Market Veggies Make The Meal - EMWTTSFM -Sunday Concert Series Fills Woods and Hills - The Grape Report

Chicken-Fried Steak

The first several weeks of the Saturday Farmers Market remind me of the time before the pool opens. The anticipation of that first dive into the pool’s cold waters, stunning the senses, enveloping you in its primordial bath, reminding you of previous summers at the pool and the promise of a hot summer yet to be lived.

I get that same rush of anticipation when the market opens, and I know that soon there will be green beans and potatoes. And, if I’m very lucky, a tomato.

The green beans and potatoes for this meal came from Rhoad’s, where they seem to always be the first to bring the staples I treasure. First with strawberries, peaches, and green beans. The bean and potato treasures were cooked in chicken broth with a large dollop of bacon grease pulled from the quart jar that sits at my stove. Cooked until the potatoes were done, still firm. Can a boiled red potato be al dente?

As I placed the Rhoad’s potatoes and green beans into my shopping bag, I ran through ideas about the rest of the plate.

Bread and butter pickles from the Crazy Cucumber, sitting atop coleslaw with a fresh tomato slathered in mayonnaise and dusted with lemon pepper and salt. But the highlight would be the beans and potatoes.

I thought about Grandma Arnie sitting on the steps at the rear of her old country road home. She’s snapping off the ends of string beans before they were stringless. What we now know as stringless green beans emerged after food scientists performed their magical incantations over pistils and stamens to develop a bean that no longer requires snipping, twisting, and pulling to be made edible by removing a fibrous string that helped keep the bean pod firm, straight, and inedible without Grandma’s efficient fingers.

It’s unfortunate, perhaps sad, that fewer kids get to sit on the back steps with Grandma, “helping” her with the green beans and listening to the stories that come from a life in the country. A country that can be seen from the back steps. Tall pine trees swaying in the steady wind, a few sweet gum trees at the edge of the pine woods. A sagging, rusty fence whose posts have weathered and eroded away but still keep the cows inside their grassy domain, where one will bellow, making us wonder if it wants a sampling of the green beans or is just reminding us of its presence.

One chicken runs free through the yard, no one sure where it came from, but believe it was drawn to Grandma’s house for those days when she tossed the ends and strings of green beans into the yard for a fresh vegetable meal instead of grains and seeds.

It sometimes sits in the shade of the crepe myrtle tree that took root and grew from a branch Grandma used in her garden to anchor one end of the string fence used to hold up the runners for the string beans she was now making stringless.

There’s a shed with an overhang just large enough to hold a tractor or pickup truck. It now sits empty, with Grandma the only one in the house, which had earlier been home to families working on the surrounding beef cattle farm. The barn side of the shed housed a few rusty tools, including a shovel, rake, hammer, and hoe, remnants from its younger years.

The most used tool in the shed was a nail driven into a corner support post, an old set of sturdy hardware store pliers balanced on it. The nail’s head was snipped off and filed to a point so Grandma could slap a catfish onto it, freeing both hands to simplify the slippery and difficult cleaning process. Anyone who has ever tried to clean a catfish without using a nail to hold it so the scaleless skin could be pulled away with pliers has missed one of life’s greatest inventions.

The perfect plan for my Saturday Market meal would have been catfish from one of the cattle ponds on Grandma’s neighboring farm. That wasn’t going to happen. So I settled on the closest neighbor at the Saturday Market, beef from one of those cows that bellowed hunger or discontent in the nearby field.

Tier Three Heritage Products was sold out of cube steaks, which, at first, seemed to ruin my plan for chicken-fried steak instead of cornmeal-coated fried catfish. The suggested substitute was Beef Chuck Eye Rib Steak, a section of the cow located between the chuck and ribeye. It is usually ground into hamburger. Tier Three packages it as a less expensive steak substitute, making it a great choice for my meal.

Cube steak is typically made from the more fibrous cuts of meat, which are then tenderized by chopping or slicing to break down the fibers. The meat’s lack of marbling and lower fat content requires this type of tenderizing to make the steak more palatable.

I did the same wth the Chuck Eye Rib Steak with one great benefit. The marbling on the steak made the “cube steak” as tender as if it had been seared and cooked to medium-rare. Coated in flour and cornmeal, with salt and pepper, the steak fried perfectly, keeping its tender texture.

I would still prefer the catfish cooked by my Grandmother, but neither was available at the Saturday Farmers' Market.

Sunday Concert Series Fills the Stands And More

It would have been a sold-out crowd if you needed a ticket for Sudany’s performance of Fleetwood Gold at the Alum Creek Park Amphitheater. The crowd overflowed into the trees, woods, playground, and the Otterbein dormitory grass to hear the popular group. one of the Summer Concert Series performers every Sunday evening in the park.

The Green Grape Report

Food Review by Gary Gardiner

Meijer - Polaris Parkway

Brand - Green grapes from Mexico.
Price - $2.99
Appearance - Bright color with few flaws.
Size - Visibly larger than the last two weeks. Ten grapes weigh 66 grams, with the average length measured from ten grapes being 29mm. The weight is about 20 percent higher, and the length about 10 percent
Crispiness - Fair.
Taste - Slightly sweet.
PLU Code - 4420

The Review

Prices this week are back at $2.99 a pound at the northern triad of grocery stores.

The grapes appear to be the same variety as last week’s, but have grown larger and more moist within that time frame. What they haven’t done is increase the sweetness. The flavor is subtle, lacking the richness of a fully ripe grape and the burst of expected sweetness.

This review is simple.

This week I eat strawberries at $2.49 a pound.

The Westerville News is a reader-supported publication by Gary Gardiner, a lifelong journalist who believes hyper-local reporting is the future of news. This publication focuses exclusively on Westerville—its local news, influence on Central Ohio, and how surrounding areas shape the community.

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