Kale!

From what I've heard, kale is a cool-weather vegetable.  I was thinking I'd be able to grow some in the spring and a second batch in the fall.  I planted it from seed at the end of March, but nothing happened. No kale. I tried again a few weeks later: still nothing.

At the beginning of August, I'd given up on some other things I'd allocated space to that weren't succeeding either (thanks a lot, cucumbers), so I used that section of the garden to give the kale one last shot. Finally, they've germinated.

To celebrate, here's a salad I made a few weeks ago, using grocery store kale (BOR-ing, but what can you do?).  Hopefully it'll be in the rotation again before the end of the summer, if the stuff in the garden can keep from being eaten by bugs and woodland creatures.

Sweet Potato Kale Salad

Big bowl full of kale, washed and torn into pieces
Sweet potato, peeled and chopped
Olive oil
Kosher salt
Lemon juice
Garlic, 2-4 cloves, minced
Chives, to taste, minced
Feta

Roast the sweet potatoes, tossed with olive oil and kosher salt, in a baking pan at 400F until they're soft in the middle and browned on the edges.  I think I stirred them around at about 15 minutes, and they may have needed another 10, but it depends on how small the pieces are chopped. 

Add the chives, garlic, feta, a splash of lemon juice, and a splash of olive oil to the big bowl full of kale. Plop the sweet potatoes, piping hot and right out of the oven, on top of everything else and toss.

That's it!  Enjoy!

From the garden: zucchini!

This is the first season I've grown zucchini.  Years ago, when I lived in an apartment and had a community garden plot, I remember walking by someone else's zucchini plants and marveling at how much space they took up.  I made a mental note not to give up so much valuable real estate for a crop I didn't particularly care for, anyway.

Last summer, though, I discovered the deliciousness that is marinated grilled zucchini.  So we bought kind of a lot of it.  And when we buy a lot of something that could realistically be grown in zone 5, I start thinking about whether we should add it to the garden. 

And so, this year, there are four zucchini plants in the garden. They're doing really well! 

Much to my great and pleasant surprise, they seem to be a relatively efficient use of space; there are so many little zucchinis on each plant. A few of them might even be ready to eat this week.

win some, lose some (garden edition)

One of the most exciting (and sometimes frustrating) things about hobby vegetable gardening is that every year is different. Just because something did well last year doesn't necessarily mean you can count on another good crop this year. I'm not a huge fan of uncertainty, but if I wanted to frame this as a positive, I'd focus on how fun it is to see which things produce more than expected.

This year, what I'm finding is that the successful stuff is going gangbusters, and everything else is just pitiful. There's no middle ground like there's been in the past. Nothing is doing "just ok." I don't know if it has to do with the abnormally warm spring we had or this being the first summer in ages that The Awesome Husband and I are both employed full time, or just the fact that sometimes things work out that way.

Here's what's struggling:

- Beets. These were planted twice, and both times were decimated by cutworms. There's one lonely little seedling left, with one leaf still standing. Bummer, too, because The Awesome Husband loves beets.

- Basil. I started seedlings inside, and then inadvertently killed them by leaving them outside and letting them dry out. Replanted outside, and the cutworms got 'em. Replanted again in containers, so we'll see, but they're way behind schedule.

- Tomatoes. Same as the basil.

- Cucumbers. Same as the basil and tomatoes, except with these guys I caved and bought seedlings.

- Radishes. Planted once, and they halfheartedly germinated. Planted a second time, and they grew two feet tall and went to seed. No edible radishes, though.

Here's what's hitting it out of the park:

- Garlic. I've never grown garlic before, but so far I quite like it. Plant it in the fall, forget it's there, and watch it pop up in the spring? I'll take it!

- Raspberries. After a couple years, they've really established themselves. They're currently absolutely covered with unripened berries.

- Spinach. All through March and April, we ate spinach pretty much every day just to keep up.

- Peas. They're not doing quite as well as they did last year, but they're still pretty impressive. They've got tons of white flowers, and I noticed yesterday that a few tiny pea pods have appeared!

mixed bag

It was super nice outside Monday and Tuesday of this week.  So nice, in fact, I figured I'd do the right thing and get the seedlings I'd started indoors used to the elements.

Now, when I say "do the right thing," I don't necessarily mean "executed in the right way." I've since learned that what I did -- set the seedlings outside in the sun, leave for the day, and forget about them until bedtime -- was a recipe for overheated, underhydrated plants.

That's pretty much beside the point, though, because something, be it a strong gust of wind or a hungry and inquisitive woodland creature, scattered the peat pots hither and yon.  Yes, hither and yon.  There might be one butternut squash survivor, but otherwise it looks like we'll be hitting up the farmers market for seedlings. 

Today's a mixed bag though, and the positive element is the early success of the asparagus in the front garden.  I think this may be the year we can start harvesting it.  Two bites for everyone!

fermentation, minus the hops

Ok, so I figure about half of you just thought to yourselves "no hops? what's the point?" But hear me out.

We made pickles last weekend, with nary a drop of vinegar in sight. Just cucumber slices, garlic, dill, enough brine (3 tablespoons of pickling salt per quart of water) to cover it all, a plate to weigh down the solids and keep them below the surface, and time (about three days).

Lemme tell ya, they're good. The cucumbers are from the garden, and we'll definitely be making this again to use up the ones that are jumping off the vines right now (this morning's count: 10). I'm looking forward to next year, when we'll have garlic and dill from the garden to use, too.

The peas are dead. Long live the string beans!

Yes, I think we've finally kicked the peas. Cue melancholy music, lots of plaintive violins and so forth. There are only a few pods still on the vines, and they're staying put for a while so they can dry out and fulfill their higher purpose of becoming seeds for next year.

Fear not, though, we're still awash with fresh-picked vegetable goodness.

And that's not all of them. The bowl there is 2 quarts, I believe. Some have been refrigerator-pickled, and many are destined for the freezer.

The tomatoes have got a lot to live up to this year.

Who needs a balanced diet when you have vast quanities of awesome?

Ok, so even though I used all caps last week, I still think I may have understated the status of our garden peas. "Ready for eating" doesn't do them justice. Try "12 linear feet of pea plants in excess of 6 feet tall are overflowing with pea pods such that my approach just now was to only pick the ones that might not make it another day before turning starchy, and even then I had more than I could carry in three minutes."

I am in heaven.

Sugar snap peas are my favorite thing we grow, hands down. I suspect it's partially because they're available for such a short period of time each year. Raw peas from the grocery storey just aren't the same because they've invariably lost a lot of flavor in transit. I'll eat the frozen ones in a recipe if I have to; I find canned peas horrific. I really only eat them straight from the garden. If they were readily available year round, I'd probably get sick of them. For a few weeks a year, though, a quart a day is fine by me.

The pictures don't do them justice either, but here you go.

SuperTomatoes!

I think the garden heard me talking about how I was on a cooking kick over the weekend. That's the best explanation I can come up with for the last, sputtering efforts of the tomato plants... and the fact that the fruit on the vines somehow managed to make it through last night's sub-freezing temperatures.



It gets better, though. These tomatoes weren't thriving in the confines of our raised beds and chickenwire fencing. Oh, no. They're from a very prolific plant that grew directly out of our compost bin.



They also look like plum tomatoes, which means they wouldn't have grown from a tomato seedling that got thinned from the garden and put in the compost, but from a seed of a plum tomato that we'd purchased from the grocery store. Crazy and impressive! SuperTomatoes! I feel like I should put little capes on each of them.

... Or I could figure out what to cook with green tomatoes. Any ideas?

they have arrived

Remember when I said we had lots of tomatoes on the plants but they were stubbornly refusing to ripen?  Well, they've apparently realized that resistance is futile. 

We've picked what you see here, plus what we've eaten and given away so far (probably about the equivalent of what's in this photo).  Lots of their friends are still outside in various stages of ripeness. 

So far we've had lots of sandwiches and salads, and we made the soup/sauce/whatever-it-is deliciousness I raved about earlier this week.  And yet, there's barely a dent made, so some new recipes would be great to try.   Anyone have a favorite to share?

(And yes, I know, we should can them. Next year.  Cannot fathom taking on canning until next year.)

This doesn't even scratch the surface.

That right there represents one day's output from the string bean plants.  Multiply this by maybe five or six, and you've got our total string bean harvest.  So far.

And we're still getting nearly a cup of snow peas every few days.  The snow peas from the seed packet sold for the 2008 season.  The snow peas that are supposed to be an early-in-the-season crop.  It's almost August, people.  Crazy.

The tomatoes are still threatening to take over the yard.  Or they would be, if they weren't collapsing all over themselves.  You can almost hear them scoffing at the tomato cages they've toppled.  If the tomatoes themselves would just hurry up and ripen, already, we'd be all set.

recent observations

In list format:

- Working an extra several hours a week creates a domino effect on my schedule and sense of equilibrium. Running more than once a week, cooking, and blogging fall by the wayside. The paychecks are nice, though.

- A packet of snow pea seeds from 2008 can produce enough pea pods for more stir fry dinners than two people can eat in eight days. It's kind of scary, in a yummy way.

- Even tomato plants in cages can topple over. Multiple times. Only an elaborate network of string supports will stabilize them. Fortunately, said tomato plants can survive said toppling and be full of flowers and tiny tomatoes to boot.

- Keeping a pencil and paper with you to track rows when knitting a sweater is kind of annoying. I almost miss doing endless repeats. Almost.

- Breakfast consisting of a homemade egg sandwich on whole wheat, with a cup of coffee and a super healthy smoothie will keep me from getting hungry until late morning. Trust me, this is an impressive feat.

Lettuce. It's what's for dinner.

In happier news...

I wasn't kidding when I said there were flowers on the pea plants!

Garden update

Not the best picture, I know, but the veggies look great in person.

We've had lots of spinach already (in it's traditional form, and in fruit smoothies! extra nutrition and almost no change in taste. the same goes for beet greens.)  Hopefully edible peas are just around the corner. For now, we need to ramp up our salad consumption; the light green plants in the front there are lettuce.

The flowers update is as follows:  they're slow.

Scenic? Not so much.

But at least it'll be protected from the groundhogs.  We hope.

In the first, closest bed, we've got peas, lettuce, leeks, and string beans (not yet germinated).  In the middle bed, there's spinach, radishes, beets, and more peas.  The last bed has tomatoes, basil (not yet germinated), and cucumbers (again, as yet invisible). 

The greenery in front of Fred (everyone, meet Fred, our shed... yes, we're ridiculous dorks around here, but you knew that, right?) is a small patch of raspberries.  It actually pales in comparison to the wild raspberries we found at the edge of our property *after* we planted these guys. 

Tiding us over in the meantime...

Have I mentioned that we have a few types of veggies in the garden? Lettuce leeks and spinach and beets and peas and radishes. Everything has germinated but nothing's ready to eat yet.

Luckily, I know my impatient self pretty well and suspected I'd be jonesing for home grown sustenance once we were back in the swing of preparing for it. Thinking ahead, I planted some lettuce seeds indoors to use as microgreens, so we were able to enjoy a microsalad last week.

(We did not, however, grow the tomatoes and artichokes. Or the olives.)

Operation Garden Setup

We've been talking about the garden work we have to do for weeks. It's been rainy or we've had other things to do, and it keeps getting pushed off the schedule. Not. This. Weekend.

Tomorrow morning we're going to buy the lumber we need to add a raised bed in the backyard, then come home and assemble it. Next, we'll line the trunk of my car with a tarp and shovel compost into into it (thank you, municipal compost supply). Two or three trips and trunkfulls later, we'll set up stakes and wire fencing around all the raised beds. It might not look pretty, but it'll keep the groundhogs out. (It better keep the groundhogs out.)

Then and only then can we put some cold weather seeds in the ground. Spinach and lettuce and peas to start. Maybe some flowers if the instructions on the seed packets say they can planted this early.

Maybe then the backyard garden can catch up with the plants in front of the house. Namely, the strawberry plants that already have flowers on them. I know, I can't believe it either!

Sheepish

Apparently when one has a row of lush string bean plants, covered in flowers just waiting to become string beans, and those plants subsequently get decimated by four-legged suburban pests, one might still get some edible string beans out of the bargain.

How many, you ask? Oh, about this many:



Or, put another way, "more than can be comfortably carried in one hand," or "more than two veggie-loving adults needed for dinner," or "enough that I feel foolish for ranting so fiercely about the death of the string beans."

Right. Will remember to rant less fiercely in the future. Or not, and simply prepare myself to feel foolish at a later date. Either way.

I figured I'd go all out

... and try to do a garden photo post that's actually (somewhat) interesting and (somewhat) aesthetically pleasing. I'd resigned myself yesterday to posting some photos no matter how boring, but I reconsidered and tried to see what I could do with the heretofore unexplored settings on my humble camera. Hello, depth of field. Nice to meet you, macro setting.

So. The garden's progressed quite a bit since the last time I took you on a tour. The closest little seedlings in that shot were kohlrabi, and today they look like this:

Hi, I'm kohlrabi.

I'm awesome but I insist on shading everything around me.

The beets are doing really well, too:

Some day soon, they'll be turned into delicious and somewhat nutritious chocolate cake.

The tomato plants, yellowing and puny as they were a couple weeks ago, are now starting to flourish:

The tallest leaves there are actually from the string beans one row over. They're flourishing, too.

As always, the peppers are the slowest to show any progress at all. This picture is a little misleading; without a lot of perspective, it's easy to miss the fact that this plant is only a couple inches tall, tops. Peppers might get cut from the list next year.

Macro setting, yo.

Finally (because the leeks, raspberries, peas, scallions, cucumbers, and watermelon are shy today), we've been eating lots of salad lately and haven't used store bought lettuce for at least a month. The full grown lettuces aren't very photogenic, but my favorite shot of the day is of some romaine seedlings hanging out in a container at the edge of the driveway. They need to pick up the pace a little in order to be ready for salads when we run out of the other varieties, but for now they're pretty darn cute:

On Nutrition and Mindfulness

I've been mulling and contemplating and gearing up to try to begin to modify the way I think about food. Hmm, tentative much?

As a caveat, I'd like to state up front that this is not a lose-weight-before-the-wedding endeavor. I could gain ten pounds in the next year-and-a-bit, and The Future Mister would still find me gorgeous, I'd still have a fantastic dress and awesome hair, and enough beautifying happiness radiating out of my very pores to knock you over from twenty paces, thank you very much. If I happen to be ten pounds lighter on my wedding day, it'll be a byproduct of a healthier approach to life overall, not some specific effort to fit in a dress or an internal, theoretical idea of what a bride "should" look like.

With that rant out of the way, I'll add that what this is about is a realization that I've been commenting way too often lately that my stomach is "wonky" or "feeling 'off'" or just "meh." I suspect I'd have more energy and motivation to do the myriad of things I need to do every week if I wasn't unconsciously spending part of my energy on tummy woes. And, hey, who wouldn't love to have less discomfort of any variety if that's an option?

Obviously, there are a whole bunch of ways to start rethinking about nutrition, and I think for now I've narrowed it down using a process of elimination. A friend was talking recently about juice fasting, and I'm a little (or a lot) wary of that. I'm unsure how beneficial or harmful it might be to limit one's food intake to broth and juice for three (or however many) days. I've just got a gut feeling (heh, cue the rimshot) that this isn't what I should do.

I'm less concerned about the advisability of avoiding certain types of possible culprit foods. Dairy, gluten, that sort of thing. I don't think this would be unhealthy -- as long as I take some "fake" calcium, for instance -- but I'm ruling this one out too because, honestly, I just plain like those foods, and I'm choosing to be stubborn and keep eating them for now. Why take the overzealous step of banishing bread and cheese from my diet on pure speculation? That would border on tragic, methinks.

So. What I've decided to do in the meantime is to pay attention to what I consume in established nutrition categories. Namely: sodium, sugar, and saturated fat. I've never paid much attention to them in the past; I avoid them as a matter of general mindset, and I don't eat a lot of processed foods as it is, but I'm sure there's some of each lurking where I wouldn't expect it. There's no question that less of each is preferable, so I figure now is the time to start paying attention, assessing what I consume as a matter of habit, and making improvements moving forward. I'm guessing (or hoping? speculating?) that in making those changes, my overall food intake will be higher quality nutrition. If that, the path of least resistance, happens to resolve my low-level but relatively constant stomach wonkiness, so much the better.

And in a few weeks, I should be able to incorporate some uber-healthy sustenance straight from the garden!

Hello, lettuce!