Journey Home

Gardeners Are Cooks

Post author By Paul Deaton
Post date July 3, 2016

As the garden produces more food than we can eat fresh, attention turns toward the kitchen where preservation, along with preparation of tasty fresh food meals, are the priorities.

Kitchen work started Saturday afternoon and continues.

I prepared a simple dinner while listening to A Prairie Home Companion on the radio. For appetizer there was basil pesto spread on a piece of toast, a slice of cheese, and raw carrots. The main course was brown rice cooked in homemade soup stock sprinkled with scallions, steamed green beans, a burger patty topped with home made barbecue sauce, and a Belgian beer. Dessert was fresh cherries mixed in a cup of Greek yogurt. Each plate exuded summer goodness.

A full row of basil produced enough leaves to make pesto. Here is the recipe:

Simple Basil Pesto

2 cups fresh basil leaves (packed)
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/3 cup pine nuts
3 garlic cloves
Salt and pepper to taste

In the bowl of a food processor take the following steps:
Pour basil leaves in the bottom and add pine nuts.
Pulse for about 30-45 seconds.
Scrape down the sides of the bowl.
Add garlic and cheese.
Pulse for 30-45 seconds.
Scrape down the sides of the bowl.
Stream the olive oil into the bowl while it is running, scraping down the sides from time to time.
Stir in salt and pepper to taste.

Pesto must be used quickly or frozen to prevent oxidation. The plan is to make a pasta dish using pesto as the dressing.

On a working class payday it feels like there is money so I did some shopping, buying some special items: two kinds of bird seed, a case of Stella Artois, a case of brewed root beer, and three pounds of fresh, Michigan sweet cherries. The beverages should last the rest of the summer.

Here’s how I told the story on social media,

After work at the home, farm and auto supply store I bought two kinds of bird seed: straight safflower seeds and a mix of sunflower kernels, peanuts, sunflower seed, safflower seed, hulled pumpkin seed, raisins and dried cranberries. We’ve already tried straight millet, and straight sunflower seeds, plus a traditional mix.

Next I went to the warehouse club up the hill where I bought a big bag of garlic (to make basil pesto on Saturday) and some root beer for the holiday weekend.

After that, to the orchard where I bought these cherries. I met Paul’s brother once at the orchard and these are his cherries, grown in Michigan. Know the face of your farmer is my best advice on eating good food. I also confirmed the start of my employment when the season begins July 30. With my other jobs that will be seven days a week of work until November, but it’s so much fun, it’s not really work. Hope my Facebook friends have a great weekend.

Use of greens turned from turnip tops to kale. I gave library workers a reprieve and have a large plastic bag full of kale in the refrigerator. While not sure what to do with it, it will be revealed when I return to the kitchen. Fresh soup certainly; a kale salad for lunch most likely. Kale freezes well, however, if everything goes well in the garden, plants will continue to produce until November — no need to fill up the freezer with kale today. It is encouragement to pick the best leaves now and compost the rest.

It is sad more people don’t appreciate kale.

Kale Comment

Cut stems of oregano are on the drying rack. The herb returns each year and we don’t use much of it. The plan is to dry enough to fill a small jar for winter. Whatever basil is left after another jar of pesto will also go on the drying rack.

One of the deficiencies of our garden is not enough flowers. In fact, the only flowers are some volunteer day lilies and milkweed. After many years of fruit and vegetable growing, I may be proficient enough to plan a flower garden plot. That idea will go into the planning hopper for next year.

We are going home and three events this weekend reminded us of that.

Elie Wiesel died, silencing an important voice for human rights. I will never forget the Holocaust as one of the genocides that make us who we are. While visiting Dachau in 1974 I learned the reason Jews were exterminated with poison gas was bullets were too expensive, according to the Nazis. My visit highlighted the importance of treating every human being with kindness and dignity — a lesson that continues today.

Garrison Keillor performed for the last time as host of A Prairie Home Companion. During a previous “last show” in the 1980s I turned on the cassette recorder and went for a walk with our daughter. I wanted to be with her constantly before she left home for school. As we now know, Keillor’s departure in the ’80s was more hiatus. Preparing dinner with the radio tuned in has become a part of my life, reinforced during the years in Big Grove. I’ll get over the change. I listened to the whole program last night.

Paul Simon is ready to give up writing and performing music. “Showbiz doesn’t hold any interest for me,” Simon told Jim Dwyer of the New York Times. “None.” If he does give up music after his current world tour, it will have been a great run for the septuagenarian. I was a fan of Simon and Garfunkel in high school and have vinyl of their first album with “Hey School Girl.” On the album jacket it reads, “Contained in this album is a generous sampling of two stars of tomorrow who are the talk of the record world today.” Simon continues to be the talk of the recording world, so cross off the part about the future. Early Paul Simon inspired me to write. Modern day Paul Simon teaches us to keep learning and changing.

Celebrity departures from life in society are one thing, but it’s closer to home. My parents’ generation is dying and so many of my high school classmates have left us. There is a meme going around social media expressing this sentiment. Here is a sample with my response:

Boomers Die

Michael Martinez explained why the elves left Middle Earth in the Lord of the Rings. While not exactly the same it articulates a relevant sentiment:

The elves were compelled to leave Middle Earth by a spiritual summons of the Valar, calling them to their ultimate destinies within time and space. In The Simarillion J.R.R. Tolkien explains how the Valar — the guardians of the world — felt that the long-lived elves would be better off living near the Valar in the blessed realm, far from the mortal lands where men were destined to build their civilizations and live out their lives.

It is time to let go and let others build their lives. The kale and basil won’t preserve themselves, so I’m off to the kitchen.

Tags cooking, Kitchen Garden, Sustainability

Living in Society

Scattered Talk

Post author By Paul Deaton
Post date June 29, 2016

Hillary Clinton Walking to the Stage at S.T. Morrison Park, Coralville, Iowa

As we live through the final month before the national political party conventions, most people I meet know the presumptive presidential nominees but don’t talk about them.

When they do the dynamic is like this, “I can’t see voting for Trump, but Hillary, you know what you get with her, so I don’t know.”

One person’s perspective is not definitive, yet given the people I know, the dynamic among those newly met has some validity.

If the 2016 general election were to be won or lost on the basis of scattered talk in society (or on social media) that would be a thing. What matters more is work done by the campaigns to register and turn out voters — something less visible than talk inside our social enclaves. By all measures Clinton is working harder and devoting more resources to registering and turning out her voters.

NBC News reported yesterday the Hillary Clinton campaign spent $1.2 million in Iowa this June compared to Trump’s zero dollars. The Iowa Democratic Party relies on presidential money to run its campaign, so the spending is two doses of good news for Democrats. Money to fund IDP operations and Trump’s “different” and thus far losing campaign.

Because of Trump’s celebrity he has been able to distribute a message to voters on the cheap. That served him during the primaries and caucuses. As we turn toward the conventions and the general election, Hillary’s campaign is somewhat predictable, using tried and true methods to win votes. Trump’s is a mystery that includes a Twitter account and public speeches, lacking any perceptible effort to close the deal with voters. If one doesn’t close, there will be no victory.

The Democratic primary churned up a lot of ill will toward Hillary Clinton in the electorate. That’s ridiculous, but also something to take seriously. On the one hand, Democrats continue to get whipped up into a froth about a potential indictment of Clinton (over something, they are not sure what). On the other, we look away from the Republican fraud that took the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi, Libya and turned them into political footballs. Clinton has weathered many storms in a long public career, yet the idea initiated during her husband’s administration — open up an investigation of political enemies and let it go on forever — is as effective today as it ever was in generating the false appearance of wrong-doing. Rep. Trey Gowdy’s Benghazi investigation, as with Whitewater, is demonstrating nothing is there. Even he couldn’t say Clinton lied about Benghazi during yesterday’s presser.

Political pundits, bloggers and partisans like to talk the strategy of elections. What I’m seeing, and believe is better information, is in scattered talk among ordinary people who still believe a presidential election is a choice to be made. To the extent the Clinton campaign can get to those voters and bring them home she can win in November. While the prospects look good for Clinton today, it appears her campaign is taking nothing for granted to win voters.

As June ends and the days get shorter it is difficult to see any other general election outcome than a Clinton victory. The scattered negative talk about Clinton will be a factor. One Clinton is almost certain to overcome.

Tags politics

Home Life Living in Society Social Commentary

Weekend Reckoning

Post author By Paul Deaton
Post date June 26, 2016

Supper was a leftover jar of bean soup, sage and cheddar biscuits, and apple crisp from last year’s crop.

It was delicious… an apple joke.

I set my alarm for 4 p.m. to begin two hours of cooking. I also wanted to hear Garrison Keillor’s radio show from Tanglewood. He’s retiring in July.

Keillor lucked into radio.

“Through a series of coincidences, I lucked onto this show, for which I had no aptitude to speak of, sort of like a kid in Port-au-Prince who’s never seen ice becoming captain of the Haitian Olympic hockey team,” Keillor wrote in an email sent Saturday afternoon. “I was never in theater, never sang in public, but I had grown up at the end of the radio era so I had some ideas about how it might sound. I was a plodder, but persistent.”

So did I luck into a pattern of preparing Saturday dinner with A Prairie Home Companion in the background. All of my other favorite Saturday shows on public radio are gone – likely as a result of budget cuts. Soon Keillor will be gone too. New times require new patterns and I’m okay with that.

Saturday’s harvest included a head of cauliflower, carrots, turnips, an onion, two bunches of celery, and lots of kale for the kitchen and to give to library employees. The herb garden is coming along. I didn’t pick basil but will need to soon.

Planting included an acorn squash seedling and some dill, both given to me by a library worker. The Swiss chard seedlings went into the ground, as did some more jalapeno peppers. I planted lettuce where the carrots grew. The overnight thunderstorm provided needed rain.

Turk's Turban Squash Plant — Turk’s Turban Squash Plant

The harvest was shortly after sunrise. I was out in time to see dew around the edges of the Turk’s Turban heirloom squash plant leaves. It’s as if the leaf was a large moisture collection device, and the drops waiting to get big enough to roll to the ground and provide moisture to the roots. Summer Saturday harvest is becoming one of my favorite times.

After lunch I organized and cleaned the garage, which is to say I put things away, swept the floor and laundered the rags. I decided to leave the bagging attachment on the John Deere for another pass at collecting garden mulch. It’s debatable whether more is needed. It can always be composted if not used.

It’s been a couple of tough weeks in the news, making it difficult to process what’s happened in society. The murders at Pulse Orlando kicked off a series of news cycles that have been enervating at best, at worst a beginning of the end of society as we know it.

There’s a lot to write about. The futile efforts of the U.S. Congress to call attention to gun violence and do something about it, the referendum in Great Britain about whether to leave the European Union, a slate of Supreme Court decision announcements, the peace agreement between the FARC rebels and the Colombian government, and more.

What caught my attention midst the swirl of current events was yesterday’s 140th anniversary of Custer’s last stand during the battle of Little Bighorn in southeastern Montana. During a visit to the battlefield it occurred to me Custer was a fool. The idea the Seventh U.S. Cavalry Regiment could prevail in that open terrain was ridiculous.

Little Big Horn was part of a genocide that began shortly after arrival of Europeans in the west. It found it’s last practical expression 14 years later in 1890 on the Pine Ridge Reservation at Wounded Knee. Leonard Peltier’s case notwithstanding, our war with native populations in the Americas is finished.

The removal of cultures is in many ways the history of the country. We removed native populations, trees and wildlife and called it “settling.” Surveyors laid out a pattern of land use that enabled us to settle the prairie and forget what once was here. Oak-hickory forests, tall grasses and bison as far as human eyes could see have been relegated to special heritage sites. It’s not all been good but it is what we live with.

As rain falls, reminding me to clean the gutters, it’s hard to miss the need to engage in society outside a surveyed lot in Big Grove. To sustain a single life requires engagement in everything around us and many things that no longer are here. At least that’s how I cope with American violence and sustain the will to do something more about it.

Tags homelife, Kitchen Garden, Sustainability, Writing

Living in Society Reviews

Book Review: Give Us the Ballot

Post author By Paul Deaton
Post date June 24, 2016

The word “progressive” got bandied about more this year than it has in a while.

Who is a progressive? Who is a “real” progressive? Who will continue a progressive legacy after the 2016 election?

Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders debated what it means to be a progressive at the beginning of the 2016 Democratic presidential nominating process, with both claiming progressive bona fides.

Here’s what I say. You are not a progressive unless you have read Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America by Iowa’s own Ari Berman.

In this extensively researched, easy to read text, Berman reminds many of us of the reason we became politically active: as a way of engaging in progress toward racial and social justice centered around the Voting Rights Act (VRA) signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on Aug. 6, 1965.

There has been a concerted, well-planned effort to suppress provisions of the VRA. The June 25, 2013 decision by the Supreme Court of the United States to overturn Section 4, which required certain states to get pre-clearance of changes to voting laws from the Department of Justice, was only the most obvious, recent incident. Berman’s account of the Nixon and Reagan administrations provides insight that de-fanging the law was part of Republican intent from the beginning. My reaction was incredulity at everything that was happening before my eyes without me understanding it.

Berman interviewed Rep. John Lewis extensively for the book (along with many others) and it shows. Lewis wrote in the Washington Post,

“(Give Us The Ballot) should become a primer for every American, but especially for congressional lawmakers and staffers, because it so capably describes the intricate interplay between grass-roots activism and the halls of Congress . . . Congress must fix the Voting Rights Act, and Berman’s book explains why, without passion or favoritism. It is the first history of the contemporary voting rights movement in the United States. It is long overdue, but Berman’s extensive reporting makes it well worth the wait.”

It’s hard to disagree.

Be a progressive. Read Give Us the Ballot this summer.

~ Written for The Prairie Progressive

Tags Book Review, politics

Kitchen Garden

Spring Notes From the Garden

Post author By Paul Deaton
Post date June 20, 2016

Spring ends and summer begins with a full moon illuminating our yard and garden. Predawn darkness mitigated by silvery reflected light.

As daylight shortens its span spring gardening went well, setting the stage for a bountiful harvest.

There is a lot to learn in the garden and here are some notes from 2016.

“Temperatures over the three spring months averaged 50.5° or 2.2° above normal while precipitation totaled 11.69 inches or 0.50 inches less than normal,” state climatologist Harry Hillaker wrote in his May weather summary. “This ranks as the 25th warmest and 62nd wettest spring among 144 years of state records.”

The importance of water management in gardening cannot be overstated. The added heat, especially in May, along with less rain, created conditions that put pressure on seedling expectations. Adequate watering when it wasn’t raining helped establish the crops for the season. I developed a habit of watering in the morning shortly after sunrise. While I am not sure if timing during the day makes a difference, the plants are growing well and appear lush.

Spacing seeds and seedlings properly is more important than I was willing to acknowledge. The garden produced enough spinach, radishes and turnip greens for the table, but production would likely have increased if I’d spaced the seeds according to the packages. I learned this lesson with seedlings at the farm and get my yardsticks out when transplanting seedlings.

Protecting seedlings from ground-based predatory critters improved the success of seedlings after transplant. The 4-inch drainage tile cut in short lengths around selected seedlings improved the survival rate over last year. Using old tomato cages wrapped in chicken wire enabled all of the broccoli to survive this year. The broccoli really looks good.

Every kale plant survived transplant, all but one tomato plant, all but one hot pepper. Basil and bell peppers were more challenging. Because I started more seedlings than needed, I was able to fill in the gaps when they failed. The bell peppers had become root bound, and appeared to experience shock after transplant. I replaced the ones that died and as of yesterday every spot has a good looking plant in it.

The experiment with container carrots can be deemed successful. The earliest carrots are producing and are so tasty it’s hard to leave them in the ground long enough to mature. The carrots are growing in soil with a high percentage of compost in it. The compost always seems dry underscoring the need for water management. I make sure they have a good daily soaking.

Water is important to celery crops. I harvested the first stalks over the weekend and they punctuated the flavor of the soup I made with them. I cut the first bunch well above the ground line to give the plant a chance to grow new leaves. Last year the stubble continued to produce into the warmer winter months.

Mulching everything with grass clippings is important. I used clippings from two passes over the yard and may do a third. The water retention properties fit into the water management system, especially during hot sunny weather.

On the longest day of the year the garden is off to a great start.

Tags Kitchen Garden, local food

Kitchen Garden Living in Society Social Commentary Work Life

Father’s Day Weekend

Post author By Paul Deaton
Post date June 19, 2016

A benefit of an American lifestyle is having the occasional weekend off.

Yet the weekend is more French than American — le weekend!

In June 1977, over two weekends, I was in France with a French infantry marine unit. Those days imprinted the meaning of “weekend” on me even if I don’t get to weekend very often.

My guide for the exchange officer experience was an infantry marine platoon leader stationed on the Atlantic coast in Vannes. The unit was on alert to deploy to Djibouti, which had recently declared its independence from France. If there was trouble in the transition, the unit would head there.

Upon arrival at the train station I was driven straight to the officer’s club. I drank too many pastis before attending a reception in my honor — no one told me about the reception until several pastis had passed my lips. The non-commissioned officers lined up one aperitif after another in front of me with glee. Too drunk to be embarrassed, when someone mentioned the reception, I decided to leave the remaining drinks on the table, sober up, and listen and learn about the culture.

At the reception I practiced my French and mustered a dim comment about the Concorde, which was still new. The alcohol drove out my vocabulary so it was the best I could do.

In homes and apartments I briefly lived as French do. There was a continuous series of meals and events tied together with a notion of forgetting about work for a while. Weekends continue to be French in Big Grove, although with much less alcohol and no drunkenness. God’s in his heaven, all’s right with the world.

Last Saturday of Spring Harvest - kale, peas, carrots, celery, oregano, basil and spring onions. — Last Saturday of Spring Harvest – kale, peas, carrots, celery, oregano, basil and spring onions.

The garden is in, harvest begun and work remains to be done this Father’s Day weekend.

Weekends at home are a way to avoid expenses as I navigate from semi-retirement to full retirement in a few years. There is no extra money to drive into the county seat for “shopping,” nor is there adequate clothing in the closet to attend any galas to which I may be invited. Working at home avoids expense.

Saturday was the first of many harvests from the vegetable garden. Untold hours were devoted to planting, cultivation and now harvest of kale, celery, carrots, peas, spring onions, basil and oregano. It was exciting.

One of my outlets for excess produce has been workers at the public library. I prepared shares of onions, kale, oregano and basil in a cooler and drove them into town. One of the library workers gave me an acorn squash seedling for which I will find room.

Next I went to the grocery store where a neighbor and I talked for ten minutes about beer selections. He didn’t carry the union-made Pabst Blue Ribbon that would have been my first choice, nor did he have made in Canada Labatt’s Blue which would have been my second. Partly as political commentary I settled for a six-pack of a Mexican mass produced brand. Upon return home I iced three of them and two cans of Royal Crown Cola in the cooler.

The garden entered the summer phase and it’s time to break loose the broccoli.

Last year the broccoli crop was a failure. I decided to protect the seedlings with chicken wire a
nd they survived initial growth. It’s time to take the chicken wire off the individual plants and create a close fence that will keep deer from jumping in and allow the plants to spread their leaves. I scoped it out on Saturday and hope to free the broccoli later this morning.

Harvest is unfinished until the produce is washed, distributed and processed. In a kitchen garden like ours that means cleaning, storage and cooking which takes more time than one might expect.

For dinner I made peas and carrots, and kale-black bean-vegetable soup poured over brown rice made with a jar of home made tomato juice. By the end of Saturday I was very tired.

I took a course in African American Studies while in graduate school.

Kale - Black Bean Soup on Brown Rice — Kale – Black Bean Soup on Brown Rice

The late Jonathan Walton made the case that slaves were likely too tired to do much organizing after working a shift on Southern plantations. I learned a lot about the literature of slavery and its narratives because of Walton. I wasn’t sure what to make of his assertion, other than that slaves were people just as we are.

I yawned during class from time to time and Walton called me on it, inquiring about my condition… was the subject matter too tedious? Had I been up late the previous night? I tried to stay awake. It was a dry topic.

Everyone has an opinion about slavery. For the most part, people don’t directly favor it. It is a stain on our public consciousness that has not been removed, nor likely will be in my lifetime. I’m not sure what exactly that means in 21st Century America.

The term “wage-slave” is popular today, especially among people ascendant from low-paying work. Forced labor continues to exist unawares, notably through labor trafficking. Neither is the same thing the peculiar institution was.

Modern life has us removed from the actuality of things like neighboring, sharing and slavery and we are the less for it. This Father’s Day Weekend I plan to commune with what is actual — what is real. By doing so sustain our lives in a turbulent world.

Tags cooking, Kitchen Garden, local food, Sustainability, worklife

Kitchen Garden

Garden is In

Post author By Paul Deaton
Post date June 13, 2016

With planting of Fairy Tale eggplant, Turk’s Turban squash, a sweet potato that sprouted on the counter and 18 bell pepper plants, I declare the initial garden planting finished.

Food is growing in six plots this year and all that remains is the weeding, water management and harvesting.

The days get longer for another week when summer begins.

Yesterday morning was soil blocking at the CSA for the fall crop — blocks for 2,160 seedlings. Afterward I walked the farm to inspect the progress of the crops. I’m not sure how often I will make it back now that my work is done for the season. The crops look fine as the farm transitions from one owner to the next.

What’s next?

With all the produce, cooking will be part of it, but that’s not really what I mean. Politics has devolved to hearing more than a person can stand about the 2016 presidential race. Not that either. My next significant gig is editing Blog for Iowa in August, so there’s time for a break in the action — a focus on maintenance of the house and my small circle of family and friends.

It’s a time to look at the garden I’ve planted and make plans for next year.

Tags homelife, Kitchen Garden, local food, Sustainability