Soup, Scoters & Scaup

Winter has taken its toll on all of us here in northwestern PA. We're having what many old timers are calling an old-fashioned winter: lots of snow (and shoveling) and regular bouts of subzero temperatures. When Mother Nature has her way with us, we make soup. At least I do. When I want soup that sticks to everyone's ribs, I make my Busia Feyas' Beef Barley Vegetable. This is an almost all-day affair with steps where a few ingredients are added each time until a fragrant, thick stew is created.

The base is some soup bones and beef (I use stringy stew beef) cooked in water until almost tender (the meat, not the bones!). Then in go onions, carrots, celery and barley; out go the bones. Then the real work begins. Meet the rutabaga:

The rutabaga is a homely root vegetable, spotted and unappealingly waxed (on the right) when found in the produce section. Old-fashioned, just like the winter we're having. The young checkout clerk at the store asked what it was. "Rutabaga," I answered. "Have never heard of it," he said. "Like a round, yellow, sweet turnip," I replied. "That didn't help much," he said. Apparently turnips don't get much play, either.

After some energetic peeling, the soft yellow flesh emerges. Soft as in color, not texture. 

Rutabagas are hard, hard, hard. And tough to cut.

My knife was stuck in this one for awhile. I eventually got them cut in half and began the laborious process of dicing.

Why do I bother, you ask? Why not just do without? Because. Because the rutabaga brings an unparalleled sweetness to the soup you cannot duplicate. 

Potatoes get diced and added, too, but they are easy compared to the rutabaga. 

Tomatoes, corn and peas round out the ingredients.

You get this:

Which you then eat, with gratitude for its warming goodness, your hands cupped around the warm bowl. It always reminds me that my mother and busia lived through the Depression. This soup has a use-what-you-have-stretched-as-far-as-you-can quality about it.

On Saturday, Mike and I shared a bowl of it with a young birder friend of ours after a long, cold day. We had been at a Great Backyard Bird Count event hosted by Presque Isle Audubon (read more about GBBC here) followed by some cold, wind-swept birding on the South Pier, where a channel joins Erie Bay to Lake Erie. 

Hunched over our bowls in the kitchen, he asked how we got started in birding and we related our tales of dating and picnicking and finding great egrets and cedar waxwings. "Pretty soon we were taking our binoculars everywhere and buying a scope.....," I started.  To which he appended "And the next thing you know, you're freezing your a** off on the South Pier looking for waterfowl." 

Exactly.

But the waterfowl experience is similar to the rutabaga experience; hard work, but well worth the time. 

Highlights:

c. Michele Rundquist-Franz

I have a thing for scoters. Not sure why.  Maybe because the male surf scoter (front) has such an elaborately silly bill and the male white-winged scoter (back) looks a little bit like a masked marauder. Both are stunning birds and to, me, seem exotic, especially when they are only feet away. 

We got so close because, unfortunately, most of the water in Erie Bay is frozen and these birds were cheek and jowl in a tiny patch of open water at the end of the pier. Not a happy situation for them but a great opportunity to see them in detail. 

We also spent some time comparing Lesser and Greater Scaup, something hard to do at a distance. For the first time, I was able to clearly distinguish the field marks that delineate the two.

c. Cathy McCullum, The World of Birds

The Lesser Scaup (left) has "dirtier" flanks compared to the Greater Scaup (right). In addition, the head shape of the Lesser is much higher, almost peaked, while the Greater's is rounded. Not too visible here but on each bird there is a small area in the middle of the tip of the top mandible (beak) that is black. This is called a "nail." The Lesser's nail is narrow; the Greater's nail is wide or splayed out. 

You will not be quizzed on this later, so if I've bored you with bird-geek details, just ignore me.

Meanwhile, I will continue to work hard at both birds and soup.

Stay warm.

In Praise of Snow, Cold and (sometimes) Sunny

We've had quite a bit of snow and some really cold days up here in northwestern PA so far this winter. We're fairly used to that. Nothing earth-shattering or extremely health-risking. But when the temperature is -10 and the wind chill lower, one does pause when considering an outdoors excursion. There is beauty to be found in this cold, though, and I can never resist a quick trip through my backyard in search of a few prizes.

A warming sunrise through the icicles

Wind-blown drifts I can measure with a yardstick (24 inches, if you must know),

snow capped cone flower seed heads (echinacea purpurera),

and my pink heaths starting to bloom.

When the day is not great, I take a few gray bayberries in my hand and rub them between my fingers. Their delightful smell is all I need.

and no matter what, the winterberry (Ilex verticulata) shines this time of year.

And when the sun comes out, well,

a drift over on the roof become art against a crisp azure sky

and gulls become little white specks soaring high in an ethereal sea.

The sun warms without heat

I  enjoy the disheveled beauty of a magnolia pod

and the simple pleasure of watching a dry leaf blow across the frozen surface 

or finding these delicate bird tracks etched in the snow.

Winter is not always at home for me.

We've had trips to find snowy owls which have been popping up all over this winter much to everyone's delight.

This past weekend, Mike and I celebrated our anniversary in an Adirondack shelter in Oil Creek State Park. With tarps to close it in and a fireplace to warm us, it was a cozy night. The setting sun lit up the woods. Its glow held the promise of summer. 

It may be cold outside but, so far, the winter has been quite warm, really.

Rewards

Today was a good day. A day to savor every small bit of the garden that is still shining. A day for standing in the sunshine and drinking in the warmth of an October sun. No big swaths of color to thrill anymore. Just little treasures like this magnolia pod that has burst open to reveal its richly red seed.

And the finely described pinwheels of the sweet autumn clematis seeds (Clematis paniculata or sometime c. terniflora).

The one aster (Aster novae angliae) plant that bloomed pink rather than purple like the rest.

I'm still enjoying the morning glories that are still magnificent,

and a sedum that drapes softly over some european ginger.

There are still some roses

The marigolds that I plant each year in honor of my mother are still blooming without a care,

and the fat seed heads of the sunflowers are now a smorgasbord for the goldfinch and chickadees.

Every single one of these things are the rewards I reap for making a garden. I never take them for granted. But today I got to savor one big reward for a decision I made 12 years ago.  I like native plants and I like birds. I have made an effort to plant native shrubs that produce things birds like. Twelve years ago I planted a very small northern bayberry shrub (Myrica pensylvanica), as it was always one of my favorite shrubs for its waxy leaves and the smell of its beautiful, gray berries. I included it in the bouquets for my winter wedding.  I was delighted to discover a few years later that yellow-rumped warblers (a juvenile shown below) are some of the very few birds that can digest the waxy coating of bayberries.

Courtesy Cornell's http://www.allaboutbirds.org/

That small shrub I planted all those years ago, along with two more have now grown into a large hedge along with some winterberry (Ilex verticulata) and a summersweet shrub (Clethra alnifolia). 

This morning I spotted a yellow-rumped warbler in the yard for the first time ever. This afternoon I watched it land in the bayberry and eat a few berries. They came, they came!

This is one of the sweetest rewards of my life.

The Tomatillos that ate my Garden with a small foray into Tomato Butter

I tried growing tomatillos this year. It was a successful experiment. I grew two types, green and purple. This is what the purple looks like on the bush. I planted three plants--crazy too many.

This is what the inside of a tomatillo looks like.

This is what eight pounds of tomatillos look like. This is a lot of tomatillos. So I decided to make Salsa Verde and can it. Wouldn't you?

But before I proceed, let's just say there was an earlier harvest from which I made a small batch of salsa verde and then used about 40 more tomatillos to make this tomatillo-chile beef stew. It was very good.

Clearly, though, a larger effort was required if these tomatillos were not going to go to waste. So, here are the same eight pounds along with some onions, garlic and chiles going into the oven to roast. 

I neglected to take some photos at this point, but here's one of the roasted jalapenos right before its seeds are removed (I'm pretty wimpy when it comes to heat).

Once the chiles were seeded and stemmed, all ingredients were tossed in a pot and I stirred things up with an immersion blender--one of my absolutely favorite kitchen tools--until it looked like this.

Kinda boring, I know. It was brought to a boil and then simmered for about 20-25 minutes or so. Husband Mike then helped me fill the jars and do the water bath. I won't show you the pic of the jars going into the water bath, cuz you probably know what that looks like--jars going into a big pot full of water.

Here is what eight pounds of tomatillos look like when jarred as salsa verde. I got eight and half pints, although the recipe suggested I should get 10 pints.

It is very good. Let me know if you want the recipe. I really don't consider this a "food" blog.

I also had a small accumulation of tomatoes, too few to process and freeze but too many to use any other way. So I made tomato-garlic butter. It is sort of like tomato paste. The basic recipe is one garlic clove to one pound of tomatoes, but I usually add more garlic. It all goes into a pot and gets cooked down until soft.

Then I ran them through the chinois (big word alert!) to separate pulp from skins and seeds. If I had more I would have gotten out the regular food mill. The chinois requires more elbow grease.

 This is what I ended up with. It simmers low on the stove for hours............

Until it looks like this on a spoon. I ended up with one cup of tomato butter, which I promptly used in the crock pot butter chicken for dinner tonight. If I had more, I would freeze it in small quantities (plastic snack-size bags are good) and save it for later use.

There are more tomatillos out there waiting for me.

Meditation Over Coriander

Everyone who has grown cilantro knows how fast it goes to seed. Frustrating. That fast bolt does have its rewards, though: Free coriander. But only if you are willing to do some work. I am willing, as I don't consider it a chore. For me, it is a mediation.

They have pretty flowers, no denying that.


















I harvest the whole plant once the majority of seeds have dried and turned brown.

I use a large bag, cover the plant and then cut off the stalks. Hanging the bag for a week or two helps the plant fully dry and makes the seeds easier to remove. (forgot to take a picture of that!)

Here are the stalks after they have dried out and I have removed the seeds.

I shake and rub the stalks through the bag first so many will fall to the bottom of the bag. The rest I pick off roughly by hand; all go into a large wide bowl.

Here's where the mediation comes in. As you can see, there is a lot of "chaff" with my seeds. This all needs to be separated out.  I park myself on the edge of the deck with my legs sticking out onto the lawn and I do this:

Everything goes into a fine mesh colander over a bowl. You can see the fine twigs and stems that have already fallen through the colander below in the bowl.

Then I "thresh" it by rubbing my hand vigorously in the colander to break up the dry stems and leaves into smaller pieces so they fall through.

This takes a good while and it is here that I have learned to just be in the moment, not rush and not get impatient. I think about women in third world countries who do something like this every day just to feed their families. I look at the flowers in my garden. I think about how lucky I am. Towards the end, I am picking out small stems and leaves by hand. I am serene.

And the result is this:

I let it sit in the bowl for a week or so to let the last of the moisture escape, if there is any, and then I bottle it up and it goes in my spice drawer.

I will have more to harvest soon. If you would like to practice this meditation, I am willing to bag and cut plants for you--but you have to sit over your own colander to get the serenity. And the free coriander. Let me know.