(Host)
The challenges of garden bounty cause Stephanie Greene, a freelance
writer living with her family on a farm in Windham County, to consider
the nature of necessity.
(Greene) I’ve spent the summer trying
to foil a young, but voracious woodchuck. He was a veritable Houdini at
getting inside my garden, even conquering the elaborate fences I built
around raised beds and pots. It was demoralizing. He adored young beans,
would go along my tomato row taking a bite of each, as if he was at a
pricey all-you-can-eat buffet. And he was crazy about tender zucchini
leaves.
So I had pretty much resigned myself to taking this year
off from the frenzied pickling, baking and roasting that a bumper crop
of zucchini usually demands. Then a friend turned up with not one but
five enormous specimens, the size of bowling pins. She intercepted my
badly disguised look of horror by telling me that I should see the one
she’d left in her garden, the size of her leg and showing no sign of
slowing down. She was promised a share of the bounty and I set to work.
I
made zucchini pickles, salsa, zucchini bread and muffins, soup and
baked zucchini sticks, then finally a roasted veggie pizza, featuring –
tah-dah! – zucchini. It was all quite delicious, but it was a ton of
work. And as the canning pots bubbled away, I wondered why, exactly, I
was doing it.
Well, first it reminded me of my mother, a master
at corralling me and any friends she could into long, unbearably hot
sessions stirring cauldrons of ginger peach jam. I miss her most at this
time of year.
Then there’s the desire to be more self reliant
in the food department, enjoying the thrill of locally grown food cooked
imaginatively.
There’s also the challenge of incorporating this
maligned butt of seasonal zucchini jokes into interesting dishes people
actually savor.
We recently went to a vegetarian restaurant in
New York City ‘s East Village called Dirt Candy. Each dish is comprised
of three or more variations on one vegetable. The mushroom dish had a
cube of portabella pate, sautéed shitakes, a pile of toasts and a tiny
dab of pear chutney to offset the mushroom stacks you build.
So I am inadvertently au courant. But mostly my cooking blitz was about the thrill of nature-driven necessity.
When
the garden (not necessarily mine) responds with bounty, it’s only right
to make grateful and inventive use of it. Just as I secretly rejoice in
being snowbound and I have to cancel my little human plans when nature
trumps them with a blizzard.
Oh, the woodchuck: I finally broke
down and bought a live trap, baited it with cantaloupe, of all things,
and caught the young chuck in six hours. He was very cute, and I
imagined even a little remorseful. Despite the fact I hadn’t carefully
studied the release mechanism, let alone practiced it – before
misplacing the directions, you understand – we managed to introduce Mr.
Chuck to the joys of camping on a remote corner of our land.
I suppose after stuffing himself all summer on my bounty, he’s rediscovering necessity as well.