Someone Might Actually Read My Blog!!

Yes, this GORGEOUS head of Broccoli is from my garden, and the carrots are too! LOOK UPON MY GARDEN AND DESPAIR

So I just realized that, because I mentioned it in the paper, someone might ACTUALLY check out my blog! And I haven’t posted since before Christmas! I have a perfectly good reason: I am an undisciplined layabout….no, actually, that is not my reason, it just sounded good. The real reason is I have had a sinus infection and have barely been awake since Xmas Day. For those of you who have never had one, a bad sinus infection is like getting bitten by the tse-tse fly: your body, desperately trying to overcome the bacteria that is trying to get to your brain and kill you and eat you, makes you fall asleep again like one HOUR after you get up in the morning.

But now I am taking antibiotics and presumably, should have some interest in terrestrial events soon. Of course I have continued to EAT and COOK throughout the week, however, it has been mostly EATING COOKIES and EATING OUT. Are all 55 dozen Xmas Cookies gone? Yes.

Part of me feels COMPLETELY ADDICTED TO SUGAR, and part of me NEVER WANTS TO SEE SUGAR AGAIN. Is this a normal feeling?

One of the things that I did, actually I did it about two weeks ago, is read every food blog in Austin that I could find, read them obsessively, and work out a system to rate them, (HIGHLY SCIENTIFIC of course) and I wrote a TOP TEN list of Austin Food Blogs, leaving out, of course, the blogs of my CHRONICLE colleagues, and myself. Most of those blogs would have TOTALLY been on the list, but then the list would have been all CHRONICLE folks and that seems unprofessional and just, I don’t know, like the most ridiculous cronyism.

Also, I would like to add, that two awesome food blogs tied for ELEVENTH place, and I just know that when I see these bloggers they will give me the STINK EYE, so I am never leaving the house again. (That will work in well with my undisciplined layabout lifestyle.) The just-barely-not-in-the-top-ten blogs are MISO HUNGRY and POCO-COCOA, both of which I wish I could have extended the list for. But once I invented my SCIENTIFIC RATING SYSTEM to come up with the TOP TEN, I thought it would be intellectually corrupt to jiggle the numbers. So, just remember that in MY world, my Imaginary perfect world, these two WOULD HAVE BEEN in the top ten, by extending it to TWLEVE.

But ANYWAY, one of the things that counted for a lot of points in my SCIENTIFIC EVALUATION was REGULAR POSTING. Not being regular about one’s posting was the NUMBER ONE SIN!!! So, you can imagine my embarrassment.

ONE THING, though: a number of the blogs I elected to tout have also dropped their balls over the holidays, so at least they look lame along with me. But that is not the point: the POINT is, reading all the very excellent local food blogs has made me realize that I could improve this blog in various ways. So I am going to endeavor to make HUNGERSAUCE the most KILLER BLOG in all of FOODBLOGGING!

For instance: you know what is super boring? Reporting. Food reporting is Borrrrr-inngg. ” I went to X place and I sampled Y and it was tasty and here’s a picture.” There has GOT to be a better way…if nothing else, brevity is the soul of wit, and a SINGLE picture of a SINGLE THING one ate is more compelling than a play-by-play rundown.

Of course that is going to present a problem, because BREVITY is NOT my STYLE. No, I prefer the rambling, overly thinky and parenthetical style of writing, where you run circles around your POINT for an hour before you get to it. I do.

But I can do better than REPORTING. And I shall.

But enough about ME! What do YOU think about ME? I mean, let’s get to the FOOD part.

Vigorous, bug-free winter growth. LOOK UPON MY LETTUCE AND DESPAIR

This is the time of year where the Winter Garden in oh, just so gorgeous. Cold weather makes vegetables sweet and delicious, and two of the greatest things going in the Central Texas Garden right now are Broccoli and carrots. The carrots are still smallish, but totally usable; I have also learned in my VAST EXPERIENCE and WISDOM that, if you wait for a whole bed of anything to reach it’s most perfect maturity, you can’t eat it all anyway and it just goes to seed or rots. So, it is GOOD FARMING to eat the baby vegetables as you go along.

Enormous Broccoli ensconced in enormous broccoli plant

To combat the SUGAR EXTRAVAGANZA that has been my diet, I hit the garden and made a dish that is a popular one around here, it is so popular I am not even sure it has a name. I should think of a name! Well, I will think while I am writing about it. It consists of Broccoli, carrots and onions, sauteed in olive oil (or butter), served over pasta, with Parmeson cheese. (How about BROCCOLI PARMESAN? Nah….)

You will need:

a white onion

some carrots

broccoli

pasta

butter

Parmesan Reggiano

The onions, carrots, and stems sautee, while the water boils in the other pot

Put some oil or butter in your frying pan, over medium heat. Fill a pasta pot with hot water and add a tablespoon of salt (yes a tablespoon!) and put it over high heat. When the butter melts, add the white onion, all chopped up. Salt and pepper it heavily. As it softens, peel and slice the carrots. Add them and stir it up. Slice all the broccoli stems into discs, reserving the florets. Add the sliced stems to the saute pan. Stir.

Can you EVEN BELIEVE that the producer of the James Bond Movies in the Seventies was named BROCCOLI??! Can you even believe that ANYONE would have the name BROCCOLI and not CHANGE IT? Even if they weren’t in Show Business? I think his name was Albert Broccoli. ALBERT BROCCOLI!!

Maybe I should name this dish “Broccoli Albert”!! Or “Parmesan a la Albert” ?   But no, that would be too much like rewarding him.

By this time your water should be boiling, so add your pasta or noodles. Tonight I used Egg Noodles because I felt like it. Stir after adding pasta and drain when pasta is done.

At a certain point, your onion, carrot and stem mixture will appear obviously softened and nearly done. At that point (and no earlier!) add the florets, crowns up, and you should have removed ALL the stems so they should be very tiny florets, not great big ones with stems. COVER. If you are using a cast iron frying pan like I DO, you can cover the pan with a lid that doesn’t fit perfectly, that is OK.

After a few minutes, remove cover, stir a bit, check for doneness. You can stop cooking it when it is slightly underdone, and the florets will finish cooking just sitting there in the pan.

On each plate, pile up noodles or pasta, dot with butter, spoon vegetables over, and then top with Parmesan Reggiano. You can grate it first and pile it on, or grate it on directly, whatever suits you.

(And, how in the name of God could they possibly be producing enough Parmesan Reggiano to keep up with American demand? How can they make enough for Italy ALONE? Even without the rest of the world? I think there must be something fishy going on, because that one little region could not POSSIBLY keep up with demand. Once you have bought Parmesan Reggiano, you can’t go back. You just can’t. Well, I can’t, anyway. For now we will call this the Parmesan Reggiano Mystery.)

Mystery Broccoli?

Broccoli Reggiano?

I know!! Pasta and Broccoli!!!

PASTA AND BROCCOLI

SEEDLINGS!

Perky young lettuce with sinister frond of Bermuda grass sneaking up on it

I actually had to WRITE actual COPY for publication this weekend, causing me to be a useless space case for three days while I attempted to FOCUS my MIND (which still doesn’t tend to happen naturally until the 8 hours before deadline.) During the time that I was sweating on the creative throne to give birth to my brain-children, I grew oblivious to the outer world, causing me to rush outside on Sunday afternoon and realize that not only had my seeds SPROUTED, but they had started to DIE of thirst and neglect as well.

Snow Peas sprout in the back, and arugula sprouts in the front

I frantically watered all my beds (Sunday was HOT) and all is well, no one died and all the wee seedlings recovered. Phew!

REMEMBER TO KEEP THOSE SEED BEDS DAMP!

SEE how the evil carrot seedlings group together?

Carrots: THE PLANTING.

Your Host, with some pretty nice size carrots freshly pulled from nature's bosom. Photo by Todd Wolfson.

I am VERY enthusiastic about planting carrots here in Austin; I have never had a terrible harvest, no matter how dreadful the soil I have planted them in. I have planted carrots in gravel, in clay, and in reasonable “good” soil, and they have done well in every type of soil (although of course they did BEST in the fairly good soil!) In fact, I have read that it doesn’t DO to fertilize them much, as this makes them grow huge carrot-tops and tiny carrots. They do better in rather poor soil. (I have plenty of that!)

“But why do you bother to plant carrots in the cruddy soil?” you may be asking, gripping your computer with white-knuckled fingers. This is a good time to bring up Crop Rotation. Unfortunately, crop rotation isn’t just for Serious Farmers with Big Farms. It’s like this: when you grow a vegetable, let’s call it Vegetable X,  in the soil, diseases and microbes and viruses and other things I forget the names of (Nematodes! that’s it!) are attracted to Vegetable X and migrate there to feast upon it and prey upon it. By the time you harvest vegetable X,  its Enemies are well-established and hoping to get an easy living by absolutely DECIMATING the next year’s batch.

If you plant the same thing in the same place the next year, it usually does very poorly. VERY. One year, before I learned about CROP ROTATION, I planted Okra in what seemed like an awesome spot for Okra: HOT HOT HOT, full sun, southern exposure. I harvested gigantic bags full of Okra, a bumper crop, I didn’t know what to DO with it all. The next year, I planted them in the OKRA SPOT again, and I GOT NOT A SINGLE POD. NOT ONE!! That is how important it is to rotate your crops.

Huge bucket FUll of Carrots. See how tiny some of them are? THAT"S BECAUSE I DIDN"T THIN THEM ENOUGH!

So, you have to pull the ol’ switcheroo on the nematodes, diseases, etc. There they are, lurking in the soil, waiting to attack….and you plant SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT! (It is not advised to plant something only slightly different. For instance, Broccoli and Cabbage are both in the Brassica family, and aren’t different ENOUGH. Most gardening books will tell you what vegetables are in the same family so you can avoid doing a poor rotation.)

So, you have to move everything around every single year. I have a few beds in my garden that are actually sort of GOOD (I think they are where older settlers might have had the henhouse, or the privy) and then I have some rather bad beds, that are very gravelly or stony or heavy clay.)

As you know from YESTERDAY’S post, I am ALWAYS amending my soil with fertilizer and compost, which helps a lot, but I think it all just washes away over time or something. The bad beds are still full of gravel and stones and clay. SOMEDAY (cue music) I will be able to build Bermuda-grass-root resistant masonry beds, filled with perfect stone-free soil and worms, 2 feet deep!. My compost and soil will be trapped and will never wash away again! (This is part of my “Lottery Fantasy”, which is kind of silly because it really wouldn’t cost THAT much! All I would need is a shovel and cement and TIME!)

Making Carrot and Fennel Stock for Vegetarian Soups

Where was I? Oh yes. Carrots do quite well, and also you almost never actually have to cover them in freezes, because the GROUND never freezes here, ever. The carrot tops never seem to freeze either, but even if they did, it wouldn’t affect the actual CARROTS.

To plant your carrots, I recommend loosening your soil and adding compost on top, as deep as seems practical. Then scatter a huge amount of carrot seeds over the top, and water them into the soil. Carrot seeds can take as long as A MONTH (!) to germinate (compared to most seeds only taking a few days) so if they don’t germinate in a normal amount of time, don’t panic. Usually in September they germinate fairly quickly, but if it is chilly out, they take their time.

IMPORTANT: DO NOT plant ANYTHING into Turkey or other bird poop compost! Nothing will germinate in Turkey Compost, I think it is too acidic or something. Use homemade or Revitalizer.

Then, after they germinate, you must THIN them, That means, pull up and kill the innocent little carrot plants so that the remaining carrots are not at all crowded and have room, like one carrot every three inches. Carrots are usually non-compliant and won’t even sprout unless they are in clumps, so you have a bunch a dirt with NO carrots and then fifty carrots all in one inch. Bastards! But you must grit your teeth and pull up nearly all of them so that they are well-thinned.

I had to learn all this THE HARD WAY because, NO, I couldn’t just BELIEVE what the seed packet SAID, I had to experiment for myself with 1) not thinning 2) not using very much seed; what do you know, the old-timers who have actually been growing carrots for generations were right: plant thickly, then thin.

"I remember how it used to rain." She reminisced, next to a huge juicy hollyhock, the kind that only grows when it actually rains. Photo by Todd Wolfson

Interesting Carrot Fact: Carrots used to be considered an EXOTIC vegetable that no one knew about. The vegetable that was MUCH more POPULAR is the one that looks like a WHITE carrot, the PARSNIP. Parsnips can be left in the field during a hard freeze and they don’t freeze and get ruined, and the cold makes them taste sweet (Cold makes all vegetables taste sweet, including carrots, which is why the best tasting vegetables come from cold places like New York State, in the summer I mean.) So naturally everyone liked parsnips better, because they were less work and sweeter. BUT WHERE ARE YOU NOW, PARSNIPS? NO ONE EATS YOU ANYMORE!

(Hey, maybe I should plant some! I would eat them! Daikon radishes grow really really well here, and they LOOK like parsnips.)

The other grand thing about CARROTS, for the home gardener, is that they are one of those awesome vegetables that, anytime from when they are tiny to when they are huge, you can just go pick one when you need one. It’s not like they all come ripe at once and demand use immediately, no matter HOW inconvenient this is for YOU. Instead, like green peppers and onions, you can go get one when you need one and just leave the rest to keep growing larger.

Gratuitous picture of cats playing with catnip

OOPS! Time to Get A-Plantin’ Heh Heh

Red Wheelbarrow full of screened compost and bag of LADYBUG Fertilizer

You remember how I said that we were supposed to get MORE RAIN? Well, it hasn’t happened; even though that storm system circled back on us, and we have has 20% and 30% rain predictions every day for days and days. HARRUMPH.

Where was I?

Anyway, I sat on my front porch in my underwear, and it WASN’T HOT! It was only like 85˚. Really comfortable. And I made a list of what I want to plant this Fall:

Snow Peas

My collection of OLD SEEDS

Carrots

Broccoli

Cauliflower

Lettuces

Arugula

Spinach

Cabbages

Cilantro

Oregano

Dill

Italian Pasley

My Seedling Purchases from THE NATURAL GARDENER

Fennel

Beets

Catnip

Mint

Swiss Chard

Artichokes

THEN, the next day, I got my old seeds out of the icebox (I keep them in a Ziploc Bag in the potato drawer) and figured out that I HAD most everything  SEED NEED-WISE.  I only needed to buy 2 packages of carrot seeds and a package of cilantro seeds. But I still needed to buy all the transplants (cabbages, broccolis, cauliflowers, herbs). Also I want to buy a few potted geraniums to keep in the kitchen windowsill.

So I took a trip out to JOHN DROMGOOLE’S NATURAL GARDENER (Out in BFE!) (That means “Bum-Fuck Egypt“) to buy the three packages of seeds, and to see if they had their transplants in yet. AND THEY DID! I was quite surprised, because it seemed to me to be a little early. But WHATEVER, amirite? So I bought everything I needed that they HAD (they did not have Geraniums, or “Melody” spinach plants, or Russian Kale which I forgot to mention. Mmmm…Kale).

Then, all of a sudden, instead of feeling like “I am ahead of weeding schedule!” I am all like, “DOOD, I had better get planting, all of a sudden I am BEHINDHAND!”

(Heh heh. I said BEHIND HAND!!)

So now I am going to intersperse this post with PICTURES so I can SHOW all the PLANTING I did today! Here Goes! (Oh, and it suddenly occurs to me that this post isn’t very informative; forgive me, I am really tired! I will elucidate of planting all the various vegetables tomorrow….after I weed a bed and finish planting.)

The New Carrot Bed pictured with two loads of screened compost dumped on it

Three packages of carrot seeds: carrots must be planted thickly and then thinned drastically. Why not just plant fewer? Because they don't like to germinate unless they are in a crowd.

Compost all smoothed out, and carrot seeds scattered and watered in

Snow Peas planted along the fence in bottomless cups, arugula planted in the front. Of course you just have to take my word for it!

Broccoli plants and smoothing rake. If you ever tried to rake leaves with this kind of rake, it is not for that. It is for smoothing soil in garden beds.

Broccoli Bed with mounds of screened compost prior to smoothing

Broccoli plants all planted up!

Catnip and Oregano (Greek and Italian) planted in pots

Lettuce, both seeds and plants, all nicely planted

Cilantro seeds all planted in the (former) Chard Bed

Fennel and lettuce planted in cups for later, pictured with the cauliflower and cabbage seedlings that are going to have to wait for me to WEED a BED to put them in.

Carrot and Fennel Stock

Fennel fresh from the Garden

Back to the “Things to do with Carrots” series! The fennel and the carrots are ready at the same time here in Central Texas, and I have learned how to make this work to my advantage. When you pull up a Fennel plant, the bulb (the part most desired for salads) is but a small fraction of it; there are usually layers of tough, unsightly bulbiness on the outer shell, and then, the fronds and the stick-like tubular parts they grow on. After cutting the Fennel bulb(s) that are lovely and delicate enough for salad out, the rest on the fennel plant (minus the roots) is ready for the stockpot and the recipe for Carrot/Fennel Broth from Didi Emmons book Vegetarian Planet.

This is a fairly simple recipe, but it is priceless in it’s ability to use up the “waste” parts of the fennel plant, as well as whatever unsightly or just overly abundant carrots you have. The stock that results has a delicate but unmistakable flavor that works wonderfully in any recipe calling for stock. Since Mr. Hungersauce is a vegetarian, I usually need a pretty good supply of vegetarian stock to improve soups and rice and various other things.

Step One: Sautee

I like my stocks super-strong, so I use about twice as much of everything as this recipe calls for, and simmer it in LESS water for LONGER.

Cats love the aromas of fennel and dill. This is Molly.

THE RECIPE:

1 T olive oil

2 fennel bulbs or equivalent, cut up in 1 inch pieces

6 medium carrots, cut into 1 inch pieces

2 white onions, chopped

1 head of garlic, skin left on and cut in half horizontally

2 teaspoons fennel seeds

 a gallon of water

1 cup white wine

Heat the olive oil in the stockpot over low heat, and add the fennel bulbs, carrots, onions, garlic, and fennel seeds. Cook for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Add the water, bring it to a boil, and cover. Simmer on lowish heat for an hour. Strain the stock, let it cool, and jar it up for storage in the icebox (good for a week) or the freezer (good for a year).

All done and ready for the freezer

The Carrot Harvest

Damn near a Bushel of Carrots

I noticed that the tops of my carrots were looking trampled on; I know the dogs NEVER walk in my garden so it seemed mysterious, and I have to admit I thought maybe Mr. Thornberry had inadvertantly crushed them down while he helped me weed one day (sorry, honey!) Well, seeing as how it is after April 15th, I knew it was time to pick the carrots (if not a little late, but it’s been a cool rainy couple of weeks, so no harm done), so I went into the carrot bed with my new spade and got them all out.

And I found out why all the carrot tops had fallen over. PILLBUGS. Pillbugs had eaten the tops of the carrots, and in some cases, entire carrots! About a third of the carrots were damaged. So, I take away an important lesson: if you see carrots looking trampled, when you KNOW they are not, HARVEST THEM. Because it is pillbugs!

So we will now have a series on carrots and recipes that use them, as we did for spinach. I don’t believe any garden ever has too many carrots (or too many onions), so I don’t think it will be difficult to use them all up. First of all, though, I need to use up the damaged carrots, so last night I made Cole Slaw:

Here is the recipe, if you can even call it that:

You will need:

Some cabbage

Some carrots

Mayonnaisse

Salt and pepper

sugar

Chop up the cabbage and carrots in the food processor. You can either use the regular dual blade (for KFC style coleslaw) or the cheese grating attachment (for more normal, old-fashioned cole slaw). When it is all grated up, dump it in a big bowl. Then, using a rubber spatula, scoop some mayonnaise out of the jar, however much seems like a good amount based on how calorie-conscious you are and also how much coleslaw you are making (I usually use about half a cup; but then again, I am usually using a whole cabbage). Add a pretty fair amount of salt, a stingy amount of pepper, and about a tablespoon of sugar. Stir stir stir!! Correct for seasoning and throw it in the icebox. (In a bowl, not with your hand!)