From Karyl’s Cook & Tell Column (August 26, 1976)
It’s that time of the year when nobody has time to waste reading about gardening. Everybody’s knee deep in beet greens, wondering whether to club the summer squash to death before it strangles everything else. So be warned. I’m about to rhapsodize about my first, maybe annual garden.
Green is not the color of my thumb, and my woods and meadowlands bear not the slightest resemblance to the valley of the jolly, ho-ho-ho, green giant. So imagine my astonishment at the edible greenery currently luxuriating on the western front of my arable acres, that huge hunk of ground loosely termed a garden.
Big deal, you say? Look, I reply, I have never made a garden before. On my own now and single, this is another of those firsts I keep adding to my credentials. When I was double, there was always a garden and a Farmer MacGregor to go with it. I was on the cooking end of the line. This seemed fair to me.
I was superb at sitting on the porch railing, with the breeze that funneled down the cove blowing over me and my bare feet, while I watched the happy harvester below. I was also good at lying on my back in the grass next to the garden, rather like Andrew Wyeth’s wife Betsy with her blueberries in his painting, Distant Thunder. Back then, life was more like a picture. I could pose in it for hours.
When spring came this year and found me all by my onesies, it also found me a bit weary but exhilarated from the challenge I’d met in the chilly season just past. I’d made it through the winter of my discontent (with apologies to Winston Churchill), warmed only by three woodstoves, to the amazement of the doubters and sissies who insisted that man does not heat by wood alone. I’d proved this woman could, and did, comfortably. Wouldn’t you think that after a drill like that, a garden would be duck—or better, vegetable—soup?
So I had the ground plowed in May. I peeked at it out of the corner of my eye for a month. By mid-June I was no closer to a garden than I was in mid-January. In that magical way things have of not happening when left alone, nothing happened. Stunned by the challenge, I was immobilized. The voluptuous furrows of mucky brown earth were enough to contemplate, too much to cultivate.
Finally, a friend took me by the hand and deposited me in the dirt. I know that’s not the proper word for soil; it does happen to be the way I thought of the inscrutable substance beneath my feet. My friend showed me how to spread compost and shovel it in. He made me rake over the gigantic plot and plant seeds. He told me I must water it regularly, that it would be nice to weed it occasionally. I followed his directions, obedient, if not enthusiastic.
Then I went away for a month, on the job down in Boston. Know what happens when you abandon a garden for a month? Things grow like crazy. Nothing gets thinned. Weeds abound. Zucchini, which is hard enough to fight off when you’re around every day, resembles an armed camp when you return after a thirty-day absence. I went right back into immobilization mode. I agonized over the weeds from my safe perch on the porch. I felt like a stranger among my own children. You wouldn’t catch me down there, trying to adjust the balance of nature, which had gotten so splendidly out of balance all by itself.
Sanity finally returned when I realized the only way to handle the madness in the meadow was to dig in and just do it.
I can hardly believe what I’m going to say next, but here goes. Isn’t a garden grand! Think of the stimulating dialogs you can have with yourself in the quiet times spent stooped over, picking and thinning. You can ask yourself what you’ll ever do with thirty-six pumpkins or why you ever planted okra; how to use your crop of one single eggplant – mutant, at that – to best advantage; why, if vegetables are so definite, distinctive, and delicious, they defy description. Ask yourself what asparagus tastes like. Try describing the flavor of tomatoes in twenty-five additional words or less. Can’t be done.
Karyl’s Headnotes
I love being around for harvesting, but actually only a few minutes at a time will do it. And I like to pick the really interesting things—basil, coriander, huge leafed lettuce, zucchini under whose foliage the big old cat could hide. Here’s something that can be done with tomatoes. You can easily make it in twenty-five additional steps or less:
GREEN TOMATO CASSEROLE
Makes 6 servings
8 medium size green tomatoes, peeled and sliced
3 large onions, sliced
2 T olive oil
2 T butter
Curry powder*, pepper, and salt
1 c sour cream
Buttered breadcrumbs
2 T freshly grated Parmesan cheese
Preheat the oven to 350. Butter a 2-qt baking dish. In a large, heavy skillet, cook the tomatoes and onions in the olive and butter till softened, almost mushy. Stir in the curry powder, salt, and pepper to taste. Cool slightly and stir in the sour cream. Cover with the buttered crumbs. Bake until the mixture goes bubbly and the crumbs are browned.
*for a subtler flavor, substitute equal amounts of cumin and allspice; if you’re looking for something more aromatic, try my new favorite, garam masala.
Amie’s Endnotes
In my continued Cook & Tell archive dive, I discovered Mom’s old recipe for Gazacho Blanco. Creamy and cool as a cucumber, which happens to be the veggie for its base, it’s the perfect bookend to the Sparkling Gazpacho I featured in July’s Orts & Reports issue. Follow me on Insta for future Recipes of the Month!
What Readers Are Saying About Cook & Tell
From Vicki Smith, who writes and illustrates the
cooking newsletter: “Such a wonderful tribute! It really is so touching how you are sharing memories of your mom and her work.”And from
, who takes her readers on a weekly journey into the journals and notebooks of historical and present-day celebrities in the captivatingnewsletter: “Your mother sounds like an incredible woman! I love this collage of your two voices!”
I’d love to know what you think of Cook & Tell !
Your pantry pals,
Amie & Karyl
Absolutely love the gardening story, especially the reference to the Wyeth painting and the Churchill quote. Such clever tie-ins. I am writing about a gardening misadventure in my next newsletter. Guess it is that time of the year.
I'm still loving the collage! What a gorgeous idea!