Day 1 - Afternoon and Beyond

Flush with harvesting success, I set about to dehydrate half a tray of parsley. This parsley preservation is going to get old quickly, I can already tell. Here's what I had for an afternoon snack:

Vegetable stew.
Chayote squash from partner Julia
Turnip and carrots from partner Colin
Tikka masala simmer sauce from partner Karl
Celery, leek, parsley, golden chard stalks and fennel bulb from the garden.
I had expected that the jar of masala would be terribly salty, but it was not. The sauce was a bit too bland for the amount that I used. I have to make this jar last, at least until I have enough money saved up for some seasoning, so I used only a couple spoonfuls.

Here's what I ate for dinner:
Handful of almonds from Igor (home grown!)
Leftover vegetable stew, this time with fresh cilantro from the garden. The cilantro really made all the difference!
Garden Rhubarb chard, Siberian kale and garlic sauteed in oil left over in a pan from dinner last night, and a dash of olive brine.
Sliced beets from the garden
The other half of the meal replacement shake
I made a large cup of tea, from herbs I grow in my garden.

I had planned to cook beans for dinner, but their tough skins made soaking difficult, and after a full day on the kitchen counter they were still shriveled and tiny. I pulled out the almonds instead. I don't really want to use all the almonds up in these first few days, since they are so expensive to purchase.
We sat down in the evening to watch House while I snacked on a Lychee jelly cup from partner Lisa, a couple of almonds and a few slices of apple. I thought it was Lupus for sure.
I didn't buy any food today, so I have an 83 cent surplus.

Oops! I Did it Even More Again (The Sequel)

Didn't I learn anything about squash this year? I grow plenty on my own, and now I am getting plenty of chayote to eat and pass around. Recently I planted a sprouting chayote on a little plot in the backyard. There is plenty of room for the squash vine to grow up some evergreen bushes, reach the olive tree, climb over to a grove of baby live oak trees and continue on down the street into my neighbor's yard, all the while clogging sewer lines, disrupting cable, irritating the Homeowner's Association Police.
I know better. I just couldn't help myself.

Chayote Challenge

I received a ton of local overgrown chayote and this month, I am determined to try them in as many recipes as I can. My first experiment was to cook the chayote whole, scoop out the cooked flesh and then "grill" it in butter, garlic and Indian spices. Unfortunately, I didn't get to try much of it because when I checked the fridge, it was all gone. Next I tried a mock mango chutney. It looked a little sad until I added some turmeric for color. It was a hit at a dinner party I attended, and my hosts asked to keep the leftovers. And I have to say, I can't think of a more perfect complement to corn chips. Here's the recipe:
Chayote chutney
1 large chayote squash
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup vinegar
1/4 cup finely chopped onion
1/2 cup raisins
1 garlic clove
2-3 fresh hot red chili peppers, chopped and seeded
1/4 t powdered mustard
1/4 t powdered ginger
1 clove, crushed
1/8 t garam masala
dash turmeric for color
Cook the chayote whole by poking it with a fork and microwaving it (about 6 min) until slightly soft. Let the chayote cool slightly and then remove and discard the seed and skin, and chop the squash into large chunks. Mix the squash, onion, pepper, garlic, vinegar and sugar and raisins in a saucepan and cook the mixture until the squash is soft and the other ingredients are cooked through. Mix in the other spices and cook for 1 minute or until the mixture is slightly thickened. Cool and place into a clear glass jelly jar. The chutney will thicken as it cools.
For my next trial, I used an extremely overgrown squash and just sauteed the cooked squash in garlic, olive oil, fennel, salt and fresh parsley, as I would potato. I'll have to say that I prefer the chayote at a less-mature stage, and sure prefer the chutney. But, who needs all that sugar? I am going to tinker with a version with honey, and less sweetness overall and with more red pepper so the color is better.

Transition Times

As soon as the ball dropped on New Year's eve, I reached for one of the last Christmas cookies. These cookies had been staring me in the face ever since I brought them home from a cookie party a week before Christmas. Now they were mine!
At 12:01, I ate the cookie, followed by some turkey with mayo. (I had purchased the mayo a couple of weeks in advance, in anticipation of the new year.) I woke up in the middle of the night, sick. Guess I will have to ease back into mayo, or maybe give it up altogether.
Many reintroduced foods have been a challenge for me in the past couple of weeks. There is something really wrong with lots of the conventional food that many of us buy. I visited a discount store and bought a few condiments and olive/type concoctions. Many of the food items in the store, if they were labeled at all, came from China. I don't really trust this food anymore, and will ease back into as much local food as much as I can muster.
This week, I have been enjoying the re-emergence of local navel oranges, limes and tangerines brought to the table. The Meyer lemons growing in my backyard are almost ripe. I have added beyond-100-mile California almonds, raisins and milk back into my diet, with an occasional banana from somewhere else. We enjoyed a large plate of steamed carrots, turnips and asparagus harvested from the community garden, along with the usual leeks and greens. I have prepared chayote in many new ways.
So this year I resolve to find more friends in warmer locations to grow backyard bananas, to learn how to make some decent pickles and kraut and to move farther away from "denatured" foods of all kinds.

Es ist ein Ros' Entsprungen

Behold, a branch is growing, right out of the place where I planted the chayote squash. I guess it is coming back to life after all. There is another branch a'growing on my kitchen counter, of loveliest form and grace, right out of the squash I was to prepare for a Christmas dinner. Right now, it's colonizing the kitchen, wrapping many tendrils around my window coverings and heading towards a light fixture. I must do something.

Hard Frost

This week, I went outside to find that a heavy frost killed several basil plants and the rain that had collected on a container lid was freezing into large sheets, trapping a lone chayote seedling. Unfortunately, I did not move all my tomato and pepper plants out of harms way. I will know in a few weeks which plants will survive and which I will have to replace. The ice-locked chayote seedling is doing well, but unfortunately, another larger seedling located in an open area has died back. Hopefully it will regrow.
The dehydrator is bursting with peppers this week, filling my living room with the scent of sweet peppers and sending me into coughing fits from the drying habanero's.

Chayote

Rachel gave me some of these interesting squashes last year, but by the time I got to them, they were infested with bugs, and I had to throw them out. This year, I got another set, and they were doing well on the counter. Yesterday I noticed that all of them were sprouting. I planted one squash and cooked another. I still have one left for the Thanksgiving holidays.
I cooked the chayote in the microwave, and threw the cooked insides in the blender with a little water. I was unprepared for how GOOD the squash tastes plain. Creamy, green, buttery. I want to make a cold cucumber soup out of it, or any kind of soup, or a dip, or maybe try to pickle it.
I have grown this plant before. R donated a plant every spring for the garden plot we had for the food bank. I took care of it all summer, waited patiently for it to flower and fruit, took bags and bags of the squash to the food bank and tore the whole plant down after a hard frost, but I had never eaten it. The final year, the weight of the plant broke the metal trellis, and we tried planting another one in the back 40, but unfortunately it died.
This spring I will have to rig up some sort of sturdy trellis and grow it in an area that is protected by frost.