Vegetable-Barley Soup

When making soups, what a fine line there seems to be sometimes between healthy and dull.  Going way back to the beginning of the soup-a-day blog posts, it was mentioned then there were a few key components to any soup – a liquid base, a garnish – usually vegetables or meat – and some kind of seasoning.  From this point moving forward, a soup cook can add, subtract, or substitute in any number of ways, depending on taste.  Even the size of the veggie dice, for example, makes a considerable difference in how it cooks and the ultimate texture.  Add pearled barley and the texture is going to obviously thicken to the point of forming a gooey base along with the chicken stock.

There are a few surprising components with this recipe for vegetable-barley soup though.  The first is that it comes from the wrong end of the 'every day of the year' soup book, September 10, but at 38 degrees here in late April it does feel plenty enough like fall to feed a hearty soup.  Another surprising feature is just how spare this recipe is, asking for virtually no sodium or meat – this is one of those lists that, once you see it up and down, you realize that the ingredients are going to have to speak for  themselves....or make some additions.  The core is a lot of veggies: carrots, potatoes, parsnips, (rutabaga, if you can find them), the barley, and basil, oregano, and thyme.  The resulting

texture is thick and rich, but the problem is that seemingly no amount of salt is enough elevate the single tone taste.  As you continue to spoon into the bowl, you know what you are eating is good for you, rich in fiber, warm in the belly and easy on digestion...but too simple.  I didn't take my own advice to add something when necessary.  What this soup needed was large chunks of cubed bacon or fried ham, turning it, I am betting, from medicinal to delicious.

Dining with the Washingtons

Washington and French General Lafayette at Mt. Vernon

Previous blog posts have tried to convey that it's quite possible it was the peculiarly disciplined and dynamic character of George Washington, as much as or more than any other reason at the time, that secured the possibility of an independent American identity.  Since the spring growing season is hopefully on us, it's impressive to think that Washington was a farmer first and foremost and that in fact, at an early period in the war, 1776, after a horrific defeat at New York, he wrote in his journal that he wondered if it might not have been a better life altogether to have lived more simply off the land 'in a wigwam' and skipped the generalship altogether.  For him, then, one of the real tragedies of becoming America, was being torn away from his elaborate and truly beloved farm at Mt. Vernon Virginia.

In 1765 Washington abandoned growing tobacco altogether, an unusually progressive concept at the time, and instead turned to wheat production as his main source of produce and farming income. He ran his own gristmill (one of the most advanced designs of the time),

five distinct farms as well as gardens for vegetables, herbs, and fruit, "The food and dining at Mount Vernon reflected the Washington's personal tastes as well as the socially accepted styles of the day.  Throughout the seasons, its farms yielded a wide selection of vegetables and fruit, including an abundance of root vegetables, beans, lettuces, apples, pears, berries and figs.  Meat, fish, and fowl were also plentiful. Hams cured in the smokehouse under Martha Washington's supervision held particular prominence on the family's tables and were often shipped as gifts domestically and abroad.  In addition, George and Martha were especially fond of fish and shellfish, and so oysters, lobsters, shad, and cod were often served."  It does have to be necessarily understood that this kind of ambition and production in farming was directly possible because Washington owned approximately 300 slaves at the time.  In all, Mt. Vernon as a farm was an economy onto itself. It not only fed and supplied the Washington family and the slaves but an astonishing number of dining guests: "In 1774, the last full year before he set off for the war, Washington recorded having dinner guests on 136 of the 207 days he was home and overnight guests on 125 of those days ... In 1785, two years after the war's official end, the Washingtons welcomed dinner guests 225 times and overnight guests 235 times.  In 1798 alone, the Washingtons entertained at least 656 dinner guests and 677 overnight guests at Mt. Vernon."

Needless to say, farming for Washington was as much a passion as a cottage industry built to sustain family, laborers, and a continual line of expected and unexpected visitors.  Although the Washingtons divulged later in life that those who came unannounced had become a tiring burden, a short story one particular visitor relates goes a long way in understanding southern culture and values of the time.  A man by the name of Watson had arrived to visit and spent two of the "richest days" of his life virtually alone in the accompaniment of Washington. One night, after dinner, Watson had begun to suffer a severe cough from a long-standing cold.  After he retired to his room, where his cough became more violent, "the door of my room was gently opened, and on drawing my bed-curtains, to my utter astonishment, I beheld Washington himself, standing at my bed-side, with a bowl of hot tea in his hand."

Garden Digest

Cucurbita Pepo

 What might look like a scene of casual waiting for the Great Pumpkin to arrive, is more likely Linus and Snoopy standing guard against the local deer herd to protect their harvest.  Likewise, when the small-time backyard gardener tries to plant a little pumpkin patch for the first time along the ragged edge of a wild forest, he had better be prepared to hire out shifts of these kinds of sentries.    

One evening, with my own attempted patch, I thought I might have caught a glimpse of two deer standing out back on the hill, heads rotating around sniffing for intruders like me, one with a measuring tape in hoof checking to see if the vines had reached the recommended six feet long, the other, a shorter deer, (wearing evaluator's glasses?), assessing each of my three pumpkins for a proper bright orange color.  I came to realize that summer that maybe it was more wise to skip reading my gardening books and instead watch how antsy the deer get around all of my vegetation and try to beat  

them to the punch by secretly harvesting in the middle of the night before their planned feast.  The term gardening suggests a quaint process of planting, tending then eating.  Change around some of the lettering of the word, and you get 'Guarding,' which truly seems a more accurate description for the backwoods planter.  

Weeknight Cooking

Mix and Match: Foil Packet Fish

Page 262 of my new cookbook, Food Network Magazine's Great Easy Meals, lays out the perfect open-ended  process for any mix and match foil-packet fish recipe.  I've been foiling seafood and chicken breasts for many many years and we almost always love the steamed (but baked) results of this quick, creative cooking style.  The fundamentals are simple: pick a fish, prep your vegetables, make a topping, fill the packets, then let them bake.  In the past, I've centered my fish foil recipes around sliced tomatoes, zucchini, and some kind of green, like basil or tarragon; last night's batch I placed

down in a heap of halved cherry tomatoes, red potatoes, onion chunks, white kernel corn, a couple of cubed lemon portions, and finally

some basil leaves.  Because the salmon, according the recipe page anyway, takes only 12 minutes in a packet, I cooked my tri-angled potatoes for softness beforehand, then set the three-inch slab of seasoned salmon down on an oiled foil square, the tomatoes, a heap of potatoes, the corn kernels, sopped it with olive oil, then sprinkled some basil leaves over it all.  Crinkle up each side of the foil then set it onto a baking sheet at 450....and in 18 minutes take them out, set them on a plate, and when you open up the packets a steam roll of the Pacific Coast comes wafting up.  The salmon is fresh and tender, the veggies soft, and a sort of quick-cooked broth sits down on the bottom of the packet, a nice little self-contained meal that everybody shakes their heads at in approval.

Garden Digest









Lactuca sativa



For the little backyard gardener, the idea of farm to table is easiest to come to understand with lettuce.

You have to love the defiance of a robust veggie like lettuce; it thumbs its little green nose at the cold temperatures and prospers despite the weather.  You can plant your lettuce as soon as "you can work the soil."  For us, in the arctic climate of Wisconsin, that might mean mid-April, but it can be done.  It is said that, "Gardeners in northern regions often scatter seeds on top of the snow in later winter for exceptionally early spring harvest."  And harvest it is...daily.  Of the limited number of things that I

have tried to grow, lettuce far and away produces the most abundantly and wonderfully useful: dinnertime sandwich? walk out under the backyard sun and clip some butter head with a kitchen scissors.  Eat it raw.  Dice some of your overly slender carrots onto a smooth bed.  It is softer than anything store bought and the freshly-picked holds a distinct natural flavor that is otherwise washed out in store bought.  Farm to table is nothing more than a repackaged idea that used to be so commonplace that there was no need for us to put a name to it – grow your own produce, eat it.  It's better.

Garden Digest

Helianthus annus (the sunflower)

You can only guard your sunflower taproots from the nibblers of the woods for so long....as I found out, again...just one more first-time gardener's lessons.  With the vivid images of fields of fully cultivated sunflowers in mind, it's no doubt disappointing to take your daily walk down onto the back slope to see that your shoots are shot, so to speak.  I can't think of a more amazing mature plant, though, and one well worth the attempt at that gardener's dream of fields of gold.

Held up in adoration to the point of being considered 'solar deities' by the Aztecs and other

indigenous peoples, the sunflower is a beautifully imposing figure out on the landscape (world's record height recorded at nearly 30 feet high) and one whose vivid textures sends out some serious vibrations, or what is more technically called inflorescence (a group of several flowers interconnected in one).

  
What maybe makes the sunflower most fascinating is the complexity of the heads themselves.  The flower petals within the sunflower's cluster are always in a pattern of interconnecting spirals – typically, there are 34 spirals in one direction and 55 in the other, all of this to the point where mathematicians have created numerical models to comprehend the intricacy, using terms like polar coordinates, Fibonacci numbers and Fermat's spiral!

Knowing just how hard it was for me to grow my own sunnies in the rocky clay soil, it's hard to believe that some farmers of mass commodities do in fact see the sunflower as a pest crop and cut it down as nothing more than feed.  I think I prefer the idea of Aztec deity.

Garden Digest

Malus domestica (the apple)

It seems the hasty gardener always ends up paying the price somewhere down the seasonal line.  Apples are a very alluring tree to plant.  Who doesn't have a memory of a favorite apple tree at grandma's house or a long afternoon picking Galas at an orchard?  Memories don't always grow the trees however.  There are rules with planting apple trees, and as I found out if you don't follow those rules, they will, as the gardening book says, 'languish.'  The book also says, first paragraph (the one I didn't pay close enough attention to when planting my three), "Best site: Plant in full sun and well-drained soil.  Apples thrive in sandy loam and languish in heavy soil or clay.  Amend slow-draining soil with plenty of compost before planting."

Without fully realizing it, I planted my own trees with an allotted 2-3 foot amendment, not really knowing why, other than the plant tag told me so, but the hole and the dirt / bark mixture was never quite enough that season.  To watch a poor apple sapling languish over the course of the growing season as it is attacked by deer, pillaged by ants, and shriveled by the sun, is a difficult sight to bear.  At one point, by late August, I was able to pull my farthest apple tree right up out of its hole because it had produced so few stable roots despite my daily attention.  The site was not ideal – clay, rocky, and the sun pattern too erratic.  This was one good case of the overanxious gardener's sweet dreams of the perfect slice of apple pie confronting the reality of Mother Nature.

    

Garden Digest

Daucus carota sativus

When you're an untrained gardener, you can find out very quickly that you don't always know what to do with an abundance of produce once you yank it out of the ground. This little gardening dilemma reminds me of our very first foray into planting, many years back, when we ended up with the perennial gardener's gift that just keeps giving, cucumbers – ten, twenty, thirty at a time, all ripe and just asking to be used, not wasted.  At that point, we had yet found that we liked cucumber water, so we stockpiled cucumber salad to the point where we were beginning to see green.

The opposite became true with my first attempt with carrots.  In this case, I already knew the more the better – I completely loved the taste and texture of roasted carrots and the kids asked for them raw all the time.  I could eat a side of soft butter roasted Imperator-style (long and slender) carrots anytime, anyplace...add a dice of garlic, maybe a splash of lemon, brown sugar, even orange juice.

Carrots, though, as the seed package suggested, need deep, rich, loose, easy-draining soil...difficult to find in many of our local clay and ridge line backyards.  So I chose a three foot box to plant in, loosely soiled with added nutrients.  Reduced to such a small space to plant, I felt like Bugs Bunny and got a little greedy I wanted my own steady supply of roasted carrots so badly. I over-indulged on the suggested seed spacing, packing them in tight rows too close together.  This became obvious once some of the seedlings started to sprout so I thinned them out, as suggested.  To no real avail.  The poor little five-inchers were eventually harvested (all three tiny batches!), and heck, they did

taste good, but it dawned on me that there are as many little tricks of the trade in gardening as any other trade or art.  To get my pan full of oven roasted foot-long carrots, next time this green thumb might have to head to the grocery store.

Garden Digest

It's easy for anybody to get bit by the gardening bug.  I can remember the dynamic rewards I felt a couple of summers ago when I built my own split rail fence on the back hill – in an opening under the bounding oak canopy – and planted along the bottom rail my first raspberries, blueberries and strawberries. Nearer the house, placed out on the brick terrace, I potted lettuce and tomatoes, wild grasses and flowers, and some boxed carrots.  Eventually, inside a newly constructed raised stone planting bed, cucumbers, a failed attempt at potatoes, and some – what I came to find out – very deer-edible flowers.



It's a bug you get bitten by because fruits, veggies and flowers are all essentially sunshine in solid form. In gardening we have to follow the gift that is the pattern of the sun, and although we know we need moisture for the process to bear fruit, so to speak, the garden hose is a masterful substitute if need be.  Before you know it, that sunshine is made plump and sweet and we see how the natural cycle of things works once again.

There is the work of the spade and de-weeding claw, the disappointment of the failed seed, the morning that, just as you expect to harvest your much labored-over tomatoes, you find out the roving deer herd has had the same thoughts of bounty and beats you to them by an hour or two. And yet it is that very story of the

triumph of that little bundle of sunshine over the obstacles of pests, poor
weather, or the hungry mouths of rabbits, that builds the memories of the garden.  It is a deep, rich story and born out of our shared genetic heritage.

Raspberry Fact:  Raspberries actually belong to the genus Rubus, which is part of the Rose family.  Cultivated raspberries have been derived mainly from two species, the wild red raspberry and black raspberry.  There are over 200 species of raspberries.