Friday, January 23, 2009

Garlic 2.0


A lot of what happened in our garden last year started with the idea of growing our own garlic. At that time, we didn't know anybody who did, but it seemed like an interesting idea. We use garlic in the kitchen, but not huge quantities of it, so it seemed very possible to grow enough garlic for our household.

In the fall of 2007 I started to poke around the Internet looking for information, and ended up buying a starter package of garlic bulbs for planting from The Garlic Store. The sampler had 8 garlic varieties, and came all bundled together with a little leaflet explaining how to plant it and care for it.

Including in the sampler were (according to their website):

Elephant Garlic Clove - The giant clove will grow out to massive bulb, the best for roasting garlic
Polish White - The large, round bulbs have a cream colored wrapper with a real punchy taste.
Brown Tempest- If eaten raw, the cloves have a fiery flavor, but that mellows to a pleasing aftertaste
Susanville- a beautiful artichoke variety, with large cream/pink bulbs, similar to Inchelium; has a compelling raw flavor, one of the most popular, and a long storage life
Red Janice - very hard to find; from Nmarazeni, Republic of Georgia; a turban with puplish stripes and a taste that is almost sweet and spicy
Inchelium Red - our biggest selling softneck; a Rodale kitchen taste test winner; gorgeous cream/pink wrappers
Applegate -
a softneck artichoke-type from the Pacific Northwest
Bronock Red - a small-ish red garlic that they have since stopped selling.

Most of these grew beautifully in our garden. Every single clove of garlic that we planted sprouted and produced a head of garlic. Some were much better than others. Without a question, our favorite was Polish White, which has a lovely flavor when roasted, very easy to recognize.

We started harvesting garlic in July (Inchellium was our first garlic to be ready) and we didn't buy any garlic until December, even though we cooked almost every day this year. We also harvested garlic scapes (edible garlic flowers, delicious in stews). Our garlic harvest was a big success.

In the Fall of 2008 we planted the remainder of our garlic crop. 90 cloves of smaller garlics were planted in square foot beds, along with 4 large Elephant garlic cloves. Within 10 days all had sprouted and were growing beautifully. Even after a long, cold winter all the garlic is looking verdant and green.

I can't wait for this year's crop. Garlic independence might seem like a trivial thing, but it makes us really happy to know that we're growing our very own garlic and we don't have to purchase any of it!

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

I'll post this year (or else)



As far as journals go, mine sucks. I had such great dreams for this blog, such illusions of grandeur, that I became paralyzed with fear. If I didn't have the greatest stories, and the greatest pictures to go with it, I might as well not post. If I couldn't reach far and wide with my witty prose, then I might as well never come back to post a thing to this blog. If I couldn't be happy and upbeat and chipper, then I might as well shut up.

And so, I did shut up.

My mother passed away, after a long and sad battle with bladder cancer, on September 15, 2008. Any happiness that she may have experienced in her last year came from going outside to our garden to pick up fresh veggies, or to watch the grandchildren do it. I now realize that I had planted that big garden for her, and I am so glad that I did. As far as children go, I don't think I was the best one that my mother could have, but at least I can grow things in the garden...and she liked that about me.

I haven't been too happy or too chipper this past year, but things are getting better. I don't think that my writing has improved, or that I have gotten any better at posting pictures, but I feel that I need to write things down as imperfect as they might be, so here I am. I am posting, even if it's only a short post to write about something I saw or something I cooked.

Which brings me to my first post of the year: Making marmalade.

We went to visit Craig's family in Florida and brought home a couple big bags of citrus. Oranges, Meyer lemons, and Ponderosa lemons (the biggest lemons I have ever seen) as fresh and fragrant as only fresh fruit could be. I made marmalade with some of the oranges and the Meyer lemons, and then made even more marmalade using a very large Ponderosa lemon. I have never seen lemon marmalade before, but I figured that I would give it a try. It is very tart, and different from orange marmalade, but so good on crackers with Brie cheese! I am so glad that I made it. I used the recipe that comes with the Sure-Jell powdered pectin, but since that recipe is for oranges, I changed it up a bit.

Here is my recipe:

1 large Ponderosa lemon (I used a ripe one, most of the peel had turned yellow)
3 cups of sugar
1/2 envelope of powdered Sure-Jell pectin
1/16 tsp of baking soda
1/2 cup of water
1/4 tbsp butter

Using a vegetable peeler, peel just the zest off the lemon (without any of the white part) and them cut the peels into small strips. Put the peel in a sauce pan with the water and the baking soda and simmer for 20 minutes.
In the meantime, peel the lemon and remove all the white parts and seeds. With a large lemon, you will get about 2 cups of lemon pieces.
When the peels are cooked, add the lemon and simmer for 10 minutes, stirring once or twice so it doesn't scorch.
After the 10 minutes are over, add the pectin, mix well and bring the mixture to a rolling boil. Boil for exactly one minute.
Add the butter (to reduce foaming) and the sugar, mix very well and boil for another minute.

Pour the finished marmalade into small canning jars and process in a boiling water canner for 10 minutes.

This makes a marmalade that has a wonderful yellow color, lovely consistency, and spreads very well.