Baby greens steps

It’s the last week of the mid-season CSA, and the box is absolutely stuffed. Seems the greening of my own garden and the blooming of the rhodies has its counterpart on the farm in leafy greens. Yes, there are oodles of lettuce, which is a good thing, because I love salads, and become testy at the mere thought of wimpy winter lettuce. But I’m talking about greens, the leafy greens that all those annoying studies talk about.

I remember asking about greens once as a teenager, and my mother replied simply, “we don’t have to eat greens,” as if voting for McCarthy provided ample protection from the Western diseases. I shrugged it off, and was thankful for spinach, which remains one of my favorites: creamed, steamed and just plain raw.

But at some point along the journey—and it has been over decade of little tweaks here and there—I realized wanted to bring greens, the heavy-duty stiff bundles you don’t see anywhere but farmers markets or the co-op, onto our plates.

My first attempts were dismal. I bought some kale at the co-op, brought it home, and steamed it to death. Darling Husband, usually game for new things, just pushed it around his plate, and Number One just gaped at it in disbelief. When faced with another bunch a couple of years later in a gift CSA box, I put off preparing it long enough that it ended up on the compost heap. This did not bode well.

Then one day, back when I still used to put up my feet and read a magazine, I delved into the February 2002 issue of Bon Appétit, and found a recipe for tortellini-kielbasa soup. You should know that I do not consider recipes or patterns to be gospel of any sort. This is usually only a problem when knitting socks, and on rare occasions in the kitchen. But this sounded like the base of an attractive and hearty soup: sausage, tortellini, kale and white beans in a vegetable broth, and sprinkled with some Parmesan cheese at the table. No worries, I thought, I have all the ingredients except Kielbasa (but I have another sausage that would work), fennel (just skip it), and kale (I’ll just substitute the old zucchini in the fridge).

I made a pot, and the family loved it. Number One always loves noodles and beans, and gladly ate the sausage; a toddler Little One gleefully picked out a tortellini with his fingers and giggled when he saw how the cannelli bean nestled in the belly button. But once they realized there was zucchini in there, the honeymoon was over.

But the soup was too good to abandon: on the next trip to the co-op, I picked up a bunch of kale—“dinosaur kale”—and brought it home. I made the soup again, only daring to use half the bunch. The kids loved it; perhaps the zucchini had put it all in perspective. Whatever: they were hooked. When a good friend had her darling baby girl, I made up another pot to use up the rest of the bunch and brought it to her family. A call the next day informed me that the soup was “slammin’!” and so it shall be called for eternity.

Once the floodgates opened, I learned that you can roast kale into tasty chips, and that if you cook it quickly (and deglaze with balsamic vinegar), it is sweet like candy. Once I got over the kale hump, I could even branch out into chard and pok choi. I tasted real fried greens in Louisiana and fell in love. No, we don’t have to eat greens; we get to.

Calendar pinups

I imagine most people’s June calendars have sunny beach scenes or images of warm people and gardens full of blossoms. I turn my calendar page, and there stands Little One in full rain gear (that’s boots, a coat, rain pants and a hat with ear flaps, for those of you who don’t live in a temperate rain forest), soaked to the skin and covered in a fine layer of sandy mud. Yes, folks, it is June, damp beginning of the clamming season in the Pacific Northwest.

Fishing Sensei has scheduled a muddy extravaganza to celebrate low tide next weekend, but alas, Number One son will be sawing away at his cello that afternoon, on a stage, which really does require our attendance. Not that it’s a hardship listening to his orchestra, but I admit hesitating a bit, recalling the heady aroma of fresh clam chowder made on the same beach where we dug the main ingredient. Mighty tempting.

The cat meowing loudly at the back door breaks my reverie. I look up and see a soggy mop that looks like it needs rinsing, and then realize she’s either fallen in the creek again, or it’s really raining. A peek through the open door verifies it is the latter, and I’m pretty sure I left the car window open last night. Just a crack, just enough.

Clearly, our plans to mow the lawn and clean the hot tub deck are on hold, and we won’t be dining al fresco any night this week. But I am glad we got the downspout fixed, some beds weeded, and the hanging baskets planted before the deluge. It is tempting to simply crawl back into our nest, where I suspect the covers may still be warm. I note that the cat has taken this approach. On the other hand, I think I have may some clams from last year in the freezer, just enough for a pot of chowder.

Week of mysteries

Number One son, off to swing from precariously high ropes in an exercise of class bonding and character-building, also had his first exercise in eating around allergies away from home. Working together with another mom, we procured the menu to see if we needed to offer up different options, and the camp obliged. A wave of nostalgia swept over me as I read what sounded like a typical school cafeteria menu from my childhood, updated to this century: corndogs are still around, but there is now a soup bar; French toast still comes with bacon, but also with a strange-sounding “goop.” Number One obliged with a picture of it, and one of his classmates described it with the kind of ardor usually reserved for the latest heartthrob off the cover of Teen magazine. Apparently, some brilliant mind, weary of their shoes sticking to the floor at breakfasts served with syrup, figured out that they could mix said maple stuff with margarine and powdered sugar, creating a frosting-like mixture that would melt appealingly on the lost bread. In spite of its unfortunate moniker, it has become an institution at that camp. Mystery number one solved.

Number two involves the share box from Jubilee Farms, our weekly gift to ourselves. Usually, Wendy posts the contents of the box on the website Monday so we can email her to lay off the cilantro or beg for more rhubarb, that kind of thing. This past week, I was too busy (doing what, I couldn’t tell you), and as for Wendy, well, it’s May on the farm. I don’t imagine they’re getting a lot of sleep, and we didn’t even get the customary short note in the box letting us know about the contents. Which left me and Darling Husband scratching our heads about those white orbs: they’re much bigger than any radish I’ve ever seem, but awfully smallish for a turnip. No purply-turnipy tinge, but no pink either. If the farmers are too busy to pen a missive, I think, I shouldn’t bother them with vegetable identification queries. Darling Husband bravely volunteers to eat one. Salt shaker in hand, he takes a nibble: a radish, he pronounces, and devours it with gusto and sodium. Mystery number two, happily solved.

Now, good things come in three, and there was a third mystery I thought of to share with you while drifting off to sleep, but I simply cannot recall what it is. I have been racking my brains and driving my family nuts for days now: is it the mystery of how to cook raab so it looses its fibrous prickliness (still unsolved)? Is it the mystery of trying to find rhyme or reason in the budding teenager’s mood swings? (That one may require a trek up a hillside to a guru.) Perhaps I was wondering how many eggs Mama Robin is tending outside my office door (a sneak peek reveals four perfect blue eggs in a cedar-lined nest). But none of those trigger the aha moment.

If I’m lucky, it may come to me in the next few days, as I head off to slumberland or in the shower, which Darling Husband has equipped with a pad of waterproof paper. It seems he grew weary of being called to the bathroom to take notes, and applied the same ingenuity that led to the creation of goop. Until then, the mysterious mystery shall remain a mystery.