Being part of a farm makes you really work with the seasons!
Take rhubarb. I’ve never actually cooked rhubarb before, as much as I love strawberry rhubarb pie (Briermere Farm in Riverhead makes the best I’ve had!). This vegetable is not part of my Caribbean repertory and, to be honest, I have been a little intimidated by it.
Silly me! It is simple! Continue reading
Leandro's first homegrown peapod
Just before this week’s visit to Restoration Farm, we went out into our yard where Leandro picked the very first pea pod from a plant he himself started from seed! We were very pleased, even though the peas weren’t so tasty raw. This was a random variety from a garden show craft, so we have high hopes for the others we planted – Burpees Garden Sweet (organic). His eyes reflected the magic of a seed transforming into food.
Trish and one of her flock
Then at Restoration Farm, we visited that other transformation into food; Trisha tells us that the pastured chickens are a week away from our cooking pots. They will be seven weeks and one day, and — we hope — about five pounds. She had initially planned to go to eight weeks, but due to the window of opportunity for processing and the fact that they are getting slower and heavier and more prone to disease, she figures next week is it!
Ignorance is bliss
Leandro still finds the chickens stinky (and really, they are pretty pungent at this point) and was more interested in drawing sweet beads of nectar out of the honeysuckle blossoms that are exhaling seductive breaths of fragrance all over the farm these days. He learned the art of drawing out the style from Farmer Steve and then taught me! Delicious.
Honeysuckle gives it up for Leandro
So now I am planning what to do with my first bird. As I expect it to be less fatty and moist than a factory bird or even an organic chicken from a large facility, I am thinking about dishes that will help contain the moisture and make the most of the added flavor that a slightly more muscular bird will have. I also want to do something that is already in Leandro’s growing list of delectable foods, so as not to risk some refusal. And then there is the desire to honor my Caribbean forebears who lived off the land (some still do, at least in part).
So… I’ve got two ideal candidates from the criollo* canon: arroz con pollo: chicken and rice,or asopao de pollo: soupy chicken and rice. Feel free to share your thoughts and opinions on which one it should be!
*Criollo or Creole refers to the generations of colonialists actually born in the colonized place. In the case of Puerto Rico, the Spanish were the first Europeans to settle. They remained Spaniards, but their offspring born on the island (in many cases, half European and half native) were known as criollos – not quite European, but not quite native, either. Criollo cooking (like Creole in New Orleans, for example), reflects the meeting of different worlds of cooking ingredients and techniques.
We headed over to Restoration Farm, our CSA, today to put in a little work and visit the chickens.
Leandro was a champion snap pea picker (he remembered his skills from last year) on this bright sunny day that showed hints of what a sweltering hazy, hot and humid Long Island summer can be.
Many peas didn’t make it to the basket, as they ended up in his mouth. He won’t yet eat the pods, preferring to open them up and eat the tiny peas inside, edamame-style. It’s a start. And at least he knows they grow on vines, not exclusively in the frozen food section! Mommy gets the pods, which are wonderfully crunchy and bright.
The boy was also introduced to the delights of picking strawberries, but won’t get a chance to pick his own quart until our pick-up day, later this week. Whether any berries he picks will actually end up getting home is doubtful. I will have to make sure he doesn’t get out of hand. He can devour a pound of strawberries at a sitting and since they are amongst the most chemical-laden of fruits when conventionally-grown (see http://ewg.org/) and very expensive to buy organic, I hope this is a good year for strawberries in our neighborhood!
We visited the chickens, of course. He still loves Donna’s future egg-layers and their roving chicken coop (now painted a proper barnyard red), but the now five-week-old eating birds, not so much.
“Ew! Stinky!” is all I got out of him today, as he ran away to see what he could spirit out of the berry patch. As we get closer to our first installment of locally pastured chickens, I am starting to think about what irresistible dish to concoct for him….
Dinner at Three Weeks
Leandro thus far seems to have no problem with his exalted position at the top of the food chain.
He likes the laying hens and during this week’s trip to Restoration Farm, pestered Donna (Mother Hen) to no end until she took him over to visit the girls. The fact that they refused to come out from under the hen house was transformed into an exciting lesson in the predator vs. prey relationship when a pair of hungry hawks soared overhead. Chickens aren’t as dumb as they look!
He’s not as fond of Trisha’s chicks – the ones destined to become meals. He pronounced them stinky and boring. “One of them is going to be dinner for you one day soon,” I said, while we weeded the strawberry patch. “Dinner? What!?!” he responded. And then he sort of nodded, said, “Okay,” and went on with the business of sorting the good insects from the bad (and stompable).
"They're stinky!"
There are 30-odd chicks. They have just turned three weeks old, and they are still cute, if a bit pink in spots rather than feathered. They don’t stink, by the way. They are now out in the fields in a pasture box, fertilizing and weeding the berry patch with great enthusiasm, while Trish visits other farms and learns the art of slaughter. We volunteers can talk of nothing else but how to kill a chicken during lunch break, which might not be everyone’s idea of appropriate mealtime conversation, but I like it.
More on the chicken project as we move forward into the Hazy, Hot, and Humid Long Island summer.
I'll be eating one of these in a few weeks
So we were down at Restoration Farm C.S.A. doing some work (or I was supposed to be doing some work, but we were chatting more than anything, what with the little guy wanting to run around). We’ve bought a chicken share; Trish Hardgrove, one of the growers, has initiated a pastured chicken project: $125, five months, five chickens. I was in, of course, but this brings the question of my son to bear.
A few generations back, it would be quite normal for kids to look at farm animals as a future meal. But today, it is a bit less usual. I am all for Leandro knowing where his meals come from and plan for us to follow the chicks’ progress from farm to (our) table. I figure, if it puts him off animal products for the rest of his life, is that such a terrible consequence?
Looking forward to hearing your opinions on the topic! If you clicked directly to this post, please note that there is a poll in the next post. Click the right hand arrow at the bottom of this post!
A beloved bean
Boiling up a bag of edamame is even easier than making ice pops, so you could say this is something of a lame thing to post about, but I’ve really been meaning to share my appreciation for this useful food item for a while now. And today, Mother’s Day, when it happened to save this mom a lot of trouble over dinner, seemed like the right time.
At under $3 per bag of frozen (even organic!) edamames make for a reasonably priced appetizer or T.V. snack for two to four people. Soybeans are full of fiber and anti-oxidants and contain no animal fats (but do contain those all-important omega-3 oils). They are tasty and quick to get on the table, and shelled, can replace lima beans (which I hate) and peas (which I quite like) in many recipes.
But what I really love about them is how companionable they are. They remind me of an leisurely, chatty evening shelling pigeon peas around a hurricane lamp in the mountains of Dominican Republic when I was doing a little humanitarian work. They remind me of dining at an Asian restaurant in San Juan with my dear, departed friend, Frances Borden, in the early days of our friendship. They are how my son and I might start a meal…popping beans right out of the pod and into our mouths (and laughing when the beans shoot across the room instead), or how we might sit around watching the news with my parents, the pile of full pods getting lower and the pile of empty pods getting higher. Farmer Steve got Leandro to try the fresh garden peas we were picking at our C.S.A. last year, because they look like edamame pods.
So get a bag and keep it in the fridge for the next time you don’t know what to do for dinner and need to buy some time, or you want something more virtuous than chips to accompany your favorite show or a movie night.
Boil up a quart or so of water and add 1 lb. frozen edamame in the pods. When the water returns to the boil, cook for three minutes, drain and serve.
Leftover beans can be added to salads (including rice and pasta salads), stir-fries and soups.
We are getting into gear for summer bounty by starting some seedlings indoors.
We’ve got beans that Leandro started at a garden show, already big enough to require supports. We’ve started arugula and sweet peas that we hope to put in the ground after the last frost danger (April 30 in our Zone 6B, although I have alwaus thought it was Zone 7!?!) . Next up, we’ll start basil (Leandro loves pesto) and lettuces directly in the ground.
This makes me sound like I know what I am doing, but of course, I don’t. We have only recently had to take down or trim some of the many trees in our yard, so we are hoping that this will result in more sun for veggies…but this is purely experimental.
Our real vegetable source will be our CSA (Restoration Farm) in Old Bethpage where we will pick up organic vegetables each week. We just spent a great day helping out there, splitting dahlia bulbs and breathing fresh air.
I’d love to know what you are doing for Earth Day and whether you will be growing vegetables this year. I know some of my subscribers are fire escape gardeners, while others are real farmers and still others are herb kitchen gardeners like myself. Let’s hear about it! Please comment….
Happy Earth Day!
Natalia and Leandro
Great food - Simply
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