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2B — THE OBSERVER & BAKER CITY HERALD HOME & LIVING TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 2021 This tomato is a true garden treasure Genius snack ■ Garden Treasure tomato variety is part of a woman’s effort to encourage youth to grow food Kate Krader Norman Winter Tribune News Service Two Garden Treasures have come together for a magnifi cent purpose and that is getting food to those who need it most. It is a story that is still being written and one that will tug at gardeners’ hearts across the country. The fi rst Garden Treasure is so aptly named. It is a tomato out of the Univer- sity of Florida breeding line. It checks off every mark a gardener could ever want. It is a medium sized slicer perfect for some off-the-grill ham- burgers. It has the taste of an heirloom. This is the taste that makes you think this is what eating a fresh tomato is all about. It is the taste that will change a young person’s palette from being squeamish on a tomato to being passion- ately in love with this fruit of the vine. Every year horticulturists like myself get bombarded with questions about what is wrong with my tomatoes. I am sure the frustration is so severe that many were asking could my tomatoes get COVID. I am joking and the answer to that is NO. But Garden Treasure is packed with modern day disease resistance. This University of Florida breeding program did some- thing else and that is give it heat resistance. If you have grown tomatoes, you have become keenly aware that once nighttime temperatures hit 72 degrees, pollination stops and many varieties shut down until temperatures moderate. Usually this means pulling and planting a fall crop later. Garden Treasure is an indeterminate variety. This Norman Winter/TNS Harvesting your own Garden Treasure tomato is a lasting memory. means it will keep growing and producing and since it has this heat tolerance you will be harvesting long into the season. It also means you will be using your favorite method of caging, or staking and tying. This tomato is so good, as is its smaller cousin the semi-de- WASTE Continued from Page 1B One way to reduce waste is sim- ply to use up all those things that are languishing on our Frigidaire’s death row. You know them: little lugs of leftovers you can’t believe nobody fi nished. The half a bowl of peas, the container of converted rice or the chunk of boneless pork roast. Like it would kill you to have one more bite of pork? Here’s what you do: Think of dishes that feature small amounts of several ingredients. Fried rice. Soup. Stir-fried noodles. If you don’t know where to start, use any random recipe as your guide: Pay attention to the method, but swap out the printed ingredients for the leftovers in your fridge. For example, if that fried rice recipe calls for a head of broccoli and sushi rice, just use those left- over peas along with the converted rice (or basmati rice or quinoa, if that’s what you’ve got). Don’t worry about exact amounts. Remember this: Recipes are written by humans whose tastes undoubtedly differ from yours. Amounts don’t neces- sarily need to be exact and similar ingredients — like vegetables or meats — often can be substituted for one another. You can apply the same prin- ciples to noodles. Or pizza. Or soup. Think of a bowl of soup. Handfuls of randomized vegetables, fl oating in fl avorful broth. Imagine mak- ing your own vegetable soup, or pork and vegetable, or chicken and vegetable. Start with canned broth, then add whatever is lurking in the fridge. If there’s not enough, throw in a can of beans from the cupboard. And speaking of soup, here’s another general principle to go with “Use Up the Stuff in Your Fridge”: Consider using things that you otherwise might throw out. Lately, I’ve been making lots of roasted broccoli. (Toss a pound or two of broccoli fl orets with some olive oil, dust it with salt, minced or powdered garlic and some hot red pepper fl akes and throw it single- layered into a 425-degree oven for 20-ish minutes, turning once.) It’s a delicious side, but uses only the fl orets, not the stems. Enter cream of broccoli soup: Sweat the chopped stems in a little butter with some onion and celery, then add fl our to make a roux. Pour in stock (1 to 2 quarts per pound of stems), simmer, puree, add cream, season, and blammo: soup. You could add cheese, too, in case the cream alone doesn’t justify your dependence on Lipitor. You can do the same thing with caulifl ower (see recipe), although the ratio of stems to fl orets is some- what smaller than for broccoli. Still, serve caulifl ower twice in one week and you’ll probably have enough stem for a lovely little caulifl ower and cholesterol soup. Every time you cook, ask yourself if something you’re discarding couldn’t be used for something else. Like the liquid you used to poach your sausages. (Use it as a base for sauces or just reduce it, season it and drink it hot like a beast.) Or, if you’re making shrimp, save Aching Feet? Step right into our office. We specialize in quality medical and surgical care for all types of foot and ankle problems. 541-963-0265 888-843-9090 www.GVfoot.com terminate Garden Gem, that this enticed Proven Winners to make them the cornerstone of the Proven Harvest section of their award-winning plants. Yes, Garden Treasure has won oodles of awards and the ones you care about. The awards include Top Performer University of La Grande 1408 N Hall Street the shells in the freezer, then use them later to make shrimp stock for bisque or gumbo. Or, if you’ve purchased a chicken, instead of roasting it whole, maybe take the meat from the bones beforehand and use the carcass for stock. Or kick it old school and grind the skin and make gribeens (cracklings with fried onions). Or just remove the skin whole and make an umbrella for your rhesus monkey. It’s cheaper than those bespoke monkey raincoats you’ve been buying at Not Just Chimp Pants. Here’s a personal favorite: You know the brown bits stuck to the bottom of the pan after your roast or pan sear meat? Lots of people use them for instant pan sauces, but here’s what I do (and if this rev- elation cuts down severely on the number of people who accept my dinner invitations, well, that’s more mackerel casserole for me): I scrape it into a jar and save it for later. If the brown bits are really stuck to the pan, I’ll deglaze it fi rst: Crank the heat beneath the pan and dump in a water-based liquid like stock, wine, beer or even water. Bring it to a boil while scraping up the brown bits and reduce the liquid to a sad- looking syrup. Done. Deglazed or not, keep it all in a jar, like Eleanor Rigby’s face, only don’t keep it by the door; store it in the fridge. The yummy gelatinous goo will settle to the bottom and be protected from spoilage by the threatening layer of congealed fat overlaying the top — like that French dish, confi t, where meat is New Name. Same Great Team. Same Exceptional Service. Travis T. Hampton, D.P.M. Foot and Ankle Surgeon Enterprise 601 Medical Parkway Georgia, Leader of the Pack All Season JC Raulston Arboretum, Top Performer Penn State, Perfect Score All Season Oregon State Uni- versity and the list goes on. A Garden Treasure indeed, and if you are wondering, Garden Gem has also racked up the awards Baker 3175 Pocahontas Rd. The second Garden Trea- sure is Katie Stagliano from Summerville, South Carolina, the founder and chief execu- tive gardener of Katie’s Krops. It is hard to imagine she is only 22 and yet she is behind the organization’s mission to empower youth to start and maintain vegetable gardens of all sizes, donating the harvest to feed people in need. This magnifi cent passion and purpose of heart began when Katie was 9 years old and grew a 40-pound cabbage. Katie’s Krops now has 100 gardens across the country, and yes, she too touts the wonderful production and award-winning performance of Garden Treasure and Garden Gem. Katie not only works at donating the tasty produce but also uses them in prepared meals that are likewise given away. One of her favorites is a salad where she also incorporates the Proven Winners award- winning sweet Italian basil called Amazel Basil. This basil which alludes to being amazing, actu- ally is, because it just keeps producing. Katie said that while other basils bolt or go to fl ower, this one simply keeps you in the harvest. She said Garden Treasure and Garden Gem tomatoes are used with Amazel Basil in an incredible pasta with marinara sauce in donated meals. If you would like to explore ways to be a part of Katie’s Krops, go to katies- krops.com Search out both transplants or seeds at provenwinners. com. The Garden Guy is so looking forward to spring and that fi rst tomato of the season. Here is hoping you get plants or seeds and have a bountiful summer too. cooked and kept submerged in its own fat. You can use the fat for sauteing or just discard it. Then, use that lovely gelatinous goo as you would a concentrated sauce base: Heat it till it melts, then strain out any bits that remain from its original and literal incarnation. Taste it. If it’s too strong (a distinct possibility, particularly if the dish from which it came originally was highly spiced or seasoned), add a bit of broth to calm it down, then thicken it with a cornstarch slurry, enrich it with a bit of whole butter, and blammo: an instant, delicious sauce. Everybody got it? Next month, we’ll discuss what to do with cereal dust. Bloomberg News Ovenly’s cookbook contains a genius at- home bar snack recipe that’s perfect for Netfl ix binges and sporting events. A year ago, who would have predicted that sales of yeast and lobster would skyrocket while on-the-go foods like nutrition bars would tank. Another, less talked about benefi ciary of pandemic- related lockdowns has been cookbooks. Print sales rose 15% for the fi rst three-quarters of 2020, compared to 2019. No surprise, bread cook- books led the way; sales were up 145% over the same time period, ac- cording to data from the NPD Group. Cult favorite Brook- lyn bakery Ovenly has taken advantage of that renewed obsession with a new edition of their 2014 tome “Ovenly: Sweet and Salty Reci- pes From New York’s Most Creative Bakery” (Park Row Books; $24). The book went through three printings and then disappeared. “During quarantine when everyone amped up their baking, no one could fi nd our cook- book,” says Ovenly co- founder Agatha Kulaga. “Prices of used copies were going through the roof.” In response, she and fellow founder Erin Patinkin put out an updated version in early January, including new recipes. See Genius/Page 3B 1 1/2 pounds caulifl ower, roughly chopped 1/2 cup fl our 2 quarts chicken broth, plus more as needed 1/2 to 1 pound grated sharp cheddar Salt, white pepper and red pepper fl akes, as needed 1/2 cup heavy cream, heated to near boiling on stovetop or in microwave 1. Melt butter in a large, heavy- bottomed saucepan over medium- high heat. Add onions, celery and caulifl ower; cook, stirring, until on- ions are translucent, 3 to 5 minutes. 2. Stir in fl our to form a roux. Continue cooking, stirring, to get rid of the fl oury fl avor, 3 to 4 minutes. 3. Increase heat and stir in chick- en broth. Heat to a boil, stirring and scraping bottom. Then reduce heat and simmer until vegetables are Prep: 20 minutes tender, 10 to 15 minutes. Continue Cook: 30 minutes stirring and scraping the bottom Makes: 12 cup every couple minutes to prevent You can make this soup with just sticking and scorching. 4. Remove from heat; carefully the stems or with the whole head, puree in batches in a blender. Re- leaves included. Don’t worry about turn soup to a clean pot; place over exact measurements. For my mon- medium-high heat to rewarm. ey, the two most important things 5. Stir in cheese until incorporated. are seasoning and consistency, both Stir in hot cream. of which you control after pureeing. 7. Add salt and white pepper as Cut down on prep and cooking time by pulsing caulifl ower in a food pro- needed; garnish with red pepper cessor along with onion and celery fl akes. Serve immediately. CHEESY CREAM OF CAULIFLOWER SOUP into small, gravelly pieces. 1 stick (8 tablespoons) unsalted butter 1/2 large onion, cut into medium dice 2 ribs celery, cut into medium dice Still running unsupported Windows 7? We’ll help you avoid critical issues by installing Windows 10! Nutrition information per 1 cup serving: 229 calories, 18 g fat, 11 g saturated fat, 48 mg cholesterol, 9 g carbohydrates, 1 g sugar, 9 g protein, 186 mg sodium, 1 g fi ber Computer not running as fast as when it was new? Let us install lightning-fast solid state drive!