If you’re local (and maybe even if you’re not), you might be interested in following the progress of one Michelle Ryan, a local dee jay who decided she wanted to go as locavore as possible (that is, eat food mostly procured at Market at the Square and the other stuff from local-as-possible sources) for the month of September. She’s on from 9-2 weekday mornings at 94.5, and she also blogs about it at The Farmer and Michelle. It’s been a solid project, plus it’s cool to see Michelle out at the Market with her friend/shopping assistant, figuring out how much they can spend and stay within budget.

Market season is winding down a bit (only 9 Saturdays left), but there’ll be a lot of programming for kids in October. I’ve been really busy trying to finish off this year, but also with planning for next year. I dream in site maps and fancy Word docs at night.

So, let’s talk about this year’s garden for a few minutes, shall we?

[Oh, hi. My name’s Lisa, and I used to blog here on a regular basis. Remember? The one who writes about… well, about nothing much, really, these days? Her? That one? I plan to start writing about something(s), but good intentions are really just that, and I can’t commit, so just know that I would like to start posting more and maybe I will.]

OK, so, the garden. It would be easy to say the garden isn’t doing well, for to my jaundiced eye, it looks like crap, though Lilly helpfully pointed out that most people would not see it the way I see it. I see plants that don’t belong/fading flowers/rotting vegetables, and most people see foliage sprinkled in with lots of pretty flowers and interesting vegetables and they gush and gush when they see it, and it is not the faux gushing of the pitying, but the real gushing of the impressed.

That is all well and good, but the fact remains that a) I haven’t gotten much out of the garden this year and b) I have Made Errors, stupid ones. It’s ironic, really, that the person who oversees a very large and very foody farmers’ market - me - is more intimate with what’s going on at the farms of its vendors than with what’s going on in her own raised beds. I mean, the peppers above exemplify this.

Back when I was starting seeds in my basement (February, right after we returned from Florida), I made a lot of noise to my family about taking great care to label things correctly, and it really was important to me that I do so, but there was some fervency missing in this year’s garden preps. We had had a lot of snow over the winter and the garden, ignored the previous fall and left to its own stalky devices, was a mess; I guess maybe I subconsciously felt that there was no way we’d get it up to speed. I planted some sweet peppers in the flat and labeled them thus; I planted some Wenk’s Yellow Hots and labeled them thus, and stuck the whole mess under grow lights, where it flourished. I’m not sure what really happened, but after everything was planted out and the plants were growing with great vigor, then flowering, then fruiting, it became clear that my previous attention to detail was nothing of the sort. I had one sweet pepper plant, and approximately twelve hot pepper plants. Twelve beautiful, awesome, green, leafy, covered in fruit hot pepper plants.

A couple of weeks ago, I ran across this recipe using hot peppers from the wonderful humans over at Homegrown Evolution:

Lyn, a reader in Canada with way too many hot peppers on hand, asked us what we thought we should do with them. We have the same problem here this year, an overabundance of very large, hot Italian Long Peppers. Thumbing through some recipe books we realized that we had all the ingredients to make Harissa, a spicy Moroccan condiment. The recipe is simple and quick. We cut open five of our hot peppers, discarded the seeds, and combined them in a food processor with: 1 tsp salt 1 tsp cumin 1 tsp caraway seeds 2 tsp coriander seeds 1 tsp fresh mint 3 garlic cloves Turn on the food processor and add enough olive oil to form a paste. That’s it. Harissa will last several weeks in the fridge or you can freeze it. You could also can it, but you’ll need a pressure canner as this is a low-acid food (even though it’s fiery).

Tomorrow is Harissa Day.

In other news: We’re selling the Blazer, I think Sarah Palin looks like Shania Twain (but is many times more dangerous), and I’m turning forty in just a few weeks. Life is damn good.

Trivia: I read all the fall fashion issues of magazines (and internalize them, sort of), I don’t feel the need to can or otherwise preserve every last fruit and vegetable I run across, and, well, I enjoy watching sports on teevee.

With that, it’s time for ice cream.