Change-of-season madness

Yesterday, for the first time in months, I awoke to the sharp smell of the gas stove firing up,
warming the kitchen and heating the tea water. Dang. Summer's gone!

Given the date, it shouldn't be a surprise that fall crept in after just a few days' warning. Sunflowers, cosmos, and cornstalks have been leaning toward the compost, longing, I think, for restful rotting after a summer of boisterous growth and the recent marauding of feasting birds. The sweet smell of rain has been in the air, leaves have crackled underfoot, and honking geese have swirled noisily overhead. What a great elongated summer we've enjoyed! But still. saying goodbye to the garden and fresh food in magnificent abundance is sad, as is depositing into the memory bank soft summer air and lazy barbecues. Sigh.

 Outside, fog drapes across the hills like a swath of cotton batting, cooling the forest and fields and settling in for the long winter ahead. Variations of this scene will be evident beyond the garden for the next six months. Eeek. It'll get a lot wetter and colder and the vegetation in the foreground will soon disappear into compost. Not a bad thing to become, really.

I spent yesterday holed up in the kitchen with tomatoes and peppers, onions and herbs, making salsas and marinara sauces.

Marinara sauce bubbling on the stove.  Wow. It makes the heart race!

On the brighter side, at the kitchen counter son Chris tapped away on his cranky computer and plotted logistics for his next adventure. He's home for a few days after returning from Brazil, where he does crazy stuff like this. Don't be deterred by a foreign language—Portuguese. The link is to a trailer for a popular Brazilian adventure/reality series in which Chris is one of three "stars." He's headed back to Africa soon, then back to Brazil.  His is not at all an ordinary life!

Back to my world, currently dominated by tomatoes. Not too exciting, but I will be so jazzed this winter opening jars of salsa or thawing marinara sauces for quick dinners.  Maybe I'd rather go to the Congo with Chris?
Hmmm.  I don't think so.

Salsa!  And it only took ALL DAY to make!
But we also prepared a dozen quarts of sauces for the freezer thus justifying an entire day in the kitchen.

Today's garden take could be the last as frost is predicted tonight. The green beans, cucumbers, basil, and peppers can't tolerate frost, and the giant zucchini leaves will blacken overnight. So sad.

I love gardening and cooking and all the rest of my little Southern Oregon reality show. It's just that when Chris alights for a few days, I become restless and wondering. What if I had diverted 40-some years ago from the well-beaten path into middle-class life? What if I had followed my heart into travel and adventure? And then I worry, what if Chris doesn't do this?  What if he finds himself 20 years from now stranded on a bridge between his youth and an unsustainable level of risk-taking?
I'm not too worried. Just wallowing in the usual over-protective mama kind of crap. He'll be fine. Won't he?

All those veggies I harvested today are sitting in the kitchen awaiting attention, as are several boxes of tomatoes on the back porch. Should I dehydrate some, or just stick them in the freezer whole? More sauces, salsas? I admit I'm so ready for harvest and food preservation to be over! In a couple weeks, it will be except for apples, which are just now coming ripe out there in the wind and rain. Applesauce? Dried apples? Pies? Cobblers? Decisions, decisions.

What if like Chris, I was deciding whether to go to the Arctic or Angola—or both, plus several other possible destinations on his ever-changing schedule. It's certain that he'll provide ongoing vicarious thrills plus ample cause for maternal angst as I remain here in the cool and indifferent landscape, so recently spilling over with vegetables and berries and now so close to shutting down for the winter.

An all-local menu— how to host a (fun)draising dinner

First, have a cause. 

Mine is Women's Crisis Support Team, a progressive grassroots organization in Southern Oregon devoted to preventing (and helping the victims of) two of the most shameful criminal acts: domestic violence and sexual assault.
Second, recruit a friend to help plan, cook, and serve. Make sure his/her culinary instincts match your own. In this case, I got a twofer with Jeanne Schraub, a wonderful cook and prodigious gardener, whose mate, Gary Clarida, looked great in his black and white serving outfit. PK, of course, was the bartender.

Gary the server explaining the fine points of waiting tables with guest Dave Frank.
 Who is that ghost in the garden? 

Here's Jeanne arranging flowers for the dinner table.

Third, get a theme. Ours was not original, but authentic: all local. This was easy as we pulled produce from our overflowing gardens and one 17-pound salmon from the Rogue River. (Not quite as easy. See previous post.) We also enjoyed some great donated Applegate Valley wine, thanks to Steve and Louise Rouse, as well as wines purchased from Del Rio Winery and Michael McAuley. Michael donated a portion of his proceeds to WCST, plus he delivered the wine to our house!

Fourth, pick a date a few months in advance and invite guests. It isn't that difficult to round up eight people (or more) who are willing to pay for a fancy dinner with good wine, all for a great cause. 

Paying dinner guests awaiting delivery of the next course.
We moved our dining room table outside to take advantage of perfect weather  and to
get the guests out of the cooks'' corner. 

Fifth, create a menu worthy of the price. (We asked $50 a person, but got some big "tips" which together made $550 for WCST.)


And now, what you been waiting for, The Fancy All Local Harvest Dinner Menu!
If you want any of these recipes, please email me or respond via Facebook. I need to figure out how to get rid of the stupid hoops you have to jump through to comment on this blog.


The starter - Paul's frescatini - a martini made with vodka, fresh mint and cucumbers.
PK and I rarely drink cocktails (we're actually winos) but discovered this potentially addictive drink in South Beach, Fl. that time I won a cruise and we had to fly to Miami to get on the ship and decided to see how the other half lives by spending a couple nights in pricey South Beach. The martini calls for quality vodka, and we used made-in-Oregon Crater Lake vodka plus some Absolute that I infused with sliced cucumbers for a month.

Mark Goracke, with beer-swilling-martini-avoiding Susan by his side,
passes judgement on the Frescatini. He liked it!

The appetizers:  Jeanne's deluxe marinated, pickled, or grilled garden veggies and Sicilian-inspired caponata served with crostini, plus a wedge of Rogue Creamery's world-famous (really!) blue cheese and a slab of Willamette Valley Creamery's smoked gouda.

Jeanne with her veggies and crostini.

The salad: Burrata caprese with brandywine tomatoes and basil-infused olive oil, a drizzle of reduced balsamic vinegar, and fresh basil. Burrata is a silky and rich blend of mozzarella and cream, available at the Rogue Creamery and other speciality cheese shops. Don't look at the price. It's worth the splurge for a special occasion.
The soup:  Squash bisque. Made from butternut squash, vegetable broth, cream, and a slew of subtle spices and herbs.
The main course: Jeanne's French potato salad made from her red spuds, oil, vinegar, and herbs. Steamed green beans with sauteed-in-butter chanterelle mushrooms. The beans came from our garden, and the shrooms were gathered in the forest by Jeanne's colleague who wanted our dinner to be a hit. The marinated grilled salmon was served with chimichurri, dill, and chipotle sauces on the side.

Nasturtium-bedecked dinner plates ready to be served. 

Jeanne's incredible tarts, one pear and the other, a blackberry-topped marvel appropriately dubbed PET—positively erotic tart.

Remember, if you want any recipes, email me or use Facebook.
I'll post the recipes in a week or so. 

Consider hosting your own small-scale fun(D)raiser dinner. It's a great way to get together with friends and test your culinary creativity with another foodie. You might even impress yourself—or catch a fish!

And the non profit of your choice will be super grateful you made the effort.

Lists about Salmon

The first salmon I ever caught. I should have been fishing the past four decades!

• That's how long I've lived close enough to the Rogue River to smell it.
• Salmon (and steelhead) run up and down this river like crazy. Or so I"m told. 
• Salmon are beautiful, brave, determined, and mysterious. They are worthy to feed the upper reaches of the North American food chain—bears, birds of prey, and humans. They also taste great.
• PK has a drift boat and desires to use it to bring home the (salmon) bacon. He needs someone to fish with and/or to row. I have rowed for decades, although not much in recent years, and I have now caught one salmon. I qualify. I can row. I can fish!

Why I haven't fished:

• No rod
• No reel
• No fishing license
• No clue
• No motivation, other than a vague and troubling sense that fish are teeming in a river that is walking distance from my home. So why am I going to Costco?
• Busy with other tasks of sustenance, such as a half-acre garden. Etc.etc.

How and why I recently caught my first salmon:

• Promised to provide an all-local dinner for eight as a fundraiser for Women's Crisis Support Team.
• Salmon is the most local and appropriate protein for guests that include vegetarians, who, fortunately, do not count fish as meat.
• Lucky enough to know, and be able to prevail upon, a master fisherman, Ed Olson, for a fishing lesson. Oh yeah, he also supplied all the fishing gear including a motorized drift boat, and has the skill to maneuver said boat through swift water while standing, steering, and letting out his line. I'm sure he could also work in a beer, but it may have been too early.
• Lucky enough to have as a fishing companion another master, who, after catching the first of only two fish of the day, turned his second salmon-loaded rod over to me to land and TO CLAIM! Thank you, Eric! So to put a finer point on it, I did not exactly catch a salmon, but I landed one.

What surprised me about salmon fishing:

• Me! Predator! Appropriate as I often hunt for bargains at the meat counter. 
• Sitting nearly motionless for 4.5 hours beginning at 6:15 a.m. In my seriously ordinary life, I rarely sit still, but this was a lesson in predation. You gotta do what you gotta do if you can't rely on the grocery store. Be still and watchful and alert for the slightest tug on your line.
• Landing even a small (by local standards) salmon, is not exactly easy.
• Stand-to-land is best. Lean forward with the rod, then lean back and reel like crazy. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. I had the combined benefits of one guy maneuvering the boat and handling the net, and another coaching me on how to get the most out of every move. (Amazingly, Ed Olson landed a 45-pound salmon all by himself a week earlier! He had to run his boat up onto a sandy beach.)   
• It wasn't as bad for the fish as I imagined. No fun being caught, of course, but seconds after the fish was netted, it was dispatched by a sharp rap on the head. Eyes went dead, then a slash to the gills. Then into the fish box. Then - into the fry pan or the freezer.

Getting the fish into the freezer? Not so easy for the novice. 

• Home alone with a fresh salmon that needed to be filleted and frozen for the fancy dinner. PK's input not available for several days, as he is away. Salmon can't wait. 
• Viewed "how to fillet salmon" videos for 90 minutes.
• Searched for appropriate sharp flexible knife unsuccessful. Improvised with Mercer blade. (Thank you, Lanny! It's not flexible, but it's super sharp and did the job.)
• Wrestled slippery and stinky (even though super fresh) fish onto cutting board.
• Opened iPad to step-by-step directions with photos. Flicked fish scales from iPad repeatedly.

Leaned elbow onto fish, applied body weight, and attempted to detach belly meat. Oops. Cut too far. Can fish be glued?

Oops again. Bandaged cut and continued to separate the salmon from its bones. Tweezers are there to remove "pin bones" one by one. Tweezers not up to task. Guests will have to remove own pin bones, or I will try again with needle-nosed pliers once fish is thawed. That would be fun, right?

Well, I'm done with this tale. I can't delete the photo below without dumping the whole post into the trash. (Blogger, what the hell?)

So just ignore the duplicate pic of me with big fish. I adore looking at it, but once is probably enough for you. 

I 

Peasant Food—eating fresh

Not gourmet fare, perhaps, but tasty. That's ratatouille, a mix of just about everything that's being harvested now, plus Golden Jubilee sweet corn and grilled hot Italian Taylor's sausage. Simple, tasty peasant food. 

Late August and all of September is high season for peasant food, when the garden leaps into the kitchen and lands on the plate every night. It's like the veggies are at this moment (it's around 9 p.m. as I write) putting on measurable growth. I'm sure someone, somewhere, has documented the fact that a zucchini can grow several inches a day. Well, they're all going nuts out there. I'm almost afraid to go out at night. The green beans, the peppers, the corn, the tomatoes, the zukes, of course, and the cukes, which appear to be even more excited about August heat. All this makes for some colorful plates. No recipes here, except for a look-back at zucchini-based lasagna, but here's what dinners look like in August when a huge garden is just outside the back door. And also part of today's harvest.

Last night was a quick fix using the usual suspects: cukes and onion salad, fresh tomatoes, zukes, onions, and chard, fried with a little rice, and sweet corn.

Fancier fare that includes grilled salmon, grilled/smoked onions and peppers, and the usual August veggie medley.
 And tomatoes, of course. 

These are the zukes, cukes, and eggplants I picked today. What to do? Give some away!

In the bag, veggies to share. On the right, those to eat fresh or process. 

A Night and a Day Away - Crater Lake

From the top of Garfield Peak in Crater Lake National Park. 

It's been scorching hot in the Rogue Valley, and PK and I have been working too hard too much on our big garden/little farm. Let's go up by Crater Lake and camp for a night then go for a hike in the Park? I suggested. He was on it, and the next day we were in our Four Wheel camper headed for our favorite camp spot just 90 minutes from home and a half hour from Crater Lake National Park. 

This says it all. Sweet respite and a brew beside the river.

We arrived at the best little campground ever (it shall remain unnamed) around 4 p.m, and scored the last remaining river site—only 10 sites in the campground. That would be the Rogue River a few miles from where it emerges from the earth in a magical place called Boundary Springs just outside Crater Lake National Park. Here the river is a sprinting creek, leaping through the flower-filled meadows and the old growth forest and making freshet music that we were longing to hear. No cell phone service here, and no wireless, of course. It was just us, the river, the trees, the star-filled night, and the wonderful forest fragrance.

Old growth Douglas Fir trees around the picnic table at campsite number six. 

The next morning we drove to Crater Lake, marveled once again at its utter blueness, and got a good workout on a couple of hikes. 

Is there a paint color called Crater Lake Blue? It is so intense and beautiful.

Still a bit of snow on the trail to Garfield Peak. It felt great to be tourists for a day.

We were home in time to throw together a quick feast from the garden, which didn't know we were trying to escape its demands and pumped out a bunch of ripe melons and tomatoes during our brief but much-needed break.