The Cucumbers are Coming

Now that we're past the Fourth of July it is time for gardens and their hoped for bounty to take front stage.

So I've got cucumbers!  OK they're not the prettiest cucumbers I've ever seen. And they are not enough for pickles, but it is good to finally have freshly picked produce to define the day's dinner. We've had green beans for three weeks. Picked three tomatoes -- OK I cheated on this one and bought a pot tomato plant with a couple of fruits already set. They've ripened at least two weeks ahead of the Early Girl. Mighty tasty, too. The other vines are coming along. My favorite heirloom Brandywine has lots of baby tomatoes growing toward their one-pound harvest size. Summer squash are taking their time getting going. Only have male blossoms.  Humph.

Weather seems to be cooperating-- finally. Not boiling hot, suitably humid, with an inch of rain once a week or so. I do water the garden.. from the uneven diameter of those cucumbers, I could probably to a better job.

There are lots more coming. And the Clear Lake Farmer's Market, held every Saturday from 9 to noon in the Surf parking lot, is a good source for goodies as well.

I'll put up some pickles.  If you get a hankering for an easy to make small batch pickle here's a different and delicious recipe from my newest book  Stirring the Pot with Benjamin Franklin.

Franklin famously wrote of the importance of pickles to healthy eating
in Poor Richard's Almanac that
" Squeamish stomachs cannot eat without pickles." 
And the corollary that "Hunger is the best pickle." 
This easy to make recipe covers both situations. 

The recipe from the 1700s combines fresh ginger root with
sliced cucumbers for a tasty pickle. Put into sterilized jars
(you can use your dishwasher for this) and store in
the refrigerator for a month or so.. if they last that long.

Ben Franklin's Cucumbers Pickled in Slices

3 cucumbers, about 8 inches in length

1 medium onion

2 tablespoons salt

1 1/4 cups apple cider vinegar or white while vinegar

1/4 teaspoon ground mace

1/2 teaspoon black peppercorns

One piece of fresh ginger root, about 2 inches by 1/2 inch, peeled and cu into thin matchsticks. 

Wash the cucumbers and cut them into slices about 1/8 inch thick. Peel the onion, cut in half lengthwise, and then cut into 1/8-inch-thick slices. Layer the cucumber and onion slices in a non-reactive bowl, sprinkling salt between the layers. Cover and let stand in a cool place for 2 hours. 

Drain off the accumulated juices. Pour the vinegar over the vegetables and continue to let stand in a cool place for another 4 hours. 

Drain the vinegar into a saucepan, add the mace and peppercorns, and bring to a boil. Divide the cucumbers and sliced fresh ginger between two hot, sterilized pint canning jars. Carefully pour the boiling vinegar over the cucumbers. Put lids and screw bands on the jars and let stand in a cool place for 2 or 3 days, shaking occasionally. As the original 1717 recipe said: "In two or three days they will be fit to eat." Store in the refrigerator for up to a month. 

Makes 2 pints. 

Copyright 2018 Rae Katherine Eighmey  All rights reserved 

And for tips on growing good cucumbers, this link to Good Housekeeping has some tips and a list of seeds to look for to plant next year.

Chicken Salad with the Entire Garden Pea and Spinach Harvests on One Plate and Rain... Rain.. and yet More Rain

First day of Summer and yet more raindrops decorate my window. 

At this point I look at the rain gauge, dump it out, share my reading with the other gauge-keepers on our corner, and try to put the amounts out of my mind.  3.3 --- 2.1 --- 2 --- .7 (wa-hoo under an inch!) and 2. All in the past week.  One good thing, the Lake is going into the season very full!

We've been more fortunate than many. Farm fields and basements have been flooded out. Here the ground is soggy.  Large mushrooms are popping up, but they're not morels so I'm ignoring them. The grass grows to beat the band when the sun does shine. And parts of the vegetable garden is thriving. Tomatoes and cucumbers are setting fruit. Green beans are blooming. Pole beans are climbing. The squash is still a bit slow. Then there are the peas and spinach.  More about them in a bit.

It has been a wet and very strange year. After a relatively dry winter we had 30 inches of snow in late March and APRIL!  The product of three blizzards with sustained 30 mph winds and even stronger gusts. I swear I shoveled out the same 4-foot drift a dozen times... maybe even a baker's dozen times. The extraordinarily late spring has delayed a great deal around the lake.

The dock installers were working 7-day weeks with very long hours to get docks set up before the Memorial Day start of the season. Unusually high temperatures in mid-May and into June with heat indexes in the 100s came next. And just as the dock crews were almost finished with just a few to go, the wall cloud rolled over the lake tearing out docks and shredding boat lift covers, upending some boats, and off the lake uprooting trees in city Park and along the north shore. Today on the first day of summer the weather seems like fall. We have a chilly mist, driving wind, white caps for a generally dreary day where no one can do any outdoor work.

So now the peas and spinach

Back to the snowy spring. The garden was too cold and wet to put peas and spinach in the ground. In fact it was under feet of snow when I usually plant. So I decided to plant some in pots in the garden.  They came up fairly well.  The crop was small. Last week. when the heat index was 103 I decided it was too hot to cook. So I thawed out some grilled chicken, harvested the entire pea crop -- about 1/4 cup and entire spinach crop  -- about 1 cup -- and tossed together a light supper.

It was just the meal we needed to dream of normal summer days. Temperatures in the 80s. Low humidity.  Light rain showers ONLY overnight.

On the plate: Chicken Salad with fresh peas, spinach and cucumbers drizzled with balsamic dressing, deviled eggs, and French bread with what I'm calling "So-So Fruit" Compote

Quick Chicken Salad

2 cups diced cooked chicken
1/2 cup diced celery
1/4 cup dried cranberries
1/4 cup pecan halves
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
1 cup (more or less) light mayonnaise

Combine all ingredients. Chill for at least  half an hour before serving. Will keep in the fridge for two days.


Just like this season's weather sometimes the peaches and pineapple are not what you think they are when you get them home... So here's the recipe for:

"So-So Fruit" Compote 
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup water
1 2-inch sprig fresh rosemary
1 tablespoon cilantro leaves

one peach, peeled, stoned and cut into roughly 1/8 pieces
1/2 - 3/4 cup fresh pineapple chunks
1/4 - 1/2  cup pitted fresh cherries

Make a syrup combining the sugar and water in a medium saucepan. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until the sugar is completely dissolved. Add the rosemary and cilantro. Continue cooking for about 5 minutes. Remove from heat and cover. Set aside to cool.  When ready to make the compote, remove the rosemary and cilantro leaves. Add fruit to syrup and pulse with an immersion blender until the fruit is in very small pieces, but stop before you have a puree. Pour mixture into a skillet and cook over medium heat, stirring frequently until the compote is thickened. Will keep in the fridge for up to two weeks. Good on bread, or ice cream.

An Iowa March --It Was the Day the Pizza Delivery Needed to Stay Home

Official Total --16 inches
Kind of Snow -- Heavy and Wet
Wind -- East at 20 to 25 mph
Date -- March 24, 2017

I had wondered when the first days of March were warm and sunny.  As it seemed to be "coming in as a lamb," would the month "go out like a lion?"  Consider the question answered.

It started snowing about 10 Friday night and ended about 3 Saturday afternoon. The snow was going by horizontally. Drifts?.... You bet!  We have a couple of five footers, some four, and a whole bunch of three foot ones.  As you can see, it will be a while before we can grill. The snow is really heavy.  I'll wait for Mother Nature to diminish it by some melting.  Thanks to daylight savings time and the springtime higher angle of the sun, the shoveled off driveway was almost dry by sunset Saturday.  This morning it is still chilly -- predicted high 33, but it is taking its time getting there. Tomorrow rain!

That's Iowa.

The lake is still frozen although the area of open water now stretches out several hundred feet from city sea wall and around past South Shore Inn. The remaining ice was turning black at the end of last week. Hard to tell now that it is covered with snow.  I sure wouldn't be walking out on it.

As every Iowan knows that you don't wait until the snow stops before clearing walks and driveways.  We were out shoveling four times. So... what's a person to eat in between rounds of shoveling?

I pulled an old family favorite recipe and made it with refrigerator basics. Usually served on toasted English muffin halves, foolishly I hadn't quite believed the forecast for a foot plus, so had to make do with hamburger buns.  Still mighty tasty!

In a Pinch Pizza

8 ounces grated cheddar cheese
8 slices of crispy cooked bacon, crumbled or chopped
24 pimento filled olives, sliced
4 tablespoons mayonnaise
8 English muffins split in half and toasted

Combine the cheese, bacon, olives and mayonnaise. Lightly toast English muffin halves. Spread the mixture on the muffins and run under the broiler until the mixture bubbles.

NOTE: You can add more or less bacon or olives depending on what you have and what you like. Leftover mixture can be stored in the refrigerator for up to a week.

And if you missed CBS Sunday Morning's coverage of the Color the Wind Kite Festival aired this morning, here's the link. https://www.cbsnews.com/video/go-fly-a-kite/


Copyright 2018  All rights reserved, Rae Katherine Eighmey

Images of Two March Days and Irish Soda Bread

Last Year -- March 7, 2017

This morning March 16, 2017

Yup! Still a lot of ice. 

Last year, 2017, was one of the shortest ice-ins ever here on North Iowa's Clear Lake. This year has been more normal, at least from an ice perspective. Ice-in was December 8, 2017. This morning there is a wide swath of open water over along the north shore from the sea wall around nearly to the Redstone on North Shore Drive and almost to South Shore Inn on South Shore Drive. We have a stout northeast breeze today and it will be cloudy with some kind of precipitation so probably not a lot of melting will happen. 

Winter started off with a real old fashioned cold snap. Temperatures were down below zero for the highs, not to mention the overnight lows in the minus 20s. We've had more ice storms than I remember from past winters and a few medium-sized snows, a couple of blizzard condition days, and at one point the snow was literally blowing sideways. All in all, not a terrible winter.  Folks who summer up here will have a fair number of sticks and maybe even a few branches to pick up come opening-up weekend. 

To celebrate the possible coming of spring and days ahead when daffodils will finally emerge from what is now solidly frozen ground, OH! and St. Patrick's Day -- here's my favorite Irish Soda Bread. It is the kind of treat that goes well with warm day egg salad to downright cold corned beef! No matter what Mother Nature will bring, it is a bread sure to please. 

The craggy surface of traditional Irish Soda Bread 

is perfect for dunking in gravy or spreading with butter and jam. 

 Rae's Irish Soda Bread

1 tablespoon vinegar

1 cup milk

2 cups flour

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt (optional)

1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Put the vinegar in a glass measuring cup and add milk to make one cup. Set aside for a couple of minutes until it sours. In a medium mixing bowl combine the flour, baking soda, salt if using, and cream of tartar. Pour in about 3/4 cup of the soured milk and mix quickly with a fork. Then begin to knead gently to form a rough, slightly damp dough. You may need to add a bit more milk, a tablespoon at a time. DO NOT OVER KNEAD. This is a roughly textured dough. If you over knead the dough will be tough. Form the dough into a circle about 6-inches in diameter. Flatten to about an inch and a half thick. Place on a lightly greased baking sheet. With a serrated knife make an "x" cut almost halfway through the dough. Bake until the bread is browned and sounds hollow when you tap it. Cool before slicing.  

Copyright 2018, Rae Katherine Eighmey. All rights reserved. 

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