I’ve been keeping a terrible secret I’ve chosen this moment to tell. Minstrel Boy is on a train traveling east to Netroots, so he may be blissfully out of touch. Dad’s dead and no longer scoffing at my crazy culinary habits. My sisters are all at the beach and Mr. DBK, foodie that he is, may be busy monitoring either health care townhalls or discussing duck en croute with his cat Cora. So it’s possible nobody’s listening, and I’m going to spill this secret. I am! Ready? I’ve found a way to make baking with phyllo dough so unbelievably easy that if you have two functioning hands you can do it even if you can’t cook. I mean that. In fact, I don’t know why I haven’t heard this terrible secret spilled on the Food Network by one of their stars that can’t cook. This weekend, I wrapped up leftovers in phyllo layered properly and quickly, and lost only two sheets to stickiness. How?

Yep.

I’m so ashamed – or I would be if lunch hadn’t been so delicious.

Tonight in the dehydrator we have fingerling potatoes and white eggplant. Tomorrow morning, I’ll package up the eggplant and potatoes and start tomatoes and zucchini. In the afternoon, we’ll jar peach barbecue sauce and applesauce. WE hate winter so much we’re planting delicious time capsules of summer on our pantry shelves. This week, I’m going to try drying the herbs growing in our garden. We have a sage bush that resists all wildlife-based efforts to kill it, and it survived last winter, so I think it’s decided to stay. I’ve decided about half of its leaves would be tasty in soups and stews, along with mint, basil, tarragon, oregano and chives.

Our garden has suffered with the torrential rains and dry spells. Many of our tomatoes started to ripen and rot at the same time, which has been disappointing. Our peppers simply aren’t fruiting, and the squash blossoms fall, orange and vibrant, right off their stems. The Japanese eggplant show more promise but it’s too early to tell if raccoons will find them. On the bright side: a friend of Siobhan’s recently taught us a simple technique for better breads: the sponge method. The night before you want to bake bread, mix all the yeast, all the water, and one cup of the flour or flours your recipe uses and set aside, covered, in a warm place. Twenty-four hours later, assemble the rest of your ingredients as your recipe describes. You may want to add a little extra water but not much. Then bake as normal. This solved my texture problems and I haven’t baked a rock-like loaf since I tried it, and believe me, that is an improvement. Rocks aren’t necessarily delicious. I mean, unless they are.

Are you stepping on my cape?

Tata: As you may have surmised, the weekly excursions to the farmers market are not just a shopping trip. I am scheming!
Lupe: Ok, I’m going to have to puzzle over this one. . . UNLESS! Unless, you’d like to give me a little hint? Is it to add peace and harmony to the office environment?
Tata: It is! Our supertaster Cindy tastes fruit, Mathilde shops without fear of overspending, Beth eats something calorie-rich, Annette discovers agriculture doesn’t necessarily blow, Tina tries out veggies she’s never cooked before, Evan gets to see his friend Martin, Tabby gets to see greener living in action, Chuan eats actual vegetables and you get some sunlight. Everyone gets a little exercise and fresh air, and we all do something together without any strife. The farmers are happy. Also: I get to see Pete and the little red wagon and have fresh vegetables It’s totally win-win. I am scheming! By next year, I shall have you all composting! MWAH HAH HAH! Did I reveal too much of my plot? Should I leave details until Act 2?

I heard her laugh from across the room.

Lupe: Hopefully you heard me laugh from across the room. . . you are totally on the money. I think it’s great – I noticed that Mathilde was more talkative than I have ever seen her, and frankly, Cindy has really cut herself off from everyone recently, so I was more than pleasantly surprised to see her going! Everyday the kids and I sit at the dinner table and say what was the favorite or best part of our day. Today – hands down – was the trip to
the market!

Sure, Cindy had never been to a farmers market before, thought we were going to a muddy pick-your-own exravaganza and wore sandals anyway, and Beth doesn’t actually go to the market if she has errands to run so we bring her back loaves of pepperoni bread, and Tabby fights me about eco-anything. So I’m holding off talking about sustainable food philosophy for another month, when I will call them locavores and everyone will run for the dictionary. Just think of the cardio benefits! Anyway, despite the vocabulary quiz, I have a lot to learn, and via Monkeyfister I’m getting a high-impact brain workout. Sharon Astyk offers a series of principles designed to change the way we live in radical and radically familiar ways.

1. Plant something – I doubt this one needs a lot of explanation. Obviously, those of us in the Northern Hemisphere are doing a lot of this right now, but it should be a reminder that gardening isn’t “put in the garden on memorial day and that’s it” – most of us can grow over a longer season than we do, and even if you live in an apartment, you can sprout seeds. So keep on planting!

2. Harvest something – some people are full swing here, but even if you just picked the first dandelion from your yard, it counts if you ate it or saved it. Don’t forget to include food you forage – whether from wild marginal areas, or even just from the neighbor’s trees that he never harvests (ask, obviously).

3. Preserve something – this starts around now for me, as asparagus, nettles and rhubarb are up. Canning looks like a big scary project if you have to can a truckload of green beans on a hot day in July. Dehydrating seems overwhelming if you have to pick the pits out of 4 bushels of plums in a single afternoon when you’d rather be doing something else. And yes, sometimes everything comes ripe at once, some big jobs can’t be avoided, and you just put on the loud rock and roll and go at it. But a little at a time is possible, you can be canning corn relish while you are washing up from dinner, or stick the strawberries in the sun to dry on your way out the door.

4. Reduce waste – This category covers both the old “Reduce Waste” and “Manage Reserves” group. Once you’ve got food, whether purchased or home preserved, you have to keep an eye on it. In this category goes making sure you use what you buy or grow, cutting down on garbage production by minimizing packaging and purchasing, composting, reducing community waste by composting or feeding scraps to your animals, and taking care of your food storage – everything from keeping records and writing dates on jars to checking the apples and making sauce when they start getting soft. BTW, reduce waste also refers to money and energy – stretching out your trips to the store and not “spending” gas on your food, cutting your grocery budget and reducing cooking energy.

5. Preparation and Storage – This is the category where you report the stuff you’ve done to get ready that isn’t growing/storing/preserving food. That means the food you buy for storage, the things you build, scavenge, rescue and repair that get you further down the path. Did you get a good deal at goodwill? Scavenge some cinder blocks for your raised bed building project? Find a grain mill on Craigslist? Buy some more rice and put it away? Inventory the medicine cabinet? Pick up a new book that will be helpful? Tell us!

6. Build Community Food Systems – Great, we’re all doing this stuff at home. But what did you do to help spread the message, because that may even be more important. Did you talk about your victory garden at your kid’s school? Offer to share space with a neighbor in your sunny yard? Bring a casserole over to the family that lost their job or moved in? Donate to your food pantry? Teach the neighbor kids to make yogurt? Offer to teach a canning class? Show someone else where the nettles are growing wild? Talk about your food storage or gardening plans? Share a plant division or seeds?

7. Eat the Food – Sometimes I think people have more trouble actually eating their garden produce or CSA shares than they do growing or buying them. Ultimately, eaters have more power over our agricultural future than they know – farmers can’t necessarily lead the way – they have to sell what eaters want. So cooking and eating are the way we will change the food system. This is where you tell us about the new recipes you tried, or the old ones you adapted to new ingredients, about how you are actually eating what you store and store what you eat, or getting your kids to try the kale.

The more I thought about this the more I knew I didn’t know enough to support myself this way. And there’s more. The Park Your Car Report is a good sweat all on its own.

Pete and I and several of our friend turned last winter to the unnamed university’s agricultural extension for gardening classes. The first was canceled when the instructor accidentally woke up in New Orleans, which is not at all commuting distance from New Brunswick. The container gardening class was useless in that what we learned was we couldn’t compose decorative containers without the deep knowledge brought to bear by the instructor. In September, I’ve signed up for a cold frame gardening class, which probably should have been held in March. I’m at the end of my rope with those folks, and it’s a long way down.

Okay: I give – and these words may never have been uttered in this order in all of history: what in glamorous tarnation happened to my fucking swiss chard?

One afternoon a couple weeks ago, I went outside to gloat about my sprouting planters and verdant garden beds, gloating, you understand, requires a significant investment of time, not to mention warm compost. Which is worth it. When I came around the corner of the picnic table, I found about half the chard leaves blistered and browning. This is hard to describe without sounding like a Discovery Channel special. But here goes.

When I was eleven, my parents had only just turned thirty and separated, so I spent a great deal of time unsupervised and at least once, burned down the kitchen. We ate a lot of take-out Chinese for a while, and Mom got a new stove out of the deal, but also, I watched with scientific detachment as a huge blister rose on the back of my left hand where a giant glob of molten wax landed, ending my career as a candlemaker. The blister was huge, the skin taut; I couldn’t take my eyes off it. I was sorry when it healed, as slathering it with emollients had become my hobby.

So I was both horrified and fascinated to observe that chard leaves have top and bottom surfaces that can separate and resemble a blister. The leaves were taut, like a Ziploc bag sealed with air inside. I had never seen this before, so I did what any idiot would do: I got gardening shears and trimmed off the blistered and browning parts before they ate up the rest of the leaves. Nom nom nom. Of course, a gardener who knew what she was doing wouldn’t have pictured her swiss chard stepping all over Tokyo and munching on a subway train, but I can’t help but wonder if this could have been avoided somehow. What happened? Did the roots hit a chunk of something they didn’t find tasty, maybe?

Pete and I are trying to jar or freeze something fresh every weekend. Last summer, we worked hard at it but we were also doing so much work on moving and the house that we didn’t have much energy left to devote to preserving. Even so, we put away quart jars of Pete’s tomato sauce that carried us through the raw, frigid days of February, when – let’s be honest – if even dinner’s no good you just want to kill yourself. Last night, Pete made both basil pesto and arugula pestos, which we put into the freezer. We have arugula growing on every surface, and the flavor has been peppery and sweet and totally fantastic, so its addition to regular pesto adds spice and bite and a nice change. On Friday, I picked up peaches at the farmers market, so this afternoon we’re going to make a peach barbecue sauce we both love so much we’d eat it off a garbage can lid.

As a gardener, I leave much to be desired. Our next door neighbor’s garden is lush and gorgeously green. The houseplants Topaz and Sweetpea tortured all winter came outside and promptly withered. I don’t understand it. Last summer, in the exact same locations, the houseplants did everything but sing. This year: we pull them out at the anemic roots. And for some reason, I may be the only person in history who can’t grow strawberries. They’re weeds. Last summer, I planted strawberries that grew for a matter of minutes before they took one look at me and went to horticulture heaven. In May, I planted strawberry plants that gave me the raspberry, so last month, I planted more. These, finally, grew like gangbusters. Two days ago, they started to droop. I have every confidence these will be pinin’ for the fiords by the end of the week. But at least I’m consistent.

I

am

the

Morticia

Addams

of

windowbox

lettuces.

Despite the fact that I am still fuming after yesterday’s episode in which my sister was a controlling bitch, I’m trying to be philosophical today. No matter how much I love someone I can’t work her karma for her – especially when she’s being a controlling bitch. But I digress. I’m philosophical, bitchez!

Good thing we didn’t try carrying this metric buttload of produce.

Our town has a farmer’s market on Fridays, where local farmers, bakers and cheesemakers bring really good stuff to a parking lot on the main street, fucking up traffic that must travel Route 27 and probably doubling our carbon footprint. Today, Pete and I dragged the little red wagon out of the basement and launched a two-person parade to the market. We had an absolute blast walking from stall to stall, choosing bok choi from the tattooed girls, fresh onions from the family chatting up older ladies, and raw milk cheese from the cheese evangelist. His gospel is local and grassfed, and he preaches it loud and proud. Praise be to gouda!

Pesto!

In our vast old age, Pete and I entertain ourselves on a Friday night by making pesto. We stripped leaves from stems on four bunches of basil. Pete washed them three times – this is his ritual. Then he tossed them into the food processor with a mess o’ garlic, grated parmesan and drizzled in olive oil until he was happy with the texture. I tasted it. The tenant wandered by and tasted it. The committee decided the pesto needed a little more cheese and a smidge of salt. We tasted again and decided it needed pepper. When it was a winner, Pete jarred. My job: zip around the kitchen restoring order with a sponge.

Pesto action photo!

We decided weeks ago that we would make a concerted effort to jar something every weekend, whatever’s good and in season. Today, the basil looked brilliantly green and smelled heavenly, so that was a natural choice. The ease with which we processed these jars is promising; we could easily do this again next Friday night. We have jars. We have lids. We have space in our freezer. I almost can’t stand the glamor of planning January’s dinners in July.

I have the ancestral food dehydrator in my basement, though I’ve never used it. It’s a bad weekend to ask questions, but what the hell. Have you tried one?