After the Freeze

I spent the weeks of December and January worrying about the upcoming spring weather.  We have to eat all these greens, I kept telling Lee, and we did eat a lot of greens, though even as I harvested bowlfuls of greens I was happy to leave just as many plants in the ground, for all those future salads.  I thought I was staying one step ahead of the impending greens-flowering season, harvesting the most bolt-prone lettuces and greens first, but I wasn't even considering the possibility that I could lose my future salads to weather extremes from the cold end of the spectrum.

Then February began with a long, deep freeze punctuated by a rare snowstorm.  Most of the plants in my gardens survived, though I did lose a few lettuces in the front yard and all of the lettuces in the backyard.  After the storm, I removed dead plants and the frost-killed leaves from surviving plants, and cleaned the gardens up for recovery.

Then we were hit with another arctic blast.  Last Wednesday morning, I ventured out into the frigid wind to cover the front-yard garden in Plankets only to discover that all of the plants were coated in a fine layer of ice, frozen solid.  I spent the rest of the morning wondering what I should have done differently – should I have covered the garden the night before, and if so, how would the Plankets have fared through the heavy rain that preceded the front, or should I have covered the garden at six in the morning, when I woke to the sound of all the screens on the house banging as the front dropped temperatures?  Luckily, the garden unfroze that day and we were able to cover it before the deep freeze of the next two nights.  Still, the damage of the freezing rain was done, and I knew that, once again, I would be removing dead plants and frost-killed leaves from the garden.

On the other side of those two weeks of extreme cold, my gardens are reduced.  In the backyard, only collards, spinach, and cabbages remain, though I still hope that the beets and chard will regrow from their mulched roots.  From the front-yard garden, I lost the fenugreek, most of the parsley, and most of the lettuce.  After the snow, I harvested all of the remaining tatsoi, which were making visible preparations toward flowering, and most of the remaining bok choy, leaving only a few plants to continue growing.  Both the tatsoi and bok choy were crowded, raggedy, and heavily insect-damaged, definitely past their prime.  Next year, I need to remember that the Asian greens grow the fastest and should be harvested first, as fall greens.  After the snow, and again after the next deep freeze, I also had to remove many of the largest leaves from the chard plants.  They will survive but this starting over increases their chances of flowering this spring.

The toughest loss for me to accept is that of the lettuces.  They have been perfect eating size for several weeks now and I have been harvesting them as needed, taking the tallest, most bolt-prone first, and leaving the rest for another week of salad eating.  In the backyard were a few small red oak-leaf lettuces that I wish harvested sooner, but they were growing slowly in the low-light conditions, so I thought I had time.  In the front yard was a large, beautiful head of Buttercrunch lettuce that I was saving for ... well, I'm not sure what I was saving it for, but just that I was saving it because I love saving the best for my future self.  That lovely lettuce survived but lost most of its outer leaves, and, even if it does regrow, it is too late to recapture that moment when it was exactly just ready for harvest.

I did have one row of plants in my backyard garden that were actually invigorated by the weeks of freezing, snow, and ice – the mâche.  Mâche (Valerianella locusta), which is also called corn salad or lamb's lettuce, is a lover of cold weather.  In fact, I've had trouble growing mâche because it won't germinate until the soil is cool, which isn't until mid-November in Austin, it is slow-growing, and it really flourishes in the coldest weeks of winter, which we often don't have.  Once the weather warms, the mâche bolts as fast as spinach, so its window for growth is quite short and, in some warm years, non-existent.  But I continue to try to grow mâche because it is delicious, with a sweet, nutty flavor, and difficult (though, in recent years, no longer impossible) to find at the grocery store.

Mâche (Valerianella locusta)

Yesterday, as I was clearing the remains of the lettuce from the backyard garden and noticed that my row of mâche was looking particularly vibrant, I decided that it was time to harvest.  A few weeks ago, I might have tried to wait, or to harvest part of the row and save the rest for some more-auspicious future date.  But if the freezes have reminded me of one thing, it is this: feast when it is ready because next week's weather, and therefore next week's harvest, is uncertain.  So I harvested the whole row and Lee and I enjoyed big bowls of mâche salad for dinner.  I slept particularly well last night, and, given that mâche is in the Valerian Family of plants, I can't help but wonder if the salad helped my sleep.  Or maybe it was just the satisfaction of finally harvesting part of my garden at the exact right moment – just after the freeze but before the hot days of early spring that are soon to follow.

Winter Berries

In between the rainstorms of January and the arctic fronts of February, Lee and I have been exploring the hiking trails in the Bull Creek Preserve.  Bull Creek Preserve, one of the City of Austin's sections of the larger Balcones Canyonlands Preserve, is nesting habitat for the Golden-Cheeked Warbler, an endangered songbird that nests exclusively in Edwards Plateau region of Texas.  To minimize disturbance of the birds during their mating season, the preserve is closed (except to entry-permi holders) from March 1 through July 31.  The preserve, which is located within the Bull Creek watershed between St. Edwards Park and the Bull Creek Greenbelt, includes 150 acres of juniper and oak woodland.  Because several intermittent creeks, tributaries of Bull Creek, originate in and cross through the preserve, the terrain is hilly, with the limestone slopes and steep, narrow canyons characteristic of the Hill Country.

Bull Creek Preserve in winter

The preserve has six miles of trails, including a longer loop and a few shorter loops.  From the Bull Creek Greenbelt, the lower trail (go to the left at the entrance map), is the most scenic, with a short, steep climb up to an viewpoint overlooking the falls on Bull Creek below.  That trail drops back down to the creek and follows the greenbelt trail back to the entrance point.  The rest of the trails (go to the right of the entrance map) wind up and down on a limestone-gravel path that is mostly shaded but periodically offers good views of the juniper-forested hills of the preserve.  The only disappointing section of the trail is the northern-most part of the main loop, where the trail follows an access road used by the Austin Water utility trucks.

The dominant tree in the preserve is Ashe Juniper (Juniperus ashei), which is usually called "cedar" by Austinites.  The densely-branched juniper trees provide nesting sites for the Golden-Cheeked Warblers.  I also saw many Plateau Live Oak (Quercus fusiformis) trees and a mix of deciduous trees without their leaves, mostly Cedar Elm (Ulmus crassifolia) and, especially on slopes and hilltops, Spanish Oak (Quercus buckleyi) trees.

Three evergreen, fruit-bearing shrubs were the noticeable part of the understory.  In sunny clearings, Evergreen Sumac (Rhus virens) branches held many fuzzy, red-orange fruits.  The Evergreen Sumac is dioecious, which means that male and female flowers are produced on separate plants, and the fruit of the shrub provides food for birds and small mammals.  The fruit are high in vitamin C and, if soaked in water, can be used to make a tart-tasting tea.

Evergreen sumac (Rhus virens)

The evergreen shrub common along the shady to part-sun sections of the trail was Yaupon (Ilex vomitoria), a native holly that produces bright red, shiny berries if it receives enough sunlight.  The densely-branched shrub provides nesting and hiding spots for birds, and its berries are food for birds and small mammals.  Like the Evergreen Sumac, Yaupon shrubs are also dioecious, with separate male and female plants.

Yaupon (Ilex vomitoria)

A third, evergreen shrub holding many blue-black fruits grew in sunny woodland openings.  I had seen this shrub along the Greenbelt trail earlier in the fall, so I knew that it was common in our area, but despite its evergreen leaves and distinct blue-black fruits, I had not been able to identify the plant.  This time around I noticed that the branching pattern on this mystery shrub was familiar to me and looked just like the branching pattern of Viburnums or dogwood trees, with strictly opposite branches and V-shaped nodes.  But the dogwoods, which are usually restricted to streamsides in our area and have distinct, parallel-veined leaves that I know by sight, and the Viburnum common to central Texas, Rusty Blackhaw (Viburnum rufidulum), have deciduous leaves.  Eventually, by searching through shrubs related to dogwoods and Virburnums, I found my plant, Lindheimer Silktassel.

Lindheimer Silktassel (Garrya ovata spp. lindheimeri) used to be classified in the Dogwood Family but was reclassified into its own family, the Garryaceae, or Silktassel Family.  Lindheimer Silktassel is a subspecies of Silktassel that is endemic to the Edwards Plateau, where it is common on rocky slopes and limestone ledges, or as an understory shrub at the edge of wooded areas.  The blooms of Lindheimer Silktassel appear in the spring, followed by round fruits that are blue with a whitish coating.  By winter, when much of the whitish coating is gone, the fruit appear blue-black in color.  Lindheimer Silktassel grows to be a large shrub or small tree and provides shelter and food for birds.

Lindheimer Silktassel (Garrya ovata spp. lindheimeri)

Like the Evergreen Sumac and Yaupon, the Lindheimer Silktassel is dioecious, with separate male and female plants.  Overall, being dioecious is unusual in plants – most are monoecious, with male and female flowers on the same plant, or, more commonly, male and female parts in the same flower – yet all three of these evergreen shrubs are dioecious.  Maybe it's just good strategy in a juniper forest, where the dominant tree itself, Ashe Juniper, is also dioecious.

I would like to think that all these winter berries will be food for the Golden-Cheeked Warblers in March, when they return from their wintering grounds in Mexico and Central America and begin establishing territories and nesting in the hills of the preserve.  But warblers eat insects and spiders found in the leaves and bark of the trees, not berries.  Still, healthy shrubs provide shelter for the birds and food for other birds and mammals in the preserve, which promotes biodiversity in the preserve and in the larger Bull Creek watershed, which ensures that the Golden-Cheeked Warblers will continue to have a place to nest in central Texas.

Garden in Snow

I made the mistake of thinking that winter was already over.  We were past the end of our most-likely freeze window and February, the month in which the elm trees bloom and the red buckeyes at the Greenbelt flower, was beginning.  But I was getting ahead of myself again, forgetting that winter in Austin, though short and mild overall, is highly variable day to day, wildly unpredictable year to year, and tends to recur long after spring is underway.

The snow on Friday morning was the highlight of the storm.  In thirteen years of living in central Austin, I've never seen actual snow – not ice or hail – accumulation on the ground.  So when I woke to a white world on Friday morning, instantly the storm of the past few days became the snowstorm of 2011 and my memory of the freezing days that preceded the snow day faded.  This day was the day of the snowstorm.

In reality, Friday, the day of the snow, was also the day of the thaw, the day of sunshine and temperatures above freezing for the first time since Tuesday.  For the plants in my gardens, the snowfall was merely the last trial at the end of three long days of freezing temperatures and frigid winds.  And, despite what I say about the seriousness of our bouts of winter and the unpredictability of our cool season, nearly 70 consecutive hours of freezing temperatures is not something that I expect for my garden to have to endure in this climate.  Before the snow fell, before the novelty of my first Austin snow day rewrote my memory of the week, I was worried about my plants and upset about the injustice of our climate, in which hard freezes are infrequent enough to warrant severe-weather status yet reliable enough that growing tropical plants is out of the question.

I grumble about the freezes but I've learned to expect them, even as I am planting my fall garden in the heat of October.  I only plant greens that can withstand the common, light freezes of the cool season, and I devote more garden space that I might like to the real cold-hardy plants, like kale and collards, that can handle ice storms, near-0˚ F wind chills, and other "freak" winter events that could otherwise wipe out my entire garden.  This year I've also been covering most of my front-yard garden in Plankets, 10 x 20 foot plant blankets made out of thick, green row-cover material, whenever the night temperatures are predicted to fall into the mid-20's or lower.

Front-yard garden under Plankets and snow

The Plankets seem to help, or at least they give me something to do in the face of an impending freeze, but using them tends to mash down the tallest of the plants and, even though I strive to put them in place near sunset and take them off as soon as temperatures warm in the morning, deprives the plants of a few hours of sunlight.  Last week, though, with temperatures remaining below freezing for nearly three days in a row, my front-yard garden was covered in Plankets for about 70 hours, from Tuesday afternoon until midday on Friday, when Lee helped me to toss away the snow (heavy!) and give the plants a few hours of fresh air and sunshine.

Out from under the Plankets, the garden looked rough – smashed by the weight of the snow, frost-bitten, and winter-weary.  Though I felt cruel covering the plants up again, we covered the garden again on Friday night because we still had one more hard freeze to endure before our "normal" balmy winter conditions returned on Saturday, allowing us to finally put away the Plankets until the next round of severe weather.  As the gardens, front- and backyard, began their recovery, the question on my mind was:  Do the Plankets help more then they harm?

The backyard garden wasn't covered during the storm.  In fact, I haven't covered that garden at all this year.  It's in a more protected location, with less direst north wind exposure, it contains a higher proportion of cold-hardy plants like cabbages and collards, and it's been something of an experiment this fall, seeing if that space gets enough light, can withstand lower temperatures, etc.  So, while the microclimates of the two gardens differ somewhat, the backyard garden, which was not covered during the extended freeze or the snowstorm, offers a point of comparison to the Planketed front-yard garden.

Backyard garden under snow

In both the front-yard and backyard gardens, I am growing lettuces, Swiss chard, spinach, and beets.  While the tall chard plants in the front yard were being smashed under the Planket, the chard plants in the backyard were covered in snow.

After the snow melted and the warm temperatures returned, the chard in the backyard looked mostly dead.  The leaves were translucent and mushy, lying on the ground wilted.  Only a few of the inner-most leaves of those chard plants appeared to have survived.  I am hopeful that, even though the current leaves on those plants were lost to the storm, the plants themselves are likely to regrow from their roots, which were protected from freezing by a deep layer of mulch.

The chard in the front-yard garden, which was covered with the Plankets, fared better.  After days of being covered, the plants were bent, with some broken stems and frost-bitten leaves, and smashed and generally looked abused.  But overall the leaves on those chard plants were still upright and alive looking, ready to rebound from the storm.

Judging from the (very unscientific) comparison of the covered vs. uncovered chard, using the Plankets saved valuable garden produce.  Other comparisons support those results.  The lettuces in the backyard garden were killed by the cold temperatures and/or snow, and, like the backyard chard, their leaves turned to mush.  Some of the lettuces in the front-yard garden were killed, but the majority of the plants in the row survived, with frost-damaged outside leaves.  Cilantro and parsley, relatives in rows next to each other, had different fates as well.  While the cilantro was covered during the storm, the parsley was not, simply because the 20' Planket didn't quite reach that far, so while the cilantro survived the storm, the parsley was wilted and white when the snow cleared.  So the Plankets do help more than they harm, but, even knowing that, I hope that I don't have to use them many more times this year.

Chard and Sorrel Soup

Sorrel was a newcomer to my garden this year, so I watched it grow with curiosity.  Its seeds sprouted after the spinach and chard, but before the carrots and parsley.  Its cotyledons were tiny, oval and bright yellow-green, much like lettuce cotyledons.  Its seedlings grew more slowly than the other greens in the garden, and, by December, the sorrel plants were significantly smaller than the chard, kale, or lettuces.  But, though small, or perhaps because they have stayed small and contained for longer than the other greens, suspended at that ever so still-young state, sorrel is a very attractive green, with erect, arrow-shaped leaves that remain bright and spring-green throughout the growing season.

Sorrel (Rumex acetosa) in the garden

What I didn't realize about sorrel when I planted it is that sorrel is a perennial herb.  In other words, unlike the annual Brassicas and lettuces that are already getting ready to bolt, flower, and be done with their lives in one season, and unlike the biennial chard and beets that will experience spring as their second year and soon after bolt, flower, and go to seed much like the annuals, the sorrel plants are programmed to grow for many seasons, regrowing and flowering each year.  I'm not sure whether to be excited about this discovery, to run out to the garden and thin my crowded plants to an appropriate eighteen inches apart, or to be distressed by the fact that, unknowingly, I have made a long-term commitment to a row of plants that will need to be watered over the summer.  In either case, the fact that sorrel is a perennial explains why the plants have been growing more slowly than the other greens in the garden.  Sorrel is in no hurry to complete its life cycle before the summer begins.

The problem is that common sorrel (Rumex acetosa), which is native to northern Europe, Russia, Canada, and the northern United States, all of which have mild, short summers, may not be able to deal with the heat and drought that characterize our very long summer.  So my sorrel, despite its genetic programming, is probably going to lead the short life of an annual.  I still hope, though, that it will be able to flower and set seeds because now I am want to see sorrel in bloom, to see its tall, buckwheat-like flowering spikes covered in reddish-green to purple flowers and to see the shiny, brown seeds that follow.  Further inspiring my curiosity is the fact that sorrel is dioecious, with male and female flowers on separate plants, which is unusual among garden herbs.

No matter how long my sorrel plants manage to survive, their leaves are best eaten while the plants are still young.  Young sorrel leaves, which taste tangy with an after-bite of lemon, can be added to salads in small quantities, or cooked along with other greens.  The tang in the leaves comes from oxalic acid, a phytochemical found in the leaves of spinach-family plants (spinach, chard, beets), buckwheat-family plants (sorrel and rhubarb), and various other foods, including bananas, ginger, and bell peppers.  Sorrel also contains high levels of vitamins A, C, and B9, and provides some iron, potassium, calcium, and magnesium.  Used as an herbal supplement, sorrel is cooling, detoxifying, and a natural laxative.  Modern nutritionists warn against eating sorrel in large quantities, however, because of the high levels of oxalic acid, which can aggravate conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis, gout, and kidney stones.  Cooking sorrel helps to break down the oxalic acid before it is eaten.

Sorrel is most famous for its use in winter soups, where its lemony flavor brightens up the heavier flavors of root vegetables, onions, and winter greens.  But only a few cups of leaves are needed to add flavor to a pot of soup, which, in these, the greens-eating days at the end of winter, is simply not enough greens.  So I decided to make a chard and sorrel soup, which would contain a whole basket-load of chard along with the sorrel leaves in a potato-leek soup base.  As promised, the sorrel added a lemony tang to a satisfying winter soup.  Better yet, the flavors in the soup were even more complex and interesting the next day, when I ate the soup as leftovers. 

Chard and Sorrel Soup
adapted from Deborah Madison, Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone

Bunches of chard vary greatly in number of leaves, size of leaves, and total amount of cook-able greens.  To make this soup, I harvested approximately two large bunches of leaves.  After removing the stems and midribs and chopping the leaves into large pieces, I was able to pack a 4-quart bowl full with chopped leaves.

Fresh sorrel is difficult to find because it does not keep long once it is picked.  Sorrel is most likely to be available in the spring at the grocery store, though it may be wilted and sad-looking, or during the cool season at the farmer's market.  If sorrel is unavailable, lemon juice can be used in its place.  To substitute lemon, add the juice of one large lemon after the soup is pureed.

2 bunches chard leaves, about 4 quarts leaves (see note above)
1 bunch sorrel leaves, about 3 cups leaves (see note above)
3 medium leeks
3 tablespoons butter
5 cloves garlic, minced
2 pounds red potatoes, chopped
5 cups vegetable broth
1/2 cup sour cream
fresh cracked black pepper

Thoroughly wash the chard leaves and remove the stems and thick midribs.  Chop the leaves into large pieces.  Wash the sorrel leaves and remove the stems.

Trim the stem end from each leek and remove the outermost layer.  Slice the white and light green parts of the leek and discard the tough, dark green parts.  Soak the leek slices in water to remove soil, which tends to hide between the layers, then rinse and drain.

Melt the butter in a large pot over medium-high heat.  Add the sliced leeks and chopped potatoes and cook, stirring occasionally, about 10 minutes.  Add the garlic and cook, stirring frequently, for a minute or two longer.  Add 1/2 cup of water and scrape the bottom of the pot.  Add the greens, a batch at a time if necessary, and wilt.  Once all the greens are wilted, add the vegetable broth.  Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer for about 15 minutes.

Puree the soup in a food processor or blender – be sure to do this in small batches so that the boiling-hot soup has room to expand.  Return the soup to the pot and season with black pepper.  Stir the sour cream into the soup.  Serve hot.

Quiet Month

After a few years of growing a fall garden in Austin, I came to think of the month from late December, around the time of the winter solstice, to late January, around the time of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, as the quiet month.  Plant growth slows, few weeds germinate, and garden projects – harvesting, watering, weeding, and raking leaves – seem to sit still and wait for another day.  I used to think that the timing of this quiet month had to do with day length, that the more-distant sun simply didn't shine brightly enough for enough hours to promote plant growth around the first of the year.  But in truth we receive over ten hours of daylight on even the shortest day of the year, and, after seeing the freeze data for our region, I realized that what I call the quiet month is actually the freeze month, the short window of time during which our climate approximates winter.

Quiet in the garden does not translate to quiet in the kitchen.  In fact, January is actually the peak production month for a cool-season garden in Austin.  The lettuces are full size, with the Black Seeded Simpson heads threatening to bolt between freezes.  Large-leafed cooking greens like kale and chard begin to look like small shrubs, while the bok choy and tatsoi rosettes grow denser as their holey outer leaves host an assortment of nutrition-conscious insects.  Broccoli and cauliflower heads reach maturity.  The winter herbs, parsley, cilantro, sorrel, fenugreek, and fennel, are bushy enough to be regularly trimmed for salads, soups, and pesto.  Last weekend I even discovered that I have full-sized carrots growing quietly beneath the mulch, adding another homegrown ingredient to our salads.

I wish that I could say that the quiet is a state of mind, but the quiet of January feels more like the calm before the storm.  Garden projects will wait in these weeks, but only temporarily, because, as early as February, weeds will begin germinating in earnest and the garden greens will respond to longer, warmer days by bolting and flowering.  A few short weeks after that, dormant Bermuda grass will recover from winter freezes as the spring planting window for tomatoes, peppers, and other hot-season plants approaches.  And the spring-planting window, unlike the leisurely, long fall planting window, is as unforgiving as the heat of the impending summer.  This quiet time is actually the time to plan and to prepare and to eat those greens.

Still, despite the fact that every summer I set an intention to get so many garden projects done during the coolest month of the year, I can't help but move more slowly along with the plants.  It took me weeks to finish raking the backyard this year, partly because I started the project then decided that I'd rather wait until the leaves were fully off the trees, and partly because raking was an satisfying task that I found myself saving, the same way that I eat a chocolate bar three squares at a time, saving some of what I like for tomorrow.  First I raked enough leaves to mulch the front-yard garden, next I raked the leaves under the cedar elm and used those leaves to mulch the strip along the side of the yard, and then I raked enough leaves to mulch the backyard garden.

Finally, on a sunny morning after the rains had dropped the last of the leaves off the post oak, I raked the rest of the backyard into a big pile of leaves.  Which reminded me that, before spring-planting time, I planned to use those leaves for mulching the future garden space for tomatoes along the south wall of the house.  Which reminded me that, in order to create that garden space, I needed to remove the roots of the shrubs that once grew there, build retaining walls to level the ground, and amend the soil.  So maybe I took my time raking the leaves because I didn't want to be reminded that time, measured in plant growth, was about to speed up once again.  Instead, for that sunny, cool morning, I sat in the backyard with Benji, enjoying the quiet between freezes, between rain storms, and between growing seasons.

A Spoonful of Oil

I come from a long line of overly-responsible workaholics.  What this means is that, if given a salaried job where I don't have to clock in and out as hourly employees do, I will work about sixty hours a week and spend the rest of my time, those few minutes which aren't spent sleeping or in the shower, thinking about what I should be doing at work so that I can finally get caught up and, maybe then, be able to work a forty-hour week.  Caught up, unfortunately, is a state of mind, not a circumstance, and is certainly not a state of mind that my thinking-ahead brain can fathom.

But even during the longest of work weeks, I still ate my greens.  In fact, I perfected what I called the Lazy Woman Salad over the course of many working-until-bedtime evenings.  (Amazingly, until I just typed the last sentence I never realized the injustice of calling the woman who was planning to work until bedtime lazy.  Score one for the psychotherapists.)  The salad was, in it's earliest days and on my longest nights, simply a pile of organic, pre-washed spinach transferred straight from the plastic box to my plate then drizzled with olive oil or dressing.  I didn't add sliced tomatoes, or carrot, or cucumber, so that I wouldn't have to use a cutting board or knife to make it, so that I wouldn't have to wash a cutting board or knife, so that I could get back to work all the more quickly.  Over time, I realized that I could easily dump a can of cut green beans over the salad to add calories, or I could open a can of black olives and toss a few (say, half the can) onto the salad as well.

The problem with drizzling oil or dressing over a pile of spinach leaves is that the leaves on top get all of the oil and the ones on the bottom stay dry and stick to each other in the way that spinach leaves do.  At the time I had rediscovered Mother's Cashew-Tamari Dressing and I wanted every leaf to be coated in the stuff, so I started using a mixing bowl to make my salads, tossing spinach leaves and grated Parmesan in the dressing.  Sometimes I added sprouts straight from their plastic box and sometimes I added green beans or black olives from the can, but I never used a cutting board so always felt that it was just my Lazy Woman Salad, nothing worthy of being shared with Lee, who sometimes eyed my bowlful of greens with curiosity.

In truth, I had discovered salad bliss.  Here's the recipe:  Put a few handfuls greens into a mixing bowl with a handful of sprouts and a half a handful of grated Parmesan cheese.  Pour Cashew-Tamari Dressing (recipe below) onto the greens.  Mix all ingredients with a rubber spatula until every leaf is coated.  Serve in a big bowl and tell all relations that it's just a quick, easy salad that is not worthy of sharing because otherwise they will eat all the grated Parmesan and Cashew-Tamari Dressing in the house.

I kept my secret for a couple of years.  When I made salads for Lee and me, I would dutifully get out the cutting board and pile chopped tomatoes, sliced cucumber, grated carrot, and sliced peppers onto our colorful, proper salads, along with toasted fake-chicken nuggets.  Then we would each pour as much Harriet's Texas Ranch dressing as we wanted onto our nuggets and salads.  Between official salad days, I would make myself Lazy Woman Salads and keep telling myself that I was doing Lee a favor by not sharing for two reasons.  One, this was a lazy salad lacking all the crucial toppings, and two, he should be able to self-determine dressing type and amount, not be subjected to my whims.

But one day Lee insisted that he didn't mind having whatever it was that I was making, even if it was lacking ingredients and already coated in dressing.  So I made us Lazy Woman Salads and took mine to the computer to get some work done.  A few minutes later, he walked into the computer room with an empty salad bowl and a quizzical, you've been holding out on me look on his face.  I would've explained but I was too busy licking the last of the dressing out of my salad bowl.

Now that the secret is out, all of our salads, no matter the complexity or number of ingredients, and no matter whether the cutting board is busted out or not, are made in a bowl and coated in dressing prior to being served.  And we're eating a lot of salads in these, the quiet days of winter in the weeks before the lettuces bolt.  I'm aware of every warm spell on the horizon, and now that Lee is educated in the art of what he calls salad lubrication, we're going through a lot of salad dressing.  So I decided it was about time that I try to make my own cashew-tamari dressing.  Because the real secret of salad bliss is this: be generous with the high-quality oil.  Just as a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down, a spoonful of oil helps the salad go down.  In such a delightful way.

Cashew-Tamari Dressing
an attempt to recreate Mother's Cashew-Tamari Dressing

The main ingredient in Mother's Cashew-Tamari Dressing is canola oil, a neutral-flavored oil that is generally considered to be healthier than soy oil or vegetable oil blends.  I like canola oil and cooked with it for many years, but have learned that most canola plants, like most corn and soy plants, that are grown in North America are grown from genetically-modified, Round-Up-Ready seeds, which I would rather not support.  I am now using safflower oil when I need a neutral-flavored oil or one that can withstand high-heat frying. 

Napa Valley Naturals makes a safflower oil that is certified organic, expeller-pressed, and high in oleic oils (monounsaturated fats).  High-oleic safflower oils, derived from the seed of the Carthamus tinctorius plant, a relative of the sunflower, are high in vitamin E and are generally considered to be heart healthy and nutritionally similar to olive oil.  Some sources warn, though, that seed oils such as safflower should be eaten in moderation because they may be providing too much omega-6 fatty acid to our diet.

Mother's Cashew-Tamari Dressing also contains soy lecithin, which functions as an emulsifier, or helps the watery parts of the dressing (the vinegar and tamari) stay mixed within the oil of the dressing.  In homemade dressing, the lecithin is not needed.   If the dressing separates in the refrigerator, simply stir or shake to recombine.  In my experience, this dressing is gone long before separation is much of an issue.

1/2 cup cashews
2 teaspoons balsalmic vinegar
3 tablespoons tamari
1 cup safflower oil

Measure all the ingredients into a food processor or blender.  Pulse a few times to combine.  Process 30 seconds to a minute longer, until the cashews are chopped as finely as desired.  Pour into a glass jar and store in the refrigerator.

Winter Harvest

My front yard garden is full of greens – yellow green lettuces growing tall next to compact vases of red-leafed lettuces, purple beet greens beside blue-green, bumpy and erect kale leaves, red-, pink-, and yellow-stemmed chards intermixed, tight rosettes of tat soi turning to crowded vases of bok choy, and dark green arrow leaves, with pink stems, on the spinach, sharing a row with the yellow-green arrow leaves of sorrel.  Visually, it's an impressive mix, yet when someone asks what I am growing in my new garden this winter, I say, oh, just some greens.

Just some greens.  Just some greens because they are so easy to grow that they almost grow themselves.  Just some greens because there are so many of them.  Just some greens because they are ongoing, a process rather than a product.  Greens don't ripen like tomatoes or peppers, or swell to full-size like carrots and fennel.  Instead, greens harvest is ongoing from the time the seedlings put on their first true sets of leaves until the days before they bolt and send up flowering stalks.  At this point in the year, greens have taken over the kitchen sink, all my mixing bowls, the big shelf of the refrigerator, and most of my "free" time.  I don't mean to complain, though washing greens does get repetitive, but to say that, with greens there is no moment of accomplishment, no specific harvest time.

Which is why I have been eagerly watching the broccoli and cauliflower patch in the backyard.  In early December each plant held, in secret under its protective center leaves, a tiny head of flowering buds.  Over the next few weeks, the tiny heads emerged and grew steadily, along with my anticipation of their harvest day, into full-sized heads.

In retrospect, I can say that three of the four broccoli heads and both of the cauliflower heads reached maturity in the second week in January.  Yet I didn't harvest my first broccoli and cauliflower until the third week of the month.  I wanted to wait to harvest until I was sure that the broccoli and cauliflower had reached their largest size.  The problem with waiting until I am sure is that the only way I can know, without a doubt, that a broccoli or cauliflower head has stopped growing is that it begins to loosen up in anticipation of flowering.  Once the heads loosen up, they are for sure done growing, but they are also officially past their prime.  Oops!

Green Magic Broccoli

Snow Crown Cauliflower

I steamed the fresh broccoli and cauliflower then tossed the florets in mustard butter and chopped parsley.  Even though each of the heads was picked about a week after its ideal harvest day, the steamed broccoli and cauliflower tasted fresh out of the garden, and harvesting both gave me that moment of accomplishment that I've been craving through this ongoing greens season.


Mustard Butter
from Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone by Deborah Madison

The recipe calls for 1/4 pound of butter, which is 1/2 cup.  When I made it, I wasn't paying close attention and used 1/4 cup butter, so my resulting butter was as much stuff as butter.  I thought it was delicious over the steamed broccoli and cauliflower (and I still had leftovers), so I would probably repeat my mistake in the future.

1/4 pound (1/2 cup) butter
1 garlic clove, pressed or finely minced
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard, or to taste
1 large shallot, minced or 2 tablespoons minced onion
2 tablespoons minced parsley
sea salt
fresh ground black pepper

Soften the butter just enough so that it is stir-able but not melted.  Stir the remaining ingredients into the butter.  Serve over steamed broccoli and/or cauliflower.