Lisa's Landscape Transformation

By Lisa Karasic

I’ve never had a green thumb. I have envied other people’s landscaping, thought it would be nice to have pretty flowers of my own, wondered why I couldn’t keep plants alive for more than a few weeks. After several failed attempts as a homeowner to add color to my yard, and without the big budget I thought I needed to hire someone to come in and do everything for me, I had resigned myself many years back to the fact that I’m just not a plant person and so what if I don’t have the most attractive yard.

Since starting to work at Sickles Market a little over a year ago, though, being surrounded by all the pretty plants, trees, and flowers every day, I became more enchanted by their appeal and it re-awakened my desire to put some of that beauty in my own life. The only problem was I still had no clue where to start, what to plant, where and how to lay it all out, how to arrange and combine different types of plants, and how to take care of them so they’d actually stay alive.

I embarked on a project to transform my landscape from barren to bountiful, sorry to sumptuous – and share what I learned with others like me. Sickles Market’s Garden Center professionals made it all possible, guiding me from planning and plant selection to final primping with outdoor accessories.

Today my front yard is charming and cheerful. I’ve enhanced the curb appeal of my home and I’m proud not only because it looks so nice, but because I’m keeping things alive and beautiful. My back yard is the private, inviting, and comfortable living space I always wanted, but just didn’t know how to make possible. My kids and I were sitting out back one night recently, when we looked around and one of them said, “Can you believe we’re sitting in our back yard?!” It was like a whole new way for us to enjoy being together. I got a little choked up as I realized our landscape transformation was a lot more than a landscape transformation. It had added new dimensions to our life.

Not only have we enjoyed hanging out together in our new outdoor living space, we had fun doing a lot of the work along the way, digging holes for the new plants, digging out bricks and debris from our planting beds to get ready to plant, visiting with neighbors while outside weeding or watering, chatting with each other while deadheading or watering our flower boxes out front.

One of my daughters remarked while we were preparing the beds for planting (digging out bricks and other debris that we found buried) that “It’s like making sure a child has a good home environment to grow up in. If there’s a lot of bad stuff that doesn’t belong in the bed, the plant may not be able to grow right.”

My other daughter looked at our flower boxes the other day and said, “I can’t believe how big and full the flowers have gotten. I guess that’s because we’re taking care of them.”

Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but these comments (and there have been many more like them), as well as my own random and philosophical thoughts along the way, seem kind of significant to me – like maybe there’s more to this landscape transformation than making our house look nicer, or improving our property value, or giving ourselves more pleasant outdoor living space, or learning ‘how to do plants.’ Sure It makes me feel good as a neighbor and a homeowner – and frankly as Sickles’ marketing manager -- but it also makes me feel good as a mom and as a person living an examined life. It’s reminded me that it’s never too late to try again something you may not have succeeded at in the past; never too late to learn something new. There’s always more than one way to work around an obstacle. Asking for and accepting help can be uncomfortable, but it connects you to your own humanity and it connects you to the people around you. And no matter how insurmountable something may seem, if you simply keep putting one foot in front of another, you will eventually get where you want to be. You can’t snap your fingers and make something happen, but taking one step at a time is a positive and powerful way to get where you’re going.

I think about the project being “complete” and I realize it’s just the creation that’s done. The maintenance goes on day to day, dead-heading the trailing vinca in my window boxes, weeding our beds, contemplating seasonal changes, pruning, and future phases, like planting perennials and more annuals next year. But instead of feeling un-doable, it feels good. There’s no rush, my kids seem interested in working on it with me, and I’m grateful that the people at Sickles Market are not only experts who’ll steer me right on what, where, and when to plant, but also friends that have joined and supported me in my journey.

Garden State Ratatatouille

Sauteed Ratatouille
www.finecooking.com

I have a repertoire of summer dishes that I don’t cook at any other time of year. Only when the veggies and fruit for these recipes are in their natural, regional prime do I return to my dog-eared cookbooks, magazines, and newspaper clippings to prepare them. 

At the start of the summer, for instance, I make a dip of white beans garlic scapes; at mid-summer I look forward to pasta with zucchini, ricotta, and basil, and during the last weeks of summer, I cook with as much tomatoes and corn, as possible, such as a savory galette with corn, tomatoes, cheese, and basil.

Given how much I embrace the seasonality of produce, it’s odd, then, that it took me until this year to prepare a classic, ratatouille. You can’t get more of summer into this slick stew-like mix of vegetables, once a dish regional only to Nice: tomatoes, zucchini, eggplant, peppers, onions, garlic, parsley, basil, and mint. All that seems to be missing is corn.

I had a bounty of these veggies, courtesy of a Sickles employee in the gardening department. Unlike me, who has no luck growing tomatoes (I might get kicked out of New Jersey for this ineptitude!), Ryan had a surfeit of candy-sweet grape tomatoes, Hungarian peppers, and wee eggplants. He generously shared them with us at work, and I filled a whole produce bag to take them home.

In my fridge they sat. It was a crime. The problem was that I had a lot of other veggies to use up and I found myself going out for al fresco meals more often than usual. Fearful that these seasonal treats would go to waste, I realized that I had to do something with them fast.

Ratatouille seemed perfect, because I could use everything up at once. And minus the olive oil, salt, and lemon, I could make this French dish completely New Jersey. Even the hot sauce— Mazi Piri-Piri—had Jersey origins!

I thought it was going to be quick and easy. After all, isn’t ratatouille just a simple jumble of summer vegetables all thrown into a pot and stewed? I discovered, however, while following a recipe from Fine Cooking, that making a proper one requires a lot of time. Each vegetable should be pan-seared separately so that their full flavors are coaxed out by cooking off their excess water. This can mean over an hour of preparation.

I can’t deny that it took a lot of time, but the results were undeniably delicious.

I encourage you to make ratatouille, too. And here are some tips to make its preparation less daunting. Follow the Fine Cooking recipe, but not too rigidly. If you don’t have enough zucchini, for instance, so be it. And if you don’t have red bell peppers, use something other pepper (I used the Hungarian wax ones that Ryan brought in for us). I didn’t have parsley so I just doubled up on the mint and basil. If you don’t have lemons, try a dash of vinegar. Acid helps balance the richness of this dish, which is not at all shy about calling for olive oil. To save a wee bit of time, don’t prep all the vegetables before heating up the skillet. Cut up one vegetable, and while it is sautéing, prepare the next vegetable bound for the pan. Do the same for the others.

The results are delicious and the essence of summer. Eat it just as is, perhaps as a side dish or appetizer, and use the leftovers to top tarts or pizzas, fill omelets, or toss with pasta on a hot summer’s evening.

Get cooking and enjoy summer!

Diana Pittet the veggie-loving cheesemonger

Some Like it Hot

The temperature has been breaking records all over the country this summer, from Oklahoma to the Eastern seaboard.  I spent the day at Long Beach Island with some friends this past week, and we were sizzling like bacon after only a couple hours at the beach.  But there’s more than one kind of heat wave raising the temperature around the Jersey Shore this summer.  Chilies and chili food products are hot, hot, hot!  Late summer is harvest time for chilies and even though New Mexico, California, Florida and Texas are the big chili growing states, we New Jerseyans can put away our share of piquant peppers.  Besides being flavorful, there are numerous health benefits to eating chili peppers.  The component in chilies that make them so fiery, capsaicin, is thought to fight inflammation, increase blood circulation, attack cancer cells, and boost the production of serotonin and other “feel-good” hormones.  Whether we eat chilies for enjoyment or for our health, they definitely add pizzazz to any meal.

Chili peppers have a serious following in the food world and are not to be taken lightly.  There are scores of websites, blogs, clubs, books and even entire stores devoted to this devilish little fruit.  There is an official scale for measuring the heat of a chili or a product made with chilies, called the Scoville Heat Scale.  To give you an idea of the range of the scale, a bell pepper is given a zero rating and the Bhut Jolokia pepper (the hottest known pepper in the world) is rated 1,000,000.  Pure capsaicin tops out at 16 million!  “The Pope of Peppers,” Dave DeWitt, supreme chili authority and co-author of The Complete Chili Pepper Book, enlightens us on everything we need to know about chilies, including why dairy products are most effective in counteracting the heat associated with the peppers (capsaicin dissolves in the fat contained in dairy, so ice cream is ideal!)  And what would this fiery food be without its own competition?  The Scovie Awards is the official contest of the Fiery Foods and Barbeque Industry and includes a wide variety of spicy products, such as condiments, sweets and cheese.  This year there was an unprecedented tie for the Grand Winner between a horseradish sauce and Poco Dolce’s Super Chile Toffee Squares, a chocolate toffee bar infused with chile.

Chilis are exploding throughout the foodie world, from pepper vodka’s like Absolut Peppar and Hangar One Chipotle to spice up a Bloody Mary to Pineapple Chile Locopops to chill down a blazing hot afternoon.  Chili peppers are peppering grocery shelves as well.  Try Eatwell Farm’s Smoked Chile Sugar to rim a cocktail glass, or use for baking and desserts.  Local Herbertsville Honey Co. produces a chili-infused honey that adds some fire to the sweetness when glazing ribs or salmon for the barbeque. If you’re in a snacking mood, Deep River Snacks offers Zesty Jalapeno Kettle Cooked Potato Chips and Popcorn, Indiana makes a Jalapeno Crunch version of their Chipins all natural popcorn chips.  Almost every condiment you can think of has its spicy alter ego:  There’s Ojai Cook Cha Cha Chipotle Lemonaise, Maya Kaimal’s Spicy Ketchup, Roasted Habanero Mustard, and Lucini’s Fiery Chili Extra Virgin Olive Oil. Harissa spread is not for the faint of heart, but it certainly livens up any couscous dish or tagine.  There are hot sauces to please every palate, from wimps like me to the Dave DeWitts of the world.  Mazi Piri Piri sauce from Asbury Park is our Sickles’ favorite, and we can hardly keep it in stock.  The Tropical Pepper Co. has a huge range from Louisiana Cayenne Pepper to Ghost Pepper (there’s a toucan skeleton on the bottle, if that is any indication).  Sailor's Swagger Pineapple Hot Sauce took away a first place medal at the 2011 Scovie Awards and the fresh pineapple flavor is a nice contrast to the chili.  It’s fun to pair chili-infused sauces with cheese, such as Terrapin Ridge Raspberry Piquillo Pepper Sauce and Vermont Creamery Goat Cheese.  There’s that dairy/chili combination working together to spice up your mouth without wiping out your taste buds.  You can even find cheeses infused with chili, like Crawford Family Farm’s Vermont Ayr with chipotle and Boar’s Head Chipotle Gouda (for the perfect summer cheeseburger!)

If you've had enough spicy food for one day, you can wind down gradually with a bar of Chocolove Chilies & Cherries in Dark Chocolate and a big bowl of your favorite ice cream!

Enjoy!

Cheri The Cheesemonger

The God of Summer

By Patricia Dumas

August 2011

The time has come.  The tomatoes are reddening up all at once and we’ll be in a frenzy to pick and find a place on the table for them.  If we can not, it's a great reason to share.

When I was a kid, my brother and I used to set up tomato shop in front of our house in Tinton Falls and sell them for 25 cents apiece.  We earned a lot of money to spend at the New Shrewsbury Country Fair back in the 1960’s, while serving the ravenous desires of drive-by neighbors who took drooling bites out of them right in front of our astonished eyes.    

Plum Tomatoes

It starts insidiously.  One little ripened fruit here, and one fat one there.  Before you know it, they’re ripening all over the place-- at risk of being eaten, chewed on, and plucked by our animal friends.  Picking green ones is not a bad thing—tomatoes ripen with the heat, not the direct sun on them, so putting in a little paper bag in a very warm place will speed the ripening process along.

If your tomatoes look a little split, or have a little brown soft spots on them, don’t worry.  It happens.  Cutting the bad spot out and eating the ripened fruit will do no one any harm.   Trying to figure out the reason for every tomato problem is frustrating.  Mother nature says let it be.  Huge problems rarely hit the tomato garden, and perfect fruit is for magazine covers and supermodels.

There are so many things that can affect a tomato on the vine, that fretting about all of them is useless.  My mother used to say, “you have to eat a pound of dirt before you die”.  And I sure have.   A little bruise, speck of dirt, or a touch of rot is not going to ruin your experience.  Squeeze the bruised ones for pasta sauce if eating them turns you off.  Any which way you look at it, they’re fresh, beautiful, and above all, from your garden!

All summer long I have plucked the basil, removed the flowers, and kept the plant bushy in hopes of having tomatoes and fresh basil ready at the same time.  Basil loves to put out flowers-- picking those flowers keeps the tender basil leaves coming—enough for the mad rush of tomatoes to come.  Add some Mozzarella, and that’s dinner every day for me.  

Green Tomatoes

What to do with all those tomatoes?  I’m not daring here to take the thunder away from my fellow writers who have given us some of the best food blogs around, but, I do have a few little things up my sleeve for a garden with tomato-itis.    How about fried green tomatoes for starters?  Thick slices of spicy fruit fried to perfection and served with horseradish sauce are a great way to serve up something unusual at a party or gathering.  The harder the green tomato, the better.

 If you have plum tomatoes galore, the thick-walled beauties can be eaten as well as squeezed and cooked for sauce.   The thick flesh of plums is perfect for dicing up and using for salsa. Add in some chopped yellow pear tomatoes and cilantro for the real deal.    

Eating your tomatoes right off the vine before you get in the house is a fine art.   My husband can’t wait.  His addiction to fresh tomatoes takes him out to the garden many times a day.  He’ll even hit my Fair Haven Fields garden, (called our symbolic Victory Garden) for his fix.  Eating a pound of tomatoes a day can have its drawbacks, but he persists.  The acidy juices cause pain in his lips and mouth as he gleefully devours the juicy god of summer everyday.

I have to admit.  My garden is a tangly web of tomatoes, pumpkin vines, gourds and basil.  Getting in there to search for food is precarious--- stepping over succulent water-filled vines and long tomato plant stalks flopped to the ground is a challenge.  All  bother aside, I find that the mess of green keeps the garden moist in the vicious heat. 

Don’t give up on your garden if it looks like a big, green mess.  There are shaded, ripening treasures to be found on the vine as well as on the ground. Keeping the garden cool helps preserve water. Your tomato plants aren’t averse to a bit of shade.  In fact, they do quite well with it. The tomato garden is a magical place where tangy smelling leaves draw us in when stepped on, and fat fruit plays hide and seek undercover.   Here’s some thoughts for traversing the winding path to your favorite summer food:

• Do you have squished tomatoes or rotten squash on the floor of your garden?  No worries.  You‘ll see Cardinals and other birds pecking away at the seeds come fall and throughout the winter.  They can’t resist them.  A mess to you is a bounty for the birds.

• The extra green tomatoes at the end of the season make good fried dishes as well as sassy tomato pickles.  Put them in the same pickling brine as your cucumbers, and you’ll have remembrances of summer all year long.

• Tomato vines growing all over the place are actually a good thing.  In time or immense heat, they shade the earth, keeping everything cool. Minerals in the ground get used more efficiently to feed the plants as well.  Don’t give in to a super neat, trimmed garden.   It will parch quicker and leave you with dried plants.  Don’t try to clean up your garden too much.  Hoeing the ground excessively lets moisture escape.  Keep it green, and keep it cool. 

• Older, bruised tomatoes can be sliced, de-seeded  and dehydrated in a 150 degree oven until dry.  All winter long you can use them dried in cream sauces, salads, and olive oil dressings.

• Last, but not least--  donate, donate, donate! Your extra tomatoes will be welcome at the Food Bank of Monmouth and Ocean County or Lunch Break in Red Bank.  They’ll appreciate it, and will find countless ways to use them.  

I remember a little book called, “Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe” by Fannie Flagg.  It’s a sweet little tale about a tight-knit group of women down south running a café in the 1930’s and 40’s.  What brought them together was the food and fried green tomatoes they made for their devoted customers.  Maybe it was the 1930’s depression, or the suffocating southern times that was the moral of the story, but, I always like to think that food brought them together.  Doesn’t it always?

      

   

Summertime, And The Livin’ Is Cheesy (Goat Cheese,That Is…)

It came in fits and starts, but summer has finally arrived in all its glory. And I for one couldn’t be happier. There is nothing quite like summer with its warm, balmy evenings filled with dancing fireflies and fragrant flowers and lazy sunny days at the seaside amid a kaleidoscope of umbrellas and beach blankets. I love the bountiful produce of summer best of all: Corn, tomatoes, peaches, blueberries, lettuces, and zucchini, to name a few. Typically, mozzarella is the cheese of choice, draped over sliced tomatoes and garnished with fresh basil, melted into a roasted vegetable panini or over a crisp margarita pizza. I have discovered another accompaniment that is perfect for almost any summer repast: goat cheese!

Most people think of goat cheese as the mild, fluffy white pillowy cheese that is molded into logs or crumbled onto various dishes. This is actually only one type of goat cheese. There are also goat goudas, cheddars, fetas, blue cheeses, bries, aged goat cheese pyramids and cylinders, triple crèmes, raw milk and pasteurized goat cheeses, herb encrusted, wine soaked and ash covered goat cheeses, and even a few rolled in flower petals! The flavor of goat cheese ranges from mild and tangy to floral, grassy and even “barnyardy” tasting. It is zesty and vibrant and stands up well to spicy summer salsas, exotic cocktails and the wide array of fruits and vegetables that are so plentiful this time of year. Goat’s milk is actually lower in fat than cow’s milk, ounce for ounce, and often easier to digest, which makes goat cheese a popular choice in the summer when people are looking for healthy options. Fresh goat cheese can also be frozen fairly successfully for use at a later date. To do this, tightly wrap the cheese in one pound packages or less to store, and thaw the cheese slowly in the refrigerator first before bringing to room temperature.

If you would like to incorporate goat cheese into your own summer meals, I have listed below some suggestions for breakfast, lunch, cocktail hour, dinner and dessert. You can use these ideas as a springboard for your own culinary creations!

Breakfast/Brunch:

*Kunik Honey Lavender Goat’s Milk Fromage Blanc slathered on a Seven Grain Boule or on a slice of Balthazar Bakery’s Walnut Batard

*Omelette with Bucheron French goat cheese, asparagus and fine herbes

* Spinach and Goat Cheese Fritatta

Lunch:

*Watermelon, Tomato, and Chevretine Goat Feta salad with fresh mint and drizzled balsamic

*Sickles’ own Bijou Goat Cheese Salad featuring aged goat cheese disks, grilled red onions and pomegranate seeds (you can find the recipe in the June/July issue of In Jersey Magazine)
*Panini with Beemster Goat Gouda and roasted vegetables (try eggplant, zucchini, red peppers)

Cocktail Hour/Appetizers:

*Apricot halves stuffed with fresh crumbled goat cheese, drizzled with orange blossom honey, and topped with a Spanish Marcona almond

*Goat Brie topped with fig preserves

Dinner:

*Burgers: Lamb Burgers stuffed with fresh goat cheese, toasted pine nuts and sun dried tomatoes (my brother -in-law Tim’s specialty!) or Hamburgers topped with a slice of Chevre Noir Goat Cheddar

*Grilled pizza topped with broccolini, fennel and goat cheese

*Orzo salad: Toss cooked orzo pasta with olive oil, crumbled Chevretine Goat Feta, chopped tomatoes, parsley, kalamata olives, toasted pine nuts, chopped green onions, olive oil, vinegar, salt and pepper to taste. You can add cooked chicken or shrimp to use as a main course

*Grilled chicken over mixed greens with fresh crumbled goat cheese, plump New Jersey blueberries, chopped dried apricots, and caramelized pecans. Splash one of Wild Thymes Salad Refreshers over the salad and toss!

Dessert

*Coach Farms Triple Crème Goat Cheese accompanied by Casa Forcella’s Raspberry and Rose Petal Preserves with a few fresh raspberries on the side

The simple addition of goat cheese to a dish can elevate your dining experience from everyday to extraordinary. Have fun experimenting with the vast array of cheeses available. You may want to check out Vermont Butter and Cheese Company’s new cookbook, “In a Cheesemaker’s Kitchen,” written to celebrate 25 years of artisanal cheesemaking. There are wonderful recipes from renowned chefs such as Michel Richard of Citronelle and Eric Ripert of Le Bernadin. If you need further inspiration, stop by the cheese counter at Sickles Market and sample the wide variety of goat cheeses available. We will be happy to share our ideas with you, and before you know it, you’ll be hooked on goat cheese too!
Enjoy the summer!

Cheri The Cheesemonger