From the Archives

On Betrayal and Burnout

I haven’t posted here in a while, and the reason has simply been that I haven’t felt that I’ve had anything all that interesting to say. The idea of writing, lately, at least, has been about as attractive as the idea of getting all of my fingernails pulled out one by one by a burly man wielding a pair of rusty pliers. I’ve been doing it, because that’s how I hold up my end of the money-making bargain in our family, but my heart is definitely not in it. There was nothing to tell you.

Burnout is a bitch.

When you go too long, too hard, and with too narrow a focus, you’re going to burn out. It doesn’t matter how much you love your topic, how much you want to help others, how much you love the act of writing. It doesn’t matter that if you didn’t write, you’d die, because it’s part of who you are. It doesn’t matter that the end product, whether you’re “on” or not, is usually pretty good, it doesn’t matter that you get to experience the satisfaction of a job well-done when it’s all over. Going forward is laughable. You need a break. And you can’t have one, because you’ve made promises to editors, publishers, family. Most of all, you’ve made a promise to yourself, that you’d be successful at this no matter how hard it was, no matter how many people told you that you can’t. You can’t let go, so you keep producing, and you keep going, even though you’ve depleted any inspiration you once had. What else can you do?

It’s been a fun August that way. And the tangible manifestation of my burnout is my garden. Overgrown, lanky, fighting powdery mildew and fucking squirrels, and it just keeps going, putting out paltry little tomatoes and anemic cucumbers because what else is it supposed to do? And I can’t help but despise it right now. I can’t help but personalize my garden’s failings, internalize them as my own. I have been betrayed. After all the hard work, after making sure I watered at soil level and provided plenty of good quality, healthy soil to grow in, I’ve been rewarded with powdery mildew. Of course I know that this is thanks to stupid weather and poor air circulation as the plants have become overgrown. Yet I can’t help taking it personally.

Feeling this way is stupid. I’ve always prided myself on being tough, on being able to push forward when it’s past time to curl up in a ball and hide. Today, I decided to take action.

I wreaked havoc on my garden. I pulled out cucumber vines, zucchini plants, and crookneck squashes. Their pickery stems scratched at my bare arms, bees buzzed angrily around my head, and pretty yellow blossoms faced me accusingly for cutting short their life. I was unmoved. Sometimes, you have to know when to call it quits. As I pulled, and cut, and dug, and stuffed mildewed vines into garbage bags, it was as if I was packing away each and every one of my personal failings. I remembered how much I love my garden, and how much I love writing. I looked forward to new life in the form of spinach and kale seedlings, in new projects and in saying what I mean. I remembered that I don’t have to impress anyone.

In the end, all that matters is appreciating your garden (and yourself) for what they are.

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Ashley English’s “Canning & Preserving” (And a Delicious Relish Recipe!)

In my post on making dill pickles, I waxed rhapsodic about my current favorite book about canning and preserving, Ashley English’s beautiful Homemade Living: Canning & Preserving with Ashley English: All You Need to Know to Make Jams, Jellies, Pickles, Chutneys & More. So I figured I really should do a full-blown review. Ashley was gracious enough to grant me permission to excerpt her simple and delicious sweet pickle recipe as well — so thank you, Ashley!

First, the book: I have to confess that I ordered this book from Amazon because I love the design of the cover. Just looking at this book makes me happy, really. And the cover reveals just a hint at what awaits once you open the book. It is well-designed, both clean and modern and homespun looking at the same time — trust me, that makes perfect sense once you start leafing through the book! It is well written, and English’s encouraging tone shines through. The recipes aren’t overly complex, and there’s a good mix of recipes in the book for everything from jams and jellies to pickles and canned tomatoes. A few of my favorites are the basic pickling brine (which can be used to pickle just about any veggie you like), apple butter, tomato basil sauce, peach and lavender butter (!) and the sweet pickle relish, which you’ll find below. It’s a great first book for a beginning preserver — highly recommended!

As I mentioned, Ashley English was kind enough to let me post her sweet pickle relish recipe here. As she mentions in the book, adding a bit of this relish to your potato salad will take it to an entirely different level, and it’s not half bad on a grilled Polish sausage, either.

Ashley English’s Sweet Pickle Relish (excerpted with permission from the author)

Yield: 6 half-pints of relish

Ingredients:
6 medium cucumbers, peeled, seeded, and diced
2 1/2 cups sweet onion, diced
1 cup green pepper, diced
1 cup sweet red pepper, diced
1/4 cup pickling or kosher salt
3 cups granulated sugar
2 1/2 cups cider vinegar
1 1/2 tablespoons yellow mustard seed
1 1/2 tablespoons celery seed
1 teaspoon turmeric

To Prepare:

1. Combine the cucumbers, sweet onion, green and red peppers, and salt in a large bowl. Toss to combine, cover with a kitchen towel, and let stand in a cool area overnight or for at least four hours.

2. Drain and rinse the vegetable in a colander. Rinse several times, pressing vegetables with the back of a wooden spoon to remove all liquid and salty residue. Set aside.

3. Sterilize 6 half-pint jars, lids, and screw rings.

4. In a medium stainless-steel saucepan, combine the sugar, vinegar, mustard seed, celery seed, and turmeric. Add the vegetables, and bring the mixture to a boil. Reduce heat to low, and simmer for 15 minutes.

5. Pack relish into the jars, leaving 1/2 inch headspace. Use a nonmetallic spatula to remove any trapped air bubbles, and wipe the rims clean with a damp cloth. Place on lids and screw bands., tightening only until fingertip-tight.

6. Process for 10 minutes in a boiling water bath. Remember to adjust for altitude.

About the Author: Ashley English has earned degrees in both holistic nutrition and sociology. Life has provided her with numerous career paths, including working as a medical assistant and nutritional consultant, manager of a bed and breakfast, wine and beer sales rep, and baker and caterer. Additionally, she has worked over the years with a number of non-profit organizations committed to social and agricultural issues and she is currently a member of Slow Food USA. Ashley and her husband live in Candler, NC, with their menagerie of chickens, dogs, cats, and bees, where they are converting their land into a thriving homestead. Ashley also writes a weekly column “Small Measures with Ashley” on the popular design blog, Design Sponge. You can also find her detailing her homesteading adventures on her blog, small measure.

Necessary Disclaimer Nonsense: I purchased this book with my own money and the opinions of this review are my own. I would have given a good review whether Ms. English had given permission to excerpt her relish recipe or not

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Our Garden in Early August

Here’s a little slideshow I put together of how things are looking in the garden this week. Enjoy!

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How To Make Super-Easy, Fast, Refrigerator Dilly Beans

I don’t know about you, but I reach that point every summer, right around mid-August, where I can’t look at another bean. I don’t care if they’re yellow or green, or even the pretty purple ones I’m growing this year. That’s when it’s time to pull out the big guns: time to make some dilly beans.

Dilly beans are vinegar-y, garlicky, dilly (obviously…) bits of crisp deliciousness with just a little bit of a kick to them thanks to the addition of hot peppers. The heat can be adjusted to your liking, so whether you like them mild or zippy, it will work just fine.

Oh, and the best part: you don’t need any canning supplies for this project. You don’t even need special jars. I reused a jar from store-bought sauerkraut for mine. Use whatever you have on hand, as long as it’s glass and has a lid.

This really couldn’t be easier.

Here’s what you’ll need: 2 cups of beans (about one huge, overflowing handful), 1 cup of vinegar, 1 cup of water, 2 1/2 tablespoons of sugar, 2 cloves of garlic, 1 1/2 teaspoon of kosher salt, 1/2 of a medium onion, sliced thinly, 2 sprigs of fresh dill (or 1 teaspoon of dill seeds), 1/2 teaspoon of whole black peppercorns, and 1/4 to 1 teaspoon of red pepper flakes (depending on how hot you want them) — you can also add a whole dried chile if you have one. I didn’t, so I used flakes.

1. Make your brine. This is the longest part of this process (and it only takes a few minutes!) so do this first. Add your water, vinegar, salt, sugar, and garlic (which you’ve minced) to a saucepan and bring it to a boil. Once it is boiling, turn it off and set it aside to cool down to room temperature.

2. Trim the beans. You want them all to fit in your jar with about an inch at the top so the brine covers them completely. You can trim both ends, or just the stem end. I think the pointy blossom end of beans are pretty, so I leave them. It’s up to you.

3. Blanch the beans. Bring a saucepan of water to a full boil, then dump the beans in and boil them for thirty seconds. Drain them, and quickly add them to a bowl of iced water to shock them and stop the cooking process. You want your beans to be brightly colored and still crisp.

4. Drain the beans and set them aside. Add your onions, dill, red pepper flakes, and peppercorns to your jars.

5. Now add your beans to the jars. They look prettiest standing upright, but don’t worry about being perfect. The easiest way is to lay the jar on its side, or hold it horizontally, and place the beans inside.

6. Go ahead and pour your brine in once it has reached room temperature. Fill the jar to 1/2 inch below the top of the jar, and put the lid on. Place the jar of dilly beans in the fridge, and let them sit for at least two days before eating them. They’ll keep for up to six months in the fridge, but I’ll bet you foldable money that you won’t have them around nearly that long!

I hope you give these a try. They’re really easy, and a great way to preserve all of those crisp beans from your garden.

More About Preserving the Harvest:
How to Make Dill Pickles
How to Oven Dry Tomatoes

10 comments

One Word: Pathetic

So, as you can see from the photo, it wasn’t exactly a stellar month for my seed Grow project nasturtiums. It was ridiculously hot for most of July (half of the month, we hovered between 85 and 95 degrees here in Detroit — yuck) and I was much more focused on trying to make sure the vegetable garden was staying productive than I was about maintaining my containers on the front porch, which is where my nasturtiums are.

The nasturtiums are just not happy. The leaves are small, and are yellowing and falling off constantly. Blooms have been few and far between. I think the porch, with its glaring, hot sun and concrete is not exactly the best spot for the nasturtiums — they’d probably appreciate a bit of late afternoon shade. But, the pepper is happy in this spot and has produced two tasty purple peppers already, and there are two new tiny ones on the plant. I’m going to move the container to the other side of the porch for the rest of the season. Between the afternoon shade it will receive, as well as the (hopefully) cooler temperatures once we get into September, I have a feeling the nasturtiums will start perking up.

I should have planted my ‘Spitfire’ nasturtiums where I plant nasturtiums every year: along the edges of my vegetable garden beds. They would have gotten plenty of moisture there, as well as a bit of shade from the vegetables. They would have also been useful in attracting the flea beetles away from my mustard greens.

But the best thing about gardening is that you keep learning more about not only plants and your garden, but yourself as well. I’ve learned that I should just embrace my practical side when it comes to flowers: they either need to be useful (as in, trapping flea beetles) or need to pretty much take care of themselves so I don’t have to. I have the feeling that if I had planted the nasturtiums in the vegetable garden the way I should have, I’d be singing their praises right now instead of being embarrassed about showing how badly they’re doing.

I’m growing Nasturtium “Spitfire” for the GROW project. Thanks, to Renee’s Garden for the seeds.

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