Sophisticated palate

Jack Deatherage

"I'm amazed by your sophisticated palate."
  - Mocks the Texas Homesteader.

(12/2021) I laugh and quickly Google "sophisticated palate". It means you can taste slight nuances in food and detect one flavor from another.

Hmm. Is one who churns up a patch of yard to plant specific cultivars of tomatoes, cabbages, peppers, beans, taters and garlic- each with known flavors, fragrances and texture profiles actually unsophisticated?

Ignoring another of the Texan's accurate remarks, "But you eat very little of what you grow", I continue wondering, does kitchen experimenting with said homegrown produce lend some credibility to my having a sophisticated palate? Probably not. The Texan, like the Mad American-Bulgarian, is known to spend much of a day preparing elaborate, multicourse meals selected from the world's cuisines. I'm more likely to spend less than an hour fixin' my vittles.

The Texan once chidingly remarked something along the line of, "So you turn up your nose at beans, rice and corn? Billions of people around the world survive on little more than those foods and you're too good to bother with them even as side dishes?"

I remember carping one evening- before Dad took most of the family to Florida -that I was tired of eating beans and fatback after seeing it served for supper several days straight. Dad, in a rare moment of magnanimity, allowed I hadn't reason to complain until I'd eaten beans eight days a week. I asked someone to pass me the corn bread. To this day I'm fond of neither corn bread, or beans and fatback.

Currently, as inflation eats into our grocery money- just as it had the family's budget back in the mid to late 1970s -I find myself less interested in meats, especially given how flavorless most of them are these days. I begin eyeing dry beans. Not that inflation hasn't hit the supermarket bean shelves as hard as it has the meat counters! However, a 30% increase in the price of a pound of dried pintos is less jaw dropping than the same percentage increase in price per pound of New York strip steak!

With the trees gone from the yard the DW jumps up on the Princess Tree stump and says, "Boy. Let me tell you what. This yard's a mess, and you're gonna help clean it up. Or you'll get you-know-what!"

Putting her favored clematis vines between us, I "Yes dear" her and manage to ask what she wants me to help her plant before she can fire up old Balor. Sometimes I'm clever, sometimes.

"Flowers! Lots of flowers." She smolders. Which brings to mind Dictamnus albus. A large clump of which planted in the yard would be entertaining when people foolishly visit. I could aggravate the DW (how could I not?) and as she glares at me I'd be all, "No. No! Don't unleash Balor of the evil eye on me!" I'd strike a match near the plants which give off a vaporous oil that ignites in a brief flame. Or, maybe not.

I suggest we build an culinary herb garden.

"Flowers." Still glaring.

"I want at least a ten by ten garlic bed." I mumble.

"Flowers."

Hmm. I think I need to distract her.

We recently bought a pound of cranberry beans- first time. I used them to make a pork stew (dry rubbed picnic shoulder, no fatback). The DW and I both liked it well enough. Perhaps enough to justify stocking up on the beans to help extend our grocery money? I make that suggestion.

Her "flowers" retort halts. "Those were good beans. They'd taste even better homegrown?"

"Doesn't most everything else we've grown?"

"Okay. Beans. And flowers."

Cool! I start searching online catalogs for cranberry beans. I'm hoping they's a short season bush bean 'cause our current favorite dried bean is Rio Zape, a pole variety out of the southwest.

Rio Zape beans (I've got a quart of them put away for eating and some more for growing out next summer) hint of chocolate and coffee- who knew dry beans could have actual flavor? Given the few vines I grew this year, and how I grew them (3-gallon cloth buckets, Summer Creek Farm potting mix, overly crowded fencing in a part of the yard that didn't get full sun and most of the pods not dry when the first frost hit) I'm impressed with the harvest. I hope to shell out a gallon's worth of these next year.

As with most stuff garden related, trying to track down anything specifically can be a challenge. Wikipedia reports the cranberry bean- a common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris), as heralding from Colombia, South America and reaching North America via Italy where it is called Borlotto Lingua di Fuoco (Tongue of Fire). This would likely have been the bean we found in the supermarket.

Territorial Seed Company (TSC) says their cranberry bean arrived from England and is "the pinnacle of quality in a horticultural bean". Near as I can tell, the English got horticultural beans from the French? Where they got them I haven't a clue. The TSC bean isn't the cranberry bean we bought locally.

Supposedly, horticultural beans have a mild, nutty flavor. I'm cool with that. I'll add them to my growing list of bean varieties I'm thinking I'll trial next year. At least they're bush varieties that mature in 90 days. The Rio Zape pole beans that still weren't ready for harvest when the first frost showed up two weeks late this year took 150+ days?

I turn to ransacking all my usual bean sources: Vermont Bean Seed Company, Adaptive Seeds, Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Company, Victory Seeds, Annie's Heirloom Seeds, Johnny's Selected Seeds, Southern Exposure Seed Exchange and Seed Savers Exchange. All have some dry bean variety that catches my eye- I like pretty beans as much as I do the culinary use of them. But I know how my "want" list ends up being drastically pared down to a "need" list, then to a "can afford" list and eventually it becomes a "what I'll actually plant" list. Heck, I'm looking at the 2021 catalogs, so all my wants are likely to change by February when the 2022 catalogs are all out!

"What about my flowers?" The room gets noticeably warmer. Drat. Is she spying on my web searches? Nope. She just knows how I get when planning a garden.

"Umm... Clitoria ternatea?"

Wow. That raises the temperature a bit! (Which is good for the Russian hybrid gloxinia seeds I'm trying to sprout.)

"Clitoria? Just what is that?"

"Urr... the common name is 'blue butterfly pea', but the scientific name is more interesting. You know those 18th century scientists were practical men who-"

"We'll refer to it as 'blue butterfly pea', because you're probably mispronouncing it anyhow."

"Yes dear."

Clitor- umm... 'blue butterfly pea' is said to have sedative properties as well as it's being used as a dye. I know some bread builders who use it to color their crumb. Maybe I can use it to color egg noodles? Or make a tea to calm the DW down a bit?

Oops. That's gonna leave a scar.