Seasonal Ontario Food

Here it is, close to the end of the garden season. (Agh, already!) It's time to assess how our breeding projects have worked out this year, both the planned and unplanned ones. To get started, here's our (cucurbita pepo x cucurbita argyrosperma) F2:

 

I thought I had posted about this last year, but I can't find that I did. This was an amazing cross that turned up in the garden last year from some seeds we had saved from Lebanese White Bush zucchini a few years earlier. We knew they would be crossed... we didn't know it would apparently be an interspecies cross with Tennessee Sweet Potato squash! The resulting squash were pretty horrid, frankly, but they were not bitter which has frequently been a problem on the seemingly very rare occasions when these two species (pepo and argyrosperma) cross. Argyrosperma is a squash grown mostly in the southern USA and Mexico, and freqently just for the seeds. We only grew it one year, and weren't too impressed. The flesh is bland, and the squash rapidly get a a very hard shell. If they are like the few of the cross that we tried as zucchini, they also develop their seeds very early. However, they are heat tolerant, drought tolerant, and bug and disease resistant. Getting some of those qualities into summer squash struck us as very desirable, and here we were with the means to work on that.

We planted 4 seeds, of which 3 germinated. One produced squash that appeared to have crossed again with an acorn squash; this was not a happy combination and got pulled pretty promptly. The other two plants appeared very similar, apart from the fact that one of them had a bush habit and the other was a bit more rambunctious, although I wouldn't call it a full-on vine. The fruit the produced was extremely similar, but that's a squash from the vining plant above and below. 

Here it is cut open. We found the stems attaching the fruit to the plant extremely tough, and the skin hardened fairly quickly too. This is no doubt the influence of the argyrosperma. That's a bit dismaying; if the plants are resistant to bugs and disease because they are physically hard that won't make for good eating. Still, these little squash were much better than last year in terms of tastiness and edibility. I won't say they were particularly great, but there is a big improvement.

We saved one fruit from each of the remaining plants. You can see how similar they are. Obviously, we intend to save seeds and continue next year. These are going to be very hard to cut open; they are still hard when ripe like the argyrosperma squash. I did manage it last year so I presume I can do it again.

We planted a bunch of potatoes from seeds in the spring, all of which got munched by flea beetles and leap hoppers, and generally didn't make it apart from a few stragglers that got left in a pot and which we have not examined yet. However, we replanted a number of seed potatoes from seed-grown plants. Here are three of the best four; one of them seems to have disappeared. I need to check the potato boxes to see if I can find a few to plant again next year. It was a dark purple skinned one, with a nice mauve and white interior. 

The others are all offspring of Pink Fir Apple. I wonder about that dark mauve skinned one; it looks like the other parent could be Purple Viking, which is known for producing some real lunkers. But maybe not; who knows what genetics are lurking beneath the surface in potatoes? The one at the top retains a hint of the waxiness of Pink Fir Apple, but the other two are quite light and fluffy in texture. They are all reasonably productive. These are the last remaining few selected from quite a few seed-grown potatoes. We discarded one I was quite interested in. It only grew about 6 or 8 inches high. It also produced about 6 very small potatoes per plant too, and that just wasn't going to cut it, unfortunately. Still! I'm pleased with the ones that remain.

Our watermelon project continues. I appear not to have posted an update last year; bad me! I feel like we've made a lot of progress, but we just aren't there yet. We planted only seeds from yellow-when-ripe watermelon this year, but we got some green skinned ones too. It's just a matter of time to sift them out, since the green skins are dominant, and once there are none, it will mean that gene is out. However, since we can't tell until the fruit ripens, they are still casting out their pollen. It sure slows us down on getting them out. 

Flavour-wise, we were a little disappointed in them this year. In spite of all the heat, they were good, but not great. Very sweet, but we thought a little on the mild side. So, we will have to see what we get next year. Right now they are moderately consistent; most of them are round to slightly oval, with either solid green turning to yellow rinds, or faintly striped green turning to yellow rinds, or "tiger" stripes in two tones of green turning to yellow and yellowish-green. And the ones that don't turn at all, of course.

As for beans, I thought it was kind of an exciting year. Our project of growing out the Blue Lake - Cherokee Trail of Tears for a more anthracnose-resistant Blue Lake type bean continues. Our anthracnose is as bad as ever, I would say, but the Blue Lake seemed especially unresistant this year. They are not really any worse than they have ever been; it's that our crosses that are growing out next to them really are more resistant and it's starting to show! 

I've sorted the crosses into 4 groups: the one I wanted the most was a pink-flowered, white-seeded, round (in cross-section) bean - there was exactly ONE. I have saved the seeds from that plant, up at the top right. Below it are the best from the much more common pink-flowered, black seeded, round bean. The beige seeds produce plants with purple pods; that's been the case since the cross first happened. I'd be more excited about them, because they are productive, tasty, and disease resistant, but for the fact that there are already quite a few purple-podded pole beans out there, and I don't know that mine are any improvement on them. Finally there are a lot of white-flowered, white-seeded plants and I saved seeds from the best of them. The seeds tend to be larger than those of the original Blue Lake, and the pods even more variable from round to really quite flat. There's also a lot of variability on the anthracnose resistance front, so we will be continuing to winnow out the disease-prone ones for a few years, I expect. But over all, they really are looking quite good.

It's some other beans that have me really full of glee, though; two in particular. The two top sets are from a cross that turned up in the garden last year, and dried down to an amazing marbled mauve. It was in a patch that was a cross between Deseronto Potato and Blue Lake; I made the decision to discard that cross because it had turned out to be extremely lack-lustre but I kept the beans from the one plant. I determined that it was most likely ((Deseronto x Blue Lake) x (Anellino Yellow x Cherokee Trail of Tears)) OR ((Deseronto x Blue Lake) x (Blue Lake x Cherokee Trail of Tears)). Yes, I've mis-labelled that seed bag - must fix it.

On the top left are the seeds I'm keeping to try again, from a number of plants. These were the most disease resistant and reasonably productive ones, and they are mostly small and round like navy beans. I did keep one larger, flatter one just because it had such an unusual slate-blue colour. It looks black in the photo but it really is not. The ones in the tub were the rejects, which will be eaten this winter. 

There was one bean in this set that was truly amazing. That's the taupe seeds from it in the bottom right of the photo. All those seeds come from one plant. There would have been even more, except that the deer made a bee-line for it every time they broke into the garden and ate a bunch of it. I've never seen such a large, robust, branching bean plant. It was also quite disease-resistant. It has big, fat purple pods, and the seeds are a reasonably large size in addition to being numerous. Its sole flaw is that it was rather late to dry down, but we'll see how its offspring do - because you can be very sure those seeds are getting planted. 

The final bean in this set was another one that stood out as extremely productive. I wrote about spotting this one in the Octarora beans earlier this summer. The pile of seeds is about half the size of the other primo cross, but they are smaller generally and more dried down at this point. That's still an impressive amount of beans from one plant, and if the offspring are anywhere near as good as this plant was, they may actually replace the entire Blue Lake - Cherokee Trail of Tears project, even though it did so well this year, as being better. Amazing! A dark horse, so to speak. On which note, I'd like to ask how people feel about green beans with black seeds. They have not been admired in modern agriculture particularly, I know that, but they do seem to be what I am getting to some degree.

The final beans are the Lima beans. The photo is a bit of a mess, but the original seed I got for Alabama is in the packet at the top. I was trying to determine how much, if any, they have crossed with other Limas. I think the answer is; they have. Immediately below them are what I believe to be uncrossed Alabamas. They have just not darkened as much as the older ones, but they have the distinctive black eye. The ones immediately to their right, I believe to be a cross between Alabama and Potawatomi, otherwise seen in an un-crossed state in the lower left. These look like Alabama but with a pinker tint and brown to pinkish eye, and one of them had some darker mottling like Potawatomi which was what convinced me that these are a cross. 

Then there are a good number that are very pale when shelled, although they dry to a standard colour, and have no eye, or only a very faint one. I have concluded that these may be a cross between King of the Garden (those green seeds in the middle bottom) and Alabama. We planted a lot of seeds from a single plant of King of the Garden this spring, that last year was the only plant of any variety that did well, which was startling because King of the Garden is usually our latest and least productive Lima bean. It was a terrible year for Lima beans generally. However, we're just not getting very many King of the Garden beans this year, and I have to conclude that it is because it was an F1 hybrid, and the subsequent plants don't resemble it particularly. None of them are that spectacularly productive, nor do they have the green colour. However, if I'm right, I'll be interested to see how they develop next year, especially if we get any back-crosses.

Finally, our selected line of extra-hardy leeks is doing well, apart from the leek moth which now appear to be a fixture. They still look quite variable but we have a good selection of medium to large sized leeks in the bed, so it looks like we are making progress in selecting them to size up a bit earlier. Unfortunately, I left about 8 to 10 leeks from last year to go to seed, and although I haven't cleaned it yet, it looks like there will be next to no seed. Not only is that pushing it on the number of leeks to let go to seed, they did very badly at blooming at overlapping times. However, there's lots of seed left from the year before, and this years, as said, are looking good. Onward to next year...

Somehow, we ended up with a lot of dry beans this year. It's interesting to compare  how productive they were, relative to each other. From left to right: Mennonite Purple Stripe, Arikara Yellow, Deseronto Potato Bean, Dolloff, and Blue Lake S7. Some seeds have been held back from all the varieties for replanting, but the above 2-litre jars give a good general idea of how productive each variety was, with the caveat that 2 out of the 5 varieties were planted in a 5' by 8' plot, and three were planted in a 5' by 4' plot.


First, the Mennonite Purple Stripe. We tried them this year as they are a relatively local heirloom pole variety, long grown by Mennonites from the Kitchener-Waterloo area. I believe they made their way into general circulation through Bob Wildfong of Doon Heritage Village (and Seeds of Diversity).  My impression is that they are likely a selected strain of Rattlesnake (aka Preacher), a relatively common heirloom American bean. It looks similar, although more brown than purple. The Mennonite Purple Stripe really are pretty, in unusual shades of purple and mauve. Even the green pods are streaked with purple.

They are supposed to be good both fresh and dry. Most people we gave them to thought they were really, really good fresh. Mr. Ferdzy and I thought they were only good, which doesn't quite cut it for us. So, after picking a few to eat fresh, we left the rest to dry. We haven't tasted them yet, but I can say that they were surprisingly slow to dry down, and only produced about 2/3 the amount of most of the other beans. They were one of the 5' by 4' plantings. The pods got enormous and puffy as they grew, but only contained an average of 5 to 7 beans. That's a high count, actually, but given how large the pods were, it seemed a bit unimpressive. And obviously, there were fewer pods, because in spite of the large size of the individual beans, they did not add up to much more than a litre once dried and shelled. These are a pole bean, Heritage Harvest says 70 days to fresh beans, and I'd think close to 120 for dry - not quick, really.


The ones next to them are Arikara Yellow. These are a traditional bean from the Mandan and Arikara tribes of the Missouri Valley. This is about on a latitude with southern Ontario, but it is in general a colder and drier place. Thus the beans are well adapted to short seasons and drought. We planted ours very late - in July! - in a 5' by 8' bed. They charged ahead, and when it became clear to them that the days were shortening, they started aborting new pods and too-small beans and concentrated on ripening what was far enough along to make it. We planted them earlier last year, and got a bit better crop then, I think. But not by much, so I'm really impressed by these. We got a bit more than it looks like; I saved a lot of seed out of them.

We planted Cherokee Trail of Tears at the same time this year (admittedly a pole bean, while Arikara Yellow is bush) and didn't get a single ripe seed. The plants seemed completely unaware of the approach of fall, and just kept noodling along putting out new beans but not shaking a tendril at getting the first ones ripe, presumably because they developed in an area of much longer seasons. In spite of the fact that Arikara Yellow went in late, they produced about as much as the best pole beans (in twice as much space, admittedly.) Bush beans are less work than pole beans though, and I find I don't mind picking dry bush beans in the same way that I mind picking fresh bush beans. That's because we yanked up the entire plants and brought them inside to finish drying, then shelled them at our leisure. The one thing to watch when growing dry bush beans is that the grass around them needs to be well trimmed, or they will run into it and rot.

Since we grew these last year we have tried eating these. They are a smallish kidney-like bean that dries to a yellowish buff and cooks up surprisingly brown with a nice mild beany flavour. These look like being a staple for us. Eighty to eighty-five days to dry maturity! Wow! Five to 6 beans per pod on average for us.


Next up, Deseronto Potato Bean. Heritage Harvest Seed describes them as "a vigorously twining bush but can be grown on a fence as a pole bean as well." We put them in with the pole beans, and boy, am I glad. Unlike most pole beans they didn't start back down once they got to the top, which means they "only" grew to seven or so feet, but I would hate to have to deal with them as a snarly mass on the ground. These were strongly determinate but took a while to dry down; 100 days sounds about right for the start, but they were quite spread out in the time it took them to finish.

I haven't eaten any of these yet but I am excited to try them. They are an even more genuine Ontario heirloom than the Mennonite Purple Stripe, originating with the Tyendinaga Mohawks of eastern Ontario. I expect they were originally grown up corn stalks, hence their slightly odd intermediate plant size. The beans themselves are lovely; big, fat and white, supposedly soft and potato-like in texture once cooked. I did not think they would produce as well as the Dolloff from the number of pods, and the fact that each pod had on average only 4 to 5 beans, but the beans are large enough individually that in the end they were actually very close in volume. This was another 5' x 4' section.






Dolloff was our other selection as a dried bean this year, and it takes the prize as the most productive, although by a nose. The beans are touted as a lima bean substitute, being rather similar in shape. They are smaller though, and prettily mottled in reddish tan and brown. These originate in Vermont, and as you might expect, they are quite early at 90 days to dry, and I would say they were all dried down within 2 weeks. Unlike the Desorontos, which died off once they were done the first batch, the plants then attempted to start producing a second batch, although only a few pods were able to mature before being cut short by frost. This is a beany, beany, bean-producing plant, for a dry bean. They are a shortish pole bean topping out at about 8' or 9' with 4 to 6 beans per pod.


Again, we haven't had a chance to try them yet, but if they are as tasty as they are productive they will be a real winner and a garden staple. We did try them as a fresh shelly bean, and they were delicious, although they turned a slightly unappetizing grey as they cooked. (That's them up above, from the middle of August.)


And finally we have a small quantity of Blue Lake S-7 beans. This is the other one that was planted in a 5' by 8' bed, which means that this is a very small quantity of dried beans for the space. That is misleading though; these were planted for fresh beans, and we only let them start drying down once we have filled our freezer and eaten as much as we can stand of them fresh. The fact that they still manage to produce any dried beans at all is impressive. They are not sold as a dried bean at all, but we seem to usually end up with about a litre of fine, delicate white beans that are really very good once cooked up - almost like the gourmet French haricot beans, although without the pale green tint of true haricots. Still, not bad at all for a complete bonus. There's always a lot of Blue Lake beans that don't get mature enough to dry down before frost,and that was the case this year as usual and it always makes me sad. Still, they at least get going on drying down the earlier pods soon enough that you should get a respectable quantity in the end. I can expect to pull out the Blue Lakes at the end of the season positive that they don't owe me a thing. Eight to 10 beans per pod, but small ones!

It is a great sorrow to me that Lima beans just aren't a local vegetable. I persist in trying to grow them, but they are from coastal Peru originally (see name) and they really don't take to this climate. However, I do occasionally buy them frozen as they are just too delicious to give up.

They make a very smooth and flavourful soup, and very quick and easy too. The quantity is sufficient for a starter to a larger meal; if you wanted, say, soup and a sandwich I don't think it would make 4 servings, more like 2 or 3.

4 smallish servings
20 minutes prep time


4 or 5 cloves of garlic
1 tablespoon butter
300 grams frozen lima beans (1 package)
3 cups chicken stock
salt & pepper to taste

Peel the garlic and cut each clove into 2 or 3 slices, so as to create the most cut surface possible. Heat the butter in a small skillet over very low heat, and gently cook the garlic for about 10 or 15 minutes, until soft and very slightly browned.

Meanwhile, put the lima beans in a pot with the chicken stock and bring to a boil. Boil until done, about 5 minutes.

Put the lima beans into a blender, without the broth but with the garlic and the butter they cooked in, and purée until smooth. Add the broth as needed to keep them puréeing smoothly, but do hold back a little. When the Lima beans are very smooth, return them to the pot. Use the remaining broth to slosh out the blender and add that to the soup pot as well. Mix well and bring back up to a simmer before serving. STIR CONSTANTLY once the beans have been blended. They are very starchy and will do their best to weld themselves to the pot.




Last year at this time it was soup time too. I made Sweet Potato & Lentil Soup and Dried Corn Chowder.

We've pulled up our edamame, and most of them are now residing in the freezer. I did save a few out to eat fresh, and this is what I did with them.

Edamame (fresh soy beans) are a bit hard to find, but hopefully if you have a good farmers' market you can find some. Corn should still be around for a week or two, but we are definitely heading into fall vegetables. I'm rushing to get in the last of the tomatoes. Speaking of which, a chopped up tomato would have been nice in this.

4 servings
30 minutes advance prep - 10 minutes to assemble


Pre-Cook the Corn and Edamame:
1 1/2 cups shelled edamame (1 quart in shells)
2 cobs of corn

Boil the edamame in their shells for 4 or 5 minutes, then rinse in cold water. Shell them, discarding the shells.

Husk the corn, and boil it for 4 or 5 minutes, then rinse in cold water. Cut the corn from the cobs.

Both of these should be cooled quickly, and cool when you proceed with the salad. They can be prepared in advance.

Make the Dressing:
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
pinch of salt
3 tablespoons white wine vinegar
2 tablespoons sunflower seed oil

Whisk together in a small bowl, or shake in a jar.

Finish the Salad:
1/4 of a small red pepper
1 slice sweet onion (or 1 green onion, or handful of chives)
1 stalk celery

Wash, de-seed and chop the red pepper. Peel or clean and mince the onion or chives. Wash, trim and chop the celery finely.

Mix the pepper, onion and celery with the edamame and corn. Toss with the dressing.

Anyone who drives through Ontario in the summer has seen the endless fields of soybeans interspersed with the equally endless fields of corn. Neither of those are for direct consumption by people, but are either components of much more processed foods or, more likely, animal feed. It's actually rather hard to find soy beans being grown in Ontario to be eaten as soy beans. They are, however, very popular as a vegetable ( and snack food) in Japan, and they can be ordered in any of the many sushi restaurants that have popped up here in the last decade or two under the name edamame. They are all imported I am sure; I have to wonder why. We can certainly grow them here, although the varieties to be used as edamame are not the same as the field soy beans. Actually, interest in growing them is increasing and research is being done on the best varieties to grow here.

We tried growing our own this year (and last year, when we had even less success). For something that grows all over southern Ontario, we had a bit of a hard time getting them to germinate. I don't think they love our sandy, acidic soil. However, the ones that germinated grew well enough, and produced a good bunch of hairy little pods each. Like most beans, they abhor cold soil and so we did not plant ours until the beginning of June. They are determinate plants, so it's best to plant both early and later varieties, or to do several plantings of a week or two apart. They freeze very well, so you may also wish to harvest your crop all at once for processing.

It's important to pick them just at the right time. If you pick them too soon, the beans will not have filled out properly. However, if they sit long enough for the pods to start turning yellow, they will be tough and overmature. You probably have less than a week to get them at their peak, so watch them carefully once they are close. The plants will only reach about 18" to 24" in height, much like other bush beans. A few sticks in the bed may help keep them upright, but they are not twiners. The ripe beans look like a cross between a lima bean and a pea, and they taste a bit like they could a cross between them as well. The texture is firmer than either, and the flavour has a nutty hint.

The simplest way to serve them - and the one found in all those sushi restaurants - is to boil them in their pods. The boiled pods are pulled through the teeth, so that the beans stay in the mouth and the tough pods are then discarded. They can be served hot or cold, but are generally sprinkled with a little coarse salt. They can also be shelled and used in soups, salads, casseroles, etc. We boiled ours for 5 minutes, then froze them. When we want to serve them, we will drop the pods into boiling water again for 5 minutes. If you are going to eat them fresh, you should boil them for the full 10 minutes, or even for 15.

We grew the varieties "Envy" and "Beer Friend"; two of the more common of the handful of varieties presently sold in Canada as seed. I can't say we noticed much difference between them.

Succotash is a traditional dish from the eastern seaboard of the U.S. How traditional is it? Well, the word is from the Narragansett, msickquatash, meaning boiled corn, so pretty darn traditional. In recent tradition, it has consisted of lima beans and corn cooked together, and my mother used to serve this simple combination when I was a kid.

I suspect that further back, when it was common to parch (dry) green corn for winter use, that it was made with dried beans and parched corn in the winter. In the summer, of course, it could be made fresh, as I have done here - so fresh the beans aren't dried or even shelly beans, but fresh green or yellow wax beans, and with corn just cut from the cobs. Of course, once corn is in season shelly beans aren't too far behind, and you could replace the green beans with edamame, fresh lima beans or fresh borlotti beans. I threw in a little zucchini, because I had it and because I'm sure the Narragansett did too (squash of some sort, that is). A little onion and bacon fat (butter or oil if you must) ties it all together.

4 to 6 servings
40 minutes - 40 minutes prep time


3 cups finely chopped green or yellow beans
3 cobs corn
1 onion, with the greens
1 medium zucchini
1 tablespoon butter or bacon fat
salt & pepper

Wash and trim the beans, and cut them into small pieces not much larger than the corn kernels. Put them in a pot with water to cover generously, and bring to a boil. Meanwhile, husk the corn and cut it from the cobs. When the beans have boiled for a couple of minutes, add the corn kernals and cook for another 2 or 3 minutes. Drain and set aside.

Peel and chop the onion, and the greens, keeping them separate. Wash and trim the zucchini, and cut it into small dice of a size to blend with the other ingredients.

Heat the fat in a large skillet. Sauté the zucchini and white part of the onion until lightly browned. Add the well-drained beans and corn, and sauté for another 5 to 8 minutes. Add the onion greens and continue sautéing until they are well cooked in, and the corn is browned in spots. Season with salt & pepper and serve.




Last year at this time I made Mexican Flavoured Corn & Potato Salad.

This may be the greatest recipe of all time. Seriously. It takes something good and makes it fantastic and surprising, and it's easy, inexpensive, nutritious and beautiful. What more could you possibly want? Well, you could want it to be local. Drat.

The recipe is adapted from Epicurious. Unfortunately, I don't think I can claim it's seasonal Ontario food. I know you can grow lima beans in Ontario: I've done it. But I've never seen them for sale; ever, anywhere, so I get them frozen and imported. This is one of those things too good to give up.

2 servings
15 minutes - 8 minutes prep time.

2 cups frozen lima beans
2-3 cloves of garlic
1-2 tablespoons butter
1/2 teaspoon sea salt

Rinse the beans and put them in a pot with enough water just to cover. Bring to a boil and simmer until tender; 5 to 8 minutes.

Meanwhile, slice the garlic and sauté it on both sides in a bit of the butter until soft and very lightly browned. If I am cooking some sort of meat in a pan to go with this, I just add the garlic slices to the pan for a few minutes. Put the garlic slices with the butter and salt into a blender or food processor.

When the lima beans are tender, lift them out of the cooking water with a slotted spoon and put them in the blender or food processor. Add a splash of the cooking water. Purée until very smooth. Add a little more cooking water if necessary in order to achieve a smooth, soft but not too liquid blend.