One night a week and a half ago, when much of the world was watching the final “American Idol” showdown between Adam Lambert and Kris Allen or viewing the finale of “Dancing with the Stars,” almost a hundred of us were at the local native plant society meeting to hear Kristie Orosco. Environmental Director for the San Pasqual Band of Kumeyaay Indians, ethnobotanist, and member of the Native American Environmental Protection Coalition, our speaker gave us a quick introduction to how some of the local Native Americans traditionally used plants in their environment as food.
She was one of those rare communicators, a person who with a very few words can take you into a different way of thinking and seeing the world. One thing she said, in particular, has stuck with me. Instead of stating that a plant blooms, she used the phrase that a plant “gives it flowers.” What a gorgeous way to phrase it: Instead of a plant being an inert blooming machine that you pick up for a few bucks at the nursery and toss when it turns ugly, it was a living entity that gives of itself by producing flowers.
How you say something is as important as what you say, and her words opened up a world to me where everything in nature is a gift. Although I’ve developed a cynical side to my personality, I’ve tried to counter it by keeping alive a part of me that continues to stay amazed at the things of the natural world and almost willfully naive about many of the ways of humankind. It’s that second side of me that’s certain that the earth would be a lot better off than it is if we all spoke and viewed the landscape the way Kristie Orosco did.
You often read that the plants you encounter in the wilds have traditional uses, but it’s not until you’ve had direct experience with the uses that the connection really clicks. To cement that connection, our speaker brought foods for all of us to try, enough to cover several large tables.
On the menu:
- Shaawii, or acorn pudding (pink, looks like spam but it’s actually edible—and subtly tasty)
- Pit-roasted agave root (something like a chewy, smoky vegan beef jerky—my favorite of the night)
- Limeade with seeds of chia (Salvia columbariae)
- “Medicine tea” (steeped dried flowers from Mexican elderberry, Sambucus mexicanus, very delicately flavored, used for a number of purposes, including breaking a fever)
- Yucca root (starchy, but different from potatoes in flavor)
- Yucca flowers, boiled (the blooms of Hesperoyucca whipplei, which is finishing up giving its flowers in many of our hillsides around town; very delicate flavor with a tiny nip of bitterness, brussels sprouts for people who don’t like brussels sprouts, or a new food for people who love artichoke hearts)
- Yucca flowers, raw (as above, only crunchier, a little more bitter)
I’ve always admired plants of Hesperoyucca whipplei from a distance—The ends of its leaves end in sharp points that you have to show immense respect. Now that I’ve tasted its root and sampled its flowers and heard Kristie Orozco speak about the plant, my aesthetic appreciation of it has deepened into something else much richer.
June 01 2009 | Categories: gardening • landscape | Tags: ethnobotany • Kristie Orosco • native plants • vegetables | 5 Comments »
It’s hardly May, and I have my first tomatoes of the season already, this gorgeous pair on a seedling of the heirloom Cherokee Purple.
Okay, I cheated a little. These are actually hothouse tomatoes. Some seed I planted in the greenhouse last spring didn’t germinate until last fall. Transplanting the plants outdoors in November would have meant certain death for the little tomatoes, but I didn’t have the heart to pull them out. One of them set down roots through the drainage holes of the pot and just kept growing. Although the greenhouse is too shady and unheated, the plant survived. And now I have these first two tomatoes, with more on the way.
I’ve never used the greenhouse for anything as practical as growing veggies, so this will be an interesting experiment.
The first artichokes of the season are also on some plants that were almost accidents. For years we had a clump of an especially good selection growing in the veggie garden. But a room addition on the house put the garden in shade, and the plants went into decline. I dug them out and was going to toss them, until I decided to try a couple stems in the back of a new raised bed. The combination of more light, more moisture, and fresh compost-rich soil worked their magic, and the plants are now looking as good as they ever have.
I like to think that I earned some bonus points for showing some mercy and not tossing the tomato and artichoke plants into the greens recycling. But in the case of the artichoke, at least, it’s another life lesson in trying to find the right location for an underperforming plant.
Are there any plants that you’ve had similar experiences with? Any “rescue plants” that ended up rewarding you as much as others you’d planned for?
May 12 2009 | Categories: art • gardening • my garden • places | Tags: artichokes • Cherokee Purple tomato • vegetables | 2 Comments »
I often have trouble mixing ornamentals and vegetables together in a garden bed that’s supposed to be “for company,” a bed that’s meant to be attractive as well as containing tasty-looking plants that you’d like to take to the dinner table.
Some parts of the garden where I’ve snuck veggies in with the other plants look a little chaotic, but here’s a patch that I really like the looks of. Earlier I showed part of this corner that the bedroom window overlooks. But new things are starting to bloom, and the colors are starting to really click for me.
When I was putting this bed together, I set myself the main rule of “nothing yellow.” In deciding what veggies to place there, I just stuck to that organizing principle. (Okay, can you tell that I work in libraries and organize information during the week?)
This bed features several edibles: red-stemmed chard, orange-stemmed chard, Red Winter red Russian kale, red beets, plus catmint for tea (and for the cat). The ornamentals include scarlet geum, purple heliotrope, violet blue-eyed grass, the salmon-colored bulb Homeria collina, two blue sages (Salvia sagittata and Salvia cacaliaefolia) plus a few other things not in bloom.
For sure, there’s a lot of red and blue and purple going on here. But several variations on green in the background green do wonders to pull together what might otherwise be chaos.
I’m going to hate cutting any of these veggies for dinner…
April 04 2009 | Categories: my garden | Tags: blue • color • color combinations • flower beds • purple • red • vegetable gardening • vegetables • violet | 9 Comments »
What would you say if you ran across a 7 pound, 13 ounce potato in your garden? Pretty impressed? That’s the current official Guinness Book record holder as the world’s heaviest potato.
But the current BBC News Magazine site has a story on a farmer’s find in his field that blows away the current record holder. This specimen reportedly weighs in at 24.9 pounds (11.3 kilos), and was produced with “no fertilizer or other chemicals,” according to the story. [ image source ]
From my calculations, this potato, if mashed and served at a holiday meal, would feed anywhere from 50 to 125 eaters, depending on how many of them are still doing the Atkins Diet. I’m afraid that, even with my extended family, I’d have a lot of leftovers…
December 09 2008 | Categories: gardening | Tags: potatoes • vegetables | 2 Comments »
“So you’re a vegetarian? No problem! People brought five different vegetable dishes!”
For any vegetarians out there: How many times have you heard this bit of reassurance, only to go to the table and be faced with plate after plate of beautifully-grown vegetables that have been transformed into something other than a vegetable dish?
Green beans and onions cooked with chicken stock and sprinkled with bacon?
Spinach with…bacon?
Mashed potatoes with…bacon?
Brussels sprouts with…bacon?
Fortunately I’m not the strictest of vegetarians. If the only options are veggies with bits of meat incorporated into the dish, I’ll try to leave the meaty bits on the plate or eat around them. But there are plenty of folks I know who would decline the offerings.
We veg-heads are used to bringing our own dishes to these gatherings. We also try to help out in the kitchen and tactfully try to make gentle suggestions for substitutions. But at a time of year when people focus on traditions, this is a delicate issue that risks fracturing a family into upstarts and traditionalists.
There’s one easy suggestion that might please almost everyone at the table: Instead of putting bacon in every dish, why not fill a condiment dish with crunchy bacon bits that people could heap on top of their veggies? The vegetarians would avoid it, leaving even more for everyone else! Also, you could offer a flavorful sauce on the side that could keep the bacon fans happy.
And of course, trying new preparations could come up with new family traditions. This Thanksgiving probably the most unusual dish was something Olinda next door shared with us: a sweet and aromatic preparation of sweet potatoes and guavas. The plate looked similar to traditional yams, but everything was heady with the aromas of fresh-baked guavas, something that reminded me of the perfume of flowers.
Olinda ran a Mexican restaurant until her recent retirement. Although sweet potatoes and guavas is a traditional celebratory dish in Mexico, it unfortunately wasn’t one that ever showed up on the menu of her restaurant. And I doubt that you’d ever see it offered at any mainstream Mexican eatery.
I’m working on Olinda to get her to divulge her recipe, but until I’m successful here’s a link to a recipe in the Texas Monthly that looks very similar. Yes, it looks like a lot of sugar. This is a sweet dish, but I’m sure you could adjust the sugar to your liking. But whatever you do, don’t scrimp on the guavas!
(If you don’t have access to fresh guavas, there are a number of recipes on the web that use the somewhat easier to find guava jam.)
December 03 2008 | Categories: rambles | Tags: bacon • Camotitos Potosinos • food • guavas • recipes • sweet potatoes • vegetables • vegetarians | 2 Comments »
Saturday I put some seeds of Armenian cucumber into the ground.
There are heirloom vegetables and then there are ancestral varieties like this, varieties that go so far back into history that to grow them and have them at your table is to connect with history, traditions and the ground that they grow in. The Armenian cucumber dates back at least to the fifteenth century, when it was introduced into Italy from Armenia. I’m sure it was being consumed long before then.
Although called a cucumber it’s actually classified as a melon, Cucumis melo var. flexuosus, and is closer genetically to honeydews than to the standard English or pickling cucumbers. With its unusual ribbed creamy green exterior, you have to do a bit of explaining when you share the extras from the garden: well, yes…it’s called a cucumber, but it’s really something different…
The flesh is mild and firmer than any other cucumber out there, almost crunchy, the texture of unripe melon. The fruits can easily reach 30 inches long, but are best picked when half that size. They’re great in salads, and they pair amazingly well with tomatoes.
Last year I started them in late June and had cucumbers 60 days later. Two hills of plants were plenty for two people, with cukes left over for the neighbors. Pretty good soil, moderate watering and occasional fertilizing kept them happy and productive until the end of September. Some people trellis them, but they’re fine if you let them roam like other melons. I like this variety so much that it’s one of those plants that I’ll keep planting as long as I have room for it.
May 06 2008 | Categories: my garden • plant profiles | Tags: Armenian cucumber • heirloom vegetables • vegetables | No Comments »
