A Greener Biener

Yesterday morning’s air had a chill that stuck around through most of the day. It was delicious. I pulled on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt and hugged myself a mug of steaming coffee. I was giddy with the thought of packing away the miserable swelter of summer’s heat in exchange for the crisp bite of autumn days. I know some of you adore summer, the tight squeeze of heat against a sweaty skull, the ripe smell of children left outside a little too long, but it’s just not for me.

With school beginning mid-August I had to wait for other signs to tell me it’s time to pull out the thick socks. Signs like this:

That’s Dave on the roof of the shed, harvesting our apple tree. Apple trees produce in full every few years, and this is going to be one of those years! The first batch was impressive, the apples are tart and tasty and have already been boiled down into scrumptious apple sauce. And the tree is still heavy with more. Added bonus? With a pot of simmering apples on the stove the house smells so good that I can barely hear the dust bunnies scuttling around. Besides, they’re almost cute when coated in the intoxicating scent of warm apples and cinnamon.

Another sign of fall? These gigantic sunflowers that are just now coming into their own.

The girls begged for the packet of seeds a million years ago (well, back in the spring) and you know how it is when the kids grab stuff as you’re leaving the store. I broke down, and they planted them all along the side of the driveway. They are amazing. Taller than me, some plants host four or five of the brilliantly bright yellow faces. One plant is inexplicably covered in these cool red striped flowers.

Ah yes, the signs of autumn. I had all but pulled on a hat and written off summer when the girls plucked these from the garden. Raspberries? In September? Drat. Foiled again. Looks like summer is not ready to go quietly into the night just yet.

Really. Please, take it. It is so totally icky.

I have come a long way from my days of subsiding on nothing more than vanilla yogurt (my childhood motto: have Dannon will travel) and my ironclad stubborn refusal to try anything new. Part of the idea behind joining a CSA (don’t remember what this is? I revealed the mystery of that acronym here ) was bravely tasting whatever the farmer picked for us each week. You know, choking down broccoli in the name of family harmony and health.

The kids are on board, facing up to beets disguised as french fries and taking at least a no-thank-you sized bite of whatever arrives in the red mesh bags. The abundance of fresh fruits and vegetables has been incredible. Check out the pile of produce we pulled in this week:

Gorgeous right? The peaches, divine. Farm fresh corn? The best. And the melons, don’t even get me started on the melons. But the cauliflower? Yuck. I’m digging my heels in. Cauliflower is yucky.

But it is abundant. Last week’s portion allowed me to be neighborly. I sent it home with the babysitter. The week before I placed it benevolently in the donation pile for the homeless shelter. I suppose I should be honest; I haven’t even tried the stuff. I can’t (see above yucky reason for clarification.) I know, I know, the children graciously swallow their bites of whatever bizarro veggie I put in front of them so why am I such a hypocrite?

Because I said so, that’s why. Because I’m a grown up and as far as I’m concerned passing on cauliflower is a privilege of adulthood. I don’t stay up late. I don’t see scary movies. I don’t eat cake for breakfast (well, except for very special occasions.) This is my thing. So there.

Anyway, does anyone want a head of cauliflower? It’s farm-fresh-fabulous, and it’s yours for free.

Update from the bachelor-pad: It’s ladies night! I don’t know whether it was the free drinks or the sugar and spice, but the ladies have finally made an appearance. Here’s one

And right down the vine is her lovely friend:

And another lady who has already snagged her man, done the deed, and is growing an adorable little squash. Mmmmm, can’t wait to snuggle that little babe in a little olive oil and brown sugar.

Meanwhile, the dating game may just gearing up for the squash, but the cucumbers are going wild. We’ve eaten about eight of the sweet treats so far, and there are close to 15 more on the vine. For the uninitiated, here’s a peek at a newby cuc:

There I was, casually pulling weeds from the cucumbers the other day when I happened to glance over at the strawberry patch. What I saw there terrified me. It ripped a scream from my throat. I started to run and actually made it half way across the yard yelling and flailing my arms before I grabbed myself by the shoulders and got myself a grip. I mean, really, what kind of message would this send to the kids? This was no way to behave if I expect them to learn to live in peace and harmony and with respect for all critters great and small and slippery and warty.

Still, I freaked out. Just look at this monster:

Yeah, yeah, it’s just a frog. Or a toad. Whatever. What this picture does not show is the enormity of this creature. He was huge. Like a dingy-green bug-eyed Prius. And he just sat there like he owned the place. Clearly, a prince. Once my heart stopped racing and I felt appropriately embarrassed for screeching like a banshee all by myself in the yard, I returned to the garden to have a chat with my nemesis, who despite the ear piercing activities around him had not moved an amphibian muscle. There he sat.

Sir Hops for Naught and I discussed his squatting without permission. I suggested he move along, that this garden was taken, that this princess was done kissing frogs, that I certainly could not promise him peace and tranquility given my squeamish response to his species. Why did I run, Sir Hops needed to know. He asked nothing of me (yeah right, nothing but a puck-a-roo to transform him back to royal glamor. I wasn’t born yesterday Froggie.) I need not be concerned he’d bite, he assured me, and clearly he wasn’t the type to give chase. So what was my problem?

My problem was this: A very real fear of the noise that would be made when I accidentally stepped on him with my flip flops. The squirmy squishy awful sound of Sir Hops under my exposed foot. To say nothing of the danger to me if I slipped on the slimy guy and landed face down in puddle of mashed frog.

Maybe I’m being rash. Maybe he comes in peace. Maybe he’s just looking for a place to rest his weary self. Many of our backyard buddies seem overly tired this year. Like Squiggy, our normally frenetic friend, who just need some chillin’ time, you know, squirrel-style.

Or maybe Sir Hops For Naught is here in response to Evil Bunny, Muncher of Garden Greens that Do Not Belong to Him.

He may look like a cute bunny but DO NOT BE FOOLED. That’s no ordinary rabbit. This ballsy bunny fears nothing. He marches right down to the garden like he owns the place and happily munches away. Screaming children with flailing arms and a garden hose spritzer set to high are futile against his power. He is a bad bad bunny and I hope he steps on a squishy frog and flounders in the slime. Just don’t tell my children that I said so.

Sure, springtime’s got young lovers and the birds and the bees and I’m on board with all of that. Who doesn’t like love in their air? But honestly, it’s autumn that has my thoughts turning to sex. Pumpkin sex that is, and squash booty and hot cucumber action and well, you get the picture. Visions of procreating gourds are dancing in my head.

Speaking of sex, it’s not too much to say that Dave and I have got the girl-making game down pat. Indoors, at least. Somehow we take that step from boudoir to backyard and suddenly all we’ve got to show for our efforts are boys, boys, boys. When it comes to flowering vines, our garden is a no-girls-allowed frat party of testosterone. Across the board our sporty gourds are nothing but snips and snails and puppy dog tails.

Hang on a minute. Male flowers? Pumpkin sex? What? Your fifth-grade teacher skipped the part about girl and boy squash blossoms? Do not fear, I am here, and I never tire of talking sex, gourd or otherwise. Here’s what you need to know: To tell the difference between boys and girls, flip over your flowers. If your flower looks like this…

…congratulations, it’s a girl. See how she wears her womb on her sleeve? That little nub beneath the flower (which she has yet to open) is her fruit-to-be. Come on girlfriend, waving your reproduction flag is no way to lure a man. But lo, the Romeos for whom she waits are right next door:

The males stand strong. The stems run straight up into the flowers. (Of course they stand straight, they’re not the ones lugging around all that pre-squash weight. Hey, does this baby squash make my blossom look fat?)

Our vines last summer tended towards boys-only too, forcing me to take matters into my own hands. When at last a lady pumpkin flower showed up, I got down and dirty, inseminating, pumpkin style. (Note: I’ve been informed that one cannot actually inseminate anything without, well, you know.) Still, I plucked a lusty male blossom, rubbed him good on our single brave female, and wham bam thank you me, I made a baby pumpkin.

At least last year’s bachelor party was limited to the pumpkins. Our butternut squash needed no help in the lovin’ department. It took both kids just to heft the gorgeous gourds of ‘07.

They were big, and they were bountiful. Only two vines, but they produced upwards of 10 hefty squash. We were so impressed with their ability to reproduce on their own that we skipped the fertility-challenged pumpkins altogether this year and went crazy with the squash seeds. After all, brown-sugar-bronzed butternut squash is the star of my favorite pasta recipe.

I have been looking forward to that pasta all summer, so I’m getting a little desperate about the dearth of ladies on my vines. What is one to do about the preponderance of males in the garden? I don’t know, and I haven’t yet found anyone out there who does. In the meantime, I’m adding a healthy dash of sugar and spice and everything nice to the compost pile. I’ll let you know how that goes.

Update from the garden: It’s ladies night! As I write this, four potential squashettes sit on the vine advertising their wares to the plethora of suitors. I think the numbers are in their favor.

I feel awful. Just as you were getting used to a regular dose of dry wit and a side of brilliant recipes, poof, the green Bieners just up and disappeared. My sincere apologies. Thing is, I’m pretty new to life in the blog-o-sphere and while I did remember to pack 18 pairs of panties and 35 bathing suits, I somehow set out for our annual east-coast extravaganza without my passwords. Come now, surely I could have gained access from my remote vacation locale? Perhaps this quaint state of New York has even heard of cell phones and emails and techno gizmos? Well, good point. Why didn’t I think of that?

I feel guilty for neglecting the site. And I feel guilty for guzzling high fructose corn syrup 35,000 feet up in the sky and recklessly burning fossil fuels in our selfish quest to visit family, friends and foaming oceans. And yes, I felt a twinge for each plastic bottle of imported agua and individually wrapped snack-food that wrestled itself down our throats along the way. Despite wild swerving off the greener path, we still received this amazing reward–

That’s best friends, loving family and pure joy, all wrapped up beneath the third rainbow of our trip! We weren’t all bad. We patrolled the beaches, pulling beach glass and abandoned sea shells from the shore. We harvested fresh fish and clams with our own sea-wrinkled hands.

Best of all, we each got a turn setting sail in this incredible nut-shell pram hand-crafted for the kids by their talented Grandpa Mikey.

That’s me, ensuring its sea-worthiness before launching the little ones.

And now, despite efforts to the contrary, it’s time. Time to get back. Back to Colorado, back to school, back to the much neglected garden. I should be out there right now, freeing up the tomatoes from the weeds and unwinding the ambitious cucumber vines, but it’s raining and it’s fifty degrees and so the poor veggies will have to make it on their own yet one more day.

Rain or not, we are busy. Check out the CSA bounty we picked up yesterday. Yummy corn, melons galore, and enough jalapeños and tomatillos to have me googling salsa recipes. Eggplant parm, anyone?

As readers of Mama Bird Diaries may have heard, our venture to the farm to pick strawberries was a roaring success. I came home not just with thirty tons of delicious fruit; but a bonus. I now held visions of my husband filtered through a dusty new light.

Just a couple of hours with the chickens and voila, Dave had morphed into the farmer of my dreams. A precious vision.

Do not be fooled though, picking is tough work. We squawked, we squatted, we picked and we tasted our little hearts out for well over an hour.

We sweated it out beneath a still-blazing setting sun, but oh the berries we picked. Late into the night strawberries covered every horizontal surface of the kitchen.

And sadly, mosquito bites covered every inch of Dave and the girls. I’ve warned them about being so darn sweet. The flying bloodsuckers took a pass on me; I just knew good things would come of my bitter skin and foul tasting blood.

While the girls and dad got down to work on the farm, I got busy with my camera. Somehow poor Bessy got it into her cud-chewing brain that I was the big agent she’d ordered up from Hollywood. You know I love the cows, but this bountiful bovine kept striking poses until I agreed to click-her. She hopes to make it to the big screen one day.

But really, enough with the gratuitous pictures of the cow. Word on green street was that these berries had to be handled, and quickly. The shelf life of a fresh, red-all-the-way-through berry is teeny tiny, which left me up way past my bedtime sorting and handling when really what I required was a soak in a whirlpool and a decent massage for oy my back was aching! Never-the-less come morning I woke with the crowing roosters. I donned my bonnet, knocked the clothes against some rocks in the stream, churned the butter, and then got down to work:

We made strawberry jam.

And strawberry puree (with visions of strawberry daiquiris dancing in our heads.)

And strawberry bread.

And strawberry ice cream with dark chocolate chips.

We froze about a gallon or so of the berries straight up, and left the rest to sit smugly on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator. Every minute or so I walk by and reach in to grab one. As the berry bursts on my tongue I think of Grandpa Terry. For years my wonderful grandfather bemoaned the state of the supermarket strawberry. ‘In the old days,’ he’d say, ‘berries were red through and through.’ Oh Grandpa, how I wish you could see the bright red juice dripping down the smiling faces of your great-granddaughters.

Picky eaters are the worst. I should know, I used to be one.

As a kid I hated all things edible, except one. Back in the day I would have traded my baby brother for a bowl of frozen strawberries (ok, I would have traded him for a black eye, but that’s a different story.) And when I say frozen strawberries, I’m not talking about the good wholesome Whole Foods type of berries. I’m talking old school, the kind that came soaked in sugared syrup and frozen in a cardboard box with a tin roof. It was my preferred form of sustenance and I was a blissful child, until one day, while eagerly awaiting dessert, this: Imagine, the bubbling hot defrosted berries were en route to the table when suddenly, out of nowhere, my mean ole ma grinned and said:

Oh, these? Nope these are most definitely not strawberries. Sure, they look like strawberries. They smell like strawberries. They even taste exactly like strawberries. But it’s rhubarb. Yes, rhubarb. Go on, try some.

I struggled. I sniffed the bowl. I swear I wanted to taste, but I couldn’t do it. Thanks to Mom’s trickery (and a stubborn streak that multiplies with each subsequent generation) I refused to eat my favorite dessert. But hey, no hard feelings ma. You did what you had to do, right?

As a parent now myself to a couple of stubborn, non-eaters, I too have succumbed to tricking my kids. But here’s the thing: I try to trick them INTO eating; and I will do whatever it takes.

Apparently, hiding veggies from children is controversial, especially since Jessica Seinfeld released Deceptively Delicious, a cookbook for parents of picky eaters. With it, the line in the sand was drawn between parents who believe children should be forced to fork their foliage in full awareness, and those of us who rub our evil hands together as we gleefully watch the kiddies consume hidden veggies and try not to scream, “Ah-hah! Gotcha!” with each green that sneaks stealthily down an unwilling throat.

I have not seen Seinfeld’s cookbook, but I’ve got a few tricks up my sleeve.

Check out these Zebra Fries my kids gobbled down. Shhhh, want to know a secret? They’re really beets. Really. Beets. Aren’t they beautiful? Sliced into fry-shapes, they’re not even scary.

Hey, while we’re at it, anyone up for a Confetti Cookie?

What’s in the world is a Confetti Cookie? Simple, it’s a chocolate chip cookie with pretty green streamers running through it. (Off the record? Those tiny green stripes are shredded zucchini, but I won’t tell if you don’t.) I borrowed the recipe from Barbara Kingsolver’s book (and my bible) Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.

Vegetables? What vegetables? Just smile, and have another cookie my dear. You can trust me, I’m not hiding any greens up my sleeves.