Of Moms and Dou Miao
Farm Share Newsletter - May 14, 2023
Steven and Steven's mom over a bed of a choy in the spring of 2021.
Housekeeping
We are slated to begin delivering CSA shares on June 4! Look out for an email this week from us double-triple-checking your pickup spot. Instructions to come in the next email or two.
Of Moms and Dou Miao
Like many others, I saw my mom for the first time in a long time during the spring of 2021. We had just begun harvesting Tian Tian Farm's first succession of crops, ever, and we barely knew what we were doing.
In the weeks before my mom arrived, I would regularly text her photos of our in-season Asian greens, which to me looked vaguely familiar and totally foreign at the same time. I'd ask for cooking advice, for my own edification, but also for the sake of appearing competent at market. My mom offered the same answer every time.
How do I cook this yu choy (or as my mom would call it, you cai)?
"Stir fry"
How do I cook this a choy (A-tsai)?
"Stir fry"
What's the best way to cook this gai lan? (Jie lan)
"Stir fry"
For a second there, my mom's relationship with Tian Tian Farm mostly consisted of my unceremoniously dropping veggie pics in the family group chat and demanding instructions.
And for some reason my mom (and dad and sister, who are equally important in my life, but, well, today happens to be mother's day) still came out to see me and the farm.
It was one of the most profound weeks of my life, and I think my mom and I finally connected over Tian Tian Farm in a way we hadn't before. I'll just share one anecdote, in which my mom totally changed the way we handle one of our most important crops.
First, some background. When Elizabeth and I decided to focus on Asian vegetables, we were both most excited about growing pea shoots. As far as we were concerned, pea shoots, or doumiao, when lightly and quickly stir-fried with garlic, blow most other vegetable dishes out of the water.
Elizabeth harvesting pea shoots in a cover crop bed in 2023.Eyes set toward pea shoot heaven, Elizabeth and I bought a hilarious quantity of snow peas and seeded them liberally in a couple of beds. A few weeks later, when our pea shoots had grown about a foot tall, we clear-cut those beds like Weyerhaeuser on an Oregon hillside. The next day we showed up to our first-ever market in Ballard with cocky grins and, like, 10 bags of pea shoots that we hadn't tried eating ourselves. It wasn't until we tried cooking market leftovers that evening that we realized that they were nothing like the pea shoots of our childhoods. That is to say they were stringy. My stomach, full of stringy pea shoots, dropped.
Not long after this horrifying realization, my mom visits our farm. We are harvesting pea shoots again, maybe for the second time. Maybe the third. I ask her what we did wrong. My mom, not a farmer, takes a knife and intuitively slices straight through the most tender point of a handful of shoots and changes Tian Tian Farm and my understanding of plant growth forever.
Get the young stuff, my mom tells us in her own words and language. Don't let it "grow old," she says over and over.
Stay hydrated,
Steven