The Recession Kitchen

The year without BLTs

It is the last week of July, and I have yet to eat my first BLT of the summer. There are several culinary joys that I associate with summer, things like fried clams, corn on the cob, and watermelon. But for me, the first BLT, made with a home grown tomato, sits above all others. There is a sweetness in a tomato grown in your own soil that simply can not be matched by the one's you buy at the store. Even the farmer's market tomato lacks the panache of the home grown variety.

This, of course, may be entirely in my mind, and that would make perfect since. After all, I spend hours each spring preparing the soil for where my tomato plants will spread their roots. As soon as the second week in May arrives, I hurry to nursery store to select the most robust specimens I can find. I rush home, plant them, and make sure I have the perfect cage or enough clips to give them the support they need. And as the season progresses I watch over them for scourges like white fly or the hideous tomato worm. All of this effort would hardly be worth it if the same outcome could be matched by a trip to the grocery or farmer's market. But it simply is not.

Excitement accompanies seeing the first bee alight on the pale yellow flower. Anticipation floods as the bright green fruit swells and starts to ripen. Then, one morning, you step outside and there in the deep green of a 7-foot-vine rests a deep red globe. You pluck it, rush inside and rinse it off. You reach for a knife and slice into its flesh, not mushy like a tomato picked thousands of miles away, but dense like a perfectly roasted prime rib. The scent of the fresh tomato is part sunshine and part sweet acidity. You reach for the salt, just to give a sprinkle, and when you devour that first slice, you know. Every moment spent has been worth it. It's BLT Time, at last.

But not this year. This year it just has not been warm enough for optimal tomato plant growth. The few days of heat and humidity have be enveloped in weeks of sub-normal temperatures. Tomato plants don't like cool. They like hot and humid. Cool stresses them. Stress reduces fruit production. It all adds up to a terrible prognosis for BLTs.

There are some fruits on my tomato plants. My hybrid varieties, a Early Girl and a Beefsteak, are spotted with green offerings. But they are small, maybe twice the size of cherry tomatoes, and they are colored a deep green. They've been this way for weeks now. Apparently frozen in jade, apprehensive about taking that next step toward deliciousness.

The Chicago Tribune has a story today suggesting that this may be remembered as the year without summer. But here in the Recession Kitchen, two pounds of bacon sit in the freezer. The first lettuce has already bolted, and the next crop has yet to mature. And the tomatoes are napping the season away.

It is the year without BLTs.

Had to share this.

Hungry Caterpillar (Alt Ending)

This story began when I was a child, and I first discovered a black swallowtail butterfly caterpillar in my mother's herb garden. It was the kind of finding that sparks awe in anyone intrigued by nature's colors, creatures and possibilities. My grandfather told me the many-splendored worms would turn into beautiful butterflies. And when a few weeks passed, I was delighted to see the creatures fluttering through the flower garden.

As an adult, I've maintained an affinity for this member of the order lepidoptera. In fact, when I first planted my own herb garden, I decided I'd let the dill go to seed. Each year wanted more and more of the tall, spindly herb to grace my bed. This would leave enough for my potato salad and for the caterpillars. And each spring I have been rewarded by the appearance of the caterpillars, each year in increasing numbers.

But this spring we decided to take things up one notch. Our two year old had caught the black swallowtail bug. Each morning, he would hustle out to the dill to see how "his" caterpillars were doing. After some discussion, we decided we would bring one caterpillar into our home, so that he could watch its growth and metamorphosis up close.

It seemed to be going swimmingly. Twice each day I would bring the caterpillar new dill, and each day he would plow through my offerings, and leave me an ample harvest of caterpillar poo to throw back into the garden. He grew and he grew. And then, one morning he appeared paralyzed on a stick in his home. A day later, he'd become enveloped in his chrysalis. And the wait for the butterfly began.

To make the wait more of an event, I placed the chrysalis on a skewer placed in a vase atop a bookshelf in our living room. There, I figured, we'd be sure to see it when it hatched. We'd also be right by the side door, to let the magnificent creature go free. So, each day, several times a day, we would check on its progress.

Then, last evening, I noticed a hole in the side of the chrysalis. But there was no butterfly in sight.
"Has anyone seen a butterfly?" I called. The search was on. Almost immediately, Callawassie, our cat, was indicted. But, not wanting to believe that she could have sacked the butterfly without our knowing, we continued to search. We looked in all of our windows, figuring it might go for light. I shook the curtains and peered behind the blinds. Then, above a living room window, I saw it crawling along the wall.

But it wasn't a butterfly. It was a wasp. It was a long, thin, bright red wasp, with a set of jet black wings that served notice that it was one badass creation. I went into the kitchen and gathered a Solo cup and a piece of paper. I had to capture the creature. I had to get it the hell out of my house.  The capture went well, but upon releasing the scourge, it flew directly at me. I screamed like girl at a Jonas Brothers show, then I leaped and spun so that the beast narrowly missed me. Bridget began to chuckle at my reaction, but then it landed on her leg, and she joined in my terror. After a few fleeting moments, the wasp, who I'm now sure was just thanking us for our hospitality, took flight into the Midwestern evening. We quickly lost sight of it.

So, how is it that an ity-bitty-caterpillar grows into a big fat caterpillar, builds itself a home called a chrysalis, and emerges three weeks later a terrifying wasp? Well, that's nature. You see, our beloved caterpillar was eaten, mid-metamorphosis, by the spawn of a wasp who'd laid an egg on it, before we'd hustled it into our home for protection. As I was bringing dill to my future butterfly, it was likely being consumed from the inside out by the larval wasp. When it disappeared into it's shell that process just moved forward, and yesterday was the day, that Pop! Out came the scary, scary wasp.

Not exactly the way Eric Carle wrote it, but Nature will do what Nature will do.

The Cavalry Has Arrived!

It is the waiting time. The cool crops are gone. The tomatoes, zukes, and cucumbers are still at least a week away. If it weren't for the Swiss Chard, which continues to produce despite being cut back as much as two times a week, there would be little harvest in these oddly cool early July weeks.
But it isn't the lack of current production that has me worried. In fact, I'm quite comfortable that in just a few weeks time, I'll be so loaded down that I'll be sending gift packs off to friends and neighbors. That is, of course, unless something tragic happens. The white flies have arrived.
White flies represent a particularly heinous segment of Creation, at least from the gardener's point of view. They are tiny, snow white, insect that feasts on the pulmonary system of plants, having a particular taste for tomatoes. They are destructive in two stages of their lives. Both the nymphs and the adult flies delight in sucking the life out of tomato vines. Their population can also seemingly explode over night, allowing them to sweep over previously vigorous plants like a chalk scourge, and leaving them twisted, dessicated, and crippled.
Making white fly an even a greater annoyance is that no one pesticide can kill both stages of the insect, at least not without posing an immediate and significant threat to other larger creatures, such as young bipedal hominids. So, when I noticed white fly attacking my dill this spring, I immediately feared their next target would be my tomatoes. I had to make a plan. I had to discover a non-poisonous way to control white fly.
I had already ordered three praying mantis egg sacs to spread around my yard. My idea in ordering these guys was that they would have a chance to mature with my plants. I also hoped that having a few mantises around to stand guard over my zukes and squash plants, I'd be less likely to lose these plants to the hated squash borer. But in the weeks that had followed my placement of the egg sacs around my yard I had yet to see any mantises. And while I figured a young mantis may eat a few white flies, I also knew a larger one would prefer larger prey. So, I needed to find something else to help me with my white fly problem.
By taking a close look at my dill, I got my answer. Well, I should say, by taking a close look at my dill and listening to my two-year-old, I got my answer. Because one afternoon when we were checking on the black swallowtail caterpillars that were living among our dill, he spotted something else. "Lady bug, daddy, ladybug!" At first I didn't see it, but upon getting on my knees to give myself his perspective, I spotted it, a lady bug and it was devouring the white fly.
Now, because of my praying mantis order, I knew that the Montana-based Planet Natural also sold lady bugs. It was then that my father-in-law mentioned to me that his tomato plants were also being ravaged. I knew it was time. I logged on to the site and placed an order for 2,000 lady bugs to split between the two gardens.
Well, yesterday they arrived, and after a quick summer storm that soaked our garden, the three of us went out to eradicate some white flies. Almost immediately our mission had an unexpected bonus. As Bridget began placing a few lady bugs on the zukes, she spotted our first praying mantis. It was tiny, only about an inch and a half long. But it was as still as a statue, and it was waiting for something, anything (maybe even a lady bug) to creep within its grasp.
Confident that my zuccini were safe, I shifted my focus to the tomatoes and started shaking my bag of bugs all over my six-foot plants. Amazingly as they fell from the bag they were able to latch on to the leaves of my plants. Immediately they began their work of consuming white flies. Their technique it appeared is quite similar to that of the white fly, but instead of sucking the life from my plants, there were sucking the essense from the flies that were killing my plants. It may seem wicked, but this delighted me.
We made the short drive to my in-laws and released hundreds more lady bugs there as well. There, too, they went straight to work. According to Planet Natural, each lady bug will be able to eat a couple hundred soft bodied insects each day. If I'm right, there are hundreds of thousands of white flies on my tomatoes. But my goal isn't truly to eradicate them all, for if all of them disappeared, so too would my ladybugs. My real goal is to restore some balance to my garden. The white flies can stay, but only in numbers that allow my tomatoes to grow, bloom and give fruit. The lady bugs will also add an interest for my young one, without the prospect of posioning him, which is also a plus. So, in this little garden the cavalry has arrived. Hopefully, the BLTs will be next.

Brewing with Strawberries

When brewing I strive to make the best use of seasonal ingredients. This means brewing potent IPAs when the hop harvest makes its way to my local home brew shop or internet suppliers, mid-summer is the time to crank out a full-bodied cherry stout for the holidays, and early autumn it is time to make pumpkin ale. So, when I noticed a sign at the farmers market informing me that it was the last week when Michigan strawberries would be available, I knew it was time to take the plunge into making a strawberry brew.

My goal was simple, I wanted a light colored ale with a hint of the sweetness of strawberries. But the challenge I faced was greater than I'd anticipated. First, cooking with fresh, unpasteurized fruit comes with the risk of introducing troublesome things like wild yeast, bacteria, and mold spores into your concoction. Clearly, I wanted to avoid this. My approach was two-fold. First, I would pasteurize my pureed fruit at the end of the brewing. After reducing the temperature of my wort to the vicinity of 165 degrees following the boil, I'd introduce the fruit and steep it at that temperature for 20 minutes. Secondly, I would make this a very potent beer, something with an alcohol content that would assist in the brew's preservation.

I already had six pounds of extra light malt extract, but I wanted to go a little further. I decided to use a Belgian Ale yeast from Wyeast, since I was going to have a lot of fermentable sugars. Deciding to go with the Belgian theme, I bought a pound of light candi sugar. Then to finish things off, I bought a 3.3 pound can of wheat liquid malt extract. I did this because most light fruit brews I've tasted were in part wheat beers. Wheat beers are also great summer bears.

So, to review, that was 6 pounds of dried malt extract, 3.3 pounds of liquid malt extract, 1 pound of candi sugar, and 2 pounds of strawberries. Doing the math, that's somewhere in the neighborhood of 12 pounds of sugars for a 5 gallon batch of beer. Now, one would think that I'd need to go a little crazy with the hops to balance out all of these sugars, but I went with a different tact. I decided I wanted this beer to be a little sweet, and I'm counting on the yeast to add some fruit flavors as well, so I didn't want to over-power that with hop oils. So, I went with a rather mild addition of 1.5 ounces of Glacier hops, added in .5, .5, .5 additions. Finally, to assist in head retention and to give the beer a bit more of a golden hue, I began my wort by steeping a half pound of crystal malt, 10L, which is a very light malt.

Figuring I had everything settled, I began to brew. Everything started off fantastic. My steeped grains gave the wort the inner glow I was seeking. But that's where everything I'd expected ended. Upon bringing the wort to a boil and adding my wheat extract, I was shocked to see how dark the wort became. The fact is that liquid malt extracts always darken beer a bit more than the brewer may want, but we're talking definite Dunkelweizen here. The wort went from golden glow to a nut brown almost instantly. I added my first bit of hops and let things ride for about forty minutes before adding the rest of my malt and the candi sugar -- which I dissolved in bowl of hot wort that I laded out of my brew pot. By the time I was done adding my sugars, the beer had a strange dark glow, something close to the sheen of a carp's belly.

When I came time to cool the wort for the strawberry addition, I had another challenge. You see, a liquid with the density made by 12 pounds of sugar dissolved into 5 gallons of water tends to hold heat rather well. Reducing the temperature from a boil at 212 degrees to a hot bath of 165 degrees would require some thinking. I decided to plop my brew pot into a cold bath in the kitchen sink. It took a half-hour, but it worked. I returned the pot to the stove, added the strawberries and something magical happened.

There is something invigorating about making beer out of tap water and a stack of ingredients. It is an experience that truly relies on all five senses, and one that gains access to all five channels of your sensory memory, that part of your memory stoked by a smell, sight, sound, taste or tactile stimulus.

For me the addition of strawberries to the heavy malted wort transported back to my grandfather's spare room, where, as a child, I'd watch the creation of wine. It was there that I learned that almost anything in the garden could be turned into wine, and he was willing to make it so. He made wine from crab apples and onions, from peaches and parsley, and from blueberries, gooseberries, and plums and pears. But the one I remember most is the strawberry. Because there are two tastes of strawberries. There is the heavy sugary strawberry taste of shortcake, the one that's mimicked by Quick strawberry milk and strawberry gum. It's that strawberry that we think of strawberry, but that is really something else, something far more sweet. But then, there is the taste of a strawberry just picked and sliced and gobbled down. It's a taste of two parts, there's sweet and tart. It's a natural berry taste. And it's smell is nothing like the sweet strawberry that gives its name to most things strawberry from ice cream to, well, to strawberry ale.
But my strawberry ale has that other strawberry smell, that true spring strawberry.

Now, I don't know what my beer will taste like. And it may well be some time until I do. You see when you have a truckload of fermentables in a beer, you have to give your yeast ample time to work their magic. So, it's possible that I may not even bottle this batch for nine months. It may even be a year. In fact, I may very well get my first taste of my strawberry ale, at about the same time next year that a sign goes up at the farmer's market, warning that time is running out: "Last Week for Michigan Strawberries."

And if it does, well, that timing will be perfect, because it will be just in time to brew another batch.