Author Archives : Roundhex

Gathering greens and lettuces in the hoop house; we have a plethora of greens.

In the fall, M built us a beautiful homemade hoop house with inspiration from Barbara Damrosch and Eliot Coleman’s Four Season Farm. We longed for fresh greens in the dead cold of winter and thought, if they can grow greens in an unheated hoop house during frigid Maine winters, so can we. And we have done just that. There were are few weeks during the coldest nights when the lettuce seemed to slow down and one had to wait to pick it til after the night’s freeze. It has been a delight to go into the hoop house with its defused light and peacefully gather greens.

With the longer days, the greens have taken off.  We have so enjoyed salads and sautés, but we needed to try something else. What did we have on hand in the larder? Goat cheese, cottage cheese, frozen garlic scapes and basil, eggs from the flock, and frozen FILO dough. Spanakopita!!

new greens in hoop house

M’s Macedonian grandmother made her transparent filo dough by hand. Imagine the skill required to do this. I wish that I could have watched Babo roll out her filo—truly a vanishing skill.

We washed down our version of Spanikopita with an Oak IPA from Big Elm Brewery—our local. Failed to mention that M’s grandmother was a single mother and supported her family by making bathtub gin during Prohibition. Prior to this, her husband started a coffee shop in Cincinnati—a modern day Joe—having arrived in the United States of America with a dream, the American dream.

Indeed, as I was standing over my patch of thyme, it occurred to me that it is about time for many spring chores. First on the list: plant peas.

Mary Elizabeth Randolph put her peas in very early in hopes that her crop would sprout earlier than her cousin Thomas Jefferson’s. Yearly, they raced to see who could put the first dish on the table.

PEAS

To have them in perfection, they must be quite young, gathered early in the morning, kept in a cool place, and not shelled until they are to be dressed; put salt in the water, and when it boils, put in the peas; boil them quick twenty or thirty minutes, according to their age; just before they are taken up, add a little mint chopped very fine; drain all the water from the peas, put in a bit of butter, and serve them up quite hot.

Randolph was the author of the first true American cookbook, The Virginia Housewife, published in 1824.  The receipts (now called recipes) were the first to incorporate American Indian and African American techniques, foods and recipes in cookbook form.  Randolph ran a boarding house in Richmond, VA and people so enjoyed sitting at table with her.  Another first for Randolph was her burial in what is now called Arlington National Cemetery, formally the estate of her cousin, Mary Lee Fitzhugh Custis.

Today you can download her book to your Kindle or other electronic device.  Thanks to Project Gutenberg.