Scarred by a Yard of Chard

Chard in the Yard

December 2009
Ten years ago, I scattered half a packet of Swiss Chard seeds in my vegetable garden.  Long after the other fruits and vegetables had given up and died off, and I had tired of eating anything green or tending the garden, the chard was still growing.  And then it bolted (sent out seed heads)!

Lazy gardener that I am, the stuff reseeded every year.  This year, almost the entire 50 x 50 foot plot was choked with chard, hollyhocks, grasses and weeds.  During spring and summer, my housemate chopped everything down.  He cultivated a patch, built a fence around it, and planted beets, turnips and garlic (too late in the season for anything else).  A few weeks later, he noticed some beets had sprouted in places he hadn't sown seeds.  That's when he discovered that beet and chard seedlings look a lot alike.

I picked some today and sautéed them with onion, julienned ginger and red pepper, then added sesame seeds and a dash of maple syrup toward the end of cooking.  Served with udon noodles with butter and curry, it made a simple, light dinner.

So ... what's on your dinner table?

Au Marché

Ah, nuts!
Francesca's Organic/Bio Nuts

Now that I'm home, I buy produce at the farmers' market on Saturday mornings (there are others on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, as well) something I rarely did in the past. I miss Metz much more than I missed Bristol, perhaps because I met more people in France than in England (go figure, my spoken French is horrible and English is my mother tongue). This ritual is similar to my Saturday mornings there, maybe that is why I have latched onto it.

The mushroom lady...
Sorry, I don't have a business name for her!

American farmers' markets are different than French braderies. They are almost exclusively produce, agricultural products, and food, while the marchés also have household and personal care items and clothing. I outfitted my apartment in Metz during one frantic morning at the marché. I had the bad sense to move into town on Easter weekend, and as I found out, unfortunately for me, Europeans actually take holidays off, they don't use them as opportunities to shop (or hold) holiday sales!

Free samples from Swank Farms,
Organic/Bio produce

Then there are the samples.  Many vendors here set out sample plates.  French vendors will give you a sample taste if you ask, but they don't generally set out a whole spread. I think there are actually people who come to the farmers' market with the intent of making a meal of the freebies!




This week, I picked up some chanterelles to put in a crème sauce I saw on Les Cuisines de Garance, except I added a dash of the pasta water, which contained vegetable stock. Crème sauces tend to be a little heavy for my taste, and the stock lightened it up and added a subtle complexity without overpowering the mushrooms.

Bon weekend!

More Information: Pacific Coast Farmers' Market Association

Fisherman's Wharf

Although San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf was built around commercial fishing, most people think of it in terms of the kitschy tourist attractions which exist today -- oddball museums, chain restaurants,  souvenir shops, and street artists and performers, such as Michael Lee (right), who does impersonations. When Michael started talking to us, my niece kept walking, eyes focused straight ahead of her,  trying to ignore him, but I made her stop and be social.  Michael likes to drink coffee in North Beach on his days off, and has lived in Germany, where he has a son.

I actually buy dungeness crab live off the boats at Pillar Point Harbor in Half Moon Bay, but no wharf visit is complete without a stroll past the crab pots on Pier 47. Dungeness crab is slightly sweet, delicious eaten plain.  I usually serve it in cioppino, an Italian-style fish stew, with sourdough bread.  We saw these guys piled up after being boiled, waiting to be someone's dinner.

Bingo

Every summer, every temple in my parent's sect (jodo shinshu, an offshoot of Pure Land Buddhism, I personally do not identify with a sect) has a fundraising bazaar, with the bazaars staggered throughout the summer so members can support each-other's churches. The main attractions of these fundraisers are the food which is lovingly prepared by church members, catching up with people you haven't seen since last summer... and, of course, Bingo, the fundraising staple of all religious groups in the US.

The bazaar for my parents' temple was this weekend, so I spent the last two evenings gorging on sushi, udon (noodles), yaki soba (more noodles), chicken teriyaki, imagawayaki (photo, front left) and kuri manju (photo, front right). The last two items on this list are forms of Wagashi, a lightly sweet confection traditionally served with green tea. Wikipedia has a description and photos of wagashi, and Benkyodo has photos of the varieties of manju that they sell, if you are interested in learning more about it.

Tonight I attended with my father, and we played Bingo for a solid hour and a half. It was cash bingo all night, with an occasional "second chance," where play continued after the cash winner banked out and the consolation prize was a bag of groceries. No cash for me (and anyway, it would have gone to my dad, since he actually paid for my games), but my father and I both won a bag of consolation groceries at the same time. Those are my groceries behind the plates. Sorry about the messy counter and the bowl of compost in the background -- sometimes I'm a little lazy! I can use the rice oil and shoyu (soy sauce), and the ramen noodles and instant miso soup will go into the pile with the Costco ramen from 6 months ago for those days I'm too lazy to cook. And the flavored seaweed in the red-topped containers is good for snacking. The individually wrapped marshmallows, however...

The last time I bought marshmallows was a little after my housemate moved in. In the backyard, he set up a woodstove he had made from leftover welding yard parts and I wanted to make s'mores with it. We sat in the dark yard sipping beer and toasting marshmallows on skewers, had two s'mores each, and got sick from the sugar. A few marshmallows were sacrificed to the fire, just to watch them puff up and burn. The rest of the bag sat in the cupboard until the contents fused together and we tossed them. Given the rate at which marshmallows are consumed here, I think it would take more than ten years to finish these off. The scary thing is that since they are individually wrapped, they would probably last that long! I am debating tossing them now, or a few years from now when I happen upon them again.

Devil's Slide

On the way home from work yesterday, I drove down the coast highway over Devil's Slide, which I haven't done in awhile. First, it takes about twice as long to get home that way. Second, parts of the hill the highway is on keep falling into the ocean.

But yesterday was nice, not too hot, not too cold, so I put the top down on the car and let the wind whip my hair up into a huge, un-tanglable (yeah, I know that's not a word) mess. This was the first time I'd driven Devil's Slide in the convertible. I'd always been in my beat-up CRX, hoping the car wouldn't lose a critical part while navigating the curves! With a sounder machine and an open roof, I actually had a chance to enjoy the ride and take in what is truly a breathtaking view -- waves crashing up against sheer, high cliffs, the seemingly endless view over the ocean. I was truly in awe of what nature is capable of producing. I'm glad I made the detour.

Since I was passing by, I headed out to Pillar Point Harbor to see what Captain Dan had on the Seabird. I buy fish off the Seabird, because Dan has a friend, Ron, who has a dog I like to play with. Alas, Ron, and therefore the dog, weren't there that day! Capt. Dan had a couple of 30+ pound king salmon, way too much for my housemate and me, so I opted for a couple of the live rock fish they had swimming around in a couple of barrels. They pummeled the fish to death for me so I could get them home, and instead of paying the couple of bucks to have the fish cleaned, I decided to do it myself.

I got the fish home and started scaling. Rock fish have large, thick scales that are pretty stubborn to remove. And then came the gutting. I haven't actually cleaned a fish in over 20 years, and the last fish I cleaned was a rainbow trout, much daintier than a bass! The guts were clinging to the fish with incredible tenacity, and everything was kind of slippery. I tried to sever the connective tissue with my knife, and failed miserably, so I just wrapped my fingers around them and yanked! Guts and scales flew everywhere -- counter, walls, floor, my shirt, my face, my hair... I had on gloves, but the ick managed to work its way down into them. I smelled like fish guts the rest of the day. Next time, I'm dishing out the two bucks for the professionals to clean the fish.