We have some amazing hickory trees on our property. They are good looking trees with edible fruit. The hickory nut is sweet and I personally think comparable to a pecan in flavor. It’s unfortunately much tougher to crack and mostly consists of shell.

Anne often collects these hickory nuts and spends some time every year cracking and eating them with her dad. There is something very satisfying in the cracking of a hickory. The sound of the splitting shell inspires us to crack more. The hickory nut tastes like inspiration.

This year, I got to looking at some nuts and thought they deserved their own little photo shoot. So I took some pictures and then didn’t really know what to do with them. I could just load them to Flickr and forget about them, I thought. Or maybe, just maybe, I should load them to Facebook and share the hickory nut message with all my hickory friends.

But if I’m going to do that, I better make the messages really blatant and also include disclaimers, warnings and general words of caution (look closely for these). Inspiration is, after all, 90% stinky.

Welcome to 2012 everyone! The coming of a new year often makes me think of trying new things. We have grown pumpkins for several years, but 2011 was the first year we ever used them for anything besides decoration.

It didn’t seem like too much extra work, not that I did any of the cutting or scooping or baking. It did take longer than simply opening a can of pie filling, but that process would have been much less photo worthy.

The flavor and consistency were spot on. If it were not for the plague of squash beetles, I’d be looking forward to this year’s pumpkin patch and homemade pumpkin pies.

(I haven’t completely ruled out the possibility of a small patch. Row covers for the squash vine borers and some kind of organic pest control for the beetles would be necessary.)

We are looking forward to more new adventures in 2012!

It’s nice to have too many tomatoes. This doesn’t always happen, so when it does I start looking for potentially delicious ways to consume them. I’ve had several absolutely perfect tomato sandwiches this year. I actually prefer the simple cheese + mayo+ tomato combination to the more classic BLT. But a sandwich really only uses one tomato, and I have many. Sauce is already made and frozen. We’ve given to friends and food banks (and to be honest, some of these season finale tomatoes are a little over-ripe).

Soup is an idea. Ketchup? Perhaps, but I don’t use that much ketchup unless I am eating fries. Fruit and veggie juices, on the other hand, if tasty, disappear rather quickly from the fridge.

The recipe is simple and not my own creation. As with all things, I learned this one on the Internet. These proportions are rough and can be adjusted to taste.

8 cups chopped tomatoes
1 cup chopped celery
1/3 cup chopped onion
1/4 cup chopped pepper
2 Tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt
(optional) 1 spicy pepper

Add all ingredients to a stainless steel pot and simmer from about 1/2 hour. Press through sieve or food mill. Chill in fridge. The site I found this recipe on mentions it lasting in the fridge for about a week to 10 days. It’s really quite refreshing.

Behold! The awesome yellow power of the lemon pepper!

Okay, you have that beheld? Good. You can stop now. I know, it’s difficult to turn your gaze away from the starburst tint that gives this pepper its name. The color is certainly lemony, but the flavor is so hot I might be missing out on what others describe as citrus tones. The hot lemon pepper rates surprisingly high on the Scoville chart. Some rank it akin to Cayenne while others place it nearer the mighty Habanero. If enough ripen before the heavy frost, they will make for an attractive pepper jelly.

In addition to the fiery lemons, I also planted sweet bells, purple cayenne (they start purple and green and ripen red), and habanero. The bell peppers ought to have been red (big red), but they are ripening orange/yellow. Either I planted some old seeds and mixed up my planting (entirely possible) or the red pepper seeds I ordered were not very red. The peppers have been sluggish this year.

Part of the sluggishness was gardener error. I planted them out before it was really warm enough and before the seedlings were big enough. That likely shocked them a bit. The bells also had too much competition from poppies. As pretty as the poppies were, I should have ripped them out. Or maybe that wouldn’t have made any difference. The green habaneros in the photo were picked from a casualty limb. All the pepper plants are heavy with peppers and without caging or staking, limbs will snap. All the pepper jam might come out green this year – maybe with a hint of purple.

Once again, this doesn’t appear to be the year to make wine from our grapes. The birds beat us to the fruit.

About two weeks ago, I saw some evidence of bird damage and rather naively thought there were plenty of grapes for everyone. I also thought that netting the rows would be a large expense and massive time-suck. Ordering netting would take a while to arrive and who knows what might happen in the between.

So, I did nothing. Actually, I hoped a little. But admittedly not with all my heart, since I honestly wasn’t looking forward to the de-stemming and washing and crushing.  We’ve been talking about scaling back the rows of vines so that they would be more manageable. “Know your limits” – that’s what grandma used to say. Not my grandma, but I’m sure someone’s grandma said that. I think we could better handle about five rows (currently have eleven). With five rows, I could potentially install a simple deer fence around the whole vineyard and bird netting could go up and over the top of the deer fence… at least then we’d only have frost, bugs and fungus to contend with.

The garden is bursting with fresh produce that would make most McDonald’s lovers weep. Every night, we toss freshly torn basil with a different assortment of beans, tomatoes, and cucumbers. Green tomato salsa has adorned cheese and bean filled quesadillas. Tonight we will slice melons – cantaloupe or watermelon, I can’t be sure yet.  There is an abundance of flavor and goodness. Eating well makes us feel good.

But the other day, I was thinking about how much I like French Fries. At first, I was searching for a recipe to make squash fries. So I really started out with good intentions. And I found some reviews of Butternut Squash fries that looked okay. I had a squash (not butternut) sitting on the counter that I wanted to use. It was an accidental pick about a week ago – sometimes fruit falls off when weeding or manipulating vines. So, I cut it open — It wasn’t ripe. Disappointment. The flesh was so thin it wasn’t going to work for fries. And by this time, I really wanted some fries.

Lucky for me, I had some potatoes sitting on the counter too. They were starting to green a bit from the morning sun. I read somewhere that green potatoes are poisonous, but then I thought that might be a myth and these weren’t that green yet anyway. So I peeled and sliced them, tossed them in a bag with olive oil and kosher salt, spread them on a cookie sheet and tossed them into a cold oven and then cranked the heat to 425. They took about 30-40 minutes and I did flip and stir them a bit every 10 minutes or so. They were the most amazing fries ever! And honestly, they aren’t so terrible nutritionally speaking, right? Especially if we don’t count the ketchup.

Surprisingly well, thank you.

It’s surprising to us in that we didn’t really do this right and continue to make classic blunders. We do not spray them consistently with copper (anti-fungal), and would rather not need to spray them at all. I do not know really the best way or the best time to trim them (I experimented with later trimming this year). They are on a nice hill, but the slope is also home to incredibly invasive quack grass (and other nasty weeds). And some vines have been “accidentally” hit with the mower. I think it’s safe to say we’ve been a tad neglectful and borderline abusive.

And yet I expect them to appease me. I want them to pose for these photos and more to come. I want them to produce lots of tight little clusters this year. I do not want then to succumb to a late frost as we had last year – and just barely managed to avoid a few nights ago. I understand my irrationality. I want them to produce with little help from me. I want them to want to live and fend for themselves. Some of them probably can and will… at least for a time. And as a spot is vacated, perhaps an apple tree, tomato plant or blackberry will take it’s place. I think I’d be okay with that.

The grapevines need to be pruned fairly soon. Hope we don’t see another late frost this year.

We were doing a little garden cleaning and this kiwano horn melon was sacrificed for better garden path clearance. The lemon cucumbers are perfectly ripe and so abundant it’s almost comical.

Click the image for larger view

The vines of the Kiwano’s have grown considerably well. They really want to ramble and climb. Much like the banana melons in this regard. I really should have given them more to climb on, but they managed to make their own trellis of the sunflower stalks and asparagus. The horns of the horn melon are indeed rather pointed. But even more of a nuisance are the fine spines along the vines and leaves. It is almost a necessity to wear gloves when checking on these plants. Otherwise I can expect to spend some time extracting the fine hair-like needles from my fingers. I have sensitive hands.

Click the image for larger view

At this yet to ripen stage, they taste like cucumbers. Nothing very exciting. When ripe I understand their flavor resembles bananas. If any ripen I will post again.

Close readers will remember we planted a few new melon varieties this year. I don’t expect we have any really close readers, so to recap, we planted MN Midget Melon, Pepino Melon, Kiwano Horn Melon and Banana Melon. All but the Pepino have more than taken their fair share of garden space. The Pepino have suffered in the shade of several tomato plants. Sorry Pepino.

We’ve had MN Midgets before, so while they are not new, they are a favorite. Perfect size and flavor. A small cantaloupe with super sweet flavor.

But now we have something new. Or new to us anyway. The Banana Melon.

Turns out this variety was popular back in the late 1800′s. It was in the seed catalogs of the day, so I’m guessing it enjoyed some level of popularity. Either that or some clever marketer realized we gardeners enjoy planting different varieties and was trying to sell us on an oddity. I know that’s why I bought them.

They are large. Much larger than I would ever have expected. This one was about 13”, but I gather they can grow close to 2 feet. I picked it slightly immature I think, but there was a little soft spot, so rather than let it rot, I thought we should try it.

It’s pretty good. The taste and texture is much like a cantaloupe. It was not quite as sweet as our MN Midgets, but maybe that was due to immaturity. The vines love to climb, and it appears to be a heavy producer – if only we had a longer Summer. And not to be a complainer, but many sites and catalogs claim this melon’s name is derived from it’s shape — sure, it’s oblong like a banana, but it doesn’t have that quintessential banana curve to it. I vote for renaming this the Yellow Mellow Melon.