Zucchini Pasta

I picked the first zucchini of the spring this morning:

I decided to make some Raw Zucchini Pasta out of it using the Spiral Slicer appliance:

I cobbled together some veggie-heavy pasta sauce and voilà—Raw Zucchini Pasta. If the zuke has been in the refrigerator, the "pasta" will be cold. You can either leave the zuke on the counter for a while before shredding, or, the heated pasta sauce will warm it up. A nice Saturday lunch:

I had read recently about a plant called Malabar Spinach. I was curious about it, wondering if it had been developed at Louis Bromfield's Malabar Farm, but it wasn't. It's a native southeast Asia vining "spinach" bearing the name of the same region of India where Bromfield lived for a while, and for which he named his farm. Malabar spinach isn't really a spinach, and goes by lots of names in Asia. But the leaves can be used like spinach, raw or cooked. It's a vining plant, so I'll need to get it something to climb. Mary Roberts of Windcrest Farm had started some Malabar spinach seedlings this spring so I bought one a few weeks ago at the Matthews Farmers Market. It was just a tiny start when I bought it but it has grown well -- large, deep green leaves; high in several vitamins, fiber, and protein. I haven't tasted it yet but it looks delicious. You can read more about Malabar spinach here:

How to Be Happy

Nobody can really be happy. You can have moments of happiness; moments of joy. But life is very difficult, unless you're a total idiot. Then you can be happy.

(Irvin Kershner, director of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, as interviewed in the forthcoming movie The Nature of Existence)

There you have it—how to be happy: Be a total idiot.

Peggy Noonan Gets It—Finally

It's taken her a year and a half to see the light, but Peggy Noonan's eyes have opened to the pure incompetence of the Obama administration. She, one of the most eloquent of pundits (writes for the Wall Street Journal), was a Reagan speech writer and has a been a so-called Republican. But she warmed to Obama during the election. But no more. In today's column, she says Obama will not survive his administration's three consecutive missteps: healthcare, immigration, and the ongoing Gulf oil disaster. I hope she is right.

Speaking of incompetence, I heard a citizen remark during an interview recently (paraphrase), "If you think the government's been incompetent with one leaking oil well, just way until you see how incompetent they'll be trying to manage healthcare—one-sixth of the economy." I shudder to think.

Peggy Noonan's closing paragraph is a fair warning to Republicans, since every out-of-office party loves to see the current administration mess up, thinking they'll get it right when they retake the White House—and then they get hit with something just as bad and prove to be just as incompetent:

But Republicans should beware, and even mute their mischief. We're in the middle of an actual disaster. When they win back the presidency, they'll probably get the big California earthquake. And they'll probably blow it. Because, ironically enough, of a hard core of truth within their own philosophy: when you ask a government far away in Washington to handle everything, it will handle nothing well.

The Squash Bugs Are Coming!

Everybody who raises squash dreads the arrival of two squash pests: the squash bug and the squash vine borer. Fortunately, the squash bug's egg clutches are easy to spot. While they are normally found on the underside of squash, zucchini, and melon leaves, these two clutches were sitting topside on two zucchini leaves. The eggs have to be removed with sticky tape or by just tearing off that portion of the leaf, and crushed. If not crushed, they'll hatch and create nymphs that will find their way back to the garden. I'll post a picture later this summer of adult squash bugs. The eggs indicate they're around, I just haven't seen them yet. The adults can be picked off and "dispatched."

Two clutches of squash bug eggs, the first one being a little fuzzy:

Nice zucchini. One of the best ways to eat raw zucchini is to make pasta out of it. I have a small, hand-powered appliance that shreds a zucchini into long strands just like spaghetti or pasta. Add your favorite pasta sauce and it makes a great mostly-raw dish. You can see to the right what happens to a zucchini or squash that doesn't get pollinated—dries up and will fall off:

Tomatoes on the vine:

I'm babying these "Black Cherry" tomatoes along in hopes of a harvest. I learned about these tomatoes from New Town Farms in last year's CSA program—the best cherry tomatoes I've ever tasted! The Black Cherries are the large, dark maroon tomatoes in this picture from last year's CSA. So good that I tracked down the seeds and am going to try to grow some of my own. You can eat these like candy standing by the vine.

The bread pan behind these Black Cherry seedling pots is filled halfway or so full of water, then set the green pots in the pan to allow them to wick up water from the bottom up instead of watering from top down. This helps prevent "damping off" disease from forming around the stalks of seedlings when the top layer of soil gets too wet. I'll move these starts into larger containers to grow—I have no more room in the ground.

CSA Harvest #5, etc.

This week's CSA harvest, the fifth of the season: left to right, cabbage head, red beets and greens, HUGE broccoli head, bag of mesclun mix (mixed baby lettuce leaves), fennel bulb, two heads (red and green) of kohlrabi, lacinato kale, Waxahalia onions, and bag of arugula.

Plus, some shots from the garden:

A carpenter bee bathing headfirst in the squash pollen:

A gaggle of baby yellow squash:

And the summer's first tray of wheatgrass. I keep my house so cool in the winter that the grass doesn't grow well. The second tray is an experiment: I've seeded a mesclun mix to see if I can begin raising trays of salad greens indoors in trays. It's been a few days and they haven't germinated yet, so not sure how well this will work.

Update: Just noticed this morning the first lettuce seed germinating, so maybe this will work!

CSA Harvest #4

Failed to post a pic of last week's CSA harvest: starting in the back, red beets and greens, Waxahalia onions, several heads of lettuce, baby bok choi, and on the front row, carrots, broccoli raab greens, broccoli head, cabbage head, curly kale, two heads (red and green) of kohlrabi. Awesome, as always.

"I Recommend You Panic"

A fascinating BBC (May 26) interview between a Columbia University economist (who has no skin in the financial game), a hedge fund manager (who has massive amounts of skin in the game), and a Financial Times writer who is surprisingly rational.

The economist: "Don't panic."

The hedge fund manager: "I recommend you panic."

The reporter: "Things look pretty bad."

It's a classic illustration of academic theory versus practical reality, in my view. I'm going with the hedge fund manager (I like his accent and his fire in the belly). (8 minutes long)

I Don't Want to Say "I Told You So," But . . .

For those of us who have been Mac users from the beginning (for me, since 1984—like the original Mac at left), and who resisted the siren song from the dark side in Redmond, Washington, yesterday was a day of sheer satisfaction. For the first time, Apple is now a more valuable company ($3 billion more) than Microsoft in terms of market cap (shares x share price). The only company larger than Apple in that regard is Exxon. Imagine—the company that once flew a black pirate flag over its secret Mac development outpost is now the second largest company in America!

That said, I'm really not an Apple fanatic, as are many. I don't own an iPhone, iPad, or even a Macbook/Pro. But I have been a loyal Mac user for so long that I can't imagine why everyone isn't. And it's nice to see more and more people valuing the creativity born out of Cupertino.

My posting has slowed down in recent days because of work commitments, but I couldn't let this go without notice.

Ten Things Monsanto Doesn't Want You to Know

Monsanto is the leading supplier of genetically modified organisms (GMO seeds) to world agriculture. They have ruined many small farmers with their lawsuits on "patent infringement" and have led the charge to patent seeds so that no one can plant that crop without buying their seeds. Monsanto is one of the worst things ever to happen to agriculture that seeks to be organic, sustainable, just, and equitable.

The Organic Consumers Association has put together a list of "10 Things Monsanto Doesn't Want You to Know." In leaflet form, the points are brief and a quick read, which is unfortunate since there is so much more evidence that could be provided on each point. And it doesn't include information that just surfaced in the press last week about laboratory tests on animal subjects that lost the ability by the fourth generation to reproduce after living on a diet of GMO foods.

Please read the brief leaflet for an overview on why Monsanto is bad for food and farming. If you are not eating organically-grown food, you are consuming vast amounts of GMO foodstuffs. Thanks to Monsanto's efforts to ban the labeling of foods in the U.S. that contain GMO products (which labeling is required in most other developed countries of the world), you have no idea what you're eating.