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
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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
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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
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