Fleur-de-Garleek

Peel

If I was in garlic overdrive in early August, I am jetting through clouds of Allium sativum this final weekend.

Or, to put it bluntly, I reek of garlleek! I’ve spent the weekend feeling like a walking, talking loaf of garlic bread. Chances are, I have smelled like one too.

On Friday, I began making my first (and possibly last) batch of garlic powder.

I began by collecting leftover German White, Spanish Roja, and Music garlic bulbs in the barn. I ended up with a total of 30 bulbs, which I broke into 200 cloves. Although my Houtzdale students swore that peeling the cloves by shaking the coverings loose in two stainless steel bowls was their secret to success—I failed that lesson. Perhaps I just don’t have the upper body strength. A few of the papery skins came off, but I soon realized the shake ‘n bake method wasn’t going to work for me.

Chop

So, my Mom and I spent a good hour peeling 200 cloves of garlic. With essential oils gluing the garlic skins to the tips of our fingers—a sticky mess—and play-by-play complaints of the process, I was relieved when the last clove was naked.

The rest was easy. We had a generous four cups of bare cloves that I stuffed into the feeding tube of the Cuisinart, pulse, pulse, and all were sliced. Around 3 p.m. Friday I spread the garlic slices in single layers on the trays of the dehydrator, set the dial to 130 degrees, and plugged in the machine. Then the fragrance began.

The kitchen, the entire house, smelled like gently roasting garlic. Vapors of the “stinking rose” carried into the night. I swore I was getting high. That it was a full moon weekend only added to the buzz.

Dehydrate

By Saturday morning, the air seemed to be more of an essence of garlic—or maybe my nostrils were numb. Occasionally I checked the dehydrator, rotated the trays, tested the cloves. The goal was slices that broke with a dry snap, not a sticky bend. Finally at 5:30 Saturday evening, we were in business. I scooped up all of the garlic chips from the dehydrator trays and put them in the blender. I pressed the Liquify button and in 10 seconds or so, I had my first batch of garlic powder.

It looks a lot like cornmeal, so the first thing I did was place a label on the re-used mayo jar. Let me tell you though, when you open the lid and take a whiff, no label is needed. Powerful stuff.

The odd thing is, I now have nearly two cups of homemade garlic powder, and I’ve never even cooked with garlic powder—always used fresh garlic. So this culinary experiment will continue throughout the coming year, one quarter-teaspoon at a time. Laurie Lynch

Powder

Garlic Airmail: An envelope from Houtzdale containing a letter from one of my students and a large plastic vial protecting three bulbs of Italian Red garlic arrived at the post office.

I made two mistakes in a previous newsletter—it was David’s grandfather (not father) who made a return visit to Italy in 1947 (not 1942) to see his mother and family again. See what happens when a teacher doesn’t have a pen in hand?

“He found post-war destruction and tough conditions overall,” David wrote of his grandfather’s visit in 1947. His grandfather came from the town of Oriolo Romano, Viterbo Province, in the hills about 25 miles north of Rome. He returned to the States with the garlic of Oriolo Romano.

“The strain of garlic never was really large, and it has weakened in the past nearly 70 years. We still use it and like it a lot!” It is an Italian family heirloom that I will adopt and treasure.

Error of Omission: While I’m confessing, I also want to explain that the image of the Belgian beauty with grapes in Fleur-de-Potluck is actually a photograph I took of a blown glass vase decorated by Fritz Heckert in 1900 and displayed at Het Design Museum in Ghent. Stunning.

Fleur-de-Potluck

Belgian Beauty

Dinner parties were my mother’s era. Potlucks are mine.

We had two this week.

The first was Monday night. After a day of work, the rule is KISS—Keep It Simple, Stupid. Pesto pasta piled into a crockpot to keep it warms turned into Upside Down Pesto Pasta when I took a turn a little too fast and it tipped in the trunk. A single serving was lost; after a quick cleanup around the lid of the crockpot, the rest was just fine.

Friday night’s potluck was with a different crowd and I had the day off to play. I found a recipe that included ingredients I had in the kitchen or the garden, and no cooking, always a plus in the summer.

Vietnamese Watermelon Salad

3 cups seedless watermelon, cut in ½-inch pieces

3 cups cucumbers, chopped in ½-inch pieces

3 ½ tablespoons lime juice

3 tablespoons hoisin sauce

¼ cup chopped cilantro

2 tablespoons chopped mint

1/3 cup peanuts, chopped

Combine cucumbers and watermelon. Cover with plastic and refrigerate at least 15 minutes. Drain off liquid (I drank it mixed with ice water). Combine lime juice and hoisin sauce, mixing well with a fork. Add herbs and toss cucumbers and watermelon with dressing. Chill. Top with peanuts before serving.

Wide, flat Romano beans are one of my favorite summer vegetables. They’re not easy to find at farmers markets, where stands have caught onto the bean rainbow of green, yellow, and purple, but some how missed those velvety Italian Romanos. I’m growing them successfully this year—the rabbits ignored them while chomping down on the Royal Burgundy and edamame plants.

I like to steam Romanos in a little water, but I decided to dress them up a little. In a separate pan, I browned some pancetta cubes. As the meat browned and the fat melted, I added sage leaves and a good splash of balsamic vinegar flavored with figs (a wonderful gift from Sabine and Richard last Christmas). With a sizzle and hiss, I had a glaze of ham, sage and caramelized vinegar to pour over the beans.

For dinner, the night after the second potluck, we had corn on the cob, leftover Vietnamese Watermelon Salad (“This is like dessert,” my mom said.) and my dressed Romano beans, with a slice of multigrain bread to mop up the leftover glaze. Home-gown heaven. Laurie Lynch

Ag Progress Hit: The luffas captured the attention of APD-goers. The CDT ran a photo on their webpage (but it got bumped from the print newspaper by the coronation photo of the Grange Fair Queen.) While politics is everywhere, including Ag shows, we have photographic proof that at least two of the three Centre County Commissioners visited the luffa tunnel. One of them, a garlic groupie, stopped by Lemont Farmers Market after APD and bought out my garlic supply—and said he always thought luffa sponges came from the sea…until Centre County Master Gardeners set him straight.

Corn Quiz: OK, eaters. How do you consume corn on the cob? Do you eat it “typewriter style”—nibbling across the “cartridge” in a straight line until you get to the end, and then, Ping! back to the beginning and down a row…or, do you take a bite and then move down, encircling the cob? There could be other methods, I’m sure, but these were the two discussed at a recent gathering. What’s your technique…and why?

Written on Slate: “Your whole life passes in front of your eyes before you die. This is called living.”   Terry Pratchett

Fleur-de-Rookie

Curing Garlic PSU Style

August is Garlic Month for me.

Besides having a barn draped with curing garlic for the month of August, my mom and I spend Wednesday afternoons selling garlic-planting packages at Lemont Farmers Market. We have Great Bulbs of Fire (Georgia Fire, Asian Tempest & German White), Stinking Rose Bouquet (Spanish Roja, Metechi & Music) and new this year, the Granary Garlic Collection (Zemo, Quiet Creek and Chesnok Red).

On the first two Fridays of August, I taught a course at the house called Garlic 101 through Penn State’s OLLI (Osher Lifelong Learning Institute) for students of a “certain age.”

The first class, on the morning of Aug. 7, I told the class I knew what I was doing exactly a quarter of a century ago. I was picking basil in the garden and chopping home-grown garlic to make a batch of pesto. That evening, my pesto baby, Marina, was born. In celebration of her first quarter century, she and Koen had friends over for a pesto tasting party with basil and garlic grown in their Belgian garden. The circle of life, in our family, is shaped like a bulb of garlic.

During the class, I had garlic roasting in the oven. Not only did it add authentic fragrance to the lecture, students got to smear the stuff on crackers for tasting. I also read my favorite garlic quote: “Tomato and oregano make it Italian; wine and tarragon make it French. Sour cream makes it Russian; lemon and cinnamon make it Greek. Soy sauce makes it Chinese; garlic makes it good.” That gem comes from Alice May Brock, a woman who ran Alice’s Restaurant, made famous in a ballad by Arlo Guthrie.

After class, a student named Jim pulled me aside and told me a wonderful story. When he was a young buck in the late 1960s, he and his buddies called up Alice and asked if they could meet her. They ended up staying with Alice in the Berkshires for the weekend—partying and eating and creating their own chapter of anti-war folk music history. My mother questioned what he was talking about, and I mentioned there was a song by Arlo Guthrie with the words, “You can get anything you want, at Alice’s Restaurant,” and that he actually visited Alice’s Restaurant and met Alice. “Hmmm, you can get anything you want?” she said with a twinkle in her eyes and a raised eyebrow. “Except Alice,” his wife quickly added.

At the second Friday class, I once again crossed the line from teacher to student. First, David told me his father went home to Italy in 1942 and brought back a family heirloom, simply called Italian Red Garlic. He and his family have been growing it in the U.S. ever since. He shared the garlic with his fellow Houtzdale buddy Frank, and oh, the stories Frank told.

Luffas taking off!

Frank is a member of a garden cult I didn’t know existed–Competition  Gardeners. There is actually a Pennsylvania Great Pumpkin Growers Association that has an annual weigh-off in nearby Altoona each October. Frank was spouting off his stats right and left, but heck, I was the teacher, not the student, and didn’t have a pen in my hand. Luckily, I Googled the results of the competitions and can give you a sampling of his accomplishments:

Frank has grown a 3.42 pound tomato, a 99-pound watermelon, and, ta-da-ta-da…a 694.5-pound pumpkin. He drove a giant pumpkin to a resort in the Poconos in the back of his pickup. The manager was so impressed that he gave Frank’s family a free vacation at the resort. By the way, Frank’s experiment this summer is growing peanuts in Clearfield County—along with a patch of okra.

But getting back to garlic, Frank grows David’s Italian Red—300 bulbs a year and consumes them all—except for what he plants. He puts the scapes around his flowers to keep the deer away, makes a mean dip from ramps he finds in the woods, and dries much of his garlic to make garlic powder that he puts on everything. Not only did he share his method for making garlic powder—he shared the numbers: 275 cloves of garlic yield one quart of garlic powder.

No sooner had he finished the garlic powder lesson, he jumped to another passion…privy digging, a topic he sometimes teaches, that combines back-road archaeology with glass bottle treasure hunting. Meanwhile, I’m hoping I have enough energy in the next couple of weeks to make a pint or so of garlic powder. As for the privy digging…there is an old foundation of the original farmhouse in the old llama pasture that I mow around. The area is ripe for privy digging…if only I could find the time. Laurie Lynch

Jo sizing up our luffa.

Ag Progress Days Update: Our luffas are looking grand in the high tunnel. We have one that measures 21 inches long—take that, Frank. Meanwhile, I was photographing the beauties and fell off the table that holds the water barrel. Rather than grabbing a luffa vine and swinging down a la Tarzan, I reached for the 55-gallon water barrel that I had just filled—it broke my fall, but I ended up with a bloody mess on my knee. Gardening is full of adventure

Written on Slate: Everything in moderation, including moderation. Oscar Wilde

Fleur-de-LuffaFamily

May Seedlings

Last winter, one of my Master Gardener friends asked for suggestions on what to plant in our Ag Progress Days high tunnel this year. I suggested luffas. At our next meeting, Chris handed me a packet of seeds from Renee’s Garden.

Luffas, it was.

Few Centre County Master Gardeners have grown luffas, but I had the benefit of raising them over several years on our chicken fence at the Hottenstein Road chicken coop, next to the F-d-L cutting garden.

Just before I left for Belgium, I handed Chris a dozen or so healthy seedlings to plant in the high tunnel. While I was gone, Chris planted them and attached twine to the bar above the raised bed so that the luffas, being vigorous vines, would have direction. Up.

June 25, I got an email, photo, and another assignment from Chris. “Look at me, I can climb” was the subject line message. Here’s the photo. Chris named her Lucy Luffa. “You and Marie can name the rest,” she wrote.

Lucy, 6-25-15

Chris went to high school with my middle sister, Lee Ann. My mother has told her on numerous occasions: “I have five daughters and they’re all Ls. Laurie, Lisa, Lee Ann, Larissa, and Leslie.” Chris decided Marie would be the perfect person to help me name the Luffa family.

We came up with Lucky, LuLu, Luvvy, Laffy Taffy, Loopy, and Loony, and a whole lot of Laughter. Chris has a way of convincing you to embrace a project.

The luffa tendrils hugged the strings Chris hung, and the vines took off toward the tunnel’s support ribs. Then, bright yellow flowers appeared like headlights on an evening drive. My “Luffa Baby Alert” email went out July 24. While I was filling up the irrigation barrel on my watering day, I noticed tiny luffas smaller than my pinky.

Well, days later, our luffas lassoed the ladder we use to check the water barrel level, and completely took over a bamboo grid we used last year for our Square Foot demonstration plot, swallowing it whole. (Luffas are members of the cucumber family. The young fruit, under 7” long, can be cooked and eaten like squash, or eaten raw, as a substitute for cucumber, but most often they are grown to maturity so the fibrous tissue “skeleton” can be used as a bath or sauna sponge.)

Pollinator at work

During our next work session, I tied purple twine connecting a support bar on the backside of the high tunnel to the support bar opposite it, giving the vines traveling room. Purple, I figured, would become invisible once the luffas make contact.

By Ag Progress Days, I expect Lucy, Lucky, LuLu, Luvvy, Laffy Taffy, Loopy, and Loony will create a shady cave of leaves, flowers, and fruit  inside the high tunnel. We may have to post a warning for visitors to enter at their own risk—they just might get caught up in the Luffa family. Laurie Luffa Lynch

Perks of Volunteering: One evening, while working at the MG high tunnel and demonstration gardens, we had a special visitor. A bald eagle perched high above us in the tree row. Magnificent. The eagle’s back was toward us. I’d guess it was a good two feet from the top of its white head to the tip of its white tail. It was the first bald eagle I’ve seen in the wild. When we have an environmental success, we must revel in it.

Luffa fruit

Perks of Attending APD: Penn State’s Ag Progress Days, August 18-20, is at Rock Springs amidst the university’s experimental farms. It is free, open to the public, filled with educational displays and the latest in farming equipment—and could pay off big time if you are an ice cream fan. This summer, there is a special Penn State Passport Program. Visitors get their “passport” stamped at each of the 15 Penn State exhibits (Master Gardeners are in the Yard & Garden Tent—and you can see the Luffa family in the nearby high tunnel, if you dare.). Turn your passport in and you get chance to win…Berkey Creamery Ice Cream for a YEAR (1/2 gallon per month).

Perks of Reading to the Bitter End: It’s cantaloupe season and I made Chilled Cantaloupe Soup over the weekend. It is so easy and so delicious. Place one chilled cantaloupe (peeled, seeded and chunked) into a blender with 1cup plain yogurt, ½ tsp. vanilla, and grated nutmeg to taste. Liquefy and serve in bowls, garnish with fresh blueberries or chocolate mint leaves. (Next time I make it, I’m going to try fresh grated ginger instead of nutmeg.) The chilled soup gets foamy and can be refrigerated for two days or so. It has a lovely color and can double as a treat for breakfast or a low-calorie dessert.