This year’s Trout Lily (Erythronium americanum) bloom in our rock garden is quite spectacular. Each bloom is from a separate plant, though all have divided from one single transplant. That is, over a space of about ten years.
High temps next week will be near 80 degrees F, and vegetable seeds are germinating like crazy. Spring is here, and goodbye to Winter.
February 24, 2024
Ok, it isn’t meteorological Spring yet, but don’t tell that to the native plants, because they don’t care. Here we have a Trout Lily (Erythronium americanum), the first of the native perennials to bloom in the Southern Appalachians. This is a signal to go trout fishing, traditionally, as the Dogwood blooms are a sign to go bass fishing. I’m down with both of those.
The temp this morning is exactly 32 degrees F, and whether it gets below that again this Spring is unknown. Our last frost date varies from February to March normally, and I already have cold hardy vegetables growing. And I also have a few potatoes in the ground. Even without a groundhog to help, I’m thinking this is going to be an early Spring.
That’s a big bloom.
After a couple of decades, our signature plant in our outdoor kitchen is blooming. Bigleaf Magnolia (Magnolia macropphyla) has the largest leaves and largest blooms of any North American tree. This is the last of five blooms on this tree this year.
There are a couple of varieties for this species. Ashe magnolia, which is common in the higher mountains, was formerly considered a separate species, but is now lumped in as a sub-species. The most unique variety is a yellow flowered one that is found in Bankhead National Forest in Alabama. And yes that forest is named after the Bankhead family of politicians and actors.
I think this would have been the favorite tree of Talulah, as it is as extravagant as she was.
Straight outa Bulgaria comes this excellent Smith forged bearded hatchet. The advantage of this hatchet design is apparent as soon as it’s handled. The space between the head and the handle allows the hacheteer to carve, or cut, like an extension of the hand.
The company that sells these gems is Thracian Forge, which is a top seller on Etsy. They come un-handled, to save shipping and labor, so I had a Sourwood handle ready made waiting for it. Unfortunately, never having seen a Bulgaria/eastern European hatchet before, I made it according to Western style hatchet head dimensions. It turned out to be three inches too long and an inch too wide at the head. A back saw and a little time on the shaving horse solved that problem.
Eastern Europe has become a treasure for traditional woodworkers, as skills lost to industrialization in the West survived in the East and North. Grab a copy of Woodworking in Estonia, which is actually a Ph D dissertation, and look through the Bulgarian and Ukranian forges who sell on Etsy. I tried to identify the smith’s initials on my hatchet, and finally concluded that they are in the eighth century Bulgarian alphabet, which is still in use. For anyone who wants to know, that is the original source of the Russian alphabet. As the people in Ukraine like to point out, Kyiv was already a capital, at the time when Moscow was still a cow pasture.
Tasso ham is not really ham, in the common sense of the word, as it is usually made with pork shoulder, aka Boston butt. Going back in time, this Louisiana seasoning product was made from any trimming leftover from a hog killing. The only constant is the combination of spices and smoke, that make this a red beans and rice all star.
Ingredients
Sliced Pork Shoulder Strips
Paprika
Cayenne Pepper
Cinnamon
Salt and Pepper
This constitutes the dry rub, and the amount of each spice depends on the quantity of pork strips. At this point the pork strips need to dry uncovered in the refriginator a minimum of three days. Then it’s time to crank up the smoke house.
This old school smokehouse, right down to the hanging strip of fly paper, is now fully operational. The external smoke source is an old steel wood stove connected via a stove pipe. This Tasso was smoked for two and a half hours with green Maple at about 150 degrees F. The char patterns on the Tasso in the photo are from the smoke, not heat. The big piece of pork shoulder in the pic was destined to be barbecue.
After the Tasso has cooled, cut it into cubes and chunk it into a freezer bag. Like the frugal ant in the ant and grasshopper fable, we will have smokey dishes all winter, while the grasshoppers have to dine on McRib mystery meat barbecue sandwiches.
Having lain dormant all summer, the first late summer rains woke up the Cyclamen. Our middling sized rock garden is literally covered with them–they bloom where they were planted a couple of decades ago, and volunteers have spread as much as 50 feet away. As the seeds are believed to be spread by ants, uphill or downhill makes no difference. It’s just all as the ant walks.
A close examination of the lowest group of pink blooms reveals a glimpse of a dinner plate sized corm, which was the first Cyclamen I planted. It has offspring galore–blooming among rocks, under shrubs, and even out in our concrete path, where just a little soil has accumulated.
Here’s the plan–this fall I am going to transplant a few Cyclamen to the area around our outdoor kitchen. Then a whole new colony will have plenty of room to spread. Ants get ready, as acres of woods surround it.
The Freudian idea of the unconscious mind is a problem for speakers of English, and is probably the result of yet another weak translation concerning the difference between German and English. Unbewusst, usually translated as unconscious, could be better thought of as unaware, as unconscious is more often considered a medical state in English, like a blow to the head. So if we go back to Dr. Freud, unconscious, conscious (unbewusst, bewusst), are more understandable in English as unaware, aware. Because you are unaware of something doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist, and doesn’t involve any head banging.
This all may help to explain my realization that I have a final plan for a five part outdoor wood-fired kitchen. I realized this when I woke up from a dream this morning, and the discovery cost me nothing in psychiatric fees. At any rate, here are the five pieces/parts/cooking stations, though I am only going to discuss the first two. I’ll get to the others later.
Brick Oven
Brick Stove
Smoke House
Tuscan Grill
Fire Pit
The brick oven will get the most use of all of these, mainly because of its versatility. I should point out that a brick oven is not a pizza oven, but a pizza oven can be made of brick, and most are, but they can also be metal and a number of other materials, such as clay. Many people, myself included, will lapse into calling this a bread oven, as that may be their primary use (this was designed to be mostly a bakery oven). However, anything that can be baked or roasted can be cooked in one of these ovens, with the added advantage that the temperature can easily be raised to 1000 degrees F, or higher. When this oven gets very far above 1100 degrees, my digital thermometer just says “HI.”
Baking traditional bread (think round sourdough loaves) also requires a door for the oven. After a fire is hot enough, which can be used to roast meat, veg, etc, it is allowed to burn down into coals. Those are then spread over the entire surface of the oven, to further heat the surface of the firebricks. After those coals are burned down to ashes, the oven is cleaned out, and the loaves are placed in the oven–this size oven will hold a dozen loaves. The door is then closed, and used to maintain an even temperature of between 400 to 500 degrees, or thereabouts. Theoretically, 36 loaves could be cooked in this with one firing, which made this style of oven popular with large bakeries, or even as communal ovens. The most loaves I have cooked in mine is a grand total of two.
This particular masonry structure fits into the category of something you don’t see every day–a Potager, more commonly called a Stew Stove in English. These were particularly popular with the upper crust of the eighteenth century, and the most famous ones in the States are at Monticello in Virginia. My Potager is a copy of one rebuilt at Ham House, a British National Trust Elizabethan period property in Surrey. It is definitely a French influenced design.
The concept is elegantly simple. A masonry firebox leads to a chimney like opening (I used flue thimbles as openings). This concentrates all the heat and smoke down to a six inch area. In the case of this stove, just sit a cooking vessel over the opening. The temperature can be varied so that it can range from a sear, to a saute, to a long and slow stewing. In short, this is a half ton equivalence to a modern cooktop, with the exception in my case, that the fuel is free and one hundred percent renewable.
As an experiment, I first used this to roast some poblano peppers that I bought at the farmer’s market, on a grill. They smoked as well as roasted, and were jet black in no time. After I cleaned and sliced them, they went into the freezer for use this winter. For stewing, shovel coals into the firebox, and use a pair of bellows to control the temp. Extra fuel is literally at your feet.
Coals from the brick oven can be used for the Potager, and a busy cook can bake and saute at the same time. Alternately, coals from the smokehouse steel wood stove, pictured above, could be used to smoke something and stew at the same time. A cook with four arms could bake, sear, grill, stew, and smoke food simultaneously. Such a creature would end up with a powerful hunger in no time at all.
Everyone who has an old Optimus stove complains about the pitiful disposable tin prickers based on the original Optimus model. Optimus is all about being on the opposite end of disposable. A kerosene stove jet is going to clog, and will have to be cleaned in order to function. Those clever Brits have an answer to that problem.
Above is a nice sold brass pricker with replaceable needles. Even better is the fact that the end that holds the needle in place is also machined out to serve as storage for spare needles, and this device comes with twenty. That’s probably enough for a pricking lifetime.
Anyone can buy these on fleabay, or at Tilleylampsandstoves.com. Julian Shaw, the owner (not the actor) sure knows his stuff. Just don’t order things during a heat wave in England, if you need your pricker ASAP.
The old school outdoor kitchen just got even-older-school, as I just finished this potager, or French style masonry oven. It’s a simple enough device, with two fire chambers with holes at the far end, through which the heat escapes, and the food gets cooked. I call this French style because it most resembles existing ovens from the Continent. Check out the parody of the French cook in the English cartoon below.
It is good to know that the severe case of cooking envy that afflicts the Brits is centuries old, but this cartoon’s claim to fame is the potager stove that the snuff snorting dandy is cooking on. The most efficient way to use one of these stoves is to shovel in hot coals from a fire, say, from a brick oven or fireplace. Snuff and a sword hanging on the wall are optional.
The masonry work on the re-built brick oven is finito, and the oven has been getting a work out. We have cooked a few roasts, re-seasoned some cast iron, and churned out multiple pizzas, including six one day during the weekend of the fourth. And we still have that big stack of firewood on the west wall.
I haven’t shown all three walls, as the two side walls are identical, and the back wall is just a smaller version of the other two. The east side is an entirely different story. Here’s picture worthy of a contest.
There are actually two projects going on over here. One is actually attached to the brick oven, but is not part of it. It is to serve an altogether different function. The old steel wood stove is soon to be attached to another part of the outdoor kitchen. Needless to say they all involve burning wood.
Anyone who can nail the purpose of each of these two units will be awarded an honorary certificate from the Institute for the Advanced Study of Southern Using What You Got. I’ll add a heavy hint–think of something that Monticello and Mount Vernon have in common, and I don’t mean the Presidents.
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Country Living in the Southern Appalachians, USA--A little of this, a lot of that
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