• Tag Archives potatoes

  • Cooking With Clay

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Winter                                            Waning Moon of the Winter Solstice

    A long time ago I got a clay pot for cooking, a romertopf.  Over many years I used it at least every several weeks, then it went in the cupboard, not to come back into the kitchen.  Until today.  A free-range chicken, 40 of our garlic cloves, two of our onions and the last of our leeks went in with the last of our carrots and 7 small potatoes.  Cook for 1 hour and 15 minutes at 475, take the top off to let it brown and voila!  A tasty, moist chicken with sides already done.  Throw in a steam in the bag collection of green beans, a Kate made chicken gravy and we were ready for lunch.

    My cooking tends to be like that, large amounts with leftovers, whether soup or chicken.


    📂This entry was posted in Cooking 📎and tagged

  • Chicken Pot Pies and Memories

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Fall                                                 Waning Back to School Moon

    Before the Vikings game on Sunday I made two chicken pot pies, whole pies filled with chicken, vegetables and a thickened vegetable broth made in the process.  These are my second and third meat pies and I find I enjoy making them as much as I do soup.  Something about baking a pie that has meat and vegetables intrigues me.  This one had our leeks, potatoes, onions, carrots, garlic, parsley and thyme.  My favorite vegetable from this garden is the leek.  The subtle flavor and the delicate flesh of the leek both appeal to my palate.

    Here are a few of the ingredients plus a tomato and raspberries from our garden.  This potato looks similar to the woman of la mouthe in the MIA’s collection.  At least to my eye.670_0300 Fresh ingredients are key to Italian, Chinese and vegetarian cooking so a garden facilitates those cuisines, at least during the harvest system.  Our best meals of the summer happen in September.

    Visiting Westminster today brought up all kinds of memories.  Don Meisel, former head pastor, came into the men’s room once during a Presbytery meeting.  I had a report on top of the urinal, reading it.  Don said, “My, you must get a lot of work done.”  Presbyterian humor. Another surprising Don Meisel moment.  There on the wall of a hallway was the exact same Granlund sculpture, the Tree of Life, that I bought Kate for her 50th birthday.  Don had given it to the church in memory of his wife.

    Jim Campbell’s name came up, too.  Jim was a top exec of Northwest Bank and a leader on the Community Involvement Program’s board.  I worked at CIP for 4+ years, starting as a janitor and week-end staff person during seminary and moving up to Director of Residential programs.  Jim came to me at one point and asked if I would take on directing both the Residential programs and the Day Activity Centers.  I thought about it and said no.  That surprised him, I could tell.  It surprised me a bit, too.  I had no interest then or later in advancement, even though I did end up as an Associate Executive Presbyter.

    Then, the chapel.  What a peaceful space,  a definite English feel to it wood, limestone, slate floor, a beautiful organ.  Wilson Yates, then professor of society and religion at United Seminary, married Raeone and me in that chapel in 1979.  Ed Berryman, the organist, refused to play the music we wanted.  I don’t remember what it was.  We had Handel’s Water Music.  Ed liked it.

    There were, too, many mornings of bible study with urban clergy in the now much renovated basement area.  Bible study was always one of the fun parts because Presbyterian clergy pride themselves on their scholarly ability.

    Well, off to bed.  Gotta catch the Empire Builder at 7:30 am.


    📂This entry was posted in Aging Art and Culture Commentary on Religion Memories 📎and tagged

  • Grounded

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Lughnasa                               Waxing Back to School Moon

    Finished digging the potatoes.  The crop seems smaller than last year’s, but I can’t tell for sure.  Still, we don’t eat potatoes often and we have enough to last us quite awhile.  Kate made an early autumn roast vegetable medley with onions, carrots, leaks, garlic, beets and one potato I pierced with the spading fork.  It was delicious.  So was the raspberry pie–of which we have two.  Our raspberry bushes have been exuberant.  We’ve still got leeks, greens, beets, carrots and squash in the ground.  Some of it will stay in the ground until the frost and freeze gets serious.  I made a mistake last year with the carrots and didn’t get them out before the ground froze.  They became organic matter for the soil.  We also left our entire potato crop out in our garage stair well.  When the temps dropped down, way down, the potatoes froze, then thawed.  Not good for potatoes.  We’re trying to not make those mistakes this year.  We’ll make new ones!

    Working with Leslie today reminded me of the punch there is in ministry.  Yes, the institutional confines squeeze life out of faith, but the individuals, the people can put it back.  She asked me an interesting question.  We got to talking about Christianity and she wondered, “Do you miss it?”  I’m not sure anyone has asked just that question of me.  I don’t, not at a faith level.

    I miss the thick web of relationships I once had there.  I miss the opportunity to do bible study.  That may sound strange, but higher criticism of the bible is a scholarly affair requiring history, language, knowledge of mythology and tradition, sensitivity to redactors (editors), an awareness of textual differences, as well as a knowledge of the bible as a whole.  I spent a lot of time learning biblical criticism and I enjoyed it.  Not much call for it in UU or humanist circles though.

    By the time my nap finished it was too late to put the shims in the hives.  I hope there’s some clear, sunny time tomorrow.  Also need to put the feeder back on the package colony.

    The Vikings.  Not sure.  Favre needs some better wide receivers, yes.  The defense played well.  Adrian Peterson did, too.  It felt as if we were outcoached the last two games.  Not sure about that, that’s a murky area to me, but something doesn’t feel quite right.


    📂This entry was posted in Bees Commentary on Religion Cooking Faith and Spirituality Family Garden Sport 📎and tagged

  • The Garden in September

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Lughnasa                                       Waning Artemis Moon

    The onions, red, yellow and white, are in the storage room ready to go on the wooden racks when I have a minute.  The honey, too, is on the bottom row of our shelving unit, collected in canning jars and resting in the boxes that held the canning jars in the store.  Kate’s just put up 7 packages of frozen kale and swiss chard, for use in the dead of winter when greens from the garden seem very special.  She’s also making applesauce from our six apple crop.  I picked them a bit too early for eating.  Chicken breasts and pie dough have been set out to thaw since I will make chicken and leek pot pie later today.  This is a busy time of year, but it is also a fun and satisfying time.

    The potato plants have not died back, so they await digging and drying and storage.  The garden of 2010 has begun to wind down.  I still have to plant garlic, mulch a few beds, weed the perennial flower beds and later plant the bulbs, but the number of tasks has begun to dwindle even though the size of some of them make a lot of work still left.


    📂This entry was posted in Garden 📎and tagged

  • Domestic, Horticultural and Apicultural Matters

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Lughnasa                                Full Artemis Moon

    Still waiting on the extracting equipment though I imagine it will arrive soon.  Then, setting up the honey house with the extractor and the capping knife and the capping container.  I’ll move some things around, get ready for winter storage of honey supers, put in a solid table for handling supers and frames and foundations.  It’ll be finished when I get the metal sign to hang over the door.

    Today found me at Home Depot early picking up a filter for the humidifier attached to the furnace–didn’t know it had one till gas repairman pointed it out–and a refrigerator coil brush.   Turns out refrigerators work more efficiently if their coils get cleaned.  Who knew?  Up the road on Hghwy 10 I went to Anoka Feed and Seed to order another 8 cubic yards of wood chips.  The sky has that late summer blue.  Autumn does not show through the sky and the winds yet, but it will.  It’s already evident in dying plants and woolly caterpillars.

    Back home I pulled some carrots, beets, chard and Kale.  I also dug for a couple of new potatoes, but I’m not finding as many potatoes as I found last year.  Hope I just haven’t gone deep enough.  That got my hands good and dirty.

    This afternoon I plan to get back to the exercise routine which has seemed too strenuous for the last two weeks while I was sick.  Looking forward to returning to that habit.


    📂This entry was posted in Bees Garden Health 📎and tagged

  • Extra Work Raises Grade

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Lughnasa                                 Waxing Artemis Moon

    Up early and out in the garden.  This is the way I like it, working in the garden before and during sunrise, a coolness, some damp lingering from the night, stillness carrying only the softest of sounds, the earth friable and eager, weeds willing to come up and the garden’s purpose easy to discern.

    Kate worked on in the orchard, going back over intensive weeding of a week ago and pulling up sprouts and rhizomes, making the place just that more inhospitable for the weedy plants.  With a second load of mulch we’ll have this place looking ship-shape heading into fall.

    A few grasses have begun to turn brown and there’s a slight hint of autumn in the morning air, a certain clarity and crispness.

    After inspecting the garden again yesterday, I’m moving my grade from a B- to a B+.  Why?  I did three plantings of beets, greens, carrots and beans.  Now the second planting has come to maturity after many other plants finished their summer and gave up their yield.  We have a good crop of young beets, a lot of juicy carrots, plenty of greens and enough beans for a couple more freezer bags at least.  This planting weekly or so for a while, creates a series of gardens, all in the same place.  We even have a number of Cherokee Purple tomato plants which I did not plant.  They are volunteers from last year’s tomatoes.

    Add to these the onions, garlic, greens, beans, beets and various fruits already harvested we have a good gardening year, not a great one, but a good one.

    Plus those potatoes are still in the ground, the raspberries have begun to fruit and the fennel and leeks look good.  All in all, not bad.  I said at the beginning of the growing season that I saw this as a consolidation year, a year when we make sure we can care for what we have.  A week ago I would have said we hadn’t even met that mark, but now I believe we have.  Caring for the orchard, the vegetable garden and the new plantings from last year in there, managing the bees and getting ready for the honey harvest, plus pruning out and restoration in the perennial flower beds.

    This advance is mostly thanks to Kate’s back surgery and her hip surgery.  She can now care for the garden, too, as she has in the past and it requires the both of us, what we have now.  Getting back to normal speed.


    📂This entry was posted in Family Garden permaculture 📎and tagged

  • A Garden Morning

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane                                   New Moon (Hungry Ghost)

    The potatoes have mounds around the growing plants and the hilled up earth from their trenches has leveled out.  The bush beans I planted there last week 06-05-10_garden_herb-spiral-670have begun to germinate and I plan to plant more bush beans tomorrow if the weather is ok.

    While checking fruit on our trees, I ended up weeding the blueberries, too.  The clover is exuberant, mostly a happy addition to our orchard, but overwhelming in the blueberry patch.  We do have apples and cherries and currants, but I could find no pears.  Our production will at least double this year, maybe more.  I counted six apples and several, say 8, cherries.  The currants have experienced substantial predation, by birds, I think.

    I mounded earth around the growing leeks, too, to blanch the stems.   The garlic, which grows near the leeks, looked ready to harvest, but when I pulled a few out of the ground, they looked like they had a ways to go.  I hung the five I dug from a bamboo pole in the honey house.

    Kate’s begun weeding and that helps a lot.  Keeping the bees, the vegetables, the orchard and the flowers in good shape requires attending to the plants we have, doing things like mounding the potatoes and the leeks, checking the garlic, watching for disease and insects, taking action if a plant seems to be in distress, replanting if, as in the instance of the carrots, germination is low.  Though weeding is an important, very important maintenance action, it doesn’t involve direct plant care which is what I enjoy.  I’m glad to have Kate back at the weeding.  She’s also our pruner and she has begun to recover our front sidewalk.

    Then it rained.


    📂This entry was posted in Garden 📎and tagged

  • Flat

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane                                         Waning Planting Moon

    Leeks and potatoes both need mounding around their growing plants, the potatoes to have more underground room in which to develop their tubers and the leeks to blanch the lower part of the stalk into the familiar white of the leek you see in the grocery store.  Did that.  At the same time I planted bush beans between the rows of the potatoes.  They help ward off bugs and provide something to eat.  A good deal.

    Feeling flat today.  Negative.  Grief, probably.  I know I want Kate home.  I want to share the home here again.  She’s been gone almost two weeks.

    You ever have that moment where you realize things have slowed down, inside?  Movement becomes a tad   more sluggish, thought a bit more difficult, like slogging through a marshland.  Sighing.  That’s me.  Overcast weather gets some credit, too.  Multiple vectors today, arrows pointing down.


    📂This entry was posted in Dogs Faith and Spirituality Garden 📎and tagged

  • Heirlooms. Better Eating, Better Seeds

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane                                    Waxing Planting Moon

    Got some plants in the mail.  I didn’t start anything from seed this last winter after starting way too many the season before.  Maybe this winter I’ll hit a happy medium.  These are heirloom plants, so I can save the seeds and plant them next year.  Would somebody remind me to do that when fall comes around?

    The flower garden has gotten the short end of the stick this spring and it shows.  Weeds and grass in places where there should be neither.  While Kate’s away, I plan to get some work done on the flowers since the vegetable garden will be planted, irrigation problems are largely resolved and I signed out of the Museum for the two Fridays she’s gone.

    We do have a lot of things growing.  The leeks have jumped up as have the sugar snap peas, beets, onions, fennel, mustard greens, garlic, parsnip, strawberries, apples, pears, cherries, currants, quince and blueberries.  The radicchio, thyme, dill, rosemary,  flat parsley and lavender are also off to a good start.  The potatoes are, as they say, in the trenches and we await their emergence.  The whole fruit group is still relatively new to us since the orchard is in its third growing season, but only beginning to actually bear fruit.  A lot of critters have evolved that love fruit:  insects, fungi, birds.  Just how much predation we can expect is still unknown.

    I got an e-mail back from Gary Reuter at the U about the comb I photographed.  “The bees,” he said, “are making extra comb.  Take it off.”

    The red car went in for its 260,000 mile check up today.  It’s in fine shapes with the exception of a little bit baling wire and bubble gum necessary for the next 100,000 miles.   Toyota dealerships are not intrinsically happy places right now, but they’ve always done well by us and I appreciate them.


    📂This entry was posted in Bees Garden GeekWorld Great Work Health permaculture 📎and tagged

  • Under the Planting Moon

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane                                Waxing Planting Moon

    Under the planting moon a large batch of potatoes will hit the soil, companion planted with bush beans.  Nasturtiums go in today, too.  I may have to replant a few things I optimistically sowed a couple of weeks ago.  I knew better.

    Finished Wheelock chapter 15.  Gonna let that sink in for today, then I’ll hit the Ovid tomorrow.

    Kate and I head out to the new Hindu Mandir in the northwestern burbs tonight for a tour and a meal.  Should be fun.

    Goin’ outside.


    📂This entry was posted in Faith and Spirituality Garden Great Work Humanities 📎and tagged