The Mysterious Popping Sound in the Night

Last night, as I sat quietly sipping on some coffee and reading In The Land of Invented Languages, I kept hearing the sweet 'ththththpop' of canning jars sealing. Yesterday, my garden friends and I spent eight hours canning tomato sauce made from the almost three bushels of tomatoes that we picked from our garden this week. Canning tomatoes is not on my list of top 20 things that I enjoy doing, but it was good to share my kitchen with friends and to preserve some garden goodness.

It seems that canning is a rather lost art in my generation. Last summer was the first time I had ever preserved anything (I made strawberry jam) and when I had questions, I inevitably had to ask someone older than myself. There are bizarre looking tools of the trade and an entire canning vocabulary to take up. The process itself is time consuming and often difficult. There is food splatter and mess, there are heavy pots and hot water, and sometimes there's intense pressure to move quickly so that things stay as sterile as possible (this pressure is intensified when you don't really know what you're doing!).

Our canning adventures yesterday were fraught with many questions, but we persevered and succeeded in making over 20 quarts of tomato sauce for our four families to enjoy. Though no one in our gardening circle grew up learning the art of canning and preserving, most of us will tackle any kind of learning curve to become more efficient stewards of our resources.

Though the education and the fresh vegetables are great, our gardening adventures are more about community. We can buy a book about canning and we can buy a jar of tomato sauce, but we can't buy fellowship. And fellowship is the best part.

Determined to Know Beans

"I was determined to know beans." -Henry David Thoreau

Our garden pictured from the south.

While impatiently waiting for the release of North! Or Be Eaten, I picked up The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan at the library. Pollan's book, along with a recent viewing of the movie "Fresh," has inspired me to work harder at trying to find food that is real (as opposed to processed), local, and organic. Though finding food that is local and organic can sometimes be difficult and cost-or knowledge-prohibitive, real food is a non-challenge in our home. We've grown to love all sorts of fruits, vegetables, grains, and legumes. I have pushed myself to learn about food preparation, storage, and cooking so that we can avoid using 'convenience' items from the grocery store.

Our goal this year has been to add more vegetables to our diet. I'm happy to report that this summer we've gone completely overboard on the veggies, largely because of the lovely 'community' garden that we've been working in. On Tuesday nights, our family heads across town where we share a meal with three other wonderful families that we know from church (there are fifteen individuals including the children). After the meal, we all head out back and complete the various garden-type chores: planting, weeding, harvesting, and turning compost. It's been a great experience. The company is superb and the garden, though it provides its share of head-scratching, boring, and/or disgusting moments, is a wonderful place.

Some green onions patiently waiting to be chopped and placed inside a taco.

Ian enjoying some black raspberries.

There's a patch of them growing next to the garden.

I have eaten a number of new vegetables this summer, some of which I was unable to identify before the gardening season began. I've loved the cabbage and the kohlrabi. I've not been real thrilled with the turnips and rutabaga, though I'll eat them. I can barely choke down the swiss chard. I still don't like tomatoes. I have a renewed love for brocolli and cauliflower. And, though I can eat them, I could live the rest of my life without seeing another zuchinni or summer squash. The carrots smell delightful. The pole beans are excellent at hiding. The romain is overwhelming. The spinach is perfectly delicious. The jalepenos are cute and satisfying and the green peppers are slow. The eggplant and parsnips have yet to be tasted by me. I love that there is such a variety of colors and textures in the garden. It's awe-inspiring, really.

I fell in love with the color of green cabbage leaves.

Needless to say, my meal plans have changed dramatically. I will try anything to avoid wasting those real, beautiful, local, and organic vegetables. I will roast the veggies, boil them, grill them, steam them, bake them into bread, chop them into a salad, or send them down the street to a friend's house. My freezer is near bursting with shredded and chopped vegetables, which I might toss into any dish at any given time (much to the chagrin of my picky 8-year-old).

The garden has made it possible for our family to experience the world of vegetables (and some misunderstood fruits, like the tomato and squash, which we usually call vegetables) and to appreciate the process of getting food from the 'field' to our table. Harvest aside, I think what we've gained is invaluable, particularly in these days when people are so cut off from the original sources of their food. I think this quote from Julie Moir Messervy sums up my thoughts: "Of all the wonderful things in the wonderful universe of God, nothing seems to me more surprising than the planting of a seed in the blank earth and the result thereof."

Sugar snap peas, leaf lettuce, spinach, turnips,

and bok choy (from the grocery store) awaiting cooking pans.

Roasted vegetables for dinner (again): zuchinni, summer squash,

brocolli, carrots, pole beans, cabbage, turnips, kohlrabi, onion, and garlic.

Baby Frisee

About seven years ago, the Hubs and I decided that it was time we start eating better. Having a toddler inspired us to examine the food that we were ingesting. Little did we know what an adventure it would be or how much we would have to learn. We knew that if we did a total overhaul of our eating habits, the changes would not stick. So we chose to do things slowly, one small difference at a time.

We started with grains. We slowly switched to whole grain bread (we ate many sandwiches with one slice of white bread and one slice of whole wheat bread) and attempted to add other grains to our diet including rice and barley. Then we moved on to fruit. For a handful of months, we brought more and more fruit into our home until it became standard fare. In the last couple of years, we've been trying to bring in a greater variety of grains and more vegetables. These last two categories have been a challenge.

I admit I'm not much of a chef and that makes cooking vegetables (and strange grains) difficult. Artichokes intimidate me. Eggplants freak me out. Squash is disheartening. Not to mention, I don't really like to eat vegetables (likely because of my lack of exposure). Under these conditions, I'm sure my family is missing out of some essential antioxidants and synergistic benefits. Alas, I plod forward.

Which brings me to my proud purchase of baby frisee. I feel like a real sensation when I purchase out-of-the-ordinary produce items at the store. For a while, I settled for the pre-packaged salad blends with unusual titles like "Mediterranean Blend," or "Spring Mix," or "Baby Leaf Lettuces" (as opposed to Iceburg or Romaine). Then I noticed that the funky leaves inside these bags could be purchased, unpackaged, just down the aisle.

I have purchased such items before: spinach for lasagne and endive for soup. I have always found them to be cumbersome to wash and store and so I preferred the bagged salad mixes. Now I have resolved to behave in a more budget-savvy and ecologically sustainable way by purchasing my greens a-la-carte, washing them and mixing them at home. The greens are cheaper, of course, and they most often are packaged with a simple twist-tie or rubberband.

Here's my frisee. It's lovely and yummy, though often awkward to stuff in the mouth.

This is my spinach (also lovely).

Voila. Two spinach/frisee salads, with alfalfa sprouts.

To conclude this short history of our family's eating patterns, I will mention that white bread and pasta often make me gag and that kiwi and carrots are everyday snacks at our house. I've managed to do away with almost every kind of packaged food (cans of broth and sleeves of Ritz Crackers are decidedly stubborn about leaving our pantry). This is great progress, but there's always something more to learn and try. My awakening to real food can be tracked (like most everything in my life) through a series of books. Two I recommend are In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan and On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee. Very enlightening.