Fleur-de-Sandy 4

There’s a palm-sized chunk out of the corner post of our deck that never fails to bring a smile, no matter how many years have gone by.

My dad’s shotgun made the splintered gouge.  He must have been sitting on the sandstone planter, armed and ready for his grizzly foe—a groundhog whose burrow is under the rhododendrons that border the deck. Both the pressure-treated cavity and the groundhog den remain.  My dad has been gone for 10 years. I figure this “hunting” escapade must have taken place a good 10 to 20 years before that. I can still imagine my dad hunkered down, right outside the living room windows, aiming for the critter when the deck got in the way.

Sunbathing after a fine meal

I’ve read that groundhogs live only three to six years.  Most of this decade we’ve had a series of rescue dogs (Sandy 1, 2, and 3) to patrol the yard.  But Sandy 3 has been gone for two years now.  So I’m dealing with anywhere from the 5th to the 10^th generation of the wily beast who bested by dad.  And he (or she) is besting me.

First, it was the sugar snap peas. Those first tender shoots of April nibbled to the ground.  Next came the birdhouse gourds.  My friend Kathy grew the seedlings for our Master Gardener Plant Sale in May.  I thought they’d look great growing up the trellis near the deck. They didn’t make it to Memorial Day.

Then came two pots of eggplants—each leaf was tenderly trimmed, leaving bare stalks with a single lavender eggplant the size of my thumbnail holding on for dear life.  The bronze fennel—whoosh, it didn’t last a week. And the Tithonia tower I was hoping would send out its Aztec orange blossoms to Saturn’s rings around the blue wren house is 6 inches tall and naked.

On the opposite side of the deck, a good 6-to-8 feet above the groundhog’s lair, is a large planter with seven ripening Black Truffle tomatoes the size of my fist. The turkey bacon is waiting in the refrigerator.  I checked them this morning.  Each fruit was smooth and beautiful, except for the bottom. Each had a bite or two, suspiciously the size of a groundhog jaw, hidden underneath. I tore them off the plant and pelted them into the shrubs, down to the groundhog den. Breakfast in bed.

I suppose I should be grateful for the plants that haven’t been devoured.

Honey Nut in a Cage

I didn’t take any chances with the Honey Nut Butternut Squash.  It is the first time I’ve grown it.  I babied the seedling in a pot in the atrium until last weekend, when I planted it, covering it with a plastic crate.  I’ll write about the survivors, and, I hope, Honey Nut, in a future blog. Until then, I asked the contractor who is planning to replace the old deck to keep the shattered corner post for me. Laurie Lynch

 

Fleur-de-DittoPesto

It’s been eight months of grumpiness.  Off my bike. Off my feet.  Now, when the weather is in the 80s, I can’t even get in the pool.

So I zero in on distractions.

I’ve read dozens of books, although I’m no closer to writing one. I sit and make myself useful, shelling pistachios. I lounge on the deck and watch the clouds sifting and sieving, white filtering through blue, blue disappearing into drifts of gray.

I’m afraid to look down at the green—grass to be mowed, volunteer maples to be chopped, waves of jewelweed sweeping over the Solomon’s Seal, yews gnawed off by last winter’s deer browse. The stubble of Freckles lettuce, sugar snap peas and birdhouse gourd vines cut to the quick by groundhogs brazen enough to climb onto the deck outside our living room windows and then into the planter.

I did hobble down to the garlic, stuffing my stitched and bandaged and wrapped and socked foot into an untied boot.  I weeded two beds of garlic, two more to go.  Sometime. And then there’s the harvest. Serious doubts as to whether I’ll plant in October.

The other day Richard sent me a link to the article: “Journey to the Place Where Pesto Was Born”.  I finally got around to reading about Liguria and its terraced mountainsides above the Mediterranean where basil and garlic, Italian pine nuts, olive oil, and Pecorino and Parmigiano cheeses were first blended together to create our beloved Pesto.

For decades I’ve read that the traditional way of making pesto is with a mortar and pestle.  It wasn’t until I read this article that I realized that pesto and pestle are derived from the same Italian verb, pestare,  meaning to crush or clobber.

My traditional way of making pesto is with a Cuisinart Food Processor bowl stuffed with basil, several cloves of garlic, and an ample drizzle of olive oil. I freeze this mixture into ice cube trays, pop them into freezer bags, and use at will.  The pine nuts (or walnuts) are added later, with a half-cup or so of coarsely grated cheese, after the pesto cubes are thawed. My Polish mother who loves Italian cuisine taught me how to make pesto.  She probably learned from the Cuisinart distributor who introduced her to the wonders of the electric French work bowl and spinning blade.

But here I am, time on my hands and weight off my foot, and the basil is pushing out its green, fragrant splendor in my Grow Box.  Quick, before the groundhog finds it.  Time to break out the mortar and pestle.

I take a couple deep breaths, set up the measured ingredients around the kitchen table, sit on my stool, and go to work.

5-7 minutes: Grind two tablespoons pine nuts, 1 teaspoon sea salt and two cloves of garlic into a paste. Crunch, crunch, whoops, there goes a flying pine nut. It’s almost painful pounding such an expensive delicacy to smithereens.

Richard walks through the kitchen. “Oh, going Old School?”

It’s not often I get that much attention in the kitchen.

“Well, since we have a mortar and pestle, I thought I’d give it a try.”

20 minutes: Two packed cups of fresh basil leaves. Slowly add a few leaves at a time, and grind, grind, grind out all of that frustration, until creamy.

Stream in EVOO and keep crushing, slushing, and crushing some more.

I borrow the Cuisinart spatula to skim the sauce off the sides of the mortar. Clobber, clobber.

I slide a pound of pasta into boiling water on the stove. 8 minutes to go.

Slowly stir a ½ cup of grated Asiago cheese (my Dad’s signature touch) into the brilliant emerald sauce.

It smells like heaven. Each bite tastes like the pesto we know and love, and, being the first of the season, tastes especially good.

“Think it was worth it?” Richard asks.

“I’m glad I did it. Mmmm. Imagine if I rolled the pasta by hand too.”

“Wait until you wash that mortar.  You won’t believe how heavy it is.”

The following day my daughter Marina and I Skyped, sharing our lives over the miles between Pennsylvania and Belgium.

“I made pesto last night,” Marina announced.

“So did I.”

We have this uncanny, umbilical cord-mental thing going on.  We get hungry for and make the same dishes on the same days on two different continents, in time zones six hours apart.

She told me she made hers with a handful of Swiss chard added—and it turned some of the pasta pink, which was different.  I told her I made mine with a mortar and pestle, also different.

After our conversation ended, I went back to my room and re-read the note in the Mother’s Day card she gave me.

“Our cooking habits align throughout the year—and this never ceases to amaze me,” she wrote in May. And here I am, also amazed, writing this in July.  Laurie Lynch

Written on Slate:  “Another world is not only possible, she is on her way.  On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”  –Arundhati Roy

Rooftop Garden Progress:  Marina and Koen’s kitchen garden in Ghent is progressing.  They harvested a crop of garlic we planted when I visited in October!  Notice the Fleur-de-Lys Farm inspiration hanging on the siding.