Adventures With Tubers

Chitted potatoes ready for planting

Photo: Chronica Domus

In another life, I might have been a very contented gentlewoman farmer, or gentleman farmer's wife, as would have more likely been the case.  I'd be living in an elegant country house adjoining my land, tending to the vegetables, fruits, and flowers that I've grown in abundance for my family. Always working with nature, not against.  This is the only scenario I have conjured to help explain my dilettante approach to all things agrarian.

Back in the real world, I content myself with my pocket-sized garden, growing whatever takes my fancy, often on a whim.  It is this approach, and a comment made by Spud, an occasional commenter on this blog, that led me to grow potatoes for the very first time this year.  Spud, as you might have guessed, is a fan of the humble potato, which got me thinking why it was that I had not yet attempted to grow them myself.  Like most people, I adore potatoes so as I was in the mood for a gardening adventure earlier in the spring, I decided to plant some.

Now, if I were a proper gentlewoman farmer, and my living depended on a bumper harvest, I would have sought out disease-free seed potatoes to plant.  Being the practical gal that I am, however, I looked no further than my potato basket buried in my kitchen cupboard.  There I found six little rosy hued potatoes and eight brown ones, all past their prime and already sprouting eyes. Knowing these were organic potatoes, I took my chances and used them for my growing experiment. The first thing I did was to place the potatoes in an old cardboard egg box, atop the kitchen table, where they remained for the next two weeks.  The light and cool temperature of the room allowed the potatoes to develop their green sprouts, a process known as "chitting".

I dug a twenty-eight foot long trench and amended the soil with my secret weapon, chicken manure. It works wonders if one desires vigorous plants.  On May 7, I placed the chitted potatoes two feet apart and covered them with a few inches of the rich loamy soil. Then, I waited.

This brown-skinned (russet?) potato should produce a healthy plant, and future potatoes, fingers crossed!

Photo: Chronica Domus

The little pink potato, now turned purple, is off to a good start with its cluster of sprouts

Photo: Chronica Domus

To my utter astonishment, I soon learned how rapidly these tuberous crops grow. Within a few weeks, the first leaves emerged above ground.  I was more than a little chuffed with the progress and felt rather like an expectant mother does, not knowing exactly when her baby will make an appearance in the world.

Six weeks after planting

Photo: Chronica Domus

Nature is a clever lady because she enjoys color games.  Upon seeing the vegetable patch, my friend Connie asked what color bloom a potato plant bears.  Not having grown them before I was stumped. For those of you who are interested, here is what I found only a week or so after the photograph above was taken.

A white potato bloom resembling Mother Goose

Photo: Chronica Domus

Then, a week later, the following appeared.

Photo: Chronica Domus

Ah, I thought, there lies the answer; white blooms for brown-skinned potatoes and purple for the rosy hued variety.

The potato plants now in full bloom

Photo: Chronica Domus

As the plants grew, I was careful to pile more and more soil around their stalks so that eventually the trench I had dug was filled and hilled.  Then, another surprise. What was this little green tomato-like orb?

Photo: Chronica Domus

It turned out this little fellow actually contains the seeds for next year's potatoes.  I highly recommend you remove these seed pods unless, that is, you wish to have hundreds of little potato plants spring up all over your vegetable garden next season.

On July 27, almost twelve weeks since planting the chitted potatoes, it was time to dig. I could not wait to discover what lay beneath the soil.  The anticipation was almost too much to bear.  Would I find anything at all?  If I did, would the potatoes be diseased or half eaten by earth-bound creatures?

I employed my trusty husband's strength to dig up the almost three foot tall plants, and thank goodness I did.  It takes quite a bit of upper body strength to pry those little devils out of the soil. Obviously, I'm not quite ready to fulfill my gentlewoman farmer fantasy.  Working down the row, my husband started with the brown potatoes, gingerly working the fork into the hilled earth so as to avoid piercing any tubers that may be lurking beneath.

Success! The first potatoes unearthed

Photo: Chronica Domus

I was jumping up and down with glee at the sight of plant after plant, full of spuds! There were large ones and small, both brown and rosy.

One potato, two potatoes, three potatoes, four ...

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The mother lode

Photo: Chronica Domus

We managed to fill three bushel baskets with our harvest, an amount beyond my wildest dreams.  All this from fourteen shriveled up potatoes that lay in my kitchen cupboard destined for the compost bin.

Hooray, the harvest is in!

Photo: Chronica Domus

I felt immense satisfaction and gratitude knowing my adventures in potato growing had turned out to be a smash hit. We had dug up so many potatoes that we were able to share our bounty with our friends. Arriving at their house for dinner a few weekends ago, I felt extremely proud to present dear Connie and Steven with a basket of our homegrown spuds.  Oh, and I finally got to answer her question about bloom color.

To date, all of the potatoes we have sampled have been flawless - not a soft spot or diseased area to be found between them.  Their flavor has surpassed all of our expectations, possessing a pronounced earthy goodness. Was it the soil conditions that played a part in our spuds' deliciousness I wonder. Mashed, boiled, or roasted, it has all been very, very good!

Our roasted potatoes formed part of last week's Sunday lunch
Photo: Chronica Domus

If you too are thinking about planting some old potatoes that are laying about in your kitchen, this is an ideal time to do so for those with gardens in the southern hemisphere. Everyone else may want to try popping a few tubers into the soil come spring.

Tell me, do you enjoy eating (or growing) potatoes and if so, what are your favorite ways of preparing them?

Late Summer Shadow Play

Photo: Chronica Domus

Sitting in the drawing room late yesterday afternoon, I could not help but be momentarily distracted from my reading.  I scurried into the kitchen and fetched my camera hoping to capture what was happening before my eyes.  Bathed in the late summer light that danced upon the walls were images of everyday objects that sit atop the furniture.  Glass and brass had magically transformed into shadow play.

Photo: Chronica Domus

Beguiling in its transitory nature, the playful shadows lasted but a few minutes, long enough for me to capture the images I include in this post.

Photo: Chronica Domus

In our hurly-burly world life is full of little moments of wonder if only we might slow our pace to absorb them. There is a quiet value in pausing to observe our surroundings, and at times for just a little longer than may even feel comfortable.

I'm so glad I did for these images will ever remind me of an afternoon spent in observation and contemplation of life's little gifts - a comfortable chair, a good book, and this ephemeral light show which accompanies the passage of time.

Have you noticed the lengthening shadows of summer's finale where you live?

A Dreamy Creamy Find

The hand-painted central decoration on my newly acquired creamware plates

Photo: Chronica Domus

While it may appear that my cupboards are groaning in protestation from all the English and French ceramics I stuff into them, I am supremely conscious of two painful truths.

1. I am a hopeless addict collector. I know the next time a little pretty catches my eye, something I "must have", I will find a way to bring it home, come hell or high water. Yes, I really am that feeble predictable.  
2. I have run out of storage space which makes my addiction obsession collecting habit a bit of a sticky wicket. 

As I reluctantly came to terms with this piteous state of affairs recently, the inevitable came rapping at my door.  Yes, you guessed it, I (once again) found myself answering that all too familiar siren call.  I had succumbed to the delights of a dreamy creamy find; a stack of creamware dinner plates demanding my attention.  What else could I have done?  I did already tell you I am hopeless.

I have long admired early English creamware, those creamy-colored table articles made of earthenware so popular during the mid-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. Many Staffordshire potteries produced creamware but it was the Wedgwood factory that catapulted its success within the higher echelons of society.  Josiah Wedgwood named his creamware "Queen's Ware" after an extensive tea service was commissioned by his royal patroness Queen Charlotte.   I have resisted creamware's temptations, not wanting to "go there" due in large part to a lack of storage space. Besides, the world is not exactly flush with early creamware. Assembling a sufficient number of plates and serving pieces for a small dinner party would take years if one were fortunate enough to encounter such things on one's travels. Needless to say, more than a fist full of dollars is also a requirement.

This covetable Wedgwood creamware part dinner service circa 1790 sold at Christie's in London in 2008 for a staggering $17,719 or  £11,250

Source

Which is why when I happened upon a stack of six filthy newspaper-wrapped late-eighteenth century creamware dinner plates at the Alameda Point Antiques Faire last month, I hesitated for barely a nanosecond before snapping them up. It helped that the seller looked as if she was in the midst of happily unburdening herself with the entire contents of a small antiques shop she had inherited. Many of the people that sell at the monthly fair are not professional dealers, which makes every visit exceedingly interesting.  One never quite knows what one will unearth.  This particular stallholder 

was selling her wares at what I could only describe as ridiculously rock-bottom prices, and cheerfully so.  You see, my purchase of the six plates amounted to an embarrassingly paltry amount; a mere five dollars. Yes, that's right, five dollars!  For those of you blessed with a sharpish mind for arithmetic, you will have already totted up the fact that each plate cost me less than a dollar. I could not believe my good fortune.  At long last the creamware gods had looked favorably upon my addiction collection. Out of pity, no doubt.

I must explain that it was not as though the stallholder was unaware of what she was selling.  Here is what I found on one of the plates.

My creamware plates in their filthy state

Photo: Chronica Domus

Frustratingly, the other label had already been partially torn off, with only the remains of the word "unusual" still visible. What, I wondered, was so "unusual" about these plates?  Was it the finely painted central medallion bearing the monograms of "IL & MGL"?  Who were these people, and why had these plates been commissioned? Was it to mark the occasion of a wedding, perhaps?  I found it rather odd that only four plates were mentioned on the label, yet there were actually six in the pile I purchased.

Washed and clean and ready for the table (notice how shallow the stack is, convenient for those of us that are storage-challenged)

Photo: Chronica Domus

Once clean and dry, I pulled together the three other early pieces of creamware in my collection; two lozenge-shaped Wedgwood serving dishes, and a shell-shaped monogrammed shallow serving bowl. I set the lot on the dining room table.  It pleased me no end to see that they all coordinated rather nicely, unified by their fresh green enamel decoration.

Hooray! The green decoration on my new plates matched that of my existing Wedgwood creamware dishes

Photo: Chronica Domus

The finely painted central motif on this shell-edged creamware dish also possesses bright green (and puce) enamel and a similarly stylized monogram

Photo: Chronica Domus 

I could not wait to set the dining table with my creamware haul.  Of course, the photograph below was taken for the benefit of this blog posting, to illustrate how splendidly the creamware pieces work with the period glassware and silver already in my collection.  I shall set this table again in mid-October for a formal dinner party we are planning on throwing.  Invitations have already been dispatched and with the addition of our dear friends, some good food, the warm glow of candlelight, and our decanters and glasses overflowing, we plan on having a glorious evening, much in the same vein, I imagine, as the plates' original owners might have enjoyed them.

At long last, a tabletop's worth of creamware enough to throw a small dinner party (please excuse the rugless floor - I'm working on it!)

Photo: Chronica Domus

If any of you find yourself in northern California on the first Sunday of each month, come rain or shine, I highly recommend you plan to spend a day trolling the region's largest antiques fair.  Perhaps you too might unearth a treasure for your own collection.

Do you have a tale you wish to share of a long-desired item unearthed for a pittance?

Life Is Sweet!

My rose scented geranium in bloom

Photo: Chronica Domus

The days of popping around to one's neighbors to borrow a cup of sugar are long gone, thanks in part to the recent demonization of sugar.  However, if you were to consider dropping by my house, you'd be welcome to borrow more than a cup or two, or even a lump or three, come to think of it.

If I offer a hot beverage to my guests, I always fill the sugar bowl with those irregularly shaped brown sugar cubes.  I love the way they smell, and my guests tell me they appreciate their taste (I do not personally require the addition of sugar in my tea or coffee).

Cooking with sugar, however, is quite another matter.  A well-stocked pantry of sugar travels far within the realms of my kitchen.  Alongside the expected granulated and powdered varieties, I find myself reaching for brown sugar, and the deliciously caramel-like demarara.  One other sugar that I use frequently is vanilla sugar.

I've been flavoring sugar with vanilla beans for as long as I've been baking, which is to say a very long time.  Vanilla sugar is a lovely alternative to plain old granulated sugar when called for in pies and tarts, or when macerating berries and fruit.  I even use it when making pastry cream and custard. A vanilla bean cut in half and buried in a jar of granulated sugar for several weeks is all that is required to make vanilla sugar. Culinary tasks don't get much simpler than this little exercise in sweetness.  I encourage you to try it for yourself.

Homemade vanilla sugar in the making

Photo: Chronica Domus

Earlier this year while visiting a favorite plant nursery, I happened to brush past a grouping of rose geranium plants, or Pelargonium graveolens to use their botanical name.  If you've ever smelled the leaves of these aromatic wonders, you shall not soon forget them.  The rosy perfume released upon gently rubbing one's fingers along the plant's hairy leaves is quite arresting.  My mother kept a rose geranium potted up for years in my childhood garden, which she moved indoors for the winter.  As you might have already guessed, I could not leave the nursery without buying a rose geranium for myself.  I did this not only for sentimental reasons - the smell alone evoked so many fond memories - but also for the fact that these attractive plants are rather a useful thing to have around the kitchen.

The pretty little pink flowers are edible and look marvelous when scattered atop lashings of whipped cream and served with berries, or atop homemade vanilla ice cream.  Best of all, of course, is that the fragrant leaves can be used to flavor sugar.

Pick, wash, and pat dry several of the fragrant leaves then place them between layers of white granulated sugar.  For my small jar, I used about fifteen leaves.  Replace the lid of the jar and leave intact for several weeks.  Use to your heart's content thereafter.

Arrange rose geranium leaves between layers of granulated sugar

Photo: Chronica Domus

Almost to the brim now

Photo: Chronica Domus

Tell me, do you use sugar in your kitchen and if so have you tried flavored sugars? How about tea and coffee, one lump or two?