Popcorn - after 10 months!

This is the lone ear of popcorn that I got from an organic farm coop late in the summer of 2007. Somehow I let it sit around on a kitchen windowsill all year until last week. I ate the end result on Friday night. It was still good! Here's what I did.

Shucking the ear was the easy part. The corn kernels were dry as a bone and really tough to get off.

First I tried using a dinner knife to scrape the kernels off, but it was very hard. The kernels flew all over the kitchen and I banged my knuckles on the sides of the bowl with disappointing regularity. Pioneers must have had some sort of special scraper for this!

Next I tried using a dishtowel to keep them (well, most of them) in the bowl.

I'm missing the picture of sifting the kernels to remove all the wispy chaff particles. Finally, the popcorn measured just about 1/2 cup. Perfect for one serving.

A little oil for the microwave popper.

In goes the popcorn....

and into the microwave for about 5 minutes.

Ta-da! Excellent popcorn for my movie night!
(but I don't plan to do it the hard way again)

Gardening Thoughts in February

For the last few years, I've heard that gardeners should start planting tomato seeds in February in order to set out some sturdy seedlings by Mother's Day. I've never done it yet and always ended up standing in line over at the local garden shop in May. Let's see if I get my act together and get some on the windowsill this month!

Last summer, Environmentalist Daughter convinced a couple of us to go in with her for a share of weekly summer organic produce from a local farm. The farm had drop-off points all over the city with one conveniently near her, so she would get our box of fruits and veggies on Saturday, divide it up, and the rest of us would get ours later that weekend.

What I liked was trying new items, including some I'd never heard of, like Asian melon. What I didn't like was that some veggies were already limp by the time I got them. Meanwhile, I had already set out my own backyard garden, and was ready for tomatoes, green beans, kale, spinach, beets, peas and radishes. Luckily, you can never have too many tomatoes, so I was still able to use everything. But this year, I'm sticking to the backyard garden.

I'm a child of North Dakota and Minnesota, and grew up thinking everyone ate strawberry-rhubarb sauce for breakfast. Unfortunately, my two rhubarb plants have withered and died, and it takes at least one year of growing uncut to give a plant a good start. So no sauce for us this year.

If anyone else is looking at the seeds in the drugstore now, you might want to read an account by novelist Barbara Kingsolver, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Tells how she moved from the Southwest to Appalachia with her husband and two daughters and they decided to eat only food grown or raised within 40 miles or so (locavores?). How they did it, what they had to do without, etc., is mighty interesting.