![The harvest season is just beginning…](https://lakevillejournal.com/media-library/image.jpg?id=48209350&width=980&quality=90)
Photo by Cynthia Hochswender
There isn’t really much lettuce left in my garden at this point in the summer but, boy, do I have a lot of zucchini.
Regular readers of this healthy eating column (and sorry it’s been so long since the last column) will recall that I’m always searching for new sources of potassium. Happily, zucchini has a lot of potassium, about 222 mg for each 100 grams that you eat (I just weighed a fresh 6-inch zucchini on my food scale and it was 247 grams, so figure 100 grams is about a cup or less).
Honestly, there isn’t a ton of other nutrition in zucchinis but they’re fresh and tasty and have a decent amount of fiber in them, which is good for your heart and helps your digestion.
Potassium, my favorite electrolyte/mineral, is important for regulating the amount of water in your body, and it keeps your muscles functioning properly (including the big muscle: your heart).
In all: I’m glad to have a lot of zucchini in the garden. And no, I’m not planning at this moment to make zucchini bread.
So what else can one do with all this fruit (because yes, botanically it’s a fruit, even though from a culinary point of view it’s a vegetable).
Zucchini is in many ways a good vehicle for seasonings and toppings. But while, for example, lobster and snails and artichokes are a good excuse to eat a lot of melted butter, zucchini is a good excuse to try a lot of different herbs.
Try cutting a zucchini into quarters lengthwise (so you have four long quarters that begin at the little cap at the top and stretch all the way down to the little cap at the bottom). Brush olive oil on the four quarters and then lay them on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper or foil. Sprinkle with a little salt and pepper, then roast them for 10 or 15 minutes, until they’re just tender. Take them out and poke them; if they feel delicious, take them off, otherwise give them another five minutes.
Once they’ve cooled, move them to a plate (be careful, they’re going to be floppy and they might split in half if you don’t support them carefully enough) and squeeze lemon juice over the top and then sprinkle on some finely cut up herbs (I often cut them right over the plate with a pair of clean, sharp scissors). Flat Italian parsley works great; so do basil, tarragon, mint or scallions. Serve with grilled meat and rice pilaf.
Too hot to cook? You can eat zucchini raw. It’s delicious with dip, for example; I often cut a zucchini into batons that are about 2 inches long and serve them with hummus, but they’d be good with almost any dip.
A few years ago, I was gifted a beautiful little lethally sharp machine called a mandoline. I finally took it out of its box this summer and have found it to be the perfect tool to use with zucchini and with their visual twins, the cucumbers.
As a side note, for thin slicing the best cucumbers are the ones with a thin skin and small seeds, such as the English and Persian varieties, and the Kirby cukes.
The mandoline can either give you paper-thin slices of your favorite cucurbite, or they can give you matchstick-thin little rectangles, also known as a julienne. You can just dress them with a vinaigrette or you can do what my friend Cybele does with her cucumbers but which works with zukes too: Dress them with sour cream and/or plain Greek yogurt, a dose of fresh dill weed, some thin-sliced shallots, tasty salt and a grind or two of fresh pepper and some lemon juice.
If you soak the slices in the lemon juice first and then drain the juice, your salad won’t get as watery.
Speaking of vegetables that you might not know you can eat raw: I’m also now getting some beets in my garden. Again, the mandoline helps you to make paper-thin beet slices — so thin, in fact, that you don’t need to peel off the skin first. This is really best done with beets from your own garden, which you know for certain haven’t been sprayed with any chemicals.
For this salad, I use the matchstick/julienne setting on the mandoline. I then dress the beets with a classic vinaigrette (French mustard, oil, a trace of a nice vinegar such as rice or balsamic, a little water to give it the right texture). You can add some orange zest, some finely minced tarragon or some chopped scallions.
If you don’t have a mandoline, you can still make a beet salad but you might be better off roasting your unpeeled beets in a 350 degree oven until they are just tender (it’s impossible to know how quickly a beet will cook; I have no idea why this is). Don’t overcook them or they’ll start to shrivel. Peel off the skin, cut into quarters and dress them as above.
Abstract art display in Wassaic for Upstate Art Weekend, July 18-21.
WASSAIC — Art enthusiasts from all over the country flocked to the Catskill Mountains and Hudson Valley to participate in Upstate Art Weekend, which ran from July 18 to July 21.
The event, which “celebrates the cultural vibrancy of Upstate New York”, included 145 different locations where visitors could enjoy and interact with art.
On Saturday, July 20, The Wassaic Project hosted numerous community events. Will Hutnick, the director of artistic programming, said “We’ve been a part of it since the beginning, this is the fifth year of UPAW.”
Most of the action was based at Maxon Mills, the seven-floor grain mill located in the heart of Wassaic. On exhibit was work from 30 artists, 18 of whom were past residents of The Wassaic Project. “Artists can come and do a residency here, meaning they live and work with one another for a couple months at a time,” Hutnick stated.
The first floor held work by Petra Szilagyi, who uses dirt and linseed oil to construct images of paranormal concepts, most of which include bats. They reflected that a recent trip to a fifth sense competition in Vietnam was the influence behind the exhibit.
Across the floor was Tiffany Smith’s interactive installation which incorporated plants and wicker chairs, all of which were objects associated with her Carribean upbringing. “The room being filled with plants is symbolic of hurricane prep which often included bringing the plants from outside into the house,” Smith said.
As visitors made their way up the narrow wooden stairs, music could be heard from behind the walls. The echoing music was Daniel Shieh’s installation, entitled Mother’s Anthem, which played a recording of the American Anthem in 30 languages. The languages ranged from Spanish and Italian to Navajo and Bengali.
Each floor was filled with artwork of all mediums, including painting, fibers, collage and photography. Rachel Bussières, who switched her concentration after watching the 2017 solar eclipse, uses varying light sources to produce lumen prints. During the wildfires, she recounted that she “made a new exposure each day to capture the changing air quality”.
Luciana Abait also incorporates the natural world into her pieces, instead using maps. An environmental activist originally from Argentina, Abait’s work highlights “environmental fragility, specifically the impacts it has on immigrants.” Her installation that is currently on display at Maxon Mills, takes the form of a mountain range built solely from maps of the US and Argentina.
Throughout the day, visitors could “Arm Wrestle 4 A Popsicle”. Winners had the choice of 3 playfully flavored trout-inspired popsicles - Nightcrawler, Power Bait, and Salmon Roe. Artist Katie Peck, who spent the day in costume as a rainbow trout, encouraged guests to step up and try their hand at an arm wrestle.
Shibori Indigo dyeing, group meditation, and dance workshops were open for community members of all ages as well.
While the daytime activities fostered appreciation of fixed art, a dance party until midnight at The Lantern Inn offered guests a space for performative art.
When describing the environment of The Wassaic Project, Smith emphasized, “It’s all community, it’s all love.”
A serene scene from the Amenia garden tour.
AMENIA — The much-anticipated annual Amenia Garden Tour drew a steady stream of visitors to admire five local gardens on Saturday, July 13, each one demonstrative of what a green thumb can do. An added advantage was the sense of community as neighbors and friends met along the way.
Each garden selected for the tour presented a different garden vibe. Phantom’s Rock, the garden of Wendy Goidel, offered a rocky terrain and a deep rock pool offering peaceful seclusion and anytime swims. Goidel graciously welcomed visitors and answered questions about the breathtaking setting.
Amenia Finance Director Charlie Miller welcomed visitors to his Bog Hollow Road garden in Wassaic, a manicured expansive yard with well-placed garden beds framing a far-reaching view. He said he plans carefully each winter for the next spring’s improvement.
The organic, environmentally responsible Maitri Farm was next, a lesson in coordinating agriculture with natural balance. The farm stand and a walk among the greenhouses brought visitors together.
Near the center of Amenia was the garden of Polly Pitts-Garvin, offering a chance to visit a robust vegetable garden with raised beds to be envious of and a remarkable absence of any insects or usual vegetable garden problems.
At Chez Cheese, the vast garden acreage surrounding the 1850s historic home of Joan Feeney and Bruce Phillips in Millerton, visitors could begin at refreshment stations where walking tour maps of the 15-acre property were available. There were streams and ponds with docks, and a dozen bridges arranged around the landscape. In the 19th-century, the property had been the home of the Wilson Cheese Factory, inspiring the name of the estate.
The Amenia Garden Tour was supported this year by Paley’s Garden Center in Sharon.
Gary Dodson working a tricky pool on the Schoharie Creek, hoping to lure something other than a rock bass from the depths.
PRATTSVILLE, N.Y. — The Schoharie Creek, a fabled Catskill trout stream, has suffered mightily in recent decades.
Between pressure from human development around the busy and popular Hunter Mountain ski area, serious flooding, and the fact that the stream’s east-west configuration means it gets the maximum amount of sunlight, the cool water required for trout habitat is simply not as available as in the old days.
This is not a new phenomenon. It does seem to be getting worse, though.
Gary Dodson and I convened where the creek makes its final run into the Schoharie reservoir, part of the New York City water supply system, on a semi-broiling Thursday afternoon, July 11.
The goal was simple. Catch smallmouth bass, which abound in the lower section of the river.
This was hot stuff — as in an 80-degree water temperature.
The air temperature was actually slightly less at 77.
After negotiating the intensely slippery rocks, festooned with treacherous algae, the first major pool presented several difficulties, with a back eddy competing with a main flow and several large trees draped about the whole thing.
I hit on the simplest strategy, which was to flip a weighted attractor fly called a Tequilley into the start of the eddy so it would proceed slowly but steadily into the maelstrom, sinking all the while.
This worked. A proper adult smallmouth, with bronze coloring and vertical stripes, took the thing.
The point-and-shoot camera finally died, however, and I was not going to try to fumble my phone out for a nice but routine fish photo.
Why not?
Because I guarantee the fish would have made a sudden, last-moment bolt for freedom, causing me to drop the device into the drink.
Gary moved downstream while I continued trying to annoy the residents of the pool, succeeding a couple of times with different colored Wooly Buggers.
Then we all got bored and I moved off, where Gary was catching rock bass and cussing them out for not being something else.
I have to admit, they are not the most compelling critters. Something about the red eyes.
This latest trip was dominated by extremely tedious and distasteful Harry Homeowner activities, but on both Wednesday and Thursday mornings I prowled Woodland Valley Creek. By “morning” I mean “dawn,” because that was when the water temps were down to a barely acceptable 64.
I made the acquaintance of several stocked browns and of a handful of their wild cousins. The wild fish are smaller and nimbler.
The successful ploy was an Adams wet fly, size 16, drifted behind something big, like a Parachute Adams or Stimulator.
FALLS VILLAGE — Close to 70 music lovers gathered at Robertson Plaza on Saturday, July 20 as the Joint Chiefs, an Americana band, played a free concert sponsored by the Friends of Robertson Plaza.
An hour into the concert, the western sky began to show threatening signs of bad weather, but the band persevered and the crowd just pulled out umbrellas and rain gear, checking cellphones for weather updates.
With the backdrop of Haystack Mountain, the musicians filled the air in Norfolk’s historic downtown with rich country, folk and blues tunes.
One Falls Village couple kicked off some dancing. People lingered in their parked cars, or sat in circles around the band’s setup.
As 4:30 p.m. approached, the cloud unleashed a downpour, ending the show.
The Friends of Robertson Plaza is planning a fall festival on Sept. 28.