Oases

It’s hot in Chicago, folks. It’s that time of year where the hum of air conditioners mingles with the throbbing, lazy buzz of cicadas. What I like to call “deep summer,” where walking outside is more like being underwater. As a friend recently commented: “I didn’t know we had a monsoon season.” Complete with pyrotechnic thunderstorms every other night, strangely starting right around 10 p.m.

The humidity was such this past week that I actually skipped the Daley Plaza market because walking or rather, wading, all those blocks through the downtown sauna wasn’t appealing enough when I didn’t really need anything. Yeah man, but it’s a dry heat.

I’ve decided one thing, though: I would much rather have too much hot than too much cold. Heat is something you have to embrace; you just eventually concede to sit/lay there and sweat. Cold, you have to huddle against.

The heat can’t stop our gardens, just like the hailstorm didn’t. (Torn leaves and broken stems later, the plants apparently just decide to keep growing.) Late July into August is when the garden takes on a life of its own, breaks from the moorings and starts to go a little crazy. It takes the heat, humidity, drought, extreme storms, whatever, and just grows bigger. (Except for the peas. My dad’s peas are stone dead, but that’s about par for the course.)

My best friend was in town this past weekend, and when I stopped by her dad and his girlfriend’s place in Bucktown on her last night in the city, I got to see another riotous summer garden. They have a beautiful square deck in back that is lined on all four sides with potted plants. Well into deep summer, the plants are bursting from their containers, covered with colorful blooms, leaning and twining around each other.

This is literally an urban Eden; there’s even a small fountain set in the wall with water quietly trickling. I’m not sure how it works, but it’s very cool.

It was still a very warm day but the sun was sinking, so they set up an oscillating fan and we sat out on the deck to enjoy the open air and greenery. They had been to the Lincoln Park market so we had an impromptu light dinner of roasted summer squash and eggplant, buttered corn on the cob, bread, and a mixed greens salad. We watched as Molly’s dad picked dill, basil, and parsley from an herb container to go in the salad. For dessert, there was homemade, yummy blueberry crostata. Sorry no pictures, Molly and I ate it as soon as it was in front of us. They had bought five pounds of blueberries at the market and froze what was left after the recipe.

Just before Molly had to head for the airport, we took a last look around the deck. I spotted the tiniest cherry tomatoes I’ve ever seen growing behind me, which had been in the salad. “Have some more,” Becky urged. I obediently plucked a few more juicy globes off the plant and into my mouth. You want to talk locally grown? This was produce transported from six feet away to my plate. Clearly doable in a city setting.

I stepped a little closer to the edge of the deck and looked over the wall at the rest of the alley. Plenty of other people had balconies, decks, porches, even small yards. I saw one spider plant at a distance, but otherwise no other gardens or potted plants were in sight. No flowers, certainly no food. A shimmering desert of concrete and metal.

I felt lucky to be standing in the middle of an oasis.

Completely bananas

I had a strange experience today. I was leaving my building to grab some lunch, and saw a girl walking out of a 7-Eleven, taking a bite of a banana that she had clearly just bought at that store. What’s so strange about that? Well, for the first time, this sight struck me as completely bizarre.

I like bananas. It was a sometime breakfast for me for years. Banana bread pudding is a great way to use up the leftover crusts from the Miller family stuffing recipe at Thanksgiving. They do have all that potassium, and that 91-year-old guy who still runs every day sure swears by them. (Does anyone remember that commercial??)

But I thought about it for a second. That banana came from somewhere in Central or South America, near the equator. Ecuador is a primary exporter, or it could have come from Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras. A hot, humid tropical region is what they require. That sure sounds like Chicago in this past week– but there are very few bananas commercially grown in the United States. Assuming that banana came from Ecuador, it travelled nearly 3,000 miles to get to Chicago.

THREE THOUSAND MILES. 2,900-and-some to be exact.

I was so shocked by this that I triple checked the distance.

How many different modes of transport and middle-men were involved in this international journey? More importantly, what funded this odyssey so that the banana could end up for sale in a basket on the counter of 7-Eleven for 79 cents? Cheap wages and poor conditions for the plantation workers, to start with, and then cheap energy. Lots and lots of oil.

In much older times, it used to be only nobility, kings, emperors could summon the resources to have exotic food brought in from the far reaches of the globe for an extravagant, decadent banquet that no one would forget. Now cheap energy, fossil-fueled transport, and globalization have made us all emperors. We can get bananas (in fact, much of our food) from three thousand miles away in the summer, winter, anytime we please. Until the price of oil skyrockets and the disruptive effects of climate change take off, at which point we’ll all be wearing our new clothes indeed.

Imagine all the preparation and expense that would go into you taking a 3,000-mile trip yourself. Why SHOULD we expect that we can have bananas in the Midwest, year-round? Not as a special occasion, but whenever we want?

Consider the clerk at the convenience store selling this banana, who has five degrees of separation from its origin and probably not the slightest idea of the situation in which it was grown. Versus a sunburned, smiling guy at the farmers’ market, who hands you a bag of Michigan peaches, banters mildly with you about the last thunderstorm, and either works at the orchard himself, or is personally connected to the family who grew them.

How did we come to accept and even demand such both literal and emotional distance from the origin of our food?

If you are lucky enough to have local and store-bought options to compare, it’s impossible not to see the difference. Even an organically grown apple from Whole Foods (shipped from Washington, typically) is a pale substitute for locally picked. On an apple-picking trip, that first tart crunch into an apple plucked off the branch on a sunny fall day? You could just lie down in the orchard and die of happiness.

But because bananas travel so far to get to us, they’re picked green and then “gassed” with ethylene in airtight warehouse rooms, or on the truck, to ripen them just before they reach the supermarket. So how would a fresh-picked banana compare to a store-bought, artificially ripened one that’s been traveling for three weeks? I couldn’t tell you. I’ve never had the opportunity, considering I’d have to fly to South America and find a vehicle to take me to a banana plantation in the middle of the jungle to find out. When it comes to tropical fruit, it’s a case that we just don’t know what we’re missing.

I’ll probably still make banana bread pudding, once after Thanksgiving. But right now I see no need for extra variety in the fruit options available to us. There’s more than enough diversity right here at home. At the Federal Plaza market, there’s strawberries, peaches, raspberries, blueberries, currants, even gooseberries. (Ever tried a gooseberry? They look like tiny beach balls or watermelons… and their taste is hard to describe.) Summer is the best time to reject the lure of the far-off and exotic, and enjoy what’s unusual and delicious here in the Midwest.

Comfort foods

Most everyone has those characteristic meals that make them think of good times at home, with family, or with friends. They’re not always the healthiest choices. In fact, the food we feel is good for our soul is sometimes what most sticks to our ribs. One of my comfort foods is good old orange-yellow mac and cheese. Stereotypical, but there it is. Usually when I spent the night at my childhood friends the twins’ house, we’d make a big stainless steel pot of Kraft mac and cheese. Or, on nights when their mom was in the mood for cooking, we’d have her trademark special dinner: enchiladas (chicken for them, bean for me) with cream sauce. So rich that you sit at the table for an hour talking afterwards to avoid having to move.

But with the proliferation of vegan soul food restaurants in Chicago, there are equivalents without the meat or dairy. The Chicago Diner, for example, offers a veggie reuben (my husband’s favorite), chicken fried “steak,” and even eggs, biscuits, and vegan gravy for brunch. A vegetarian or vegan can sit back, stuff themselves, and feel right where they belong. It’s like being back at home enjoying my mom’s meat-less-loaf.

So comfort food doesn’t have to include the discomfort of animals. But can comfort food go local too? Dave and I tested this last night on a favorite from his side of the family: Green bean casserole.

We already had a good supply of green beans. Some were picked from my dad’s garden the week before.

And to make sure I had enough for the recipe, I found some more beans (French this time) at the Tuesday Federal Plaza market, including both green and a deep shade of purple that fascinated me and didn’t seem edible. For the hash-brown base of the pie, I also bought some Illinois-grown potatoes at the market for grating. More of the Wisconsin two-year cheddar got grated to go on top.

To get the other non-produce elements of the casserole, we then did a little cheating. A can of cheddar cheese soup, chopped veggie burgers, and a can of French fried onions later (all from the grocery store and full of preservatives, I’m sure), we had this strange but delicious amalgamation. Tender green beans, earthy potatoes, made all cheddar-gooey, with the it’s-so-bad-it’s-goodness of French fried onions to top it off. A work in progress (maybe we can fry our own onions? does someone make a somewhat more natural cheese soup? or maybe some mushroom gravy instead..), but a definitely comforting late-night dinner nonetheless.

Counting

How do you measure success, or what makes you “rich”? Some people count their coins, or belongings: how much money they make, the size of their house(s), the car they drive. Others count their blessings.

In the ecological world, richness is defined by diversity. A calculation exists for the “species richness” of an ecosystem. Generally the greater the diversity, the healthier a place is and the longer it can persist in the face of disturbance.

Summers at our place have always brought a different kind of counting, not financial or scientific. It was a little game we often played at the dinner table when I was a kid: Count how many things came from the garden. The number typically got more impressive as the summer months went on.

This past week Dave and I made a recipe using barley for the first time I can remember (pretty much a superfood: high-fiber, high-protein, can lower cholesterol, reduces the risk of heart disease, and is nearly fat-free. Shockingly, it tastes great too.) While we were waiting for the barley to cook, I put together a quick salad with the mushrooms from last week’s Logan Square market, which amazingly hadn’t spoiled yet.

As we sat down to eat, this time I counted the locally grown foods: Broccoli and onions from Nichols Farm in Marengo, Illinois (only 60 miles from Chicago); two-year cheddar cheese from Wisconsin; mushrooms from River Valley Kitchens, just north of the Wisconsin-Illinois border; and baby lettuce, thinned from my dad’s garden this past weekend. A total of five! Not bad.

I believe we set the record for our Homewood garden one night in late summer when my mom had made a hearty and very diverse minestrone soup. We counted I think nine ingredients from the garden. Potatoes, onions, tomatoes, carrots, zucchini, and even turnips (my dad’s least favorite root vegetable, but a couple years they grew like gangbusters– whatever those are) must have all went into the pot.

It seems like a small moment, this household record, but then how do I remember it clearly so many years later? I sat at the table, impressed by all these vegetables that we grew right in our own backyard, feeling proud. Thinking wow. What a success.

What’s in a name?

A Bowl of Raspberries. I had been contemplating this blog for a few weeks, but put off creating it for lack of a name. Many things can stall in the absence of an appropriate beginning. Then a couple nights ago, sitting on the couch with my husband and cat sharing a true summer delight, the answer was right in front of me: in the form of tart, luscious black raspberries, picked a few days before, sprinkled over and swimming through silky vanilla ice cream.

A bowl of fresh raspberries and Breyer’s vanilla (or plain soymilk) is one of life’s simplest and most unbelievable pleasures. Every year is as good as the first time, because in the meantime, you forget just how amazing it is. The first sun-warmed tomato is like that, or the first time you discover a new, unusual food that’s been prepared really well.

Fresh raspberries, like any good produce, are a guilt-free indulgence. An indulgence that, when it volunteers wild in your backyard with no needed maintenance the rest of the year, seems like a ridiculous gift.

My grandma had huge red raspberries growing behind her farmhouse outside Rockford. I can still feel their smooth, somewhat dusty-feeling flesh, covered with fine hairs, as I picked them. They were so big they could easily fit on the ends of my fingers and thumbs. Of course, that was probably relative to the size of my thumbs at the time. No store-bought raspberry will ever approach their taste.

A big bramble of black raspberries has thrived year after year in my dad’s vegetable garden. I don’t remember if anyone planted it. In fact, it has jumped locations over the years, a true living colony. It starts to ripen just around the fourth of July. Picking a big bowl of these raspberries in the morning to have with breakfast, or in the summertime dusk, is one of my favorite childhood memories. (Sugary cereal isn’t the only thing that can turn the milk colors. Crushed black raspberries turn it a vibrant purple.)

After the BP oil spill happened (and continued to happen) last summer, Garrison Keillor wrote a column that appeared in the Tribune editorial section. It provided some solace – another thinking, caring person, expressing a shared sense of despair and frustration. He did the only thing he could think to do, in the face of our self-destructive behavior, indifference to the natural world, inaction on environmental problems, and cynical politicking: He sat in his yard, watched the Mississippi go by, and ate a bowl of fresh raspberries with ice cream.

I can’t say what he felt after that. But what I felt was that if such simple pleasures tied to the land are still possible in our world, then all is not lost.

At the bottom of a bowl of fresh raspberries, picked by hand or from the market, is comfort and a feeling of contentment. A feeling of family, community, and continuity. At the bottom of a bowl of raspberries maybe is hope. And all of that is what this blog is about.