I am re-committing energy to my blog this week, the second week of summer. Green Light.
The garden is planted, and thanks to plenteous spring rains in May and June, I have only begun to water it. Heat arrived two weeks ago and now there are little green tomatos on almost all the tomato plants except the last two late additions:
4 Brandywine (Yellow, Red, Black, and the more usual Pink).(Shumway)
2 Italian Heirloom (Shumway) 1 German orange (oddball purchase)
1 "Yellow tomato" --30-cents for 4-pack, close-out at a parking lot stand.
A few Brandywine-type tomatos are coming up volunteer, plus 2 or 3 here and there. I'm letting them grow for awhile: for one thing, to see if any of them are Roma or Sweet 100 Cherry plants. Because you CAN have too many tomatos, I promised to limit myself to 10. So, maybe a few volunteers sneak in under the fence. I'm a sucker for volunteer plants.
I dug up new potatos last week for the first time in my life. I cooked them with peas and cream sauce: they weren't quite as good as my mother's used to be, but I don't know that recipe, so I'll experiment. Have you a suggestion?
And PEAS--my first year for a really good big crop. I think they must need a lot of moisture, perhaps? And also, I got things in a month or so earlier this year.
Spinach, chard, cabbage, kale, broccoli, kohlrabi, carrots, more peas, zucchini squash, Butternut winter squash, cucumbers, pie pumpkins, and two oddball melons just for the heck of it, thrown into little hills in the compost. Now if I just remember to water and weed there.
Yes, I'm reading books galore. But I stopped being able to write cogently about them. I think it's because they all fit into a larger project of a scholarly book on Post-Colonial theory and contemporary 'Western' literature. So I was trying to throw the full book-concept into every review,
as the reviews got longer and longer and less about the specific book and more about the world of literature in connection with geopolitics and history. Yeah. Bite-sized chunks from now on. Except maybe a few literary extravagances. Maybe I should warn the reader at the top of each post: Long, Middling long, Short. We'll see.
So: stay tuned for the following book reviews: (And I'm skipping the title formats. )
The Accursed, Joyce Carol Oates.
MAUS, Art Spiegelman.
Bone Clocks, David Mitchell
God Help the Child, Toni Morrison
As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner
East of Eden, John Steinbeck
The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami (?)
Geek Love, Katherine Dunn
Not Like Other Girls,(1884) Rosa N. Carey
The Rise of the Novel, Ian Watt.
2666, Roberto Bolano
The Savage Detectives, Roberto Bolano. **anyone who knows how to add the cedilla, as in
Spanish symbo for "Bolanyo" I'd welcome it.
So, to conclude, here comes summer and, I hope, a new and differently purposed blog of my opinions on just about everything. First big opinion: an organic vegetable garden near your own house is a privilege and a treat and a joy beyond almost anything I can compare with it. Fresh salads,
Fresh vegetables, Fresh herbs !!
I may even add some recipes that knock me out: like Carrots vichy!! Cook sliced carrots in some butter, lemon, salt, and a little water. 1 TB sugar per 2 c carrots: I use brown sugar. 1 tsp salt.
Start by adding the boiling water last (1/2 c water to 2 c carrots). I like to add fresh chopped parsley once it's cooked. Let the water boil out and brown the carrots just a little in the butter (2Tb). I usually double this recipe and eat it hot the first night and cold the second. Yes, I can eat 2 cups of sliced carrots at a meal: they are so good I only need maybe a rice of spaghetti side dish.
By the way, recipe is in old Joy of Cooking. I should review some cookbooks, but then I might get exiled from my No-Cook Book Club.
Ciao. Juanita
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