Tag Archive | potatoes

Chuño

Nov1

Today’s gratitude stretches back to the first week I moved to this valley in 1992. I saw a flyer for a dance class for women, and there I met several whom I still know today. Though I haven’t seen them much since those first few years, I am grateful for the warm welcome and sense of belonging they offered when I was new here, and grateful to remain connected with them through the web of community and common interests.

I’m grateful for community radio KVNF, and for their gardening show “As the Worm Turns,” and for an episode a couple of months ago when I called in with a potato question. Then Tara, one of those first friends from that dance class, called in with a potato answer. Tara and her husband have been adopted into a community on an island in Peru’s Lake Titicaca. Here is one of my favorite poems of hers about her Taquile family.

I had forgotten about that poem until Tara called into the Worm after I did, and told us about chuño again. Lance reported the next week on the show that he had made some, and I had by then harvested some tiny potatoes and frozen them. I didn’t have a huge potato crop, so I kept adding to the chuño bag in the freezer until I had finished harvesting and then left it until I had time to focus on it. With the garden largely put to bed, tomatillos all processed, and most of the tomatoes and peppers finished, I took out the chuño bag, let them thaw, and then smashed them with a heavy-bottomed glass on a plate.

After a few days in the drying pantry (which hangs in the living room not far from the woodstove from mid-summer through fall), the smashed potatoes were dry enough to put in a jar. Tara says she uses them in soups and other dishes throughout winter, and I look forward to enjoying their particular flavor/texture sensation this winter, maybe after I’ve eaten the last of the fresh potatoes. I’m grateful for living in community through time, for KVNF, for the Worms, for Jeffy the technical heart of KVNF, for Tara, for her cross-cultural horticultural wisdom and her good heart, for potatoes in general and specifically those that grew in my garden this summer, and I’m grateful for learning yet another way to preserve food: chuño.

Chuño dried and ready for the jar this afternoon, a mix of red, russet, and Yukon gold baby potatoes.

Harvest: Potatoes and Basil

Aug13

This morning I picked another pound or so of rattlesnake pole beans, and dug up one of five Yukon gold plants. I planted five each of three varieties, and have now harvested one plant of each to see how they did… and of course to enjoy the subterranean fruits of our labors. On the menu for Boyz Lunch today was green bean-potato casserole.

Also on the menu, mustard chicken, browned in bacon fat (from making the casserole topping: bacon, and crumbled Ritz crackers), then skillet roasted in sauce of mustard, white wine, soy sauce, tabasco, and garden garlic and herbs: ripened fennel flowers and basil, plus a teaspoon of herbes de Provence.

The boys said it was definitely Top Five. I love that they say “Top Five” about eighty percent of the meals I make for them. I’m grateful for their appreciation, and grateful I get to host Boyz Lunch live, at least until it gets too cold to eat outside.

I’m really grateful that my hand gets to be out of the brace sometimes, and for OT’s TLC. I can cook again! I still have to be very careful and gentle with it, and it aches and tires easily. OT says it will be a few more months before it’s back to a hundred percent, and I’ve got a handful of therapy exercises to do with each hand, probably forever going forward, to mitigate the underlying arthritis.

The lettuce leaf basil is going bonkers. I’m grateful for the adventure of watching these magnificent plants grow from fragile, minute seedlings, and for the joy of harvesting and eating or preserving the robust leaves. I’m exploring various ways to save this basil, having dried some, made and frozen pesto, and today, freezing the chopped leaves. The four basil bushes continue to splurge outward, promising more and more.

I’m grateful to own a food processor, in which I roughly chopped the basil, then drizzled in just enough olive oil to coat it. Then, into an ice tray by the tablespoon, and into the deep freeze. Tomorrow I’ll pop them out and put them in a freezer container for easy access once the fresh basil is gone.

I’m grateful for prolific basil and green beans, and for potatoes even though they’re all pretty small: live and learn, next year even lighter soil, but hey, this is my best potato crop ever, so far. I’m grateful for the garden, the fence that keeps out the deer, the people who built the fence; grateful for the kitchen and all its implements, for solar power and batteries to store it to keep the fridge and freezer running and power the food processor and this computer and everything else in the house, and grateful for the support of a kind and capable solar technician. I’m grateful for every day that I wake up alive and get to harvest in the garden and cook in the kitchen.

Vichyssoise

Jul28
Let’s get the phoebe report out of the way: grateful that all four chicks are filling out, and moving around on the nest platform.
Grateful all the leeks are growing well enough to need thinning…
Testing the potatoes, which have never yet bloomed; surprised and delighted to unearth three lovely red potatoes while checking. Grateful that I can start a slow harvest of potatoes!

I was grateful this morning to find myself with both leeks and potatoes in my hands, fresh out of the garden. There’s only one thing I think of with both those vegetables: vichyssoise! It was my father’s favorite soup, which I’ve known my whole life. Today I thought of him, grateful for his culinary skills and interests that he transmitted to me. I’m grateful for many things about today, including vichyssoise.

Grateful for a quick and easy recipe, and that I had all the ingredients including chicken stock in the freezer; grateful for the freezer, and the solar power to run it, and all the conditions and people who made possible the freezer in my mudroom, and also the blender: Grateful for a good blender with a glass pitcher so I could pour the soup in hot, blend it to velvet, and let it cool, before adding cream and enjoying. Grateful there’s plenty for another meal.