THE ANSWER MAN: Fish Tacos

The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D. (4/30/2014)

 

Q.  Dear Answer Man, Abigail here.  I hate to bother you again.  It’s about Rusty.  He’s been in trouble.  He was arrested outside San Felipe’s Cantina downtown for rioting.  He said San Felipe’s was cool, no problemo.  He was getting a fish taco and a beer with Buzz, his friend from the garage down on “66”, when, all of a sudden, all hell broke loose on the street.  He says he and Buzz went out to see what was going on and got jostled around.  Somebody spilled a beer on him, and low and behold, he and Buzz were just swept up in this crowd of young street thugs.  He says the cops said he stunk of booze, and “they just corralled us, cuffed us, and hauled us off to jail.  They didn’t even ask us what we was doin’ there.”     

 

I had to go down to the jail and get him out.  I was so ashamed.  Nothing has ever happened like this in our family before.  Turns out that he wasn’t drunk.  I asked him what he was doing down at San Felipe’s, especially for a man his age.  After he got a little puffed out, he said that he and Buzz have been thinking about doing a study of fish tacos in Flagstaff, and “what better place to start than San Felipe’s Cantina?”

 

Needless to say, he’s mortified by what happened.  I asked him whether or not he and Buzz were studying the kind of fish used and the seasonings.  He said, “Hell, no, Abby, we was just running a taste test, nothing fancy like you learn at Master Gardeners, no high-falutin’ , hoity-toity stuff.  We wasn’t checkin’ out the herbs and stuff like that.”

 

I said, “You mean you and Buzz plan to just go around town checking out the fish tacos and drinking beer?”  “Yep, that’s about it.”

 

What do you think I ought to do, Answer Man?

 

          A.  Well, I think you’d better keep him at home for his own sake.  He’s not safe running loose around town on his own.  Buzz doesn’t sound like much of safety net, either.  If you want to keep a man at home, feed him something better than he can get elsewhere, and it sounds like Rusty’s the kind of man whose heart’s in his belly.  You can start by making better tacos at home than he can find in the bars throughout town.  Just set them up with a TV so that they can watch Highway thru Hell or Alaska State Troopers.   That way they’ll think they’re in some bar down town. 

 

          Q.  What’s better about fish tacos at home?

 

          A.  The ingredients: fresh purple cabbage, fresh cilantro, and fresh tomatoes.  The vegetables you get at most bars are at least two days old, and old cabbage takes on airs.  Sometimes, the taco joints try slipping in lettuce instead of cabbage, and any fish taco aficionado knows that purple cabbage is necessary to have an authentic fish taco.  Lettuce is for cheeseburgers, not tacos.  Lettuce is so gringo.

 

Flagstaff is purple cabbage, tomato, and cilantro growing territory, and, besides, home-grown tomatoes are the best kind of tomatoes to eat.   You’ve got the best fish taco fixin’s right in your backyard garden.

 

Q.  I just don’t know, Answer Man.  I suspect Rusty and Buzz like the smell of stale beer you get in those joints.  Rusty even likes cold pizza and flat beer for breakfast.  Reminds him of the semester he spent in college.

 

A.  I know what’ll get him: home-grown chilis, freshly picked, the kind that’ll knock his socks off.  You can even get him involved in growing them.  Jalapeños do well in Flagstaff, and you’ll be needing them for a little kick in the salsa.  Maybe you can get Rusty to smoke them to get some chipotles for the salsa.

 

Q.  Well, what about the fish?

A.  Any white fish will do.  Make sure it doesn’t smell.  Batter and deep fry it.  Fat tastes better.  Fish is better for you grilled, but it’s crunchier and tastes better deep fried.  Olé! 

Copyright © Dana Prom Smith

Dana Prom Smith and Freddi Steele edit Gardening Etcetera for the Arizona Daily Sun.  Smith emails at stpauls@npgcable.com and blogs at http://highcountrygardener.blogspot.com.

A QUADRIPLEX OF BACKYARD DELIGHTS

The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D. (4/15/2014)

 

 

          In the Old Testament story of Jacob and Esau, Esau sold his birthright, as the oldest brother, to Jacob for “a pottage of red lentils.”  As the story goes, Jacob dwelt in the tents with the women while Esau had the smell of the field and hunt.  Famished from a hunt, Esau sold his birthright to Jacob for the stew of lentils (Gen. 25:27-34.)  The account is about 4,000 years old.  Peas, lentils, and chickpeas were used for food as early as 8,000 years ago during the Neolithic Age, and probably earlier, in Central Asia and the southern and eastern Mediterranean basin.  The Neolithic age is the spread of time when our ancestors moved from being hunters and gatherers into cultivated agriculture and husbandry.

 

          These ancient legumes: peas, lentils, and chickpeas, aren’t to be confused with Phaseolus vulgaris which is Latin for the common bean.  Actually, phaseolus is the Latin for small boat which the open pod resembles.  The kidney beans we eat today come from Mesoamerica or what is now Central America and Peru, first appearing about 7,000 years ago.  Along with tomatoes they were the culinary gifts of the New World to the Old World by way of Columbus and his successors.

 

          Ironically, of the three ancients, some peas (Pisum sativum) have come down to us as sugar snaps which developed by serendipitously crossing peas with Chinese snow peas in 1979 at a horticultural research facility in Twin Falls, Idaho.  Along with snow peas, the French call sugar snaps mange tout, “eat it all,” meaning that the pod as well as the peas is eaten.  They are one of the premier delights of backyard gardening and the first in our quadriplex of backyard delights.  Grown in the backyard or in a tub on a deck, they’re sweet, crisp, and munchy, unlike the starchy and flaccid substitutes found in grocery stores.  

 

          By the way, Pisum sativum is Latin for a cultivated pea which implies that wild peas were domesticated during the Neolithic period.  Also, it further implies that they eaten as wild peas long before their domestication.  They were probably eaten dry, ground into a pea meal.  

          The rest of our quadriplex is now a triplex, not of peas but of bean, our old Latin friend, the Phaseolus vulgaris, the common bean, only ours aren’t so common.  The first that comes to mind is La Comtesse de Chambord, a rare, small, thin rice bean.  About four inches long, it’s sweet when eaten raw and immature much like snow peas and sugar snaps and is used in salads.  It’s tasty when blanched or sautéed.  Also, when mature and dried, the bean can be cooked much like rice only with a richer and nuttier flavor.  Since it’s not produced commercially, it can only be found in the backyard.  They’re easy to grow and are bountiful producers.

 

          After La Comtesse de Chambord, the Beurre de Rocquencourt takes its place as the premier wax bean.  Although its forbearers haled from Central America, it was introduced into France from Algeria about 1840, and as one can tell by its name, it melts in the mouth.  The pods are straight, slim, stringless, and crisp as well as being fine-flavored.  In short, they are a chef’s delight, and as with La Comtesse de Chambord they’re rare and unavailable in the grocery stores.  There is little point in growing vegetables that can be found in the supermarket, especially when these rare beans are easy to grow and taste better.

          Finally, there is the haricot vert which is French for green bean.  The interesting thing about the word haricot is that it may come from Aztec ayacotli indicating the origins of the bean.  The French green bean or haricot vert is longer, slimmer, and better tasting than the ordinary American green bean, something like 7 inches long.  Now and then, they can be found in upscale grocery stores, but they’re never as good as home-grown.  My favorite is the Maxibel.

          For an investment of about ten dollars, gardeners can have the world at their doors, horticulturally and culinarily.

Copyright © Dana Prom Smith 2014

Dana Prom Smith and Freddi Steele edit Gardening Etcetera for the Arizona Daily Sun.  Smith emails at stpauls@npgcable.com and blogs at http://highcountrygardener.blogspot.com.

             

CARESSING THE GARDEN

The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D. (3/29/2014)

 

          The most boring word in the English language is the pronoun “I” and its colleagues, “me,” “mine,” and “my,” and “myself.”  The reason is simple.  Not many people are interesting enough to sustain a conversation about themselves.  The late, great historian, Arnold Toynbee, once said, “Not many autobiographies are worthwhile because not many people live noteworthy lives.”  Most of us rate only a paragraph or two.

 

          This, however, does not dissuade people from talking about themselves, even the most humdrum tidbits: trips to the grocery store, indignations, prescriptions, or aches and pains.  Even fascinating war stories stale with age.  Ask any war veteran.  Perhaps, the worst are those who purportedly want to comfort someone in grief by telling the grief-stricken their own tales of grief. 

 

          Human beings are the only animals who have a fully developed sense of self-consciousness.  This doesn’t mean that the higher animals don’t have a sense of themselves, such as memories or emotions.  Charles Darwin wrote, “Nevertheless, the difference between man and the higher animals, great as it is, certainly is one of degree, not of kind.”  However, animals other than human beings never seem to suffer the “terrible two’s” when the “I” emerges as “No!”  Sadly, lots of people never get past “No!”  They’re called “oppositional personalities.”  Albert Camus writes: “In rebellion awareness is born.”

 

          Of course, the sense of “I” is what inhibits human communication because the self gets entangled in the communication.  This is what’s so great about dogs.  They have a sense of themselves, and, yet, they aren’t burdened by an “I.”  They understand touch, the basic form of communication, and certainly taste, hearing, and smell.  Human beings entangle themselves in words, thinking that words create a reality.  Only God can create by a word (Genesis 1.)  Human beings, especially academics and bureaucrats, often think their dicta are creative, but they are delusional.  Announcements, policies, and studies aren’t enough to make reality.

 

          One of the reasons that dogs are so good at therapy is that they don’t bring along the baggage of “I” into the relationship.  They’re simply “there,” wanting to be close, sharing the moment.  There are no “hidden agendas.” 

 

          The grief-stricken want touch, not words, certainly not autobiographies.  A touch and some tears.  Saint Paul wrote that there are “sighs too deep for words” (Romans 8:26).  Sometimes there are no words.

 

          I watch meine Überfrau garden by touch.  Every time she passes an English ivy plant on the coffee table in our living room, she runs her hands through its leaves and stems in exactly the same way she runs her hands through our Labrador retrievers’ fur.  The ivy has survived, flourished, prevailed for nigh unto 12 years.  I can almost hear it sigh.  And she does it is with all the plants inside and outside our house.  She even talks to the pines.

 

          I doubt that the English ivy plant has a sense of “I,” but it does communicate by flourishing, the same way that children do when they are touched and cuddled.

 

           One of the delightful things about gardening is planting onion sets in March.  For one thing, it’s beating the alleged short gardening season of ninety days.  Onions are a natural season extender.  It’s getting one’s hands in the soil and letting it filter through one’s fingers.  It’s also relishing a dog’s fur, caressing a child, and embracing a loved one.  There is no substitute.

 

          Gardening is often considered the province of the botanists and horticulturalists, and while they may have something to contribute, gardening is actually a spiritual experience, a sense of the presence of Another.  Nearly everyone senses the Presence, save the spiritual flatliners.  The sense begins in our mother’s arms and on her breasts and with the timbre of her voice — touch, sound, and taste.  It can continue throughout lives if we diminish the “I” and attend to what we experience.  One sure way to make a garden thrive is to caress it, speak to it, and taste it, allowing the soil to caress us as it runs through our fingers.   

Copyright © Dana Prom Smith 2014

Dana Prom Smith and Freddi Steele edit Gardening Etcetera for the Arizona Daily Sun.  Smith emails at stpauls@npgcable.com and blogs at http://highcountrygardener.blogspot.com.

 

 

 

           

ONIONS: A BUNDLE OF LEAVES

The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D. (3/11/2014)

          As I was strolling through a slim paperback on little known historical facts, to my dismay, I found out that I am older than sliced bread which was developed in 1928. 

 

Something far older than either me or sliced bread is the onion, lost in the mists of antiquity, six thousand years.  Its origin is unknown, but a plant similar to the wild onion has been found in Turkestan.  It’s certainly from somewhere in Central or Western Asia.  It’s far older than the tomato which comes from a fruit that was grown in the Andes and used by the Incas.

 

          The onion’s strong odor and flavor are the reasons for its widespread use throughout the world and the chief reason that gardeners grow onions in their backyards.  Backyard-grown is always better than store-bought.  Along with being a culinary delight, onions are easy to grow and are spectacularly good for the eater.  They are jammed with nutrients.  As a matter of fact, they’re richer than tomatoes, carrots, and red peppers.  The combination of ease of growing, great taste, and nutritionally rich is hard to beat.

 

          Some of its possible health benefits are the prevention of cancer and heart attacks.  It is also thought to be beneficial in diabetes.  For further information on the health benefits of the onion, type in your browser: whfood.org and then click on onions.  A vegetable that tastes good and is full of nutritional goodies is not to be dismissed, especially in an era of ersatz food, such as “processed foods” or “fast foods.”

 

          As for its culinary uses, the richer leaves are the outer leaves so the best tactic is to peel away only what is necessary of the dry, brown outer leaves.  Some people eat onions raw like an apple.  When I had an office on Westwood Blvd in Los Angeles, there was a Persian restaurant nearby which used lots of onions.  The waiters, as well as being condescending, ate onions like apples during their breaks.  At any rate, Persian cuisine is, along with the French and Chinese, thought to be one of the finest cuisines in the world.  So instead of one more Greek restaurant, pizza parlor, hamburger joint, or Mexican and Thai restaurant, how about a Persian restaurant in Flagstaff?  Failing that, maybe restaurants with imaginative and capable chefs can offer some Persian entrées. 

 

Onions can be grown in three different ways, seed, transplant, or sets.  Transplants have already started to develop a bulb.  Sets are immature onions sold in bunches.  Seeds take a long time and are particularly difficult in cold climates.  Sets are easy to grow and can be purchased from commercial nurseries or online.  The drawback of onion sets is the limited variety of onions available. 

 

          The first thing to do is prepare the bed with compost and organic material and a good 10-10-10 fertilizer before the middle of March.  Buy or order the varieties of onion sets desired.  About the middle of March ― certainly before the onset of April ― plant the onion sets about five inches apart and an inch or so deep.  Onions require lots of water, so it’s smart to plant them in trenches in order to save water.  A couple of weeks after planting the sets, they should be side-dressed with a high nitrogen fertilizer and watered straightaway and repeated every three weeks during growing season which is fifty to sixty days. 

 

          Onions are categorized not only by variety but also by length of day, short day, intermediate day, and long day.  Onions need sunlight, and Flagstaff falls right between intermediate and short day.  It’s safe to plant an intermediate day onion with an added short day, such as the varieties Superstar and 1015-Y Supersweet.  If harvesting green onions in addition to mature onions, pull them early in the season when they’re immature.  Onions mature when the stalks fall over.  After about a week, the mature onions should be pulled and allowed to dry before being stored.

 

          If eaten raw, it’s best to remember the Arab proverb:  “Never deny a man his breath.”      

Copyright © Dana Prom Smith 2014

Dana Prom Smith and Freddi Steele edit Gardening Etcetera for the Arizona Daily Sun.  Smith emails at stpauls@npgcable.com and blogs at http://highcountrygardener.blogspot.com.

 

THE PERILS AND GLORIES OF TOMATOES

Yhe Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D. (2/17/2014)

 

          A hail storm last summer assaulted my garden while meine Überfrau and I were in Phoenix where she had another operation on her eyes for a retinal detachment.  I asked my friend and student, Tam Nguyen, to check on my tomatoes, hoping that the hail didn’t hit them.  She replied, “My heart is sad.  I cry for your tomatoes.”  The chances of something bad happening with tomatoes are discouragingly high, not probable but possible, not necessary but nearly inevitable.

 

          Why bother?  The taste, that’s all, the taste.  Store-bought, corporate, industrial, capitalistic tomatoes don’t cut the mustard.  They’re tasteless and too firm like cardboard, leaving only the taste of flavorless acid.

 

          Actually, they’re easy to grow.  It’s the hazards, diseases, insects, and weather that are the problems, but they’re all manageable, save for the weather.  “For man proposes, but God disposes; neither is the way of man in his own hands” (Thomas à Kempis (1380-1471.)  Grief is a natural component of growing tomatoes.

 

          First of all, containers are useful for growing tomatoes.  It’s easier to control the water and fertilizer and to prevent infestations, diseases, and insects by placing the containers farther apart.  As parents know, afflictions spread like wildfires in kindergartens.  I would recommend the tomato containers and cages sold by Gardeners Supply or other such similar containers found in local nurseries; however, five gallon black containers do a dandy job and are a lot cheaper.  It depends on the degree of one’s fanaticism.  Another advantage to a cage is that with sufficient warning the containers can be covered to protect the tomatoes from adverse weather.

 

          Seeds are the best way to start for several reasons.  As with hospitals and kindergartens, nurseries are more likely to have infestations and diseases than packets of seeds.  Although it’s a lot easier to buy a tomato plant than a pack of seeds, it’s slightly more problematic.  The trick is to inspect the plant in the nursery as though one were searching for leaks at the NSA, even to the point of using a magnifying glass.  New gardeners and non-gardening philistines may scoff at such vigilance, but pay them no mind.  Also, seeds offer an opportunity for tomato varieties more congenial to the high country, as in our short growing season.

 

          Seeds are easy.  Nurseries sell small packets in which to start the seeds.  All they need is a sunny window sill.  After the plants develop their second leaves, transplant them into a pint container.  When they develop into sturdy plants, they can be transplanted outside.  Since the last frost statistically occurs in Flagstaff about June 15, the transplants can be protected by Walls ’o Water until the danger of frost is past.

 

          The soils should be friable with lots of compost and organic material.  While a high nitrogen fertilizer is helpful at first to get the plant established, the fertilizer during the growing season, whether organic or artificial, should be high in phosphorus (K) and potassium (P).  Too much nitrogen (N) will give the gardener an outstandingly beautiful plant with few tomatoes.

 

          Now, comes the grief.  Failure generally appears sometime after the plant has developed and nascent tomatoes appear, a time of high hope and anticipation.  White flies, often coming in on a plant from a nursery, 

will cloud the plant.  The only remedy is sudden death at the hands of Environmental Services lest the white flies spread. 

            

          Other maladies such as blossom-end rot, various wilts, blights, and unwelcome viruses are a part of the grief panel, and for the most part they can be dealt with.  An excellent source of information online is http://ag.edu/pubs/garden/mg/vegetables/tomatoes.html.

 

          Now, the best all around tomato plant for Flagstaff is the Stupice from what was once Czechoslovakia.  The tastiest is the Siberian yellow grape Galina, the earliest, the problematic, Canadian Beaver Lodge Slicer, and the two dependables, the Montanan Prairie Fire and the Siberian Sasha’s Altai.  This year I’m going to experiment with a San Marzano at the suggestion of Gretchen, a foodie.

 

          Thank God and Drs. Graff and Johnson, she’s doing well.  Ravaged tomato vines are a small price to pay for eyesight.

Copyright © Dana Prom Smith 2014

 

Dana Prom Smith and Freddi Steele edit Gardening Etcetera for the Arizona Daily Sun.  Smith emails at stpauls@npgcable.com and blogs at http://highcountrygardener.blogspot.com.

A GARDENING TRIAGE

The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D.

 

          After thirty-nine days without rain or snow, it’s time to think about a winter watering triage in our gardens.  When trees and plants go dormant for the winter, it doesn’t mean that they can go without water. Their root systems are still growing.  When human beings go dormant with sleep for the night, they still need water.  Indeed, some even set a glass of water next to their bed.  Usually, a winter’s snowpack does the same thing for the garden, but not this year.

 

          Even though we may get a few snow showers in the next week or so, we are still in a drought, and this means that gardeners have to supply dormant plants and trees, especially the evergreen trees, with water.  If we don’t, they will stress, and, as if with human beings, stress can kill and certainly will make the plants and trees more susceptible to diseases.     

 

          The signs of stress in human beings are rising blood pressure, heavy breathing, disruptive digestion, increased heart rate, compromised immune system, tensing muscles, and loss of sleep.  The signs of stress in trees are leaves wilting, curling at the edges, and yellowing.  Deciduous trees will show signs of scorching, a browning between the veins of the leaves.  Evergreen needles may turn brown. 

 

To stay healthy, both human beings and plants and trees need water and rest.  Human beings need to sleep seven to nine hours out of the twenty-four, and many plants and trees need to go dormant during the winter.  So without a snowpack to provide that dormant time water, gardeners have to supply water with dripping hoses.

 

          In a watering triage, the big trees, especially our evergreens and pines, need to go first because they are the hardest to replace.  A thirty year old ponderosa doesn’t grow over night, nor does that twelve year old blaze maple.  It may take a day or two to get around to all the plants and trees in the yard, but that’s a small price to pay for saving the garden.  For the big ones, it’s best to let it drip in concentric circles around the tree to just beyond the drip line, soaking to a depth of a foot or more.

And if no big snow arrives soon, it’ll be smart to do it again.

 

          After the big ones have been watered, the next ones that need attention are the most vulnerable, that is the plants and trees that don’t have well-developed root systems, such as the ones that have been planted in the last year or so.  Of course, there are always the fragile favorites that need special attention.

 

          Some long time gardeners tend to think of their plants and trees the same way they do about their pets.  Both are dependent and well-loved and need protection and care.  Gardeners who water their yards in the middle of winter in the midst of snow shower may appear a little looney, but a little ridicule never hurt anyone when they’re doing the right thing.  As W. Somerset Maughm wrote in The Summing Up “the philistines have replaced the rack with the wisecrack.”

 

          Stress in human beings weakens the immune system making the people more likely to get sick.  Some people with compromised immune systems never seem to get well.  Drought adversely affects the system by which trees feed themselves by taking energy from the sun.  In a way, it’s a form of slow starvation adversely affecting the trees ability to fight off infestation.  The bark beetle’s destruction is an example.  For both trees and human beings good health enables them to fight infection, and good health requires rest, dormancy, and water.

 

          Since we live in a drought prone region, we have to pay attention to our trees and bushes all year long, especially their needs for water.  It is a sorrowful thing to see human beings, animals, and plants and trees mistreated, but there is poignancy with trees and plants because they have no voice.  Their suffering is silent if we don’t attend to their needs.  So get out the drip hoses.

Copyright © Dana Prom Smith (2014)

 

Dana Prom Smith and Freddi Steele edit Gardening Etcetera for the Arizona Daily Sun.  Smith emails at stpauls@npgcable.com and blogs at http://highcountrygardener.blogdpot.com.