The Potato Report

When I was younger--around 11 or 12 years old--I had a serious habit with the frozen french fries. I could eat about half a bag by myself. And would, with more frequency than I should have.

Healthy.

In this new life of mine, I don't buy frozen french fries. But did you know you can make them yourself?

OH YES, YOU CAN. And you should, because damn, they're good.

See, I figured this out after my Mother's Day gift to myself of canning seven quarts of potatoes. It was a pain in the ass. It took about three hours start to finish. I wasn't sure it was worth it. I have since used two of the quarts for things like last-minute soup and sending with A. and Cubby when they went camping. The canned potatoes didn't turn out mushy, as I'd feared, though they do taste a little overcooked. But it is nice to have cooked potatoes on hand.

Not nice enough that I was willing to do that again, however, and I still had a lot of seed potatoes left to take care of before they were too sprouted and unusable.

So I looked in the Ball Blue Book. Because that's what you do when you're trying to figure out what to do with excess produce. The newer version of it has a fairly extensive section on freezing, with several options for potatoes. Including french fries.

Right on, Ball Company. Now you're speaking my potato-obsessed language.

Their method involved actually frying the potatoes until they were lightly browned and then freezing them. In a puzzling omission, the book doesn't say how to cook the fries after you take them out of the freezer, but I presume you just fry them again, still frozen, thereby achieving the double cooking most people swear by for proper french fries.

But since I'm much more likely to bake french fries in the oven than fry them in oil, I did what I always do to make oven fries, but didn't finish cooking them. That is, I peeled the potatoes, cut them into pieces, mixed them all up with oil and salt, and spread them out on parchment-lined baking sheets. Then I baked them at 450 degrees until they were soft, but not crisp. After taking them out of the oven, I let them cool on the counter, than put the pans right in the freezer. When the fries were frozen, they were already separate and easy to take off the parchment paper and put in bags.

After that, it was just a matter of putting them back on a parchment-lined baking sheet and baking them again at 450 until they were all browned and crispy. And eating them, while marveling at this miraculous breakthrough I've had. Pre-made frozen french fries! Homemade, pre-made frozen french fries! Yes! It can be done!

And it will be done in my house, from this day forward, amen.

The Family Blackrock

Today's Sunday Family Fun was a hike up to the woods near The Plantation so A. and Cubby could scout out a site to build a permanent lean-to for camping. A. requested that Charlie and I also go on this scouting expedition. Just before we left, I asked the MiL to take a picture of us. You know, so we would have more than the one photo of the four of us together.

Literally. This is the second picture ever taken of the entire family. And wow, is it ever a treasure.

You want a representative photo of what the Family Blackrock is really like?

Yeah. 

Cubby is carrying his very own hatchet, with a locust-wood handle lovingly carved for him by his father. I'm featuring my Summer Hair, with full-on frizz. A. is his usual bearded mountain-man self, with the addition of an infant strapped to him in the famous pack. And Charlie . . . well, Charlie just looks kind of dazed. Or maybe worried. 

Not that I blame him if he IS worried. I mean, look at the family he found himself a part of. I'd be worried too.

I Shouldn't Say This Out Loud . . .

Or rather, type it for all the world to see, because everyone knows that's a surefire way of cursing oneself, but what the hell. I'm gonna say it anyway: The garden looks really good.

I can't tell you what a relief it is to not have the weedy hellhole of last year. It's been a joint effort this year.  The MiL is taking care of the top section of the garden planted to leeks, onions, parsnips, and kohlrabi. A. has been diligent about tilling when I request it and keeping the rabbit trap by the fence set to catch the numerous rabbits that try to infiltrate from the adjoining gully (and one very unlucky skunk that got caught in the trap, but we won't talk about that). And I've been weeding and mulching and weeding and mulching more than I ever have in the past.

Good thing too, because the clumps of pigweed seedlings that keep reappearing are TERRIFYING in their numbers.

Even the garden tasks that I kind of hate--like hilling potatoes--are made significantly less awful for the simple reason that I can actually DO THEM this year, rather than standing there on my pregnancy-swollen ankles, watching helplessly as everything goes entirely to shit.

Everything has finally been planted. We've had enough rain that it's all growing, too. I've done the first potato hilling. The corn has just started appearing; not all the peas have been decimated by the rabbits; none of my transplanted tomato seedlings died (yet).

Happiness is a well-ordered vegetable garden. Well, MY happiness is, anyway, and so far this year? I'm very, very happy.

Mobile

Hey, guess who's crawling!

Your electrical cords are no longer safe.

Yup, the little grub is no longer so grub-like. He can now maneuver himself quite spryly in pursuit of the dogs' water dish in the kitchen, intriguing chunks of dirt outside, and the aforementioned electrical cords near the television.

Although he's been commando-crawling for awhile now, yesterday was the first day he did some honest-to-God, no-doubt-about-it, hands and knees crawling. He spent today practicing and picking up speed.

Also today he held onto my hand and walked (okay, so it was more lurching than walking, but whatever) all the way across the kitchen with the very purposeful intent of playing in that irresistible dog water. I foiled that plan, of course.

So I guess Charlie is going to try both walking and crawling at the same time and come to a decision at some later point as to which method of locomotion is suitable for him.

And me? Well, if you need me, I'll be spending all my time hauling him away from choking hazards and providing a helping hand for walking practice.

Chips and (Unorthodox) Dip

Gather 'round, children, for I have a great pearl of wisdom to share with all of you today.  And that pearl is this: Chips make everything better.

Consider:

Chili? Scoop it up with tortilla chips.

Likewise any kind of taco or burrito filling. Ditch the actual tortilla; go with the chips.

Chicken or tuna salad? Way better scooped up with potato chips than on any bread.

Tuna casserole? Don't bother with those ridiculous little crumbs of potato chips sprinkled over the top. Go big or go home: Scoop it right up with the whole chips.

What's a sandwich without chips? Not much of a sandwich, in my opinion.

I've even seen cookie recipes that incorporate crushed potato chips. The only reason I haven't made them is because I know damn well I'd eat them all in one go.

It's the chips, y'all. Can't beat 'em.

You're welcome for that priceless pearl. Now go eat some chips.

A Short History of My Tomato Staking

What? That title didn't grab you? Don't you want to hear all about my various tomato staking methods over the years?

Oh good! I knew you did.

In my younger, more ambitious, and (most importantly) child-free years, I made some SERIOUS STAKING. Craziness with bamboo and sisal twine. It was really cool-looking and extremely effective for supporting the tomatoes. Win for me.

Then I had a baby. And there goes any time for constructing elaborate tomato scaffolding. I think one year I did a bamboo stake on either side of each plant. That worked okay.

Then there was last year. The Garden Year Which Will Live in Infamy. Last year in the garden sucked--thanks to Charlie's arrival in July--and the tomatoes were no exception. I was under no illusions that I would be properly staking any tomatoes last summer. I knew damn well I wasn't going to be tying up the plants when they needed it. So I had A. put in two posts at the end of each row of tomatoes with fencing in between the posts. The idea being I could maybe pull the plants through the fencing and support them at least a little that way.

That worked about as well as you might expect. That is, it didn't.

Like I said: sucked.

So now what? Thanks to a series of events that's too boring to go into here (WAY more boring than a detailed discussion of tomato staking, which I bet you didn't think was possible), I no longer have a large supply of bamboo stakes. But I still have 25 tomato plants. What to do?

Why, call on my own personal superhero of course: Woodchuck Man.

A. was all, "You need stakes? I'll get you stakes."

So he cut down some small locust trees and used his ax, wedges, and sledgehammer to split them into stakes. Which he then pounded into the ground next to the tomato plants, using the sledgehammer again. He tells me that all tomato stakes used to be split hardwood like that. He can't imagine why nobody does it anymore.

OH REALLY?

Would YOU do all of that? Nope, me neither. But I married someone who would, lucky me. And so now . . .

Bam! Tomato stakes.

Locust wood pretty much never rots, so I can keep using these stakes for the rest of my gardening life. We have locust posts on this property that are at least fifty years old. So these stakes could last longer than I do.

There's a thought.

Enough with the reflections of mortality courtesy of tomato stakes. Point is, the tomatoes are in, the stakes are in, and now the low temperatures just have to get the hell out of the thirties so those plants actually grow big enough to stake.

Anytime, tomatoes. Anytime.

A Public Service Announcement from Charlie

Feeling glum? Gnaw on a watermelon rind until your shirt is soaked.

Works for me, anyway. WHEE!!!