The Kitchen Garden

Peace in the Garden

The solace of double handfuls of dirt

By Jan Leitschuh

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

— Wendell Berry, “The Peace of Wild Things”

In April we were housebound, anxious and uncertain, perhaps bored, lonely, broke, depressed, slothful or antsy. You can’t go out and socialize over a meal or a beer with mates. The kids make working at home an oxymoron. No hugs. Fewer workouts. Your industrious neighbors or social media buds are detailing their cars, lifting weights, reaming out their closets, basement and garage, then sewing masks for hospitals before repainting the house, and you haven’t even put your pants on by lunch.

Will May bring a reprieve? Here’s hoping.

These are difficult times, with friends and neighbors falling sick or worse, losing jobs, losing business, with money worries, or working on the front lines of exposure. It is easy to “despair of the world.”

At the same time, we can observe good things. The terrible and the lovely can, and do, exist simultaneously. This pace downshift has changed my neighborhood. Parents stroll outside with their children or teach them to bicycle in the nearly empty side streets. Joggers run past, folks work in their yards, walkers smile at each other even as they give a wide berth. Couples stroll holding hands. 

And there is ample time to work in the garden. 

Personally, I find this among the most anxiety-relieving activities available. I can trowel the earth and pick though the weeds, divide the perennials and repot for later distribution to friends, prune the grapevine, trim shrubbery. For a time — a momentary eternity — I too, am able to “rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”

Plopped in a backyard awash in sunshine, I can top up my winter-depleted stores of vitamin D as I strip out the centipede grass that crept into the beds over winter, admire the daffodils and later the iris, prune the spring-blooming bushes, plant seeds. (I still might not have on proper pants, but then, our place is private.)

By putting my hands into the dirt, I find I’m able to release a myriad of distractions and anxieties, focusing on one grounded, concrete thing at a time. The world slows down. This is self-care.

Not only that, gardeners wear gloves! We wash our hands — a lot! We probably invented the elbow bump. Social distancing in the garden is a cinch. We stay home, rooted. We are a compliant lot.

The Washington Post reported that seed companies are seeing brisk business online as consumers turn to growing their own food amid the coronavirus emergency. Some half-opened seed packets at our house are 2 or 3 years old, and their germination is suspect. Yet, miraculously, here come zinnia, basil, cosmos, cucumber and sunflower shoots, spottily perhaps, but plenty for our needs. Online, I ordered some squash, eggplant and gloriosa daisy seed. Perennial herbs in the garden flushed out, supplying us with homegrown oregano, parsley, garlic, chives, mint, sage, sorrel, thyme and lemon verbena — as local as you can get.

Care to join in the garden meditation? Feeling the tug to give into the earthier rituals of spring? Find an area with a minimum of six hours of summer sunlight, with access to water. Weed out that raised bed, or till up a row and add compost, potash and lime. Perhaps your yard is landscaped, unsuitable for a vegetable garden. Yet often there is a little sunny bare spot suitable for a compact bush tomato, or a small section for herbs. A cucumber or melon vine can snake up a deck or porch railing.

Containers are also an option for those without a bit of ground. Use the richest soil you can, and add compost. Protect the side of the pots from baking, thus burning the roots. Water daily, especially when the blossoms, and then fruits, appear, or after fertilizing lightly. Beans can grow in a 5-gallon bucket, with a drilled drainage hole. Window boxes can grow a vining cherry tomato or herbs as well as flowers. A child’s old play pool is a raised bed, with proper drainage. 

For those without dirt or inclination, who still wish to participate in the fruits of the earth, good news — farm stands are allowed to be open, even during the shutdown. This is especially welcome news for lovers of Sandhills strawberries, which peak in early May.

“We’ve been getting advice from NCDA (North Carolina Department of Agriculture), the Strawberry Growers Association and the N.C. Extension specialist for strawberries and NCSU,” says local producer Billy Carter, of Eagle Springs, who has 4 acres of strawberries under cultivation. To make the process safe for both customers and farms they’re using plenty of cleaning supplies and single-use gloves for pickers, limiting contact with customers, and posting signage about staying apart.

Farmers are being innovative, employing protective measures like pre-packing tomatoes in plastic containers to avoid contamination. “You know how people love to rub a tomato,” said John Blue, of Highlanders Farm in Carthage. 

Blue grows several greenhouses of tomatoes, as well as strawberries, peaches and summer produce for his stand on N.C. 22. As for Highlanders’ strawberry U-pick operation, “We’re thinking maybe open every other row, spread people out, ask people not to come if they are sick,” said Blue. “It’s frustrating for farmers, because we don’t want anybody to get hurt. We’ll have to adapt as we go and do the best we can.”

Some producers are even learning, via video classes, how to open an online store for their farms.

And we all know that to stay healthy, we have to eat well. Like Mama always said, “Eat your vegetables . . . and get out of those pajamas!”

As the world as we knew it has been transformed, there are unmistakable little blessings everywhere. A new sense of rest and stillness, time to spend with loved ones and creative hobbies. Neighbors checking on neighbors. Getting on top of life again instead of chasing it. A deep appreciation of those in critical infrastructure jobs: medical staff, police and fire support, supply chains, as well as an extraordinary acknowledgement of those in simple front-line work such as grocery, feed and hardware store employees.

People are finding innovative ways to help and connect with each other, and an expanding joy in simpler things. People are finding enough space, for even a moment, to not “tax their lives with forethought of grief.”

A renewed appreciation of nature, and the “peace of wild things.”

There is no clarity as to what May might look like. I hope you have something tasty, or perhaps cheerful to tuck into your bit of dirt. Or, lacking that, support those who do it for a living. 

May we meet on the other side of this with dirt under our nails, wearing pants, not pajamas.  PS

Jan Leitschuh is a local gardener, avid eater of fresh produce and co-founder of Sandhills Farm to Table.

The Kitchen Garden

Ode to Compost

Dig in when the mood strikes

By Jan Leitschuh

April is a month to stir the winter-sluggish soul. Soft temperatures and sunshine tempt us out into the yard. Bulbs, blossoms and shoots poke forth in the garden.

An ancient craving takes root: Turn up some soil and plant something.

Here in the Sandhills, our sandy soils can be worked earlier than those with more clay-based underpinnings. Tilling the tight, wet clay characteristic of other areas of the Piedmont too early can result in virtual pottery — clumps and chunks of garden not conducive to deep root structure or drainage. It’s hard to wreck the loose soil structure of our well-drained, sand-based soil. So, we can get to it as soon as the mood and temperature strikes.

But we need to do some critical soil preparation first.

Our unique Carolina Sandhills is an area about 10-35 miles wide within the state’s southwestern coastal plain, a unique region that bleeds down into South Carolina and Georgia. Strong winds from the last glaciation kicked up sand dunes from the shallow seas of the area — putting the “hills” in Sandhills.

It’s no accident the Sandhills was the last area of the state to be developed agriculturally, but peaches, tobacco, blueberries and cotton eventually thrived alongside the longleaf pine and wiregrass. Over time, area farmers learned how to manage sand’s natural tendencies and lower fertility to grow an agricultural bounty.

We kitchen gardeners can, too. Sandy soils have several pluses but need a little love. In some cases, a lot of love.

The East Coast is blessed with plenty of rainfall in a year’s time. This bounty also tends to wash minerals down into the deeper levels of the soil. This descent is accelerated on sand, as you might imagine. This is one reason that our sandy soils here tend to be quite acidic.

Our sandy soils also drain so well that when summer’s heat bakes, we find our seeds drying up and our sets needing daily watering. Skip a day and your plants might stress and drop blossoms — no blossoms, no veggies.

Vegetables need a deep and well-drained soil with adequate moisture, organic matter, and a much gentler pH. Sand has some of these plusses.

Our sandy soils are deep and well-drained, so good news there. Roots can penetrate easily. Sandy soils also warm up earlier than clay soils, so heat-loving plants can go in somewhat earlier.

Sand’s negatives include difficulty holding moisture and nutrition. Luckily, there is a simple solution: loads and loads of compost.

Organic matter, broken down, will loosen the tightest clay and “fatten” the fastest-draining Candor sand. Compost helps sand hold more water. Digging the soil is a dream, easy. And the decomposition process of organic matter feeds the soil biome, adding nutrients as it further breaks down the organic matter.

Compost also captures the nutrients we might apply. It helps hold soil fertility and manage the pH. This is especially beneficial in the case of, say, nitrogen, which may otherwise wash down into the water table. Why not hold on to what you paid for, and let it benefit the plant?

At Cottage Garden Farm, fertility and compost start in the fall. I beseech my landscaper husband to bring home bags and bags of the autumn leaves he scoops up for clients who want to discard them.

My favorites are crape myrtle and maple leaves, since their small size and tender composition break down easily. Whole oak and magnolia leaves are too waxy to break down quickly, and layers of them can form a mat that smothers the plants beneath. But, run over these with the mower and chop them into bits and the tough leaves break down much quicker. I dump these on the garden, around the fruit trees and blueberries each fall. They cover the soil, protect the roots and feed the worms before breaking down into lovely soil. Tilling the garden in spring is a pleasure, seeing the rich dirt turning up. Four inches of fall leaves are more than enough.

Grass clippings are also useful if you know they have not been sprayed. I tend to not use these in my vegetable garden, where I grow food I might eat. I use them around ornamental trees and such. But, with all the Bermuda grass grown in this area, you might be adding weed seeds. Experiment in a small area if you have access to some.

Do not use uncomposted sawdust, fall leaves or straw right now because as it breaks down, it will rob the soil of nitrogen and, consequently, starve the plants of this essential nutrient. These need to be piled to compost.

On other occasions we have planted a cover crop in the fall. Vetch, winter rye and crimson clover send their roots down deep, “digging” plenty of organic matter into the garden all by themselves. Many studies have shown the benefits of keeping roots in the garden over winter — they hold soil and provide places for the soil biome to colonize and expand. Come spring, if you can bear to weed-whack down the gorgeous crimson clover blossoms, you have added “green manure” or even a mulch to your garden, depending on whether you till it or not.

If you have done neither last fall — and now it’s spring — it’s time to haul in bags of compost. Some local businesses offer compost by the scoop if you have access to a truck and strong backs for unloading. Dump your coffee grounds directly into the garden. Start a compost pile — there are many good how-to resources online.

What about the abundant horse manure in this equestrian area?

It’s a valuable resource, and I’ve loved it, but it pains me to acknowledge it is not without problems.

Has it composted? You don’t want it too fresh, to damage plants. Ask the owners if they spray their fields for broad-leaved weeds — a persistent herbicide often used that can wreak havoc with your garden for years. Sometimes, even if the owners don’t spray, the herbicide can come in via the hay.

Finally, the harsh acidity of our sand. Compost helps here too. If you have limed your garden appropriately, compost will help stabilize the pH.

How do you know if you need lime, or another common soil deficiency here, potassium?

You probably need it, unless you are growing blueberries. But the only way to know for sure is to test your soil. The Agriculture Extension Soil Conservation program in your county offers free (April-October) or very low-cost (November-March) soil test kits. You may even be able to have the kit mailed to you. Then simply follow the directions and mail it to the enclosed address at NC State, or drop it off at your local extension office. They will mail or email your results and the staff/master gardener volunteers at the extension office will help you interpret and develop a plan to correct any problems.

So, give in to that urge. Turn that soil, spade your compost into your garden area. Toss in some seeds and sets. You are participating in a spring ritual as old as agriculture itself, one that does the body, and soul, good.  PS

Jan Leitschuh is a local gardener, avid eater of fresh produce and co-founder of Sandhills Farm to Table.

The Kitchen Garden

Soup’s On!

Take the chill off the Ides of March

By Jan Leitschuh

On the cusp of spring, when the weather swings wildly between balmy hope and savage bluster, every kitchen gardener senses a good pot of soup is warranted.

A well-made soup is fine home medicine to chase off the crud. The ultimate comfort food, a big pot of soup can nourish an ailing body for days. It goes down easy. It’s a spring tonic and a spring cleanse all in one. 

“My European mother would make soups and it would fill us up,” says Goldie Toon, former chef and owner of Goldie’s Gourmet in West End. Among her loyal patrons, Toon was known as the Soup Queen for her popular, bubbling pots of specialty soups. “People would order quarts of it at a time,” she recalls.

Soup is efficient. A well-balanced soup is a meal in itself; just add a crust of bread, a jug of wine and thou. Stuff veggies, protein, flavorful stock and spices — everything you need — in a pot and heat ’er up! Invite friends.

Say you can’t cook? Au contraire. You can make soup. Everyone can make soup. And with a Crock-Pot, the soup hardly needs watching.

“Last night’s leftovers make the next day’s soup,” says Toon. “In fact, that’s probably how soup got started.” Her cafe’s three most popular soups were a luxurious shrimp and crab bisque, a hearty beef barley, and a gingered curried carrot.

After a couple of hours turning up the spring soil in anticipation of planting lettuces, radishes, spinach, beets, carrots, kale, arugula and other crops that germinate in cold soil, a body craves soup for lunch. A hearty cup will take the chill off those “in like a lion” March days. It’s a cozy accompaniment to seasonal seed catalog perusal. 

With the new planting season commencing, it’s time to clean out the freezer and canning jars of last year’s bounty anyway. Toss in those last two jars of canned green beans. Dump the frozen sweet corn into a bacony chowder or a Brunswick stew. You’ll need the room; by the end of the month, the fresh asparagus will be arriving.

Crafting a batch couldn’t be easier. It can be a recipe-free, creative endeavor.

Start with stock. It’s the “juice” in which you will simmer the remaining ingredients; it’s the element that ties it all together. 

All grandmas know chicken soup is good for the crud, as well as the soul. Purists will want to simmer chicken thighs until the meat is falling off the bone, then strain and pick the meat, returning it to the pot. Simmering the bones gets tissue-building collagen and minerals into your home medicine. Same with a meaty beef bone, turkey carcass or ham hock. Others may opt to simply open a quart of chicken or beef broth. Bone broth is increasingly available in cartons these days, too. Vegans can opt for a rich vegetable stock. You can even use plain water, although the richness factor is harder to re-create.

Now, chop up a batch of onions — the more the better. Is there any savory recipe that doesn’t begin with “sauté an onion?” It is our flavor bass note. Packed with nutrients, full of the kinds of elements our healthy gut biome loves, onions also have antibacterial properties. Sauté in butter or olive oil. A little browning increases the flavor profile of your upcoming soup.

What next? 

Though you will add many of them a little later, consider: What do you enjoy most? Italian spices? Curry flavors? A spicy Mexican soup? An Asian twist? Simple meat-and-potatoes salt and pepper?

Whatever you choose, think about adding multiple cloves of garlic. Used medicinally for 5,000 years, garlic has antibiotic, atherosclerotic and anti-cholesterol properties. It helps lower blood pressure. Hippocrates, the father of Western medicine, prescribed garlic for respiratory problems, parasites, poor digestion, and fatigue. It tastes good. It runs off vampires. I rest my case.

You might choose to add sinus openers such as cayenne pepper or fresh ginger. Cayenne warms things up and juices the winter-sluggish metabolism. Besides its wonderful bite and zing, ginger is anti-inflammatory and wards off nausea and muscle aches. Gingerol, the bioactive substance in fresh ginger, can help lower the risk of infections and inhibit the growth of many different types of bacteria. Ginger has been shown to speed up emptying of the stomach in people with indigestion. 

You might toss in a little turmeric, another potent anti-inflammatory and antioxidant, especially with a chicken soup base. 

As for vegetables, it depends on what you have on hand or can pick up easily. Here is a free-form “recipe” we make several times each winter because it’s cheap, easy, tasty and a wholesome meal in itself — chicken garlic cabbage soup, with lots of garlic.

In a big Crock-Pot, dump in sautéed onion, chicken and stock. Cabbage is inexpensive and nutritious, so it forms the bulk. I like to chop it fine, as if I was making spring rolls or coleslaw, but anyway you hack into a head is OK. 

Start tossing in what you have or what you like: sliced mushrooms, those baby carrots that are so convenient, lots of celery, that cauliflower “rice” you find in the stores these days, chopped asparagus, perhaps some broccoli florets, and, of course, more garlic. Season with salt and pepper, a teaspoon or more of curry powder, a pinch of cayenne, a little ginger. Heat until carrots are softened (microwaving them first is a trick that speeds up cooking time). Just before eating, we’ll add a little soy sauce and a dash of toasted sesame oil. It will make you sit up and bark for joy.

Remember all those little tubs of kale you froze when it was in season? Use them up. If you didn’t, there is plenty of fresh kale in the market now. That leads us to another fine winter soup, a simple white bean, sausage and kale. This soup starts out much the same: Sauté some onions in olive oil or butter. Throw in lots of garlic. Chop up the kale and sauté briefly. How much kale? Dial your dose. Italian sausage is a good addition. Dump it in the Crock-Pot (or a soup pot, but beans love to burn in a soup pot, so watch closely). Add a quart or more of chicken stock, depending on how many you plan to feed. Dump in a can or two of white (cannellini) beans. A trick for a thick, chowdery bean soup is to hold back some beans and process them in a blender, adding the bean slurry back into the soup. Season with salt and pepper, perhaps some Italian spices. 

A good, all-American corn chowder could be your third free-form option. Chowder is a classic cold-weather soup. Sauté up some bacon, then remove from the pan and sauté some onions in the drippings. In the pot, throw in some small-diced potatoes, chopped celery, some chopped carrots for color, and several cups of sweet corn kernels. Add three or four cups of milk, though a vegan friend does hers with almond milk (she also skips the bacon, sautéing in olive oil). Take care not to boil the milk. Soup is ready when the potatoes soften. To give it a nice thickness, mash some of the potatoes. Add lots of salt and pepper.

And, if you prefer a more formal recipe . . .

Goldie’s Curried Carrot Soup

1 tablespoon olive oil

3 pounds carrots, peeled and chopped

1 large onion, chopped

1 tablespoon shredded ginger

1 1/2 teaspoons curry powder

1 teaspoon salt

6 cups water

1/2 cup orange juice

Juice of one lime

Can of coconut milk

In a large pot, sauté onion in olive oil until soft. Stir in carrots, ginger, curry powder, salt. Add water, bring to a boil, then reduce and simmer 20 more minutes until carrots are soft. Add in orange juice, lime and coconut milk. Purée, then return to pot. Check for seasoning. Serves 6-8. Can be served hot or cold.  PS

Jan Leitschuh is a local gardener, avid eater of fresh produce and co-founder of Sandhills Farm to Table.

The Kitchen Garden

Micro Biz

Delivering nutrition in a tray

By Jan Leitschuh

While the cutting February winds scour the Sandhills, a young Southern Pines entrepreneur putters amid a bright, humid sea of edible green.

His grandfather and great-grandfather were farmers; their tools were mules, harness and hand plows. His tools are scissors and plastic trays, LED lights and stainless steel shelves. 

But for Isaac Kundinger, 26, the occupational heritage is identical: growing stuff. His “stuff” is microgreens.

In 2017, Kundinger took his young savings and embarked on the adventure of starting his own business, The Conscious Cultivators LLC. From a building attached to his parents’ house, Kundinger sells boxes of microgreens to area chefs, Nature’s Own Market, the Pinehurst farmers market and elsewhere.

Microgreens are young vegetable greens, approximately 1–3 inches long, grown out from a tray of seeds. The pungent young greens fall somewhere between sprouts and baby leaf vegetables. They have an intense, aromatic flavor and concentrated nutrient content, and come in a variety of colors and textures. The tender greens are full of antioxidants and beneficial phytochemicals.

First introduced to the Californian restaurant scene in the 1980s, microgreens have steadily gained popularity, and can be found in most white-table restaurants these days, either in salads, as a garnish or integrated into various dishes.

Microgreens can be grown from a variety of seeds: lettuces, arugula, kale, sunflower and chards, herbs like chervil and basil, vegetables like broccoli or radish. As such, the rainbow hue of the various sprouted seeds leads some chefs to call it “vegetable confetti.” The rich flavor and concentrated nutrition of microgreens add a welcome splash of color and taste to a variety of soups, salads, eggs and other dishes, say local chefs.

“We use his microgreens in many dishes at the restaurant,” says Matthew Hannon, award-winning chef de cuisine at Ashten’s restaurant in Southern Pines. “It might be a specific herb tailored to a specific dish, or garnish for multiple dishes. We use his greens as salads, blended in soups and sauces, or anything else we can find a use for them. We truly cannot get enough.” 

One advantage for Ashten’s, says Hannon, is the hometown connection. “The main thing we like about his product is the quality and freshness,” he says. “His operation is literally blocks from the restaurant so the freshness is unmatched.”

Another local advantage is customization. For Chef Warren’s, for example, Kundinger grows a special mix of fennel, lemon balm and chervil for a specific seafood dish.

Hannon relishes the flexibility. “One thing we like so much is our working relationship,” he says. “Issac is always willing to try new microgreens for us. If there is something obscure we are looking for, he’s willing to give it a whirl. I think it keeps us both excited about new products “

In his operation, Kundinger uses only an organic compost mix in his trays. His lighting is a mixture of LEDs, fluorescents and blue light to ensure maximum health, growth and nutrition. He watches the trays of sprouted seed attentively as they form the first, thin seed leaves. He harvests in a short, carefully timed window, when the majority of the tray develops its first hearty set of true leaves. Fans for air movement ensure the proper humidity, so the greens are not packed wet.

With sterilized scissors and plastic gloves, he carefully snips the tender crops from the seeds in the tray, taking care not to crush fragile cell walls. The microgreens are then packed in special clear containers, weighed, labeled and delivered.

Kitchen gardeners wishing for a little February fresh-vegetable hit could grow ’n’ snip a tray of their own vegetable seeds in a windowsill. The most popular microgreen varieties use seeds from a number of plant families, including:

Brassicaceae: cauliflower, broccoli, kale, cabbage, radish, collards and arugula.

Asteraceae: lettuces, endive, chicory and radicchio.

Apiaceae: dill, carrot, fennel and celery.

Amaryllidaceae: garlic, onion and leek.

Amaranthaceae: amaranth, quinoa, Swiss chard, beet and spinach.

Cucurbitaceae: melon, cucumber and squash.

Pea shoots, curly tendrils and all, are another popular crop for Kundinger. He is experimenting with basil microgreens. Microgreens pack all the nutritional punch of their larger parents, but in concentrated form. According to microgreen aficionados, every salad could benefit.

The road to the microgreen business was convoluted for Kundinger. He’d taken some college classes for pre-dental, but found the work unfulfilling. He had friends out West with a medical marijuana business. “This piqued an interest in indoor farming with me,” he says.

He began researching the science of vertical gardening, making several trips to learn the growing process and techniques. “I began to see, especially in urban areas, that indoor farming is becoming a wave of the future,” he said. “The concept of growing microgreens indoors appealed to me through vertical farming, and it was evident to me that one can grow more nutritious food for more people in much less space. It’s become my passion.”

He started out in a 10×20-foot bay in his parents’ garage and turned it into a vertical grow room with 25 wooden shelves and 20 different varieties of microgreens. 

It was a steep learning curve. “There was no manual for me to follow on how to do this,” he says. “I’m learning all this from the ground up.” So to speak.

He experimented with the growing process, the lighting, temperature, airflow and ventilation, heating/air, water, sanitation and more until he developed a thriving environment for microgreens. 

“He’s had to learn a lot on his own,” says Eric Wind, Kundinger’s operations manager. “Lots of trial and error.”

Once he was able to consistently produce a top quality product, Kundinger began taking samples to local upscale restaurants, country clubs, health foods stores and farmers markets. “Working closely with the customer is how I have built my clientele over the past two years,” he says.

The walls for his grow room glow white, and the room smells strongly of springtime with a faint undernote of disinfectant. Everything looks clean, bright and fresh. The grow room walls are a special washable material, glossy and easy to sanitize. He uses fans for airflow, to prevent mildew. Watering routines are strict. The racks are stainless steel, replacing his original wooden racks — stainless steel the preferred surface for sterilization.

An eye on larger markets has prompted many of these changes. While the business is successful, Kundinger sometimes must work part-time to fund expansion and sanitation upgrades and boost his income.

To ensure a self-supporting business, he knows he has to grow his markets. “My vision for the future is to get GAP-certified (Good Agricultural Practices, a USDA audit program) so that I can expand to large distributors, catering companies, colleges and other large commercial outlets,” he says. He recently tripled his indoor vertical space. 

Building a business from the ground up has not been easy, but there have been rich, unexpected gifts. “Figuring this business out taught me discipline,” he says. “I just want this so bad.”

Another gift has been the ability to live his values. The name of his business, The Conscious Cultivators, suggests as much. “It reflects my passion for natural farm practices, and to highlight my core values,” he says.

“I can truly say that I am finding joy in the journey. I am deeply thankful to all of the chefs and businesses that have supported me and believed in me — they played a huge role in my success. Seeing my product used so creatively and artistically to create mouthwatering and nutritious dishes in our local restaurants — and knowing that I played a part in it — has been extremely rewarding.”

As for the chefs, they are effusive in their praise. 

“We’ve always known Issac was on to bigger and better things,” says Hannon. “His commitment to his craft definitely shines in the end result.”  PS

Jan Leitschuh is a local gardener, avid eater of fresh produce and co-founder of the Sandhills Farm to Table cooperative.

The Kitchen Garden

Ode to the Veg

Or: Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we diet

By Jan Leitschuh

It happens every January.

As penance for the rich feasting of the holidays, the unrestrained, celebratory consumption/imbibing of pecan pies, creamy dips, butter sauces, eggnog (and other tipsy spirits), gravies, mocha-mint lattes and, of course, peppermint ice cream, we find ourselves in January, contemplating our softening middles, spreading bottoms and muffin tops. A powerful craving for a Christmas cookie and fruitcake detox takes hold.

So we sign up for the gym and start a diet. We step away from the metaphorical sugarplums.

Can’t help with the gym, that’s on you.

Now, diet, here we can brainstorm. Kitchen gardeners may even have a leg up here. Isn’t your freezer full of produce picked at seasonal peak from the garden or local farmers markets? 

Think about it — so many diets out there to choose from. There are the old classics: Mediterranean, Atkins, South Beach, Weight Watchers, grapefruit, cabbage and more. There are the more recent diet entries such as Whole 30, TLC, DASH, the Zone, the Warrior, Paleo and ketogenic.

There is so much confusing info. Are eggs bad for you — or good? Is dairy a healthy food — or not? Legumes — hard-to-digest gut-disrupter or heart-healthy protein source? Wheat toast and whole grain pasta — dietary staples or ketosis-killing carbohydrates? And don’t even start on meat — blood sugar-stabilizing muscle-builder or cardiovascular scourge?

And yet, there is one simple category everyone can agree on. Virtually every diet and meal plan encourages their consumption.

Vegetables. Yep.

No matter one’s choice of diet, vegetables form the true backbone of a sensible eating plan and healthy weight management program. And let’s get real — it’s just plain hard to start a complicated “diet” in bleak, cold, gloomy, dark of January, but it’s not that complicated to drop the junk and fill that void with more veggies. It’s a simple plan, with health uppermost. Keep it simple and start subbing out the sugar, fat and alcohol for an extra helping of nutrition.

Start with advice from the USDA: “Five-to-Nine a Day For Better Health.” For many people, it may seem like a huge amount, especially if you aren’t a vegetable fan. But there are simple ways to up the veggie ante. More on that in a minute.

We’ll start with some sympathy. If you cling to the “I don’t like vegetables” mantra, it’s possible science has some support for you: It could be your genetics. Researchers with the University of Kentucky School of Medicine recently discovered that a particular gene might cause some people to be particularly sensitive to the taste of the brassicas — radishes, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage and other bitter-tasting veggies. 

That’s not a “get-out-of-diet” free card, more of an understanding of how one’s preferences might shape a search for produce one might like. There’s still folate-rich spinach, or fat-satisfying avocado, high vitamin-C red peppers, glutathione (the master antioxidant) rich asparagus, or the medium starchy indulgence of a sweet potato.  Zucchini, avocadoes, cucumber, mushrooms, celery, tomatoes, onion, eggplant, garlic, sprouts and microgreens, carrots, yellow squash, green beans, and onions will work too. For starters.

As we learn more about the human gut biome, we are learning how vital plant material is to its (and thus, our) health and diversity. Fiber, found only in plant foods, is one factor. A recent study found that those with the greatest weekly diversity of dietary plants had — surprise — the greatest diversity of beneficial gut bacteria. Eating 30 different plants a week can seem daunting, but this study included nuts, fruits, seeds, grains, spices and more. (Yes, spices are a type of health and taste-promoting plant food. Consider turmeric, basil, ginger, sage, black pepper, garlic and more.)

Fruits are sweet, healthy and tasty, but for some might be less than helpful if weight loss is a goal. The fructose, or fruit sugar, is one type of carbohydrate that can trigger blood sugar spikes in diabetics or those with metabolic syndrome, and may push keto dieters out of ketosis. Yet fruit in judicious quantities is healthy and delightful. During a January push, think low-sugar fruits such as a few blueberries in your almond-flour pancakes, a sprinkle of raspberries atop yogurt or mascarpone, or a squeeze of lemon or lime in dressings or tonic water. Save the bananas, figs, grapes, dried fruit and mangoes for celebratory treats down the line.

Non-starchy vegetables are naturally lower in calories, so if you are pushing for weight loss rather than health and maintenance, you might also want to give the potatoes a miss for a few weeks. Eat the foods on the DASH food plan: fish and lean protein, high-fiber starches, and deep orange and green-colored vegetables, berries and nuts. 

So, let’s huddle about sneaking a few more vegetables painlessly into our daily lives. The secret is simple. Start at breakfast. And then keep it up.

The simplest breakfast veg start is the classic veggie omelet. Sauté a few of your favorites, and whip up some eggs and pour. The sauté could include any combo of chopped onions, mushrooms, asparagus, spinach or other greens, tomatoes, broccoli and more. On the side, add a few slices of avocado or tomato. For a Mexican scramble, add a dash of salsa atop your eggs, and a small side of black beans. For a Greek, spinach and feta. And so on. Or go all Scandinavian and add slices of tomato and cucumber to your breakfast smorgasbord. The classic green smoothie is breakfast rocket fuel.

Lunch is easy. Many folks enjoy a lunch salad, and there are lots of ways to add more vegetable variety here. The advent of prepared veggies such as shaved carrots and beets, cucumber slices, etc., in the supermarket makes things easy. Or run through the market’s salad bar and pick out the items you wouldn’t buy or prepare at home, and add them to your own base of greens. Instead of sandwiches, use lettuce or collards for wraps. Serve an asparagus quiche. A bit of Sunday afternoon preparation in the kitchen could yield, say, a hearty white bean and kale soup or chili one could sup all week.

In fact, vegetable soup is a very good way to pack in both more veggie variety and quantity. Use an immersion blender and puree them all together if you don’t enjoy vegetable chunks.

Snack on your favorite finger veggies, adding a light smear of something enjoyable to, say, celery. Or mash up a batch of avocados and toss in a little onion and tomato.

As for supper, that’s the easiest. Fill the plate three-quarters full with vegetables. Your traditional side veggies will do. A small sweet potato microwaved is a quick side and a treat. Instead of pasta for your next Italian spaghetti, try spaghetti squash or spiralized zucchini strips, “zoodles,” as a vegetable-rich base. Use riced cauliflower instead of rice in a soup or dish — they are sneaking cauliflower into everything these days. Asian, Italian and Indian cuisines pack many veggies into one dish — think ratatouille, moo goo gai pan or stir-fries and curries. Any casserole can shelter extra vegs. 

Make spicy “chips” of kale, sweet potatoes and more. For lasagna, use strips of squashes instead of traditional lasagna noodles. Stuff some bell peppers. Grill some kebabs and use a whole lot of grape tomatoes, mushrooms, squash rounds, peppers and onion. Up the veggie ration in your fajitas, or pad out your meatloaf with your friends in the plant kingdom.

No matter your dietary goals, health or weight loss, you can’t go wrong working a few more veggies into your daily feeds.

Now, go forth and detox!  PS

Jan Leitschuh is a local gardener, avid eater of fresh produce and co-founder of the Sandhills Farm to Table cooperative.

The Kitchen Garden

Brussels Sprouts

A superstar in the vegetable world

By Jan Leitschuh

They are a seasonal Christmas holiday staple, Brussels sprouts.

You’ll find them in markets now, fresh or frozen. And despite the fact the marble-sized veggie is “trending,” you either love ’em, or you hate ’em.

If you love ’em, ’nuff said. We shall rhapsodize later.

If you dislike them, there may be a good reason — but all is not lost. You may have gotten old, over-large or overcooked sprouts. It might simply be a matter of positive exposure.

This mini-cabbages-on-a-stalk vegetable was first mentioned in the 16th century. Seems they are native to — surprise! — chilly Belgium, especially the region near the country’s capital, Brussels. World War I spread their use across Europe. Now Brussels sprouts are cultivated in Europe and the United States, where almost all commercial Brussels sprouts are grown in California. 

According to a recent NPR report, their production has quadrupled in the last decade, and the 2,500 acres devoted to the sprouts in the past has expanded to five times that. 

Were Brussels sprouts forced upon you as a child? Overcooked, the sprouts can have a stronger smell, which could lead to aversion. And apparently, as babies, the only tastes we humans favor are mother’s milk and sweet things. Our tastes only evolve over time and exposure, say scientists.

And, by adulthood, many of us just haven’t cultivated a taste for bitter foods, according to nutrition experts, who bemoan that fact — because bitter foods, like Brussels sprouts, stimulate digestion and are some of the healthiest eats on the planet. (Many bitter foods may also be poisonous and bad for us, so perhaps this innate caution has been a good thing over the course of human history.) Newer varieties, says NPR, have less bitterness than in prior decades. 

Brussels sprouts belong to the same family as such uber-healthy, cancer-fighting veggies as broccoli, radishes, kale, bok choy, cabbage, arugula and cauliflower — all slightly bitter veggies due to their health-containing compounds. 

Health experts recommend enjoying at least 3/4 of a cup of some kind, or combo, of cruciferous veggies daily, or five cups a week.

Would knowing that Brussels sprouts have an extremely high nutritional value — indeed, they are an absolute superstar among cruciferous family superstars — change the willingness to try them again? After all, say geneticists, food is information. Food, they say, switches our genes on and off, for good or ill. And crucifers are big switchers toward the “good” side of the health scale.

This famous food family contains glucosinolates, important phytonutrients that have a variety of cancer-protective substances. All cruciferous vegetables contain glucosinolates and have great health benefits for this reason. 

Recent research has brought Brussels sprouts forward into the health spotlight. For total glucosinolate content, Brussels sprouts are now known to top the list of commonly eaten cruciferous vegetables. Their total glucosinolate content is greater than the amount found in mustard greens, turnip greens, cabbage, kale, cauliflower, or broccoli. A cup of Brussels sprouts offers over 243 percent of the day’s vitamin K requirements, and 129 percent of vitamin C, plus almost a quarter of our folate.

Nearly 100 studies in PubMed (the health research database at the National Library of Medicine in Washington, D.C.) focus on Brussels sprouts. Over half of those studies involve the health benefits of this cruciferous vegetable in relationship to cancer. And besides helping our bodies detox unhelpful substances, Brussels sprouts offer powerful antioxidant and anti-inflammatory benefits. Thus, they also help protect our hearts and blood vessels.

Food as medicine — the “hold your nose and eat it anyway” argument. Weak, right?

Now, rhapsody. Those that love ’em, anticipate the “fresh” season with pleasure. These tiny cabbages-on-a-stalk are mighty cute, besides being good for you. How you prepare them can make or break your dish, so go for delicious. 

The first tip is to use sprouts of similar size for even cooking. Smaller sprouts tend to be sweeter. Then, don’t overcook them. Overcooked sprouts will release that strong sulfur smell some find unpleasant. Their color should remain an intense green; olive-drab sprouts have been overcooked.

Roasting on a sheet pan is simple and can bring out the sweetness of sprouts. Rinse the sprouts, and if you want, carve an “X” on the base to help cook faster and more evenly — or cut each sprout into halves or quarters.

To roast, toss with olive oil and salt, spread out in a single layer and then pop in a 450-degree oven. How long to roast for? You should be able to pierce them with a fork, so no more than 20 to 25 minutes at this temp. The roasting helps caramelize the exterior, adding sweetness, while the insides remain tender. Dress with you favorite concoction: balsamic vinegar, a honey-mustard dressing, a chili-lime or lemon-herb sauce.

You can also pan-sear Brussels sprouts in oil or butter on the stovetop. This method gives an even and crisp outer coating if the halved sprouts are cooked cut-side down until browned.

Steam them for 5 to 7 minutes, and they can help lower cholesterol by binding together with bile acids in your gut. But don’t overcook, and dress with something tasty and perhaps slightly sweet to overcome the bitter factor, since you won’t be caramelizing with a steaming process.

If you want to freeze fresh Brussels sprouts, steam them first for between 3 to 5 minutes. They will keep in the freezer for up to one year.

Add in various favorites to make a creative dish of your choosing. One friend adds olives and artichoke hearts, dresses the concoction and sprinkles with sesame seeds.

Another friend uses Brussels sprouts as the base of her signature dish. She halves and blanches the sprouts first for about 6 minutes, for best texture. A natural cook, she then dries the blanched sprouts and sautés them and some onion in some bacon drippings, adding some garlic, red pepper flakes and cayenne for savory heat near the end. Then she tosses in some golden raisins, pistachios, crumbled bacon and thinly sliced apple at the end. To dress, she stirs in a little honey, Dijon mustard and shredded Parmesan cheese into the pan. 

“It’s even good cold,” she promises. She thinks dried cranberries might be a nice substitute for the golden raisins, and notes both the fruit and the honey counter any bitterness.

What about the kitchen garden? I have failed twice at growing Brussels sprouts here. The heat, bugs and long growing season did the plants in. They require about four long months to form the marble- to golf ball-sized sprouts, and meanwhile, the aphids and other bugs have a field day. Heat is not their friend. So I am happy to buy them grown in cooler, more sprout-friendly regions. 

And how fortuitous that these little cabbage “Christmas trees” are so readily available fresh this time of year. Or, frozen, if you prefer the convenience.

Here is the simplest possible recipe — if sprouts are new in your kitchen, start here, and build up your signature dish according to your tastes.

Simple Roasted Brussels Sprouts

1 1/2 pounds Brussels sprouts 

3 tablespoons good olive oil 

3/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Cut off the brown ends of the Brussels sprouts and pull off any yellow outer leaves. Mix them in a bowl with the olive oil, salt and pepper. Spread them on a sheet pan and roast for 35 to 40 minutes, until crisp on the outside and tender on the inside. Shake the pan from time to time to brown the sprouts evenly. Sprinkle with more salt.  PS

Jan Leitschuh is a local gardener, avid eater of fresh produce and co-founder of the Sandhills Farm to Table cooperative.

The Kitchen Garden

Be It Ever So Humble

Sweet potatoes and apples, the perfect pair

By Jan Leitschuh

Come November, when the days (finally!) can crisp up and take on a chill, I crave a favorite fall dish. It’s a superstar in our household for four simple reasons: It’s simple to make; it’s seasonal; it’s highly nutritious; and it tastes splendid. It’s a humble dish, but so very satisfying on so many levels.

Perhaps you’d like a crack at it, too.

The recipe pairs two iconic fall superstars, sweet potatoes and apples, and the resulting marriage blends as comfortingly as turkey and stuffing. You can make a big dish of it at the beginning of the week and spoon it onto your plate as a side dish (or, dessert) all week.

Sweet potatoes and apples — one is a root vegetable, and one is a fruit. Just use regular old orange sweet potatoes and any apples. I’m especially fond of Granny Smiths and Honeycrisps in this dish, but often use several varieties — whatever is available. The recipe is simple: Chop up some of both, drizzle with some wet stuff and spices, and roast until soft and bubbly. More on that later.

Of course, this simple dish is not Thanksgiving-worthy, but only because every family has their own iconic dishes to trot out each Turkey Day. Otherwise, sweet potatoes-and-apples are the belly-filling, late-fall dish at our house, great to serve with pork, turkey leftovers, grilled cranberry and Brie sandwiches or just by itself.

We know we’re supposed to eat five to nine fruits and vegetables a day for better health. I find this dish a most pleasant option to knock out at least two.

Apples are rich in gut-friendly pectin, according to the North Carolina Apple Growers Association. Pectin and mild acids found in apples help fight body toxins, aid digestion and pep up the whole system. Pectin also has been associated with helping to keep cholesterol levels in balance and is significant in helping to reduce the incidence of certain types of heart disease.

And, as we approach cold season, November is the time to consume apples. Studies have demonstrated a correlation between regular apple consumption and a reduced incidence of colds and other upper respiratory ailments. The old saying “an apple a day keeps the doctor away” has its roots in fact.

Sweet potatoes are full of soluble and insoluble fiber — good for gut health — and packed with vitamins, too. Incredibly rich in beta-carotene, the antioxidant responsible for the vegetable’s bright orange color, sweet potatoes promote eye health and support the immune system. In fact, one cup of baked orange sweet potato, with skin, provides more than seven times the amount of beta-carotene than the average adult needs per day

So much for health. Then there’s the seasonal/local aspect.

You couldn’t eat more local. For almost 50 years, North Carolina has been the top sweet potato-producing state in the nation. While we may wilt in heat and humidity, the humble sweet potato thrives. In 2016, North Carolina dug and marketed over 1.7 billion pounds of sweet potatoes, nearly three times as many as California — the second highest producing state. North Carolina grows more sweet potatoes than the rest of the United States combined.

And the Tar Heel State holds its own with apples, too. North Carolina ranks seventh nationally in apple production. North Carolina growers favor apple varieties such as Rome, Golden Delicious, and Delicious, Fuji, Gold Rush, Honeycrisp, Jonagold and Pink Lady. Up to 4 million bushels of apples can be produced in a given year. How about them apples?

As for taste, these two fall friends not only marry well, they invite others to share their autumnal happiness. At various times, with a free hand, I have tossed in a number of other additions that really upped the flavor quotient, nutrition and/or visual interest.

To the chopped (or cubed, or sliced) dish I have added, variously, a drizzle of maple, sugar-free ginger syrup, or honey. Some prefer brown sugar — or no sweetener at all. For fall spices, I like cinnamon (especially with a tiny dash of warming cayenne to kick up the heat), fresh or chopped crystallized ginger, or pumpkin-pie spice — even a little curry or chai spice, if I’m feeling adventurous.

Chopped orange peel (not the white pith, but the outer orange rind) also adds a nice variety and flavor. Even crumbled bacon adds a compatible twist.

For variety, I might top with roasted pecans or walnuts, or throw in a handful or two of fresh, washed cranberries. A can of Mandarin oranges mixes in well with the basics too.

Cautious cook? Give yourself permission to experiment with this dish and your favorite flavors. Mix and match — combine ginger-orange, say, or maple-pecan, or even cranberry-walnut.

In our house, we top the whole shebang with dabs of butter or coconut oil — hey, it’s fall, and it’s chilly! — but you may prefer a non-fatty apple cider or orange juice to get things bubbling and the flavors mixing. Near the end of the cooking, you could even add a splash of bourbon, rum, Calvados or Grand Marnier to class up the humble fall fare.

This is one of those dishes that tastes better and better as the days move along. By the third day the flavors have married so well, and we eat it so heartily, it’s time to make another batch.

So, chop up some sweets and apples, and toss them in the oven to roast. Still want a recipe? Here is a good starting point, from Bon Apetit magazine. Adjust it to fit your tastes. The basic recipe is very forgiving — and tastes just like fall.

Maple-Roasted Sweet Potatoes
and Apples

Ingredients:

3 pounds orange-fleshed sweet potatoes (about 3 very large), peeled and cut crosswise into 1/4-inch-thick rounds

1 3/4 pounds tart green apples, (or any apples), peeled, halved, cored, cut into 1/4-inch-thick slices

3/4 cup pure maple syrup

1/4 cup apple cider

1/4 cup (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, cut into pieces

1/2 teaspoon salt

Preheat oven to 375°F. In 13x9x2-inch glass baking dish, alternate potato and apple slices in rows, packing tightly. Combine remaining ingredients in heavy medium saucepan and bring to boil over high heat. Pour hot syrup over potatoes and apples. Cover dish tightly with foil and bake 1 hour. Uncover casserole. (Can be prepared 3 hours ahead. Let stand at room temperature, basting occasionally with pan juices.)

Reduce temperature to 350°F. Bake until potatoes and apples are very tender and syrup is reduced to thick glaze, basting occasionally, about 45 minutes. Let stand 10 minutes.  PS

Jan Leitschuh is a local gardener, avid eater of fresh produce and co-founder of the Sandhills Farm to Table cooperative.

The Kitchen Garden

Hot Time

One last rush of fall peppers

By Jan Leitschuh

Pepper abundance time is now. Take advantage.

Enjoy October’s cooler weather, after this summer’s scalding sweat bath. Pepper plants revel in the easier temperatures, desperately throwing out lots of new fruits this time of year.

If you have a little vegetable plot, and it includes sweet bell peppers — or peppers of any type — chances are your counter is overflowing right now with jalapeños, sweet bells, habaneros, Anaheim chilies and more. 

What to do?

Don’t argue with the prosperity! Peppers of all types are expensive in winter. Chop and freeze for winter fajitas, pizza toppings, veggie soups, Italian dishes and chili, of course. Hot pepper jam is amazing on cream cheese and crackers all winter long. And roast some sweet red bells on the grill, or in the oven.

It’s a funny thing, this crazy fall pepper flush. 

Young pepper plants are warm season plants. The little transplants can be frost-tender in spring, and they dislike cold soils. Not only do they need to be planted well after any frost is possible, their little rooty feet crave warm soils to thrive in.

But once a pepper plant digs in, matures and begins producing, it can segue smartly into fall and handle some chilly nights. Curiously, heat-loving peppers put out one last hearty flush of fruits in the fall, leaving a gardener with an abundance. It’s a plant that can pay itself back in spades come early October.

Didn’t put any peppers in last spring? Local festivals and farmers markets can be a fun way to experience the fall pepper abundance, too. Places like nearby Pittsboro celebrate this Carolina fall flush with a popular “Pepperfest” (held annually, it was in late September this year). Star chefs, brewers, distillers and more, all from central North Carolina, produce pepper-themed dishes, desserts and beverages for the festival-goers, along with live music. Put it on your calendar for next year. 

The Farmers Market in Carrboro features growers like Alex and Betsy Hitt of Peregrine Farms of Graham, roasting peppers in a metal drum on the spot for your feasting pleasure, or to take home in a paper bag to cool down. Our local farmers markets should have fresh peppers for salsas, stuffing, pepper steak and more.

Roasting bell peppers instantly improves the flavor of this common garden veggie, kicking up the interest in any dish. It’s a fall specialty. Kitchen maven Ina Garten’s instructions for pepper roasting are:

1. Preheat the oven to 500 degrees.

2. Place the whole peppers on a sheet pan and place in the oven for 30 to 40 minutes, until the skins are completely wrinkled and the peppers are charred, turning them twice during roasting.

3. Remove the stem from each pepper and cut them in quarters.

To get an even smokier and more complex pepper flavor, try flame roasting, over a grill or even on your stove. Be sure to wear a protective oven mitt and use tongs. To grill, arrange peppers on a medium flame, turning every few minutes, roasting for 15-20 minutes, until the peppers are charred, soft and collapsing in on themselves. Let cool in a paper bag, or steam further in a glass bowl covered with plastic wrap. Peel away the charred skin and discard. Remove seeds and membrane from interior.

Over a stove burner flame, char individually, using tongs — simple for a small-batch recipe needing a flavor up-level. Hold pepper above your hottest flame with tongs and a mitt, turning until fully blackened, 7-8 minutes. A sheet pan and your broiler can also do the trick for a greater number, but watch carefully and rotate as needed.

Process the results for terrific, smoky roasted red pepper tapenade or soups, relishes, dips, pastas, sandwiches, even breakfast scrambled eggs.

To freeze your abundance of peppers, first rinse, dry, then remove the stems, seeds and white interior membranes. Dice or cut into strips, then spread on a tray so they’re not touching. They don’t even need to be blanched (flash-cooked) first. Freeze till firm, then transfer to a freezer-safe zip-top bag with all the air pressed out. Or, if you have a vacuum sealer, seal your harvest into chili-worthy portions. Shake out needed quantities for your cold weather recipes.

If you have a dehydrator, and freezer space is scarce or you like to camp and backpack, it may be a good option. It’s generally too humid in North Carolina to dry peppers outside, as they do in New Mexico and Arizona. Set your oven to the lowest possible temperature and watch carefully throughout the day. This will heat the house but, hey, nights are cooling off. Store in airtight containers.

For a little winter heat, I like to freeze my hot peppers as well as the sweet bells. A teaspoon or two of jalapeños scooped out of the bag adds a kick to many a chilly night meal. While you are chopping, wear gloves and don’t touch your eyes.

Come November, when the colder winds blow, you’ll be glad of a little fire to add to chili, beans, curries and tortilla soups. Or treat yourself to a few jars of homemade pepper jam to serve over the holidays, with cream cheese and crackers. Since you’re already chopping hot stuff, why not go ahead and whip up a batch of fresh pepper salsa straight from the garden? 

Habaneros and the throat-scorching “ghost” peppers are generally too much for most dishes, yet the plants are throwing them out by the handfuls now. Despite the fact that many humans love hot peppers, capsaicinoids, the “heat” in peppers, is an irritant to mammals and insects. We can use that to deter deer, rabbits and some insect pests.

Chop and freeze two cups of the habaneros or ghost peppers as above — besides gloves to protect the fingers, contact wearers may appreciate goggles. Come spring, dump it into a food processor with several cloves of garlic. Add a little water to make a slurry. Consider the goggles again. Once pureed, add the mix to a big, clean bucket and pour four gallons of hot water over it. Cover and let steep for a day, then strain well, through several layers of cheesecloth, into another clean bucket. Add a few squirts of dish soap to help the mix stick. Add to your garden sprayer, and use after a rain or every few days. Don’t spray your actual tomato fruits unless you like them spicy!

Peppers can be slow to come into production in summer. Once they hit their stride, they bear prolifically. The heat and dryness of late July can cause blossoms to drop, thus a gap in fruiting. But come fall, they charge ahead. As we head into late October, it’s usually well worth the effort of tossing a blanket and covering the plants on those first few frosty nights.

Roasted Red Pepper Spread

Red bell peppers, roasted

Garlic cloves

Good olive oil

Red wine vinegar

Salt and pepper, to taste

Rinse, then roast red bell peppers and peeled garlic cloves in the oven at 350 degrees until soft. Cool, then blend in food processor with a little olive oil, red wine vinegar, salt, and black pepper. Adjust quantities of ingredients to your taste. 

Roasted Red Pepper Spread can also be frozen, and it takes up less freezer space than chopped and bagged peppers. Get the fireplace going, crack open a good bottle of wine, and serve with a good chevre and crispy crackers. Consider it dinner.  PS

Jan Leitschuh is a local gardener, avid eater of fresh produce and co-founder of the Sandhills Farm to Table cooperative.

The Kitchen Garden

Sandhills Melon

Slice it any way you like

By Jan Leitschuh

When the heat is on, the kitchen is the last place you want to be, unless it’s rummaging in the refrigerator. Luckily for the Sandhills, the melon bonanza of July — starting with the first local watermelons on Independence Day -— continues on through the first few weeks of August. So don’t delay if you haven’t gotten your summer Sandhills melon on.

Sandhills melons are dessert in a rind. Breakfast too. Crisp. Juicy. Cool and sweet. And healthy. What’s not to devour?

On a hot and thirsty day, they are hydrating with their high water content — up to 90 percent, making for a juicy and sweet texture. Blended with a little mint or basil, it’s the ultimate healthy electrolyte sports drink, refreshing after mowing the lawn.

The Sandhills grows melons quite well. Apparently, this viny fruit enjoys our “light land,” that is, the sandy soils, which don’t hold certain nutrients that promote vine growth at the expense of fruit. The sand helps concentrate flavor instead of growing rampant greenery. Wholesale buyers are said to pour in from other areas because of the delectable sweetness of our Sandhills melons.

Melon versatility is another mark in their favor. A simple slice enhances any meal as a colorful and healthy sideshow. Melon can be eaten as dessert in combo with other fruits, or with prosciutto as a light meal. Melon bits can be added to salads, blended into cold summer soups, as fruit slurry added to boozy cocktails, as drinks and juices, as sorbets and granitas. Where does something so tasty get off being healthy? Melons contain folate, niacin, vitamin B6, vitamin A, copper, iron, phosphorus and manganese.

Melons are members of the Cucurbitaceae family, which makes them the sweeter relatives of squashes and juicy cucumbers. Although often grouped together, most sweet melons fall into two broad categories: watermelons and muskmelons. You may have heard folks referring to cantaloupes as muskmelons — all cantaloupes are muskmelons, but not all muskmelons are cantaloupes.

Another benefit of buying local melons comes from the way they are harvested. Not having to ship them long distances, a Sandhills grower can let the melon linger to ripe perfection, at which point it “slips” from the vine. Slip-ripe melon should be eaten within a day or two because they are . . . wait for it . . . ripe. Peak melon here has a flavor that is next to impossible to sample out of season. Dive in! They won’t hold. And slip-ripe Sandhills melons deserve to be eaten at their peak. This is one of the supreme benefits of local food — the taste of a fully mature melon.

Although melons are refreshing when served chilled, refrigeration does diminish their flavor, so serving at room temperature is ideal. Or try grilling them: Cooking concentrates their sugars even further. I have even dried melons in a dehydrator for healthy hiking snacks — you don’t end up with much volume but, wow, what a zing of flavor.

In choosing a good melon, first look at the stem scar. A smooth, hollowed scar indicates that the melon was harvested slip-ripe. If a piece of the stem remains, it may have been harvested too early.

For thinner-skinned melons, press very gently on the bottom of the melon, opposite the stem end. If the skin is easy to depress, the melon is ideal for eating.

That wonderful melon fragrance is another clue. A sweet, musky aroma, produced by enzymes that generate more than 200 different fruit esters, also signals ripeness.

Inspect the outside. Does it have any bruising, cracks, moldy patches or soft spots? If there is, pass it by. You should always inspect the melon’s skin, or rind, before you do anything else, because if there are any imperfections on the outside of the melon, there is likely something wrong with the inside as well.

While you’re inspecting your melon, make sure you pick it up and test how heavy it is. If you notice the melon is larger and heavier than expected, it’s a good melon to choose.

The thump test really is “A Thing.” Take the palm of your hand and tap the melon a few times on its skin. If you notice a sound that is very hollow in nature, your melon has promise.

Some common types you’ll find in area markets and farm stands are:

• Cantaloupes. Common, and the most nutrient-rich of our Sandhills melons. The exterior has a rough “netting” atop its creamy rind. The rich, pale orange flesh has a light and sweet flavor, and it can grow from less than one pound to several pounds in weight. Cantaloupes are high in Vitamin A and numerous antioxidants. These netted melons are easy to digest, contribute to vision and eye health, and have a high beta-carotene content, which is great for knocking out free radicals. A sun-warmed, slip-ripe cantaloupe just begs to be paired with prosciutto. Or blend chunks with frozen mango or orange juice. A splash of Grand Mariner liqueur would not be out of place.

• Honeydews. The green counterpart to cantaloupes, pale green honeydews and peach-colored cantaloupes are often paired together in salads. Honeydews have a higher sugar content than either watermelons or Sandhills cantaloupes. As a honeydew ripens, its rind develops a sticky, velvety feel and turns from green to creamy pale green. The honeydew melon usually grows in a round or oval shape, with a very smooth rind, weighing from a pound to several pounds. Honeydew is popular as a dessert ingredient, but I love to juice it for drinks and frozen ices. Blend chunks of honeydew with mint, lime and a little sweetener, then freeze, beating periodically to reduce the ice crystals. Non-alcoholic honeydew mojitos, practically. Scoop the frozen crystals as snow cones for the kids, or serve as a palette cleanser if you want to go all “Downton Abbey.” Another tangy option is to combine honeydew chunks with lime and basil and do the same. Serve as a sorbet, or add rum, triple sec, tequila or a spirit of choice for a grown-up porch-sittin’ sipper.

• Watermelons. Everybody eats these thick-rind fruits. There are almost 50 varieties of watermelon. They taste similar but vary in size, flesh color (mostly pink or red but also yellow, white and orange), and are seedless or seeded. The most popular red-fleshed varieties are rich in the useful antioxidant lycopene. It carries the highest lycopene per serving of any fruit or vegetable. Watermelon can be sliced and chunked, pickled, candied, fermented, injected with one’s favorite spirits or made into a syrup, and its spit seeds have provided children with amusement for generations. The newer “icebox” varieties are handy if you are not feeding a picnic crowd. They tend to be smaller, and virtually seedless. Still, watermelon takes up room in the fridge, so if you are short on space, cut it into chunks and discard the heavy rind. Fresh watermelon chunked in a spinach salad with feta cheese is a cool summer classic. A ripe watermelon has dull, not shiny, skin, and the lighter colored part of the rind, where the melon rested on the ground, should be yellow or creamy, not green or white. A light tap to the rind should produce a hollow sound.

• Sprite melons. Here is the answer to big melons. This little personal-sized melon is perfect for a small treat. It’s about the size of a baseball or softball. Serve half for breakfast with some berries or a prune in the center. The sprite melon looks like a tiny cantaloupe, complete with a round shape and seeds on the inside. The skin of the sprite melon is ivory in color, and it develops brown markings when it ripens. The flavor is delicious. To me, it has a subtle pear flavor in with its melon-ness. A sprite is up to 35 percent sweeter than any other type of melon, so popular with fruit lovers. This is a true dessert melon.

• Canary melon. Named for its bright yellow rind, that yellow skin is as bright as a canary bird. This oval-shaped melon has a hard skin and a pale flesh, and weighs a pound or three. I’m very fond of canary melons, and grab them whenever I find them. The cream-colored flesh has a mild, sweet, slightly tangy flavor and a texture similar to a pear. Originally from Persia, canary melons pair well with citrus and herbs, such as basil and cilantro, and are good for making sorbets and granitas.

• Korean melon. You might find these small cuties around the Sandhills, although they are not common. Snag one if you see them. Another smaller, personal-sized variety, this little elongated yellow-and-white striped melon is cheerful. Korean melon is smaller than the other melons. It has white color flesh and unique flavor. It’s mildly sweet, juicy and is delicious when eaten in a salad. Its small size is perfect for those just wanting a melon “taste,” but don’t want to deal with a larger melon. The flavor is between a honeydew and a cucumber. In fact, it makes an interesting salad sliced with cucumbers and dressed in balsamic vinegar. The sweetness is lower than other western melon varieties but very juicy — 90 percent water — and refreshing.

• Crenshaw. You can sometimes find these around the Sandhills markets. Again, grab them when you find them, as they probably won’t make a reappearance. It’s a hybrid type of melon with a sweet, juicy salmon-orange flesh. It’s ovoid in shape with greenish-yellow skin. This variety is popular, and pretty in a fruit salad.

The Sandhills melon season is brief but worthy. Grab a slip-ripe melon from a local farmer and enjoy.  PS

Jan Leitschuh is a local gardener, avid eater of fresh produce and co-founder of the Sandhills Farm to Table Cooperative.

 

The Kitchen Garden

Sandhills Berries, Part 3

It’s blueberry pickin’ time

By Jan Leitschuh

We are in it now, the thick of summer.

Our Sandhills area is so horticulturally blessed. We have been celebrating the stellar trio of local berries available in the Sandhills, and our last berry star is the rabbiteye blueberry so abundant this month of July.

Go on, sprinkle blueberries over everything you eat. You know you want to. Your taste buds — and health — will thank you.

True, local blueberries have peeped forth in June. Those were the Southern highbush (SHB) blueberry bushes. Now, I love those early berries, and seek them out at farmers markets. But as a kitchen gardener, I have never had terrific luck harvesting a large crop from my 15-year-old SHBs.

Perhaps, since they bloom earlier, they’ve been nipped by our increasingly erratic spring temperature swings. I’ve heard SHBs need an even lower pH than the rabbiteye varieties and that I could add a little sulfur to the soil, though my leaves are nice and green (as opposed to yellowing), indicating happiness. I’ve heard the “Legacy” variety of SHB is more forgiving.

However, since local blueberry professionals seem to do just fine, in the future, I’ll leave the SHBs to the pros and enjoy their precocious products at the you-picks and farmers markets. I sure do like nibbling those early highbush berries. But in my garden, I’ll focus on rabbiteye blueberries.

Blueberry quality and flavor from the supermarket is unpredictable and often terrible. That’s why I prefer to grow my own — plus, I know they are organic because I grew them that way.

I have long said that the rabbiteye blueberry is the ideal Sandhills edible landscaping shrub. I know some mighty fancy places in Pinehurst and Southern Pines that have rabbiteye blueberries gracing their property, quietly incorporated into their overall landscape plan. Unless one knew where and when to look, they might never be noticed.

First of all, rabbiteyes are easy. They need little effort and maintenance to thrive well in a home garden or landscape. Rabbiteyes bloom later, so are less susceptible to damaging late frosts, and they tolerate higher pH and mediocre soil conditions. They tolerate a little shade.

Native to our region, Vaccinium ashei loves our hot, humid Carolina summers and easy winters. It makes a nice, head-high shrub over time, although if pruned right after the berries have been picked, you can keep the bush height lower.

Besides being a food source for man and bird, the rabbiteye blueberry shrub has four-season landscape interest.

In spring, when rabbiteyes flower as the nights shift between frosty and mild, we enjoy seeing the delicate white blueberry flowers being worked by the harmless and workaholic solitary Southeastern blueberry bees, as well as honeybees, bumblebees, even carpenter bees. Come summer, rabbiteye bushes will produce buckets of sweet, crazy-healthy, edible berries for years to come — with little effort. Their bright cool green spring and summer foliage is an attractive foil to darker plants.

Come fall, the rabbiteye turns a beautiful reddish-burgundy color that persists somewhat into winter, where the shrub’s sculptural framework also adds textural interest.

Rabbiteye blueberry is a plant which benefits from cross-pollination and will produce more berry crops when at least two varieties are planted near each other. Don’t be impatient to pick. They may look blue and ready, but sample a few first before picking your winter freezer supply. Rabbiteye blueberries need to ripen awhile on the bush. Wait until the berries are fully ripe before you pick them or the fruit will not be very sweet, even bitter. If you let the rabbiteyes hang on the bush long enough, they really do taste good. The problem is, they turn that beautiful blue color before they are really ripe.

Then the birds come eat them. Some people use that nasty plastic netting, and we did too. But after tangling with the lawnmower blades and finding the occasional snared bird, we abandoned that. We have so many berries, we generally just share with the local songbirds that give us much pleasure (although I have swathed a particularly late bush in tulle fabric just before harvest to extend my season).

If you choose to plant your own, stick with the rabbiteyes to start. Avoid completely the Northern highbush varieties grown in Maine and Vermont. Here in mid-North Carolina, they will be a disappointing and expensive waste of space, producing little. Rabbiteyes are embarrassingly productive, and after eating your fill and filling your freezer, you’ll have some leftover to take to friends.

If you want to put some rabbiteye bushes in, consider selecting your site now and digging in some peat moss or decomposing pine bark. Chances are, you won’t add lime but gypsum can supply both calcium and sulfur, and not raise the pH like lime will. Blueberries need a pretty acid soil, a pH of 4.0 to 5.3, more so than even azaleas. Your soil may be fine, or you may need to add sulphur; testing is better than guessing for this long-lived and generous perennial shrub. Moore County Cooperative Extension can guide you in testing your soil and selecting proven varieties like Climax, TiffBlue, Premier, Onslow, Columbus and Powderblue.

That makes a pretty happy base for a shallow-rooted blueberry. Then, come late fall or winter, you can plant a couple of varieties of dormant plants on a slight mound or hill — it’s counterintuitive, but those shallow roots like to be a little higher than the surrounding soil. Mulch well with shredded leaf mulch or aged pine bark (not fresh). I beg my landscaper husband to bring home bags of fallen crape myrtle and Japanese maple leaves, since these small leaves decompose into a terrific mulch, and eventually enrich the soil. I would use the tougher oak leaves if they were well shredded.

That first summer, keep an eye on watering these new sets well, and you’ll be rewarded with future blueberry pies, cobblers and pancakes. We used to say that the rabbiteyes were basically pest-free, but in recent years there has been evidence of damage from an invasive little pest, the spotted wind drosophila. Again, Extension can advise you on management if this pest is an issue.

If blueberry Belgian waffles are on the menu this weekend, rest assured that blueberries are the healthiest part of the recipe. An entire cup contains only 84 calories, with 15 grams of carbohydrates. Calorie for calorie, this makes them an excellent source of fiber, vitamin C and vitamin K.

High in anthocyanin — the antioxidant that paints blueberries their namesake color — they offer powerful inflammation-fighting and cell-protecting properties. Besides containing the same resveratrol as red wine, blueberries contain another, similar compound, pterostilbene — which displays many of the same properties as resveratrol. It not only acts as an anti-inflammatory and antioxidant, but it also has anti-diabetic, cardio-protective, neuro-protective (good for the brain and eyes) and anti-cancer properties.

One study has shown that once absorbed, pterostilbene may hang around our bodies offering its many health benefits up to five times longer than resveratrol. Few commonly eaten foods are as rich in pterostilbene as blueberries, so we may be looking at a fruit that is even more unique than previously believed in terms of its ability to support our health.

And a recent study on rheumatoid arthritis reports that the one food that best relieved inflammatory autoimmune symptoms was simple and delicious blueberries.

So we know you’ll get your health on when you spoon these over pound cake, or whip up a batch of blueberry-lemon muffins. But what else can you do with these sweet puppies?

Given that June’s tender baby zucchini have by now mutated into green baseball bats and you are making zucchini bread, toss generous handfuls of blueberries into the batter to up the flavor and health benefits. July’s morning smoothies demand blueberry nutrition — and for a beach afternoon or evening, search out online recipes for boozy blueberry floats, or icy sips like blueberry-basil-infused vodka. If you’re feeling too slowed by the summer heat to make jams, or even pie, search out a Blueberry Crumb bar recipe.

Blueberries play well with chocolate, so chunk some into your summer brownies. A savory blueberry-onion jam or blueberry-chicken mole may intrigue you. Too hot for even that? Churn up some blueberry-lemon ice cream, or spoon out some chilled blueberry soup for starters.

Blueberry Summer Soup (or Sauce)

3 cups fresh blueberries (frozen, if you must)

1 cup water

2 tablespoons sweetener — honey, sugar or substitute

2 teaspoons lemon juice

1 cinnamon stick, optional

2 teaspoons cornstarch

1 teaspoon lemon zest

Yogurt, crème fraîche or whipped cream for serving, if desired

Toss all ingredients  but the cornstarch and lemon zest into a pan and bring to a gentle boil. Stir the cornstarch into 1 tablespoon of warm water to make a slurry, then stir this into the cooked berries. Bring back to a very gentle boil and cook, stirring, until sauce starts to thicken, about 2 minutes. Remove from the heat and stir in the lemon zest.  Serve warm over pound cake, pancakes, cheesecake or waffles. Or chill and serve later as a cold soup with a creamy garnish.  PS

Call Moore County Cooperative Extension for a list of local You-Pick berry farms: 910-947-3188.

Jan Leitschuh is a local gardener, avid eater of fresh produce and co-founder of the Sandhills Farm to Table Cooperative.