Kitchen Counter Monologues
March 2023
From In Donata’s Kitchen
Contents
In this issue of Kitchen Counter Monologues:
My favorite Garden Blooms of Late Winter
A Month of Palindromes
A Flaming 7’s 7k Fun Run
Farms on Fobes Hill: Fobes Hill Farm and the Farm on 83rd
What’s In Season: Maple and Nettle
*A Monologue About Practicing a Slow, Hyperlocal Foodway
*Maple Sugaring Pictures
*Pear Maple Pecan Syrup
*Wild Greens Pesto
Natural Slug Control
St. Patrick’s Day Dinner: Lamb Stew and Soda Bread
It’s March, and she did come in like a Lion, but only for a day or two, and then she charged like a raging Ewe, and after a last week of freeze she will turn into the Lamb that we all know and love. Weather wise, at least. Misty rains, sometimes with thunder showers, that are certain to bring rainbows and vibrant sunsets will guide us into April. The first fruit trees will begin to blossom. Here, on my little knob atop Fobes Hill, the Golden Plum will bloom first, permeating the air with a sweet scent of floral honey. Right now the Pussywillows are already turning to flower, bringing bits of yellow to the Willows, and the cottony buds of the Star Magnolia are just about ready to burst into a white frilly show of flowers. The Early Blooming Currant are making quite a show around neighborhoods in these parts, and the yellow Forsythia is soon to follow. Our bulbs are all peeking out of the ground, and next week, as the outdoor temperatures reach 50, the daffodils, crocus, and hyacinth, are sure to bloom.
Favorite Late Winter Garden Blooms
White Heather
Hellebores
False Turkey Tail Mushrooms
Pussywillow
Nettle
One of the many reasons I wanted to live on Fobes Hill.
When I was young we would come out to cruise the hill and visit family. Along the way were farm stands full of eggs, and raw milk, honey, flowers, and whatever fruits and veggies were in season. Though it waned for a while, and I sorely miss the Lavender stand that was just up the road from me, some of the old stands still exist and a resurgence of flower farms and nurseries are dotting the hill once again. I love driving along 83rd and finding the hood of this old car open. It means there are fresh chicken and duck eggs. Honey, jam, and candles too!
Fobes Hill Farm offers Chickens and Eggs as well. I follow them on instagram to find out when fresh eggs are available at the road side stand, and order chickens on their website.
This is a month full of wild astrology, planetary happenings, and numerology. It is full of feast days and spring celebrations, it is a month charged with wild energy, breaking us out of our shells and thrusting us into the light that is growing by two minutes and seven seconds each day until the peak of summert. According to the Farmer’s Almanac, there are 11 Palindrome days this month. In case you are unaware of this numerological phenomenon, these are the dates that read the same forward and backward.
Palindromes exist in nature and that is a theory of biology related to DNA that is of no consequence to this theory of dates. Much information abounds on the significance of these sequences. One suggests that it’s a nice tidy little flow of symmetry that is intriguing. One suggests that it represents hope and the presence of angels. This is reminiscent of the many rainbows we will see this month, a symbol of hope and renewal and the gold (or peace, or fulfillment, or abundance) we will find at the end of that rainbow.
At 4am on March 7th the full moon comes to its peak here in Snohomish, Washington. This is called the Full Worm Moon and indeed as the afternoons creep into the 50s, the worms will come to the surface. My yard will be littered with birds and the chickens will grow plump. The Spring Symphony will return as well. A chorus of frog song with an inconsistent chirp of bat and an intermittent screech of owl. Their song will flood the landscape with a soundtrack for golden sunsets.
https://www.farmersalmanac.com/its-palindrome-day14486#:~:text=Palindrome%20Dates%20In%202023&text=For%20example %2C%20in%202023%2C%20there,20%2F3%2F23%20qualify.
While I have many favorite foraging and herbal gurus, these are two books I’m focusing on at present. I am enrolled in Juliet Blankesnpuor’s Chestnut School of Herbs, learning about so many of the wild herbs that show up in my gardens, commonly referred to as weeds. Her book, The Healing Garden is a superb introduction to herb gardening and everyday herbal use. You can follow chestnut school of herbs on Instagram as well.
I follow Dina Falconi religiously. I have had her book for the ten years it’s been published. She has delightful content for free and behind a paywall at WildKitchen.com and is on Instagram.
Foraging and Feasting is full of botanical diagrams of the wild foods available to most of us across the U.S. I delight in pulling the book out to help me identify and learn to use the wild edible in my garden.
While I got through raising teenagers with wine and potato chips, my mom got through it by running. For her 60th bday we ran a 10k, roughly 6 miles, and for her
70th she wanted to run a 7k. So, prompted by my dad, and hosted by we four daughters, was her Flaming 7’s 70th Birthday 7k. We had an absolute blast, and I think she delighted at being able to run while her 50 year old friends walked due to body ailments, and I am absolutely positive that she felt absolutely validated by running faster than her pack of teenage grandsons.
Her ability to stay physically active has been a valuable education for her grandchildren. She kayaks all year round, she walks, hikes, or runs several miles each day. She scales mountain peaks like a billy goat, delighting at how pumped she is at the top. She scurries down hill from elevations that leave me with jelly legs. She is our lifestyle guru for certain.
She is a savvy investor as well, pinning Starbucks, just when it went public, as the key to a healthy financial future. As well as designing and building two homes that she and dad quickly owned outright. She has kept many businesses in La Conner afloat with her talented bookkeeping skills. And from time to time she teaches herself a new computer language, just because. She paid her way back to school when we were young by having an in-home daycare and weekend waitressing. She got a computer programming degree when my youngest sister was a toddler. My parents felt that it was important for us to see her graduate.
All of her children are college educated, and so far all of her grandchildren are college educated, military, or college bound. She has come into her own at 70, recognizing her feats, and feeling appropriately proud. Not bad for a gal coming from a generation who had been pretty beat up by sexism and the leftovers of the Vietnam War. Go. Mom.
Maple Sugaring
And a monologue on the practice of hyperlocal eating I was a huge fan of Laura Ingalls Wilder in my youth . I even read through the Little House series during Covid to re-acquaint myself with the homesteading ways of the Ingalls family. My favorite scene has always been from Little House in the Big Woods. The scene when they tap the maple trees and make maple candy and maple snow cones and pa fiddles the night away.
It tracks, then, that when I dreamed up moving to this house, I dreamed of a house with windows in a strange room that connected the kitchen to the backdoor. Through the windows a sea of Maple Trees glowed golden and orange and brown with Autumn leaves. That strange room is my instafamous pantry, and those trees can be seen out the window, above the sink there, on the way out the back door. Lest you think you can’t foretell the future in dreams, think again.
When I spied the maple grove in this yard I knew I would be tapping these trees. And, to my wonder, the family that built this house planted a Sugar Maple right alongside the PNW natives. I bought maple tapping supplies right away so that we could tap the trees that winter.
different, earthy, with a slight hint of brown sugar, and an even slighter hint of maple, it’s a practice that is indeed revered. You can now find Big Leaf Maple syrup and even PNW Birch Syrup at some more adventurous farm’s markets. In fact, my sister gifted me a bottle she found at a market last summer.
I’m sure it comes as no surprise that the First Nations people here, the Snohomish Nation in fact, tapped the trees in order to drink the sap as a spring tonic, partaking in the mineral rich waters that flow from the trees in late winter. I consulted one of my favorite books, Ethnobotany of Western Washington: The Knowledge and Use of Indigenous Plants by Native Americans, by Erna Gunther, published in 1945, to make certain of that fact.
I sipped the waters to aid in the dehydration and rehydration of a colonoscopy. The waters are currently being touted as an excellent replacement for coconut water and electrolyte drinks.
This year marks only the 3rd time in 7 seasons that we have tapped the trees, but it has been our most successful. I have rendered roughly 13 cups of syrup from the two weeks of tapping.
You might be wondering about tapping our Big Leaf Maples, can it possibly be the same as the sweet maple stuff we get from the east coast? Though the syrup is
It is a tedious and messy process, and our stovetop has certainly suffered the consequences. Still, it is an effort that is simply satisfying. It brings my husband and I such joy to partake in the sustenance that wild foods have to offer. Using what nature provides feels as if we are becoming one with the living breathing thing that is Earth. It feels as if we are accepting the offer of Life itself, and we are so grateful for it.
There is a time and place for store bought wonders, for big agriculture, and modern and even global food
systems. I love celebrating citrus season and tropical fruits for instance, and our modern food system expediently and most of the time, efficiently, provides calories for a ridiculously large number of people. But, to practice this hyperlocal effort of gleaning as much fuel and medicine from the earth as possible, right here on our “Home Dirt” is a practice that we find fulfilling, and important.
In this effort we are remembering the days of food sovereignty that the first nations enjoyed. We are holding the memories of living with and honoring nature, memories that we hope to pass down to future generations. We are participating in a movement to eat mindfully and slowly, to heal thyself, as we detoxify ourselves from years and years of eating food like things, and very little real food. By partaking in this practice of growing and foraging our own food, on our own property, we get to honor the rhythm of the seasons, and even look forward to winter and it’s prospect of Maple Tapping.
There may come a day when we need this knowledge again, for survival. And for now, it is a pathway out of sickness and into health, away from food waste, and away from chemicals, and away from unhealthy processing systems, and away from wide scale food borne illness outbreaks. And honestly, it’s just very entertaining, these sort of pursuits are my passion, aligned somehow with the work I’m supposed to be doing in this world.
So, while I’m not going to waltz about like a slow food prophet, suggesting that everyone should give their life over to living this seasonal rhythm, and I’m not going to suggest that you partner in community with others to send some out to make money and keep some home to
forage and cook, to keep hearth, even if I think these increasing Agrarian communities are quite rad. I am just going to continue to share the ways we create our own little sustainable food efforts full of vitality and flavor to tickle your senses. And maybe, just maybe, when you do finally get to slow down, and pay closer attention to what you consume, to notice the changing of the seasons, to want to really taste real food, to feel the way that your body and mind react to it, you might want to know how to practice this kind of living, too.
Without further ado, here a few pics of our Maple Sugaring Experience:
A bucket full of our first batch of sap
Sap on the stove, looks and tastes like barely sweet water.
The First Batch of rendered syrup had a decadent caramel taste and a light toasty color:
We had 5 trees tapped this year
Sap boiling away
Seven hot packed syrups sealed in Mason Jars
Forgotten sap left to boil to long while we worked on the new greenhouse. This turned into a decadent sandy caramel.
Sap boiled down with pear and pecans. The best experiment.
Eaten over Pumpkin Oat Pancakes
Sap in Weck jars headed to the freezer
Divine
Found and Foraged Pesto
Here atop our little hill on top of Fobes Hill the ground was once a dark mass of soil peppered with leaf litter. That dark earth is now contrasted by the deep green of new plant life. Many of these plants are commonly referred to as weeds; however, many of them are fabulously nutritious wild foods.
Currently available for food are: Nettle, Purple Dead Nettle, Chickweed, DayLily Shoots (Hemerocallis fulva, the orange and yellow) Dandelion Greens and Roots, Lambs Quarters, and Woolly Lambs Ear.
As much as we love foraging for these first spring greens, we love Pesto. Well, we love any of the green sauces, Pistous, Salsa Verdes, Sauces of Green, or however you wish to think of them; the green things that are pummeled into submission with various flavor and texture elements.
Pesto seems to be one of the green sauces that everyone understands: A little Basil, a little Olive Oil, a few Pine Nuts, a little Parmesan. What everyone doesn’t know is that Pesto is just Peasant Food. It’s meant as a sauce to make seasonally using what you got!
And this season, I got wild greens. In abundance is Nettle.
on top of Farro with Roasted Veggies
Wild Greens Pesto
To make this pesto is all too simple:
1. Harvest roughly 2 cups of greens
2. Wash greens and remove tough woody stems. I like to use a salad spinner to wash my greens: Soak, Rinse, Drain, Spin. If using nettle, blanch the leaves in hot water for barely a minute in order to distill the sting. **
3. Put greens in the food processor or high speed blender; add roughly half a cup of nuts, I used Pecans. Half a cup of grated cheese, I used Pecorino. Squeeze in half a lemon, reserve the rest for adding to taste. Add a few Garlic Cloves, don’t even bother removing the skin. Add a Pinch of Hot Chili Flakes. Add a Pinch of Black Pepper. Add a few Tablespoons of a fruity or peppery Olive Oil to start.
4. Blend. Taste. Add more lemon if you want tartness, add more heat if you like, add more garlic if you’re not tasting it, add more salt if need be. Add liquid as needed to get to desired consistency.
5. Blend, taste again. Remember that as mixtures like this sit, the flavors become entangled and more pronounced, so while you adjust things to taste think of how they might become overpowering when left to linger.
6. Use as a dip, as condiment, as marinade. Slather it over Salmon before baking. Rub it on Cod and poach in parchment. Settle a few seared Scallops on top of it. Make homemade Sweet Potato Fries and dip ‘em, do what you will!!
This keeps great in the refrigerator for a week. It also freezes really well. Do cover the top with a little extra olive oil lest it browns.
**For this batch I used Nettle, Chickweed, Woolly Lambs Ear, and Dandelion Greens
Natural Snail and Slug Control
As you may have guessed, I’m not one to go spreading Sluggo all around my landscape. Though it’s touted as not killing beneficial insects, only targeting the bad, I am loathe to believe this is true. And I certainly don’t want the product dusted by my food. And it’s a practice I don’t support, the use of chemicals at all. What we do here is akin to Permaculture. We are attempting to convert this space which was once over watered, over fertilized, and over sprayed, to care for itself, with some, of course, but little need for interference from we mere humans.
I love love love love Hostas
Especially this hosta. I can see it from my living room window all the way out to the pathway in front of my gazebo. She is a stunner.
I also have snails, and slugs.
Hostas are great independent growers, and, they are a magnet for leaf eating critters. In fact, the Hosta leaves and flowers are edible for us as well. Its sprouts are said to be especially delicious. Surprisingly, I’ve yet to try them.
At any rate, the snail population when we moved into this place was absolutely impressive. The dogs had a heyday munching on them throughout the day. The sprinkler system provided year round moisture to foster their growth and the neglected soil, naked of mulch for many years, and bare of plants in many places, allowed them to roam freely from plant to plant. They seemed to enjoy living in the Lemon Balm and the Boxwood Shrubs the most.
Garden Snakes are hand critters when it comes to controlling slugs, especially. And we had a whole lot of slugs showing up on rainy days. In past gardens the presence of garden snakes were always visible once the slug scene hit, but I saw none that first growing season, nor even the second, and no birds seemed to linger in the space where the raised gardens stand. This seemed so strange to me as there are large cedars to nest under to the west and a wonderful hiding place
underneath the hedge of red cedar at the southern border of this garden space.
I intended this space for my herb gardens, and I just so happened to know that if I planted herbs as hedges, at edges, in cracks, and spreading in between plants to cover the bare soil, that I could eventually resolve many of my slug and snail problems. By planting hardy drought tolerant evergreen perennial herbs, I could turn the sprinklers off and discourage their moist habitat amongst the shrubs. By planting pungent herbs that most creeping crawling critters don’t like, I could form a barrier for sensitive plants like Hosta.
I am happy to announce that this effort has worked. I am also able to plant “enough” having expanded the garden spaces to bring in more perennial pungent herbs. Now, when i do spot a slug laying eggs in my garden bed, I can simply toss her into the massive lemon balm and let her have it, there is enough for us to share. But, she is unimpressed with the mint that also grows there and goes to find a less pungent home. And now, it seems, I have encouraged biodiversity in this little section of garden. I have snakes nests littered about, and birds visit constantly. Worms crawl under the loose soil. I can only think that it is because I have fixed what was once clay soil, the top soil washed off long ago by the consistent sprinkling in the dry season, by bringing in loads of mulch. The mulch that inhibits the parade of slugs and snails due to its bumpy and impractical surface, has also encouraged tilth in my soil increasing the movement of beneficial bugs and insects that till the earth. These critters then become a siren song to birds who come to eat the slim critters that once were killed off by weed suppressants and fertilizers. Inviting this beneficial web of life into the garden area means that when nonbeneficial critters show up to ravage the roses or eat the kale, or bed in the cabbage, that the birds can readily sup them up and away from my tender food and of course, my beautiful leafy plants.
While a perfectly groomed garden looks neat, I am more prone to the Wild and Unruly, full of creepy crawly things that find their own balance eventually.
Think of the pungent herbs that you too can plant next to and within your hostas and roses to keep the creepy crawly things away.
Lavender, Thyme, Sage, and Rosemary are all good Perennial options and here are a few more:
Plant White Chive
Picture courtesy of Eden Brothers Seeds
___________________________
Plant Borders of Lemon Thyme
just toss your slugs into the neighbors yard;) _________________________
Plant Carpets of Red Thyme that bloom in spring and fall and create a natural mulch
Pictured here are Garlic Scapes, a wonderful Spring Time food. Plant Garlic or Shallots or Bunching Onions in between your roses and sensitive plants to keep critters and even some fungus away!
Pic Courtesy of American Meadows
Oh! St. Pat’s Day
There is nary a hint of Irish in me, but boy do I love St. Patrick’s Day. It is a harbinger of spring with its pots of gold and rainbows. Its Shamrocks and little Leprechauns and wearing o’ the green. It’s a feast day for the Saint that’s said to have driven the snakes out of Ireland and purportedly raised people from the dead. He somehow has usurped the lovely Saint Brigid who founded the guild of nuns of Kildare, or purportedly they did it together. But at any rate, it’s a feast day that existed long before the Catholics. It was Ostara, a celebration for the Spring Equinox, which is just 4 days away from this more popular celebrated feast day. The pagans, you know people who lived with the seasons and honored the cycles of the earth, celebrated the goddess Eostre during this time (Easter anyone??) the goddess of spring and new beginnings.
I do love a good feast day and St. Patrick’s is no different, no matter its stolen beginnings. My husband’s family used to hold the most wonderful St. Pat’s dinners. Tables were set all over the living room at my husband’s grandparent’s house and all kinds of family joined in the feast, my mother in law took over once Besta could no longer do the chore. The menu always stayed the same:
Corned Beef Brisket with a crusty Brown Sugar Mustard Crust
Boiled Cabbage and Potatoes served with Malt Vinegar and Sour Cream
Fried Chicken for the unadventurous Soda Bread
Mile High Strawberry Pie
Creme De Menthe Pie
And Dewars Scotch Whiskey was always served
For one reason and another those dinners no longer come together with all the folks that used to attend, and I even typically spend St. Pat’s Day by myself these days. But if I have a hankering, which I always do, no matter who is or isn’t in attendance, I will spend the day making up a Lamb and Guinness Stew and a few loaves of Soda Bread too. I will blast a playlist of Irish tunes and sip on Irish Whiskey. I will probably make a lemon curd to celebrate the coming on of eggs. I will most definitely have the doors open to celebrate the first 50 degree days. I will decorate the countertops with yellow daffodils. I will find real live cultured buttermilk to make my soda bread with. I will make or buy some really good butter to slather on warm, thick slices of that bread. I will buy a shamrock plant, or two. I will light candles. I will decorate for spring!
This is a rough sketch of how I make my lamb stew, I cannot devise a recipe because so much is dependent on the cut of lamb I use, or which root veggies I use. It’s a dance with the flavor and ingredients, dependent on how bitter the beer is, how sweet the veggies, how maillard the meat.
I begin by choosing a bone-in style of lamb, it’s dependent on what I can quickly find, whether it’s a leg or steaks or some other type of roast, or how my lamb came cut that year as I’m typically at the whim of my butcher even if I ask for specific cuts.
I strip the meat from the bones.
The bones go in a pot with many branches of Rosemary, a few branches of Sage, several twigs of Thyme, a couple Bay Leaves, half an Onion, a few Garlic Cloves. This steeps away as I prep my vegetables and meat.
I chunk up a few Potatoes, a few Carrots, and possibly a Parsnip, Turnip,and/or Rutabaga or two, depending on what I have or depending on my mood.
I set these aside.
I typically make a mirepoix of chopped Onion, Celery, and Carrot. I small dice all of these and set them aside.
I then cube the meat into ½ to 1 inch pieces. Then, I dredge the meat pieces through a mixture of flour seasoned with salt and pepper.
I warm a stockpot on the stove, add olive oil once it’s nice and hot, then add the coated stew meat in single layers, crisping the crust that forms on the meat. I remove the meat to a platter.
I deglaze that meaty oily mess with a bit of the simmering lamb broth and add my mirepoix.
I gently sautee the mirepoix with a bit of broth, instead of adding more oil, until the vegetables are tender, adding just little amounts of broth as needed so that the mixture doesn’t burn.
I add the meat back to the pan.
I add the broth.
I add a can or bottle or two of Guinness.
Does this batch need a bit of Worcestershire sauce to add to the meaty-ness?
Does it need a bit of Onion powder to create some depth?
Does it need a bit more garlic?
Is it too bitter?
Should I add a hint of sweet, or perhaps the carrots will add the sweet that it needs.
I turn the heat to low, go out to the yard to do the year’s first weeding, and wait for the ingredients to meld together.
I taste again before serving, asking myself the same questions as I did before.
It’s probably perfect, so I’ll just dig in, dipping warm buttered Soda Bread into the stew as needed.
I add the vegetable chunks.
I fill the pan with broth.
I taste.
Do I need more salt?
More pepper?
More Rosemary?
I have been tinkering with my soda bread recipe for oh so many years. Every year the ingredients from the stores seem to change. Some years the soda seems dormant, without flavor or activity, some years it's wildly active and overpowering. Sometimes I can find real raw living cultured buttermilk, and sometimes I can find none. During covid I had to use the reconstituted powdered variety. My flour choices are different each year. I’ve been using local whole wheat varieties and they tend to soak up the flavor, so I need more salt and more sugar, but less soda, somehow. The wilder the cultures in the buttermilk the more the soda activates, and the more the bread rises. It’s a dance of ingredients that used to be consistent from year to year, but that is the pleasure of cooking, of exploring new sources for ingredients, and to investigate the nuances of new things! So here is this year's version, which seems to
work for me, but it might not for you, so adjust accordingly.
These loaves are so quick to throw together, I often make several batches. I make some plain, and some seeded, some fruited, some with nuts, you never know what you might cut into!
Donata's Soda Bread
3 cups Flour
1teaspoon Baking Soda
1 teaspoon Salt
1 tablespoon Sugar
1 ½ cups Buttermilk
add ins: 2 tablespoons Caraway Seed and/or 1/2 cup Currants, or one tablespoon Dill. I have even added sunflower seeds, grated carrots, and grated zucchini a time or two. This dough is incredibly forgiving, the cooking time may just need a bit of adjusting if you add wet ingredients like grated vegetables.
*Sift the dry ingredients together.
*Add the Buttermilk.
*Mix gently with a fork until the dough forms a ball
*Knead loose flour mixture from the bottom of the bowl, add a little more milk as needed.
Do Not Overmix.
This is an imperfect process because it it very dependent on the flour you’re using and the consistency of the buttermilk.
*Form Dough into a semi circle.
*Cut a cross into the top about ½ inch deep. Place the round of dough on a baking sheet and bake at 400 degrees for roughly 40 minutes.
