, hot tuna salad in hot dog buns called ‘sea dogs’, and a ‘hotdish’ called Tuna Rice Jumble consisting of instant rice, canned tuna, green olives (little brother Tom picked them out), and cream of mushroom soup were also on the winter lunch menu.

“We all loved PBJ sandwiches”, he continued. “It had to be white Sweetheart bread with Skippy creamy peanut butter, Welch’s grape Jelly in jars that had Howdy Doody, The Flintstones, or The Archies on them, and big glasses of milk.”

Here they are with their PBJs in Dorothy’s 1954 Ford Station wagon one warm early spring day.

Here they are almost 50 years later on July 4.

My first dinner at Dorothy’s dining room table was as the new girlfriend of her confirmed bachelor son. She welcomed me with open arms and pronounced me “a keeper”. My last dinner at Dorothy’s dining room table was last Monday evening as her boys and their extended families gathered to share a meal lovingly prepared by her friends in a local civic sorority. The menu was chicken noodle hotdish, coleslaw, ambrosia salad with marshmallows, cookies, cake, and coffee. The rest of the evening was spent laughing and crying as each family member shared their memories around that table.

Somehow food not only nurtures our bodies and soothes our psyches but it is the pivot point around which the milestones of our lives revolve.

Thanks for the memories Dorothy.

Sage

Botanically it is Salvia officinalis. Emotionally it is stuffing in the Thanksgiving turkey. Medicinally it has been used for thousands of years.

This interesting woody stemmed plant with its slightly fuzzy, gray-green leaves is native to the Mediterranean region but it has made its way into most of the cuisines of the world. Ancient Romans considered it part of the official pharmacopoeia, Charlemagne ordered it planted on the German Imperial Farms, and modern studies have found it can aid digestion and memory function.

Of course it is an ingredient in my heirloom recipe for turkey stuffing as well as the key ingredient in seasoned ground pork that is forced into casings and called sausage. My great-aunt Sophia used it in vegetable soup. I like to use it fresh in rolls with parsley, rosemary, and thyme as the song suggests.

One of my favorite recipes starring sage is one that fits my simple and fresh criteria. The sage leaves infuse the chicken with flavor then get sautéed in the olive oil and butter until they are crispy.

Lemon Sage Chicken

4 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves weighing about 6 ounces each

3 Tablespoons fresh lemon juice

3 Tablespoons olive oil

28 fresh whole sage leaves

3 Tablespoons unsalted butter

2 Tablespoons olive oil

Sea salt

Freshly ground pepper

Put the chicken breasts in a shallow glass or stainless bowl or a zip lock bag. Add the lemon juice, oil and sage leaves. Turn the chicken to coat evenly and set aside at room temperature for 30 minutes.

Remove the chicken from the marinade and pat dry. This is an important step in browning the chicken. Strain the marinade into a small bowl. Remove the sage leaves and press the liquid that clings to them into the marinade. Reserve the leaves.

In a large nonreactive skillet with lots of room for the chicken and the leaves, melt the butter and the olive oil over moderately high heat until hot and bubbly. Place the chicken breasts in the skillet smooth side down and cook until nicely browned on the bottom, about 5 minutes. Turn the chicken and season with salt and pepper. Add the sage leaves and cook until the chicken is browned on the bottom and the sage leaves are crisp, about 5 minutes. Remove the skillet from the heat and remove the chicken and sage to a warm plate and cover. Pour the remaining oil from the pan then reheat the skillet until hot. Pour in the reserved marinade and stir with a wooden spoon scraping the browned bits from the bottom of the pan. As soon as the sauce becomes a brown glaze—less than a minute—pour the sauce over the chicken and serve.

Miltomatl

Miltomatl that’s the Aztec word for tomatillo or to exact Physalis ixocarpa.

Late last winter when I was ordering seed I was feeling adventurous so I ordered something I had never grown before, tomatillos. A few years ago, I first found these firm little fruits that come wrapped in their own papery husk at my local market displayed with the tomatoes and avocados. I purchased some and used them in salsa. I was pleasantly surprised when they added a nice crunch and a sweet citrus-like note unlike the green tomato flavor I expected. Then last winter while dining at a Mexican restaurant I noticed a dish on the menu that was accompanied by tomatillo sauce so I ordered it and liked it very much. Those facts in addition to the seed catalog’s description stating that the plants are easy to grow and that they like the same conditions as tomatoes clinched my decision to give the seeds a try.

















I started the seeds in flats then planted the strongest two seedlings in the bed with my tomatoes. My tomatillo seedlings grew into three foot tall plants with green Chinese lantern-like pods. The fruit began to form inside the lanterns and continued to develop until it split the husk. Two plants have produced fruit for enough salsa and sauce to supply my family and a few friends!

Tomatillos are native to Central and South America. There is evidence that the Aztecs domesticated the tomatillo by 800 BC. Some experts think that it might have been the tomatillo rather than the tomato that the Spanish first brought back to Europe because the Aztec word for tomato is xitomatl and their word for tomatillo is miltomatl. It seems the Conquistadors called both fruits a tomato.

No matter what you call it, a tomatillo makes great salsa.


















Tomatillo Salsa

1 medium homegrown red tomato, diced

8 tomatillos (about 8 oz.), husked, rinsed, and chopped

1 green Ancho pepper, fire roasted, seeded, and chopped

¼ cup red onion, chopped

½ medium lime, juiced

Mix all ingredients in a stainless or ceramic bowl. Serve at once with your favorite tortilla chip or cover and refrigerate up to four hours. You can add other fresh ingredients like cilantro, or bell peppers, but I like to taste the tomatillo’s delicate flavor so I’m a bit of a purist with this salsa.

Love Apple

Love apple is a fitting description for a fruit with smooth firm skin and luscious ripe flesh exuding an enticing smell and offering the promise of infinite ways to be devoured. There is no vegetable, well technically a fruit, that can quite compare to a homegrown tomato. Many of us go to great lengths to grow them. I am no exception.

Each year I follow the same ritual of choosing the varieties, preparing the beds, planting, laying in the irrigation, mulching, and building the supports. My husband thinks I’m a bit nuts but he’s not a big tomato fan…yet. Although I am an advocate of heirloom varieties I plant hybrid varieties too. Most of the varieties I choose are indeterminate because I have the space for them to grow as big as they like. Each year I build a support structure of bamboo poles and twine. My husband has dubbed it “The Hanoi Hilton” but it is a strong scaffold that keeps the vines off the ground and protected from animals. It also makes harvesting the fruit easier.

Brandywine and Orange Oxheart are two of my favorite heirloom variety tomatoes. These are varieties that my grandmother or even her mother could have planted. Brandywine is in the photo at the top of this post and as you can see it is large, oddly lobe shaped, and cracks easily. But it has a sweet, rich, intense tomato flavor to which most other tomatoes are compared.

Orange Oxheart is a large yellow variety that is actually heart shaped. It is juicy and meaty with fewer seeds and less acidic flavor. It’s a great counterpoint in color and flavor to its red cousins.

At the end of this productive summer I have made countless fresh salsas, Caprese salads, and sauces. I have canned a few jars of pasta sauce and frozen a few tomatoes to add to soup this winter. I lament the looming threat of the first hard frost and the last fresh tomato. That makes the tomatoes I harvest in September, and if the weather cooperates, October that much more precious.


So to do justice to heirloom tomatoes here is an heirloom recipe with a bit more family history in explanation. This photo is Aunt Sophia holding my Mom in about 1915.

My mother’s Aunt Sophia (pronounced So-fee by her niece) has become a culinary legend in our family. Aunt Sophia was my grandmother’s older sister. She never married but dedicated herself to helping my grandparents farm and raise their family. She was the cook of the household, keeping the hearth fires burning while the rest of the family worked the fields or went to school. She died a decade and a half before I was born. I have a few of her recipes written out but most of her legacy has come to me through demonstrations by my Mom who was her kitchen apprentice. I grew up eating this tomato salad. It is classic Aunt Sophia--ingredients at the peak of ripeness with simple preparation. Nothing can be more enduring.

Aunt Sophia’s Tomato Salad

2 pounds fresh homegrown tomatoes, sliced horizontally
I like to use at least two varieties of tomatoes.

1 small red onion, sliced very thin

½ cup cider vinegar

2 teaspoons sugar

½ teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

In a small bowl mix the vinegar, sugar, salt, and pepper. In a larger bowl put the sliced tomatoes and onion. Pour the vinegar mixture over the tomatoes and allow to marinate for about 10 minutes.

Okra

Okra is a recent introduction to our family garden. No one in the family had heard of the vegetable until my uncle and his family visited friends in Georgia who served it fried in the traditional Southern way. The next summer my aunt planted some okra in her garden and our family has liked the green fuzzy pods with their slippery interiors ever since.

Okra is thought to have it’s origin in Ethiopia and the Upper Nile River valley. A Spanish Moor visiting Egypt in 1216 described the plant and noted that the young pods were eaten with meal in a preparation similar to my favorite way to cook them. It is assumed that French colonists and African slaves brought okra to the American South in the early 1700s.

My family discovered okra a couple of hundred years later in the 1970s. A member of the cotton family, okra is a slightly exotic plant for my Midwestern garden but our summers are hot and humid enough to make it produce well. I need to harvest the young pods when they are three to five inches long at least every three days to keep them from growing too large and getting tough.

If you look closely at the photo you can see a white spot on the soil and a black shape behind the leaves above it. That is Tommy. He loves to accompany me to the garden.

He is quite the hunter bringing us mice and birds almost daily. I have not figured out if he seeks out my company in the garden because he knows he can get some quality petting from me or if he us using my presence as protection from dive bombing mocking birds.

We like to eat okra sliced vertically, rolled in cornmeal and fried or sliced in rings and cooked in soups and gumbo.

Fried Okra

1 pound fresh okra

¾ cup flour, divided

1 cup milk or buttermilk

¾ cup cornmeal

Salt, black pepper, and cayenne pepper to taste


Wash the pods, cut off the stem, and slice them vertically.

Set out three large pie plates.

In plate one put about one half cup flour

In plate two put one cup milk or buttermilk

In plate three put the remaining flour, the cornmeal, and the seasonings

Roll the sliced okra in the flour, then the milk, then the seasoned cornmeal. Use one hand in the wet ingredients and the other hand in the dry ingredients to avoid breading your fingers. If you run short on any of the ingredients in the pie plates just add more during the process.

Lay the breaded okra on a baking sheet to dry while you heat vegetable oil in a skillet or fryer to 350 degrees. I test the oil by dropping a piece of breading into it. If the test piece bubbles and browns quickly it’s ready. Fry the pieces golden brown and drain on paper towels.

My husband introduced me to green Tabasco sauce. I think it is a wonderful condiment to serve with fried okra. It adds a wonderful glow to the crunchy exterior and juicy interior of the okra.

Raspberries

Raspberries are my husband Dave’s favorite fruit. I think. We’ve been married just under two years and we are still learning each others likes and dislikes but I think I can safely say raspberries rank right up there on his top ten list.

Early this past March my cousin Kay told us that she was going to divide some of her red raspberries and asked if we would like a few plants. Dave immediately said yes and offered to help me prepare a bed for them. We planted about six plants. I didn’t expect to have any fruit on the canes this summer but much to our surprise I have been picking a handful of the ruby gems every few days. Even though our canes are young we have an abundant supply of berries because Kay, knowing Dave’s berry preference, arrives on our door step with cardboard flats filled with the fragile, juicy jewels when her plants are at their peak of production.

I spread fresh berries on a sheet pan and freeze them as in the photo below. When they are frozen I put them in freezer bags and return them to the freezer. Then it's easy to use part of the bag for a recipe.

Dave puts fresh red raspberries in one of my grandmother’s Depression glass custard cups, smothers them with heavy cream and devours them. Between making happy noises he reminisces about the summers he spent at his family’s cabin in Canada where his grandmother and aunt introduced him to the pleasures of fresh berries with cream. Should there be any fresh berries left after Dave is finished I set aside enough for this simple but amazing cake recipe. I found this recipe in a magazine many years ago and make it whenever I have a lot of fresh raspberries.

Raspberry Cake

2 cups all-purpose flour

½ teaspoon salt

1 Tablespoon baking powder

1/3 cup butter, at room temperature

¾ cup brown sugar

1 egg, at room temperature

1 cup milk

1 teaspoon vanilla

3 cups fresh raspberries, whole, unsweetened

Glaze:

1 ½ cups confectioner’s sugar

2 Tablespoons heavy cream

1 teaspoon vanilla

Grease and flour a 13 x 9 x 2 inch pan. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Stir together the flour, salt, and baking powder; set aside. With a mixer cream the softened butter then add the sugar gradually, beating well after each addition until mixture is fluffy and light. Stir in egg; beat one minute. Combine milk and vanilla. Add dry ingredients alternately with milk mixture, beating well after each addition. Spread the batter in the pan. Sprinkle the berries evenly over the top of the batter. Bake for 35-40 minutes until the center of the cake springs back when lightly touched and a tooth pick comes out clean. While the cake is baking combine the glaze ingredients. Allow the cake to cool 5 minutes then spread the glaze over the cake. Serve warm.

The original recipe says this makes 16-20 servings but I have yet to meet the person who can stop at one piece.