And suddenly it is fall.

Summer on the Salish Sea has been delightful.  My garden produced more lettuce than I would ever guessed.  Although I am fairly sure the first planting was killed off when I was weeding (if you haven't had a garden in many, many years, you don't know what a lettuce seedling looks like).

But here is my surprise--I planted three zucchini plants, because I LIKE zucchini.  Everyone talks about zucchini's profligate ways.  But I no longer believe that is true.  Three plants produced a few zucchini, but not the truck-load I was hoping for.

Zucchini is fantastic--I slice it into thin coins, and saute with garlic in olive oil, until lightly browned.  Toss in some fresh spinach, sliced mushrooms and tofu cubes and toss with pasta for dinner.  Sprinkle with cheese.  Nummy.  

Or saute with onions and bacon and toss with pasta and cheese.

Maybe I don't like zucchini so much as I like pasta:)

We have been blessed this year with an amazing fall--today we walked the Pierce County Hunger Walk and it was sunny and 75 degrees.  

So I still have lettuce growing in the garden, as well as basil (which I am digging up to plant in a planter at the apartment for the winter), and tomatoes still ripening.  Peppers also--beautiful deep green bell peppers, wonderfully bright colored banana peppers.  And one lone acorn squash, which may or may not get ripe, but hey, I am pleased to have it growing there.

And I am happy that I will have my apartment for another year--even though I hate and love where I live.  The rent is decent, the manager is great, it has a pool that I used a few times and an exercise room that I use rarely.  

But I am still stuck in my food desert.  No easy access local grocery stores--so once my garden (which is not near by either, but is close to work) is done, I am back to driving further than I should have to for food.

So here is my new vow: it is time to embrace the life that I now lead.  Food desert, mom with dementia, and a job that has it's own set of issues--starting with a paycheck that isn't enough.  

Of turkey, red peppers and polenta

On a recent holiday week-end, we decided to gather at my daughter’s house.  She shares a rental house with two friends in the south sound, and we decided since they have the best kitchen and a large dining room set, we would gather there for our Easter meal.  No one was terribly interested in the traditional ham or lamb, so we went with turkey.

Despite being taken out of the freezer two days before, the turkey is still partially frozen when I start cooking.  (deep sigh).  So struggle number one for the day: getting the turkey prepped.

Before I go any further, I should say a few works about my daughter and her roommate T.  T (whose name I will not use until he gives me permission) is a vegetarian.  That’s okay.  I often eat vegetarian for days at a time.  T is not a zealot about this—he is not trying to force everyone to follow his vegetarian ways.  But a turkey dinner cooked in his house means we need another main dish option, which his mom is going to provide—a tofurkey. 

But vegetarians cannot live by tofurkey alone.  And as I struggle with my turkey, T starts a homemade polenta, with roasted red pepper.  Turning to me, he asks if he can use the oven for a few moments to roast his pepper. 

Distracted by the slightly frozen turkey I am tackling, I tell him to go ahead.  I had already gotten it preheating.  Thirty minutes later my turkey is finally ready to go into the oven.  In it goes, the timer is set, and I go sit down for a bit. 

Fast forward 45 minutes—I go out to the kitchen and find that my turkey is already browning nicely.  Seems quick, but I check the thermostat and it is set at the correct temp.  A few moments later, my daughter notices what I had not: the oven was set to broil.  They have a separate dial for bake or broil.  We quickly change it back to bake, but I worry—what will this have done to my turkey?

So, I wouldn’t recommend broiling at the start of baking a turkey, but it turns out that it is an amazingly moist turkey when it is done.  I have always cooked turkey at  325 degrees for a long time.  That is what my cookbook suggests.  But as T’s mother explains, she often starts her turkey on higher heat for 30 or so minutes—it has a similar effect to a quick braise on the stove top for a roast, sealing in the moisture.  Apparently our broiler accident had a similar effect.  I won’t do it quite that way again, but I am going to try my next turkey on a high heat start.

T’s mom has her own adventures for this meal.  Tofurkey, it turns out, is easy to find at Thanksgiving and Christmas, not so much so at Easter.  She had to go to quite a few stores to find one.

Despite our series of dinner challenges, it was served on time, and it was great!  T’s polenta was creamy and delicious, and reminded me how great this dish can be when you take the time to make it right.  T used a freshly roasted red pepper, wonderful Fontina Cheese, and home-made polenta to come up with a creamy side dish that was wonderful. 

What’s polenta?  Well, it was an Italian dish, and the word itself comes from the Latin puls or pulmentum or more commonly as gruel or porridge.  Before corn was brought to Europe from the New World it was commonly made from chestnut or chickpea flour (who knew?).  Today it is commonly made from corn meal, which can be bought in the bulk section of many grocery stores.  You can use standard cornmeal, or the more coarsely ground cornmeal, depending on how smooth you want your polenta.

This is one of those cases where the Italians take a simple grain (cornmeal) and turn it into something great simply via preparation.  Stirring this a lot while it is cooking results in a creamier texture, as does using milk for at least part of the liquid.  It reminds me in this sense of risotto, which takes rice and slowly cooks in the liquid to make that wonderful, creamy rice dish.

If you make polenta, count on spending 45 minutes at the stove stirring.  But make a big pot, and you can eat it for a couple of days.  I have been known to spread part of it in a cake pan, about ¾ inch thick and put it in the fridge.  Then you can take a piece and reheat it or fry it (it is really good fried!) and eat topped with fresh tomato sauce (or pasta sauce).  

For every 1/4 cup of polenta, you will want 1 cup of liquid.  The liquid can be water or broth, or you can substitute part of the liquid with milk.  When it is thick (really thick!) you can throw in some cheese: Fontina is good.  So it Parmesan, but for this you don't want to use parma from a can--use fresh.  Fresh herbs are good--I like sage or basil, but play with it.    Because playing with your food is good for you:)

On Planting a Garden . . .

In April I checked to make sure may name was still on the waiting list for a pea patch in the Proctor Community Garden.  It was.  I added my name to a community garden closer to me, but wasn’t given much hope.

Then I got a call from church—they were resurrecting the church garden, and I could have a plot if I wanted. I did, but it was already early June. Too late to do much with seeds.  So I started buying vegetable starts.  I have three roma tomato plants, four zucchini (yes, that may be three too many, but I really like zucchini), two types of cucumbers, acorn squash, cauliflower, and bell peppers.  Then there are the herbs—basil, peppermint and lemon thyme.  I wanted sage, but couldn’t find any plants or seeds.  

The one thing I planted by seed was lettuce—which I have had little luck with to date.  But I have started more lettuce in my window at home, and will transplant it in a few days.  I figure that if I work it right, I can have lettuce from late July thru September.  

What do I hope for?  Enough produce to make the weeding and watering worth the effort. Meantime, had a great dessert of local raspberries and nectarines (which were at the peak of ripeness) over pound cake.  Yummy.  Must get some local berries to eat regularly . . . 

But planting a garden brings me to another thought.  The planting of a garden is an act of faith.  You plant seeds (or seedlings) and water them.  Weed around them, and maybe give them a little plant food.  But they are at the mercy of conditions you have little control over: animals, insects, weather, and other humans.

When you plant a garden, you are living in faith and hope that in a few weeks or months you will have this wonderful bounty to show for it.  

My father was a gardener.  When he bought the property he built the house on, he actually purchased multiple plots of land, so he could garden.  The land was rocky--every spring one of us kids would walk in front and another would walk behind dad as he went through with the rototiller; each of us carried a bucket to collect rocks.  By high school, I was sure that we should have picked every rock possible out of that garden, but year after year we still picked rocks.

But we also ate incredibly good food.  Fresh lettuce, home grown tomatoes, beets and carrots, corn and potatoes.  And cherries, grapes and plums from our own trees became jams and jellies that we would ear on toast in the winter, savoring the flavor of summer.

My dad was a child of the depression--born days after the 1929 crash of the stock market, to parents who farmed at the edge of the dust bowl, he understood the value of being self supporting.

So in my garden, I find memories of my dad.  I talk to him, knowing that somehow he would approve of my feeble little attempt to grow vegetables (well, everything except the peppers--dad hated peppers).  And I keep the faith--that there will be fresh tomatoes, wonderful lettuce, and zucchini enough to share with everyone.

Please God, help my garden grow:)

BTW, a great read on the topic of gardening (if you are looking to laugh) is "The $64 Tomato".  Re-read it after planting my garden, and laughed out loud in public (reading at the park).  His trials and tribulations with his home garden/farm will make anyone who has ever gardened laugh (especially if you have done battle with deer, ground hogs and squirrels over first rights to what you grow!).  William Alexander is the author.  
  

Note to self:

Never start a blog days before your daughter graduates college.  Your intention to post two to three times a week will sound simple, but not so much so if you have a very busy 10 days in front of you.

That having been said, it was a beautiful, but bittersweet, graduation weekend.

Beautiful, because my daughter, the joy of my life, was getting her degree.  But bittersweet, because the two people who love her as much as I do could not be there. 

Her grandpa would have been amazingly proud of his only grandchild, and the sorrow that he passed before he could see his grandchild graduate college at times seemed more than my heart could bear.

And after a long talk, we decided that trying to deal with my mother and her dementia during graduation was more than we were willing to try and cope with.  Mom gets confused when she is in new surroundings.  So as much as we wanted her there, we decided not to have her join us. 

We started the week-end with a small party at the kid’s house (the “kids” are my daughter and her two roommates).  Potluck with BBQ.  Because of all the news about “pink slime” in hamburgers, the kids are eating a lot of ground turkey (accept for T, who became a vegetarian last year).  So we grilled turkey burgers , turkey dogs, and vegi burgers.  (I have to say, I am a fan of the mushroom based vegetarian burgers, especially when they are grilled.)

Thunder chased us out of the yard and into the living room, but we had a great time talking, catching up with some friends, and seeing A's fellow grads.

One of the things everyone enjoyed (accept the resident vegetarian) was the Hot German Potato Salad I made.  I only made this once before—last summer, using my mother’s recipe while visiting her over the 4^th of July weekend.  It is a bit more time consuming to make than standard cold potato salad, so mom didn’t make it often.  But I always loved it.  Making it made me feel like my mom was there with us . . .

[note: I have NO idea where my mother got the recipe--my Aunt Ann says that mom shared it with her years ago, saying it came from "the paper".  Mom's copy was handwritten on a 3x5 card]

Hot German Potato Salad

6 medium potatoes (about 3 pounds--I used yukon golds, which mom would not have)
1 medium onion - finely chopped
1 1/2 tlb sugar
Pepper to taste
3/4 cup boiling water
1/2 tsp celery seed - optional
6 slices bacon
1 tlb flour
1 tsp salt
1 beef bouillon
1/2 cup cider vinegar

Boil potatoes in their skins until tender (my note: DO NOT OVERCOOK OR YOU WILL HAVE MUSHY POTATOES).  Peel and slice into a large bowl.  In a skillet fry the bacon until crispy.  Remove the bacon leaving the fat in the pan.  Drain bacon and break into pieces.  In the bacon fat cook the onions until transparent, stir in flour, sugar, salt, pepper and celery seed.  Remove from heat.  Dissolve bouillon cube in boiling water and add vinegar.  Gradually add into flour mixture keeping smooth.  Cook over low heat stirring constantly until slightly thickened.  Add bacon pieces.  Pour dressing over potatoes and toss gently.  Serve hot makes 8 servings

How did I happen to move into the desert? 

First off, let us define the desert I mean:  a food desert.  While I live in a mid-sized city in the state of Washington, I moved a few months ago into a neighborhood with no grocery store.  I have to drive miles and miles to get real food.  There isn’t even much in the way of fast food around.

WHAT WAS I THINKING?

Honestly, it wasn’t intentional.  I didn’t even notice until moving day.  I had spent 6 weeks looking for a new apartment, and there were a variety of issues with the move that I won’t go into at this time (although probably later).  On move in day, for the first time, I realized I had no milk or eggs, and there was no grocery store nearby to buy such items at.

Crap.  Crap, crap, CRAP.

There is an AMPM mini mart and a 7-Eleven across the street, where I can buy chips, prepackaged salads, apples, bananas, lemons and limes.  Milk is available, but I am picky—I drink organic milk, which they do not sell.  And both shops take SNAP benefits (the new name for food stamps).  I don’t use food stamps, but how do you make a real meal out of this stuff?  Oh course you don’t—the lemons and limes are probably meant for beer drinkers (THAT they have plenty of).

Spring was a bit away, but I checked two things: would there be a farmers market in the area (depends on how you define area.  There is a farmers market come spring—June 3^rd.  But it is still several miles from me at something called the Star Center (I have NO idea what this is or where it is except for the map quest map).  And I email the community garden program (again, several miles from home) to see if I can get a plot come spring.  

  

Which begs the question—how do the lower income people in the neighborhood survive?  The bus line is close, but my guess is that these are some of the recently cut routes—I never see a bus around here.  In my old neighborhood, buses were regular, and easy to catch.  Three weeks in, and I have yet to see a bus.

I DO see cops.  Have yet to go more than a week without coming home to find cop cars in the parking lot of the complex I moved into.  Or fire trucks.  Or aid cars.  Or a combination of the previously mentioned.  What the heck is going on here?

Crap, crap, crap.

But it isn’t just a food desert.  It has been a tough year.  Dad died, mom was officially diagnosed with dementia, and I am only working part time.

Crap. Crap, crap, CRAP!

So this blog, which I am calling (in my mind at least) Living in the Desert, is about my food desert.   And cooking.  And occasional recipes.

But it is really about food, faith and family.  And occasionally I may stray into politics.

Stick with me, and see what we find.