madeline may write

Are you a boy or a girl? Hey — are you a boy or are you a girl? Huh? Well… I see titties, so I guess you’re a girl. How tall are you? Six-three? Six-four? Hey, answer me. Don’t be scared of me, bitch. You scared of me ’cause I’m a black man, bitch? I made you. I made you. Check your history. I made you.

I don’t know what to say, or why it hits so personally, but the instinct is to hide — ashamed and afraid. Take my pathetic mannish body home and hide it. (Breasts? What breasts?) Put on powders and rouge to truss up this unimpressive, unfeminine face. Hide forever. Avoid people, because people are intrusive, no matter how hard you try to walk the world invisible and unbothered. Avoid people, because they see my body as something to discuss. Avoid people, because my outrage is seen as fear; my introversion as racism…? Sometimes it’s just too much to take.

The whole interaction is an attack on my person — my dignity, my privacy, my sexuality, my decency. I’m angry, but unable to respond. I can’t say what I want to say — all I can do is stammer, turn red, and clench my jaw to keep my eyes from watering. I walk away, blindly, stunned. The sun hasn’t even come up yet.

Sometimes I really hate this town.

A branch snapped off my biggest tomato plant last week, taking with it about five still-green ‘maters. Sigh. Unwilling to let the green fruit go to waste, I brought them in, cleaned them, and put them in our fruit bowl with a bunch of bananas. A week later, and all the underdeveloped tomatoes were turning red — albeit a bit wrinkly, too — and begging to be cooked. My solution? Tomato sauce. For the ultimate from-scratch pizza.

I started by blanching and peeling four home-grown tomatoes and two CSA tomatoes. Then, I chopped them up, tossed them in a saucepan with a cup of water, and let the whole thing simmer for a few hours. In the meantime, I made my favorite pizza dough recipe, from Laurel’s Kitchen Bread Book.

When the tomatoes had cooked down by about half and there were no visible chunks left, I pureed them with 1/4 CSA onion, 1 whopping clove of garlic, a huge handful of balcony-fresh basil, a more modest handful of balcony-fresh oregano, a pinch of salt, and a generous dose of fresh-ground pepper. I spread the velvety sauce across our main-dish pizza and the three mini-pizzas I was making for the freezer and topped it with what we had on hand:

• 1/2 green bell pepper (from the CSA), cut into thin strips
• 1/4 onion (also from the CSA), cut into thin strips
• 1 andouille chicken sausage, cut into thin slices
• Mozzarella cheese
• Parmesan cheese

After 25 minutes in the oven, it came out looking something like this:

There are only two of us, but the pizza lasted less than twelve hours.

Paired with an endive-tomato-cucumber-basil salad, it was nothing to turn up your nose at! Plus, we’ve got three more mini-pizzas for the freezer. Par-baked, they’ll just need a few minutes in the oven:

After two months of utter neglect, we finally returned to our Sierra Madre Pale Ale, one of two beers left unfinished in our apartment after this spring’s brewing spree. (The other one is our Double Bock, which can handle a little abandonment).

We brewed the Pale Ale on May 8th, using 1/2 lb Briess caramel malt (grain), 6 lb Gold malt syrup, and 1 lb Briess Golden Light dry malt extract for the fermentables. The hops were 1/2 oz. Summit (18.5%) for 60 minutes, 1 oz. Perle (9.5%) for 20 minutes, and 1 oz. Cascade (6.1%) at the finish. We added 1 tsp Irish moss and a packet of Safale US-05 dry ale yeast and called it a day. Original gravity was 1.038.

We racked the beer once and tested the gravity twice (1.015 after a week, 1.012 after a month).

When it came time to bottle the brew, the gravity was down to 1.007 (for a 3.1% alcohol beer) and the color was a gorgeous amber. Neither of us tasted it at bottling time, but it sure smelled good. Forty bottles (plus three 22-ouncers) total and we’re counting down the days ’til this weekend’s inaugural tasting. We may have neglected, abandoned and mistreated this one during production, but I’m sure our loving attention while consuming it will more than make up for our process shortcomings.

Next up: bottling the Double Bock, brewing our Rye PA and trying our hand at some hard cider. It might be a few weeks, though, since we want the worst heat of summer to pass before we start any fermentation. No sense stressing the yeast with excessively high temperatures.

Not all pickles are made from cucumbers, and our recent abundance of green beans and baby beets inspired me to can a few of these alternative pickled veggies.

First, after harvesting eight (8) quarts of green beans for free through our CSA’s pick-your-own policy and packing about half of them into our already overcrowded freezer, I turned to my family’s tried-and-true recipe for dilly beans:

Dill Beans

Ingredients:

• 2 lb beans, washed and trimmed to the height of a pint jar
• 1/4 tsp red pepper flakes per pint jar
• 1/2 tsp mustard seed per pint jar
• 1/2 tsp dill seed per pint jar (I couldn’t get my hands on the seed, so I shoved a few sprigs of dill weed into each jar, instead)
• 1 clove garlic per pint jar
• 2 1/2 C white vinegar
• 2 1/2 C water
• 1/4 C salt (no iodine!)

Equipment:

• 4 wide-mouth pint-size canning jars
• 4 wide-mouth canning lids
• 4 wide-mouth canning lid rings
• Tongs (regular)
• Canning tongs (for lifting full jars out of water bath)
• Clean towels to cover counter-tops
• A large canning kettle or stock pot (deep enough to accommodate jars plus an inch or two)
• A canning funnel (if possible)
• A canning rack insert for your stock pot or kettle (I don’t have one, and have had to improvise using pot lids, towels, etc.)
• A non-aluminum saucepan

Fill kettle with water and bring to a boil; submerge jars and rings (not the actual lids) to sterilize. Add the requisite spices to each hot, sterile canning jar. Pack the hot jars with clean, trimmed beans — really wedge them in until no more will fit. In a saucepan, bring vinegar, water and salt to a boil. Pour over the beans until the jars are full to within 1/4 inch of the top. Tap to eliminate air pockets. Wipe the rim of each jar with a rag dipped in boiling water. Set a NEW canning lid on top of each full, clean jar; add rings and tighten only until secure. Carefully transfer jars to canning kettle, setting them upright (and evenly spaced) in whatever canning rack you have (or have improvised). Cook the pints 5 minutes in BOILING water bath; remove with canning tongs and allow to cool completely before removing rings. Label and store.

Note: If a jar doesn’t seal properly, store the pickles in the fridge and eat ASAP or start over!

Back home, we'll open a jar of these for any family gathering. Plop them in a bowl and -- bam! -- instant appetizers.

Spicy Pickled Beets

Ingredients:

• 1/2 gallon beets
• water to cover
• 1 T allspice (I don’t have allspice, so I used a mix of mustard seed, coriander, bay leaves, cloves, ginger, and cardamom)
• 1 stick cinnamon
• 2 C vinegar
• 1/2 C honey

Equipment:

• Same as for Dill Beans (above)

Trim beet stems and roots to one inch in length. Simmer in water until tender, then transfer to an ice bath, peel, and remove stems/roots. Place trimmed, peeled beets in a sauce pan; add spices and vinegar and simmer 15 minutes. Add honey.

Sterilize jars and rings in boiling water; pack jars with beets and cover with syrup to within 1/4 inch of the top. Wipe rims with a hot, damp cloth and cover with NEW lids and sterile rings. Process 10 minutes in a BOILING water bath; cool completely before removing rings. As with Dill Beans, make sure everything seals properly — otherwise store in the fridge, eat ASAP, or start over!

Essence of magenta, pickled. Another great insta-snack.

Aside from the carrots, lettuce, green beans and herbs we’ve been enjoying from the balcony garden, there are a few big tamales to look forward to. We’ve got a handful of green cayenne peppers, a malformed cucumber, and about a dozen green tomatoes waiting to ripen. Counting down the days…

One cucumber -- and a little malformed at that. Still, it's what we've got.

One of the by-products of this weekend’s canning binge was a glowing jar of peach simple-syrup. Rather than throwing it out, we held on to the delicious nectar and invented a fantastic summer cocktail based on the sweet, refreshing flavor of a fresh peach:

1-2 oz bourbon
1-2 oz peach simple syrup
club soda
iced tea, such as red roobois and/or orange spice (something fruity)
ice
2 peach slices
small sprig mint

Combine ice and mint in the bottom of a pint glass; bruise the mint thoroughly. Add bourbon, simple syrup, and peach slices. Fill the glass with equal parts iced tea and club soda; stir gently and enjoy. This drink is sweet and mild with all the flavors of summer — a perfect afternoon and evening drink on a hot July day.

We kicked off July with our first round of canning: bourbon cherries, bourbon peaches, and quick-pickles (or “quickles”). Sure, it made the apartment 900 degrees hotter than usual, but when we’re enjoying peaches in January…

I followed recipes from the Joy of Cooking for preserving the fruit:

Bourbon Cherries

1 pint sour pie cherries, washed and stems trimmed
heaping 1/2 C granulated sugar
Maker’s Mark bourbon

Layer cherries and sugar in a clean mason jar. Cover with bourbon (this may take some time, as the liquor has to soak into the sugar), seal tightly, and keep at cool temperatures for several weeks. Periodically turn or shake gently to help dissolve sugar.

About four days later, the sugar has finally dissolved nearly all the way. We’re keeping ours in the fridge, not because it’s necessary, but because we have the space and it doesn’t hurt.

Bourbon Peaches

6 medium peaches, peeled and cut into eighths
1 C sugar
1 C water
1/2 C bourbon

Blanche the peaches and peel them; cut into segments, catching all the drippings in a bowl. Combine sugar, water, and peach drippings in a small saucepan and heat, stirring, until thoroughly dissolved. Simmer peach slices in syrup for 5 minutes, then transfer the slices to hot sterile pint jars. 6 peaches should fill 2 pint jars. Add 1/4 C bourbon to each jar. Bring syrup to a boil, then pour over the peaches & bourbon to within 1/2-inch of the top. I hardly needed any syrup at all, actually, so be careful not to overfill your jars. Seal and process in a boiling-water bath for 15 minutes. Store at cool temperatures.

The original recipe called for leaving the peaches whole, but I didn’t want to deal with peach pits later, so I took the risk and cut my peaches up. We’re keeping these in the fridge, too, because we have the space.

The quickles were nothing special — chunks of cucumber (I did one pint chunks, one pint spears), mustard seed, fresh dill, red pepper flakes, garlic cloves and peppercorns in a brine of vinegar, water, sugar, and salt. They’re in the fridge, hanging out, to be tried in a few days. We may get a bulk order of cukes next week and make real pickles, but for now quickles will do just fine.

Now that hot weather has finally settled in over Massachusetts, the balcony garden is really taking off.  The herbs are producing in abundance (basil, oregano, and mint), the carrots are actually forming carrots, the beets are forming beets, and the green bean plants are covered with beans that, well, need picking.

The larger fruiting plants — the peppers, the tomatoes, and the cukes — need a little more time. The cucumber has been flowering for weeks now, but even pollinating the blossoms by hand, I haven’t yet coaxed it to set fruit. Soon, perhaps. The primary tomato plant is working on about five green tomatoes, while the other two are just starting to flower. And the cayennes are flowering beautifully; hopefully we’re on our way to some hot red peppers!

Watering has become a primary concern, as the sun bakes away the minuscule water reserves in each container. Nevertheless, things are going well and it’s been fun having a garden to look at.

This weekend we took advantage of our new Relay Rides membership and got out of the city for a few hours. We headed west on the Mass. Pike and, just over an hour later, found ourselves picnicking at Red Fire Farm in Granby.

The clouds kept us from overheating — although not from getting sunburned — and there was a cool breeze blowing through the fields. We ate our homemade meal on a beach towel in front of the farm stand: potato salad, cole slaw, baguette, and oatmeal raisin cookies. Then we headed out to pick strawberries, peas, and herbs. The season was mostly over for the berries, but we managed to scrape together a few quarts. Peas and herbs were in abundance.

After picking, we bought a few extra veggies and drove home, exhausted. Not a bad way to escape from the hectic life of the Allston-Brighton area. Once the sunburn on my shoulders fades, I’ll be truly satisfied…

Photos courtesy of Flowers.

Week two of the Red Fire CSA brought more leafy greens our way: romaine, red lettuce, curly endive, spinach, spring mix, and beet tops. We also received a quart of ripe strawberries, a head of broccoli, a handful of garlic scapes, a bunch of beets, some dill, and some cilantro.

We sauteed the broccoli with lemon zest and garlic; the scapes became garlic top pesto as soon as we got home. Beet greens and spinach (and some of last week’s green garlic) went into a hearty vegetable lasagna, and I’ve been throwing dill into all of our bread dough — three loaves so far.

By far the fanciest of this week’s creations was last night’s dinner, a salad of mixed lettuce, endive, chevre, bacon*, and sliced strawberries. The salty-tangy-sweet of the salad fixins balanced out the bitterness of the endive perfectly, and the combination of crunchy-creamy was ideal. We rounded out the meal with some of the previous day’s dill bread and a few hefty slices of havarti. Sublime.