私は詩です
(I am Haiku.)
As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.
This is a story of being poor, but it makes me like Jesus, so suck it as this is Jesus, TL's and my experience.
So being poor, we do poor folk things.
One thing is we graze like the sheep of the pasture.
Some of the farmers around here to improve soil, plant a mix of Diakon winter radish and Turnips in August after the wheat harvest. Some then graze it off into cow shit fertilizer, but that is beside the point, as we were told several years ago that we could pick fodder up like the Prodigal Son so we do just that.
Why yes I have ruled Senator that turnips taste like a skunk's ass in July
and I have judged pickled radishes to be Japanese Haiku ambrosia.
This year was lovely, until the Arctic cold came in October, which was HAARP. The lovely part was the turnips, even in a drought were just perfect for eating. There is a difference of a skunk's ass in July as road kill, summer turnips to fall raised turnips. Fall raised turnips are light and sweet and for a few weeks we ate turnips for our veggie. TL liked them so much that this was the request on the birthday, which was granted, as I am a big spender in grazed turnips.
The cold came and things started to freeze, but the last day in the big storm as the fodder was covered with snow, I stopped for turnips and got into a patch of radishes. These were the best radishes I had come across in being large as it was a drought and most stuff was stumpy at best. So I pulled about 8, and when we got back home, I had decided that we were making pickled Japanese radishes, as we had done that when the mother was alive, and never got to eat them, because he mother was a shit for brains stubborn wog really. She would starve with a pile of things to eat, just because it was different food. She would make chow chow, which is like German Korean Kimchi, make pickled beets which were heaven, but pickled radishes were too exotic, and turnips, she was not going to eat, so all of my work rotted as I was busy and by the time I remembered about those things, the food was kaput and that meant more money being spent, which she did not have, and I always had to chip in for the hard times. Yes I was a good child.
Anyway, you can look up the recipe, as there are several. I will not eat green tomato chow chow, just cabbage, peppers and onions, with the spices.
Same with the Nipper Pickled Radishes, and I have a secret in this too from the poverty inflicted upon me.
See, salsa was on sale, Tostitos mild in fact, in a short quart jar. So we picked them up, good chips on sale, and had snacks. Thing is with salsa, just like Mexicans, they are ok the first couple of times, and then I really get tired of it. So TL said to throw the jars out, as we just threw out 6 garbage cans of jars the mother had stores to pretend she canned things, and I washed them, sat them on the table, and in looking around for canning jars for the pickled radish, I spotted them and thought 'No sense wasting a good jar on radishes, so I got them sterilized and we began the recipe search.
The recipes for 3 quarts was like 4 cups of white vinegar, 1 cup water, 1 1/2 cup white sugar. Boil that up and that is how complex it is..
The Daikons were sliced thin by TL, as I sliced a pretty thick slice of white onion, left intact, and cut into strips a sweet bell pepper, think this one was orange.
I'm not particular, so I just pack in half radishes, the onion, then the peppers strewn around and top off with the radishes again.
By the onion section I add a teaspoon of canning salt, a clove of whole garlic, a half teaspoon of ground mustard and a half teaspoon of coarse black pepper.
As I sad, pack the vegetables in, fill up the jars with the hot vinegar solution, cap with oven mitts and that is as complex as this recipe is.
You can add bay leaf, but the salsa jars already stunk like salsa, and it does impart flavors to the radishes. This recipe in taste is hard to describe, as it is kind of a sweet, garlic, radish thing, where you really do not notice the vinegar at all. You can start gnawing on this the next day, and it is suppose to keep a month in the fridge. It is cold enough on our floors that the jars are sitting there and I will find out of they start to ferment which is non edible, but this is about pickled radishes which most people have never eaten or tried, but honestly like Kristi Thom, they are some of the wonderful things that came out of Japan.
Hey I like radishes, but that damn Sulu keeps
stalking me as he has Haiku envy.
I mean I hate relishes. My brother's inlaws paid for his wedding trough spread and it was all Goddamn corn relish shit, I mean who serves six courses of relish? That lasted me a lifetime and I am not a celery grazer either. I want food, but this radish stuff tastes like food and Chow Chow German stuff I like and is where our one head of cabbage ended up this year and we ate a half a jar of it already.........easier than cole slaw.
Daikons are probably too expensive to buy, but it the market was tossing some out or if you have rich farm relatives .......no you rich people would not be hogs out in the field picking up fodder as it would be beneath you, so you can just look at the jars I conclude, but for others, this is a good fill in, in winter. This stuff goes with just about anything from burgers, to chicken to whole meat products, it is both picnic and gourmet vegetable.
I'm in the process of deciding if we should go to the other place and check on things as it was 13 degrees last night and will be warmer tomorrow, but I hate sitting around cold and it is easier to go so some place and fill the time. In a few days, I will check the turnips and see how they turn out in Arctic cold and thawing out some. Yeah the go into mush and hog shit after winter, but I'm hoping for non hog shit autumn Indian summer turnips.
Ok that is about it, except if I was rich, I would invite Kristi Thom over for pickled radish dinner party. We probably have nothing in common, nor with the people I would invite like Chuck Yeager who would not come, but you know wholesome balls to the wall kind of people like Amy Barrett, and we would have dinner party conversation, drinks and more conversation, as Daikon radishes really should have their own dinner parties.
Nuff Said
agtG
