May 2010 Newsletter

April showers bring May flowers...

I have a confession to make. I love having a garden. I love being able to pick flowers and arrange them in vases around my house. I love being able to pick herbs and veggies and fruit and cook them up right then and there. I love growing enough food to be able to share with people who are hungry by donating to my local food bank. But I really don't enjoy gardening.

Okay, I like some of it. I like planting seeds in starter pots and watching them grow. I enjoy planting the starts into well-prepared soil. I certainly love the smell of the earth. It's just all that work -- the hoeing and weeding and picking of slugs -- that I find painful and not at all fun.

Where I live, May means lots of work in the garden. The rains have finally let up enough that the clay soil is dry enough to work, but they've also nourished vigorous growth of wild radish, sheep's sorrel, plantain, and thistle. All of which is fine out in the pasture, but is unwanted competition for my cultivated plants (flowers and veggies) in the garden. And so the mowing and weeding and slug picking begins...

But guess what? Basic organizing principles apply to the garden, too! Keep It Simple, Sweetie reminds me to tackle only small areas at a time, rather than try to weed the entire garden in one day. Create (and use) Habits reminds me to weave the watering and slug patrol into my daily chores. Adopt an Attitude of Gratitude helps me to see (and appreciate) the garden I have instead of the work that still faces me. And Ask for Help encourages me to call my gardener, who takes care of the mowing and weed-whacking (and some of the weeding) for me.

Whether you're organizing your garden or your home, the basic principles serve as a helpful guide. If you need a reminder of the principles (and want to see what some other organizers have come up with), read my article "Organizing by the Numbers" on my website. http://www.clairejosefine.com/art.htm#organizing%20by%20the%20numbers And, as always, let me know if I can be of any help.

Happy spring!



Tip of the Month

Get ready for your garden by discarding old seeds, sharpening and cleaning your tools, and recycling broken and excess pots. Then organize: put your hand tools together into a bucket or caddy and hang your larger tools (shovels, rakes, etc.) on the wall of your gardening shed or garage.

This year, I've organized my seeds in order of when I'm planting them, so that the ones due to be planted next are on top of the bundle. You can also organize them by type -- flowers, herbs, veggies -- or alphabetically, or by shade vs. sun. However you think of them and want to access them is how you should organize them.

Quote of the Month

Our life is shorter than flowers
Then shall we mourn?
No, we shall dance
Plant gardens
Dress in colors
And teach our children
To make the world more beautiful
Because our life is shorter than flowers.
— Toltec fragment

Creamed Spinach, Garlic Kale, White Beans, and Creamy Polenta

Oy, two months already since I last wrote? Okay, I’m a lousy blogger. But then, I’m not writing to be a blogger; I’m writing to share my thoughts, recipes, and life with whoever’s out there reading. (Hello? Anybody there?)

Garden update: Except for micro-slug damage, the winter veggies are doing well. The garlic has sent up its leaves, and the greens are beginning to show up at the dinner table. I’ve harvested the first round of spinach, plucking the largest leaves from the outer edges of each plant. Made an amazingly delicious creamed spinach by wilting the spinach, then covering it with a bechamel sauce (make a roux from 2 tablespoons each of melted butter and flour, then add about a cup of milk and stir it in until thickened) seasoned with a packet of Simply Organic’s onion soup mix.

I’ve also made one meal from the kale – sautéing it with garlic and serving it with white beans and creamy polenta. To make the white beans, soak 1 cup of them overnight, then:

Sauté one chopped onion
Add the beans
Add sprigs of thyme, rosemary, and sage
Add whole, peeled garlic (an entire head)
Add just enough water to cover the beans

Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to a simmer. Cook, covered, for a couple of hours, or until the beans have softened.

If you’d like, add two Aidel’s chicken apple sausages, sliced into ½ inch pieces, about ½ hour before the beans are done.

Serve the beans with the garlic kale over creamy polenta:

Bring 4 cups of liquid to a boil. I use 3 cups of chicken broth and one cup of milk or cream.
Add 1 cup of polenta
Reduce heat to medium and stir constantly for five minutes, then reduce heat further, to a simmer, and continue stirring regularly for 10 to 15 minutes, until the liquid is asbsorbed and the polenta has thickened.
Stir in ½ cup of mild grated cheese – I like fontina or jack
Add one small diced red bellpepper
Remove from heat and serve

Reheated polenta for lunch:
A client of mine turned me on to this. She takes a slice of leftover polenta and heats it briefly in the microwave. (Not owning – or wanting – a microwave, I use the toaster oven.) Then she drizzles olive oil on it and sprinkles it with pepper, toasted sunflower seeds, and a bit of grated parmesan cheese. Yum!


Farmer’s market only has two more Saturdays before it closes for the winter. Luckily, the garden is like a mini farmer’s market. Waiting patiently for me to choose them are beets, chard, kale, and spinach. And I saw the beginnings of a broccoli.

Also, the apples are ready to harvest. I’ll probably wind up drying them or making applesauce. They’re Fujis, and don’t taste very good. No doubt some of them will wind up in the Thanksgiving stuffing, and possibly in a pie. I’m thinking about taking some pears a friend canned that are too sweet for my taste and making a pie with them, apples, figs, cranberries, brandy, cinnamon and cloves, and I’m not sure what else.

Veggie Songs

Peas squeak.

Seriously. When I pick the snow peas from the vine and place them in my hand, they gently rub against each other and produce a squeaking sound. It’s quite charming.

The green beans are quieter, issuing a small percussive snap when I break them free. Although would somebody please remind me next spring that I’m fonder of the idea of yellow wax beans than of the taste? I think there must be something about leaving the beans on the vine long enough to yellow that causes them to get a bit too starchy and tough. The Haricots Verts, however, are delicious: fresh and crunchy.

The sound of dill is softer yet. I picked a paper-lunch-bag full of dill leaves and set them out to dry, the whole time telling the dill how wonderful it smelled and that I was grateful for it; that it would be used well in spanakopita and zucchini latkes, in bread, and maybe even on fish.

And snails make a satisfying (if guilt-ridden) smack as they hit the pavement, having been launched over the fence once discovered hiding among the bean leaves.

This morning was dedicated to harvest. I walked over to the neighbors and picked up two dozen eggs, five of which I gathered directly from the hen house. (The cackling and carrying on of chickens is its own symphony of sorts.) While there, I helped myself (upon my neighbor’s invitation) to zucchini: four little, four medium, and one huge honker (for stuffing). Three small tomatoes made their way home with me, too, destined for tonight’s pizza. Then I wandered into my own garden, from which I harvested ½ pound each of peas and green beans, the bag of dill, and two bouquets worth of flowers (mostly dahlias).

Meanwhile, a loaf of oatmeal bread was baking. And later today I’ll wander over to the cows’ side of the pasture to collect blackberries. I’ve picked and frozen four one-pound bags so far, but would be happier with more. I love blackberries.

But what I love even more is gathering, and eating from my surroundings. I’m reading Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle right now (I’m in June), and am absolutely loving it. She’s a wonderful writer, and her attitude is refreshing. I wind up comparing her year-long experiment of eating only local food with Judith Levine’s Not Buying It. Where Levine came from a place of deprivation, Kingsolver embraces the challenge with a mindset of abundance and gratitude. And her daughter’s recipes are enticing – I will definitely be trying them. In fact, the book may wind up living on my cookbook shelf once I’m done.

Not that I’m ready to take the localvore pledge, but that’s mostly because of the dearth of local grains where I live. But I eat mostly local food, and of that, probably 90% organic.

In fact, one of the things that amuses me as I read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is the differences in crop availability. Kingsolver lives in a region that has seasons – snow, even. She also has more heat than we do here on the coast. My god, she’s talking about teasing tomatoes ripe in mid June! Here it is mid September, and my tomatoes are still little green guys. (My neighbor has a warmer garden plot, shielded from the wind, and his tomatoes are up against a wall that adds reflected heat. Hence he has some ripe already.) I can’t even think about growing hot-weather crops: melons, peppers, eggplant… Of course, I’m allergic to them, so for me it doesn’t matter.

Also, everything seems to be late this year. The first of my sunflowers just opened its sunny face today. And most of my dahlias are tight buds. Hopefully this means it’s not too late for me to put in the winter garden. I planted broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, kale, chard, spinach, and onion starts on Sunday.

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My goodness, searching through my posts to provide links to recipes, I realized that I never shared my recipe for spanakopita. I apologize! Here it is:

Wilt one pound of cleaned spinach leaves.

Transfer the spinach to a large bowl and add:

8 ounces crumbled feta
one bunch of scallions, chopped
dill (about 1/2 cup fresh, or two Tablespoons dried)
mint (about1/4 cup fresh, or one Tablespoon dried)
nutmeg (just a light sprinkling)
Pepper (to taste)

You can also add:
toasted pine nuts (about 1/4 cup)
cottage cheese (to give it more bulk, up to 8 ounces)

Melt 4 Tablespoons butter and 4 Tablespoons olive oil together.

Brush the bottom of a square pyrex with the butter/oil.

Now begin the layering/buttering process with the phyllo dough, one sheet at a time, until you have about a dozen buttered sheets in the dish. Place your spinach/feta/herbs mixture on top of the phyllo, then proceed to cover it, one buttered sheet at a time, for another 8 to 12 sheets. Tuck it all in, brush the top with yet more butter, and bake at 350 until golden brown.

Warning: the measurements here are off the top of my head. You may need to tweak them. As always, I'm assuming you know how to cook and am offering the recipe as a guide.

Gleaning Fruit for the People

Yesterday’s Times-Standard had an article that made me think: Finally!

It’s a simple story about a woman who has the local food bank send in a volunteer gleaner to harvest the abundance of apples on her trees so that the fruit can go to people who need food.

Years ago, when I lived in San Rafael (Marin County, California), I would walk around my extended neighborhood and wonder at the plethora of produce wasting away on people’s unharvested trees. So much food! Apples, plums, figs, pomegranates, lemons, pears … why wasn’t anyone harvesting this? It seemed to me that there must be a way to have the fruit picked and distributed to those who were hungry. But no, I guess people were too concerned about their liability to have anyone come in and pick the trees clean.

Ah, but this is Humboldt County, not Marin. Not only does our local Food for People provide volunteer gleaners, it is part of the national Plant a Row for the Hungry program. As explained in the Times-Standard article, “Gardeners are asked to plant an extra row of food and donate it to Food for People, the food bank for Humboldt County. The purpose of the program is to ensure that everyone has access to the healthiest food choices available.”

Back in those Marin County days, times got tight. There was a period when my partner and I found ourselves needing the help of the local services. The saying “beggars can’t be choosers” was right on; the contents of the grocery bags we received were far from the healthy foods we tried our best to eat. Fresh organic produce? In our dreams. So I’m particularly pleased that programs exist to bring those apples (and whatever else folks plant or can’t keep up with themselves) to people needing help with groceries.

And who knows, with a bit of luck (and a lot more sweat), my garden may start producing enough to share with others! I’m excited – I got a worm bin for my birthday! And, I discovered yesterday, bats have finally moved into the bat house. So we’ve put a tray below their abode to catch their guano. Worm castings and bat guano – exciting shit.

Recycling My Food

And I thought I was being so innovative…

You know that little piece of green onion that you cut off, along with the roots, when chopping up green onions? A while back, I decided that, instead of tossing them into my compost, I’d spoon them into the soil in my herb bed (a long planter box that Anthony built for me and that lives on my deck, right out my front door). Sure enough, those little darlings grew into brand-new (sorta) green onions. The ultimate in recycling and being “green,” eh?

Of course, I plant the garlic bulbs that have begun to sprout, too – and am happily harvesting fresh garlic as a result.

And a client recently gave me a bag of Warren Creek organic potatoes – Russets, Yukon Gold, Red Creamers, and Peruvian Purples – that had grown a tangle of roots in her ignored potato drawer. Those are now in the ground, covered with rice straw. A bit of luck and they’ll shoot out leaves, then, eventually, potatoes.

Turns out my recycling techniques are old hat, though. In this week’s North Coast Journal, Amy Stewart wrote a cute piece entitled “Eat Your Trash.” In it, she discusses the re-issue of Deborah Peterson’s Don’t Throw It, Grow It! 59 Windowsill Plants from Kitchen Scraps. To quote Amy: “There’s hardly a scrap of produce on your cutting board that can’t be given a second life, according to the authors. Carrot tops, garbanzo beans, peanuts, jicama, lemongrass, ginger – they can all be made to grow again. Spices and nuts can be sprouted as seeds, fruits and vegetables will grow from cuttings, and beans and peas will turn into climbing vines in a jiffy.”

You mean I can be recycling my carrots, too?

Of course, a lot of plants won’t produce here. Too much wind, not enough heat days. Rules out the possibility of ginger or lemongrass (both of which I like to cook with). And I think I read that growing beans is tricky. But maybe I can let some of my peas go all the way to seed, and then start new plants from them. (Duh – isn’t this the basis of seed saving? It’s a good thing I’m not dependent on my gardening to feed me. There’s so much I don’t know!)

What have you had success at re-growing?

For these things we are grateful

The swallows are back!

And tonight we eat the first dozen spears of asparagus, harvested from the garden.

The fruit trees are in bloom, and the rhodies are about to flower. The bearded iris are sporting buds – promises of purple – and the lilies are sending up their stalks. The blueberry branches are bursting with pink, teases of blueberries to come. Borage is blue and begging to be picked, a cheerful starburst to spice up the salad. (My latest favorite: lettuce, crumbled feta, dried cranberries, toasted almond slivers, and borage flowers tossed with a simple olive oil/lemon/honey/thyme dressing. Very patriotic appearance!) Oregano, parsley, cilantro, rosemary, and mint are healthy with new growth. The raspberries and boysenberries are leafing out, as is the grape. And the roses seem to be thriving after our hard frosts earlier this year.

In other words, spring has returned. And with it has come my hope. I’m feeling enthusiastic, energetic, creative, and joyous again. Part of this is because we’re moving forward on projects for the garden; e.g., we’ve finished building two of the three raised beds that we’re putting in this year. Part of it is because I’m feeling inspired in my work. I’m starting a series of Clutter Support Groups, and have ideas for a few more products related to my book (The Spiritual Art of Being Organized).

But I’m also feeling better because I’ve reconnected with my spiritual path. I’ve hooked up with a group that helps me to remember (and practice) basic truths: the importance of being in present moment, of gratitude, of remembering our connectedness, of choosing love instead of fear and abundance instead of scarcity, of being kind, of taking responsibility for my life. All the stuff I intellectually know, but sometimes my heart (ego?) forgets.

Thank god for spring, for hope – and for happiness!

May we all feel joy and gratitude. May all beings be happy.

Country Living

And I don’t mean the picture-perfect everything-matches life portrayed in the magazine of the same name.

We’re getting the garden ready for winter, in our haphazard, don’t-really-know-what-we’re-doing way. Saturday we took Ant’s Toyota pickup over to Rabbi Les’ place and loaded up on composted llama manure. (The Rabbi has two llamas.) I’ve been spending an hour or two in the garden most days since then, weeding the beds, adding the manure, then mulching with rice straw. Today Ant spent some time in the garden with me, weeding his kohlrabi and radishes and dead-heading the dahlias. He also cut the heads off a few of the larger sunflowers, which I’ve brought inside to dry. I hope the seeds will be edible.

I’m also hoping that our favorite growers – Rita and Laurie of Flying Blue Dog Nursery – will have starts of various cole crops at market this weekend so that we can have a winter garden: broccoli, brussell sprouts, chard, and so on. We’re not very good at planning; if we were, we’d have started seeds ourselves a month ago. And we have yet to plant enough of any crop to have anything more than a handful at each harvest, enough for a meal here and there, never enough to preserve or sell. I’d like to change that. My sister and her husband have an organic farm in Scotland, and they’re doing well at selling weekly baskets of produce, eggs, and flowers. I would love to be doing the same thing here, but don’t feel like I have the know-how or the help to pull it off.

Well, I may not try to have chickens again. My neighbors up two doors up the road sell eggs fresh from their hens. Anytime I need more eggs, I walk to their barn, pick up what I need, and drop money into the box – eggs on the honor system.

My dad admits to shaking his head in amazement, wondering aloud to his wife how he, an utterly urban man, wound up with two country girls for daughters. Seeing the way he delights over the beauty of something as mundane as a thistle, though, I understand where Jessica (my sister) and I got our love of nature. I’ve lived in the city, loved being able to hop a bus or walk to whatever I needed. But I also love looking out my kitchen window to see the pasture full of Farmer John’s "girls": doe-eyed Jerseys grazing 10 feet from my window. I love watching the birds come and go with their seasons – the flickers and stellar jays and Oregon junkos and robins – love listening to the osprey’s high cry and the distinctive sound that a raven’s wings make as they displace air.

I even love the excitement of chasing my neighbor’s "pet" raccoon out of the garden, where it was planning to dumpster-dive my compost bin in broad daylight. (My neighbor’s been feeding it because she can’t refuse a cute face. I know, I know – give her the lecture, not me!) Actually, I only started to chase the raccoon; Ant did the real running it off. Right down the private road, toward the buck who was there, eyeing the abandoned apple trees. Raccoons and bucks in the middle of the day…

Soon our apples will be ready to harvest, then I’ll need to either dry them for winter snacks, or freeze them for apple pies. Remind me when we get closer to Thanksgiving and I’ll give y’all my recipe for sugar-free apple pie and for pumpkin pie (from scratch – we’ve 2 pie pumpkins in the garden, both of which were volunteers). I think my pumpkin pie is the best around, and the sugar-free apple pie is delicious (sweetened with raisins).

Oh my, Thanksgiving. Autumn really is here, isn’t it?

Okay, here’s my favorite way to eat Brussell Sprouts – with Horseradish & Cheese Sauce

Sautee 8 sliced mushrooms in either olive oil or butter
Add about 1 pound of brussells, washed, stemmed, and sliced lengthwise in half
Cook, covered, over medium-low heat until tender (to taste).

While the sprouts are cooking, grate about 1 cup of sharp cheddar cheese.
Once the sprouts are cooked, push them to one side of the skillet.
Add in 2 Tablespoons of butter
Mix into the butter 1 heaping Tablespoon of flour
Add one cup of milk, and mix so that the flour/butter is fully dissolved into the milk.
Add the grated cheese, 1 heaping Tablespoon of horseradish, and 1 Tablespoon of dried tarragon.
Continue stirring until everything is well blended and the sauce has thickened. (It’s okay to be mixing the brussells and shrooms in with the sauce.)

Serve over pasta.
Yum.