Crab Grab

Today's adventure: picking crab apples! We visited just two spots, about 10-12 individual trees, and hauled back in the Croozer a whopping 35 1/2 pounds of deep red fruit ranging in size from cherry to golf ball.

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There are still some crab apple trees not quite ready to be picked—you can tell by the lack of fruit on the ground below them. The trees we visited today were at the perfect stage. They had dropped many crab apples on the ground (but not so many that you have to walk through a bee-infested sludge of rotting fruit)—which means the apples are ripe—while plenty of apples remained in the tree—which means they're not overripe yet.

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Len got on the stepladder and picked from the tree, and I mostly inspected the apples on the ground, bagging the ones that were not smashed, bruised or bug-bitten. Of course, we ate one while we were out—have to taste the product at every stage! These larger crab apples are tart but not bitter, like a Granny Smith but redder, if red can be a flavor.
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And now, it's jam time! Expect a post about the crab apple jam soon.

.Rinsing the crab apples - this is a 16-lb. batch.

Summer's Slow Bounty and Zucchini Pie

Now that the strawberries and raspberries are long gone, I have been waiting impatiently to pick anything from my garden. It has been a slow growing season, thanks to the relatively cool temperatures and our awful clay soil. Only this week have a few of our cherry tomatoes begun to ripen. I have two (count 'em—two!) cucumbers that are growing abnormally—one looks like a cucumber ball and the other like a small, crook-necked squash. Our pumpkin plants (they're just too small to call vines) have flowers, so that's a good sign, but they have a long way to go yet. Our grapes are slowly getting bigger (so slowly!) and a few have begun to turn purple. Oh, and I think my butternut squash plants are kaput. Rabbits kept eating the blossoms (and no blossoms = no squash), so I rubbed hot pepper oil on them. It deterred the rabbits for sure but also killed the blossoms. Big sigh...

We've really gotta break in this soil or switch to raised beds for all summer vegetables. It's August, for crying out loud, and we have harvested a handful of baby tomatoes, one miniature bell pepper and that's it! Maybe I'll pull up the shallots and see if they're big enough.

I have, however, been enjoying the bounty of other people's gardens. My mother-in-law gave us a giant zucchini, half of which I used for fried zucchini strips and the other half to make sumptuous zucchini pie.


This is my mom's recipe for Zucchini Pie:

4 cups thinly sliced zucchini
1 cup sliced onion
1/4 c. butter
2 tablespoons parsley flakes (or 6 tablespoons fresh)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder (or 1-2 garlic cloves, minced)
1/4 teaspoon basil (or 1 teaspoon fresh)
1/4 teaspoon oregano (or 1 teaspoon fresh)
2 eggs
8 oz. shredded mozzarella
1-2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
refrigerated crescent roll dough or a pie crust

Preheat oven to 375. In a pan, melt butter and cook zucchini and onion (and garlic if you're using fresh) until tender, about 10 minutes. Stir in parsley, salt, pepper, garlic powder, basil and oregano.

In a mixing bowl, beat the eggs with the shredded cheese. Stir in the zucchini and onion.

Press the crescent roll dough or pie crust into a pie pan or square baking pan. Spread the Dijon mustard all over the crust. Dump in the zucchini mixture.

Bake 18-20 minutes. Let cool a little before cutting and serving.

It makes a great side dish or entree.

A Quick Note for Our Fashionista Friends

A friend just bought a very nice leather bag, or as she put it as she unpacked it from the UPS box at work the other day, her first "I'm a grown-up now and can have a real leather" bag. But before members of PETA get up in arms, get this: The bag is made from repurposed leather. That's recycled, folks!

A simple online search for recycled or repurposed leather will lead you to a multitude of fashion and shopping websites, where you can buy purses, wallets, shoes, jewelry—pretty much anything leather—made from old leather jackets and such. And, since I have personally seen, touched, and smelled one of these earth- and fashion-friendly bags, I can promise all you leather lovers that the bag looks good and smells good—just like brand new leather. It does not look like a patchwork quilt, OK?

Now, I do very little fashion shopping myself, so I don't know for sure, but after browsing a little online, I think can safely say most of the items are priced just like new leather, too. But I'm sure the frequent shoppers out there, like my friend, know where to find the good deals.

Some of these handbag designers use leather remnants, like the ones leftover from a purse factory (or whatever they're called), so it's not so much recycling as it is preventing waste—still a great thing. And others are actually out there scouring thrift stores for battered leather goods that they will recycle into other stylish items.

So, I'll end with a reminder that you should always donate to Goodwill (or Salvation Army, etc.) your unwanted clothes and fashion accessories, even if they have holes or other imperfections. A purse designer is out there, searching for those items, eager to cut them to pieces and make something new.

A Fruitful Excursion

Urban gleaning—maybe you've heard of it. Maybe not. It's related to freeganism (a good topic for another post, another time) and salvaging in general. It's big in Portland, Oregon, but is not unique to the Northwest. So what is it exactly?

Gleaning was originally a rural gig; people gathered stray crops left behind after a farmer harvested his fields. I'm not sure if that counts as stealing or not, but I suppose if the farmer isn't going to use the leftovers... Anyway, gleaning has moved into the cities, and in our case, the suburbs. People are picking fruit from seemingly ignored trees in residential areas. I'm not talking about going into people's yards (but if your neighbor has a fruit tree that is just dropping its bounty to rot on the ground, ask him if you can bring over your ladder and have at it—I bet he'll let you). These are fruit trees that don't belong to anybody and are not being picked clean by squirrels, like the trees surrounding an apartment complex.

A few years ago, Len and I noticed a huge crab apple tree in our neighborhood, on what appeared to be common ground, and under it, a massive mush of rotting crab apples, the edible kind just a little bigger than cherries (as opposed to the smaller, purely ornamental variety). We watched the fruit ripen, fall, and rot for two years in a row and were certain that it belonged to no one and was being used by no one. Last summer, we took advantage of this otherwise wasted harvest and picked a Croozer-full of crab apples, which we turned into sweet, tart, beautiful deep-magenta preserves.

We also found a few apple trees that we think exist by happy accident. They are typically near other crab apple trees, so we think they were meant to be ornamental crab apples, but in fact turned out to be full-fledged apples (perhaps due to the grafting of one type of tree onto another type of mature root stock). However they got there, it's free organic fruit! We're pretty sure there are no pesticides being sprayed on these trees, based on the fruit's rustic look. Of course, we nibbled on an apple, to be sure it wasn't some nasty inedible hybrid, and were delighted to find a couple of different and tasty varieties. We have no idea what kind of apples they are; one's Granny Smith-ish, the other is sweeter and more yellow/pink.

This past weekend, we took a bike ride (on our way to the grocery store—gotta combine those errands when you can!) to check on the varying stages of ripeness of "our" trees, and to look for other apple and crab apple trees. We started collecting for preserves and apple butter toward the end of the trees' peaks last year; we wanted to catch them earlier this time around. I'm happy to report we found lots of crab apple trees (more than we can use), some of which are just about ripe now, and even a few new apple trees.

But the best discovery of all (and one we're marking our calendars for next summer) was the apricot tree. Who knew? We can't believe we'd never noticed it before, all the times we've biked past it. But there it was, a litter of small orange fruits all over the ground and plenty more still in the tree. We stopped right there, hoisted ourselves into the tree (it was a big one, old, with thick branches) and picked to our hearts' content. We made apricot jam that very night, and I had apricots in my oatmeal for breakfast the next morning. Delicious. Delightful.

Green Grilling: Gas or Charcoal?

One of the biggest obstacles to going green is having to give up bits of your lifestyle. You know—the convenience factor. (Why do you think Al Gore called it An Inconvenient Truth?) Recycling at home, for instance, is very convenient (when your neighborhood has curbside pickup). But what about recycling on vacation? A hearty "Great job!" to all of you who carry home bags of empties from your campsites; as for the rest of you... we'll continue this discussion later. I'm sure we'll have many more posts about how to make a difference without eschewing all of your favorite things. I'm a big proponent of being as environmentally friendly as possible while still enjoying life the way you want to enjoy it, so join me in the search for that perfect balance!

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Today, we're talking about grilling. What is summer without cookouts? But burning stuff on our patios can't be good for the environment, so what's the greenest way to grill? Gas or charcoal? The debate that used to be simply about flavor has evolved into a scientific study weighing the environmental impact of obtaining the fuels, burning the fuels, and disposing of their waste. The electric George Foreman grills would probably win the energy contest, but let's be honest—that's not grilling. I'm talking about charring, smoking, barbecuing.

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I shall direct you to yet another Slate article (we do love Slate) on the charcoal vs. gas debate. As the article points out, barbecue emissions account for only 3 ten-thousandths of a percent of the United States' annual carbon footprint, so changing your grilling habits may not matter. But as I will point out, every little bit helps.

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You'll see there are pros and cons to either fuel. But there is one big rule: No lighter fluid! You don't want to breath its harmful compounds, and you don't want its yucky residue on your food. If you use charcoal (we do, for the true smoky flavor of barbecue), get your coals going in a starter chimney with a couple of crumpled pieces of newspaper.

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Perhaps more important than which fuel you use is how you use it. If you're using a gas grill, try not to leave it on any longer than necessary. But if you're cooking over charcoal, take advantage of the coals' lasting heat and grill for as long as possible. Why waste all that heat energy by flipping a few burgers and calling it a night? You could get another hour of good grilling out of those coals!

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When we fire up the grill, we usually have prepared a feast of items to grill in succession, giving us meals for the week. We pile the coals on one side of our rectangular grill so there is a spot for grilling some things over direct heat and a spot for slow-cooking other foods off to the side. One of our latest feasts included burgers, two different kinds of fish, chicken breasts, kabobs, corn on the cob, mixed veggies, potato wedges, onions, and peaches.

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Sometimes we go crazy with marinades and sauces, and it takes three hours to prep everything before we can light the coals, and we end up grilling late into the night. Other times we go for the convenience of bottled sauces, and the prep time simply depends on how long we take to decide which foods we should lay on the grill first. Regardless, it's a fun evening, especially if we're in the mood to try new recipes, and it makes the subsequent weeknight dinners a breeze.

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We do have to add a few more coals to the fire from time to time to keep it at a high, even temperature, but even then we're using fewer coals than we would have if we had grilled each meal on a separate occasion.

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And, there's always fire left for cooking some dessert. (S'mores, of course.)

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Trying Again with the Pumpkins

Remember when we were pumped about our pumpkins? Me too... Let me summarize our little pumpkin adventure thus far.

We saved the seeds from the bigger of our two Halloween jack-o-lanterns and planted them indoors in late winter, mostly just to see if they were still alive. They germinated all right and, as spring wore on, became quite gangly little vines on our bedroom windowsill. They even began sprouting blossoms.

But indoor winter weather just isn't ideal for vegetables—the sunlight isn't quite right, the air and soil are stagnant, the little cups holding them are small. We started these seeds way too early. So we planted a few more later. These, too, germinated and sprouted quickly, stretching toward that sunshine just out of their reach outside our bedroom window.

About half of the oldest seedlings eventually pooped out and died. We gave most of the others away. When the danger of overnight frost was gone, we finally planted our two remaining vines outside. Within days, someone or something nipped them off at the base of the stem.

I planted six more seeds in a shallow tray of seed-starter mix on our front porch. It dried out so quickly, I couldn't keep up with the watering, and only two of these sprouted. They promptly died while we were on vacation.

In a fit of frustration, I dumped the tray of seed-starter mix right onto the spot where we had planted those first two seedlings. I spread a handful of seeds around in it, making sure the seeds were just lightly covered with the soil. I watered it every morning (except days it rained).

Just a few days later, voila! Cute, aren't they?

Upon closer inspection, however, I gasped in horror at this creepy crawly discovery: Roly-polies were everywhere, and they were eating my precious seedlings! Just look at that guy munching the leaves of that poor baby pumpkin plant.

Web forums on the subject of protecting plants from roly-polies (a.k.a. sow bugs, pill bugs, wood lice) were mostly useless, mostly just hosting debates on whether or not these formerly endearing crustaceans actually do eat living plant matter. Guess what? They do. I was watching them chew.

So what to do without using insecticide? I mixed up some olive oil and hot pepper flakes to brush or spray onto the leaves, thinking the bugs might not like the spiciness. But I have not tried that remedy yet. I'll go back to it if my first line of defense doesn't work. I cut plastic drinking straws (See? We rinsed and saved those straws for a good reason!) into segments the length of the seedlings stems. I cut a slit down the side of each piece of straw, so I could slip it onto the little stems—it looks like the seedlings sprouted right out of the straw. Then I pressed the straw segment into the soil just a tad, to hold it in place and to give the seedling a tiny bit of protection under the surface. I also skipped a day of watering, since roly-polies love that ever-moist soil.

Today, it seems there are fewer roly-polies. So far, the seedlings are in good shape. I will, of course, keep an eye on them and adjust my battle plan as necessary. I'm saving the hot pepper oil just in case.

And, I'll have to thin out the bunch soon. (You saw how many there were!) I never liked thinning out my plants. It feels like killing something, wasting potentially good produce. At the same time, I understand that if I don't thin them out, leaving only the very few strongest seedlings, the growing vines will be fighting for soil and sun and water and space. In our tiny yard, even one vine would be fighting for space.

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More Adventures in Edible Gardening

In mid-June, the temperature has finally crept up to what I consider comfortable; most other Chicagoans might consider it warm. Good gardening weather.
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Today, I planted some more fun stuff in our yard: jalapeño seeds we cut out of a store-bought pepper, the butternut squash and cucumber seedlings I had started in small containers, and, just to see what happens, an avocado pit and some key lime seeds. We have previously made an avocado pit sprout roots and a scrawny stem in a glass of water, but it died before it really turned into anything. This time I just stuck it in the dirt. As for the key lime seeds, I have no illusions that we can sustain a citrus tree outdoors in this climate. They're just an experiment. If little lime trees happen to spring from the earth, I'll dig them up and pot them and then figure out what to do.
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A garden really is just an outdoor laboratory, isn't it? I made an interesting discovery in mine a few weeks ago. This plant, and now, another baby one just like it, sprouted on its own in our little garden bed.
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As it grows, it looks—and smells—a lot like a tomato plant. Last fall, I spread some almost fully decomposed compost onto my garden areas. Could it be that seeds from tomato scraps survived the winter and germinated "wild" on their own? We'll find out. I'm letting these two plants grow undisturbed until I discover they're actually a cleverly disguised weed.
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Another experiment I began today is growing my cucumbers in a window-box-type container hanging on our fence, right under some latticework for easy climbing. But, can cucumbers thrive in shallow soil? There isn't much room for their roots to stretch. We'll see. Just in case, I planted two more seedlings in the ground at the base of the fence. They'll just have to reach a little higher before they can attach themselves to the lattice.
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Meanwhile, my snow peas aren't doing so great in the hanging baskets. They look pretty, but don't get enough sun under the porch roof and therefore haven't produced a single pea yet.
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The sweet pepper and tomato plants (the purposely planted ones) are still short but are slowly reaching for the sky. A pepper about half the size of my thumb is already growing, so that's something.
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The strawberries are still producing like crazy. And we still have our own little salad bar out there with the remaining heads of romaine and buttercrunch lettuce.
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The grapevine is stretching and has tiny clusters of tiny green balls. I wonder if these become the grapes, or if they become flowers that become the grapes? I've never seen the life cycle of a grape, so I don't know. Again, I say, we'll find out.
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And, take a look at my bushy raspberry bushes (tied back to grow up against the side of our garage instead of out into the yard), fronted by massive shallots. Those onion shoots are almost waist-high. Their tips have burst into clusters of mini onions, shallot "heads" meant to be planted back in the ground, meaning the onions beneath the dirt are almost ready to be pulled. Could I have ten times as many next spring? Or even as soon as this fall?
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Oh, and that scary-looking Chinese cabbage was definitely not cabbage. It sprouted lanky stalks of tiny yellow flowers. My mom suggested it was a type of wild mustard. She found the same thing growing in her garden 300 miles away. It had to have come from that Chinese cabbage seed packet we shared! Strangely, though, she did get some cabbage in her garden. Whatever it was, I yanked it out last week. Maybe I'll sow my leftover seeds later for a fall harvest and keep my fingers crossed.
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What's new in your garden, readers?
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