i have been meaning to roar about this for months, and while i know what i’m about to tell you might not come in handy this very moment (that is, unless you live far, far away from me and you actually do have an abundance of fresh grown chiles that you need to take care of right now) i’mma give it to you anywayz…

back sometime in august my chile bed exploded. eighteen or so plants dripping at once with teardrops and baubles in a myriad of greens, yellows and reds. there is only so much fresh eating and pan-frying of chiles one chile-head tigress and her chile-head husband can do. we had fire mouths for the entire month!  the red ones were hung and dried for winter cooking of course. but because our season is short many of my chiles never reach full ripeness.

not willing to let even one hard earned chile go to waste – and not too fond of throwing them in the freezer either (am i missing something – what are they good for?) this is what i did last summer:

i know, i know, when they’re pickled they’re not as pretty, but they are good!  try them in a grilled cheese sandwich, in scrambled eggs, or anywhere else your little chile-head heart desires.

…and if you, like me, are waiting once again to have an abundance of homegrown, or neighboring farmer grown chiles that you need to take care of, pin this – ’cause you’ll need it later.

it’s february and i’m up to my old tricks again. i have no idea if you peeps are as gaga over indian preserved pickles as i am, but i’m thinking like my absolute fave vegetable kohlrabi, if not today, it will eventually have it’s day.

meanwhile, i can’t help it if i’m ahead of the curve. my mouth puckers at the mere thought of an indian fermented citrus pickle. all at once they are hot, sour, salty and sometimes sweet. unlike your run-o’-the-mill north african preserved lemons, they should not be rinsed before eaten. and, unlike them, they can make a meal out of nothing more than yogurt and plain rice. but i like them most of all as an intense condiment served on the side of a curry or even a quick vegetable stir-fry. if you have an indian pickle in you fridge i guarantee your kitchen will be void of boring one-dish meals, they are so flavor packed they could most certainly perk up an old leather shoe.

not that i’m suggesting your cooking tastes like old leather shoes mind you.

i’ve settled on a basic recipe with which i play each winter. it contains equal amounts of salt and sugar (although the sugar goes unnoticed in the finished bite) turmeric for color and earthiness, and a quarter cup of ground chiles. i grind up my homegrown and dried cayennes, which if truth be told i grow specifically for indian pickles. they of course render my pickles mouth-explodingly hot, but you could be a bit more subtle with yours and use a milder chile powder or lighten up the load. i do suggest you go somewhat hot though to get the full effect.

i’m particularly excited about this batch because i’m using meyer lemons from the lovely lemon ladies, and a typical bengali spice combo which is sometimes referred to as indian 5-spice. and with good reason, it’s ubiquitous in eastern india where it’s enjoyed in all manner of fish, vegetable and legume dishes. back home, i’ve found it hits all the right notes of exotic and familiar when introducing someone to indian flavors. it’s simply one part each of whole fennel, cumin, fenugreek, black mustard, and nigella seeds.

if i have peaked your interest over the last couple of winters, dear readers, with my endless roaring about indian fermented pickles but you have not quite taken the leap, i say, give this one a try! i think you’ll love it.

last year when i said I was going to attempt to grow more beans this gardening season, many of you were interested in doing just the same. well i did grow more beans and i am happy to report that i ended up with two full quarts each of dried yin yangs, jacob’s cattle, and tiger’s eye (changed to tigress’ eye around my digz). that equals twelve meals for a family of two – not bad!

all of the beans were of the bush variety, which means there was no need to tie each plant to a trellis. why make more work i say? the seeds went directly into the ground the second week of june and didn’t need much except for a bit of watering during the first couple of weeks. one twelve foot row produced approximately one quart of dried beans.

yes, i know you just did the math, there are eight rows there. the two exotic looking rows in the middle are black garbanzos. they were, apparently, a little too exotic for my new england growing season. that experiment didn’t go so well. there was just one other caveat in my bean growing adventure; bean-lovin’ deer! the bed you see above was one of two – the deer devoured the other one in a bean eating frenzy one fateful july night. i woke up to a sea of trampled, beanless stems. ugh!

the best part of growing your own beans, other than of course, eating the most fresh, juiciest and plump-when-you-cook-’em beans you could possibly eat is that they are pretty stress free to harvest. i just let mine dry on the vine as they say, up until the middle of september. then i plucked off all of the dried pods and threw them, by type, into brown paper bags. they can sit around like this all snug in their fall-looking pods until whenever the mood strikes you. you can do a lot at one time, or just enough for a meal. you can drink wine while you do it (my fave way) and listen to good tunes. you can tell your significant other that if he wants dinner he better get his paws on those pods, you can even have a bean shucking party. there are plenty of ways to get dem’ beans shucked, and no hurry to do it either – you have all winter! (unless of course you want to write a blog post about it and you need to find out your total yield and take photos).

so next season, grows some beans for winter! i know i am.

it’s no secret i’m a hothead. i love me my chiles and those of you in more hot & dry climes may not know it, but this year the northeast, and more specifically for me, the berkshires, had a damn good chile year. that’s not particularly easy to come by in the short – and usually wet – season we call summer.  these juicy little hotties burning up my paw above were the prize from my garden’s chile patch. red hot cherries! perfect for homemade sriracha.

this is how i do it:

is there anyone out there still dealing with end of season tomatoes? i just used up the last of mine in the best tomato paste i have ever tasted. i ain’t lyin’, it’s roar-worthy.

i know i’m not the only one to find myself in the unwieldy dinnertime predicament of needing a tablespoon of paste here, two tablespoons there. half the time i end up omitting it all together because the store bought stuff is nothing to write about. for the past couple of tomato seasons i was set on making some paul bertolli, italian grandma type number. you know, the kind that calls for eighty pounds or more of crushed and pulpy san marzanos spread across a well-worn, nay, ancient cotton sheet, held taught by a quadrant of gnarly old olive trees and basking for days in the fig-scented mediterranean breeze.

not.

yet anyway.

in a frenzy to find new ways to use up almost too-old tomatoes i found a wonderful tomato paste recipe over at gilt taste. i was desperate enough with my tomatoes-on-the-verge to give paste making a go, sans any previous romantic notions.

other than doubling the recipe i didn’t veer from it at all. i froze mine in ice cube trays – approximately 2 tablespoons per tray. they didn’t quite pop out, i had to use a knife around the sides and get a little jiggy with it. but eventually they came out and were placed in a freezer bag for said dinner time predicaments. if you have small jars or plastic containers that can hold a couple of tablespoons even better. just take them out individually for use.

there’s no need to recreate a perfect recipe, so please consider this a public service announcement. if you’ve still got tomatoes hanging around your digz, follow this link to francis lam’s perfect new world tomato paste recipe. i highly recommend it!

pawnote:
in an effort to fully disclose and still offer up a pretty photo, please know that i used mostly amish paste tomatoes for this, with a couple of those little red heirlooms up there thrown in.

yes, yes, i’m still alive!

it’s been over two months since last we spoke and there’s really nothing to say other than, when you have 110,000 people over for the weekend for a bit of music and fun, things get buzy.

photo bennett sell-kline

not to mention the full month absence from my berkshire garden, and subsequent avalanche of tomatoes, chiles, all kinds-o’-roots, greens, beans, corn, herbs threatening to seed, and impending early october frost all waiting to greet me upon, or quite soon after, my arrival. whew!

there’s only so much one tigress can do.

even with all of that hoopla going on betwixt my garden fence, there was no question that my first self-inflicted order was, SAVE THE TOMATOES!

i know roasting tomatoes and freezing them for later may not be a new idea for the savvy preservers out there. but it’s a very good one. and one that i would not think about skipping when saving my garden tomatoes. plus it’s dangerously easy, uses up a lot of tomatoes and the finished product is sweet, concentrated tomato flavor. great for pastas, bruschetta, adding to a pot of beans, winter stew, or egg scramble.

before i jump into my version inspired by my way too long ago trip to istanbul, let me say that the basic version that’s been floating around the interwebs for years now, the one of olive oil with a dusting of salt and a scant sprinkling of sugar is nothing to scoff at either. so go simple, or go daring like i do below.

just when i felt the need to confess my lack of jar filling over the past few weeks over here i had an epiphany in the kitchen. well, not quite an epiphany but you get the point – i put something in jars.

we’ve been making a lot of quick stir-frys over the last couple of weeks, having found ourselves with a lot of greens and a desire to cook them up as fast as possible and get outta the kitchen (yes, ’cause we can’t stand the heat). on one such night i saw M searching around the refrigerator shelves exclaiming, “this stir-fry needs a crunchy pickle, what do we have?”

i was like (ahem) ”nada.”

peeps, i have a reputation to uphold, and even though you dear readers are the forgiving type (and M is too of course) there is just something wrong in my world if my husband comes out of the fridge or larder  pickleless!

so you know, i went out to the garden and deftly slayed 3 pounds of kohlrabi, then went down into the cellar and got my paws on an empty half gallon jar. this is what i did:

so you see, pickles, quick!

i am really excited about the two books that are off my larder shelf this month! actually they haven’t even been on my larder shelf yet because they are two brand new preserving books that have come into my paws recently that i just can’t put down. aside from the fact that they are awesome preserving books just in time for preserving season, i have a special affinity to both authors.

in celebration of these two wonderful authors, and to bring more awareness to the cause that i am giving to each month in my off my larder shelf series, i’m giving away a copy of each!

if you don’t win, that doesn’t mean that you should not have these books. it means that you should order one or both from my amazon larder because a) these books are awesome and b) just by buying from my amazon larder you are giving to a very important cause!

first i’m going to tell you all about the books, and then i’m going to tell you what to do for a chance to win!

ok, i told you about the books and the lovely authors. the second reason why i’m giving away these two books is because give-aways always generate activity. and i am going to selfishly use it to bring awareness to a cause i believe in strongly. i support the humane society of the untied states efforts in correcting the terrible conditions that factory-farmed animals are forced to live and die in each day. each month i’ve pledged to contribute and match the 6% amazon associates fee that comes my way from your purchases through my amazon larder page, and i guarantee a minimum of $50 contribution each month, even if my associates fee and match does not equal $50.

amazon associates receive their fees at the end of the month for the time period two months prior. that means i’ve recently received info regarding march sales. my march associates fee plus my matching of that amount does not equal $50. today i have contributed my minimum guarantee of $50. please go to my amazon larder page for full details on how your purchasing dollars can contribute.

oh…you want to know how you can be the one lucky winner of both of these must have preserving books right?  tell me in the comments section below your thoughts on factory farms. i want to start a dialogue, i want to know what you dear readers think. is it something you are aware of, do you make choices in your life and meals surrounding these issues? or do you not think much about it? all answers welcome and the winner will be chosen by the random number generator this coming sunday. all comments must be posted by midnight saturday the 30th.

off my larder shelf: a flavor of the month shout-out on books & kitchen things. why?  ’cause your
purchase on my amazon larder contributes to a very important cause and I’ll match your contribution. go!

upon learning to grow my own food, i’ve found as time goes on, that it gets even more exciting. particularly if you try to adhere more-or-less to the locavore way of eating. no, i’m not trying to say i don’t indulge in the succulence of a texan grapefruit in the winter, or a wayward avocado even. i mean, hell, it’s not like i can eventually grow them myself up here in new england. but life takes a wonderful turn when one really starts to think consciously about what they consume. the seasonal joy that comes when the first buds bloom, and the first signs of green pop in the vegetable garden is palpable. i love home preserves as much – or more – than the next cat to be sure, but there’s nothing like homegrown produce straight from the garden or neighboring farmer’s garden if you don’t have one yourself.

although we’ve had some wacky heatwave like temperatures recently, the end of may and first days of june have been the typical cool, wet weather familiar in the late days of spring here in the berkshires of MA. the vegetable garden is nowhere near the horn of plenty it will be a month from now. still, there’s some early blooming show stoppers.

like these neon orbs of lettuce. not for nothing, but if i happened to come upon a gang of whirling dervishes at a rave party, this would be them.

the kohlrabi are taunting me. peeps, you cannot guess how much i love kohlrabi. i will eat them big, i will eat them small, but mostly i will eat them all!

the hardy perennial herbs are raging too; bronze fennel, chives, mint, horseradish, lovage, sage, chervil, and this rather robust oregano.

the pea greens are finally floppy, trellises ready. the greens in between will be snipped for stir-frys, the others tied up and left to grow. english garden peas coming soon, in june!  there’s spring onions behind the whirling neon lettuce orbs – the larger allium bed is outside of the fence. in the back corner is broccoli, kale and future kraut.

and then there’s these mischievous little buggers. truth be told, i’ve not made tea with them once. they’re back every year multiplied by the 100′s I think. most dewy mornings their petals are flat and spread wide, all sun-shiny and bright looking they are. by dusk they look ornery. definitely up to no good. i love them.

what things are you (or your neighboring farmer) growing to eat?

there once was a tigress who inherited a rhubarb patch. she was very, very happy that her little house in the country came with it’s very own rhubarb patch. during that first winter, she imagined the many ways she would eat her rhubarb when the springtime came.

she would eat it in pies with strawberries, and upside down in cakes like the french do with apples. she would make jams and chutneys, and eat it stewed for breakfast drizzled with fresh cream. soon spring came, and with glee she made all of these things.

tigresses are industrious by nature, and that first spring-summer she was determined to let no stalk go to waste. for many days she went to her rhubarb patch in the late dawn or early eve and harvested. and harvested. and harvested.

by june her freezer was full of rhubarb, cut to one inch, blanched and stacked in zip-lock bags. rhubarb jams and chutneys lined her larder shelves, and she tried her paw at rhubarb relish, pickled rhubarb and rhubarb ketchup even (the ketchup a winner, pickled rhubarb and rhubarb relish, not so much).

she brought bags of rhubarb to the city and gave them to friends and friends of friends, with copies of rhubarb recipes tucked inside. she gave them to the english – they love rhubarb! even with all of those things, she never did harvest the entire rhubarb patch that first year, or any year after. goddess knows she tried.

6 years later and 6 years wiser, tigress has given up the notion (noble as it was) of harvesting the entire patch. but still, there’s late dawns, early eves, and sunday afternoons this may just like the last mays. there’s baking, canning and freezing, and bags brought down to the city.

tigress has come to believe that her rhubarb patch is a magical rhubarb patch. that no matter how much she pulls and chops and bakes and cans, there will always be more rhubarb. and why not i say?

the garden is full of magic. why not a never-ending rhubarb patch?