Ham Sandwich Indicted!

After a day of dealing with the aftermath of man's depravity, it's deeply gratifying to come home and see this happening on my porch: Lettuce sprouts! Hooray for growing things!

"The Heart of Darkness." aka, my tomato plants. All that rain we had seems to have treated them well, as it's just now July and they're as tall as the fence. The Romas are fruiting nicely, as are the Early Girls, but the heirloom Willis Plum I picked up in Clintonville is the slow kid of the bunch. Maybe he's just a late bloomer... The cukes produced their first batch of veggies, allowing me to make a batch of sweet & spicy pickles: I used this recipe, and since I didn't have 24 dried Cayenne peppers on hand, I used some of the peppers from the jungle: We'll give them a couple of weeks to marinate and see how they turn out. Finally, the onion and garlic seem to be lying down on the job: My garlics never produced any scapes (oh, the horror!), got about a foot tall and not all that thick, then decided to give up the ghost. I dug up a test garlic the other day, the bulb was about the size of bounce-ball--definitely not the nice, plump head I was h...

Because I didn't make anything this Memorial Day weekend save for Black & Blue Mojitos (recipe below!) and a bowl of guacamole, I'm resorting to posting pictures of the back 40. So far, things are going swimmingly.... The cucumbers are taking off; there's probably a dozen blossoms already. Hopefully, I can train/tie them up the fence. There will be lots of pickle experiments this summer. The peas are doing ok--I've never dealt with peas, so I don't know if they look good, too thin, or are slow to fruit (or maybe, they're fine). All the March/April cooking magazines I get promote pea recipes, but those editors are crazy--here in central Ohio we most definitely do not have fresh peas in April... The radishes, however, are most definitely doing well. I pulled half of my little row of radishes last weekend, and will probably pull the rest this weekend. Broccoli. Again, I'm not really familiar with the growing of broccoli, but basically, you get a g...

This is what mon jardin looks like right now. Well, actually, this is what it looked like two weeks ago, when we actually had some snow on the ground. I can't decide if it looks kind of sad and desolate, or cozy and tucked in--waiting until planting season in just a few, short months. I'll go with the latter, as the former thought makes me want to pack up and move to the Islands. For my loyal readers out there, you'll notice that Ham Sandwich has been pretty quiet lately. The insanity of the holidays, coupled with a general lack of inspiration, has kept me from posting anything of interest. Not to say that it hasn't been a great season of wacky food misadventures, because it has... For my coworkers, I made a bouche de Noel as a Christmas present: If you're thinking "wow, that's so impressive...I could never do that," thanks, but trust me, you can. If you can read and follow the recipe on the inside of the Libby's pumpkin puree label for making ...

The rabid jungle expanse that I refer to as le jardin , continues it's inevitable domination of my tiny backyard. The black krim, old German, and marglobe tomato plants have been staked up to the very top edge of the fence, and are planning their escape down the backside and out into the alley. I'm guessing its only a matter of time before I go out there one morning, and having failed to show up for work, my coworkers find me tangled in a viney web with a tomato stuffed in my mouth... In other news, my tomatillo plant finally produced some fruit--tiny, yellow tomatillos that I assumed would be green until I took a second look at the tag in the pot: " Dr. Wyche's Yellow ." Oh. So they're NOT supposed to be green. Due to poor planning/failure to do appropriate research, I planted the tomatillo in too small a pot, which resulted in an explosions of flowers through early August, but culminated in only about 20 or so slightly-smaller-than-a-ping-pong-ball siz...

The above is what I've picked from my run-amok garden in the last two days. So far, I've not felt too overwhelmed, as I've been pawning off tomatoes on my coworkers, boyfriends, and eating a lot of tomato salads. My newest favorite dish I've made with them is a Corn and Tomato Pie from Gourmet Magazine. It sounds a little weird, but trust me, it is sooooo delicious (and a great way to use up some big beefsteaks or marglobes). The crust really makes the pie, and I found that it's great at room temp, or heated up. (NB: I didn't chop up the corn at all, and I used a mix of cheddar and a "Mexican mix" that I had on hand.) Corn and Tomato Pie serves 6 (light lunch or brunch) Active time:40 min Start to finish:2 hr (includes cooling) 2 cups all-purpose flour 1 tablespoon baking powder 1 3/4 teaspoons salt, divided 3/4 stick cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubes, plus 2 teaspoons melted 3/4 cup whole milk 1 3/4 lb beefsteak tomatoes 1/3 cup mayonnais...

I realized a little late that I probably should have been keeping a garden journal this season--the kind that details when things went in the ground, when they started blooming, fruiting, how many of each thing I planted, etc. Since I failed to do that, this blog will have to serve as the next best thing. Above is the start of a tomatillo growing. The plant has been covered in little yellow flowers for the better part of a month now, and they're finally morphing into actual tomatillos. Very exciting. The tomatoes are going like gangbusters, this is the pink tomato plant (exact species escapes me), listing a bit from the weight (and my jerry-rigged support system--I was apparently too lazy to get some cages. Eh.). The red cabbages have provided me with the most drama this year, as they were attacked by worms in late June. Since showering them with that Sevin dust (it kills everything under the sun and is ok to use on plants), the worms have not returned. Bastards. Their impa...