Post Produce: Calendula Lotion

Last summer the nice Korean family gardening across the path from our community plot grew masses of amazing golden flowers. I asked them what they were and he said that they were Calendula and added that they were good for the skin. This year I grew some and, remembering what my garden neighbor said, looked into the “good for the skin” thing. Calendula, it seems, is used in different healing balms, salves and lotions. After perusing a few recipes on the Internet I decided to take a shot at whipping something up from the dried flowers I’d saved from the garden for this month’s Post Produce.

 

The lotion would consist of only three ingredients: olive oil, beeswax, and dried Calendula flowers pulled from four or five inflorescences.

 

 

I started by adding the flowers to two tablespoons of olive oil and gently warming it on the stove. Taking it off the heat, I let it steep for about an hour and then strained the oil.

 

 

 

To melt the beeswax I first broke it into pieces. Beeswax is less brittle and more sticky than candle wax, I noticed.

 

 

I started with six grams from my thirty gram bar.  To melt the concoction I put the oil and wax inside a clean can—not a tuna can!—in a small pan of simmering water and stirred with a wooden stick. When it looked like the mixture was still pretty liquidy and not so lotiony I kept adding small amounts of wax.

 

 

Eventually I had added the entire bar. The next step I do not recommend. While I was lifting the can out of the pot with tongs I bumped the edge and splattered the oil and wax on the stove, counter, my shoe and the rug. As I was scraping and cleaning up the mess I realized there was too much wax in the mixture making it brittle so I added another tablespoon of oil, carefully placed the can in the oven on a piece of foil and alternately warmed and stirred.

 

Eventually, after gradually adding small amounts of oil it appeared to be maintaining an acceptable consistency.  I scooped it into a small jar and tried rubbing a tiny bit into my hands. There appear to be some small bits of wax yet, but they smoothed out and didn’t remain a problem. This stuff is really waxy, though. After applying it I did have to wipe my palms so I could handle things without gumming them up.

 

It was an interesting exercise and I ended up with some nice-smelling if odd textured lotion. Were I to do it again I’d definitely use a recipe with exact proportions. The Calendula flowers themselves were ridiculously easy to grow from seed. In fact, I noticed some seedlings springing up around the mature plants late this past summer. Whether or not I make anything with them, I do intend to grow them again.

The Garden in November

The garden is ready for winter, as far as I’m concerned. The last big project this year was to reshape the layout of  last year’s half of the plot. I had originally created beds running north/south which resulted in them also running up and down the slight slope rather than across. As a result I had to be extra careful when watering in newly seeded rows. If it rained hard, the water pooled and ran down the row dislodging the carefully placed seeds. As beds became close to empty this fall I worked on digging and shoveling to reorient them east/west and thus across the slope so the tops could be more level. I also made the beds a full three feet wide. Previously I had limited their width to whatever I could easily step over. Since they ran the full length of the garden I didn’t want to have to walk all the way around one to get to the next row. In the end that didn’t prove to be an advantage since it was more the height of the plants that determined what I could step over. I drafted a fairly accurate representation of the previous and new bed layouts in AutoCAD and it appears that we gained a bit of plantable area.

 

After the new beds were established I dumped a load of partially composted leaves on each one and roughly spaded it into the top eight inches or so of soil. There is a good amount of clay present in the garden so we take advantage of any opportunity to add 0rganic matter and loosen it up. I left the surface rough to slow water running off it through the fall and winter. Finally, a thick layer of leaf mulch was spread on all the beds and paths. Fortunately there are still a few living plants or the garden would look like a dozen unmarked graves.

 

Last year I made a note in my garden notebook to ignore the typical predicted first frost date of somewhere around the last week of September or first week of October. I sort of heeded that by planting some fall crops that would take me past that date, but I held off doing a cover crop because by the time I thought of it I was sure it wouldn’t have time to grow. While we may have had a light frost up there, we’ve been nowhere near a real freeze for over a month past the expected dates. I kind of wish I’d taken a chance and put in some buckwheat anyway, but at the time I hadn’t yet done the bed rearranging. Next year I definitely plan to do a cover crop of something.

 

The biggest veggies still surviving and producing are the Brussels sprouts. They’re going to make an appearance on the co-conspirator’s Thanksgiving table. My note for next year is to plant them a lot farther apart.

A few parsnips are still in the ground but I pulled one to cook some time this week. We tossed one in when we roasted a chicken recently and it was wonderful. One aim of loosening the soil is so that we can grow better root crops. The parsnips did OK, but we had a lot of forked carrots. There are some more unusual root crops I want to try next year as well.

 

Off in the corner where I planted cilantro that promptly flowered and went to seed is…cilantro! I thought I had harvested all the seed to use in curries and such, but apparently I missed some. The volunteer plants are growing much better than the potted plant I bought last spring so next year I’m just going to direct-sow this crop. I’m one of those people who thinks cilantro tastes like soap. I used to loathe it but now I merely dislike it. I’m working toward tolerating it and perhaps one day actually liking it.

Another herb that is still going like crazy is the French sorrel. It’s too bad because I never did find many uses for it this season. I had no idea it would get this big, nearly smothering the winter savory I planted it next to. I don’t even know if I should be using the big leaves or only the tender young ones. If you grow this one, let me know how you use it.

The winter savory was used at least a little. It went into bean dishes and I believe I used it with chicken once. It kind of reminds me of rosemary which I’ve never had any luck growing. Hopefully it will make it through the winter and come back next season.

I suppose I could be doing some season extending things like a little coldframe or some row cover, but what with rearranging the layout—a process that took multiple sessions of work over several weeks—it looked like it would be a logistical pain in the neck and a bit of overkill. Maybe next year I’ll experiment more with fall and early winter crops, but for this season I really feel like I’m ready to be done.  Now to start really planning next year’s garden! 

Lima Beans

This year I grew lima beans. On purpose. They're also known as butter beans or butter peas.

I can't remember if they were seeds I purchased myself or got from my garden guru. They were called 'White Dixie Butter' and I find it hard to resist anything with butter in the name, especially a bean. I planted them fairly late compared to the other beans since I planned on picking them as shell beans and didn't worry too much about them reaching the dry stage. I didn't pay a whole lot of attention to them, just noticing that they'd bloomed and that pods were forming. Then a few days ago I finally looked up when they should be harvested. I read that they are good when the pods are fatter but not too yellow. Next time I was in the garden I pinched a few pods and could feel the little tell-tale bumps but they weren't what I would call fat. Then I noticed that some pods were dry and brown and a few had been chewed by pests. Popping open one of the fatter pods I was reminded that lima beans are flat compared to the other beans I grow. I looked over the small patch and decided rather than go over them every day or two looking for all the "just right" pods that enough were ripe or beyond. In cut all the plants at the base and brought them home. It was much more comfortable sitting on the deck stripping the pods off the plant than it would have been crouched in the garden.

The co-conspirator pitched in sorting the dry from the fresh pods--which included a number of under-ripe ones and we got to work shelling. In the end, knowing how many seeds I planted that actually grew into plants that produced beans and how much we ended up with I calculated a yield of nearly one hundred-twenty five times what was planted. Had I not wasted some that weren't ripe that number doubtless would have been higher! It occurred to me that the quick bean counting I did a while back was in error. I didn't account for the fact that not all the bush beans planted grew and produced. Beans are often touted as one of the most productive crops you can grow. I know I'm convinced.

"Pick 'em, hull 'em, put on the steam. That's how we fix butterbeans!"

Tomatoes

I've wanted to write about tomatoes for a while now, but I just couldn't figure out how to approach the subject. To me, tomatoes are one of, if not the best reason to have a garden of one's own.

This season I "undertook" growing tomatoes like never before. I decided to get into cultivating them, coaxing them toward maximum production, treating them like the special, Chosen plants they are. The results have been fairly satisfying.



Have you seen the movie "Ratatouille?" Do you remember the scene where Anton Ego takes a taste of the special ratatouille and is immediately transported in his mind to a childhood moment where taste and memory meet? Tomatoes do that for me.



I can munch (if I had to) on the pathetic, bland commercial tomatoes from the grocery store all year and not feel a thing. There's nothing to them. But when I get my first, real local.,home-grown tomato of the summer my eyes close and I'm taken back. I don't know when it is, but I can picture exactly where. I'm at the supper table with my family and there's a plate of thick slices of vine-ripened tomatoes. They were, and still are, the best thing I've ever tasted in my life. Hands down.



So far the tomatoes I've harvested this summer have become snax-off-the-vine while gardening, salad items, sandwich additions and tasty side dishes all on their own. I've also cooked them into thick sauce with and without spicy local Italian sausage. Today I oven-dried a big batch which, of course, became a little batch of concentrated savory/sweet flavor. They'll be stewn on pizzas and folded into pastas over the coming months and taking me back to this time when ripe tomatoes that actually taste like tomatoes are easy to come by.

A Quick Garden Update

With temperatures approaching those found on the surface of the sun and humidity in excess of 150% we haven't been spending a lot of time in the garden this week. Still, an occasional visit is necessary to make sure everything's OK and to pick the beans so that they keep producing more than we can eat. We tell ourselves we'll freeze some and eventually we will. We're currently only picking the Pencil Pod (yellow) and Royal Burgundy (purple) bush beans. The rest of the beans are being grown on to the shell or dried stage. I harvested both yesterday.



All the while I was doing it the resident hawk was all, like "OMG! You're picking beans! That is so cool!!!"



I also checked how the other crops were coming along, especially the tomatoes and peppers. I picked a couple more really ripe Sungold cherry tomatoes that went straight into dinner's salad. There are a bunch more that will be coming on soon.



The larger varieties are holding a lot of fruit right now that just needs to start turning red, except of course for the Tasty Evergreen that never will. I wonder how I'll know they're ripe. Here are either some Carbon or Italian Heirloom. I forget which.



In the pepper department the first poblano is starting to get some color on it.



It's going to be dark and tasty while the Jimmy Nardello's Sweet Italian Frying Pepper near it is turning an inviting bright red.



A good bunch of Early Jalpenos are forming, too.



On the way out of the garden I passed one of the community fruit trees. It'll be interesting to see if the fruit is allowed to ripen. One of the drawbacks of community gardens is that there is pretty intense competition for shared resources. I don't even bother looking over the shared raspberry plants anymore. People are so anxious to get them before someone else does that the majority of them are picked when they just start to turn color. For the time being, the little pears are pretty and I can enjoy them at this stage just hanging on the trees.

A Little Appetizer

Sunday was oppressively hot so naturally I decided to go the the garden and take care of a few tasks. I'd been reading up on when to harvest garlic since our plants were showing signs of slowing down. Bottom leaves were browning and drying up as were the tips of most of the rest of the leaves. I decided to take a chance and harvest the whole crop. I'd dug a couple of bulbs over the past week or so and they seemed ok. In the end, counting the two early harvests we ended up with forty-three bulbs from the forty cloves we planted. I think that's a pretty good success rate. The three double bulbs were all the same variety.

In the process of digging them up, I nicked one of the bulbs. Since it wouldn't keep for long in its damaged condition, I went ahead and roasted it in a little olive oil. The resulting, sweet/savory paste inspired me to make a little appetizer that ended up comprising most of my dinner. I toasted a couple slices of some grainy bread from Clasen's which I then further browned in a pan with some olive oil. Honestly, Clasen's makes some decent pastries, but their country style breads really are the Wonder Bread of artisanal loaves. But, they were two for the price of one so how could I pass that up? Additional heat helps.

I plucked some basil from the pot on the deck and sliced up a tomato from Flyte Family Farm. After spreading the lucious garlic paste on the bread I layed on the tomato slices, sprinkled with some basil ribbons and hit with another drizzle of olive oil. The bread was still too soft, but on the other hand it didn't shatter and send the toppings flying. I would definitely make this again but with a heartier bread.

Making it Up as I Go Along

Last night I came back from the garden with a random load of produce and no real plan what to have for dinner. The only thought I had was that I should cook some collards because, dangit! we've got a lot of collards. I decided a savory, flavorful braise was probably the way to go. Scouting through the fridge and pantry I assembled some ingredients I thought might work together.


For aromatics I grabbed one of the white onions from the garden and a clove of garlic from the Westside Community Market. Braising liquid would come from the tomatoes, also from the Market, and a super special rare ingredient. The jar contains tomato pepper water. When I make salsa I like it to be chunky. The problem with that is that in processing, a lot of water is forced out of the vegetables. Now, when I open the jar, I drain the salsa and keep the flavorful liquid for other purposes such as this.



The results were pretty tasty but I couldn't eat it all. I'm sure it will be good left over.

My second course starred fava beans. I wanted them to really be the center of attention so I paired them very simply with some French sorrel and scallions.



A lightly fried the onions in olive oil and then added the beans, tossing frequently to get them warmed--they were already cooked in the blanching/peeling process--and then allowing a little caramelization before I tossed in the chiffonaded sorrel. The herb may have cooked a little too much but it provided a tangy addition to the dish.

Garlic at Last!

The co-conspirator has kind of been riding my back forty about when we can dig up the garlic. I understand. There are few things we're as keen on in this year's garden as the garlic patch. Since we carried our plot over from last year we were able to plant garlic properly. More specifically, we planted it last fall for harvest this summer. So, barring any unlikely disasters we should have a better crop than last year's spring-planted bulbs. I looked into some information on how to tell when garlic is ready to harvest on the Internet and there was some variation but it seems to boil down to the old "when it's ready" voodoo involving some dead leaves at the bottom and some live ones on top. Today I dug down next to one of our Tai Lang plants to see how big it was. It looked big so I went ahead and dug it up.

I'm pretty sure we can let the rest of the plants go for a week or so at least. There are only a couple of dead leaves at the bottom of each and I definitely won't wait until the whole plant is dry on any of them. We really want some of these to keep this year. There are only forty plants which I think will take us at least into the beginning of winter. Our experience of buying local garlic in the winter has been disappointing. The bulbs must have been mis-handled or stored wrong. Often they're bruised or containing one or two or more dusty, molded cloves. I don't want that to happen to ours so we're treating them with as much care as possible.

Fava Beans

Today I decided to pick a couple of the largest pods from our Windsor Broad Bean or Fava Bean plants, Vicia faba. They're getting big! I've never grown them before so I have no idea how long to let them grow. The first few I got were pretty undersized. The thickness of the pod is deceiving because it's lined with a thick, spongy material. I'll be blanching these and then peeling them before deciding what their final fate will be.

Strangest Kale Recipe Yet!

So, for some forgotten reason I'm growing kale this year, Dwarf Blue Curled Scotch Kale, to be exact. It's growing fantastically, hasn't shown any signs of insect activity and they're really attractive plants.



The problem, though, is that we don't eat a lot of kale. It's always just been that stuff they use to dress up the seafood case at the store. Or, on a few rare occasions--one, maybe--I've put it in soup. So having broken the gardening rule that we're only going to grow what we'll eat I went in search of recipes to use that stuff up. Naturally, there is a plethora of soup recipes online. Many pair it with beans and for reasons I'll go into at another time, we don't need another beans-n-greens opportunity. Then I stumbled on what I think is a rather unique recipe: Baked Kale Chips. I know, it sounds completely crazy but they really are good. They won't last until tomorrow and I'm starting to worry I didn't plant enough kale. I made them using the method in the recipe and sprinkled them with Barbecue 3000 blend from Penzey's and some salt. The results aren't pretty, but they're delicious! Maybe it's just that if you put enough olive oil and salt on anything it becomes edible, but I like the slightly cabbagey flavor they have. Next time I make them, I'll hold off on some of the oil and salt. They shrink when they cook so underseasoning them at the beginning is probably a good idea.

Germination Station

Last year we put in most of the garden by planting seeds directly in the ground. A few plants, like tomatoes, peppers and parsley were purchased at the Westside Community Market or received from my Garden Guru. This year I decided to start some seeds indoors on my own from my current supply. I've started seeds in the past with wildflowers and even hostas back when Shady Character was all the rage on the Internet. Back then I had a good sized propagation bed on a table in the basement complete with a heating cable. This time around I'm using the plastic-enclosed shelf I built for my orchids which are greatly reduced in number now. Fluorescent fixtures provide the light and some warmth in the enclosed space. I've also got a fluorescent fixture over part of our work bench lighting some pots on a small heat mat I purchased as well as some pots that that are doing just fine without any bottom heat. I'm looking forward to seeing these little guys grow into real food-producing plants!

Seeds

The way I like to describe the weather over the last couple of weeks is "less consistently wintery." Sure, there's still snow on the ground and more on the way today--accompanied by freezing rain. Yay. But there have been some warm days recently that have done a good bit of melt damage to the accumulated snow. In fact, there are some bare places near the house where the drifts had nearly reached the windows. There aren't any crocus yet. Yes, I looked.

Spring is a countable number of days away and my intention to start some seeds for the garden ahead of time has got me thinking and planning what to do and when. Seed catalogs have been arriving fairly regularly. In the depths of winter I got a little crazy and ordered dozens of them. It's a little escape to page through each one as it arrives and dream about actually picking the luscious vegetables in the pictures. However, if I read the phrase "very unique" one more time I may flip out. Most of these catalogs are going to turn out to be just references, though. I've got sources.

First, across the street from my office is an extremely well-stocked garden center. It's got everything I need in the way of seeds and later it will have started plants should my own attempts to make little seedlings fail. And, second, one of my dear friends is a serious collector of seeds who shares them generously. Consequently between the ones I've purchased, saved myself and gotten from him, I have a list so extensive it will be a miracle if I can grow even half of it. And this isn't even including the tomatoes and peppers I'll be selecting later.

Alyssum , Carpet of Snow
Arugula, Apollo
Arugula, wild
Basil, Italian Genvese
Basil, Purple Petra
Bean, Bush, Baby Lima 'White Dixie Butter'
Bean, Bush, Pencil Pod
Bean, Bush, Red Calypso
Bean, Bush, Royal Burgundy
Bean, Bush, Tavera
Bean, Fava, Windsor
Bean, Lima, Henderson Bush
Bean, Pole, Trionfo Violetto
Bean, Soy, Green, Butterbean
Beet, Bull's Blood
Beet, Burpee's Golden
Beet, Burpee's Golden
Bok Choy, White Stem
Bok Choy, Tatsoi, Rosette
Bok Choy, Tatsoi, Rosette
Broccoli Raab,
Calendula, Mixture"
Calendula, Pacific Beauty Blend
Carrot, Rainbow
Carrot, Scarlet Nantes
Cowpea, Southern, California Blackeye #5
Cucumber, Armenian Burpless
Cucumber, Japanese Soyu Burpless
Cucumber, Lemon
Cucumber, Parade
Escarole, Broadleaf Batavian
Fenugreek,
Garlic, Bavarian Purple
Garlic, PVT
Garlic, Tai Lang
Garlic, Western Rose
Gourd, Autumn Wings
Kale, Dwarf Blue Curled Scotch
Kale, Chinese, Kailaan, White Flowered
Kohlrabi, Purple and White Vienna Blend
Lettuce, Butterhead, Marvel of Four Seasons
Lettuce, Butterhead, Tom Thumb
Lettuce, Leaf, Lolla Rossa
Lettuce, Leaf, Red Sails
Lettuce, Leaf, Tango
Marigold, Starfire Signet
Melon, Charentais
Minutina,
Mustard, Ruby Streaks
Nasturtium, Peach Melba
Nho Gai, Vietnamese Coriander
Oregano, True Greek
Parsley, Italian Dark Green Flat
Parsley, Rooted, Hamburg
Parsnip, All American
Pea, Snowbird
Radish, D'Avignon
Radish, Easter Egg
Radish, Helios
Radish, Winter, Chinese Rose
Seasoning Celery, Amsterdam
Shinguku,
Silverbeet, Five Color
Spinach, Bloomsdale
Spinach, Bordeaux
Spinach, Olympia
Squash, Summer, Early Golden Crookneck
Strawberry, Alpin,
Strawberry, Alpine, Mignonette
Summer Savory,
Zinnia, Cut and Come Again

Baked Beans Part 1

I love baked beans. We serve so many meals that include them it's ironic we buy the canned ones when making our own wouldn't be that difficult and possibly more economical. I made a couple of batches in the last month using two different methods and the results surprised me. The recipe I used is an altered version of Alton Brown's. I'll point out the changes I made as I go along.

For the first batch I used beans I got for free--can't beat that! Our garden neighbor had a bunch of pole beans mature and dry. He didn't want them them so I picked and shelled them. They're an unknown variety and definitely not the white Great Northerns the recipe calls for. The color was more of a medium brownish tan. Referring to my many catalogs I might say they fall into the category of yellow beans.

Before I could actually start cooking I ended up having to re-season our Dutch oven. Apparently when we used it last time we either cooked something acidic in it or cleaned it too thoroughly when we were done. A few small spots of rust had developed on the bottom and inside the lid. After that time-consuming task I was finally ready to bake some beans!

The actual cooking begins with the bacon and vegetables. To cut down on the fat but keep some smokiness I substituted Canadian bacon and reduced the amount to ten ounces. I used local onions and the jalapenos came right from our own garden.



I didn't want the finished beans to taste too sweet, so I reduced the brown sugar and molasses by half but kept the full amount of tomato paste. Ew. Not very pretty at this stage of the game. Taking an idea from one of the comments posted on Alton's recipe I added a crushed calcium citrate tablet to make up some for the reduced molasses. After all, everyone knows that the combination of sugar and calcium keeps the beans from cracking.



In the pot it was starting to look like food!



And after adding the soaked beans and broth (I substituted chicken because we had some) it was really starting to look like--soup? I was a little skeptical that the beans were going to soak up that much liquid.



But after several hours--I don't remember exactly how many but it wasn't the six to eight the recipe calls for--the liquid was absorbed and the beans were done. AND, as you can see in this image, the Dutch oven had lost it's seasoning again! In fact, the inside of the lid was stripped completely!



Final assessment? Despite the bacon switch and reduction this was a meaty pot of beans. I could see further reducing the meat and adding some smoked Spanish paprika to maintain the smokiness in future batches. Also, the sweetness was still pretty high. Not too cloying, but definitely noticeable. But worst of all, the dish carried a distinct metallic flavor. I'm attributing that to the iron that got in as the steam corroded the Dutch oven. They were not horrible, though so we ate them of course, first with a pork chop and a side of braised cabbage.



In my next post I'll be cooking up some beans again with a different twist and perhaps a mystery solved...