Atomic Nerds

It’s not really been a bad winter here at the Ranch, as winters go. We’ve had our cold spells and warm spells, and while I find it vaguely irritating that our yard is currently a very small scale version of an interglacial period, it’s not so bad now that Tank is old enough to go outside without an escort to mark the exact last point at which he went to the bathroom. I’m a lucky first-worlder and thus my grocery store is stocked with all sorts of out of season things, though being a small grocery store in a small town, both space and supplies are limited, especially when it comes to fresh food. Thus it comes to pass with the democracy of the market that I can much more easily lay my hands on honeydews or cantaloupes than the hard winter squashes I’m so fond of, cherries are easy but kale is a question of if the store felt like stocking it that week, and the same goes for beets. Somewhat more exotic veggies such as celeriac and okra are totally out of the question, and eggplants tend to be obtainable but only if you don’t mind that it looks as though it was used as the ball in a game of rugby before hitting the store shelves.

I was brooding specifically on the subject of sugar pumpkins and how much it irritated me that they were only available for two weeks out of the year: the week of Halloween, and the week of Thanksgiving. This galls me, because they are a base ingredient in two* recipes I REALLY enjoy in cold weather, and tend to be good candidates for serving guests. I was bitching about this to Indy, who tends to be the default listener to my bitching about many things (lucky her), who responded by linking me to this article on heirloom pumpkins. There was a thought; eating pumpkins, only much better than even the pricey ones the hippie mart up on the hill has. Hmmm. She linked me to seed savers, because she’s helpful like that**.

I spent some intensive time contemplating vegetables, most particularly the scrawny and missing sorts on our local produce shelves. Time passed.

The two kinds of pumpkin, cherry tomatoes, eggplant, and beet seed arrived today. The kale, okra, other two kinds of tomato, lemon cucumber, and Thai chiles will probably get here next week. Spring fever being what it is, I have spent my time planning ways to cope with the results of success.

Only one minor problem with that: beyond the hops vines, which are natives- our non-native vines all died- we’ve never successfully grown anything. In fact as a gardener I’m only slightly better than Agent Orange, because I do not care much for messing with plants, only eating them.

Well. I’ve got some time before the soil warms enough to do anything with… and the seeds were only $2.50 a pack. If you don’t hear anything from me for three months, you’ll know why.

*That is not our pumpkin and bacon soup, which doesn’t have potatoes and does have a number of other things, but I don’t feel like writing the thing down and then linking that. Suffice to say pumpkin and bacon soup is more of a genre than a specific recipe.

**Translate “like that” to “you will technically end up with what you wanted, and you will have willing help, but your project will be six times larger than originally planned and have many children”.

Posted Food, homestead |