Garlic scapes, fennel and tomatoes over pasta

After I posted that I was eating garlic scapes for dinner, a friend asked me how I cooked them, so I wrote this up. It's not really a recipe, but more like my cooking methodology - if you can call it that.

This was very much a last minute, make-it-up-as-you-go dinner. That's what happens when you live alone and don't plan your meals in advance. It sounds horribly disorganized, but sometimes great things come from experiments like this. Many of my favorite dishes have resulted from me just throwing ingredients in with no plan.

I had garlic scapes* from the garden, and my fennel was getting bushy as well. I figured maybe I should cut the fronds on the fennel back a bit so that more energy would go into the bulb. (I love fennel, and have tried to grow it in the past, but never had any decent bulb, so I'm happy to report that it looks like it was a success this year.)

Several people had told me that garlic scapes can be eaten just like asparagus, so I thought I'd cut them up and saute them in butter, since butter always seems to improve garlic. The scapes looked a little lonely in the pan, and not much like a meal, so I decided maybe I should make a more varied veggie dish over pasta. I walked into the back yard and cut a big frond of fennel, chopped it up, and threw it in as well. Then, so pull it together and make it more sauce-like, I chopped up a few tomatoes and threw them in. Salt and pepper are often the only spices that are needed with veggies this flavorful, so that's all I added. OK, I actually also added a little bit of balsamic vinegar, which I find is like salt - it brings out the flavor in foods.

After the pasta was all cooked up, and I dumped the veggies in top, I decided that the parmesan cheese just wasn't rich enough, so first I added a bit of olive oil, and then a little cottage cheese to make it extra creamy.

Yup, that was just perfect.

The following day I made a similar dish, but this time just the veggies, salt, pepper, olive oil, and vinegar in foil on the grill. Very tasty and quick addition to the burger and brats.

*More on garlic scapes.

It's the most dangerous time of the year....

As I ride around town every August, I have that holiday song, "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year" going through my head, but with new words, as noted in the title of this post.

The highest crash rate for bicyclists in Madison is late August and the month of September. This is due in part to all the new bicyclists showing up each year. Many undergraduates have heard that the best way to get around town is by bike. "Don't bring your car!" is written in very large letter - three times - in the materials on transportation given to all new students coming to the UW.

The problem is that many 18 year-olds, and even older bicyclists that are riding around Madison for the first time, haven't learned to do it right. American teenagers often give up riding a bike when they are about 13 - about the age when they can really start to understand how to negotiate traffic safely. It's not cool to ride a bike around town when you are in high school, and you start to have friends with a drivers license. So the Freshmen coming to Madison haven't been on a bike, except maybe on a trail or in a group, since they were truly kids.

And there are also many people moving to Madison that aren't used to a real city. Although Madison is still considered only a mid-sized city in population, our downtown and campus area operates much more like a bigger city because of density, urban design, and traffic congestion. So even if the new bicyclists are used to riding in the street, they may not know how to ride in urban traffic.

These two factors - no adult experience on a bike and no experience in urban riding - cause new Madison bicyclists to make all sorts of mistakes: riding the wrong way, riding without lights, riding on the sidewalk, riding unpredictably, turning without looking for cars or signaling, etc. After awhile, they either learn to ride correctly (more or less) or they give up on biking in Madison. The crash rate goes down either way.

But there is another factor that may contribute to the crash rate. And it certainly makes biking harder and more stressful for those of us used to Madison's patterns: There are a whole bunch of new drivers in town.

Parents are dropping off the kids at the dorms, trying to find a parking spot or just generally lost. Late summer tourists looking for the Farmers Market or Monona Terrace are confused by the one-way streets and inner and outer loops of the Capitol. New faculty, graduate students, or staff trying to find their way around their new home. And then those new students: young, excited to be on their own, impulsive, and completely clueless that driving is sort of a pain in the ass in Madison. None of these groups are used to the many bicyclists, pedestrians, moped drivers, buses, and general confusion and congestion of our downtown and campus.

We veterans of the Isthmus know that W. Dayton ends at both Camp Randall and the Overture Center, that you can't drive a private car on State St, that there is both a King St and Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd, that the diagonal streets to the Square are one way, that bicyclists are likely to be sneaking up on the right side where there is a bike lane and riding on the sidewalk everywhere, and when traveling west on E Johnson from First St, the name of the street changes to Gorham -> University Ave -> Campus Dr -> University Ave.

We also know that there is construction everywhere, and the Isthmus makes both driving and parking a dicey and slow process.

But many of the newbies and visitors don't know any of these things, and they are lost, confused, stressed out and distracted by all the activity. That makes for lots of mistakes on their part, and a dangerous situation for those of us using less protected modes of travel.

To the veteran bicyclists and walkers, I urge patience and caution. You can tell when a driver is not a local. There's car "body language" as surely as there is human body language. Be especially careful when someone is going slow, drifting about in their lane, or the car is filled with furniture and luggage. These people are about to make a sudden turn without signaling or turn the wrong way on a one-way street. Try to wave with all your fingers and smile instead of yelling.

The visitors are probably not going to see this post, but in case it gets passed along to new residents, my advice is to park the car as soon as you can and walk. Really, it's faster than looking for a parking spot. Please remember that you must yield to pedestrian in the crosswalk, and bicyclists both have a right to the road and also are likely going as fast as you are in traffic. No matter where you lived before, Madison has a different traffic rhythm, and a different mix of road users. It's slow going in the car, and it's sort of confusing as well. Did I mention that walking might be easier?

Free food on Fridays - delivered by bike

Yummy fresh produce, courtesy of the folks at the F.H. King Student Farm, is delivered by bike and given away each Friday at 1 PM on Library Mall.

I think I heard about this, and then forgot until today. There I was, enjoying a little lunch from the food kiosks, and here comes a woman on a bike, with a long bed trailer and eight 18-gallon plastic totes full of fresh produce.

Within a couple of minutes, more people come by with more veggies, a table and banner.

I had just stopped to take a few photos of how much stuff can be carried by bike, and asked what was up. "Oh, we give away produce every Friday."

I grabbed some great big bulbs of garlic, since mine's not ready yet. And fennel, which in now making my backpack smell like anise.

Raising monarchs

Another post to mull the natural world and enjoy urban nature.

I'm raising monarch butterflies again. There is quite a bit of common milkweed in my front yard, and some swamp milkweed in the backyard. I think the common variety just showed up uninvited, but I'm thrilled to have it because I love to have monarchs flitting through the yard, and milkweed is the only plant where the female will lay eggs, and they only plant the caterpillars will eat. The swamp milkweed works too, but the common milkweed is larger, sturdier, and I can pick the leaves and stems without significantly reducing the overall plant population. And the caterpillars eat a lot when they get big.

Wild visitors to the Walnut St greenhouses

Among of the wonderful things about bicycling are the things you see at slow speed and the ability to stop and enjoy them. It is difficult to stop on a busy street to greet a friend when you are driving,  but it's pretty easy on a bike. You can see the funny, sad, beautiful, and weird things that exist in your community, but are often missed as we rush about encased in our metal boxes.

Biking home along the campus Lakeshore Path I have had many of these special experiences, although they usually involve wildlife of view of the lake instead of other humans. I have seen migrating tundra swans, otters (or some large, weasel-shaped animal that ran in front of me), and nesting great-horned owls. I've been dive-bombed by angry redwing blackbirds, heard those owls calling to their young in the dark, watched the willows sway and bend as a storm rolls in, and laughed at the gulls lined up in rows on the deck of a boat moored in University Bay. The color of the lake and sky just after sunset as I bike west is an entrancing mix of blue, pink, purple, and indigo that paint could never capture. That color draws me in every time, and seems impossibly rich.

But last night my joyous moment happened a bit away from the lake. As I headed south on Walnut, past the greenhouses, I noticed a couple of visitors headed east on Observatory. They strolled along the grass and then peered into the greenhouse windows, walking between the low brick wall and the glass building. One stayed on the grass, and was harassed by a pair of redwing blackbirds that were likely nesting nearby. They seemed much more bothered by the other birds than by me, as I followed them on my bike at a discreet distance.

Aldo Leopold, while a professor here in Madison, on seeing a sandhill crane flying overhead once told a graduate student, "Take a good look at that crane, because you may never see one again." He wrote about the dwindling crane population in Marshland Elegy: 

Someday, perhaps in the very process of our benefactions, perhaps in the fullness of geologic time, the last crane will trumpet his farewell and spiral skyward from the great marsh. High out of the clouds will fall the sound of hunting horns, the bang of the phantom pack, the tinkle of little bells, and then a silence never to be broken - unless perchance in some far pasture of the Milky Way. 

Fortunately, we stopped many of the practices that were dooming the cranes, and now they are so common that they wander our urban parks and even mowed lawns on the UW campus. We stopped draining the wetlands and marshes, became more careful about the chemicals we put into the environment, and stopped hunting threatened species. But we are still harming the natural world in ways that will doom more species. 

Finally, the visitors left the greenhouses and paused on the grass near the parking lot for a bit. The light was fading, and they seemed perfectly at home wandering the campus, so I went on my way with another memory of the little moments made possible by quiet, clean, healthy, human-powered transportation.