When I first knew Dave about a dozen years ago, he didn’t know the difference between a tulip and a daffodil. Now he spends so much time in the garden, weeding and differentiating between leaves that used to look all the same to him, I call him Farmer Dave.  Last winter he chose the Poona Kheera, a cucumber from India, as “his” plant for the garden and today he harvested the first two of what looks to be a bountiful crop.

Folks, this cucumber has changed my world view on what cucumbers are all about. I have grown cukes before, harvested them when they were young and tender, enjoyed eating them. But nothing like this beauty. You don’t have to peel it, first of all, but it’s a good size. It’s sweet and very mild, and completely lacking whatever it is in cucumbers that makes me dislike most of them. And the crunch! With a beautiful texture and taste like this, we were able to eat sliced cucumbers with nothing to doll them up. No salt, no dressings, nothing. Just pure pleasure.

It doesn’t take much to figure out what that might be, right, Syracusans?

It’s the Dinosaur BBQ!  Manhattan’s award-winning Dinosaur is the best, but I’m willing to bet ours is better, if only because ambiance like that takes years to develop.

The best – and worst – smells in NYC
New York Daily News , July 11, 2010

Just found this good news:

US Supreme Court Rules Farmers May Sue Over Harms Caused by GMOs

It’s an easy-to-read blog post. Just read it. Then celebrate. There is hope.

Our English friend, Graham, visited recently and brought with him some Has Bean coffee beans, very freshly roasted.  I had picked up a bag of Santa Maria Cup of Excellence from Coffee Mania in Cortland. We did a taste test.

First let me state: it wasn’t a fair test. I was highly distracted by visiting family members while doing the vacpot thing (bring water to 197 degrees, hand-grind coffee beans, leave to infuse for exactly 1 minute, allow to go south and so on). And I’m afraid the Santa Maria got far less attention than the Has Beans.  That said, I was fully expecting the Santa Maria to be better than the Has Beans, based mainly on the fact that the latter had traveled so much further. What I didn’t count on was the special bag that it traveled in, with the little valve that allows gasses to escape without allowing air in. Poor Maria, she traveled from Cortland to Poughkeepsie and the next day to Syracuse, all in a plain old paper bag, aging all along the way.

The Has Bean cup was astounding. It gave me that moment that comes along only a few times each year when everything stops, all incoming noise seems to cease and I know I’m being transported to coffee heaven.  The Santa Maria just could not keep up. As Dave said, only the lower notes were left.

Graham ordered a bag of Has Beans yesterday to see how long it would take to get from the UK to the US. Coffee is shipped the day it’s roasted, so it could well arrive momentarily. In the meantime, since I don’t get to Cortland very often, I’ll content myself with picking up a bag of Coffee Mania’s house blend that they do for Sparky Town on Burnet Ave.  Either that, or checking out what Owen O’Neill has been roasting at home lately. Every coffee nut should have their very own coffee guru.

One of the first vegetables any child plants, and one of the first to mature in the garden, is the lovely radish. So round, so brightly colored red on the outside and so intensely white on the inside. What’s not to like?  The taste! I hate radishes. Always have.

So this year I planted some radish seeds that I got from Cook’s Garden called Summersicle.  A red daikon, they said, “crunchy, sweet…” – sounded great.

It was, to put it mildly, really awful. It started out peppery like a “regular” radish, then just got worse… and worse… in the mouth. I’m sorry, folks, but I didn’t keep it long enough in my mouth to be able to describe just what it did taste like. It was the first fresh food I’ve ever spat out.

What to do? I have a whole row of these beauties. Well, what do you do with anything that tastes too strong fresh from the garden? Cook it. So I just did a quick sauté of the sliced radish with onion in coconut oil (it might easily have been our other favorite, olive oil), then added a bit of white wine and the radish leaves and stems chopped up. A tad more cooking, a bit of kosher salt and fresh ground pepper and then a taste of just the radish alone.

It was pretty good! Reminded me of cooked turnip, and no wonder, since the two are related. Then I ate a forkful of the entire mixture and it was really good. It actually took a bit of restraint to leave a couple bites to Dave.

The radish crop is safe for consumption, then, as a real quick sauté that I look forward to eating while the rest of the garden matures.