A load of …organic matter

In this case organic matter would be horse manure. Early this spring I called my cousin Kay who has two horses and asked if she had any horse manure I could have. She said,”When can I bring it over?”

Manure is great for garden soil. It fertilizes as well as aiding the soil structure, not to mention it is green in many meanings of the word. Long before the modern world knew the terms green, sustainable, organic, community garden, seed saver, or locavores they were part of daily living for my family.

The way of farm life for my grandfather and the generations before him was to grow food to feed your family and sell what you couldn’t eat, preserve, or store. Grow grain and grass to feed and house the animals that helped you till the fields and sell the surplice grain. Clean out the manure in the animals’ stalls and spread it in the fields where it helps the next crop grow. You can’t get much more sustainable or labor intensive than that.














This is a 1937 photo of my Grandfather cultivating (weeding) his corn field with his two mules. Grandfather is riding behind the mules as they are pulling an implement called a cultivator which is essentially a large hoe. Now we would call it organic weed control.

The first thing I fertilized with my delivery of horse manure was the asparagus. I planted two short rows two years ago and this is the first year I cut a few of the largest shoots. Asparagus takes a few years to get established. If you cut too many too soon the plants will not do well. But patience pays off because a well established and cared for couple of rows will produce for many years. There is nothing to compare to the sweet green flavor of freshly cut and lightly steamed asparagus.





















To my delight I found a new product that is wonderful for steaming fresh vegetables. It is Ziploc brand Zip’n Steam bags. As the Ziploc folks will tell you on the site these zipper bags are designed for the microwave oven and contain no dioxin. Some how this method of cooking makes my garden fresh veggies taste better than steaming them in any other way.

I just put the clean asparagus in the bag, added a little butter (the Ziploc guys suggest you add butter after you finish cooking but I like to add it before) and hit the cook button. Delicious. I have tried this method with broccoli, green beans, and fish so far and have not been disappointed. I found the bags at my local supermarket next to the other storage bags. The cooking directions and suggested cook times are printed right on the bag. If you can make microwave popcorn you can cook fresh vegetables!

This spring I only cut the largest spears of asparagus for a few weeks. I left the other stalks grow into fern-like five foot tall plants aided by Kay’s horse manure. Next year their roots will be fully established and I will be able to harvest as much as I want.

Leap of Faith

As the days grow longer the winter grows stronger.

My folks would quote that in German. It rhymes in German too and it is all to true in any language.

For most of the first two weeks of January our thermometer didn’t rise above freezing. The fields were frozen solid and covered with powdery snow. But the past few days have brought us a warm front with the temperature nudging 50 degrees on a few warm afternoons. The smell of wet earth and the muddy footprints on the kitchen floor have turned my thoughts to the tall stack of seed catalogs on my desk. The catalogs started arriving in the mailbox at the end of the lane in early December, each one holding its own promise of distinctive vegetables and fabulous flowers. I have my favorite places to order seeds and plants so I set aside their catalogs. Territorial Seed Company, The Cooks Garden, Select Seeds, Kitchen Garden Seeds, McClure and Zimmerman, White Flower Farm, and Trees of Antiquity are the major sources of the seeds and plants that make up my garden.

Territorial Seed Company is my favorite source for tomato plants, herbs, and supplies including some kitchen equipment. The Cooks Garden has a wide variety of lettuces and salad greens along with other vegetables and flowers. I always order their Spring Mix lettuce. Select Seeds specializes in heirloom flowers and foliage although they offer a few herbs and vegetables. If you are looking for flowers that grew in your grandmother’s garden, look there. Kitchen Garden Seeds has a nice variety of vegetable and flower seeds. McClure and Zimmerman are exactly what they claim on the front of their catalog, quality flowerbulb brokers. They have most every flowering bulb, corm, tuber, and rootstock you could want, heirloom and otherwise. White Flower Farm has a wide variety of annuals, perennials, shrubs, bulbs, and edible crops all of the highest quality. Trees of Antiquity is a new source for me. Last year when my Montmorency cherry tree died I went looking for a source of heirloom fruit trees so I could plant a replacement. I found a huge selection of heirloom fruit trees in Trees of Antiquity’s catalog. Their selection of Apple trees is especially impressive. I ordered my cherry tree and it will likely arrive in March.

Ordering seeds and plants is a leap of faith, a belief in the future, and the promise of honest hard work. I haven’t had time to plan my garden or put in any orders yet, except for the cherry at Trees of Antiquity. My Mom’s declining health has kept me busy just keeping the family comfortable, fed, and clean but somehow I will find the minutes and hours in the days and months to come to plan and plant my garden. The last time I spoke with my mother-in-law, Dorothy, before she passed away last October I promised her I would plant a yellow grape tomato this spring. Territorial Seed Company has just the plant to fill that request.

Somehow I will also find the minutes and hours in what I expect will be trying and emotional days ahead to continue to post to this blog. I may not post as regularly as I would like but I will continue.

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.

Lil' Loupes

Early last spring when I stuck the seeds for Lil ’Loupe in peat pots and put them in the sunny south facing window of my garden shed I didn’t know what to expect. I had never grown this melon before but the description in Territorial Seed Company’s catalog intrigued me. It was described as single-serving sized with firm, sweet, bright orange flesh that packs full-size flavor.

The seeds took off quickly and the seedlings did so well that I didn’t have room in my garden to plant all of them so I gave a couple plants away. Once planted in the garden the vines took off twining and producing little yellow blossoms that first turned into tiny melons the size of my index finger nail and then into melons the size of a large grapefruit at maturity.

I have been picking one to three a week for a few weeks now. The catalog was right. They are firm and juicy and their deep peachy-orange flesh is very sweet. They are the perfect size to fit in the refrigerator and eat half for breakfast or lunch, which is what I have been doing. If I am lucky and the vines stay healthy I might just have Lil’ Loupes through September.

I have the same theory for cantaloupes as I have for watermelons. Pick them ripe from the vine, refrigerate them until they are cold, and the only other thing you need is a spoon.

Sugar Baby

My Sugar Babies aren’t exactly babies this year. They have been weighing in at around 12 pounds and are about a foot in diameter. They have dark green skin with even darker stripes and juicy ruby red flesh. I have been cutting them in half to make it easier to wedge them into my refrigerator. Sugar Baby is a variety that is supposed to be the standard of the icebox melons, meaning they are smaller so they will easily fit into a refrigerator. Not this year.

Watermelons are thought to have originated in the African desert. There is evidence that watermelons were cultivated in the Nile Valley as early as 2000 BC. Watermelon seeds were found in Pharaoh Tutankhamun’s Egyptian tomb. Early French explorers found Native Americans cultivating them in the Mississippi Valley in the 1700s. Some watermelon seeds also found their way to America on ships full of African slaves.

Watermelons are more than ninety percent—you guessed it—water! So they make great slushies, watermelon lemonade, sorbet, fruit salad, and pickled watermelon rind. I have even found a recipe for watermelon cake that uses chunks of the melon in the cake but I’m a bit skeptical about it. In spite of all the wonderful recipes out there I have never gotten past this simple one:

One cold, deep pink wedge of vine ripened watermelon

Paper towels or napkins

Plate, knife, fork, and spoon optional

And for those misguided folks like my Mom and cousin—

Salt!

Schnippel Beans

Most kinds of beans that are commonly eaten when their pods are still unripe or ‘green’ are thought to have originated in the tropical and subtropical latitudes of the Americas. You can find the modern varieties of green bush beans in my Mid-American garden every summer and on some hot and humid August days it feels like the subtropics.

Growing up Mom and I planted, weeded, picked, tipped and tailed, blanched, and served green beans fresh or froze the extra. I love their fresh crunch and sweet green flavor raw or lightly steamed. My dad preferred his beans cooked with bacon, or smothered in sauce, or in salad with vinegar dressing. I recall one summer dinner that included green beans. My Dad, his face, forearms, and hands burnished by the summer sun, was gathering a fork full of green bean salad from his dinner plate.
Addressing my Mom with a wistful tone to his German accent he announced,

“My Mom used to schnippel (meaning to cut) beans in long thin strips. She used to do big pots full. Why don’t you fix beans like that?”

My Mom gave him ‘the look’. ‘The look’ is only understood by women who have had to listen to their husbands explaining a dish their mother prepared when they were growing up. If it was a particular favorite some of us go to the trouble of getting the recipe from our mother-in-law but in my Mom’s case it was too late, my grandmother Emma had passed away and taken the secret of how to schnippel beans with her.

As far as I can tell Grandma Emma spent her life growing and preparing food. I use the same garden that she did and I imagine I could be walking in her footsteps as I pick green beans. Her kitchen was in the basement of the farm house in which I live now. She cooked on a wood fired stove and served meals on a big walnut table. I still use some of her kitchen tools; her flour sifter is one of my favorites. She used a dark alcove in the basement to store her canned goods. When I was a girl I remember my Mom pointing out a dusty quart jar on one of the shelves in that alcove. It was packed full of French cut green beans and it had a paper label dated 1952, the year before Grandma Emma died. My mom marveled at how thin and uniformly the beans were cut and how well preserved they were considering the jar was at least fifteen years old.

“I’m afraid to open the jar to throw out the beans. I don’t know what sort of ‘bugs’ are growing in there after all these years.” Mom said turning off the light in the basement.

Almost forty years after Grandma Emma canned that jar of beans I found myself back in the same basement cleaning up in preparation for new furnace ducts. I was standing on a step stool when I noticed that something was stuck between an old duct and the first floor joists above my head. I reached up and pulled down an odd sort of wooden box. It was a narrow rectangular shape with a handle attached to a wheel on one side and two narrow tin tubes set into the opposite side.

It had four “feet” on the bottom that extended like sled runners. I took it outside to brush away the dirt and cobwebs and noticed that there were three razor blade-like insertions in the wheel that was attached to the handle.

My only thought was that I had found some sort of antique food processor. I took the gadget to the kitchen and set it on the counter then continued with the basement clean up. But I couldn’t stop trying to figure out for what purpose that contraption was once used.

It was about three hours later when I was steaming green beans for dinner that it hit me. It was Grandma Emma’s green bean slicer! The two tubes would have consistently fed green beans into the blades—now hopelessly rusty—at the perfect angle to turn out the slices I saw in that jar when I was a girl. I had solved the mystery of how Grandma Emma schnippeled all those beans. But even if I could have figured out a way to sharpen the blades it was too late to prepare a dish of schnippeled beans for my Dad because he had passed away a few years earlier.


This is my favorite green bean salad recipe. I think my Dad would have liked it in spite of the fact that the beans aren’t schnippeled.

Four Bean Salad

1 pound fresh green beans, tipped, tailed, and blanched

1 small white or red onion, chopped

¾ cup Edamame, (green soybeans) thawed if using frozen

¾ cup canned black beans, rinsed

¾ cup canned Garbanzo beans, rinsed

¼ cup olive oil

¼ cup balsamic vinegar

½ teaspoon salt

Fresh ground pepper to taste


Put all the beans and the onion in a large bowl. In a small bowl whisk the salt and pepper into the vinegar then whisk in the olive oil. Pour the oil and vinegar over the beans and toss to combine. Serve now or store in the refrigerator up to two days.

Caprese

This is a Cabernet grape tomato. It is about the size of a large grape and tastes almost as sweet. I set these magic little jewels in a bowl on the kitchen counter and they disappear.

This is my version of the classic Italian Caprese Salad. As with the classic salad, all the ingredients must be at their peak of flavor and freshness.

2 cups home grown grape tomatoes, sliced in half

One 8 oz container of fresh mozzarella ciliegine (cherry sized balls)

6 to 8 large, fresh basil leaves, chopped

3 Tablespoons olive oil

1 Tablespoon balsamic vinegar

Sea salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

Toss all ingredients together and serve.

Blackberries

Once again I am sweltering in the blackberry patch on a hot and humid July afternoon cursing the blasted plants as their thorny canes grab my shirt, get hopelessly snagged on the bird net, and dig their evil spikes into my hands. The ripe berries are glossy purple-black and no bigger than the last joint on my little finger. Just as the berries are not big compared to modern varieties their seeds are much smaller also. So much smaller that you hardly notice they have seeds when eating them. That fact alone is a reason to continue to cultivate them although there has been more than one occasion when I have walked away from those thorny devils scratched and bleeding determined to spray them with Round-up!

Growing blackberries is a family tradition I find myself obliged to uphold. These berries are offspring of plants that belonged to my grandfather and considering their tenacity I am suspicious that they are direct descendants of a wild variety.

In 1929 my maternal grandfather moved his family from a farm in Jefferson County Missouri to a more productive piece of land in Monroe County Illinois, a gutsy thing to do at the start of the Great Depression. My mother assures me he brought blackberry plants with him. Twenty- five years later when she married my father she brought blackberry plants to the farm on which we now live. I am still picking thorns out of my fingers.

This is a photo taken in 1921. The little girl is my mom, Ellen, age 7 and her little brother, Bill, age 3. Although it’s difficult to be certain I believe they are standing in front of a row of blackberries, the descendants of which I have growing in my garden today. So out of respect for my grandfather and love for my mother I continue to cultivate the thorny, blankety-blank blackberries.

Oh, by the way, did I mention that they make pretty good pie?

Blackberry Pie

For crust recipe see Flaky Foundation

Filling:

¾ cup sugar

3 Tablespoons cornstarch

2 teaspoons finely grated lemon zest

Pinch of salt

2 Tablespoons fresh lemon juice

4 cups ripe freshly picked blackberries
(frozen berries work too but do not thaw them )

In a small bowl mix the sugar, cornstarch, lemon zest, and salt. Put the berries in a large bowl and add the lemon juice to the berries. Sprinkle the sugar mixture over the berries and toss to coat evenly. Turn them into the pie shell add the top crust and bake. Go to Flaky Foundation II post for detailed crust shaping and baking instructions.

Eight Ball

It’s certainly not a measure of cocaine, and definitely not a pool ball. It’s a type of zucchini that grows in a globe form rather than the traditional shape. Because the traditional green and yellow summer squash are so easy to find at the market I like to plant squash that have different forms. In addition to eight ball, I like the yellow scallop, sunburst and ones called flying saucer that are star shaped. I love super fresh summer squash. It has delicate skin and mild creamy flesh that is so full of moisture that it literally squeaks when I bite into it.




















Squash is native to South America. Columbus took the native seeds back to Spain and from there squash spread across Europe. The Italians are credited for developing zucchini. Zucchini is one of the easiest garden plants to grow. Put a few seeds in the soil, keep them watered and you will have squash. It is also one of the most prolific plants. The fruit can grow inches in one day. The largest zucchini is on record at being 5’9” long and weighing 65 pounds! I have a relative who tells me that one summer his garden produced so many zucchini that after he gave them to family, friends, and acquaintances he still had many more than he could use. Then a devious idea hit him. He put all of his extra squash in his car and drove to the nearest large parking lot. Then he patrolled the lot for unlocked cars and when he found one deposited a few zucchinis in the front seat. Imagine the poor driver’s surprise when he got back to the car after his shopping trip!

I solve the problem of having too many huge squash that are woody and filled with hard seeds by harvesting them when they are small. With eight ball they are ready when they are anywhere from golf ball size with the blossom still attached to tennis ball size. Simple preparation with fresh ingredients is the best way to enjoy summer veggies. I like to lightly steam these little zuchs and toss them with butter, salt, and pepper. Sometimes I want a zucchini dish with a little more depth of flavor so I prepare the following:





















Sautéed Zucchini

2 Tablespoons salted butter

One medium to small sweet red or white onion, sliced

One medium sized zucchini, sliced
or two to three small zucchinis, sliced
or six to eight whole baby zucchini with the blossoms attached


Four fresh large mushrooms, sliced

One medium homegrown tomato, chopped

Six fresh basil leaves, chiffonade (sliced)

About a Tablespoon fresh oregano leaves, chopped

1 teaspoon salt—more or less to your taste

1 teaspoon fresh ground pepper—more or less to your taste

Melt the butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the onions and sauté until they are softened slightly, about 5 minutes. Add the zucchini, mushrooms, and tomato. Sauté a few minutes then cover the pan and steam just until the zucchini are cooked to your liking. I like mine a little firm so I only steam them a minute or two. At this point you should have a lovely pink sauce in the bottom of the pan from the tomato, zucchini, and mushroom juices. Add the basil, oregano, salt, and pepper and toss to blend. I serve this with pasta, rice, or bread so you can soak up the sauce. You can add or substitute other fresh veggies like green pepper, sugar snap peas, beans, or whatever sounds good to you. This makes four generous servings.

Cabbages and Kings

In case you haven’t deduced this from looking at my last name, my family heritage is very German. My father’s family came to America from the Rhinepfalz (Rhine River valley) in southwestern Germany in 1843 and my mother’s family, as near as I can tell, came from northern Germany a few years before that. My family, having a stubborn German streak, held on to the old ways of living and eating about 100 years longer than most immigrants. Sauerkraut, pork sausage, spaetzla, and kohlrabi were all foods I grew up eating. I was surprised and a bit amazed when I discovered that most people thought that kohlrabi was an odd, exotic vegetable. Maybe it is a little odd, but this mild mannered vegetable that grows in the garden is certainly not exotic.

Kohlrabi is a member of the cabbage family along with cauliflower and broccoli. Kohl is the German word for cabbage and ‘rabi’ could be a form of Rube the German ‘root’ word for turnips, carrots and beets. Legend has it that in 800 AD, Charlemagne the ruler of the Holy Roman Empire, ordered kohlrabi grown in all the lands of his realm. Most of us think of Charlemagne as French but his chosen city of residence was Aix-la-Chapelle now called Aachen located in western Germany. Somehow the German name for this form of cabbage stuck through the ages.

Kohlrabi is often mistaken for a root vegetable because of its bulbous shape. It actually grows above the ground as cabbage and cauliflower do. The swollen stem produces the beet shaped bulb and leaves grow in concentric layers from its exterior. You can see where I cut the stem just above the roots in the photo. It sort of reminds me of Saturn with rings of cabbage leaves orbiting it.

Kohlrabi tastes nothing like a root vegetable either. It has a mild delicate flavor like cauliflower stems but sweeter and crunchier. My husband grew up eating it cut into slices raw as a snack or side to sandwiches. I grew up eating it cooked in cream sauce and served as a side dish with summer Sunday dinners of fried chicken and garden fresh green beans.

If you find kohlrabi at your farmers market or at the supermarket as I did earlier this spring buy ones that are tennis ball size or smaller. As they get larger they tend to get tough and bitter. Remember that whatever you do with cabbage, cauliflower, or broccoli you can do with kohlrabi. You can shred it in salad and coleslaw. You can steam it and top it with sautéed breadcrumbs. You can hollow out the center and stuff it with sausage. You can smother it in cheese sauce. You can eat it raw.

This is the classic recipe for kohlrabi as I grew up eating it. I like to think Germans have been eating it prepared this way for centuries.

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Kohlrabi in Cream Sauce

2 kohlrabi bulbs, peeled, halved, and sliced in 1/8 inch thick half moons

¼ teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon sugar

1 Tablespoon butter

1 heaping Tablespoon all-purpose flour

½ cup milk

2 Tablespoons cream

½ teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon sugar

¼ teaspoon fresh grated nutmeg

1 teaspoon fresh ground pepper

Put the kohlrabi, salt and sugar in a saucepan. Cover with water and bring to a boil over medium high heat. Cook until kohlrabis are tender but still firm. Drain but reserve ½ cup of the cooking liquid. Put the cooked kohlrabi in a serving bowl and cover to keep them warm.

Melt the butter in the saucepan and stir in the flour. Keep stirring until the paste is golden brown. Slowly add the milk and reserved cooking water. A wire whisk works great here. Keep whisking until the sauce is smooth. Add the cream, salt, sugar, nutmeg, and pepper. Continue to cook and stir as the sauce simmers and thickens, about 5 minutes. Put the cooked kohlrabi into the hot sauce to warm them, and then return everything to the serving bowl. This makes about four servings as a side dish.