Tawny

Sorry for the radio silence this week. I spent all of Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday patching through a last-minute flurry of interviews and edits on an article that has lingered, somewhat ominously, over my desk for a month. So nice, yesterday, to hear pleased words from my editor, walk outside and let out a giant Paaaaahhhhhhhh...
I felt like one of those self-inflating life rafts.

I've been barely keeping up with the garden, these past few weeks. Really, just keeping up with the harvesting, and trying very hard to keep up with preserving. I'm doing pretty well, but I just got the September issue of Bon Appetit, in which there are all sorts of interesting transitional recipes, AND I'm realizing I've eaten zucchini three times a week for a long time, AND right now I have gorgeous heads of bok choy, mustard greens, and napa cabbage in the garden. Poof. How did that happen? While I was hacking away at deadlines, the crops I planted the first week of July just grew... and grew.

Meanwhile, the flowers...

And canning-breaks. I'm sure some freelance writers go see a movie when they're feeling burned out, but not I. Tuesday night I turned a $5 case of day-old 'maters (yeah, I still have to buy some 'maters, to can...) into seven quarts of stewed tomatoes, and 6 half-pints of tomato paste. 
Last year, I figured out a big canned-tomato short cut. Instead of doing peeled whole tomatoes in water (the PEELING, the ploppy JAR-FILLING...) I started just throwing washed, cored tomatoes into my giant three-gallon pot, mashing them layer-by-layer as they cooked. My pot will fit a whole case of tomatoes this way. Then, I let it heat up to a boil, and stir until all the tomatoes are soggy and broken-down. Then, I throw in a heaping tablespoon of garlic powder, salt, and lots of dried basil, oregano, and thyme. I can seven quarts' worth of this tasty slurry-- a nice, full water-bath canner makes me happy-- and process for 40 minutes.
But meanwhile, I let the slurry continue cooking down, at medium heat, another hour or so. I let it cook and cook and cook, until it thickens down into tomato paste. And then, at a quarter to ten, I can the paste in half-pint jars. 

A lot of times, the economy of canning seems a little uncertain to me, especially when I'm canning purchased produce. But even taking into account the $3 boxes of canning jar lids, this little project was definitely a frugal enterprise. A 28-oz can of grocery store tomatoes is, what? $1.19 on sale? Yuppers.

Swiss chard, arugula, scallions.

So, as the summer assignment crush finally fades away, I am deeply looking forward to getting back to outdoor pursuits. Walking around the yard yesterday, after I unplugged, I was amazed at how late-summer tawny everything is looking. The birches always lose their leaves early; the New England asters are inching up above the top rail of the back fence; the goldenrods are swingin'. My neighbor Jody has beach ball-sized pumpkins looming orange under the slumped mildewy leaves in his garden. Wednesday, I dug up one of my Kennebec white potato plants, and was AMAZED. Last year, my potatoes yielded so poorly, and the taters were rubbery and oddly sweet. This year, just that one plant yielded 12 pounds of potatoes-- three of 'em were damn near guinea pig-sized. WOOT.

It's a good season to be heading into, indeed. 
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At the fair

Happy Friday, everyone!
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Redundant

Let me warn you: this here blog is about to get redundant. It's food preservation season. I haven't even started doing anything with tomatoes yet, and still I have bottles of hot sauce cooling on the windowsill,

...and blanched eggplant in the freezer,

...and this bouquet of calendula, which I dried in the oven. I grilled and dried a bunch of jalapenos, too, and blanched and froze broccoli and more green beans. 

And, oh my goodness, this was last Friday, when it was pouring rain and the only occupation I had available (other than cleaning the house or caulking molding or other such nonsense-- was to suit up and harvest, weather-be-damned, in order to earn the exquisite pleasure of working in the kitchen while it rains.
That has got to be my very favorite thing about fall.
So that's what I did, last Friday. I shredded and froze zucchini, and made pesto and curry paste, and seven quarts of vegetable stock. That felt so good. Even if I can't get started on tomatoes yet (though they're coming) I can get all these other little bits and bobs crossed off.
Yesterday I went to Binghamton with Patrick, to shop, and I found, among other things, half-price lavender and alliums and hyssop and yarrow, and a pair of sturdy cargo pants in chocolate brown for three dollars (new gardening pants!). I've been working at clearing out that weedy garden edge, and now that I've purchased some things to plant there, once the job is done, I'm finding myself full-up with motivation.
And with a projected high temp of only 73, I better get myself out there...

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Garden scenes

The garden is starting to get that late-season slumpy look. It seems early, but then, it always seems early. As much as I look forward to fall, it's always bittersweet to watch the wild green thicket of summertime growth fade away. Everywhere there are dying zucchini leaves and spent calendula blossoms, yellowing string beans and potato rows inching closer to the harvest. 

This morning was foggy, and so the row of Swiss chard drew me in like a shelf full of old mercury glass. They show the most beautiful colors on those wet, dim mornings. Pewter, plum, and platinum mixed in with the reds and greens. 

The calendula is looking really nice. It's something I planted with the intent of harvesting and drying the flowers to use in bath salts, lotions, and other gifty handmade things like that. But the harvest, in this case, would mean cutting all those happy orange flower-heads, so I procrastinate. Also, I want enough of the heads to stay and ripen seed where they stand, so they'll replant themselves.

Slumpy.

Fennel. I am dreaming of a roasted vegetable tart featuring fennel, onions, potatoes, and cabbage, with lots of dill sprinkled in. 

Over where I grew beets in the early summertime, I've planted rows of bok choy, broccoli raab, and curly mustard. All is doing so splendidly. I love fall greens.

I finally picked the first of our cucumbers last week. Surely a record for lateness, but I'm still happy to have them. After a few rounds of cuke and tomato salad, into the pickle pot they will go. 
In other parts of the garden, the raspberries are done fruiting (save for one or two soft, magnificent gems hidden in the shady centers of the rows, which I've delighted in finding, one by one...). I'm launching a campaign against the weed-choked far edge of the garden (the edge you very conveniently can't see in any of the photos...) this week, a campaign involving scrap lumber and long screws and end-of-season-sale perennials. We'll see how it goes; it will surely be a lot of digging. But. My summer deadlines are met, at last, and with the cooler, crisper days I am itching to get back out there and make tracks.

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The Puppy Frolic

God, that second-to-last picture just slays me. Look at those jowls flap! 
Del has been having a pretty good summer. He's enriched our life so much-- even when he wants to hang out by the kitchen window and watch squirrels while I am trying to get dinner made and beans blanched and zucchini shredded, all at once-- I remember this. After dinner is play time. Play time is Patrick's domain, because, call me a wuss, but I find even a very gentle and loving dog like Del scary in play mode. He snarls and huffs (at the toy, not at us) and jumps up with his very big toothy mouth fully engaged. He makes himself as wild and wolf-like as possible, for about three minutes, before he's spent his playtime energy for the day and goes back to his preferred armchair. I stand back and grin from ear-to-ear.
Such a good boy.
August is shaping up to be pretty busy for Patrick, which is good, because it's shaping up to be canning time for me. It's incredible-- and admittedly slightly baffling to me-- that I get nostalgic for the sight and smell of simmering-down tomato sauce. But I do. It'll be awhile before I'm canning garden tomatoes, as they're finally starting to blush, bit by bit-- but of course, once you pick that first ripe one off a plant, the rest of the cluster seems to ripen overnight. 
In addition to tomato sauce, paste, puree, bloody mary mix, salsa, and stewed tomatoes (phew!), I want to can a ton of bread and butter pickles, escabeche, hot sauce, roasted red peppers, and veggie stock. So I'm a little impatient to get going here, a little over-eager for chilly fall nights home alone canning and listening to Radio Lab. Man. How funny that that is my idea of a good time. Someone should make an introvert meme like this for canners.

I'd love to hang out, but I have to go sit in my house and can things...
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Home on the range

It's so nice, in many ways, to be home. It reminds me how much I love cooking-- really-- when we come back. Patrick had such a packed weekend, band-wise, and I stayed home about every minute I could, blanching and freezing and making pesto and going blueberry picking and buying more chickens.
That's right, these girls are new. After losing Pasty and Genevieve a few weeks ago, I'd been rolling around the idea of finding two hatch-year pullets to fill out the flock and keep us in eggs. I called the farm up the road. I wasn't too hopeful-- it was August, after all, and I was going to be picky about breed. This here homestead ain't no place for no newfangled red sexlink-- we like heritage breeds in red, buff, and stripey. But, lo and behold, they had two Rhode Island Reds born April 1st, and we could have them for $5 apiece.
Thus Rhonda (as in Vincent) and Reba (as in McEntire) have come to stay. They have caught on beautifully quickly, and Loretta, for her part, doesn't seem to mind them much. Surprisingly, SO surprisingly, Reba laid her first egg for us yesterday. First off, a chicken supposedly takes a month to adjust to new surroundings before settling in to laying; second, 16 weeks is young for a laying bird; and third, getting them gathered up from their old home and into my cat carrier was beyond traumatic, involving barking farm-dogs and lots of flurried running and squawking. And then the stuffing.
So I'll take it as a compliment that Reba's began laying already; she must approve of the coop.

In the meantime, we're still waiting for these guys to start laying... 

...and meanwhile, 'Retta's gone looking for friends in all the wrong places. Anybody want to write a dialogue for this photo?

And meanwhile, the garden is still looking great. My tomatoes are finally starting to blush, little by little; I will have cucumbers very soon, too. Winter squash and peppers are both not looking so hot at all-- probably the cooler summer is to blame for that. I really didn't mind having an average high of about 76 between June 1st and now, though, in trade for two bum crops. I finally have a slew of carrots that have made it past infancy, thanks to plastic mesh fencing I laid over the germinating rows. So galling to have lost multiple carrot plantings this year, since I've never had trouble before, and carrots are about the most time-consuming thing to replant, and replant, and replant... Le sigh. It is always, always something. 

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Nashville.

A word of advice: if you don't like country music, you might want to skip this post. We had a week steeped in Hank Williams and Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard, with the occasional Patsy Cline and Loretta Lynn sprinkled in for good measure. It was BLISSFUL.
In the beginning, though, there was naught but anticipation. This is what a 14-hour drive does to me, apparently:

But then, thrillingly, we were delivered. Sunday morning, we went to "church" (an early morning gospel show) at Robert's Western World on lower Broadway, and looking back at the pictures, it seems like we spent the whole week there. 

It is awesome. From 11am to 2am every day, you can walk in, find a comfy seat at the bar, order a PBR, and hear all those golden old country songs. Mama Tried. Jambalaya. Folsom Prison Blues. All the musicians were first-rate, everyone knew how to sing and how to perform and how to banter between songs. There is all manner of wonderful stuff on the walls, a pressed-tin ceiling, and a wall of shelving with cowboy boots for sale. And that mural... well...
We spent a lot of time on lower Broadway (the center of town, where all the honkytonks are) and it was so comforting to know we had a default activity-- if we ever found ourselves bored, or irritable, we could go sit at Robert's and be soothed.

We also found a fun blues club on Printer's Alley-- a nice change-of-pace from all the 3/4 time and drawly choruses, when we needed one.
During the day, we saw the city. It's tiny. Everything worth seeing downtown is concentrated around four square blocks; everything worth seeing in East Nashville is the same way. We visited Gruhn's Guitars on South 8th, which was Patrick's idea. There are fabric stores that make my heart pitter-patter, that feel spiritual... and I can only assume this here guitar store affected my sweetie in a similar fashion.

We went to the zoo, and the Tennessee State Museum. We got hand-dipped milkshakes and did a Civil War walking tour. I bought boots; Patrick got a beautiful Western shirt. I ate chicken and waffles and fried green tomatoes.
Inevitably, though, we found ourselves back at Robert's, staring into our beers. 

Just look at that sign. How could it not be good, with a sign like that? I ask you.

This was my favorite band of the week-- Rachael Hester and the Tennessee Walkers. The only complaint I will make about lower Broadway is this: there aren't enough female-fronted bands! I love Ring of Fire and Crazy Arms as much as the next hillbilly, but I want to hear You Ain't Woman Enough to Take my Man, too. Watching this band set up, noting the chick singer and the fiddle player and, oh my, is that Chris Scruggs on guitar? Oh my. I put a five in the tip jar and requested Faded Love, my very favorite Patsy cover. I may have gotten a little teary, but I swear that was the beer's fault.
Ahem. Where were we? Oh right. Tuesday night, we got a little fancied up, and I was able to take a picture of Patrick and I without him flipping the camera the bird. 

We went to F. Scott-- definitely the toniest place we ate all week. And then, the infamous Bluebird Cafe.

It was definitely an experience. It's as intimate as everyone tells you-- I took this shot from our table, I didn't have to zoom or anything. But what they don't tell you is while Robert's is a goofy pasture where the wannabe cowboys roam free-range, the Bluebird is essentially a music industry feedlot. The songs were all originals, but so thoroughly steeped in the shallow, pop-song style of corporate country music... well, it wasn't our scene. One had a refrain of Hey Ya'll Hey Ya'll. The performers were all really talented, but forced into the very narrow confines of what sells on country radio these days. Still, part of the well-rounded Nashville experience. We high-tailed it to Robert's immediately, and drowned our sorrows.
If it wasn't for Gillian Welch and Jason Isbell and Kacey Musgraves, I'd be convinced that country music is dead forever.
Anyway.
All too quickly, we came to our last night in town. How could this be? 
I felt so aligned with this town, even with all its cheeseball charm. I loved its neon signs and river view and walkability and adorable little bungalow neighborhoods. Patrick and I talked about staying another night-- "we've got another $109 for the room, right?"-- and we talked about having Del shipped to us in a mailing tube. And we talked about the day when I'm rich and famous and we can have an apartment here.

Sigh. We walked over to check out the Shelby Street bridge over the Cumberland, for pedestrians only, which ended up being a dreamy-perfect swan song. Look at that damn view.

And then, of course, the photo shoot. 

Damn him! Good thing he's cute, or there'd be trouble.

And then, one last shot of Lower Broadway at night, and home to bed. 
What a fabulous trip. Our hotel room was awesome, we had HGTV, we only ate one bad meal, it only rained a little, and in the meantime, we had the city to explore, and each other. 
And now I'm home, back to facing down deadlines and blanching green beans and loving my Delmer-dog (who missed us terribly, but definitely bonded with my parents). It's a good life, but so nice to get away ever once-in-awhile. I left a piece of my heart in an empty PBR can atop a barstool at Robert's.
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