I just grew shallots.

Lovely, delicious shallots.

Which, I am happy to report are even easier to grow than garlic which is easier to grow than onions, especially if you grow them from bulbs rather than seed. (Though in the years to come, I’m going to attempt to grow them from seed, too.)

Some people eschew shallots, swearing that people cannot tell the difference between their flavor and that of onions, but I disagree. Especially in Thai recipes, such as Thai Basil Chicken the flavor of shallots is necessary, for they are milder than onions with a lingering sweetness that really brings a depth to the sauce that is lacking from onions. (Though, I have found that if you are going to substitute onions for shallots, try using smaller younger onions–they have a bit more sugar in them and not as much of the sulfurous scent that gives onions their characteristic bite.)

Without shallots, the above recipe, which is Zak’s favorite dish of all time, I think, the dish lacks depth. The sugar in the shallots that caramelizes so quickly in the wok really is magical. And last night, when I made it for the first time with my own shallots, I found that freshly harvested shallots are even sweeter and more delectable than the ones found in the store.

Only one farm family that I know of grows shallots around here commercially (That would be Kim and Larry of Cowdery Farm), and they don’t have them very often, so I decided last fall to give shallots a try. I figured since I hate using the ones from the grocery store from who knows where grown who knows how, and I do have a community garden plot, it should be no trouble for me to experiment with a pound of shallot bulbs.

Territorial Seed Company carries shallot bulbs and seeds both, and they have an admirable selection of both. This year, I grew Sante shallots; next year I am growing them as well as some Dutch Yellow and Gray shallots.

They really are easy to grow.

In the fall, you plant shallots (round end down and pointed end up!) in soil rich in organic matter about six inches apart with the pointed end either at soil level or only slightly below. They are shallow rooted. Water them well, and then mulch well with straw or other organic matter. If the winter is mild, you might see some green sprouts unfurling about February, but they really look like they’re never going to grow until suddenly springy leaf-green shoots start popping up reliably where you planted them. It doesn’t take them long to really start growing like mad, so long as you keep them moderately moist (don’t over-water or under-water) and feed them now and again with some side dressings of compost, manure, worm castings or fish emulsion.

No pests bother shallots. Deer don’t think they’re tasty. Bugs don’t like them. slugs hate them. They can get a bit overly wet and catch a fungus or mold in the bulbs–in that case, if it’s raining too much, pull back the mulch to let the water evaporate a bit. If it isn’t raining enough, like this year, you’ll be happy for the mulch. (I used wheat straw. But chopped up fallen leaves are great, too, or grass clippings or what have you.)

They grow pretty fast to about three feet, and they set pretty white globular blossoms. (You can see in the picture here my shallots with their guardian gnome standing watch.) You harvest them when the tops start dying back, which happened here in July, though I am led to believe that this was early for them. You just pull them up and cut off the stalks about four inches up from the bulbs, and then set them in a dry, cool, airy place to dry out for a week or so.

You’ll find that they grow in clumps, with each bulb you planted having at least two, but most often three to five bulbs growing along side it, sometimes attached to it, and sometimes not. If they are attached, pry them apart, and dust off as much dirt as possible before setting them to dry.

And that’s it. That’s how to grow shallots.

Now, what do you do with them? Well, I suggest you try my Thai Basil Chicken recipe above, but shallots are great in other recipes, too. They classically used in vinaigrette and Bearnaise sauce in French cookery and I think they taste just stunning in a stir fry.

They’re good roasted and eaten just by themselves, too.

So, there we are–I’m a Lady of Shallots, and now, you can be one too.

Unless you’re a guy. Then, you get to be Lord of Shallots.

Now if I can just get someone to write a poem about me….

But however you pronounce it, tomatoes are among American’s favorite garden vegetables.

I adore them, myself. But only ones grown in the summer, in gardens, locally. Those tomato-shaped and vaguely tomato-scented things in the grocery store that are as hard as baseballs and vibrantly colored as as insipid and watery in flavor as they ever were, though it is true they have improved in looks over the past couple of decades.

Here’s a recent harvest from our community garden plot.

Above you can see four of the varieties we are growing.

The green ones are ripe, though they are green inside and out–those are an open-pollinated variety called “Green Zebra.” Often considered an heirloom because it is open-pollinated, (which means you can save the seeds from one year to the next and they will breed true–when you plant them, you will get plants that bear the green and yellow, zesty fruit you had the year before) the Green Zebra was developed in 1983 by Tom Wagner in Everett, Washington. Characterized by a yellow and green striped skin and a kiwi-green interior, these small tomatoes are tangy and zesty in flavor with a good acid/sugar balance, and look beautiful sliced or cut into wedges in salads.

“Green Zebra” is a prolific tomato that ripens earlier than many larger than cherry tomato-sized cultivars. My two plants are LOADED with fruit and I have to pick them every other day to avoid them over-ripening and rotting on the vine.

I have to admit to trying the little red and orange striped tomatoes pictured with Green Zebra above because they’d look pretty on the plate together. This stripey variety is a new hybrid from Burpee called “Red Lightning,” and is meant to be an improvement on the heirloom, “Red Zebra.” I will say the vines are heavy with fruit, so heavy that they pulled my stakes down to the ground and broke them. I left them to clamber after that, feeling too tired to play with staking them all over again. These fruits ripen slower than Green Zebra, and the flavor is milder and sweeter. Overall–it is a pretty fruit, but not the tastiest I’ve ever eaten. I may try to grow it again in different soil and see if that improves the flavor–if it doesn’t, I won’t grow it again.

The tiny orange-yellow cherry tomatoes are Kat’s favorites–the celebrated hybrid “Sungold.” This is one of the most prolific of cherry tomatoes I’ve ever grown, and it is hardy, tough, tolerant of container plantings, tolerant of too much rain (though if there is a lot of rain once fruiting commences, the tender skin of these tomatoes will crack easily) and mildew infestations, and will produce until finally done in by a good hard frost. As for the flavor of these little glowing gems–in the sunlight they look positively incandescent, and that’s saying a lot because I really dislike yellow as a color–they are sweet as candy. This, I suspect, is why Kat loves them so much. But it is a musky sweetness that isn’t just like eating tomato-flavored sugar–thus I like them, too. They are pretty as well; on the inside they sport a green gel around the seeds that contrasts with the golden flesh and skin.

My favorite tomatoes that I grew this year, however, are the “Cherokee Purple.” These huge plants with stalks as big around as my thumb, are loaded with heavy beefsteak-style fruits that are burgundy red on the bottom, with contrasting green shoulders. “Cherokee Purple” is my favorite heirloom variety of all (with Black Krim coming in at a close second)–the dark violet-red varieties all seem to have a deep, musky, rich flavor and scent that is out of this world delicious. Not too sweet, not too acidic, these tomatoes are delicious on their own, but they really shine when made into salsa or gazpacho, especially when mixed with other tomato varieties because they add a depth of flavor that is irresistibly seductive.

Some people may find these purple and black types of tomatoes to be ugly–they do tend to have odd shapes and their colors are not what one expects if one is only used to red and every now and then, yellow tomatoes. I, however, find them to be not only tasty beyond belief, but beautiful, but then, I do have a rather unusual aesthetic sense when it comes to food. I like bright, bold color combinations in food, which goes along with my love for bright, bold flavors.

I’m also growing the heirloom “Amish Paste” tomatoes in my plot, but mine have just now started ripening. Morganna’s however, are fruiting like there’s no tomorrow. She declined to stake her tomato plants and so they are clambering all around the ground in a big tangle of vines–which I have to say is how my Grandpa grew his tomatoes, too–and they are vigorous and healthy with no sign of any mildew problems whatsoever.

How do the growth rates and disease resistance compare between the heirloom, open pollinated varieties and the hybrids in our garden plots?

One of the big advantages to growing hybrids is that many of them have been bred with disease resistance in mind–but truly–all of my tomatoes have succumbed to mildew problems due to a rainy two and a half months in the late spring and early summer. I say succumbed, but, really, it hasn’t slowed the growth of the plants or their fecundity. They are still growing huge stalks with lots of fresh green growth above the mildew-damaged branches and they are fruiting madly. And this is equally true for both the hybrid and the heirloom varieties–they all seem tough and hardy, and very resilient in the face of Colorado Potato Beetle infestations and damp conditions.

So, for me, the jury is still out on whether hybrids are better growers than heirlooms. This means that I’ll continue to grow the varieties that I think taste the best and do the best in our garden conditions. Next year, I may also just let my tomatoes ramble about like Morganna has done, though I’m not as sure about that as I’d like to be. I have to note that slugs love tomatoes as much as we humans do, and I’ve seen at least three of her scarlet fruits eaten hollow by slugs who had no trouble getting to them as they were on the ground, as if waiting to be devoured by those slimy little devils.

Now that I’ve had my say on tomatoes–what are your favorite varieties to grow and why?

Why the rhyme?

I dunno.

Except, that somehow, the combination of those three ingredients -does- taste like sunshine. Like warm summer sunshine in a garden filled with flowers and buzzing bees. Really. Put the three together and then cook it and slather it on anything, and suddenly, even if its midwinter, you’ll feel like you’re hanging out with the bees, humming along and sipping nectar.

It’s the damnedest thing.

And if it actually -is- summer, and you use it on vegetables you just harvested from your garden, and pork from a local farmer, well, hot damn! It’s like summer inside, outside and all around.

I reckon you could use this sauce to make anything, but I did it as a stir fry with zucchini, haricot vert (those are wee tiny slender French green beans) and some beautiful multicolored (red and yellow) carrots, all of which were plucked, picked and pulled out of our garden by Kat. The pork was a single solitary pork chop that really only served to add a little protein and extra flavor to the vegetables and rice that we ate with it–but I have to say that the next time I grill pork–I reckon some version of this sauce will show slathered all over it. Same could be said for grilled eggplant. Or braised chicken. Or baked salmon. Or portabello mushroom caps stuffed with spelt pilaf and baked.

I don’t usually put zucchini into stir fries here at home, not because it isn’t good in stir fried dishes, but because Zak, until recently, (like until two days ago) didn’t like zucchini under any circumstances. So, I really only cooked it for myself, or myself and Morganna when she lived here, or myself and guests, always in separate dishes. BUT, because Kat picked this zucchini with her own little hands, she wanted to taste it and in order to support her on trying a new food, Zak said he’d try it to.

Woo hoo! And to the kitchen, I galumphed and promptly went to work with my knife.

Since the haricot vert are so slender, I used them as the basis for how I cut all the other vegetables–and the meat–which means I cut everything into thin julienne strips. To do this with either carrots or zucchini, or in fact, with anything cylindrical, is simpler than it would seem. All you have to do is make diagonal horizontal slices that are thin oval shapes first, then stack those and cut them into thin vertical slices. That’s all. Not hard, huh?

Meat is a bit harder to cut so thinly. The best way is to partially freeze the meat so you can cut it into thin horizontal slices, and then cut them into vertical strips, just like you did with the firmer vegetables. If you meat is thawed all the way, it simply is a beast to try and cut like that. Be patient and firm it all up in the freezer before you start.

The cutting is all the hard part–the rest is perfectly simple. Toss the meat in a bit of tamari, which is a Japanese style of soy sauce that doesn’t contain any wheat. It’s just fermented soybeans. Add some mirin–that is a sweetened rice wine, also from Japan–and then toss in some cornstarch and mix it all up until a thick marinade coats the meat.

Then, make a bit of sauce–mix together some more tamari and mirin, then add a little bit of vegetable broth or chicken stock, some honey and a goodly amount of shiro miso–that’s white miso–which is a mild, fragrant fermented soybean paste, and whisk it all together until it’s smooth.

Then, get ready and fire up the wok–because dinner is almost done.

How did they like the zucchini?

Well, Kat loved the sauce. She ate extra over her rice, which was exceptional for her, because she usually likes her rice plain. And she loved the beans and the carrots and ate inordinate amounts of them. And the pork was very much to her liking.

But, the zucchini–alas–was not her thing.

Zak tried the zucchini and declared it, “Inoffensive.” Which is a lot coming from him. (It wasn’t until the next day when I sauteed a zuke in just plain old good olive oil and salted it well at the end that he declared it, “Downright tasty,” and ate several pieces of it.)

As for me–I ate up the zucchini from the dish that they didn’t eat, and gladly, because it was delectable with this sauce combination. Especially after I added a little bit of toasted sesame oil at the end–it became almost my favorite way to cook and eat zucchini. I say almost, because I still like it best with just some olive oil, salt and maybe a fresh herb or two.

Anyway, here’s the recipe for a dish that would be just as good if you substituted a good pressed tofu for the pork.

Summer Vegetables and Pork with Tamari,-Miso-Honey Sauce
Ingredients:

They are the Holy Trinity of the First Peoples.

Corn, beans and squash.

There are many Native American tales, most of them originating among the Eastern tribes, about the Three Sisters. Some say that they existed as soon as land was separated from the sea. The Iroquois tell that they sprang from the body of Sky Woman’s (the mother of all humanity) daughter, after she died in childbirth. After she was buried, three plant sisters sprang up from the ground–one tall and dressed in pale green with long yellow hair, another who loved to hug and cling to her big sister, with a yellowish green dress dotted with purple and white flowers, and the third who was so young she could only crawl on the ground who wore a dark green dress, and liked to circle her sisters’ ankles and playfully pat their dresses. These three sisters fed the sons of Sky Woman’s daughter, and later, the rest of humanity, but they never, ever liked to be taken one from the other.

Always the Three Sisters stayed together, and if their wishes to be never parted were respected by their human brothers and sisters, they would reward them with great harvests and full bellies.

I may not look it myself, being pale of skin, hair and yes, but I am of Cherokee ancestry, and so I’ve always had a great respect and love for the ways of the First Peoples of our nation. When I was a Girl Scout, way back in the day, one of the first merit badges I chose to fulfill was the American Indian one–and as part of my work to earn that badge, I planted a small version of a Cherokee-style Three Sisters garden at my Grandma and Grandpa’s farm. They let me have a little plot of land where I made three round, flat-topped mounds, spaced the way the Cherokee did when they lived in the East, and these I planted over three successive weekends, with corn, beans and then squash.

The corn is planted first in the center of the mound, in a circle–and is allowed to sprout and begin to reach for the sky with its long, strap-like leaves. Then, the beans are planted in a circle around the corn. After the beans sprout, along the outside edges of the mound, squashes or pumpkins are planted.

This interplanting technique makes a great deal of sense from a scientific standpoint.

Corn is tall and straight, but is a heavy feeder, requiring a great deal of nitrogen in the soil to be healthy. Beans need something strong and stout to climb, because their vines will otherwise clamber on the ground and never reach the sun. So, they hug and twine up the corn stalks and thus reach upward for sunlight. They also fix nitrogen from the air in their roots, making it available for the corn to feed from. Squash vines don’t climb, but instead clamber over the ground, forming a living mulch that keeps the roots of both the beans and the corn cool, retaining moisture and retarding weed growth. They also have prickly vines and leaves, which helps keep marauding animals like raccoons out of the vegetable patch as the corn and beans ripen.

Harvest was a time of joy and celebration, with all the tribe, women, men and children, working together to bring in the mature vegetables. The complete proteins provided by the corn and beans nourished the people through their harvest and the winter, while the squash, baked in the fire with bear grease and maple syrup or honey from “The White Man’s Flies,” (honeybees!) provided vitamins and minerals to their diet.

When the season was over, the dying plants were chopped up with hoes and then dug back into the soil, replenishing it with fresh organic matter, enriching the soil for the next year’s crops.

This ancient form of farming works just as well today as it did hundreds and even thousands of years ago. While the founding of this method of intercropping is lost to us and is only commemorated in myths and stories, the techniques are just as accessible and sustainable as they were when they were first used.

My daughter, Morganna, who looks way more Cherokee than I do, decided this year to plant a Three Sisters garden in order to test out how well it worked in a small Community Garden plot as well as to both feel closer to her ancestors and feed herself and her household.

She prepared the ground herself, and though she didn’t use mounds of earth, she did plant in the proper sequence. Tight rows of corn first, then when they sprouted, beans surrounding the corn, then when the beans came up, squash along the edges of the rows. She chose to plant Silver Queen corn, various pole beans that can be eaten fresh and dried, and varieties of summer and winter squash, cucumbers, watermelon and good baking pumpkins. At every stage of the planting, she prayed and danced, and she sang and talked to her plants, hoeing and weeding until the garden grew big enough to create its own living mulch.

A generous third of her plot is taken up by the Three Sisters. The rest of it is tomatoes, peppers and eggplants, and potatoes and sweet potatoes intercropped, with sunflowers, herbs, cabbages and brussels sprouts along the periphery.

The garden has grown amazingly well–now the corn is taller than she is, and is starting to show tassels, while the beans are obediently climbing their way to the sun, and are just now starting to make purple and white blossoms. The squashes are not only blossoming, but setting fruit–she cut four zucchini yesterday and there are more to cut this weekend. Every plant is healthy, happy and productive and she is going to get an amazing amount of food from her twenty by eighteen foot plot this year. She and I already have plans for how to improve yields next year, and how to interplant even more effectively.

We’ll be combining both of our plots together next year–I’ll dismantle all but two of my raised beds, and this fall, we’ll till in compost and aged manure, then we’ll sow a cover crop. Next year, we’ll decide how much of the combined plots we should plant as a Three Sisters garden and plan for other crops around that central traditional plot.

Growing beans, corn and squashes this way really is simple, and it results in a very pretty, productive garden. I can’t recommend this style of gardening enough for people who want to try growing vegetables in ways different than the long rows of monocropping that we are used to seeing in fields all over the country.

While herbicide contamination in commercial compost seems to have stunted many of my plants, it hasn’t stopped my six raised beds at the Westside Community Garden from producing decent crops.

Many of my radish plants have stunted, twisted roots, but I do have a big beet ready to pull from the ground, and other beets coming along slowly, but surely. My purple baby bok choy have taken months to grow to the height of three inches–which is weeks slower than they should be, but my purple mizuna is huge and beautiful. My tomato plants are covered with blooms and fruit, and
even my poor, sad eight-inch tall haricot vert plants are blooming wildly and producing harvestable beans.

And my lettuce patch has yielded four huge harvests so far and is still going strong, while the Slow Bolt cilantro is living up to its name and is producing a weekly harvest of flavorful green leaves and stems.

So all is not lost, not by a long shot. I consider my disappointing experience with bagged commercial manure and compost to be a learning opportunity, and have filed the data I have learned from it away in my memory banks, (and garden journal!) to be used for seasons long after this one.

My favorite surprise vegetable success this year is sugar snap peas.

To be specific, “Cascadia” sugar snap peas.

My Grandpa complained about how hard peas were to grow in the garden, and many home gardeners find peas to be a lot of work, and that they take up a lot of space for a very small harvest.

Cascadia, however, has surprised me with it’s prolific nature.

Kat and I first harvested it a couple of weeks ago, and while we worked, I noted that there were plenty of blossoms left on the plant, so I didn’t do what my Grandpa always did–after he harvested peas, he pulled them up and gave the vines to the cows to eat (I’d have composted the vines, having no cows to feed), and planted something new there. I figured–”let’s see how many peas we get from this second flush of blossoms.”

Anyway, we picked a generous quart off of the plants intensively planted in three square feet of space. Even though the vines are 1/3 smaller than they should be–they are only about two feet tall rather than three–they still produced a massive amount of pods, though some were a bit undersized–just as the vines were.

So, last week, on Sunday, Kat and Zak and I were thrilled to find another bunch of peas dangling from the vines. We picked those and got about 3/4 of a quart. There were one or two blossoms left and I thought I might pull them, but then decided not to, because Kat wanted to go home and it was starting to rain, and thunder was rumbling in the distance.

Imagine my surprise today, just THREE days later, when I showed up at the garden, ready to pull peas and plant broccoli raab seeds, to find the vines covered with a third flush of beautiful white blossoms! And when I say covered, I swear this third wave of blooms has more flowers on it than the other two combined.

And, on top of all of this, the peas are sweet, crisp and juicy. Eaten raw, they are sugary without a hint of the bitterness that sometimes comes accompanies raw peas, and when cooked they are sublime.

So, needless to say, next year, I’m planting Cascadia again, (and more than just three square feet of them, too) and I highly suggest that any other sugar snap pea lovers among you do the exact same. Even under the worst conditions, this variety really produces amazingly well.