Summer Vegetables!

Late August and early September is the season of bounty!  Pasta salads are perfect for this time of year because they can be made ahead for a quick supper, used for great healthy lunches for work and school and perfect for a fall potluck.   I adjust this salad to feature whichever vegetables are freshest and in the fridge.   This week it had cauliflower, carrots, peppers, cherry tomatoes and steamed romano beans.   I had plans to put grilled corn on top but ran out of energy.   That’s super yummy too!    Cut up Farmer’s sausage from Spragg’s and it was a meal in a bowl.    The dressing recipe below is from a great cookbook called Rebar by Audrey Alsterberg + Wanda Urbanowicz.   It’s inspired by a vegetarian restaurant of the same name in Victoria.  This recipe book is a great way to step into vegetarian food as they offer ideas, tips, add meat options as well as options to make a dish vegan. 

If you don’t have time to roast the peppers and garlic you can use the roasted ones you can buy in the antipasto section with the fancy olives at the grocery store.    The trick I find with any pasta salad is to use lots of dressing.   The recipe below makes a lot of dressing and it seems like you’re going to drown the salad.   But, once it gets stirred in and fills all the lovely ridges on the pasta it’s perfect.

Santa Fe Pasta Salad

Dressing:

2 roasted red peppers

4 cloves garlic roasted

2 tsp chipotle puree (these are the chipotle peppers in the can that have a great smoky flavour)  Puree it and keep it in a jar in the fridge- it’s worth it and keeps a long time. 

1 shallot

½ tsp salt

2 Tbsp rice wine vinegar

2 Tbsp fresh lime juice

¾ cup olive oil

Puree together. 

  

Cook 4 cups dry pasta such as fusilli.  Or some other kind of pasta that has ridges and spots to hold the dressing.    Drain and rinse with cool water.  

Add seasonal vegetables such as corn, tomato, beans, snap peas, cheese, sausage, salmon,

Season with your choice of fresh herbs, - dill, sage, rosemary, parsley, savory.

Pour the dressing on top and stir to coat well.   Refrigerate until serving.

I LOVE TOMATOES!

With the Priddis/Millarville Fair last week I didn't have time to post a blog!  And this week....I'm going to cheat a little and post some of my favourite tomato photos.  It really is tomato season.  So if you love tomatoes but don't have time to deal with a case of them you can cheat.  Pull the green stem part off and put them in ziplocks and put them in the freezer.   That's it.  Really.   When you want to use them in sauce take out as many as you want and then run them under the water in the sink- the skin slips off and then drop them into the soup, pan, sauce etc.    If you have enough time you can also roast them.  Again pull off the green stem, lay them in a baking pan in one layer.  It needs to be deep like a roasting pan, not a cookie sheet.  Roast in the oven at 400 F.  The water comes out of the fruit and concentrates the flavour of the tomato in the remaining pulp.  You can put them in ziplocks after they cool or can whiz them in the blender first and measure out portions appropriate for your needs.   One of my tricks in the fall when I am super busy is that I buy a huge case of roma tomatoes- roast them, put them in big zip locks and then they are set to thaw and use to make a big batch of salsa on a chilly fall day.  

Greenhouse tomatoes and field tomatoes come in all shapes, sizes and colours.   Cherry, roma, grape, yellow, orange, striped, green, beefsteak, and on and on.   I have two all time favourites if you can ever find a Big Rainbow - they weigh at minimum a pound apiece, and have red, yellow, orange, peach stripes running through them.   One slice makes a doozy of a sandwich!

My other all time favourite is a very light green/chartruse colour with darker green stripes,  called Green Zebra.   The taste is tangy, zingy, almost reminds me of the ocean.  

My husband, kids and I started growing greenhouse tomatoes in 2003 when the kids were little.  We were given a CD of Connie Kaldor called a Duck in New York City which has an awesome song on it called "I Love Tomatoes." The kids and I would play it in the truck at top volume and sing along on tomato deliveries.  

I LOVE TOMATOES

I love tomatoes

I love tomatoes

You can keep your carrots and potatoes

I love tomatoes

 

I've got tomatoes in my pocket, tomato colored clothes

I carry a tomato everywhere I go

I've got tomatoes on my windowsill, tomatoes on my bed

I sleep each night with a tomato on my head

I love tomatoes

I love tomatoes

You can keep your carrots and potatoes

I love tomatoes

 

I love tomato cookies, I love tomato cake

I love tomatoes in my salad and tomato milkshakes

I like tomatoes in my cereal, tomatoes with my tea

I like tomato flavored toothpaste and tomato fricassee

 

I love tomatoes

I love tomatoes

You can keep your carrots and potatoes

I love tomatoes

 

I even go so far as to sing off key

And I sing so loud "la la la la la"

And I don't listen to the music "la la la la"

And then they start to boo and then they throw tomatoes at me!

"Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much..."

 

I love tomatoes

Oh, I love tomatoes

You can keep your carrots and potatoes

I love tomatoes

T-O-M-A-T-O

In my garden that's all I'll grow

Cherry or Roma, I love them so

T-O-M-A-T-O

 

"Faster now!"

T-O-M-A-T-O

In my garden that's all I'll grow

Cherry or Roma, I love them so

T-O-M-A-T-O

I love tomatoes

Oh, I love tomatoes

You can keep your carrots and potatoes

I love tomatoes

"I love tomatoes!  I just love tomatoes!  I love tomato sauce on my spaghetti and tomatoes on my pizza!  I love a wonderful tomato salad with just a little bit of mayonnaise!  I love BLT's!  Oh, I love tomatoes!"

 

from A Duck In New York City

©2003 Word of Mouth Music, Lac Laplume Music

Here is a taste of what it sounds like:    http://www.thesecretmountain.com/node/354

Alive and Pickling

My grandma Gertie (who I’ve written of before) was a master pickle maker.  I guess she learned from her foremothers and I decided when I was about 11 years old that I should learn to make pickles too.   My mom probably knew how, but she declared that the smell of hot vinegar made her nauseous.   So I asked Grandma if she would teach me.  But, in my grandma’s universe, learning to make pickles starts in the garden.   So I grew the cucumbers and the dill and when they were ready I went across the yard to Grandma’s house.   Old fashioned dills are the first kind I learned: 

Gertie’s Dill Pickle Recipe

Brine:

12 cups water

4 cups pickling vinegar

1 cup pickling salt

This was the original recipe and my friend Irene aka Jam Goddess kindly corrected me that pickling vinegar in Gertie's day was higher percentage of acid.  So in 2012 we need to use half vinegar and half water- so the above recipe should be 8 cups water and 8 cups pickling vinegar.   Thanks Irene.  Note: I haven't killed anyone yet.  (That I know of :))

Mix together and bring to a boil so the salt is all dissolved and then turn off.

This is the brine.

Jars with new snap tops.  For dills it’s nice to use wide mouth jars either 500mL or 1L jars.  Depends on the size of your family.   

Cucumbers- dill pickle size (I prefer about the size of my thumb)

Baby carrots- or carrots cut in quarters.

Beans- with the top and tail trimmed.

Buy a big bunch of dill with the flower heads on them- but not dry seed yet.  (Market vendors will know what to sell you if you say it’s for pickling)  

Dill for pickling

Some years there are lots of aphids and aphids looooovvvvveeee dill.   If you dill has aphids don't worry- leave it outside on the step overnight,  hose it off, then when you go to eat the pickles skim off any extra aphids before you put them on the table.   (Really- it's harmless)

Pickling Salt

If you like garlic or hot peppers in your dills then buy those too.   You will need one clove of garlic minimum per jar.    

It’s always a bit of a guess how many jars for how many vegetables.    You can start with a half a batch of brine and then always make more if you run out.   The full batch that I made last night filled six 1 L jars and four 500 mL jar, but it depends how tightly packed the jars are too!  I don’t mix the types- I make cucumbers or carrots or beans separately.   You could mix them and see how it works out. 

The fresher and crisper your vegetables are to start with the better the pickles will be.

Wash the jars and the screw part of the lids. 

Hold them with tongs and swoosh them in boiling water to sterilize.  

Washing

Wash the vegetables-  Make sure they are clean, trimmed and those pesky little bits of the old cucumber blossoms are off.   You can trim the stem of the cucumber off, but I like it. 

Put a dill blossom in the bottom of the jar (along with a clove of garlic and a hot pepper) optional.  

  

Lay the clean cucumbers (or carrots or beans) in the jar the way that you can fit the most in.  (it’s like a jigsaw puzzle)  Pack them tight!  Add another dill bloom at the top.  Make sure the lid will screw on without touching any vegetables that could be sticking up.    Set aside and keep filling the jars until you either have no more vegetables or no more jars.   

Cram them in!

Heat up the brine until a light boil.   Put the snap tops (inside section of the lid) in a pan of boiling water and let simmer.    Pour the brine into the jars leaving a half cm of space at the top.  Put on a hot snap top and screw on the lid.   Just finger tight is tight enough.  You don't have to crank them tight so you can never open them again. 

Set aside to cool.   You will hear the tops popping down.  You will know they are sealed if the centre of the lid is sucked down and doesn’t flex when you push on it.   If one doesn’t seal don’t worry.  Put it in the back of the fridge.   Jars with sealed lids can be stored in a cool dark place.  

Pickles are ready to eat in a minimum of 8 weeks.  Put them into the fridge to chill before you eat them and they will be really crispy.  This method is safe because the amount of vinegar and salt prevents any bacteria growth.  Other types of pickling require other methods.     If you can resist eating them all, save a jar to enter in the Priddis/Millarville Fair the next summer.  

The rest of the story: 

It was a really great year for cucumbers and at 11 years old the novelty wore off eventually.  So I stopped watering the cucumber patch so they would stop producing.   But it didn’t work- more cucumbers, more picking, more pickling.   I finally figured out what was going on when I came around the hedge to see my grandpa watering my cucumber patch!   He laughed.   For a man who grew up in the Depression you never took food for granted and could never have too many pickles in the cold room.   

I encourage you to try your hand at pickling, join a friend, then teach your kids or the neighbour’s kids and keep an honourable tradition alive and pickling.  

Beautiful

Krystal making pickles for the first time!  Yeah!

The next pickle recipe I'm going to try is this one:  http://www.nwedible.com/2012/09/turmeric-garlic-dill-pickles.htm   Turmeric Garlic Dill Pickles!

Corn!

It’s corn season in Alberta.   In this part of the woods this means that we look for corn coming from Southern Alberta.  A lot of that corn comes from Taber.   This is because there are families like the Jensen’s that have been growing corn there for years and are really great at it.   

This season we’ve had enough rain and enough sun and heat to start corn season in early August.  If the frost holds off we’ll be eating corn well into September.   The reason we can’t grow corn here in the foothills is that we don’t have enough heat.   The nights cool off and we don’t get enough frost free days.   At my place west of Millarville we get anywhere from 40 to 80 days between the last frost in the spring and the first frost in the fall.   Down by Taber they can get 100 to 120 frost free days.   Corn loves to grow at between 25-30 C but is sensitive to frost damage.

Taber is famous for its corn due to the large amounts of sunshine the area receives. It is therefore known as the Corn Capital of Canada and holds an annual "Corn Fest" in the last week of August.   http://www.taber.ca/calendar.aspx?EID=152

But not all corn is from Taber.   Some is from BC, some from Medicine Hat and other areas of Alberta.  Lots of roadside vendors try to pass off any corn as Taber corn.

"It’s a challenge that happens every year,” explains David Jensen, with the Alberta Corn Growers Association. “We try to do some control of that by having certificates that we issue to people we sell to, that gives the growers name and where the corn is from.”   The certificate of authenticity will also have a raised emblem on it to try to limit the amount of fake certificates being displayed at counterfeit corn stands.

“There are people out selling corn, and that corn is not originally from Taber, and they’re calling it Taber corn,” says Jensen.  (http://www.globaltvedmonton.com/pages/story.aspx?id=6442693253)  

Here at the market we have two corn vendors who are the real deal farmers.   One is Jensen’s which helped to start the branding of Taber Corn twenty five years ago. 

http://jensenstabercorn.com/index.html

The other is the Magill family corn which is from near Lethbridge.    I like them both.    Some of our other vegetable growers like Michelle’s Market and Mr. Hiebert  grown corn as well.   Think of it a great research to try all the different kinds.   Different varieties, growing conditions, water, picking time, all affect flavour.  

One thing that really affects the sweetness, flavour and texture of corn is how fresh it is.   As soon as it’s picked the sugars start to turn to starch.   This is slowed by cooling, but the fresher it is, the better it will be.   Another reason to buy locally. 

Everybody has a favourite way to cook corn.   Mine is to drop it into boiling salted water for 5 min and add butter.   Say no more it’s corn time.   

Summer Berries and Pies!

One of my favourite things to do in the summer is to go and pick saskatoons.   My kids and I went to the Little Purple Apple U-pick last week. (formally Prairie Berry)   Market managers do get a day off once in a while but berry farmers don’t get a day off during picking season!    

Gorgeous juicy saskatoons.

Kids and picking stools.

 

I think that I have picked saskatoons almost every year of my life.   As a kid we used to pile in the back of the pickup truck with my mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, brother, sister and drive up to the gully to pick wild saskatoons.  It was one of those hills where you can’t see over the hood of the truck when you’re going up, but my dad would always gun it and drive on memory.   A collection of my grandpa’s retired ties would come out to tie the bucket around the waist so you could pick with both hands.   Grandpa would help me find a good bush, stomp the grass down and pull the tree over to hold with one hand and pick with the other.   Grandma, a world class competitive berry picker would always cover the bottom of her bucket first and then fill it first too.   She would actually get offended if anyone picked faster that she did!   It’s mandatory to have purple hands, purple tongue and then make pie!    

 

 

The river valley in Edmonton has great native saskatoons and there are still hidden pockets of wild saskatoons left.   There are many u-picks around the province that would love to host a berry picking outing.   www.albertafarmfresh.com

Pie Crust:

From Horn of the Moon Cookbook by Ginny Callan.

This crust only has butter so it’s perfect for vegetarians and other lovers of butter. 

Enough for one 10” pie top and bottom. 

2 cups all purpose flour

2/3 cup cold butter

Dash of salt

5-6 Tbsp very cold water.

In a mixing bowl combine flour and salt.  Cut in the butter with a knife, then a pastry cutter, then smooth out the pieces with your fingers.   Add very cold water and mix as little as possible.   Squish together dough.  Wrap and chill at least an hour- overnight works just as well.   Divide into two parts with one slightly bigger than the other.  Roll out the slightly bigger piece for the bottom and put in the pie plate.  Roll out the top and have ready.  Put in the pie filling add the top and trim.   and put in the oven right away.   Bake at 400 F for 10 min and then reduce to 350F for 30minutes until pie is golden brown and the filling is juicy and bubbling.  

Filling:

Summer Fruit or Berry pies-  I use only three ingredients:  fruit, sugar, minute tapioca.

To get the right amount of filling I pour the berries or the cut up fruit into the pie plate and mound it up in the middle then pour it back out into a bowl.   Wash or wipe the plate to be ready for the crust. 

To the fruit/berries add sugar and tapioca- stir well and let sit while you roll out the crust.

Here are the ratios that work most of the time- developed over many summers of “research”.   Once in a while it’s too runny or too firm, but still tastes great. 

Saskatoons + 1/3 cup sugar 3 tbsp tapioca

Saskatoon/raspberry + 2/3 cup sugar 3 ½ cup tapioca

Peach- ½ cup sugar 3 tbsp tapioca

My grandma Gertie must have made thousands of pies in her life.  From helping feed threshing crews as a girl and young woman to baking pies to take to the field during combining.    Summer was fruit and berries, fall was apple and pumpkin, winter was lemon meringue, raisin and cherry or maybe banana cream.   Go to her house for lunch or supper and expect to have a bunch of pies on the table for dessert and have her cut each one in four.  A quarter of a pie for everyone!   You inherit short but eat for stout in my family.   Grandma used to comment if pie crust was “snappy”.   Not a compliment.   But any pie you make yourself from scratch will taste many times better that what you can buy.   I encourage you to start a family tradition and try your hand at pie.

The last lonely piece.