Outrageous Okra

Ahhh, okra.  She’s a true southern belle who loves the Georgia heat and thrives in the garden when most vegetables are wilting under the summer’s sweltering temperatures, often producing to the point where you can hardly keep up.

Okra is an absolutely fantastic vegetable to add to your summer garden repertoire, if you haven’t already, since it produces a tasty green “between the summer and fall season” crop, when little else is actively producing. 

Being a Michigan native, where okra is a mythical vegetable of lands far gone, I discovered these gems a little late in life.

The first time I planted okra, I was quite taken aback at how ridiculously tall each stalk got (taller than me- nearly six feet!).  Buttery-yellow flowers cover each stalk before magically transitioning into okra, ripe for the picking.

When my daughter was three, at her yearly check-up, the pediatrician asked her if she ate vegetables and what were her favorites.  She said in the cutest little three year old voice ever, “Yes.  I like ducinni (zucchini) and otra” (yes, otra is exactly how she said it).

And in that exact moment, I realized I was, indeed,  raising GRITS (girls raised in the South).  Proudly.

My okra rarely makes it into my house, meaning, I pick one and immediately eat it.  Pick one and eat it.  I just can’t resist the snappy crunch of fresh okra.  I find that in a day or two in the refrigerator, they start to lose their luster and even develop this thin layer of what I would call slime.  And who in their right mind really wants to eat a slimy vegetable?

My favorite uses for okra (when a harvest actually does find way into my kitchen) include:

• slicing raw and adding to a garden salad.
• slicing length-wise, lightly tossing with Grape seed oil (known to be best for use at high temps, now sold at our local Trader Joe's), a touch of sea salt and roasting at 400 for 10-15 minutes. 
• dipping whole and raw into hummus. 
• adding to soups, specifically Jambalaya.

Recently, one of my gardening soul mates, and friend, Pattie said to me during a recent community garden outing, “Robin, have you ever made an okra Santa?”

Just when I thought I had heard it all when it comes to the world of gardening, she hits me with this.  A Santa ornament made out of okra?  Now why the heck didn’t I think of that?

I’m known in these parts to be somewhat crafty and do enjoy making Christmas gifts for family, friends, teachers, neighbors, etc., so this was right up my alley. 

After a little on-line research, I easily discovered step-by-step instructions.  I zipped out to the garden, and picked eight over grown (six+ inches; they are not edible at this point anyway) okra.   Pattie did the same and dried them in her dehydrator.  Since I’m still in the craving-a-dehydrator-but-don’t-yet-have-one stage, I strung the stems together with thread and have them hanging in my laundry room next to the school backpacks.

What you will need to make a Santa Okra:

• Dried okra
• Acrylic paints (black, red, pink, peach, gold glitter)
• Textured snow medium
• Paint brush or cotton swabs
• Fishing line

Instructions:

• Use red acrylic paint to paint the entire dried okra and allow to dry.  You may need to use two coats.
• Use peach acrylic paint to paint on the face. 
• Create two eyes using black acrylic paint, two cheeks with pink acrylic paint, and a mouth with the red acrylic paint.
• Paint a belt across Santa's middle as well as the bottom of the okra for his boots.  You can add a bit of gold glitter paint around the belt for an extra touch.
• Use textured snow medium around the face (beard and hair), two dots above the eyes (eyebrows), the top (hat trim), and the bottom above the boots.  You can add a little heat to make it puffier.  Allow the textured snow to dry.
• Once you are finished you can drill a hole through the stem top and insert some fishing line to hang on the tree!

And wait, did that say drill?  A power tool, vegetable and a craft combined?  You may not hear from me again until next year.