The Love of My Life: Eggplant

I love eggplant. I can't get enough of it. Whenever we order out for our Friday night meals, my friends always pick out an eggplant dish especially for me.

This year, I stumbled across an eggplant plant at Behnkes. It was kind of late in the spring when I planted it and I wasn't sure if I'd have any success. But it has sweetly delivered about five good-sized eggplants this summer, or more elegantly in French, aubergine. This one is likely the last that the plant will offer me (though there is one blossom coming in now, and if I count the weeks until the first freeze--about five. Well, maybe she'll pop out another one for me).

Now, here is a funny story dredged from a long ago horrible time when I was smitten with my first real case of love. There is nothing worse than unrequited teenage love. The boy was in my third grade class and I fell deeply in love with him the first time I saw him. I harbored a painful passion for him for years. Maybe, as I recall, all the way through sixth grade. I did terrible things like phone him and hang up when he answered. I would sit starring at him in class. Sadly, he had no interest in me. I think he even called me Pyface. (I hated when the boys called me that.) So I made up a name for him. I channeled my love into a huge force of hate and loathing and worked up a powerful contempt for this boy, the former love of my life.

To ratify my contempt, I came up with a name for him that was certain to convey my utter and total disregard for him. His new first and last name were derived from the two most vile, repugnant vegetables that a mother could ever set before a kid to eat at dinner--"Broccoli Eggplant." Thus baptized one day on the playground, his moniker quickly caught on. The other girls on the playground and I used it to create a song, and later, a line dance to go with it. It was a chant that I'm sure unnerved him, and possibly caused his mother to phone the principal.

Today, the boy is a nice man who sells real estate. I wonder if he likes eggplant as much as I do?

My kids love eggplant, too. The other day, C. called from college and asked if I would please send her the recipe for her favorite eggplant dish. So here it is. The Putterer


Maccheroni Al Forno Alla Rustica

Ingredients

14 oz maccheroni

vegetable oil

1 aubergine, peeled and cut into 1/4 inch thick slices

salt

2 oz butter, plus extra for the baking dish

4 oz thinly sliced onion

12 oz tinned whole peeled tomatoes, with their juice, coursely chopped

freshly ground black pepper

4 tbsps freshly grated parmigiano-reggiano chees

4 pz Italian smoked mozzarella (use fresh if smoked mozz is unavailable), very thinly sliced

Preparation

1. Pour vegetable oil into a saute pan until it comes 1/2 in up the side. Place over a high heat. Once the oil has become very hot, carefully slip in as many slices of aubergine as will comfortably fit. As the bottom of each slice turns golden brown, remove from the pan and transfer to a plate covered with kitchen paper. Continue frying untill all the aubergine is done. Sprinkle with salt.

2. Pour 7 pints of water into a large saucepan or pot and place over a high heat.

3. Melt the butter in another saute pan over a medium heat. Add the onion and cook until it softens and turns a rich golden colour.

4. Add the tomatoes, season with salt and black pepper and cook until the tomatoes have reduced and separated from the butter. Remove from the heat and set aside.

5. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

6. When the water for the pasta is boiling, add 1 tablespoon of salt and drop in the pasta all at once, stirring well.

7. When the pasta is molto al dente (about 1 minute away from being al dente), drain and toss with the sauce and the grated parmigiano-reggiano cheese.

8. Smear the bottom of a shallow baking dish with butter and pour in about half the pasta, spreading it out evenly. Cover with all the aubergine slices and half the mozzarella slices. Pour in the remaining pasta, and place the rest of the mozzarella slices on top.

9. Place on the upper shelf of the oven. Bake for about 15-20 minutes or until a light golden crust forms on top. Remove from the oven and allow to rest for 10 minutes before serving.

Source: The Classic Pasta Cookbook by Giuliano Hazan

A Plant with Attitude

This weekend was satisfying. I did an enormous amount of cleanup, fix up, put away and get it done. On Monday morning, I took the dog out and strolled through the garden and all was order. Nice way to start the week. (My hip hurts like hell, though, and I felt exhausted all day yesterday.)

I can't remember the name of this plant. I never can for some reason. It just won't stick. So I call it the Plant with Attitude. They are a mainstay in my garden and this time of year they come into their own. When we traveled to Africa, they were all over the place. If I only gardened with Maryland natives, I'd have to forgo this beauty.

I contend that the Plant with Attitude is a better name than whatever it might be called. I remember once I was in Behnke's with my brother. That was that unforgettable day that my mother died and C. and I just couldn't figure out what to do, so we went to the nursery. I wanted to buy one of these and of course, had forgotten the name. So I asked for the Plant with Attitude and the nurseryman knew exactly what I was talking about.

I'm all attitude as I march toward my 49th birthday. It's all good and it just seems to get better. My husband, my family, my friends. I'm going to close out my forties contendedly. And when I'm dead and gone, they might not remember my name, but everybody will know who that Girl with Attitude was. The Putterer

Everything that Dies, Some Day Comes Back

October and it's all done. This picture of my phlox David (white) and Veronica (lavender) is old, stored for a future post back in August. Outside this morning, the remnants of phlox petals are gently drifting away.

The 2009 garden might have been one of my best. The dependable rainstorms throughout the season meant I rarely watered (I think once or twice this whole summer). In fact, the biomass that I've raked and weeded out of the garden this summer is probably a record. The deer that came through must have encountered the deer resistant plants that I'd put in, and decided to graze elsewhere. His damage was minimized by a flush of growth. The family of wrens that took up residence in my birdhouse hopefully made it to adulthood. The goldfinches have moulted. Their gorgeous yellow feathers have turned an autumn brown. The banana tree in the pot on the deck is probably confused by the cool evening temperatures. (What am I going to do with it?) The apple tree never produced but at least it's not growing sideways anymore. The peach tree survived the gypsy moth infestation. The Fourth of July tomatoes delivered all through August. The herbs and peppers are still holding fast. And the eggplant plant gave me two or three lovely Aubergine.

Now comes the process of closing it all out before the first freeze in mid-November. The fall chores sometimes come with a self-imposed anxiety to rake and clean and put away. The crush of fall social obligations, sports games and school activities. The temptation to work late in the evenings and go in on weekends to meet the press deadline for goSmithsonian. All of this conflicts with garden work and chores. I have to remember that no one cares if the plants turn brown and fall over, and the leaves gather on the lawn. It's the way it is supposed to be and I need to move slowly, deliberately, one step, one season, at a time. The Putterer

Fall Days Make for a Perfect Pepper

The temperature fell last night. It's fall officially. J will work late tonight to close out the fiscal year. My mother's birthday follows, and then mine and J's the week after. Leaves are spotting the ground, which is damp, and the grass is thinning. Two pumpkins are on the porch and as is the custom at my house, their fall orange flare will clash with the pots that hold the springtime purple and pink blooms that I can't bear to pitch.

On Sunday, with minutes to spare before a darkening sky brought another deluge, I raced to mow the lawn. The clumps of wet grass are still out on the sidewalk. I can't possibly find enough time to clean everything up before an autumn gust blows in more detritus.

It's the way of fall. I mourn the passing of summer, but I love the coming of cool days. My jeans fit loosely after a summer of exercise and my arms long for the warmth of a soft sweatshirt. Everything is in order with the girls back in their school routine. Early morning coffee, fast departure, dog is walked, house locked up for the day. No deviations, no late night teen parties. Chaos over.

In the garden, the parsley is plentiful, the peppers are turning a deep red and a burnt yellow, a thin growth of arugula is coming in from the seed that I threw down about ten days ago. There's a sweet bush of lavender that anchors one corner of the farmer box balanced by the thick bunch of chives at the other corner.

I've stored up some grass to salt the next pile of leafy compost. And the compost from last fall is wormy, warm and black.

It's time to stop blogging and blast off to work. That is the routine of fall. The Putterer

Now I Want Chickens

Meet Caley, my dog. She is not a farm animal and she has no job to do other than to sit artfully around the house as if Diego Velazquez might happen by. Caley would be most annoyed if I were to follow through on this morning's vaguery--to buy backyard chickens, though they would certainly upstage her productivity.

But just the other day, J and I were driving home on a nearby street, when he suddenly lurched his head around and exclaimed that he'd just seen a flock of chickens in someone's yard. He was incredulous; suggesting that it must be a recent immigrant family that brought them in. I informed him, however, that raising chickens was the new, best thing in gardening. Fresh eggs; ready, steady fertilizer; and even something to throw in a pot, if for some reason you couldn't walk the few blocks to Whole Foods. We pondered the idea together and considered turning around to go gawk at the menagerie, but we had to hurry home.

This morning, I got up earlier than I really should and settled in with my New Yorker and found Susan Orlean (I have a secret crush on her only because I just wish that by now in my career I was as famous a writer as she is). And of course, she's one-upped me again, because she's moved to the country and bought chickens. And the chickens are lending her a special credibility in the arena of gardening elite and domestic goddess. "When one of my hens laid my first home-grown egg," she writes, "I was as proud as if I had been attending my daughter's bat mitzvah." I know this emotion. I've shared it many times. When my first tomato ripened. When my mixture of grass and leaves and kitchen waste turned to black compost gold. When my eggplant plant (is that what you call it?) delivered. This is the ecstasy the domestic goddess achieves when her efforts bear fruit.

So calculating my latest vaguery. . .That would include purchase and upkeep of a chicken coop ($1,000, because everything costs $1,000 to begin with); nurturing and care of said chickens (do you walk them on a leash?); veterinarian bills (rabies shots?); neighbor complaints (attorney fees?); J's protestations (divorce attorney?), and of course, Caley's feelings (the elite Cavalier King Charles Spaniel's bark is pitched at an ear-drum-shattering spike). . . my first egg would likely be costly.

The truth of the matter is that Orlean, because she's such a great writer and observer of life and culture, nailed it right were it hurts. Pegged me with this provocative observance, that chickens seem to go "hand-in-glove with the post-feminist reclamation of other farmwife domestic arts--knitting, canning, quilting. . . . newly appreciated as a declaration of self-sufficiency, a celebration of handiwork."

My hero is a cynic. True scorn for the post-feminist working/wife/mother/hand-maiden still to male dominance. Us girls, clinging to the hope that we might have stepped up and out of our domestic roles and always hoping to briefly touch on Orlean-like fame. Oh, if only, we just had 37 more hours in the day to do it all, and raise chickens, too. The Putterer

September Hurries By

September arrived and left me in its wake. September is a hurry month. Everything comes in a crush in September. We arrive back from an August vacation. There's a pile of things to do at work. The pile of dirty laundry is insurmountable. There's a pile of bills and paperwork on my desk. School starts. There's shopping to be done. The dog needs a bath. Softball starts up again. Before long, any wisp of a vacation calm is lost. This year, though, I've kind of whipped the final days of September into shape. I took a pick axe to those piles and chiseled them down to size. It's a Saturday morning and I'm luxuriating in the weekend possibilities as if time and errands have no meaning. It's a cool, fresh morning and in a moment, I have to rush away to take P to softball practice. But for this iota of a moment, I have all the time in the world and I'm filling it with ideas of things I'd most like to do outside in the garden. Arugula. I want to plant some arugula and see if I can't squeak out a few more weeks of growth out there. I want to weed. I usually hate that. But something deep in my soul is fostering a need to bring order to chaos. I am born to putter. The Putterer

I'm Back!

My dear blog, you have languished far too long and I am so sorry to neglect you. I have been away from home and hearth as is the August tradition in Washington. We ventured out to see the world. But in order to leave, I had to accomplish double the work in half the time so that my absence wouldn't be noticed. Thus, the week away was equivalent to four. Because of course, when I came back I had to redouble efforts to make up for the lost time away! And, as I have over the past two days achieved the high status of Domestic Goddess Priestess, having done ten loads of laundry, the shopping, the cooking, the sorting of mail and papers, the doctors' appointments, the dog grooming, the moving of furniture and the dusting of dust bunnies, I am ready now to putter in the garden. Tomorrow, Labor Day, is the much anticipated return. I won't be gardening, however, I'll be cleaning up--pulling weeds, whacking back, mowing and otherwise clearing detritus. It's a mess.

But then again it really isn't. It's a natural paradise where seed and soil and rain have crafted a devil-may-care landscape and I must say, it's still quite lovely. Tonight, as I write this a gentle rain is falling, certain to make the soil more manageable and my mosquito friends all the more plentiful.

So, where was I? In the photo above, I have trained my binoculars into the meadow that is located adjacent to the Wawona Hotel, built between 1876 and 1918, in Yosemite National Park. The day we hiked the meadow, a four-mile loop around its perimeter, we took our time and breathed deeply of the peculiar scents. I could have sworn I was picking up the acrid smell of an artichoke after it had been boiled to a delectable appetizer. Not really a pleasant aroma, but something kind of almost addictive, like the scent of rubber cement.

I wanted desperately to know the names of all the delicate plants in the field. And I carried with me reference cards that identified the wild flowers, the trees and the birds, but naturally none of the designated wild flowers on the card were in bloom at the moment I was traipsing through the meadow. So I could only admire and not catalog. The trip was so beautiful and restorative. We also hiked among the giant sequoias in the Mariposa Grove on an exhausting climb that began at the lofty elevation of 5,000 feet and ascended on a gentle switch back trail to 6,100 feet. The thin air truly taxed us and we unfortunately had to descend without seeing the entire trial. But nothing topped the day that we climbed the steep mist trail (no mist in August, thankfully, it would have made the trail treacherously slippery) to the crest of Vernal Falls. There were some 160 steps carved into the side of the granite cliff and we stepped up endlessly, over, and over, and over again, panting and sweating and worrying that we might not ever reach the top. We rented bikes in the Valley and pedaled our way around the entire eight-mile bike loop, stopping to admire whatever caught our interest. At one point, the girls and I parked the bikes and plunged into the cool mountain spring-fed Merced River. Feeling reckless, I let myself sink so that my head was completely submerged. The water was so chill that the hairs on my head and skin seemed as if they would all drop from their follicles. I emerged breathless and thrilled. Incredibly, the hot sun instantly warmed and dried me. We also traveled the distance of the park on Rt 120, the winding high-country, west-east road, and slipped out of the far eastern park entrance for a quick trip to the toxic salty, but exquisitely beautiful, Mono Lake. And on our way there, we sampled the delicious fish tacos served at, of all places, the Lee Vining Mobile Gas Station.

Once back home, I hastily did the wash and repacked for two other short trips, one to Chicago and the other to Columbus, Ohio. Now, just as I l was once looking forward to all our summertime travel adventures, I relish staying here, happy to putter. The Putterer