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Author: theMan
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Fresh Homemade Tofu – 新鮮手作り豆腐
After experimenting with making tofu for over twelve years, I’m satisfied enough with the result that I’ve started selling it at Bow Little Market each Thursday. For the market, I’m making it on Wednesday, so if you come to the market, you can get fresher tofu than you’ll find in any grocery store. Or, if you’d like even fresher tofu, contact me and I can make you tofu, so that it is fresh out of the press for you. My labels always state the date it was made, something no one else is willing to tell you.
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The Beauty of Food
Before your wheat is ground and made into bread, this is what it looks like, golden sheaves of spiny heads of wheat.
Swiss chard stalks look like candy sticks. The colorful stalks are worthy of their own dish. The Costata Romanesco, a ribbed variety of zucchini, is beautiful too. I much prefer it to the smooth, regular varieties of zucchini.
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Sandbox for Adults
Grow savoy cabbage. You won’t be disappointed. Few vegetables are more beautiful, or so delicious.
Grow corn. You won’t be disappointed. Few vegetables have such wild hairdos.
Plant a noble fir. In midsummer, its cones will remind you of Christmas. The sap, capping the cones, even looks like icicles.
For a really great time, grow potatoes. When its time to dig them up, it’s like a sandbox for adults. I grew up in sandboxes and on the beach, digging through the sand, making roads and bridges, and castles more than I can count. Digging through the soft, warm dirt, looking for potatoes is every bit as much fun.
And look at all the potato fruits I found. I’ve got thousands of seeds to plant, just with this lot. Something interesting and new should grow with this many seeds.
Don’t forget to thank the earth and all the creatures living in the earth which made your potatoes possible. A sack of potatoes will provide many meals and plenty of conversation, all made possible by the good earth.
A surprise this afternoon was coming upon a snake skin on a log. You can picture the snake rubbing its belly against the log to remove its old skin. It makes you wish you could crawl out of your skin and leave it behind. If we humans did that, we’d have all sorts of rules as to where and where you could not leave your skin. NO SKINS ALLOWED IN THIS PARK! Or country people would say, “I’m so glad I live somewhere I can leave my skin wherever I want.”
Wherever you live, may you be surrounded by flowers.
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Worth It
With its showy leaves, zucchini is worth growing just for its looks. Just one turns into a stunner. And it will feed you too!
I’m preparing beds for fall. So how wide should I make them? A meter? A half a meter? Three feet? Two feet? I’ve decided to ditch the tape measures, rulers, and yard sticks this fall and stick to rulers I have with me at all times … my own feet. It’s as simple as can be. Just line my feet up. And for smaller measurements, I’ll just use my hands and fingers. I’ll never forget where I left my measuring sticks and tapes again. The best solutions are often the simplest ones.
Growing your own food is worth it just for all the amazing creatures you encounter. This looks like a ground beetle larva. These beetles, larva and adults, are predatory and devour all sorts of insects and even slugs. Keep your garden free of pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, and other poisons, and you will end up with a healthy ecosystem with sufficient predators to keep the harmful insects in check. Everything is food for something, and when there are too many aphids or other pests, something will come along and enjoy a feast, taking care of the problem for you.
The mornings are fall-like, but the days are summer. The mimosa is in full bloom. After working the vegetable beds, the powdering fragrance of the mimosa is pure delight.
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Hints of Fall
The chilly, dewy mornings hint of fall. It’s down in the low 50s when I head out early in the morning, cool enough to put on a light jacket. On mornings like these, kale leaves are jade jewels. In the hoop house, the tomatoes keep ripening. It may be chilly in the morning, but midday, it’s over a 100º in the hoop house. The tomatoes soak in the sunshine and trap it inside, turning redder with each sunbeam they soak in.
A surprise today was finding some white flower beans 白花豆 ready to pick. The handful made a great side dish for supper. A few more weeks and I should have buckets of these.
