…the koi have been up and about all fall, not going to sleep yet. They’re uncommonly nervy: I wonder if they don’t perceive our near water level lines as some sort of protection. They’ve never been so out and about. But that’s about to change: Wednesday will be in the 50’s. Wednesday night a cold air mass arrives, with moisture, and snow and freezing rain are possible, not to mention fog.
Our new trees and bushes are being quite pretty: the magnolia and birch and weeping cherry have gone bright yellow, the hawthorne is gold, the new cherry tree (sakura) is bronze with hints of red. the dogwood is reddening, our red Japanese maples are brilliant, and the burning bushes are raspberry red to brighter red, and the Virginia creeper is going red along the front stonework. We are very happy with our fall color: we didn’t know how they’d all go in fall, but the placement and look is very nice.
We lost one of our Japanese maples, the green one, to verticillum wilt, which is a soil fungus very common up here: most Japanese maples sold in the PNW have the problem, according to one horticultural site. And there’s no cure for it but to plant something that ignores it, like an apple, or such. Except—cauliflower growers in California also fight this pest, and one discovered—wait for it—that it hates broccoli. Apparently broccoli has something in it that verticillum can’t abide; and they chop up broccoli and use it as a soil treatment.
Well…so we got a lot of broccoli from Costco and chopped it up, and dug it in around all our Japanese maples, for starters. We also dug it into the place where we had to take the green maple out. Next spring we are going to plant a new green Japanese maple with a lot of broccoli, and if it lives and thrives there in soil we know was infected, we’ll go on broccolizing our trees.
“broccolizing” LOL
Wonder what the fungus would think of brocciflower as it’s a hybrid of broccoli and cauliflower?
Shakatany, that avatar is so neat.
Perhaps it would serve as poisoned bait?
Go Brocolli! My favorite cruciferous veggie.
Hmmmm! Verticillium Wilt is a huge problem for tomatoes around here. I may give broccoli a try next summer. I wonder if companion planting would work. May be worth a try.
I wonder if hollandaise sauce would enhance the efficacy? Heck, I just eat the broccoli without sauce. I hope the Japanese maple I planted 3 years ago after my cat Ruthie died is still okay. She’s resting under it, but I no longer live in that house.
Hmmmm….never heard of this Japanese maple V-wilt issue on the west side. It IS a problem with daffodils. I’ve been growing J maples and other Acer species for decades without any broccoli additives (grin). I especially like growing out seedlings and seeing which parental characteristics show up in the progeny. Did you have a grafted tree? If you got it from a nursery, it’s more likely. I don’t have to worry about graft failures with my seedlings (wink). I did lose several grafted trees to this while they were still potted and the symptoms were similar to what you’d see with V-wilt. I talked it out with several specialists at a local nursery and they concluded I had graft failures.
My koi are still getting morning feedings of wheat germ-type food. I stopped by Pan Intercorp to pick up some small enough for my babies as I’m too lazy to manually crush the larger pellets I had left over from this spring. I can tell right now that I need to pick up a black-and-white baby next year.
This was a beautiful, at least five year old shrub. It was one of the first we put in when we built the pond and was a pretty good sized plant when we got it. Here’s a pic of it just before it began to go… http://www.janefancher.com/HarmoniesOfTheNet/wp-content/gallery/treepeonies2012/peonies1.jpg
Hahaha, I think I’ll have broccoli and cauliflower (and edamame and carrots) tonight. I will probably be lazy and not fix the hollandaise. I’d need to look up a recipe, besides. (I’d expect it’s pretty easy.)
I’d say, rank newbie gardener though I be, try companion gardening. Plant some broccoli nearby and see what happens. You’d get the benefit of wonderful veggies to go with the flowers or trees. Really nice how Mother Nature works that out, symbiosis through proximity, rather than parasitism. … An ecology of multiple species as a larger, mutually beneficial community.
Very smart of whoever discovered the broccoli issue. Even if they threw down some stuff for composting/fertilizer, or came across it by accident or necessity. “Hey, just throw that here.” Or, “Hey, just plant that here, there’s space.”
Heh, joe, I can’t think of much of anything at all that hollandaise sauce wouldn’t enhance. Marshmallows, maybe. 😀
BCS, it’s really not hard to make, you just have to follow the directions and be careful to not let it get too hot. But even then, as long as it’s not scorched, it will still taste good, even if it doesn’t look pretty.
Of curse, I had to look up hollandaise. Gosh, that looks easy, though it sounds like junior chemistry set meets the kitchen. After reviewing a few variants, I see what makes best sense to try.
I’m puzzled by the maverick individualist who adds a spoonful of Dijon mustard to the sauce, but to each his own. I wouldn’t turn my nose up at it. One version uses a blender. Another melts the butter first. I will try the traditional approach before getting all modern. I generally prefer easy and modern, but it’s useful to know the classic no-tech way too.
Ce soir, on sert la sauce hollandaise avec des végétables en mélange.
Oh, haha, auto-correct / auto-corrige s’enfou. — It made hash of the French, and “hollandaise” became Holland aisle…isle might be more fitting…. But really, auto-correct has never heard of sauce hollandaise? Wow. Guess it doesn’t eat much though, just words.
Un mélange des végétables sounds so much more than even vegetable medley. It’s actually a frozen veggie bag from the store, edamame soybeans along with broccoli, cauliflower, celery, baby carrots, and onions, steamable, might be Birdseye, I forget the brand. Except for the onion for CJ, very good. I have no onion allergy, though.
Mustard is an emulsifier (I think that’s the right word); it helps your sauce become creamy and perhaps less likely to break. Although I just went and looked at my Joy of Cooking recipe and they don’t use mustard… The butter does have some water in it though. If there’s not much mustard, you might not notice the taste. J of C puts mustard in their mayonnaise recipe as an emulsifier, and I’ve also seen it in salad dressings.
Oh civilization, oh culinary arts, that was wonderful, and pretty easy. The hardest part for me was separating out the egg yolks, and finding where I’d misplaced the cayenne, unknowingly.
Much butter. I think it must have been very good to have the butter market, back in the old days, perhaps now too.
Teegan, thanks, that explains, besides a taste preference by some cook, why the mustard. For mayonnaise, in most cases, I’d even prefer mustard with the mayo.
I eyeballed, guessed, amounts of spices, based on the measurements in the recipes. This worked surprisingly well. I got a little extra of all, lemon juice too, truth be told, but I liked the results a lot.
My one mistake was in not draining the small amount of broth from the veggies before garnishing with sauce. Still, grand, most excellent. The sauce therefore broke and diluted a bit, but still was good. I sampled a bit by itself. The cook has to be sure the spices and taste and texture are right, right?
I now know I can whisk together hollandaise easily, a real boon the next time I cook for anyone. Quite satisfying, simple, and basic culture.
All from a tangent to broccoli and Japanese maples! Many thanks to Joe for mentioning the hollandaise, and to CJ et al for the topic. Broccoli, Japanese maples, daffodils, ecology, and classic French sauce, who’d guess?
I wonder if kale would work as well? There are ornamental ones that stand the cold nicely. And edible ones make a nice slaw 😀
mustard, in small quantities, is a perfect ‘secret ingredient’. You can’t really taste it, but it enhances the overall piece.
I’d love to grow some veggies, but weather around here is brutal on anything that needs any cool. It would get up out of the ground, and probably immediately bolt. I might be able to get away with the traditional SW trio, beans, corn and squash. Mmmmm, squash with butter… and I cook my beans in leftover ham drippings.
Turkeys have been on sale here, $2.98 for one under 16 pounds, free with purchase. The same store also has a promotion of a free turkey with coupon. I’m wondering if we will see any hams on sale this year, or if it will be all turkeys, all the time.
Squash loves water and heat. Acorn squash, cut in half, cleaned, oiled, salted, baked face down til you can smell it, then flipped, filled with brown sugar and a pat of butter, baked til browning, mmmm–hard to say whether it’s a veggie or dessert. Green beans grew in Oklahoma heat; ditto blackeyed peas, which with Worcestershire are God’s gift to the south. Corn wants winter cold; but root crops might do well: radishes, carrots, beets—I think the acidity of your soil might offput some veggies. But leaf crops like lettuce and spinach, maybe even brussel sprouts—I am a brussel sprout addict: Jane must want to pitch one at me, now and again…You might also manage okra, an African crop which does well in the southern US; it has hibiscus-like blooms; you pick the pods while small, slice them into small rounds, dip them in egg, then cornmeal, and fry them with salt and pepper until crisp. I am Southerner enough to say they are to die for.
I’ll tell you a funny story from me mum’s time: she lived in the country: going to a friend’s house was a bit of a trek, and often involved supper there—sometimes a return by horseback. Well, she had a close friend named Irene; and Irene and she, in Irene’s house, went down to the apple barrel in the basement—
[Understand, crops like apples and potatoes would be taken in the fall, then put in the cool of the cellar, and would have to last til spring—so apple pies, before refrigeration, were an important winter thing, but absent during the summer]
Well, she and Irene were going through the apple barrel, hunting for apples that were starting to rot, because the rule was, you eat those first.
The mother of the house found them at it, and reached an epiphany on the spot: “Why should we always and forever have to eat only blemished apples? Just take some good ones from the top! The others should go in pies!”
THose of us who’ve grown up with refrigeration and food safety warnings do not often enough appreciate what our forefathers did, or how they got through the seasons.
Fried is the only way you’ll get me to eat Okra… as a kid I called it snot food when it was boiled.
My grandmother showed me how to make ‘Leatherstocking’ green beans by picking them with the beans about halfway ‘made’ then sewing a heavy cotton thread through the middle (short ways) and hanging the strings to dry. You washed them only when you took them off to cook them. Not having basements in most of Texas, there was a lot more drying of fruits and veggies. And a lot of reliance on preserved meats (pork) and dried corn/dried beans.
Battery Farm Turkeys are much cheaper to produce than pork – not as much attention from activists so the production is less humane. The only time you see a glut of cheaper pork on the market is when there’s a shortage of feed and they have to cut back on their herds.
Okra: Raw, steamed, mixed with grain; those seem to help with the sliminess.
Raw: Nice green okra, not the beaten-up half-brown stuff at the local supermarket. I haven’t tried with large quantities.
Steamed: Local Japanese restaurant sometimes serves steamed okra; it’s pretty good.
Mixed with grain: Tried that once, in the microwave, with wheat berries (which are like brown rice on steroids). The chunkiness of the grain kept the sliminess of the okra from being a problem. Didn’t get around to trying it again.
We used to grow it in the back yard: us kids got the job of cutting it, because it has little stickers in your fingers. I’m not a great fan of it any way but fried, but I *love* crisp fried okra, absolutely love it.
There’s now a spineless variety! Dad planted one row over one of the septic leach lines The septic tank was at the top of the garden and exited quickly to a pasture, but Dad was forever planting SOMETHING nearby. It’s a wonder we survived! Anyway, Dad planted okra right over the leach line. It grew. And grew. Most folks know it tops out around 5 ft tall. We had to use a ladder to pick it in late Summer. That Fall he had to use a chain saw to cut down the 23 foot long stalks. We waited till Spring to try to grub up the stumps (big around as your wrist).
Mom didn’t let him plant okra there any more. So he planted tomatoes…
Okra is one of the frequent flyers at local farmers’ markets. We get a lot of Filipino vegetables here, like wing beans, long green beans, and kabocha pumpkin, which is a lovely all-purpose squash (anyone remember my previous craving for pinakbet?) I may have to try buying a baggie and frying it up.
Turkey is something I can barely eat because it has a taste that doesn’t go down easily…chicken has taken a lifetime to learn to eat, though now it’s probably what I have most of. I still won’t eat dark meat, except in one form: broasted chicken. And I can manage Thanksgiving turkey, with enough gravy and spice, but that’s it. I don’t know what we’ll do for Thanksgiving: it may be Jane’s favorite dish: chili size, aka chili over spaghetti, with (our way) cheese melted atop, with jalapeno slices,and sour cream. I like it. She asked for that for her birthday.
I don’t believe that we HAVE to have turkey for Thanksgiving dinner. Many times, my family had ham, which is a traditional Easter dinner. When I was stationed overseas for my first tour, I don’t recall if I had dinner onboard the ship, or managed with PB&J. Thanksgiving is a time of celebration, of friendship, family, food, and the companionship that results. Have whatever your heart desires for Thanksgiving dinner, because it’s what goes into the dinner, not what the dinner consists of, that matters. Have a great Thanksgiving, regardless of what you have for dinner.
CJ, I have an absolutely killer oyster dressing recipe (dressing = baked in a dish, not in a bird). I make and eat it year round, yum! Just a thought.
ExACTly joekc6nix! It’s the whole Norman Rockwell ‘perfect American meal’ thing – and that Turkeys were the ‘official’ meat at the Pilgrim’s first Thanksgiving meal, according to the accepted myth.
My sister makes a pork roast most times as hams are usually too salty for our hypertensive group. But I DO love me some ham bone for the bean pot!
Hah, those “leather stocking” green beans are what my dad’s family (Virginia, Appalachian mountain country) called “leather britches.” I never had them the authentic way, I’ve only heard of and read of them. But my dad once said we’d stumbled on something that tasted very much like them.
Roast beef was pretty usual for my family for Saturday or Sunday dinner / supper. Often, that would mean putting in a bunch of green beans and new potatoes and some carrots, sometimes some onions, very ordinary roast veggies. Once, the roast with the green beans and potatoes, went nearly dry. The drippings had reduced to nearly dry, coating all the green beans and new potatoes in a concentrated sauce, nearly a jelly, of roast drippings, vegetable broth, salt and other spices.
We tried it this way instead of adding water and fooling with the au jus gravy to get it back to a liquid consistency. We tried the green beans and new potatoes, with this concentrated sauce/jelly coating. The veggies were roasted and dry but still tender.
My dad said the taste of the green beans was very much like leather britches, and for my benefit, he explained again what those were.
We liked them, and off and on thereafter, we’d sometimes let the roast and veggies go close to dry like that, but carefully. (Well, usually carefully….)
The green beans, coated that way, were cooked down too, brownish, even to a chocolate brown. This gave them a very concentrated green bean taste, but also a strongly “roast beef” and strongly salty and roast spicy taste.
Oh, cooking method: 9 x 13 inch (or thereabouts) pan, the roast beef with spices (not a lot more than Lawry’s season salt, generally). Cover with foil, place in oven at around 375deg. About 30 min or so before it’s ready, then add the veggies and either keep covered with foil or leave it off to brown the meat more. In order to produce the concentrated drippings, I think the veggies were added a bit sooner and allowed to cook around ten minutes or so longer. This is something I’d ahve to eyeball to get right.
—–
We’d typically trade off Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners, my grandmother would fix for one holiday and my mom and dad for the other, and host at either home. — My grandmother loved to cook. Pies, cakes, sometimes candy. Typically wassail (the recipe is on my site). Usually a turkey with all the trimmings, homemade cranberry sauce (whole berry). Various veggies and usually sweet potatoes. And her homemade stuffing. (The recipe for the stuffing is also on my site.)
But sometimes, we’d have a ham instead of turkey. Veggies were always something traditional and seasonal, but there was variety there. My grandmother favored simple and tasty cooking over complexity. (The things CJ mentioned above from her childhood and her family are all common, except for the Worcestershire in the black eyed peas; I’ll try that!) My grandmother did acorn squash several years after she’d tried it, fixed the way CJ said above. Very good stuff, served as a side dish but as much a vegetable as a dessert. She served it as dessert a couple of times at other meals.
In later years, with my parents gone and my grandmother getting so she had trouble cooking, I helped and then did the holiday meals most years after that. Hahah, one year we couldn’t find the right dish to suit her for cooking a ham…used a very good serving dish (and ruined it) to cook the ham in (over my objections). But, well, it was what she wanted and it suited her. 🙂
I would be game to try broiled fish. Or tamales (traditional for some Latino families to go with the other foods). Turkey or chicken spaghetti sounds good. Go Asian if you like.
It’s more about the fellowship, enjoying the food and time together, than anything else.
This year, I’ll be solo (the cats and myself) for the holidays. If my cousins happen down for Christmas, they will (as uaual) not call until they’re about to arrive. But this year, my house instead of my grandmother’s. … And I *really* will have to hustle to get the house fit for company.
But even so, I plan to *enjoy* the holidays this year. I don’t want to mope around if I can keep from it. — There will likely be stuffing and wassail, but not a huge dinner for one. — Some other year, I may visit or host,l but quieter this year. — I don’t know yet whether I’ll bother with putting up a tree. (Artificial tree, but heirloom and recent decorations.) My inclination is to avoid it this year, but do other decorating. It depends on if I get the house in order and if I feel like putting up the tree. Possibly next year.
At nearly the end of this year, little Smokey will be three. Looking at him now, you’d never guess he arrived so tiny, scrawny, cold, and scared. (And very hungry and thirsty. I swear he doubled his body weight as soon as I put down water that first evening.) — He is now a sassy and energetic imp, and very loved. Goober, meanwhile, just turned six and is his gentlemanly self as always, but with a hidden humorous streak, and the slightly ditzy side that earned him the name Goober. 😉
In about two weeks, it will have been a year since my grandmother passed. It seems still fresh and yet ancient. I think I am mostly past that, but this holiday season is likely to have its tough moments.
Everything changes, and we change with things.
Hmm… It won’t be a whole turkey, that’s for sure. Will have to think what I want to fix. — The black eyed peas with a bit of Worcestershire sound good, probably this week to try them.
Well, WE will probably be online during Christmas day—so come here. 😉 We’ll be full of cheer. The one wisdom I’ve learned in loss is to be happy on days designed for happiness, and deliberately do something that MAKES you happy, be it watching a favorite movie, playing video games, indulging in a favorite food—and if certain food involves memories that will make you feel a loss, postpone that dish a year or so, and have something new instead: engineer a day of happiness if you’re on your own—entitle yourself.
Winter is Icummen in
(Ezra Pound)
Winter is icummen in,
Lhude sing Goddamm,
Raineth drop and staineth slop
And how the wind doth ramm!
Sing: Goddamm.
Skiddeth bus and sloppeth us,
An ague hath my ham.
Freezeth river, turneth liver
Damn you, sing: Goddamm.
Goddamm, Goddamm, tis why I am,
Goddamm.
So ‘gainst the winter’s balm
Sing Goddamm, damm, sing Goddamm
Sing Goddamm, sing Goddamm,
DAMM.
I am so stealing that poem to post on my blog,
http://theowlunderground.wordpress.com/
By all means. I believe it’s now in the public domain, since Pound has been gone for a long time, and I don’t believe his estate controls publications. I got the poem when I took one of my required English courses back in college. I met my first fiancee in that class – she’s now happily married to someone else, and I’m happy for her, too. Anyway, we studied Pound, Eliot, cummings, Frost, and several other poets. I had lots of fun trying to figure out what e.e. cummings was trying to say in his poems. I’m still lost on most of them.
Lol!