Mirabile dictu! If you have followed this column, you'd know I was fussed up when about a year ago one of the blue horses (discarded kid's toys) that I (make that "eccentric" I) have placed around my yard was stolen off a platform at the front of the yard. Going out the other day at dusk to check the security chains on the replacement horse, I stepped on something. It was the original blue horse. It'd been returned. It is now on the railing of my third-floor deck where you'd have to be a gibbon to take it again (an ape with a lockpick!).
Here's this month's recipe—it's called "Addie's Potato Salad" since it's my mom's recipe and her name was Adeline. Perhaps from eating this as a kid I've always thought most mustard/mayonaise-based potato salads were way too dry. This is definitely wet:
Ingredients: Five or six big potatoes (or seven or eight small ones—this is for a big group; cut everything in half for a smaller one), celery, a dozen hard-boiled eggs peeled, two smallish onions, six or seven green onions, pickle relish (a cup), French dressing (that orange stuff they put on cafeteria food when you were a kid—this recipe is the only truly usable example for this, ummm, liquid.)—one cup, yellow prepared mustard (one cup), cup of mayonaise (either the real thing or the sugared up white kind), optionals are radishes, crisp salad greens, small crisp cukes and carrots. S and P.
To do: Clean and quarter potatoes. Don't peel. Boil them, cool and chop to bite-sized. Chop eggs and celery. If using, shred carrots, slice radishes and chop unpeeled cukes. Pull greens into small pieces. Make a slurry out of mayo, mustard, French dressing and relish. Salt and pepper ingredients and toss with dressing; it will be bright yellow-orange. (NPR says this kind of salad should not be outside more than an hour and it's the potatoes, not the mayo that spoils quickly.)
If you read and were affected by The Diary of Anne Frank, you'll be glad to know that the chestnut tree she mentions often that was virtually the only trace of nature she could see from her hiding place has produced saplings (even tho' the original tree died of age and disease). The saplings have been sent to various museums and memorials in 34 U.S. cities.
The Reader reviews a new book that many of us will be eager to glom onto—"From the Ground Up: A Food Grower's Education in Life, Love, and the Movement That's Changing the Nation" by Jeanne Nolan. Nolan's life is amazing and she has become one of Chicago's "preeminent authorities on organic gardening." The book offers practical tips besides her life story. Stealing from the Reader review the most important tip: "You need to plant your [edible] garden in a spot that gets six to eight hours of sun every day."
If any of you wish to register your garden as a wildlife reserve (no, I'm not talking about those Bear gatherings some of you have) my friend Edwin tells me that you can go on-line to the National Wildlife Federation and sign up. (This may help some folks to keep the city from coming after them with fines -$600 a crack for wildflowers they say are weeds). You must have a water source, not use pesticides, and some food for birds/insects. There is a variable fee depending on how fancy a certificate you want.
I suppose I'd better get one of those "Madeline" slicers after listening to a recipe that uses it to slice those trillions of new raw zucchinis for a Parmesan cheese and olive oil salad. And it's handy to slice raw ginger or hard-boiled eggs. And cukes (for sunomono) and, and...
Herb Quarterly (Fall 2013) both recommends elderberry as the herb of the year and cautions against it: its berries make great jelly (and some sort of tincture—I'm not going there). It's a good yard shrub with food for birds. But most of the sambucus species have unsafe levels of cyanide in their leaves, stems, and unripe berries. The bushes are often found on abandoned farmsteads where they were planted in the 19th century.
I may have left a number of people annoyed or at least bemused by a garden plant I gave them. I received some Indian balsam, an Asian impatiens that self-seeds, which spread around my yard. Nine-tenths of the plants were three feet tall with pink orchid like flowers. The rest of the plants had yellow flowers. Yellow must be dominant. Most of the hundreds of new plants are blooming yellow. They are also six feet tall. I believe most of the babies I gave away must've been yellow potential giants. I may get some strained phone calls.
For you world travelers, here's a destination: Jardin Majorelle in Marrakech, Morocco. Dating from the 1920s, this garden was built by a French painter, Jacques Majorelle. He collected plants from all over the world, put them in outdoor "rooms" and opened it to the public. After his death it had fallen into decline but was bought and rescued by fashion designer Yves St. Laurent and his partner, Pierre Berge. They tripled the number of plants and when Yves himself died his ashes were scattered there. Berge has given the garden to the city of Marrakesh. Check it out at www.jardinmajorelle.com; better yet, go see it in Morocco.
