Not far from the Orioles’ park, Camden Yards, is Baltimore’s Little Italy, a touristy-kitschy collection of Italian restaurants, bakeries, delis and other businesses that run the gamut from very good to awfully mediocre. But we used to go there sometimes when I was a kid, and between that and multiple viewings of Lady & The Tramp, I’m a sucker for an old-school Southern Italian restaurant with a booming-voiced proprietor, an accordion soundtrack, and candles flickering in bumpy, red glass candleholders. Throw a carnation in a tiny glass vase on the table for good measure, and I’m in heaven.

Either before or after an Orioles game one night, I ended up with a couple of friends at Sabatino’s, which is one of the hoary veterans of Little Italy. While dating my eventual ex-husband, I had become obsessed with Spaghetti Aglio e Olio, the very simple and traditional preparation of spaghetti tossed in heavily-garlic-infused olive oil—there was a place we used to go where I ordered it every time. On this particular night at Sabatino’s, I started looking for that on the menu, but got sidetracked by Spaghetti a la Gus.

Spaghetti a la Gus was described as being served in an olive oil and garlic sauce, but with green and black olives and chilis in the mix as well. I ordered it, fully planning to eat half and save the rest for later, and found myself empty-plated within a shockingly short number of minutes after my plate arrived, then found myself mopping the plate with the bread still on the table. I’m not proud of my total lack of restraint, but I could not help myself.

My intent was to return to Sabatino’s, and to return quickly, for another plate of Spaghetti a la Gus. But things happen, and life moves in a whole bunch of directions, and I never got back there, and then I moved away. But, even six years after I left DC for Iowa (and therefore probably 13 or 14 years after that plate of pasta at Sabatino’s), I still find myself craving it.

Here’s the version I made earlier this summer to satisfy that very craving.

Pasta a la Gus, Genie-style

1 lb. fettucine (can substitute spaghetti or any other substantial long pasta, but I find angel hair to be too delicate)
1/3 c. olive oil
Three cloves of garlic, peeled and whole
½ c. sliced green olives
½ c. sliced black ripe olives (don’t go fancy here – go for the canned kind)
1 c. chopped flat-leaf parsley
½ TBSP crushed red pepper
Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

1. Prepare the pasta according to instructions. Cook to al dente and drain.
2. Heat the olive oil in a small saucepan over medium-high heat. When it’s hot, add the garlic and let cook until light golden brown. This will only take a minute or two, and be sure to watch it so it doesn’t burn.
3. Remove the garlic from the pan to a cutting board to cool. Add the olives, crushed red pepper and parsley to the oil. (Be careful at this point, because any liquid on the olives or parsley will spatter in the hot oil.) Stir and let cook for a minute or two.
4. Crush the garlic with the back of a fork, then add it back to the olive oil mixture.
5. Remove the oil mixture from the heat, toss it with the pasta, give each bowl a hit of salt and pepper, and serve immediately.

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That night, he gushed about an apartment he’d found after a fellow student in his program had decided she didn’t want to live there anymore. He raved about its hardwood floors, its closet space, the amazing sunroom, the fabulous location.

“There’s only one problem,” he said. “It doesn’t have what I would call a real kitchen.”

I sat up straight on my couch in my apartment in Northern Virginia, looking around at the apartment I’d worked so hard to find and make my own. “What do you mean it doesn’t have a real kitchen?”

“Well, it kind of has a galley kitchen,” he said. “It has a stove, and a little bit of a counter, and a sink, and that’s pretty much it. Oh, and a refrigerator.”

“And you signed a lease?” I said. “For a year?”

“Of course,” he said. “It’s a great apartment.”

If he had looked to the east, he would have seen the mushroom cloud from my head exploding. “Do you have any idea what it means for me not to have a kitchen I can cook in?” I said. “Cooking is my therapy. I won’t be sane if I don’t have a kitchen.”

The story ended happily, at least for a time, though it required some more negotiating before he was able to go back, break the lease, and then seek out a new place, the place we ended up living in together, the apartment that spanned the bottom floor of a house and had a wonderful, giant farmhouse kitchen that fit all our friends and our music, and, after we split up, was where I worked and cooked and cried and strategized next steps and, finally, came back to life.

I am still friends with the man who took that lease off Steve’s hands, and the first time we went to a party at that same apartment, I walked in the kitchen, turned around and said to Steve, “Are you kidding me? Do you know me at all?” The kitchen was even smaller and more awkward than I’d imagined from the description. Between that and the winters, I would have never made it a single year in Iowa had we moved in there.

I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about those days anymore, but on some nights, nights like last night, when I stumbled home from work overwhelmed and head-spun and exhausted, when the processing in my mind was overtaking the carefully planned to-do list I’d set for myself, I remember what I said back in 2005. Cooking is my therapy.

And so I walked in the door, took stock of what I had and what I needed, ran to the market for local produce and milk, and came home to make my own versions of comfort food: rosemary-artichoke hummus, which ended up as dinner atop a zatar-crusted pita; soup made from homemade stock and laced with Parmaggiano-Reggiano rinds I’d been saving in the freezer for just such a purpose; and my first-ever pot pie.

As I stirred the sauce for the pot pie, the flour, butter, stock, milk and sage transforming into something thick and glossy over the many minutes, I thought about my grandmother and how she taught me to make roux and transform it into cream or cheese sauce. And I thought about my friend Erin, who gave me the flat-headed whisk I use to make such a sauce just before she moved to Sweden to live with the man she had loved for years. She married him after he proposed to her somewhere over the Atlantic halfway between Sweden and the United States.

And I thought about the Swanson pot pies my babysitter would heat up for me on nights when my parents would go out for dates when I was a kid, and the smell of my mother’s perfume as she put on her dress and makeup, and how she and my father would sneak into my room to kiss me goodnight when they got home. They never thought I woke up, but I always did, and I loved the ultimate safety of those shadowy hellos.

Cooking is my therapy, and my memory, and just one of the ways I express myself. And on nights like last night, it is what brings me back to what’s most important.

None Found

This is about when I noticed that I had a voicemail from Susan, who had apparently found my number. The serious thing, as I found out shortly thereafter, was a question popped, a ring delivered.

It seems that Susan and her fiancé, Don, went out to Roosevelt Island, which is smack dab in the middle of the Potomac River between D.C. and Arlington, Virginia on Friday, and after a picnic, he asked her to marry him.

But Genie, this is a gardening blog, you may be thinking. And even if you have just moved and may be awfully discombobulated, why are you telling us about the social milestones of your friends? Aren’t there plants to talk about?

Why yes, good people of the Interwebs. There are plants to talk about, and if you’d just hold on, I’d get to that part of the story.

As I was saying, the engagement happened Friday. But here’s the thing. It would have happened sooner, before Susan went on an extended set of business trips to Chicago and Ecuador, but for one tiny detail.

The day Don was originally planning to ask Susan to marry him, she beat him to the question punch. She asked him if he’d dig her a garden bed.

“Oh my God,’ I said to Susan on the phone. “A whole bed?”

“Yes,” she said. “Which meant he had to dig up all the grass.”

Ladies and gentlemen, I remember what a huge pain that process was. And how long it took. And I was actually helping. A little. Anyway, by the time Don finished, it was too late, that day, to take Susan to the island, and so he held off until there was time for an unhurried moment of surprise.

But now Susan and Don have a garden AND a wedding to plan. “And every time we eat our vegetables, we’ll think about how this all happened,” she said to me last night.

I can’t think of a better reason to delay something…even something so happy. To Susan and Don, I wish you smooth wedding planning, incredible veggies out of that garden, and as much happiness as you both can stand. Can’t wait for the Key West blowout!

None Found

I knew what she meant, immediately. Iowa has prairie beauty, but D.C. and its dogwoods and cherry trees and magnolias? D.C. in the spring cannot be beaten.

And those of you who knew me when I lived there and, therefore, remember me with my inevitable allergic-reaction-sparked spring cold that generally hobbled me right around the time those trees all bloomed? Hush up. ‘Cause even when I didn’t feel well, there wasn’t anything wrong with my eyes.

About this time last year, I had the opportunity to take a business trip back to D.C. over a Wednesday and Thursday with the CEO of my company. It was just before Easter weekend, and I had thought I would be able to extend the trip and see friends and family in the area before returning to Iowa. It’s a long story as to why, and doesn’t bear repeating, but I had to fly back Thursday night without seeing a single person I knew. Airport, client dinner, hotel, client site, Starbucks, airport.

From the second I got off the plane in D.C., I drove miserably at high speeds past the flowering trees, wanting nothing more than to stop and get a closer look.

Through a quirk of flight scheduling, Thursday afternoon’s schedule had us driving from Annapolis, which is far to the East of D.C. (for those who don’t know the geography) all the way to Dulles Airport (which is far enough West of D.C. as to qualify as practically being in another time zone). I told the CEO I would navigate us through downtown, skirting Capitol Hill and taking us out the George Washington Parkway. My intention was to get us to the airport faster, of course, but I also wanted, even though I would be driving in D.C. traffic, to catch a glimpse of the cherry blossoms surrounding the Jefferson Memorial.

I came off the Howard Road exit off the Anacostia Freeway and took the turn onto South Capitol Street to cross the Anacostia River toward I-395. And then, past the flowering trees that popped up here and there off the roadway, I saw it. Nationals Park, still under construction. When I left for Iowa, it had just been a concept, and I hadn’t seen it since.

The CEO had fallen asleep in the passenger seat—he was traveling with a bad case of the flu—and so he either missed this next episode, or he did a good job of pretending he was asleep long enough to let me re-compose myself. But suffice it to say I was crying before I even knew what was happening. Springtime in Washington. A new baseball stadium that I had been wishing for for years. Friends just minutes away from the road I was on and no way I could see them. If I could have gotten out of the car right then and sent the CEO on his way back to Iowa, I probably would have.

Iowa has its own spring magic. We just got that annual soaking rain that turns everything from brown to green overnight. And I’m excited about getting out there in the dirt and planting—that’s going to happen sooner rather than later.

But as I listened to the Nats play their opening game at the new stadium, I couldn’t help but wish I was there. And yeah, Prairie Robin. This time of year, every year, I miss those flowering trees.

• The cherry blossoms tell you when to plant
• Prairie photos, take two
• Beyond cabin fever
• The letting go
• We. Survived. Winter.

Although Valentine’s Day has come and gone, it seems appropriate to tell you about a little indoor plant experiment I have going on right now. At Christmas, my former roommate Susan, who has managed to locate the world’s greatest gardening gifts ever since I started this blog, sent me a terrific gift that I will unveil to you patient blog readers when the season for actual gardening comes around.

But in the meantime, there was a smaller, more immediate part of the Christmas gift: A small “Valentine” kit, with a teeny-tiny pot, little strawberry seeds and the growing medium to plant them in.

I haven’t had much luck with strawberry plants outdoors, but thought it would be cool to try the kit indoors just to see what will happen. Susan and I coordinated by email: we would both plant our kits on January 21, mine here in Iowa on my chilly windowsill, and hers at her new house.

The growing medium arrives as a flat disc that requires a little water to expand out to a thick cylinder. It’s sort of like sea monkey dirt: you add water and the fun begins.

I planted the seeds and put my pot up on the kitchen sill, and but for a couple of days, have managed to remember to open the shade so the thing has some sunlight. It’s watery, often-snowy sunlight, but it still has to be healthier than the gloom in my kitchen without the shift in shades.

So far, nothing has broken the surface of the dirt, and I’m trying to take a lesson from the aloe and not water it every single day. We’ll see how it goes—even if I don’t end up with a ripe strawberry, it would be nice to see something green rise up from the dirt.

• Take a ride on a magic carpet of seeds
• Berry surprising
• Watering cans: Actually functional
• A garden poem
• Seedlings, not seeds

My parents live in Adams County, Pennsylvania, home to apple orchards that dot the landscape as you drive down country roads, and that’s where I have become most accustomed to the apple trees, with their blossoms and heavy fruit. Iowa wasn’t where I expected to find apples.

This year wasn’t so great for Iowa apple farmers. We had weird, warm weather early, which made the buds blossom on the trees, followed by a hard freeze. Parts of the state escaped apple blossom trauma, but around Iowa City, things weren’t great for local farmers.

Pennyslvania escaped Iowa’s anti-apple weather. In Pennsylvania this year, there appeared to be no shortage of apples.

In October, I visited my parents for the weekend, and Mom and I made a trip to Hollabaugh Bros. Fruit Farm and Market, a sprawling barn that features apples, pears, and other locally-grown produce, along with more locally-produced jams, jellies and other goods than you can imagine. On Fall weekends, the place is packed, crawling with area residents (and the occasional, camera-lugging out-of-town guest) who fill bags of varying sizes to the brim with bulk apples, then stagger to their cars, visions of crisps and crumbles and pies dancing in their heads.

This time around, a Japanese man lamented the lack of Asian pears. Adams County might not have lost their apples, but it was, apparently, not a good year for Asian pear production, and they were running at a hefty price while we were there. But there were local persimmons, lined up like little pillows of sweetness, and at least a dozen varieties of apples and pears, including Bosc pears, banana apples, and the trend-eriffic Honeycrisp.

I had plenty of time for photography, since a 10-pound bag of apples does not make for a non-awkward carry-on item, but I have to admit I was a bit wistful not to be filling up my bag with varieties perfect for eating and cooking. Back when I lived in D.C., it didn’t seem like Fall if I didn’t make a pilgrimage up to see my parents and hit Hollabaugh’s, always buying more than I could comfortably eat. This time, I had to leave with just the images. After all, they’re much easier to take on the plane.

And, sometimes, much more amusing.

Editor’s Note: Thanks to Kay Hollabaugh for stopping in the middle of her busy day to take this picture of me and my Mom. Kay said, “I don’t know about that bus driver…”

• Brandied apple tart
• Garden bloggers’ book club: The Essential Earthman
• Mind over to-matter
• Apple-plum crisp for one
• Spring, delayed.

Sounds precious, doesn’t it? Sure it does, until I tell you the part where, when I was doing this at somewhere around age 23, when it occurred to me that I hated this little ritual. I inevitably ended the day washing baking sheets somewhere around 1 a.m., after starting the process somewhere before lunch. Although I would have planned something resembling nutritious food during the day, I ended the day sick from eating bites of raw cookie dough, with aching legs, a small burn on my arm from hitting the side of the oven, and a general Grinch-like demeanor.

So, I stopped the tradition. Here’s the thing: I liked the idea of spreading cheer via cookies, but I had lost any sense of fun that went along with it.

But this year, Lydia of The Perfect Pantry, one of my favorite food bloggers, threw out an idea. She is spreading the word about Drop In & Decorate, an effort sponsored by King Arthur Flour. The idea is simple: bake some cookies, invite friends or family or co-workers or neighbors to help decorate them, and deliver them to a local shelter or food pantry, lunch program, senior center, or any other place in your community where folks could use a little holiday cheer. Christmas cookies, Hanukkah cookies, Kwanzaa cookies, Festivus cookies…this one is non-denominational and provides the opportunity to have the cookie experience without the gritted-teeth at the end of the day.

King Arthur is selling special Drop In & Decorate kits, and they’re providing a special offer: Order a Drop In & Decorate baking kit now through November 15, and King Arthur Flour will include a free dough scraper with each order. Add the kit to your shopping cart. On the payment page, enter Promotion Code “Dropin” to the Promotion field and click the Update button. The page will refresh and the dough scraper will be added to your order. Offer valid through November 15 only (but the kit is on sale until December 26, and would make a great holiday gift).

But this doesn’t require much more than a batch or two of cookies and your own creativity. If you’re interested in participating, I encourage you to learn more over at Lydia’s Drop In & Decorate page, where she has plenty of free resources available.

It’s enough to make an Inadvertent Grinch like me send out some invitations to folks in town. This might be the year I resurrect my cookie baking skills!

• Shortbread times four
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• Lemon basil aioli
• Fish biscuits to warm the snowy soul
• The great ice cream caper

“Hmm,” she said. “It shows here that you came in on October 16 your Freshman year, October 17 your Sophomore year, and October 15 your Junior year.” She looked up at the calendar: it was October 18. “Seems to me you’re right about on time for your annual cold.”

Annual it is. There has barely been a Fall when the combination of leaf mold and wacky changes in temperatures hasn’t overcome my body’s ability to fight off the same progression: a strange, overwhelming exhaustion followed by sinus issues followed by sore throat followed by cough.

This year, I thought I might have escaped it, and luckily so. I spent much of the last half of October on the road, on trips to Pennsylvania and North Carolina, spending some of the time working and some of the time having lots of fun. The whole time, I felt like I was some sort of ticking time bomb, albeit a ticking time bomb that seemed to be appeased by irregular applications of Sudafed and Airborne.

But I probably should have known that the fun and games would come to an end. Much like this year’s delayed onset of real Fall, my real Fall bout of Ick was still to come, whether I liked it or not. And it arrived with a vengeance on Thursday, although did everything I could to ignore it Thursday night and went to work on Friday protesting that I was just fine, as long as I drank liquids constantly and mainlined Sudafed. But by the time I got home, it was clear: I had the full-on Fall Ick, and there was nothing to be done other than to go to bed.

Now, did I help matters by living in a state of frenzy from June through October? Probably not. But would I trade any of the fun I’ve had? Not for anything.

Still, I did have plans for the weekend. A good friend who moved away in December is in town, and I had to maintain quarantine so as not to potentially pass this on to her and her new baby. The Mint Killer and I had a dinner-and-movie girls’ night out planned to take advantage of a brief trip out of town by her husband and daughter, and I had to bail on her. And, most relevantly, I had solid plans to get out there in the garden and get some of the clean-up done, since word on the street is we’re in for a serious temperature plummet starting Monday.

I suppose it all makes good sense, though. There’s a season for the madness of harvest, and a season to just sit back and rest. I’ll get a good night’s sleep tonight and get up tomorrow and try to work for a little bit in the garden, and when I feel like I’m ready to call it quits, I will. If it doesn’t all get cleaned up in one fell swoop, so be it.

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• A peck of pepper plant pieces

To govern, there are many more steps. And so, for those of you who have been asking for an update on the march of the Farm Bill and the status of the Community Food Program (CFP), I have to tell you…there has been good news, but good news doesn’t mean it’s over.

The latest word on the street is this: The Senate Agricultural Committee has set funding for the Community Food Program funding at $10 million per year. That’s enough to keep local and fresh food programs afloat for the time being.

The process is far from over, though. The committee is scheduled to debate the entire Farm Bill October 24. That’s tomorrow, folks, so hopefully I’ll know more soon. There’s still a chance the funding could be cut, although continued voices from around the country can keep that from happening. There’s no word yet on when the bill actually may hit the Senate floor, and once it passes, there’s that whole President signature/veto thing, etc. etc. etc. Like I said…the process is weighty and takes time.

What can you do? Well, if you already called or faxed your Senators, thank you. If you didn’t get a chance to do so in the last round, there’s still time to participate. If you have a Senator on the Agriculture Committee, you can even make your voice heard before the committee starts marking up the bill tomorrow.

Calling is your best bet this time around. If you call the Capitol switchboard at 202-224-3121 and ask to speak to your Senators’ offices, you can make a difference to make sure this important piece of funding stays in the bill.

Now, here’s a little trick I bring you from my pre-Iowa life inside the Beltway…there’s no point in calling to talk to your actual Senator. It’s not that they don’t like you that way, it’s just that…well, you know…they’re rather busy. But they all have someone on their respective staffs who handles agricultural and nutrition issues. Ask to speak to that person. On this front, they’ll have the good Senator’s ear.

So that’s the latest. As I said, it’s much easier to garden. But this is a worthy cause and besides, here in the U.S., the growing season’s wrapping up. Use this call as an opportunity to take a quick break from your garden clean-up, and you’ll make a difference for Americans everywhere.

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But, thus far this year, I had not actually made pizza with ingredients from my garden. I’m not really sure how I overlooked this. Perhaps I was afraid to heat up the kitchen any more than it already was? Or maybe I was just that busy this year.

When we had a near-frost in mid-September, I harvested a ton of unripe, kind of ripe, nearly ripe and fully ripe yellow pear tomatoes, and those were still hanging out on my counter, the green ones slowly working their way toward yellow. I still have basil growing out there, and now there’s some arugula in the mix.

I will stop here just to recommend homemade crust over store-bought. I mean, that’s a pretty obvious statement, because isn’t everything homemade better than what you can buy? That being said, I haven’t actually made homemade crust in a long, long time. Not since I had a breadmaker, which I didn’t actually like to use to make bread, but which facilitated a wicked herbed pizza dough. I got rid of the breadmaker when I moved to Iowa, which, every time I make pizza, I regret just a little bit.

But I digress.

I built this particular pizza on a store-bought crust, which I brushed with olive oil before adding the toppings. There’s no tomato sauce on this, but I figured the tomatoes themselves would do the trick, and they did. This particular mix, in fact, does the trick. Olive oil, green and yellow tomatoes, some kosher salt and freshly ground pepper for crunch and flavor, and a topping of roasted arugula and basil and fresh mozzarella. A little sweet, a little bitter, a little salty, a little tangy, and a powerful hit of basil-y goodness.

I love pizza in all its forms, yes. But when it’s topped with my very own garden fresh ingredients? Then I adore it.

Greens and yellow pizza
(Serves 1)

One 6- or 8-inch prepared pizza crust
1 Tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper
8 to 10 mixed ripe and unripe pear tomatoes
1/4 cup torn arugula leaves
1/4 cup torn basil leaves
1/2 c. fresh mozzarella, cut into uniform chunks

1. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F.
2. Halve the tomatoes. Put the pizza crust on a pizza stone or cookie sheet, brush the crust with the olive oil, arrange the tomato halves evenly on the surface of the crust, and put the pizza in the oven.
3. Once the pizza is in, turn down the temperature to 425 degrees F. I have no idea what this does, but I’m sure it’s highly technical and chemical and trust me, it makes the pizza crispy and crusty and tasty.
4. Bake the pizza for 5 to 7 minutes, then take it out. Add the greens and top them with the cheese, and return the pizza to the oven.
5. Bake for another 5 to 7 minutes, or until the greens look a little crispy and the cheese is melted.
6. Remove, slice and eat.

This is my contribution to the second anniversary of Weekend Herb Blogging, an event that I stumbled upon not that long after I started blogging. I’m thrilled to have been a part of it for as long as I have, and I’m so grateful to Kalyn for keeping it alive for two years, which, I daresay, is about a lifetime and a half on the Interwebs. So here’s to you, Kalyn. What’s pizza without a good Chianti? I toast you, my friend. Congratulations on this anniversary.

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