Making Pesto

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We have, out in our garden, what I described to my lovely spouse as an insane amount of basil.  It has been, I admit, far too long since I have made pesto. I haven’t gotten around to it once school started and work kicked in and things just got busy. But now it is starting to go to flower, and we need a pesto fix, and we have an insane amount of basil in our garden. So this afternoon I picked and picked and made four double batches.

The first batch I popped into a glass vessel and saved for immediate consumption, meaning dinner tonight.

Batch number two I put into a freezer container–two cups–and stashed in the freezer for this winter.

I combined batches three and four into one 4-cup container and added it to the getting-full-with-summer-produce freezer as well.

So we will be good with pesto for a while, especially since, even though I picked 16 cups of basil leaves and made a half gallon of pesto, we still have an insane amount of basil in our garden. I will be able to make maybe two more gallons. That is just nuts. I know we can use basil for other things, but, um, why?

Here is my recipe:

Combine 4 cups basil leaves (washed and spun dry), 1/2 cup nuts (walnuts or cashews or pine nuts if you can find some) and two to four large garlic cloves in small pieces in a food processor; mix until well blended.

Add 1 1/2 cups shredded parmesan cheese and 1 teaspoon salt and process to blend.

With the food processor running, add 3/4 cup extra virgin olive oil (the good stuff–none of that light crap) until completely blended and smooth.

Makes two cups. This freezes well in a tight container.

Bon appetit and all that.

Spiders in the Morning

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In the morning these days, the sun catches the light across the field. The nights are cool, and that means dew on the leaves. The milkweed and grasses and goldenrod are covered in beads of water.  And if you look when the sun is shining at just the right angle, you see the spider webs. The light only lasts a short time and then they disappear, but if you catch it right you can see them everywhere.

There are hundreds of them, stretched between stalks, glowing in the morning light, their creators waiting for things to dry so they can have breakfast caught the night before, or so they can repair the damage and try again. There are too many to count.

Gazillions of Webs

I have been looking at them up close and took a few photos. Some are whole and some are broken. Each is amazing, a geometric wonder, woven by tiny creatures we usually don’t even see.

This One Liked the Black-Eyed Susans

More Perfection

This One Took Some Hard Knocks

And I found an orb weaver. This one has been settled in the flowers for weeks. They like to hang in one place for a while. Check out the zig zag below her. And check out how cool this spider looks. Kind of a combination of “don’t mess with me” and “don’t like I look beautiful?” all in one.

Queen of Her Realm

More to Pick

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Late Summer Bounty

I picked a few more things from our garden today.  The harvest is winding down but we do have more to pick.  I wanted some leaks for dinner (to start off the pumpkin soup) and I had to pick the zucchini before it got enormous. The cucumbers needed to be cut off the vine (they have been getting bitter quickly) and that pepper is going with the roasted potatoes. The melon was iffy.  I am hoping it is ripe as I want to serve it with dinner. If not we have a back up watermelon and a few slices from the last melon from our garden (tastes like candy).

Yet to go: three or four more melons, a few peppers, maybe a zucchini or two, a couple of cucumbers, cherry tomatoes out the wazoo, lots of leeks.  We have several green tomatoes still as well. That isn’t bad for September. And did I mention the basil? More pesto for the freezer (and for immediate consumption) is in the works. Like I said, not bad for September.

Fall Arrives

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Yesterday we had one more shot of summer. It was hot, in the 80’s. Not so much today. Right now, with darkness settled over the house, rain falls.  It drips off the eave and taps the deck. It collects in the hollows of the field. It pools in the driveway and brushes the walls and trees. It is cool. Fall is here.

A couple of weeks ago I was fortunate to hike for three days on the long trail. It felt like fall up high. Leaves were starting to turn in spots. I had some heat but the nights were chilly. As the sun set on my first night, the last of the light caught a few maple leaves framed in the canopy. They were bright from the setting sun, and brighter still in their lack of chlorophyl.

Fall Framed in August

This rain is not unlike the rain I heard on my last night. As I climbed up and over Mount Mansfield (my first time up there in almost 20 years in Vermont), fog blew in. I did not get much of a view. I waited up there for an hour or so, and caught a few glimpses of the scene below, but mostly I saw white.

The "View" Northwest

That afternoon it rained a little here and there and then rained more heavily at night. I had thought that I might climb back up in the morning if it had cleared, but no go. So I headed down.

It rains again now, more heavily than when I started writing this. The nights are cooler. The days are shorter. Leaves change. Fall nudges summer out.

Popcorn Picking

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I picked the popcorn today. Last time I planted popcorn, two years ago, I picked it on the 22nd of September, but this was ready to go. It was nicely dried and the stalks were starting to fall over. I planted the same variety as last time–Tom Thumb, a miniature variety with four foot tall stalks–but the weather was just not the same this year.  With the help of my daughter I picked 69 small ears.

Popcorn off the Stalk

Both my kids helped me shuck it. My daughter noted several times that the ear she just revealed would the be the perfect size for a doll, although it would have been less tasty than the corn we purchased from the Conant farm (whose last day was today, and we missed it). After peeling back the husks, we ended up with a pile of golden ears.

Each Ear Equals One Batch of Popcorn

Last time I bagged the ears in a mesh bag and left it to dry for a bunch of weeks. The children were so excited to start collecting it in a bowl, however, that I totally forgot in my own excitement. So we took it off the ears and we marveled at the bowl of kernals. It will need to dry more, indeed, but in a mesh bag that is hanging in the right spot, that should happen easily.

This Will Warm Us on a Winter Day

It was easy to grow. The hardest part was keeping the birds away long enough for it to sprout. They love to yank it out just as it pushes green from the soil. The first time I grew it I had to totally replant it. The second time I tried to grow it I did not have enough time to try again. This time I hung reflectors just as the first shots appeared. That scared the crows and turkeys away and I had plants. After that it was just water, weed and wait. I planted melons in between the plants and that worked out well for both plants.

In a few weeks I will test the popcorn to see if it pops well. Once it is I will jar it up to keep the moisture content right and we will have healthy snacks for the winter. And plenty of it.

More Produce

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Pumpkin Crop, and Other Stuff

I finally picked our pumpkins today. I harvested our entire crop, seen above with a few other items I sliced off the vine this afternoon. So we have a whopping three pumpkins for pie, soup, what have you. That ain’t much. In past years we have gotten more pumpkins than we can eat, freezing most of them for use over the winter. We did get a few, indeed, but we’re not talking a bumper crop here.

We are still picking cucumbers. The cherry tomatoes are falling off the vine. I might pick a bunch of them and dry them. The second melon from our garden is pictured above as well. Hopefully it will be as good as the first. That first one was tasty when we busted it open and even tastier after the second half of it cooled in the refrigerator. We should be able to pick a few more of those.

Next up–onions, already drying out of the ground. Good food. We have much more to still harvest. The rain we will get over the next couple of days will help with that. It should drop below 90 degrees by Saturday. That might help as well.

First Day of School

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Our children hopped on the bus today. September one–first day of school. I have to admit I am happy school starts in September. Starting in August is hard to take. I can think of September as fall, but August is still summer, no arguing, even if the temperature is supposed to top 90 today. I am off to work, hoping to get it all done before the bus returns this afternoon. Another school year underway, with the good and the bad that comes with that. My kids were excited and nervous at the same time, as I imagine I was back in the school days. A colleague of mine, when I saw her for the first time since June this week, said to me, “Happy New Year!” I thought that was apt. So here is to a good new year. Cheers!

Bus on the Way

And Off They Go...

Melon Action

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I have tried to plant melons in the past, with limited success. Last summer I saved some seeds from a melon we got from our farm share and planted them directly in the ground in spring. I guess we had a good combination of sun and rain, because I picked the first of what I hope to be several melons today.

I cut it up and we sat out on the porch in the early light and ate it together. The sun was not too hot yet on this 90 degree plus day and we savored the cool sweet flavor of summer.

Here is what it looked like two weeks ago:

Melon on the Vine

And here is the result from this morning:

Ready to be Sliced and Eaten

And on the inside:

Melon Guts

I picked up our farm share tonight and mentioned that I picked my first melon from seeds supplied by the fruit (ahem) of his labor. He was curious to know what it looked like. It turns out he planted hybrids, so the result of those seeds could have been anything. It seems to have worked out. That answers my question about the other melons, however. We have a couple of them that look different from the one I picked. I will be curious to taste those. They have smooth skin and no netting:

A Different Type of Melon

I have to admit I am pretty fired up to have grown some melons. I love those things. I already have seeds drying to plant next year. Maybe they will work just as well. I am hoping I get more from these plants as well. Summer has one more hit of heat this week (at least two more days in the 90’s!) and then we taper to fall. I want to taste it a little longer.

Potato Harvest

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The kids and I dug up all our potatoes the day before yesterday. It was like digging for buried treasure. They had as much of a blast as I did. Turn the soil and find some food.

There's One

I wish I had a scale. I have thought maybe 149 times that I could use one, but I have not taken the effort to get one. I planted five pounds of seed potatoes and all told, with the potatoes we already pulled from the dirt earlier this summer, we harvested 40-50 pounds of potatoes. That is a guess, of course, but probably close.  That paid off.

First into the Basket

We have two varieties–one purple and one white. Right after we dug them up we boiled some of the white one and ate them with salt and butter, along with the corn we bought. A simple and fine dinner.

Bucket of Potatoes

I plan to store a bunch of them so we can be eating potatoes at least into the fall. Hopefully I can make them last. I still need to pull the onions. They won’t keep as long but they will last for a couple of months. And I need to make pesto. And those melons are looking close to ripe. And pumpkins. We’ve got lots of food these days.

Creemee Musings

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I painted the house for a while today and when I took a break for lunch was offered the idea of heading to the creemee stand for a cone. I did not want to disappoint my children, who have not had the pleasure of my company for such a foray for several weeks. I could not refuse. So after lunch, and a quick pop outside to scrape just a little more, we hopped in the family rig for a treat.

I chose to get something different, something unusual, something I have not had, as I mentioned to my wife when it emerged from the window, since I was about nine years old–a small vanilla swirled frozen soft ice cream delight. I never get vanilla, unless it is accompanied by its partner chocolate. I also mentioned to this same wife of mine that the last time I had a vanilla cone I did not refer to it as a “creemee.”  I just called it soft serve ice cream. So we discussed my transition, when I moved to Vermont, from “soft serve” to “creemee” as one worth making and full of portent for our once blossoming relationship.

The vanilla was, indeed, tasty. It was hardly plain for me, as it so rarely visits my palate, so I enjoyed it with gusto. My daughter had respberry. My son had maple. My wife had none, having succumbed to the urge to eat ice cream at home earlier in the day. There are six choices at our local creemee stand–vanilla, chocolate, raspberry, maple, vanilla and chocolate swirled, and maple and raspberry swirled. The maple and raspberry combination would seem to be the least popular, but many people like it. My wife compared it to raspberry pancakes with maple syrup; a good comparison.

I considered that this latter combination might be the least popular creemee flavor, but I could only speculate, so I went to the window, where the perky teenage server had helped us earlier, and asked her “What is the least popular creemee flavor ordered?” She did not hesitate to tell me, “chocolate, hands down.” She continued, “I’m not sure why; chocolate is my favorite and is pretty much all I get.” She told me that the two-flavor mix in question is actually one of the most popular orders.  And plain vanilla is probably right up there, although she wasn’t counting or anything.

Maple is not a regular flavor for creemees, even in Vermont, but is all my son wants. He isn’t alone, despite that most maple creemees are not made with real maple syrup. The ones that are–whoo baby!–that is some fine gustatory enjoyment I tell you.

Whoda thunk chocolate would be the least popular flavor? People will eat anything if it involves chocolate–coffee beans, ants, gummi bears (I mean, come on people, gummi bears?), bacon. I guess I was more in the main stream with my vanilla cone than I would have thought. I know vanilla is popular, but I would have thought chocolate would have been more popular. I don’t know doodly. Apparently.

I did enjoy the vanilla cone. Next time, however, I’m getting chocolate, or at least vanilla and chocolate. Call me a maverick. You might as well, since you won’t be able to call me plain vanilla.