18 June 2009

Arugula, Beets or Hakurei turnips, Bok choi, Garlic scapes, Kohlrabi, Lettuce, Mustard greens, Scallions, Basil, Mint

 Hi there folks!  How are you doing this evening?  My name’s Thomas, and I will be your farmer tonight.  Can I start you off with something to drink?  Perhaps a mint/basil syrup and bourbon cocktail garnished with a slice of kohlrabi?  Some water?  Tap or rain?

Let me tell you about tonight’s specials.  This week the farm is offering a very fresh, very tender kohlrabi.  It is presented with a few kohlrabi leaves, kohlrabi skin, and just a touch of greenhouse dirt enriched with compost.

We also have some very nice garlic scapes, hand harvested from the tops of garlic plants and arranged in curlicues for no obvious reason.  You will find they have a flavor very reminiscent of garlic, with a not so subtle garlic aroma and a garlicky finish.

Our mustard greens of the day are mustard greens.  They are being served in an assortment of shapes and colors. 

For lettuce we have either red oakleaf, red leaf or green boston.  The farm chooses the one it thinks will suit you best.  They are all being done en tete this evening.

There’s a lovely arugula with rubber band, which I think is just terrific.  I could eat it all the time.

If you are in the mood for roots, perhaps you would enjoy beets or turnips with their greens. 

The scallions are just in.  I have not had a chance to try them yet, but they look absolutely terrific.

For an Asian twist, we have a hefty artisanal bok choi with contrasting leaf and stem textures.  

And finally, for herbivores we have mint and basil. 

Unless somebody already drank them.

But enough silliness.  You don’t want a joke; you want a recipe.  Fair enough.  So take equal parts sugar and water and stir together in a pot. Put over medium heat and slowly bring to a boil, stirring until all the sugar has dissolved.  As soon as the mix comes to a boil, turn the heat all the way down and simmer for five minutes.  Take the syrup off the heat and add basil and mint leaves.  Let the herbs steep until the mixture has cooled and then strain them out.  Put roughly equal quantities of good bourbon and syrup in a glass, add ice, stir and sip.  A few of those and I think you will find all your worries about how to prepare bok choi ebbing away.

And if that does not work you can try going to the farm website, theallegedfarm.com, and checking the recipe section to see if there are any good ideas there.  Or try adding more bourbon to your next drink.

Perhaps, though, you already have a good bok choi (or mustard green or garlic scape or kohlrabi or cocktail (or kohlrabi cocktail)) recipe, something you think other members might appreciate as they nurse a drink and mull over the array of vegetables on their kitchen counter.  If you send it to me I will add it to the recipe collection on the website.

In addition to recipes, you will also be able to get newsletters from the website and information about farm events, such as our farm days and fall open house/pie contest.  I am still figuring out the dates for most of these, but I can say that the first farm day will be on Sunday, July 19^th.  It will be a chance for you to come and see where those kohlrabis come from and meet the farm crew (well, not Josh; he’s off to Alaska in a couple of days to fish for salmon) and maybe find out just how much fun you can have while weeding onions.  I will remind you of the date and offer further details in future newsletters.  

In the meantime, in this newsletter I will offer further details about those garlic scapes since I know I have not put a recipe for them on the website and I recognize that it might not be immediately apparent what you should do with them other use them in some sort of children’s game.  While they make fine toys, they make a better sauce.  Just cut them into 2 inches pieces and put them in a blender with about ¼ cup olive oil, ¼ cup grated parmesan, salt, pepper, a few hot pepper flakes, a splash of vinegar and some basil leaves and puree until you have a smooth sauce.  You can use it on pasta or grilled meat and fish or as a dip for vegetables, such as slices of kohlrabi.  You can also just cut them into pieces and sauté them in olive oil over medium low heat with a generous amount of salt until they have started to go a little brown in spots and are somewhat tender.  They have the texture of good green beans and a sweet garlic flavor.  Some of those, perhaps a few sautéed turnips and scallions or some steamed bok choi, a nice green salad with arugula; sounds like a good meal to me. 

Are you ready to order?

30 October 2008

Arugula, Carrots, Cress, Escarole or radicchio, Garlic, Kale, Onions, Parsnips, Potatoes, Sage, Shallots, Turnips, Winter squash

This is the way the season ends

This is the way the season ends

This is the way the season ends

Not with a bang but a whimper

 

Me and Mike whimpering, that is. 

Not that a bang would necessarily have provided a better ending to the season.  I guess it would depend on what went off.  Most of the time, though, when things around here end with a bang it is not so good.

Given the choice, I would have ended not with a bang or a whimper, but with a stretch of warm, dry weather.  It would not even have had to be all that warm to satisfy me.  Merely average temperatures would have sufficed.  That and a little less snow.

On the other hand, this weather leaves little doubt in one’s mind (in mine, anyway) that the farming season has come to a close.  On the few occasions in recent years when we have had really terrific fall weather it has been harder to call a halt to farming.  The remaining crops in the field (and we always have things left out there in various states of development) all seem to have real potential.  This is largely an illusion.  By this point in the year, with short days and cold nights, most crops cannot do anything more than hang on.  If they have not gotten big enough to pick by the end of October they probably won’t ever, no matter how delightful the weather.  I am fully aware of this, but it still feels like one is giving up on the vegetables.

I don’t have to worry about that feeling bothering me this time.  We may not have stripped the fields clean of every harvestable vegetable and there are rows of crops that just did not have time to grow.  But many of them will not have survived this weather and those that have will feel disinclined to put much further effort into sticking around.  In other words, there won’t be much left to give up on.

That does not mean I end this season without regrets.  I doubt I will ever have a season good enough to leave me fully satisfied (or expectations modest enough that I could satisfy them).  Certainly this was not that season.  I never had the workers, weather or back to do nearly all I meant to accomplish.  At some point it became clear that getting done what absolutely had to be done would be work enough.  Planting cover crops, repairing greenhouses, beefing up deer fence, installing drain tile, building a potato hiller, redoing the hay mow floor; I don’t even remember all the tasks I had in mind that we never got to. And then there were the crops that disappointed, the carrots perhaps foremost among them, but rutabagas, broccoli, cabbage, eggplant, cucumbers and winter squash also certainly worthy (or do I mean unworthy?) of mention.  Something always does poorly (hard to avoid when you grow this many crops), but the bizarrely cold June nights and relentless rain in July put extra strain on any number of crops.  I don’t know that I have ever seen eggplants look as seriously aggrieved as ours did by the end of June and the carrots never got over the rain. 

That said, I hardly think we need apologize for this season.  If we were not brilliant we were at least good enough.  We delivered a lot of vegetables over the course of the twenty weeks, including some very fine beans, piles of tomatoes, a steady supply of potatoes and enough garlic to keep flocks of vampires at bay.  Not to mention the occasional kohlrabi (oops, I just mentioned it).  Not being on the receiving end, I am unqualified to say how good it all looked coming out of the bag, but I think most of it looked fairly good going in, though I confess I may have exercised less that ideal oversight for much of July and early August.  I hope we, unlike the carrots, did not disappoint.

Perhaps, though, despite everything you already got, you feel the need for a few more vegetables.  Well, we happen to have a few crops for sale.  In addition to the ones listed below, we may have some other, such as beets and kale.  Let us know if you are interested in an unlisted crop (and in what quantity) and I will let you know if we can supply it.  Please send orders via e-mail (Thomas@theallegedfarm.com) by November 20^th for delivery on the 24^th (or you can pick up your order from the farm).  Orders of $75 or more get a 10% discount.

 

Onions                                                $1.50/lb

Shallots                                              $5.00/lb

Garlic                                                  $8.00/lb

Potatoes                                             $1.50/lb

Parsnips                                             $2.75/lb

Rutabagas*                                        $2.00/lb

Carrots, mixed colors*                      $2.25/lb

Celeriac*                                             $3.00/lb

                        *modest quantities available 

In addition to the crops for sale, we also have a few out in the field that we would like to send to Community Action for distribution through their food pantry and various soup kitchens.  If you would like to help pick these crops please let me know.  You will be getting dirty for a good cause, and as thanks from me you will get a 5% discount on your storage crop order.

Speaking of thanks from me, I am as always grateful for your commitment to this unlikely enterprise.  I trust that you have found your support for local sustainable agriculture as rewarding as we have and that you have eaten well.  Thank you.     

23 October 2008

Red bok choi, Cabbage, Daikon, Garlic, Leeks, Lettuce, Onions, Poblano pepper, Potatoes, Rutabaga

          We have spent a lot of money looking for life in the universe.  Or, to be more precise, intelligent life.  Sure it is kind of exciting to discover a drip of water on some other planet’s surface or possibly even traces of ancient bacteria on a rock from space.  But exciting in a slight dry academic sort of way, like when someone finds more digits of psi or a really big prime number.  You can appreciate the work that went into it, the hard science, the theoretical ramifications.  But it doesn’t really make you want get a new outfit and throw a party.  It doesn’t really change anything.  We are not sending all those probes out into deep space just to find we share the universe with interstellar mold.

         We want friends.  Smart friends.  Cool friends.  Aliens with great ideas about stuff that matters, like how to pull off nuclear fusion, how to save the panda, how to eat cheese without getting fat.  We are willing to put up with some pretty strange stuff like extra arms or eyes on stalks just as long as we can have a new pal in the neighborhood, someone to hang out with who will understand how tough it is for a sensitive person to put up with a galaxy like this.

         It is unclear what makes us think we will run into creatures like this out there.  Even if they have existed on some other planet, there’s no particular reason to believe they will be around when we make contact.  We have had life of one sort or another on this planet for around three billion years and, unless we have seriously underestimated dinosaurs, the possibility (and I stress the word possibility) of good conversation for all of ten thousand of those years.  Given our current behavior, it will be something of a miracle if that possibility lasts another hundred centuries, and it is hard to say how long it will be before it appears again.  Meaning the chances of coming across intelligent life on our own planet at a randomly chosen moment in its history are pretty lousy.    

         But let’s say we get lucky, run into someone out there with something to say.  Given our own experiences with social interaction, why on earth would we think they will want to have anything to do with us.  Oh sure, they’ll be polite, express the usual pro forma delight over running into us, what a pleasant surprise, so nice to see us, gosh we’re looking well, have we lost some weight, love what we’ve done with the planet.  But when we, needy little creatures, press them about getting together again for dinner they’ll get that evasive look, say it sounds great, they’ll have to check with the wife, things are really busy right now, you know how it is, let’s get in touch, and they’ll still be making that universal hand to ear (or whatever it is they have that pass for hands and ears) I’ll phone you gesture as they hop into the spaceship and rush off.

         Why even bother?  Who needs to be humiliated by a bunch of snooty aliens too cool to hang out with us?  Let’s forget the whole thing, spend that money on our own planet.  God knows it could use some help.  With that kind of money, even without the help of extraterrestrials, we could find better ways to generate electricity, clean up rivers, provide basic health care for kids, build schools, teach people to farm properly, all of which would help us here and now.  Plus if any aliens every do drop in they are a hell of a lot more likely to stick around and share their ideas with us if we have kept the place looking decent. 

         Perhaps when they get here they will be able to tell me how to get reliable crops of rutabagas.  Some years rutabagas work (too well, even), some they don’t work at all (I once harvest a grand total of two rutabagas from four hundred bed feet of perfectly healthy plants).  They are somewhere in between this season, but definitely on the less productive end of the scale.  Which I know comes as a great disappointment to you.  You’ve been waiting all season for a really big rutabaga and all you get is this runt of a root.  Hardly enough to go around if the aliens decide to stay for dinner (I have a strange feeling aliens would like rutabagas).  I trust the daikon will help to ease the pain. 

Plus you have that red bok choi.  I know it is not a big rutabaga, but it looks good and probably even tastes good too.  I don’t know for sure.  I have never eaten one.  It is unusual for me to hand out something I have never tried (yes, I have actually eaten rutabagas and daikon).  But they were a total failure last year—the whole bed bolted before they sized up—and we only just picked these.  At least I know now to wait and grow them in the fall (figured that out all by myself, no help from aliens).

We still have one or two other crops that seem to do well in this weather, a couple of greens, some parsnips, a last bed of carrots.  Enough, together with the storage crops in the barn, to do one more week of the share.  Next Thursday’s delivery will be the last of the season.  We will have some storage crops for sale after the season (mostly onions, shallots, garlic and potatoes).  I will send out a price list next week and if we get a reasonable number of orders we will do a delivery shortly before Thanksgiving.  Or you can come out to the farm to get your order. 

We also have several rows of potatoes that need to be harvested for Community Action’s food pantry.  Anyone interested in helping with that project should get in touch with me about coming out to dig potatoes.  And if you have any aliens staying with you feel free to bring them along.  Since they’re so smart maybe they will know how to get potatoes out of the ground without getting themselves dirty. 

        

  

9 October 2008

Eggplant, Garlic, Leeks, Lettuce, Mustard greens, Peppers, Kennebec potatoes, Hot peppers, Rosemary, Tatsoi, Tomatoes

It is time again for my once a year stint as a caterer for the local land trust’s landscape exhibit preview party.  Consequently, instead of writing a normal newsletter tonight, I need instead to make venison pate, cook down some onions, roast tomatoes, make a spicy marinade for pork cubes and possibly start on some puff pastry.

I am afraid I cannot invite you to the preview party, at least not unless you express a sincere and credible desire to make a major donation to the land trust or to purchase a few pieces of art (those wishing to express either desire should get in touch with me as soon as possible).  I can, however, invite you to the opening party the next day, and you are free to attend (and attend for free) without giving or buying anything—though I would encourage you to do either or both.  Your donation and a portion of the price of your art would support the work of the Agricultural Stewardship Association, which works (successfully) to protect farmland and ensure the viability of farming in Washington and Rensslaer counties.  ASA holds a conservation easement on a portion of our farm (including the fields where some of you weeded carrots, peppers, eggplants and onions), meaning that nobody can ever build on that land.  Everybody in the region benefits from such easements, which help a vital part of the economy, encourage the local production of food, protect natural resources and preserve a beautiful landscape. 

If you want to know more about the art exhibit or ASA, go to agstewardship.org.  I strongly encourage you to come to the show and to take a look around the area.  I would encourage you to drop in at the farm too, but I won’t be there.  I won’t be at the art show either.  Greg and Andrea, who worked here in 2006 and 2007 are getting married on Saturday so we will be at their wedding. 

Before returning to my cooking tasks I offer a few notes about the vegetables in your bag.  Your eggplant is, I know, rather small.  Consider it a final adieu to summer.  We stripped down the plants just before the first frost.  Fortunately the tatsoi (the head of dark green spoon shaped leaves) could care less about frost.  In fact, it may taste better after one.  It definitely tastes better after you steam if and top with soy sauce, vinegar, garlic and hot sauce (though it is tasty raw).  You can have the mustard greens (in the bag) raw or cooked.  I like to put some in a salad (or have a purely mustard salad).  At this point in the season, the tomatoes might taste better cooked.  The weakening sun has lost much of its power to produce sugar in fruits.  The potatoes definitely taste better cooked than raw.  The real question with potato varieties is which cooking method suits them best. I am told Kennebecs make fine baked potatoes, but they are considered general purpose spuds so you can do with them what you want, such as making a leek and potato soup with rosemary or a garlic-infused gratin.

16 October 2008

Arugula, Carrots, Garlic, Kohlrabi, Lemon grass, Lettuce, Onions, Peppers, Anaheim peppers, Potatoes, Radishes (red) or turnips (white), Shallots, Winter squash

I thought I would write about presidential debates, about how with their array of highly stylized tradition costumes, scripts, gestures and intonations they remind me not so much of keen intellectual combat as of Javanese shadow puppet theater.  Except that we sit and listen raptly to these often tedious political theatrics, while the Javanese understand that such shows only require intermittent and often half-hearted attention because surely they will occur again in much the same form the next time you go to pick up some fish.   

            But then I got a cold and my brain turned to mush, precluding any possibility of extended, grumpy comparative ethnographic commentary.  Though come to think of it the mushy brain syndrome could have set in when in a moment of weakness I turned on the debate and caught a couple of minutes of the two candidates arguing over which one of them is less faithful to his party’s principles, such unpredictability apparently being considered an asset.  I should have stuck to baseball.

            Whatever the cause, at present my brain can barely distinguish between a radish and a turnip.  Those of you better equipped to do so my be interested to note that to some extent it does not matter if you mix them since you can eat both raw or cooked and both have edible greens.  Madhur Jaffrey has a recipe from Uttar Pradesh for radishes cooked with their leaves in A Taste of India (and I would guess you could substitute turnips for radishes and end up with much the same dish).

            You may be thinking, depending on what is in your bag, that I have had similar trouble telling the difference between a winter squash and a pumpkin.  In fact, however, there is not really any difference.  The various sorts of winter squash and pumpkins all belong to a small number of Cucurbita species.  As it happens, pie pumpkins and Acorn squash are both Cucurbita Pepos and thus more closely related to one another then they are to, say, a Butternut (cucurbita moschata).  In any event, you cook them in exactly the same ways, my preferred method being to place the whole squash in the oven and bake it until it goes soft, then scoop out the flesh and puree it with a little cream and butter, a bit of nutmeg, a dash of paprika and perhaps a little sherry.  You can use the puree to make soup, eat it just like that, or mix in an egg and bake it until it sets slightly.

            Many of you, finding a couple of grassy stalks in the bag, may have come to the reasonable conclusion that I have also failed to tell the difference between weeds and edible crops.  As it happens, those are grassy stalks, they are not edible and we put them in your bag on purpose.  No, we are not getting a little punchy at the end of the season.  While you would not want to eat lemon grass, you would want to use it in soup for its excellent flavor (one of the basic flavors of Thai cooking).  Snip it into smaller pieces and throw it in some stock with a fair amount of garlic, simmer for a while, add onion, carrots, pepper (sweet and of Anaheim), perhaps some potato cubes, maybe even a couple of radishes or turnips.  When the vegetables have cooked, add thinly sliced beef, fried shallots, some lime juice, fish sauce and perhaps some arugula and serve.

2 October 2008

Arugula, Shell beans, Garlic, Lettuce, Mizuna, Onion, Peppers, Hot peppers, Potatoes, Radicchio or escarole, Shallots, Tomatoes

         I would love to tell you all about how exactly to deal with those odd, seedy red beans or why I have included a couple of bunches of weeds in your share, but I am afraid I just don’t have time for that.  I must instead address an issue of some considerable urgency.  I cannot put it off or another week, but must bring it to your immediate attention.

            I am talking, of course, about the annual pie contest, which as you are all no doubt aware takes place this Sunday on the farm.  Obviously, none of you have actually made a pie yet.  Pies don’t keep well.  You are not going to win with a two day old entry.  But I feel sure that you have been giving your pie considerable thought.  You have been sifting through recipes, contemplating exciting new fruit combinations, going over in your mind just which subtle refinement will create the perfect flaky crust. 

I don’t mean to complicate this creative process, but I thought I should point out that while this is a pie contest, it is not necessarily a dessert pie contest.  Nobody has yet entered anything but a fruit pie (with apple, pumpkin and three berry winning).  But there’s no reason you could not.  For the purposes of the contest, a pie is a filling in a crust.  So you could enter a quiche or a tomato onion tart or even a spicy beef empanada. 

A greater range of pies would certainly provide the judges with a greater challenge.  It is far easier to assess the relative merits of two apple pies than of a lemon meringue pie and bacon leek quiche.  But please don’t limit your pie imagination for our sake.  Trust me, no matter what you bake, we will judge it. 

And oh yes, there’s also a fall open house the same day as the pie contest.  It is a chance for you to look around the fields, help pick potatoes or clean onions, meet the farm crew and other CSA members, share a potluck dinner and eat some pies.  We would love to see lots of you here on what’s forecast to be a lovely autumn day, and not just because we could use some help with the potatoes and onions.  We like to meet the people we grow this food for, to hear about what you do with it, to show you where it comes from, to answer your questions about it, to get your suggestions.  So we hope you will take this chance to visit the farm.  The farm tasks and tours start at 3 pm, with the potluck dinner around 6.  I would recommend warm clothes and sturdy footwear.

For those of you who cannot wait to come out to farm to learn about those beans, they are shell beans, more or less the fresh equivalent of dry beans.  Take the beans out of the pods and boil them for about 30 minutes until soft.  You can eat them hot or cold (they would be excellent in a salad with the weeds—arugula and mizuna—and a lemon garlic dressing, perhaps with a little shaved parmesan).

 

25 September 2008

Bok choi, Carrots, Eggplant, Garlic, Lettuce, Onions, Peppers, Ancho and Roberto’s Cuban Seasoning hot peppers, Fingerling potatoes, Tomatoes

I have been reminded this week why I should stick to gloomy news here.  I forgot myself last week and dared to suggest that despite a parade of incompetence (or incompetents), I had finally ended up with a few decent, happy workers and that together we would go forth in the golden autumnal sunlight to work vegetable wonders with the help of fecund mother nature, coaxing from the deep loam a parade of fall crops to delight and amaze you.  Or something roughly like that.  I might, in my giddy state, have gotten more carried away than that.

And now I must pay the price for this moment of uncharacteristic exuberance.  True, the weather has not turned abominable.  Yet.  But it will if it has to.  A little sleet or perhaps a good nor’easter.  There’s nothing quite like working in cold mud. 

That may not, however, be necessary.  The pests have already arrived.  I just tossed out trays of aphid-infested lettuce seedlings and the slugs have come out from wherever it is slugs spend time when not chewing up bok choi and Chinese cabbage.  The deer have found the celery root—and found it to their liking.  Apparently it makes a nice change from shell beans, of which they have not left themselves many to graze on. 

And that crew of workers?  Well, does one worker count as a crew?  I knew I would be down to two workers this week.  At least, I thought I knew.  But what I did not know was that Mike #2 would have to stay home with his kids because the day care provider had an accident.  I knew too that Mike #1 would not be in until Tuesday afternoon.  But I did not know that he would get stuck on the Deegan Expressway for three hours and not make it to work until Wednesday.

I have no particular objections to working alone.  In fact, sometimes I like having the farm to myself, like not having to think about what anyone else is doing or ought to be doing or ought not to be doing.  The pleasures of solitude notwithstanding, however, it is hard to avoid noting after a morning picking up two rows of fingerling potatoes how much quicker the job would have gone had four people been doing it instead of one.  I suppose it is nice to discover that I can pick just about all the vegetables for the share myself if I have to.  But I would have liked to get a few other tasks done and perhaps to have spent a little less of the past few days in various postures that while suitable to carrot pulling or pepper harvesting probably do not come highly recommended for people with back problems. 

 At least I found a few carrots to pull.  Or rather, to keep.  I must have pulled thousands of carrots from the bed I dug, but most of them were hardly large enough to get the attention of a starving rabbit.  I do not fully understand why it is such a bad year for carrots.  All that rain in July has something to do with it.  But they have had weeks to get over that and they are still sulking.  Maybe it is just their turn to slack off.  Last year the potatoes performed inexplicably poorly.  Whatever is irking the carrots, though, has nothing to do with them turning those odd colors.  The white and yellow ones are supposed to be white and yellow.

The eggplants did not have a much more spectacular year than the carrots, but that comes as less of a surprise.  I am well aware that they do not like this odd northern climate, especially the cold nights which leave them pining for their warmer native habitats.  Given how the plants look, I figured I should go ahead and pick every usable eggplant I could find.  They are hardly prize winners (whatever prize it is that eggplants win), but they will do as part of what is more or less a farewell to summer share.  The peppers and greenhouse tomatoes will still produce some fruit for another week or two (though now that I have said that they will probably be trampled by a herd of irritable giraffes or confiscated by Homeland Security personnel as part of an ongoing investigation into antipatriotic activities in the organic community).  But they too have begun to notice a slight arctic aspect to the weather, or perhaps they just see the leaves starting to turn and know the time has come to cede their place in the bags to hardier crops, to leeks and rutabagas and those odd Asian greens so attractive to slugs and even the occasional human (not that I have had a lot of problems yet with people attacking them—though now that I have said that I will probably find that some vegetarian collective has wreaked havoc on the tatsoi in the night). 

I don’t think the slugs—or many humans, come to think of it—pose a serious threat to the hot pepper crop.  But some sort of rodent does eat them.  Some sort of Mexican or Thai rodent, no doubt.  It cannot be anything native to this part of the world, where eating a hot pepper is considered about as foolish as voting for Democrats or trying to farm without pesticides.  I don’t know that I can say much to change your mind if you subscribe more to the local than the rodential view of hot peppers.  But I will try.  They taste good.  At least, the good ones do, and I think both of the varieties this week are good.  I am particularly pleased with these seasoning peppers (the tiny wrinkled red pepper), which I have not grown before.  The other seasoning pepper varieties I have grown just tasted like sweet peppers, but these taste like Habaneros—which is to say intriguingly, tropically fruity—without the scarring heat.  You could slice up and fry your fingerlings (they are especially good fried) and toss in some garlic and the seasoning pepper, finely chopped, a minute or two before taking the potatoes off the heat.  Or you could mix the garlic and seasoning pepper and some soy sauce with steamed bok choi.  Or use the pepper in salsa.  Or just follow the lead of those alien rodents and nibble on it.