Many good vegetables gave their lives today, so the two-leggeds here, at 3MPH could enjoy, really fresh food. My mother is at the Cottage, visiting from Denver for a couple weeks and I’m having fun sharing the bounty of our garden with her. Fresh garden vegetables just make every meal better, way better. Ironically, when I was a kid back in the midwest we had a big garden, every year until about the mid-seventies and slowly we started adopting the convenience is better lifestyle that still permeates our culture to this day. The garden got smaller every year until there was no garden. “I can get all that stuff at King Soopers. Heck, they bring it in from Mexico, Argentina and a number of other countries. Who needs a garden?”
We started off the harvest fest today with some batter-fried crookneck squash. I gave up the dark art of deep frying twenty or thirty years ago but recently have been inspired to give it another go, after discovering the wonders of coconut oil.
A Little Reminiscing
Many, many years ago, I fell in love with tempura, in the dim sum houses and Japanese restaurants of San Francisco’s eclectic food scene, (I had a much more active metabolism then). That was back when I considered San Francisco my favorite city. I never really liked cities all that much but if I was going to be in one, San Francisco or Denver were the only two worth a look. The Beat Generation of the 50’s and the Hippie counterculture of the 60’s, both had deep roots in San Francisco and I had a connection to those movements in my formative years. San Francisco was the center of the culture I was chasing back when I was young; Alan Watts, Jack Kerouac, Hunter Thompson, The Dead, Mountain Bikes, Wine and of course the food.
I used to crave the culture that was San Francisco. Sadly, there is not much that goes on there anymore that I crave. I wonder if exorbitant taxes and the COVID disaster has destroyed all the funky little eateries yet? A question for another day, I suppose. Let’s drop the reminiscing and get back to the fresh food.
The second meal of harvest fest was Goulash. While we were putting up 20 quarts of pickle slices and spears, we discussed what a garden fresh Goulash should look like. The dialogue brought on by a few pounds of Roma tomatoes we harvested from the garden. The first serious tomato harvest of the season, and a reason for celebration. While I was whipping up a Garden Goulash, Vickie cooked, beets – the side dish. Pre-boiled and sautéed in butter.
Like a lot of my cooking, the Goulash started off with a mirepoix. The carrots were from the garden, the onion and celery, came from the market, along with some red bell pepper. (The peppers in the garden are coming on strong though and we should be using garden peppers in the very near future).
Once all of the veggies were soft and there was a bit of Carmel in the dutchie, we added about a third cup of Malbec. Raised the temperature and cooked in a pound, of ground bison. Then it was time to get the tomatoes in, half of them chunky and the other half processed in a blender.
While all those happy flavors simmered together, loving on each other, we cooked a package of pasta. We used brown rice shells. A bit of seasoning was added before the pasta, mostly Italian type herbs and some salt and pepper; stir it all up and wha’la. Garden fresh Goulash. I’m guessing about an hour of stew time on the stove top all together.
While I was cleaning up the kitchen, Vickie made two loaves of Zucchini Bread for dessert. And we still have a bushel basket full of stuff on the back porch to be processed. Keep On Gardenin’!