Soft Serve and Post Haste Garden Post

World's Best Softserve (Sugar Free, Gluten Free, Dairy Free, Soy Free, Nut Free)

Adapted from an idea at ChocolateCoveredKatie
6 frozen very ripe bananas
1/2 fair trade unsweetened cocoa
1/4 c french vanilla so delicious coconut creamer
1/2 c lowfat soy or rice milk
pinch of guar gum (optional) but keeps it soft.

Blend in blender. Pour into bowl and freeze. Use more milk if it needs to be thinned. Eat within two -four hours. Good with blackberry syrup, pomegranate syrup or brandy. Read on for an account of gardening so far this summer.
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Eden Farms, CU, Pittsburgh, the old well as compost pile

If 'post haste' should be the norm for deadlines, I failed this summer.

The colors of the M&Ms but in nature! Spot the Blue!

Do you remember when you bought grocery produce that had to be checked for pests and ripeness? I recall turning bags of apples for the least worm eaten. When was the last time you found a worm hole in a bag of grocery store apples? Does that worry you a bit? What are they spraying that not one apple has a worm in it?

A couple of summers ago I learned about ripening rooms for Kroger. These are for bananas. Want to learn more about them? Click here. I got to thinking about the produce at the store and why, when I buy out of season, I get so many stomach issues. Why when the powdering grey of pesticide is thick, do I double over in pain? Why when I garden even hybrid plant starts do I still harvest decent tasting fruits and veggies? Is is more than heirloom, though I am stuck to beauty, variety and flavor of my Cherokee Purples, Lemon Zebras, Lemon Drop, Chocolate drop, Amish Pasters, Mortgage Lifters, Canary Melons, and other heirlooms? Is it what they spray? How they fertilize? And finally, that they pick and deliver vegetables and fruits before nature's cycle approves harvest. Those skins are as edible as newsprint, or plastic wrap.

I love eating from the garden this time of year. We have had a bounty, thanks to obscene water bills. We shared with our neighbors. While I traveled from the week of July to the third week of August, folks helped to water. My kids covered the cycle. I was able to tour Chatham University's Eden farm and learn about their co-planting garden experiments. Next year, I repeat the cukes but mix with something else. They didn't compliment with the squash. I think a pretty tobacco plant may be in order. Those repel squash bugs, I hear. I may throw in some other heavily scented herbs, lemon verbena, or more basil. We can never have two much pesto in our house. My daughter froze 24 ice blocks of it today. We'll make more in a week or so. Each 2oz block will make us a pasta dish.

One of my honeydew babies!

I was happy to harvest three honeydews from the 75 cent plant I rescued. I harvest too early. My mother used to make me knock the watermelons, which I saw an Indian man doing at the international grocery Saraga last Friday.  I had to sniff the ends of cantalopes for the pungent musk. I hated cantalopes and the ripe smell made me gag. It turns out, we picked the honeydews a bit soon. While I traveled, I asked my daughter to peel and deseed one of them, then freeze it.-- I can smoothy those up. Frozen melon and frozen banana make some great, low sugar 'soft serves.' See my chocolate soft serve recipe below-- Needless to say, progeny of a certain age are almost incapable of following more than 60% of directions, even simplified into three steps.

So I defrosted half an unpeeled honeydew and tried to cut its unripe flesh from the skin. It took this vegetarian momma back to days when I had to butcher and carve chicken flesh. It squiggled under my skin and my knife almost slipped and nicked me.  It was a bit hard to eat.

Ripeness matters.

Even in Pittsburgh the heat oppressed cats.

My mom  used to have me pick the bananas that would turn in a day or so. The sugars were less starchy. We two days of banana eating and the remainders became bread. Mom did buy those often, since bananas were expensive compared to Michigan peaches and Hoosier apples. Nowadays, it's almost impossible to find local varieties. Local means it came within 6 to 10 hours from here, instead of say, Guatemala. When we were down there, we saw vast plantations adapted with North American fruits and veggies that would be harvest just a tad early and rushed north for your local chain store. The less perfect specimens were sold at local auctions. My husband pointed out that the eating at the Hogar Rafael Ayau is much healthier and easier on his stomach than American food.  Perhaps it's because the produce is fresh. Perhaps it's because it's not laced with preservatives when it is prepared. Either way, he got sick with the first meal back in the USA.  Ah, America.

Two weeks ago, Layla replanted beans, which is a first for our home garden. Liam did some peas. I hope to get this rotation habit improved next year. Travel kills several good rhythms in me: fasting, self-control, prayer and gardening.

Recipe:

Summer : Surprises and Salads

Reynolds Summer Salad Recipe Below

It was 11pm when I turned my camry into our narrow driveway. I pulled in to the left, hoping not to run over the crookneck squash plant that is spilling from one of five raised beds along the right of our drive. I slaked around the car in the dark, for the camry has 176,000 miles on it and the usual gremlins of an old toyota, a loss of electrical amenities like overhead lights, has sickened it. I waited for the crunch of leaves. In the eerie city shadows, I could see plants, half-dead. I would have to wait until morning to assess what the 100+ degree days of 2012 had wrecked in the five day absence.  Against all hope, broccoli, spindally and tall enough to tickle my elbow, begged me to break a clump and munch.

Garden fresh broccoli, like any garden fresh veggie or fruit tastes better than the mojo from the grocery.  I wonder what they do to that produce these days. I heartell of ripening rooms in warehouses and stores.  I hear of picking while green and forcing the ripening. This may be why sniffing the belly button of a cantelope no longer yields the musty scent of ripeness. It may be why apples may have rotted guts without a single prick from a very hungry catepillar. I recall examining bags of apples and peaches for the number of items with worm holes, exchanging one item for another in the bag, at my mother's behest. She taught me how to weigh the heads of iceberg, to check for ripe peaches, to assess tomatoes for color.

Going to the grocery with my mother included learning to read labels for preservatives, transfats, fiber, and protein. It was only a part of our eating structure in my formative years. We also canned up bushels of Michigan peaches my grandparents hauled home in season. We cooked up spiced applesauce: slow stewed apples run through a Vitorio Strainer with a bit of brown sugar and one Red Hot candy at the bottom of the quart jar. We grew and canned green beans, bread and butter pickles, carrots, and so many tomato products that our neighbors thought us oddities. Our corner lot reeked of stewing amish paste tomatoes for days. Later, my mother hung the juiced product in disinfected pillow cases to drain off water and make sauce, then with  more, she let it sit until it was paste.  Our kitchen was a sauna with the whistle of a pressure cooker. We ran outside to collect more scabs on our knees and avoid carrying tomato skins and seeds to the compost pile, or to avoid shucking more corn for the freezer.

On vacation this past week, mother said she and Dad only gardened a year or two. I remember a long stretch of it. I recall being bribed to weed and pick peas. I recall sunflowers that grew so fat their heads could nuzzle mine. I recall a year with the Sweet One-Hundred Cherries seemed to be Sweet One-Thousands. I recall a carrot that weighed a pound and purloining off our monsterous zucchinis on unlucky folks at church.  THat was before we knew to treasure the 'baby' veggies for fine dining. That was when my mother still served canned spinach, asparagus and lima beans. Yuck.

I am sure they gardened much longer, though the efforts grew more modest each year. Gardening is a constant negotiation with the moods of a region. In Indiana this year, we have had over sixteen days of temperatures topping 90 degrees. There is no rain. My garden is going to cost me, just for the water bill. I was more modest with my seed-buying. I followed Dianne's lead and planted 'rescues' and refurbs: wilting heirloom varieties and dying Coral Bells.

When I woke up the next morning and set the sprinkler on the beds, I discovered my tomatoes are plump and ripening fast. I picked a whole peck or more last night, along with a head of broccoli, three fat cucumbers, more squash, though the leaves look to be dying. I found a few more beans and two melons. The sweet potatoes out back are surviving and the first year asparagus starts I'm babying are alive still.

Goodie for me. Goodie for gardening. Goodie for my daughter who wants Summer Salad for her birthday meal and my son, who made it tonight from our krims and mortgage lifters, and those cukes.

Reynolds Summer Salad Recipe

4 cups cubed and peeled cucumbers
4 cups warm, fresh tomatoes, diced
Dressing:
1/2 c greek yogurt
2-3 T Olive Oil Mayo
pinch of cayenne
1/2 t fresh cracked pepper
1/4 t fresh cracked sea salt
2 shakes or pinches of garlic powder

Mix dressing, pour over diced veggies. Serve promptly.