vegetables

Crapaudine Beets

/ lizbaessler / Leave a comment

I’ve been experimenting with heirloom vegetables this year. Part of my inspiration is a desire to connect with the past. Another part is a desire to connect with my work. Earlier this year I wrote a series of articles about heirloom seeds for Gardening Know How. One of those articles was on the Crapaudine beet, the oldest known cultivated beet in the world.

Wanting to back up my writing with hands-on experience, I got my own Crapaudine seeds and planted them in the garden in April. After a few months, three of them had gotten big enough to pull.

The seeds all came from the same packet, but one of these things is not like the other ones…

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The two rough beets are more like what I was expecting – I’d read that the skin would be tough and barky, possibly with a secondary root. This made sense to me, as if it were a missing link between the wild roots our ancestors ate and the fully cultivated ones we grow today.

Maybe that beautiful smooth one is just the kind of mutation that got us where we are today.

Or maybe I don’t know a thing about beet evolution.

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I cut open the perfect beet (it was perfect on the inside, too) and laid all three out on a baking sheet.

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I roasted them at 350 F for well over an hour, checking them every now and again with a fork. Once they were done, I tried to peel them.

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I’d read that if they’d been roasted long enough, the beets would slip easily out of their tough skins. This was not especially true. Peeling these things was hard and messy. If anything, the flesh sloughed away from the skin, turning to mush if it wasn’t held very delicately.

I think peeling before cooking would have been the way to go.

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Once I managed to get to the flesh, it tasted pretty darn good. It was sweet and earthy, with a grainy texture that did make it seem more “primitive” than a modern beet. But maybe that’s just my imagination.

I have another batch getting big in the ground – I’m interested to see how many look authentically ancient.

Sauerkraut

/ lizbaessler / 1 Comment

My housemates wish I would stop fermenting things.

I’ve told them I don’t just ferment. Sometimes I bake cakes. Sometimes they’re good. Sometimes I feed them fresh, local, and organic vegetables and honey. I’ve told them to stop complaining.

But it’s true – I do ferment a lot of things. And this is one of those things.

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A while ago I made borscht and found myself with most of a cabbage leftover. This prompted me to try one of the easiest fermentations that I’ve never actually done: Sauerkraut.

I cut up my cabbage and removed the core.

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Then I chopped the rest into fine strips and threw the strips in a bow with 1 1/2 tablespoons of kosher salt.

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I smashed it all around with my hands for about ten minutes. Perhaps ‘smashed’ is too strong a word. The recipes I’ve come across online are fond of the word ‘massage.’ After ten minutes of gentle massage, the cabbage released a lot of its water and became wilted.

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I plopped my wilted cabbage into a jar, tamping down with my hand after each plop to release air bubbles and more liquid.

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I covered the whole thing with a kale leaf to protect it from the air, and weighted it down with a jam jar full of water. The name of the game with sauerkraut seems to be keeping it out of contact with the air with a layer of water. At the moment the water released naturally from the cabbage is a little sparse. I may have to add more.

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I rubber banded a piece of fabric over the whole jar to keep critters away and stuffed it away in a cupboard. The pictures of that weren’t very glamorous, though, so I’ll leave you with beautiful shot of my sauerkraut to be.

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In a few days it should be ready to eat.

The Tragedy of the Hoop House

/ lizbaessler / 3 Comments

Remember my hoop house? Remember my palpable excitement and hope for summer vegetables well into the winter?

I remember, too.

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Sadly, it was not meant to be.

I think I severely overestimated the hoop house’s ability to store heat. I’d read so many warnings about overheating, I made sure to leave the ventilation flaps open when the sun was up. On the night of the first frost, I dutifully went down (after the sun had set) and closed things up snugly. It was dark, so I don’t know if my plants were already dead when I tucked them in for the night, but it’s a pretty striking image.

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In retrospect, it makes sense that if the air inside the hoop house is cold when you close it up at night, it’s not going to heat up much. Plants produce a tiny bit of warmth when they respire, but nothing like a breathing animal would.

I remember covering blueberry bushes with my dad to protect the blossoms from late spring frost, and I was under the impression that this would have a similar effect. I think the difference is that we draped sheets over the blueberries, making a barrier directly between the blossom and the cold air, blocking heat transfer. The hoop house is a big room, with lots of head space for cold air to swirl around.

We also covered the blueberries before the sun set.

The pepper plants, though wilted, still kept their vivid green color. I thought maybe they could be saved, until I actually touched the peppers.

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It was like squeezing a stocking full of Cool Whip. The slightest pressure made it distort, and I had to be careful not to put my thumb right through it. A stocking full of Cool Whip would have been sturdier.

The eggplant plants were stone dead, but the fruit fared better. I managed to salvage three small ones.

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I left the plants in the ground for a week in case of a miracle, but none came. The cold weather plants, of course, don’t know what all the fuss is about and have been doing fine. With any luck I can keep them going and the hoop house won’t be a total bust. Going all-in on greens and roots, I ripped out the frosted plants and sowed some seeds. They came right up! I have tiny lettuces.

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And tiny radishes. I’m a little worried about the shortening of days. Even if they’re warm enough, these guys may not have enough sunlight to grow. We’ll have to wait and see.

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Funnily enough, the plants that did survive were only an afterthought. I brought all my healthiest specimens down to the “safety” of the hoop house, but they wouldn’t all fit.

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The scragglers had to stay up by the house, where I hastily covered them with the leftover plastic the day before the frost to give them a fighting chance. I didn’t attach the plastic tightly, and they had air circulation all night. They also had something I never even considered: a shared wall with our house. They made it through the first frost and subsequent frosts with no problem.

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I even have a brand new baby pepper.