It is encouraging to see that President-Elect Barack Obama is interested in food policy. In this interview with Joe Klein, he responds to Michael Pollan’s excellent NYT article by saying:

I was just reading an article in the New York Times by Michael
Pollan about food and the fact that our entire agricultural system is
built on cheap oil. As a consequence, our agriculture sector actually is
contributing more greenhouse gases than our transportation sector. And
in the mean time, it’s creating monocultures that are vulnerable to
national security threats, are now vulnerable to sky-high food prices
or crashes in food prices, huge swings in commodity prices, and are
partly responsible for the explosion in our healthcare costs because
they’re contributing to type 2 diabetes, stroke and heart disease,
obesity, all the things that are driving our huge explosion in
healthcare costs. That’s just one sector of the economy. You think
about the same thing is true on transportation. The same thing is true
on how we construct our buildings. The same is true across the board.
For us to say we are just going to completely revamp how we use energy
in a way that deals with climate change, deals with national security
and drives our economy, that’s going to be my number one priority when
I get into office, assuming, obviously, that we have done enough to
just stabilize the immediate economic situation.

The time is ripe for revival of a national Victory Gardens program. Check out this rationale over at civileats.com and consider making your own ask of our new president.

Our nation has many needs right now. Families need help with their personal economies. Entire communities are food-insecure. We have a tenuous connection with the land, and a poor understanding of our food system. Obesity is an epidemic. Environmental concerns - and declining oil supplies - dictate a need to recreate more sustainable and local food systems. And Americans have proven that they are hungry for change, eager to re-engage with their neighbors, their communities, their nation.

A revival of the successful national gardening programs of the past could help in many, many ways. This would not be a costly program. All of the educational materials that support school, home and community gardens is available through existing government agencies and private organizations. A government-sponsored program through the USDA, state land grant institutions, and county government fields thousands of highly-trained Master Gardeners who could be called upon to share their expertise with school, home and community gardeners.
What is needed to make this idea a reality is an “ask” by our new President.

Christa Dumpys, Mayor Greg Nickels, Julie Whitehorn at Good Neighbor Garden, October 11, 2008

Last Saturday, I had the pleasure of showing off the Good Neighbor Garden to Mayor Greg Nickels on his walking tour of Queen Anne. He seemed pretty interested in our efforts to promote urban food gardening and asked some unexpected questions (”hey, is this Trex?”). He mentioned that his neighbor in West Seattle has “ripped her strip” and is growing some fine-looking produce in it. When I gave him a tote bag, he admired it and said he’s getting quite a collection. (Aren’t we all!)

The tour included an entourage and two photographers (I am still kicking myself for not wearing makeup and better clothes). Once my nerves calmed, I had a great time, especially with Sharon Nickels chatting about parenting and schools and food. Her mother used to make home-made rootbeer, and now I’m eager to try it.

The coordinator of the tour was Christa Dumpys, the QA/Magnolia rep from the Department of Neighborhoods. Four years ago, when Christa was coordinator of the QA Community Center, she championed my friend Heather Brownell’s and my proposal for a new, environmentally-focused preschool at the center. Heather and I named it Fresh Air because we (1) think kids need a lot of it, and (2) we are fans of NPR’s Terry Gross. Our children attended the school for two years, and GNG volunteer Sarah Holt’s son is now a student there. Needless to say, I was thrilled to talk about Fresh Air’s help with the Good Neighbor Garden this year, and to champion Christa and the many other city employees who are assisting with neighbor-driven efforts to improve our communities.

The tour ended at Eat Local (a GNG sponsor) where I overhead owner Greg Connor tell Sharon Nickels that he plans to plant his strip with edibles. Wow! I think a rosemary / lavender hedge would do pretty well there on that western edge, don’t you?

Let’s get growing!

Julie

We are thrilled that GNGP cofounder Nancie Kosnoff is among the five finalists for the Cox Conserves Hero award. Cox Conserves Heroes is a conservation awards program created by The Trust for Public Land and Cox Enterprises to honor “unsung heroes” who work to create, preserve, improve, or enhance the shared outdoor places in our communities. The winner gets $5,000 for their nonprofit, and Nancie has designated the GNGP (through our fiscal sponsor QANRG).

The award money would go a long way toward our goals. Please tell your neighbors and friends, and get out the vote before October 13th. Enjoy the video . . . and take pride in this grassroots project you helped create!

I hate to say it, but you know all those green tomatoes you have growing? They’ll likely stay that way. We’ve had a few nice weeks of heat, but the days are short now and it won’t be enough to ripen all the fruits. Since you’ve already trimmed up your plant and removed the teeny tiny green tomatoes so they won’t suck all the energy away from the bigger fruits (remember my tomato maintenance tips from early September), here are some tips on how to deal with a green tomato glut.

- If green tomatoes are full sized, you can bring them in the house to ripen. Be sure to try and keep them in a cool spot (i.e. not your windowsill). This helps to prevent rot. If you have a gnat problem, cover the bucket/bowl loosely with cheesecloth.

- Green tomatoes make great chutneys and jams. I came across a great relish recipe for canning here last year, but I can’t attest to the flavor, as I’ve not made it myself. I typically stick to a not-too-sweet ‘jam’ so I’m able to use it with roasted meats during winter, and I’ll be posting recipes in the next two weeks here.

- Quick pickles - I love to make a quick pickle for any meal. It’s something you find in chef kitchens often, as a little bit of tang on a dish, but I like a small bowl as a side dish. Quick pickles are basically fruit or vegetable mascerated in a vinegar solution for a short amount of time. For green tomatoes, try a quick pickle, or let them sit in the fridge overnight. They are wonderful served as accompaniments on sandwiches and especially on burgers. I like the soft flavor of rice wine vinegar, but you can easily substitue regular ol’ white vinegar or another, if you like. Stir all ingredients together and add sliced green tomatoes, letting sit one hour, or overnight.

AMY’S QUICK PICKLE BRINE

½ cup rice wine vinegar

2 T sugar

Pinch red pepper flakes

Pinch of salt

- Soups - green tomatoes will have similar characteristics of a tomatillo, and so may be used interchangably (although they are not as tangy). Think stewed green tomatoes (a little stock in a pan, cook down diced tomatoes until soft) with a little smoked pepper, cilantro and a dollop of sour cream. Toss in some jalapenos for heat. Pull in some braised pork shoulder, grill up some tortillas, and you have a delish hearty soup. And in perfect time for the cold weather! (And if you’re the kind of person that just can’t cook comfortably without a formal recipe to envision this, email me here, and I can type one up.)

My apartment is full of all sorts of goodies of intrigue this time of year. At the moment, I have a bunch of parsley that I let go to seed drying, some brassica seed ready to be stored and two sheet pans full of flower heads waiting to be picked over. I’m in full swing of seed-saving, a project most home gardeners seldom think to do. Why spend $2.50 on a pack of cosmos AGAIN next year, when you have hundreds of seeds at your fingertips? Saving seed is not only economical, it’s a good self-education on a plant’s biology. (That was way garden geeky, I know)

Some tips for seed saving:

- Beans - if you’ve left some peas and beans on the vine too long, leave them be and let them turn brown and dry. Remove the seeds (ie the actual bean or pea) from the pod, and store in your freezer for an hour before bagging up and labeling. Why freeze them? Some farmer friends told me once to do it…….and so I do. This is also how you dry soup beans.

- Lettuces - If you let lettuces bolt and flower (and I know you do!), they will eventually grow little pods full of seeds. It’s a beautiful thing, and people are always surprised to see it. Give it a go with some of your lettuce this fall. To save seed, cut off the stalk just before the pods start to dry. Hang the stalks to dry, and once the pods are brown and dry, you can rub them between your palms to release the seed.

- Flowers - pretty simple here. Dead head your plant, and instead of tossing the head, save it for seed! I always leave my flowers out on a drying rack overnight to be sure that they are, in fact, dry. Be careful when you first take them in to the house, as they may have little teeny bugs inside. When seeds are completely dry, wrap them up. These also make a great hostess gift, if you get fancy with the wrapping!

Just-picked poppy pods in my kitchen

Good to know, also, is proper storage. Most seeds will do well in a small paper envelope, stored in a cool place. A garage or cellar is the perfect place. Finally, all seeds have variable viability, meaning that some seed keep for years, and some won’t last too long. I could go on for days on how to check germination rates and what crop stores longer than others………but that’s a conversation for another day. (or you can email me here)

I had the pleasure of working our market booth with Sally DeCardy last Thursday. For the last four markets of the season, the market is located on the strip now between the Community Center and the ball fields, and this is my favorite part of the market season. Perhaps because the booths are a bit closer together, our neighbors are shopping nearly tush-to-tush, and warm conversations and greetings abound. Not to mention that September is really our bounty time, our abun-dance! But back to Sally. So many silly things happened while we worked the booth, from keeping the band and the story-teller mollified with sharing space and time (again, abundance), to running out of our fantastic “Beet the System” t-shirts in sizes that suit anyone (we are still prepared for the very large and very small), that we hardly got to talk about what we really wanted to: oh, how to take advantage of the late-season peaches, strawberries, heart-shaped plums — I thought we would have to eat them immediately!

Sally, it turns out, is a true peach. Aficionado. A peach-preserving aficionado. And by the end of our fragmented conversation on this topic, she had persuaded me to buy a case and put them up. She gave me these instructions when I told her that I am not a fan of cooked peaches, only fresh. These tips help you have “like fresh” peaches until your freezer is empty.

So, after a committee meeting that ran until near midnight, I came home and did just what she said:

Put a big pot of water on to boil and sink a colander down into it. (Or be prepared to lift them out in batches with a slotted spoon or wire dipper). Once it boils, put the whole peaches down into the colander (as many as will fit and be immersed in the water) but only for TEN SECONDS! Bring out the colander and gently pour the peaches into a big bowl of ice water. Start another batch of peaches on a TEN SECOND boil, remove the first batch from the ice water to a cutting board and repeat until your entire kitchen counter area is covered in peaches ready to be skinned.

Now, for this skinning part, I am sure Sally said something like “it’s like peeling off a pair of pantyhose” and many readers have perhaps never had the pleasure of peeling off a pair of panty hose. But the skin will happily come away (unlike what I seem to remember about trying to get out of those torture devices so many years ago).

Once all the skin is off, cut the peaches as big or small as you like, being sure to remove the pit and anything else you don’t want to eat later, and then stuff it all into Ziploc bags or other freezer containers (Sally recommends small bags or containers because when you defrost, you want to use it all very quickly, so pack some small bags for pieces to put in your yogurt and some larger bags to make pies, tarts, jam or salsa batches). I seem to remember Sally saying something about how several days after defrosting it all looks like soggy paper bags or something, so be prepared to quickly use up what you defrost.

Voila, another beautiful bounty “put up” to share with and dazzle friends as the winter months approach. Here’s what my kitchen looked like at about 12:30 AM. Move over, Barbara Kingsolver!

This weekend, I drove three hours out to apple country (which is now more of a peach country) for a last-of-the-season swim in Lake Chelan and first-of-the-season green apples for making green apple pectin. On the road through Blewitt Pass and the farm country just east of there, I couldn’t help but think about big agriculture. Amidst green vineyards and irrigated fields, it leaves a lot to ponder for a lil’ urban gardener, like me (and you!).

As if the universe knew I was pondering, the next day I found an old National Geographic magazine sitting in the main cabin where I stayed. Drawn to the cover “Where our Food Comes From”, I picked it up for some lakeside reading. What I found was a fascinating article on soil that everyone should read. Now, I know soil doesn’t sound super important, but it is. Topsoil is not a dime a dozen, as we’re often inclined to think. We shovel it up, push it around, bulldoze it for housing developments, but much like seemingly free-flowing fresh water, it’s a precious resource everyone can do to learn more about. Read it - let me know what you think.

While our urban gardens don’t necessarily bare as large a global impact, soil is the number one factor to the success of a home veggie garden. (ok, ok - water and sun are pretty darn important, too) Whether you’ve just paid $200 to have a bunch of topsoil delivered this season, or you’re fortunate enough to have a backyard full of the stuff, it’s our job as land owners to protect the soil, so it keeps giving back. Why go through all the trouble of conditioning our gardens in Spring and Summer only to let them falter over Fall and Winter?

This fall, make sure to do right by the soil we grow food in and plant a cover crop or winter garden. Bare soil tends to wash away - both nutrients and general mass. Soil filled with plants will hold tight, the plant roots anchoring soil down and helping prevent run off. There are lots of choices for cover crop - clover, arugula and even your winter plants (think kale, chard or chicories). Whatever you choose, choose NOW and get it planted! The fall season is waning and what with cooler temps, it’s best not to hesitate. Walts Organic is a great resource for bulk cover crop seeds, as is City Peoples in Madison. For more information on what your choices are, check out this site by WSU.

Now get planting!

It’s happening. Days are getting noticeably shorter and cooler. Tank tops in the garden have been replaced by long sleeve shirts and there is a certain chill to the air - the seasons are changing.

In the garden, especially given this summer’s cooler temps and late start, you’ve likely been staring at branches of green tomatoes with hopeful eyes and fingers crossed. While we can’t control the sun, we can control the plant, and there are some late-season tips for getting the ripest tomatoes in the last few weeks of warm(ish) weather.

If you haven’t been trimming suckers off your plant all summer, now is the time. Essentially the branches on the main stem, suckers can be snipped off without affecting the fruit. By doing so, you are in essence re-routing the plant’s energy to making a full ripe fruit, not new leaves and branches. (That is a really simplified way of looking at it, by the way, but it works.)

To further encourage ripening, now is a great time to remove all the flower clusters on the plant, as well, and even the little green tomatoes. They really won’t have enough time to mature, so you’re not losing anything in the process.

My last tip is a tricky one that really depends on weather, so sometimes I use this, and other times I don’t. You can try and kill the vines by cutting off their water supply. This stress to the plant causes them to ripen fruit (fascinating that plants can register when they die, so they hurry to get seeds made). Trouble is…..if it rains you run the risk of disease to the plant. It’s a gamble, but in a cold year like this, it could be worth it.

If anyone has any other great tips, please feel free to comment. Be on the lookout in late September for green-tomato recipes. I’m certain that will be an upcoming post!

Near closing time at the Queen Anne Farmers’ Market each week, a couple of volunteers walk through the market carrying large plastic bins, and ask the farmers if they have any produce they’d like to donate to a charity. Many of the farmers are quite generous, and give large quantities of highly perishable vegetables and fruits. We’ve been taking the surplus produce to the Seattle Children’s Home, just a few blocks from the market, but last week, the home was unable to take all of the produce that we’d collected. There was no backup plan for the donated food (who’d have thought that a facility on a tight budget would turn down such a bounty?), so we distributed some to families in the neighborhood, and took some home ourselves. And that’s how our little family of two came to have several pounds of summer squash and eggplant, a couple of cauliflowers and a dozen ears of corn crowding our refrigerator.

One of the ways that my mother used to coax her young daughters to eat summer squash was to cook it in a casserole, gooey with yellow cheese, bound with eggs. I haven’t had squash casserole in years, but when faced with several pounds of squash, and a cool, rainy weekend (quite a change from last weekend’s heat!), I reached for my copy of the Treebeard’s cookbook, and made some old-fashioned Southern comfort food from local Northwest ingredients.

Squash Casserole

3 pounds crookneck, zucchini or other summer squashes, sliced
1/4 cup butter or olive oil, or combination of two
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 medium onions, chopped (about 1 1/2 cups)
1 bell pepper, chopped
1 cup cheddar or other hard cheese, grated
1/4 cup parsley, chopped
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper, or to taste
3/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
3/4 cup bread crumbs (I made crumbs from a homemade English muffin)
3 eggs, beaten

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

In a large saucepan, bring 3 quarts water to a boil. Blanch squash until cooked but still firm. Do not overcook. Drain squash well.

In a large skillet, heat butter and/or olive oil. Saute garlic, onion and pepper until vegetables are softened, about 5 minutes. Transfer to a large bowl; add remaining ingredients. Add drained squash and stir to blend completely. Pour into a large casserole dish.

Bake at 350 degrees until bubbly around the edges and browned on top, 30 to 45 minutes.

Feeds 8-10 as a side dish, or 6 as a vegetarian main dish.

To accompany the squash casserole, we had cauliflower roasted with mustard, lemon and butter, and sweet corn sauteed with onion, garlic, chopped serrano pepper and tomatoes. Good thing that I really enjoy all of these dishes, ‘cuz we have lots of leftovers.

Many thanks to the farmers at the Queen Anne Farmers’ Market for the food that they provide, both for my family and for those less fortunate.