Black Friday, 4:30 a.m., at the home, farm and auto supply store
I spent much of Black Friday loading customer vehicles with large, bulky items that were on sale. It was often a three-person job.
Management had us come in an hour before the store opened at 6 a.m. to put the final preparatory touches on what is one of our biggest sales days of the year.
A crowd of shoppers waited when we opened. Given the types of merchandise we carry and aggressive pursuit of Black Friday market share, it was no surprise.
Throughout my shift shoppers arrived in vehicles containing bags of merchandise from other stores. We helped fill them up and all was good in retail world.
I was tired when I arrived home at 2:30 p.m., more because my early morning schedule was disrupted than the work I did at the home, farm and auto supply store.
First thing I did was make a batch of red chile sauce using dried New Mexico chilies.
We continue to have kale in the garden so the day before I planned a last-minute dish for our Thanksgiving dinner. Before I forget, here’s what I did:
Saute a diced medium onion in a frying pan. Add a couple of cloves of diced garlic. Once the onions and garlic are tender, add a pint of diced tomatoes and a tablespoon of Mexican oregano. When the sauce comes together, add a large amount of sliced kale leaves with the stems removed. I used three big leaves but more is okay because it will cook down. The stems can be sliced finely and added for more texture. Add a drained and rinsed can of prepared black beans. Season with salt to taste. Reduce heat to a simmer until the liquid has evaporated and serve hot as a side dish.
I had dinner of Thanksgiving leftovers and went to bed early. There will be a lot to do as we come into the light of this weekend.
This year’s holiday season is just beginning. I’ve been reluctant to turn the page on a year of transition and hesitate still.
We’re writing a Thanksgiving Day menu together and thus far know there will be our special recipes for wild rice and cranberry relish, along with sweet potatoes, green peas and an extensive relish tray split between crudités for her and pickles for me. There are roasted pumpkin seeds.
Yesterday I went to the orchard to buy Gold Rush apples for the cranberry dish. It was the last chance to catch up with my orchard co-workers until mid-December. I bought frozen Montmorency cherries from Michigan. The retail merchandise on display is dwindling down, soon to be placed in storage until next year. Should I get another frozen pie or two to last through winter? I don’t know but we have peach, cherry and apple already and once we get past the holidays anything that’s left will likely rest in the freezer. We are not dessert people and potluck season is drawing to a close.
Seventeen degree weather ended the kale run. I cut the number of plants in half this season and we still had more than could be used in a single household. We have fresh kale in the ice box and will use it in some to be determined dish on Thanksgiving. The point of all the food is the leftovers, and not having to cook for a few days.
My orchard supervisor asked me what I was doing with my weekends now that the season is finished. I didn’t have a good answer. I’ve been napping more, reading too, and preserving the abundance that still lives in our ice box. At some point I must turn the page. She asked how many we were having for Thanksgiving dinner. Like always, it’s just the two of us.
Until soil blocking begins at the farm in late February my weeks are two days at the home, farm and auto supply store and five days to do what I will. Three months to make progress on home projects among which writing is most important to me. To begin planning would be turning the page on life, something I’m not ready to do.
By Wednesday I should feel more in the holiday spirits as I have dinner planned with a friend. I’m not one to linger in uncertainty, at least I didn’t used to be. I’ll take these days into the 2018 holidays one at a time. Focused on the present, rooted in the past, and hoping for a better life afterward. Sustaining a life in a turbulent world.
Part of my barter agreement at two Community Supported Agriculture farms was participation in fall shares. I pick up the final share this afternoon and sweet mother of Mary that’s a lot of vegetables.
Now that I’ve learned to make corn tortillas at home we need something to put in them. Something different — black beans, kale and Guajillo chile sauce. It didn’t use up many of the vegetables in the ice box, but that’s where I am after the frustrating results of the statewide election contests became known.
I watched more than a dozen YouTube videos on red pepper sauce, notably two by Rick Bayless, before arriving at this recipe.
Guajillo Red Pepper Sauce
Ingredients
Four ounces dried Guajillo chile peppers
Tablespoon Mexican oregano
Two head of garlic, peeled and crushed
Salt
Black pepper
Sugar
Water
Process
Stem and seed the chile pods, tearing them open. Toast them flesh side down in a frying pan with vegetable oil until the flesh turns a lighter color. It doesn’t take long. When the chilies are toasted, place them in a bowl and submerge them in hot tap water. Re-hydrate them for about 20 minutes.
Transfer the chilies to a blender and add about a cup of the soaking liquid. Add the Mexican oregano, crushed garlic and black pepper and blend together until the mixture is incorporated and as smooth as can be. Strain the contents of the blender into the frying pan used for toasting and simmer on low heat until the sauce is reduced to a thick consistency between tomato sauce and tomato paste.
Add salt to taste and a pinch of sugar. Add a half cup of water and stir until the mixture is incorporated. Simmer over medium heat to enable the flavors to meld and the sauce is complete. Taste and adjust seasonings.
Guajillo chile sauce can be used on almost anything. I made a taco filling with green kale and black beans cooked in this sauce. I also served the finished kale, black bean and chile sauce as a side dish at the end of season potluck at the orchard. It was well received and our tractor driver asked me for the recipe.
I put a batch of the sauce in a squeeze bottle. While there’s no way to pour the sauce on the election, it will make many dishes in our kitchen taste better.
I made corn tortillas for the first time last week. They tasted okay, but weren’t the best. They served.
A tortilla press is forgiving but my dough texture and portioning needs practice. The second batch was better than the first, so there’s hope of better fresh tortillas.
Tortilla-making was not part of our family culture coming up. Mother began making tacos at home when she worked in the grade school cafeteria. She used store-bought tortillas and everyone liked them, including some of my friends who frequently asked, “when is taco night?” Those were the days when neighborhood grocery stores began selling more prepared food and eventually instituted a “Mexican section” in one of the aisles. Occasionally I make taco filling similar to what Mother made. When I do, it’s comfort food, plain and simple.
I’ve been buying raw flour tortillas from the warehouse club and make breakfast tacos once or twice a week. Home made tortillas provide better control of what goes into them.
Tortillas serve as a better delivery system than a slice of bread, or pouring stir fry on rice. Fillings can more interesting than tortillas. In the works is a kale, black bean and Guajillo chili sauce filling. My recent project of buying a press and warmer, Guajillo and New Mexican chilies, Mexican oregano and Mexican cheese is to develop new meal options. If it goes well, I’ll cultivate different chilies in the garden next year, although I’ve already ordered the seeds so there’s little doubt about that.
Tortillas are like the mathematical function that establishes relationship between inputs and outputs. At the beginning is the raw material from the garden. In the end, it can lead to a better life.
We have yet to have a hard frost, which is okay by me until I get the kale in for cleaning and freezing. Despite weird weather, this year was the best ever for our home garden. It seems I should say more about it than that.
Truth is I’ve been bedridden the last 48 hours, spewing mucus into tissues without end. I’m over the worst of it, feeling more like working at my desk under lamplight and the glow of my monitor in the wee hours of morning. The last two days seem lost in endless fits of coughing. The two times I went outside to get the mail the weather was perfect for fall.
The ice box was getting overfilled with greens from fall CSA shares. Despite my punk feelings I cleaned eight varieties and made a vegetable broth using them with traditional celery, onion and carrots. This set the stage for other dishes to use the abundance. I made a test batch of fennel potato soup while the broth was bubbling.
Fennel Potato Soup
Melt two tablespoons of butter in a small skillet. Clean and slice a bulb of fennel into spoon-sized pieces and fry it in the melted butter until it begins to soften. Turn off the heat.
In a saucepan cover seven or eight small, peeled and diced potatoes with vegetable broth and bring to a boil. Add the fennel and butter mixture then salt to taste. Add broth to cover again. Return the soup to a boil then reduce to a simmer. Cook until the vegetables are soft and serve with a dollop of sour cream and salt and pepper to taste.
Made three servings.
This weekend was the kick-off of GOTV (Get Out The Vote) for Democrats, and I’m sorry to have missed the action. Between scheduled work and being sick, there was no time to do much but generate sales for tissue manufacturers. I followed along on social media, but that’s not the same as being there.
I don’t have any predictions about the results, and based on the 2016 presidential race, don’t plan to make any. What I do know is more people I know are engaged this year than since 2006. That’s a positive sign for Democrats.
Republicans seem to be using an outdated playbook. A group called the Congressional Leadership Fund spent almost half a million dollars on behalf of Congressman Rod Blum in the First Congressional District to scare us about Abby Finkenauer who is leading in the polls. They warn us she wants to create more “sanctuary cities” and team up with Nancy Pelosi to implement an extreme liberal agenda. Despite the scary music in the internet spots, there are no sanctuary cities in Iowa and it remains unknown if the U.S. House of Representatives will flip to Democratic or whether Pelosi will be elected speaker if it does. Voters who might respond favorably to these ads have been conditioned by the rise of right wing radio and to a lesser extent, FOX News. Accepting these ads may not be reasoned, but it’s in their wheelhouse, and something of a concern.
What I see locally is the same Republican candidate placing the same campaign lawn signs in the same places as he has done since first elected in 2012. It’s clear his segment of the electorate is not growing and that’s good news for the Democratic candidate.
Our gubernatorial candidate Fred Hubbell led in the last polling. Republicans handed Democrats a full quiver to use this cycle. Between their malpractice on privatization of Medicaid, alienating large numbers of voters over abortion rights, and getting teachers and other public employees mad over changes to collective bargaining, there is plenty to shoot down the incumbent. There is so much to talk about Democrats should disband the party if they can’t win the governor’s race this cycle. If we do win, we’ll be able to check the most egregious aspects of the Republican agenda going forward.
I guess I’m getting over my sickness if I can write about two of my favorite things, local food and politics. After I post this I’ll head upstairs, have leftover soup for breakfast and see if I can get feeling well enough to go to the orchard for a my shift. There’s kale to pick before the hard frost leading to winter.
Weekends at the apple orchard are as good as life gets. Families and individuals arrive to walk among colorful deciduous trees, drink a cup of hot, mulled apple cider and bag some apples for traditional uses in apple butter, pies, sauce and crisps.
Like leaves on the trees, cold brings out the best in people. For an hour or two life seems normal as people dream about what to serve with a holiday dinner at extended family gatherings.
I relish my shifts among such society. There are three more of them this season.
Our annual county party political barbecue and fundraiser happened last night while I was working at the orchard. I donated an item for the silent auction — a four-pack of red pepper flakes and ground spice in an African basket — and attempted to provide desserts.
Instead of producing 24 servings of applesauce cake, I caught the oven on fire with an experiment using almond flour instead of wheat. Luckily the fire extinguisher was fully charged. It took a couple of hours to clean up the mess. I re-baked what I salvaged and can report that after baking soda rises once, there is no second rise. I froze cubes of the result for future home desserts. The plan is to microwave them until hot and serve with a scoop of ice cream or flavored Greek yogurt. Ice cream can cure a lot of things.
Speakers at the fundraiser included local candidates and four outsiders: Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI), Governor Jay Inslee (D-WA), and entrepreneur Andrew Yang, Democrat from New York City. I’m not aware that any of the speeches are available on line, so the event will pass into the annuals of local scribes without further consideration. I’m curious about what was said, but not that curious. I would like to know if my donation to the silent auction garnered any bids.
2018 has been a punk year in so many ways. October was no different. For every good thing that happened there were two or three to mitigate any joy resulting from it. It feels like a long slog toward winter which unofficially arrives with the end of Daylight Savings Time on Nov. 4, two days before the midterm elections. A darkness is settling in. It is difficult to see where people stand.
I ran into a friend from the board of health at the grocery store after my shift at the orchard. Her husband is a fan of this blog and we talked about my post, Gardening in End Times. Answering the question, what would you do if society were heading for an imminent, irrevocable disaster as in end times, she answered, “I’d work in my garden.” What else is there to do if disaster is coming?
Former U.S. Senate candidate Roxanne Conlin said it better than I could on twitter last night, “I just hope we can check him at the midterms. I’m not sure we will be able to do anything at all in 2020.”
We accept reality as we know it, become better cooks and gardeners, and that’s a life.
We were busy at the orchard last weekend with perfect fall weather: sunshine and cooler temperatures. Throngs of people visited picking apples, buying apple products, and having fun with friends and family.
We are at peak apple cider sweetness this week. Gala and Honeycrisp apples make the cider sugar content highest of the year. A great time to make fermented products — cider vinegar for me. Since my apple trees did not produce this year, I bought four gallons and started vinegar on Saturday.
The mother of vinegar I use is traced back to the 19th Century. It’s a proven process and if one cares about flavor in a home kitchen, a necessary ingredient.
I haven’t written for a week, due mostly to my brother-in-law’s passing on Sept. 19. Jim and I started at the University of Iowa the same year, although I didn’t run into him after university until Jacque and I met. He married Jacque’s sister. A Celebration of Life is planned in October.
This year has been a challenge for many people I know. As our eyes turn toward the midterm elections we’re hoping to break the spell of this sour time. At least dilute it enough so it is more tolerable.
It’s raining as I type on the keyboard. Rain is to relent and I hope it does because one of the farmers for whom I work is getting married today.
In our small family there are not many celebrations. I’m not sure what to do at a wedding, although I’ll figure it out by 3:30 p.m. today.
Jacque is steering me in the right direction. We bought a gift on line and had it sent to the bride’s home. She is making a card. She suggested I refrain from going directly from the orchard in my work clothes as I had planned to do. I looked through the closet to find something to wear and there was my blue shirt and a pair of slacks. I have a pair of dress shoes left over from when I worked in the Chicago loop. I need to pick a tie. My navy blue blazer still fits. Special things for a special day. I’ll change in the employee rest room at the orchard then head down to the county seat for the ceremony. Civilization at work.
It’s still raining.
Since my first retirement nine years ago I’ve kept track of significant activities.
I keep a balance sheet, a list of books I’ve read recently, and record every event, meeting and significant encounter with people outside immediate family who are part of my world.
Early on there was a purpose to this, although I’m not sure now what it was. Three full binders later, I’m ready to give up tracking things so closely. My last full report was in December 2017 as my Social Security pension began. My second retirement seems opportunity enough to let go of details and focus on main tasks at hand. Things like weddings, funerals, birthdays, housekeeping and the like. I expect I’ll get better at it.
September begins the turn toward winter. The garden is in late summer production so there are tomatoes, celery, cucumbers, winter squash, green beans, eggplant and peppers coming in, requiring processing. Fruit is also coming in from the orchards with pears, apples and peaches lined up on the counter waiting to eat. Cooking has taken a fresh flavor with local food dominating most menus. Cucumber salad is happening daily and we’re not tired of it… yet.
2018 is proving to be a year of transition. So aren’t they all?
I’ve been planning garlic planting in late September and haven’t decided whether to use the cloves I grew as seed or to get more from the farm. I picked a place for them and once the cucumbers are done I’ll prep the soil. I think I know the answer. At some point we have to live on our own — I’ll use the cloves I grew this year, hoping they multiply and eventually become self-sustaining. I’m confident they will.
We don’t need any more salsa in the house yet the abundance of hot peppers this year had me making this recipe… it’s a big batch.
My Serrano pepper crops failed the last couple of years so I’m glad to have more this year.
There weren’t enough of them in the ice box so I went to the garden and picked more. No Roma tomatoes either so I used Clementine, a two-ounce, orange colored tomato of which we have an abundance.
This year I froze the salsa and am not sure how it will turn out when I use it — an ongoing experiment in food preservation. I bagged up two-cup servings. The rest is in the ice box ready for use. The recipe made 17 cups of salsa.
Serrano Pepper Salsa
Ingredients
2 pounds Serrano peppers
3-1/2 pounds Roma tomatoes
1 pound yellow onions
24 ounces tomato sauce
1/4 cup salt
1/4 cup ground black pepper
1 large head of garlic
Technique
Clean and stem the peppers. Clean and prep the garlic, tomatoes and onions, cutting into large chunks. Put the vegetables into a blender in batches. Grind it until medium coarseness. Mix the end result thoroughly in a large bowl. Add the salt, pepper and tomato sauce and mix until ingredients are incorporated.
It is debatable whether to cook the mixture. I like it fresh, although if one wants to can salsa it should be brought to a boil, stirring constantly to keep it from sticking to the pan, and then cooked for ten minutes under medium low heat. After cooking, fill pint Mason jars with the mixture, leaving an inch of head room, and process for 15 minutes.
We’ll be in salsa for months with this recipe. Now what to do with the jalapeno peppers. I’ve already pickled and frozen enough to last until next year.
Peel them, slice and put them in a bowl. Add thinly sliced onions, extra virgin olive oil and your favorite vinegar, then salt and pepper to taste.
Mix gently then serve. It’s summer in a bowl.
When the garden produces them, we eat a lot of cucumber salads. This year I mastered the art of cucumber growing with a couple of simple things. First, I mulched as soon as I planted the seedlings. Then, I made sure deer had no access to the plants. I also put up cages and a fence for the vines to grow upward. The result has been abundant.
Other than in pickles, cucumbers don’t preserve well. They must be enjoyed in the moment, and sometimes that’s as good as it gets.
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