Play it again, Ssam

I love it when a plan comes together, especially when it’s a plan I didn’t even start out with. You know how that goes, right? You have this vaguely formed idea in your head, and this other vaguely formed idea sitting right next to it, and somehow they get together and combine forces into a much stronger idea than the other two ever were? Maybe not. But it happens to me all the time, most recently in the case of the durian adventure. As I mentioned in that post, my original, vaguely formed idea was that we’d get a durian, take it somewhere outdoors, and eat it. At the same time, thinking about topics to write about in this here blog I was pondering tackling another recipe from the Momofuku cookbook, since all of them seem delicious, slightly time-consuming, and require skills and ingredients that are advanced enough to be considered adventurous. The recipe I’d decided on came from a different section of the book than the pork belly buns – while those come from David Chang’s original restaurant, my next foray into his cooking would come from his follow up establishment – Ssäm Bar. I had a very clear idea of which recipe I wanted to attempt, but the vaguely-formed part came in when I was pondering what to do with it once I’d made it. The recipes in the Momofuku book tend to feed a large number of people, and it didn’t seem right to force-feed Mr. Menace, even if the recipe turned out well. So, I had a large number of people coming over, and a recipe which feeds a large number of people…ah ha! We had what the MBA-types refer to as synergy! And since I’d already purchased everything I needed for this particular treat, it was high time to cook it all up anyway, lest the ingredients spoil.

So what was I planning to make, anyway? Momofuku’s Ssäm Bar has a focus on, quite understandably, ssäms – a sort of Korean burrito. Rather than a tortilla, ssams can be wrapped in a number of things: seaweed, pumpkin leaves, even thinly sliced octopus! (The word ssäm literally means “wrapped” in Korean.) The most common wrapper, however, and the one that I was employing, is lettuce. The fillings are equally diverse. Momofuku’s specialty is the bo ssäm, made with dry-rubbed, slow-cooked pork butt, served with kimchi and oysters as accompaniments. I’d decided not to go that route, however, for a few reasons. The first was that it was going to be extremely hot the weekend in question, and the idea of leaving the oven on for six hours, even at a low temperature, was rather unappealing. The second is that both kimchi and oysters are rather polarizing foods. Kimchi is a Korean dish of fermented cabbage (or other vegetables, depending on the region), similar to sauerkraut if sauerkraut included some of the hottest chili paste ever to burn a tongue. It smells like death and can be nostril-clearingly spicy. As for the oysters, in addition to some people just really not enjoying them, they’re really better in the winter months and we were already into May. With all these factors in consideration, I decided to make something that I thought might be more universally appealing – sausage!

Yes, folks, I did indeed make my own sausage – although I didn’t stuff it into any casings. This makes more of a Jimmy Dean, patty style sausage – pork, with lemongrass, shallots, and sriracha. The straight-forward title of the recipe was “Grilled Lemongrass Pork Sausage Ssäm” – clearly David Chang is uninterested in cutesy names for his food. Fine by me! What was fun about this recipe was that, in addition to the sausage itself, there were a variety of accompaniments, including pickles and a fish sauce vinaigrette that I got play with as well. I don’t know that I will ever get tired of the joys of just how easy it actually is to make things like sausage and pickles in your very own home. (Although some day I will tell you all the story of my recent, repeated mayonnaise failures. The moral was this – always add the oil REALLY SLOWLY at first.)

The first part of the recipe is getting the sausage flavorings mixed together – just throwing the lemongrass and shallots into a food processor with salt, fish sauce, sugar, and sriracha and whirling it about until it’s all combined. However, you can’t throw in whole pieces of lemongrass, which is about a foot long and rather reedy, and Chef Chang warned that most folks don’t slice it correctly. So I made sure to follow his surprisingly detailed instructions on the matter:

I’ll spare you Chang’s detail, but the gist is that you’ve got to be sure to remove all of the woody bits, then slice it finely lengthwise before mincing it. Otherwise you just have unsightly lemongrass hunks.

Into the processor it went, with all of its friends:

Mmm…looks like salsa.

Next, this is massaged into the ground pork.

I kind of love mixing up raw, ground meat with flavoring – it’s very therapeutic, like Playdough for adults. Be sure to use good food safety techniques, however! (Side story – I bought the wrong amount of ground pork at Market Basket and when looking for an additional pound, couldn’t find it ANYWHERE, so I just whirled some boneless country pork ribs in the trusty food processor. So easy, and it came out just as good!)

I was supposed to add some flour as a binding agent, but spaced and didn’t. I have to say the sausages held together just fine.

Next throw the whole shebang into a brownie pan to bake for about half an hour. This lets the sausage cook enough that you can really just brown it on the grill, as well as rendering out some of the fat so you don’t end up with a three-foot flame shooting out of your grill. THIS IS NEVER THE DESIRED OUTCOME FOR GRILLING, PEOPLE.

Now we were ready to grill!

I brought down all of the other accompaniments for the sausage – pickled daikon and carrots, a vinaigrette made of fish sauce and shallots, mint and cilantro, sticky rice, and sea salt, along with the Bibb lettuce wrappers. I put out the sriracha as well, for those who like things a bit spicier. Since we hadn’t planted the garden yet, this became our little ssäm bar.

Mr. Menace grilled the sausage, cut into little logs, beautifully!

Finally, after putting it all together, I sat down to eat the fruits of my labor:

I’ll be straight up honest here – these things are amazing. The sausage is perfect – delicately flavored from the lemongrass and sriracha, with the fish sauce amping up the meatiness to 11 (fish sauce is basically anchovy juice, a natural umami booster. It smells like low tide, but then performs magic in your mouth. It was a better example of this than the durian that day!) The pickles added sweetness and crunch, and the crisp, light lettuce encased it all beautifully. In addition, the burrito-bar setup made this a really fun party food. You’ve done it again, David Chang – I’m a believer.

Guest Post: Hooray for Beignets! And Other Gastronomic Adventures in Downeast Maine

Today’s post is extra-special, because it’s not written by me! The fabulous words and images come from the witty and talented “Easy Bake.” If you’re not starving after this post – and eager for a trip to Maine – you’re a better person than I am. – TRM

I was trying to think of what would be a good blogger name for myself. I thought since I am guesting for The Red Menace, I could be The Brown Menace, since I have brown hair. But that sounds more like something you deal with in Mexico than a blogger. I think I’ll go by “Easy Bake”. It describes both my affinity for the childhood toy that cooks by light bulb, as well as baked goods. I’m sure there are a lot of other meanings that can be extracted from the moniker, but I’ll stick with those two.

So, I am here to report on my recent excursion to and throughout Maine with my boyfriend, let’s call him Lieutenant Funyuns. This trip was planned as a birthday present for me. I was told about it last September and had to hold out until May, which was very difficult as I am a fan of instant gratification. But hold out I did. Our trip took us from Cambridge to Acadia National Park, and back. Of course I was excited to see the scenery and explore the wilderness that Maine is famous for, but really, I was in it for the food.

We left the wilds of Cambridge on Thursday with the goal of stopping in Ogunquit on our way to Portland. We pulled into Ogunquit without a plan. This was unlike me. For those who know me, know I am a planner. As a child, I started planning my Halloween costume for the next year on November 1st. I always have a plan. This time I did not, and it worked out for the best. We strolled around Perkins Cove looking for a place to eat, almost enticed by the kitschy, touristy vibe of Barnacle Billy’s. But then we saw MC Perkins Cove with a small sign on the door that read: Home of 2010 James Beard Foundation Best Chefs of the Northeast: Mark Gaier and Clark Frasier. Um, yes please! If this place didn’t have spectacular food, it would be worth going to just for the view. But Lt. Funyuns and I both in the Mainey mood ordered fresh, local fish. He ordered fish and chips and I ordered fish tacos made from local Cod. Perfection in a taco! This is on the list to go back to, and visit their sister restaurants.

Fish Taco

Bellys full, Lt. Funyuns and I made our way to Portland where we were staying in the Old Port district – lovely. My first stop, after dropping our bags in the hotel room, was a quick walk to Two Fat Cats Bakery. A local told me that this was the place to go for cupcakes. I am a sucker for cupcakes. I know cupcakes are so “in” right now. But I am a cupcake purist. I don’t need bacon (no offense bacon) or any other exciting ingredients in my cupcakes. Give me some chocolate cake and some buttercreme frosting and I am like Augustus Gloop in a fudge river. Two Fat Cats delivered. It is a very small establishment across the street from a meat packing facility that apparently just burned down. Had a very pungent smell. But that didn’t matter. I walked in, there was one chocolate cupcake left, and I knew it was meant to be. My mother has this process when she eats Sanders Hot Fudge Sundaes – it’s a Detroit thing – she closes her eyes, and doesn’t let anyone speak to her, that was my experience with this cupcake.

Heaven

We did some other stuff around Portland that day, but really it was all just trying to waste time before our dinner at Fore Street Fore Street is the type of restaurant that I love. They take pride in their food, everything is local and fresh, and if it isn’t, it isn’t on the menu. They change their extremely extensive menu daily. I have to say, I thought Fore Street was good and not great. I think part of this was because I didn’t do a great job ordering. I started off with a salad with shiitake mushrooms – good, and my main was salmon. I always have a hard time with salmon in restaurants, I don’t know why, it just is never that good. That said, Lt. Funyuns really enjoyed his meal. He started with mussels, he actually made me eat two of them, my first two mussels ever, and his main was the duck. He was impressed, and Lt. Fun. is a tough boy to impress. The ambiance and service was grand, so overall, recommended. PLUS, our homeboy (waiter) Lance gave us the inside scoop on what to get for breakfast the next day, so to him I am eternally grateful.

Fore Street Dinner

Friday morning we started our drive up to Rockport, our home for the next two days. However, not before we stopped at the other recommended bakery in Portland, Standard Baking Co., which coincidentally is directly below Fore St. Holy Macanoley, this place was the shiz. As I mentioned, Lance recommended the fougasse. He said this word like I was supposed to know what he was talking about. I did not. The fougasse is a bread product that is shaped in a ladder. Why? I don’t know. I suppose I could wikipedia it, but this post is long enough already. (Editor’s note: click the link!) It comes in different flavors, Lt. Fun. got the Asiago cheese and I got Sesame and Poppy seed. If there is a patron saint of butter, I would like to show some sort of gratitude in whatever way you do to saints (I’m a Jew, we don’t do saints). This was amazingness in a way I can’t describe. Just get one.

Fougasse!

We did some non-food related activities in Rockport, and then the next day made our way up to Acadia and Bar Harbor. Unfortunately I do not have food adventures to report from there, (Jordan Pond House was closed) but it’s a good place to go to if you’ve been eating your way across the state and might perhaps need a hike to burn some calories.

Saturday night we had reservations at Primo, back near the hotel in Rockland. I learned about Primo from the New York Times, said it is one of the best restaurants in the state…I concur! First of all, it is beautiful. Primo is in an old house, that feels welcoming and warm. The staff feel like they have been your best friends since second grade, but just went to school for food instead of Mason-Rice Elementary School. The bread – delicious, but then…then an AMUSE BOUCHE! Of course I know what this is from all my years of studying Top Chef. I casually explain to Lt. Funyuns it is a precursor to the appetizer, literally to amuse the palate, a gift from the chef. I swear to god this one bite is the best thing I have tasted all trip. It is a potato croquette with short rib marmalade. It tastes like the lightest, fluffiest, cheesiest tater tot you can image. Then I got the farmer’s salad which comes with a poached egg and bacon – perfection. Lt. Funyun ordered olives stuffed with sausage breaded and fried for his starter. For his main he had the Pork Saltimboca, which came with garlic, mashed potatoes. This man is a mashed potato fanatic, and when he says “Judas Priest, these are damn good potatoes!”, I know they’ve done something right. I got a pasta dish with fried eggplant, fresh tomatoes, some sort of salty cured pork, and other sorts of deliciousness. I wasn’t going to order dessert, but my best friend, waitress dimples, convinced me (she was good). I ordered the Zeppoli, which is basically Italian Fried Dough balls covered in cinnamon sugar – commence drooling. I did this even knowing I was planning on getting the Beignets the next day, but I was unstoppable, and once I took my first bite, I didn’t regret it for a second.

Amuse Bouche

Saltimbocca

Zeppoli

Lt. Funyuns and I often like to go through our many experiences at fine eateries and compare them. We did that again on this night. Primo unexpectedly shot to #2 on our list of Best. Meals. Ever. Second only to Craft in New York, which can only be explained by divine intervention. If you are ever, anywhere near Rockland, Maine, go, go, a thousand times, go.

So that brings us to our final day in Maine. The day I saved my jeans that are one-size too big for, but on this day felt surprisingly snug. One of my goals had been to get an authentic Maine Whoopie Pie. On our drive back down Route 1 we stopped in at Moody’s diner and snagged a cream filled wonder. I am actually snacking on it now as I write this. You would think I would have had enough, but no, Easy Bake is insatiable. Our final stop in my quest to raise my cholesterol 50 points three days before my yearly physical (not kidding, the weigh-in should be fun), was at DuckFat in Portland. Two of my best pals, Fred and Baby Panda have been raving about this place for years, it was only fair to them that I check it out. We got a table outside, again across from the burned down meatpacking plant, and ordered up a large fries with truffle ketchup. Those people know how to do fries! They were perfectly cooked, some crispy, some soft, but none undercooked which really is my pet peeve when it comes to fries. And here comes my confession…I did not have the Beignets! After the cupcake, and the fougasse, and the Zeppolis and the Whoopie pie waiting for me in the car, I just couldn’t do it. But the way I look at it, now I have a reason to go back.

Whoopie!

Thank you so much to the Red Menace for suggesting I document this trip as a blog and graciously allowing me to post it on her fabulous Foodie blog!

Places mentioned:
MC Perkins Cove Restaurant, Ogunquit, ME – http://www.mcperkinscove.com/index.cfm
Two Fat Cats Bakery, Portland, ME – http://www.twofatcatsbakery.com/
Fore St. Restaurant, Portland, ME – http://www.forestreet.biz/
Standard Baking Co., Portland, ME – http://www.yelp.com/biz/standard-baking-co-the-portland
Primo, Rockland, ME – http://www.primorestaurant.com/
Moody’s Diner, Waldoboro, ME – http://www.moodysdiner.com/
Duckfat, Portland, ME – http://www.duckfat.com/

Fruit Devil or Fruit King?

In many ways, this post has been a long time in the making. On my original list of adventures, it was mentioned. It came up again when I tried mangosteen. Reaching further back, I remember reading about a fruit so pungent, so terrible, that was banned on public transit, yet its devotees consider it the food of the gods all the way back in 2002 (in Lynda Barry’s amazing book, One Hundred Demons. Lynda’s grandma describes it as something that “smells so badly, but tastes so goodly.”). I was intrigued by the possibility of a food whose scent belies its flavor. I’m talking, of course, about the one and only King of Fruits – the durian.

For the uninitiated among you, this is a fruit with a serious reputation. Native to Southeast Asia, it resembles some sort of primitive sea creature that has washed up on shore – about as big as a basketball, yellowy-brown, and covered in thorns:

(Those thorns actually come into play, later)

They typically weigh 2-7 pounds, and some of the trees are so tall that they can only be collected after falling to the ground (and believe me, you do not want to be standing under it when that happens). In all respects, this is a formidable looking fruit. However, the terrifying power of the durian is not in its looks. It’s in the smell.

Reports of its odor vary, from turpentine to onions to almonds to excrement. TV personality Andrew Zimmern of Bizarre Foods loathes the thing – it is one of the few foods he’s spit out on his show. Anthony Bourdain, on the other hand, loves it – though he describes the after-effect as having breath that smells “as if you were French-kissing your dead grandmother.” This was the fruit that just this past Sunday I purchased at my local Asian market and to which I subjected my friends.

To be fair, they volunteered! We gathered in the backyard for the tasting, along with several other goodies that I will discuss in upcoming posts. Still, the king was the focal point of our afternoon, and we got right now to business. I printed some helpful instructions on how to open the beast, since the spiky horror looked like it was going to be challenging, and convinced Mr. Menace to do the honors. The knife went in with surprising ease – it turns out that beneath all of the spines, the hull was more pliable than it appeared. The flesh within was revealed, and we all recoiled instinctively, prepared for the stench.

Tentatively, we sniffed the air. There was a faint odor of…nothing. No terrible smell. What were all of these people going on about? We got a bit closer…maybe a the barest hint of turpentine, maybe a touch of overripe fruit, but hardly anything to get worked up about. Mr. Menace turned back to his work at the grill and I set about freeing the pods from the shell.

Here at last there was a tiny bit of drama, because while it still didn’t smell all that much, the devil fruit DID manage to fight back a bit – those spines are really sharp! While prying out the pods I noticed a red smear on my finger, and was temporarily puzzled, thinking about what was at all red inside the durian. It turns out that it was nothing inside the durian – it’s red inside of ME. The sucker bit me! My fingers are now covered in this little pinpricks:

Despite this I soldiered on and finally released all of the pods:

They were extremely soft and custardy. My dining companions compared them to runny eggs, pudding, or alien young. The spent husks looked vile, coated as they were in fruit slime:

Finally, after all this ballyhoo we put the fruit in our mouths. The taste was extremely sweet, practically a sugar overload. Some folks compared it to honeydew melon. There was a sort of pineapple tinge, and at certain points a definite almond flavor. Nothing too offensive until it was finished, when there was indeed a faint aftertaste of onions. This was unevenly distributed throughout the fruit, however. No one hated it! Even our friend Gary, a notoriously picky eater, gave it the thumbs up!

In the final estimate of whether I’m in the Bourdain or Zimmern camp, love it or loathe it, I have to come squarely in the middle. Ultimately it wasn’t the faint hint of onions that bothered me; it was the texture. The durian is soft, vaguely gelatinous, dare I say it? SQUISHY. While I’ve come a long way in my fear of slimy foods, I’m not sure I could just snack on this – I could see enjoying it cooked into something, but not so much au naturel.

In the end, after all the hype, there was a slight feeling of anticlimax. Some quick research suggests that we were eating Thai durian, which is known for its sweetness and relatively mild odor. I guess we’ll need a trip to Malaysia to experience the fruit king in all of his stinky glory. In the words of Levar Burton, however, you don’t have to take my word for it! Two of my esteemed guests have already given their thoughts:
Elise’s Blog
Dan’s Blog

Thanks to all of my fellow food adventurers for making this a party! Special thanks to Mr. Menace, who encouraged me to do a bit more than “go to a field, eat fruit.” I’ll be posting about some of our other snacks later this week.

Look out, also, for a very special post – Adventures in Food’s first ever guest blog! Good friend “Easy Bake” and her beau, “Lt. Funyuns” went on an amazing, food-filled trip and EB has graciously blogged the tale. I guarantee that once you read it, you’ll be hungry.

Seedtastic

We’ve all heard of chia. During the 80’s and 90’s Chia Pets were a nearly ubiquitous novelty product, little terra cotta shapes that sprouted fast-growing plants as hair or fur and came complete with a catchy, meaningless ear-worm of a jingle. However, what fewer of us know (though awareness is growing) is that chia, also known as salvia hispanica, is good for a lot more than coating goofy cartoon sheep in a thick green coat – this member of the mint family is edible, tasty, and a great source of fiber and omega-3 fatty acids. Native to Mexico and Guatemala, it turns out that chia was a staple food of the Aztec cultures in Central Mexico.

I’d first heard of the benefits of chia seeds from a friend’s blog about this wondrous little seed, but to be perfectly frank, the method of consuming them seemed a little unappealing. Chia is hydrophilic, meaning water-loving – it sucks up as much h2o as it can get its tiny, non-existent hands on. This plumps up little fibers, called mucilages, in the seed, which coat it in a thick, gel covering – the end result looks uncannily like very tiny frog eggs.
So, put the seeds in water and get slimy frog eggs – check. What then? Well, the unappealing bit is that you are then supposed to drink the frog eggs, lustily swallowing the entire slimy mass. Gross, right? And yet, the more I read about chia, the more intrigued I became, particularly after reading Born to Run, a book I found particularly inspiring during my marathon training. As I’ve mentioned before, it’s the story of a group of folks racing through the Mexican desert for 50 miles, a group that mixed American distance runners with the Raramuri, a tribe indigenous to the region, known for their ability to run forever as though it were nothing. One of their trade secrets is chia fresca, a gooey combination of chia seeds, water, fruit juice and a bit of sweetener. In the legends, they can go for miles on just this and a bit of pinole.
While the legends are a bit exaggerated, as legends usually are, there turns out to be a bit of truth to them. That hydrophilic gel that the chia forms helps to keep water in your system longer – maxmizing the hydration potential of the water that you’re drinking. In addition, the little seeds are so packed with vitamins and nutrition that they are a surprisingly powerful source of fuel for their size. So, despite my reservations, I decided to give it a try.

After mixing it all up, I waited a few minutes for the seeds to absorb the water. Sure enough, they began to plump up with a thick, clear coating. Putting aside my fears of all things gelatinous, I took a sip.

To my surprise, I really enjoyed it! The seeds are sticky but crunchy at the same time, providing a weirdly appealing texture. As for maximizing my running performance I cannot exactly say, but I do find that I feel full longer if I have chia with my morning breakfast, and if nothing else I’m getting the equivalent of some sort of omega-3 dietary supplement.

If the idea of the squishyness still bugs you, there are other ways to enjoy chia. Some vegans take advantage of the gel quality to make “pudding” with it, other people avoid the stickiness altogether by pouring the dry seeds over salads or into baked goods. One thing I’ve really come to enjoy is mixing them into a smoothie.

This one is made with banana, frozen blueberries, some yogurt, some lowfat milk, and the chia. With the thickness of the banana and the yogurt the jelly of the chia just kind of blends right in.

Wonder food, staple, or novelty planter, chia is pretty fascinating stuff!

Summer Drinks

To be fair, it’s not quite summer just yet, but despite the fact that May has really only just gotten underway, we’ve already seen a few scorching temperatures, most of which happened during the Great Water Debacle of 2010. As the mercury soars, the weighty, spice-filled drinksof the fall and winter lose their appeal, and a young lady’s fancy turns to gin and drinks kissed with citrus.

Don’t get me wrong, I still think a Vieux Carre or a Manhattan are the bee’s knees – but one has to give in to the demands of the season. I vastly prefer roasted squash to a raw salad, but not only is it uncomfortable to crank the oven to 400° when the thermometer reads 80°, it’s a bit too heavy, hanging out like lead in one’s overheated stomach. So it is with cocktails; light, refreshing, and often bubbly are the watchwords of the warmer months.

To that end, I’ve been playing around with a few new drink recipes! Some, like this one, are just variations on a theme:

Essentially, it’s a Tom Collins – it’s got gin (Hendrick’s, my personal favorite), lemon juice, sweetener, and club soda. The difference is in that Bulleit bottle in the background – don’t be fooled, it’s not the lovely bourbon – that’s merely the container. Rather, it’s a basil liqueur that I put together a while back – basil leaves steeped in vodka, then mixed with simple syrup. It’s light green, herbal and faintly tasting of anise, and I used in place of the sugar in the Collins. My theory was that the basil would go nicely with the Hendrick’s, and I was right! There are a few drops of orange bitters as well, for good measure.

More exciting was this:

Though it wasn’t intentional, it’s a variation on the Rum Swizzle, though one of considerably less sweetness. Alas, it’s also not swizzled, although I suppose you could – due to the falernum and gomme syrup I prefer it shaken. Also included are two kinds of rum and lime juice. As loyal readers of this blog know I have a hard time naming drinks, but I’m trying to improve. I pondered what rum and lime signify to me, and came up with the beach, even though I’ve never been to a beach that served such things. Okay, well, what do I think of when I think of beach? The first association that springs to my head is the house in Hull that my father’s family used to own. It was a beautiful old Victorian that was directly on the most amazing (to my young mind) beach – it had these rock walls filled with vibrant tidal pools that were literally teeming with life – teeny fish and seaweed and snails and sometimes even small lobsters. It was a wonderful place to run around as a kid, and is my most essential definition of the word beach. The name of that beach (or possibly the public one next to it, to be fair) was Gun Rock Beach. While Gun Rock and Hull are hardly a tropical paradise, it seemed like a fitting enough name. And so I present the Gun Rock Swizzle:
2 oz Gosling’s Black Seal Rum
1 oz Rhum Barbancourt
.5 oz lime juice (do I even have to say fresh squeezed?)
.5 oz falernum
.25 oz gomme syrup
2-3 dashes orange bitters
lime twist

Put all ingredients into a mixing glass with cracked ice. Shake and strain into an ice filled rocks glass. For a more authentic swizzle, stir rather than shake. Garnish with the twist!

One order of business – there is now an Adventures in Food group page on Facebook! I set this up so that local readers can easily sign up for adventures they might want to be a part of, and so that all readers could suggest new adventures and ideas they’d like to see discussed on the blog. It’s easier for me than sending 1 million emails or scrolling through the contents. So, if you have a Facebook account, please join!

Garden Adventures!

In addition to making food, eating food, and writing food, I have always loved growing food. This has everything to do with my dad, who maintained a garden throughout most of my childhood (he took a brief break, but was tempted back into it the summer I graduated college; I was looking for a job and had nothing better to do than send out resumes and re-break the completely overgrown sod. He bought a roto-tiller the FOLLOWING year.). Dad’s garden wasn’t huge, but it managed to have a good yield of tomatoes, carrots, zucchini, and beans. Every year he would plot out what to plant and where, drawing funny little diagrams on scraps of paper. We’d buy seeds and seedlings and put them into soil – or at least he would. We kids were pretty good at picking out rocks and digging holes and the like, but inevitably would get distracted by things like a really disgusting worm or slug and move on. Despite the attention span issues, however, that time in the garden really stuck with me – the smell of warm soil and tomato plants, the feeling of dirt under your fingernails, and most especially, the taste of the vegetables that eventually sprang up like magic from the plants. It was always an amazing thrill to bite into a garden tomato or carrot – so sweet, so fragrant, so unlike the mealy or woody vegetables from the supermarket. When I finally moved into an apartment with some decent outdoor space I knew I wanted to recreate that feeling.

Well, Mr. Menace and I have that space, but there’s just this one teensy little problem with it – it’s completely paved over as a parking lot. The town in which we live doesn’t allow on-street parking overnight, so the little yard in the back of our house was converted into parking for the tenants. Since we only have one vehicle that requires a parking spot but two spaces, we were left with a small outdoor plot that could either go to waste – or turn into something amazing. Something…like a garden.

But wait, Red, I hear you say, you just said it was completely paved over! And so I did. But my garden is no ordinary plot of land. My garden…is on WHEELS!

How fantastic is that? Mr. Menace is, at times, truly a genius, because he invented and built that beauty all from his own fertile imagination and my vague garden longings. I’d originally envisioned a series of pots, but this was better – a mini-garden, raised high enough that I didn’t need to bend over to weed or water it, and wheeled so that we could move it into the sun – or back out of the way if a visitor needed to park.

This set up had other delightful benefits as we discovered last year, when it rained profusely for most of the summer here in Massachusetts. While everyone else’s tomatoes rotted on the vine, sad and full of blight, there were mine, hale and hearty, the very picture of tomato health:

They survived thanks to strategically placed drainage holes, which whisked the excess water safely away!

We also had great success with beans:

And a little built-in herb garden!

Less successful were my beets and radishes, although I suspect that was largely to do with not having enough fertilizer.

I’m eager to get started again this year, with a few modifications – more tomatoes in pots, more beans for a better yield, and perhaps an attempt at carrots. Cucumbers or zucchinis, alas, are beyond my reach due to being ridiculous space hogs, but some small peppers or eggplants might work…

Be on the look out for future posts on what I’m growing and how it’s coming along, as well as the triumphant return of the Vegetable Therapist – it will be hard to resist writing about veggies when such lovely ones are growing in my backyard!