chicken feathers

in the running...again

For those of you who have been reading this blog for awhile, you may recall our running in our last house for the weirdest neighbor award.  There have been numerous opportunities for nominations: worms eating our garbage, getting bags of leaves from people, dumping them in our yard and mowing them, chickens as pets...the list can go on but we don't need to go there.

We have instead moved on to a new neighborhood and we are trying to secure our rightful throne of the neighborhood nut-jobs.  At the moment we have a bag of foul smelling fertilizer on our front step.  "We could smell that coming up the road!" quoted one neighbor.  We also have a pile of cow poop at the sidewalk. "I had to walk through a load of manure to deliver a package," said our UPS man.  I dumped out multiple bags of leaves I had been saving as a top layer of mulch (over piles of messy straw, no less) for our new garden...a huge gust of wind scattered them within 30 seconds and the rest have been steadily blowing away for the last three days.  No comments from the neighbors - those are likely reserved for conversations through clenched teeth.  Yes, we are merrily on our way to the eccentrics of 17th Street.  It feels good to be Queen!

a garden keeper

Chinese Red Noodle Beans.

I almost pulled them out a few weeks ago due to some early trauma by earwigs or something like that.  They just didn't seem to be doing well...

I'm so glad I had a rational thought and left them in!  They're gorgeous!  I can see a big row planted along the house next year...

They are HUGE and delicious.  We've been cooking them just like we do the regular green beans: blanch in boiling water then quickly sauté in butter, s&p, and lemon juice (if we have it).  Of course we have to cut them into manageable sized pieces before we do any of that.  They are a little heartier and have an amazing almost nutty flavor.  The best though, is that they turn a deep purple when cooked.

 

Even their flowers are delightful.  This picture reminds me that I need to pay attention to my camera settings EVERY TIME I take a picture.  Sighhhhh.

oh please.

Beautiful lettuce in the garden.  Wanted a sweet picture of it (you know, so I can lovingly remember a head of lettuce as it's picture sits framed on my nightstand).

Here's what I got.

Not quite what I was going for.

Definitely not what I was going for.

MMMNnnn...not exactly but I suppose it will do.

Whose kid is that, anyway?

bears, beets, and battlestar galactica

Upon a return from a hectic wedding weekend, here's my suggestion for how to decompress and reconnect with life at home.

Beets, baby.  Seven pounds from the garden.

 
First I sliced off the greens.  The big leaves and stalks went into one bowl to and the small tender leaves went into a different bowl to be used in that night's salad.  Once all the greens separating was done I removed the stalks and fed them to our grateful ladies.  I tossed the greens into some boiling salted water for a couple minutes, drained them and then put them into freezer bags to be used like spinach at a later date.

And the beautiful beets?

They were boiled then slipped out of their skins.  Sexy, I know.  Some just went into a bowl in the fridge to be sliced into salads at a later date.  The rest got a fancier treatment. 

Pickled Beets
(from the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook)
8 servings

1/3 c. white vinegar
1/4 c. sugar
1/4 c. water
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. ground cloves
2 c. sliced, cooked beets

In medium saucepan combine vinegar, sugar, water, cinnamon, salt and cloves.  Bring to boiling, stirring occasionally.  Stir in beets.  Return to boiling; reduce heat.  Cover an simmer for 5 minutes.  Cool for 30 minutes.  Chill beets in liquid at least 8 hours before serving.  Cover and store in liquid in the fridge up to 1 month.  Drain before serving.

It's good to be home!

how to build a lasagna garden

Grab your favorite beverage.  This is a long one.

So.  We have a wonderful landlord.  I approached him last fall with my idea to turn our front yard into a garden and he thought it was a great idea.  How great is that?!?  We immediately got to work.  I bought the book Lasagna Gardening by Patricia Lanza (do you ever wonder if people's last names influence their destinies?  I'll bet Patricia has many childhood memories of being called lasagna...so was it coincidence that she came up a method called lasagna gardening?  I think not.)  Anyway, I wanted to try the concept which is basically this:  Pick a spot where you want to grow something.  Layer stuff on the site you think might be good for growing things in.  Plant.

Sounded delightful to me!

So, step back in time with me, won't you, while I give you a how-to garden tour.  From the ground up.

Step One:  Pick a spot.  No brainer - the front yard.  Oodles of sun and unused space.  This picture was taken late November of last year. 

Step Two:  Lay down a layer of newspaper.  This is supposed to keep the weeds down and provide a welcome mat of sorts for earthworms.  Note:  windy days make this challenging.  Note, note:  If you are Type A (ooh! me! me!), you can precisely stake out your area with sticks and yarn then carefully line up the newsprint.  Note, note, note: You can also gather lots of strange looks along with bags full of newspaper if you go recycling bin diving on a Saturday morning dressed in filthy gardening clothes with your car full of young children.

Step Three:  Start layering.  I started with peat moss which I found at our local feed supply store. 

 

I also wanted to use chopped leaves for some nice thick layers so I put out a request at church and had about 30 bags delivered to our house.  Note:  People LOVE to get rid of their leaves.  First we would dump out 3-4 bags of leaves on our leaf-free yard.  The kids would pack them down.

 

Then we would unpack them and them out all over our previously leaf-free yard.

Then I would mow over the leaves and then re-rake them into a pile and put them back into their original bags for later use.  I fully realized the ridiculousness of all this as I was doing it.   

Some of leaves I used right away, though.  Here is the first bed, two layers deep.  Now fast forward four months.

 

In that time we took out the fence and added another bed beside the first one as well as some trellises on the north side of each bed.  Russell brought home some cherry bins to use as easy and cheap raised beds.  We also bought a bale of straw, Russell came home with a truckload of steer manure (be still my beating heart!), and I collected several garbage bags full of used coffee grounds to add to our layers...Here is a sample of what one of the bed's layers turned out like: newspaper, peat moss, leaves, peat moss, straw, coffee grounds, leaves, manure, leaves.  But we're not quite done...

 

We need a home for the tomatoes and some shade maker for lazy summer outdoor book reading!  And the layering processes begins again.  Note:  To lay out the semi-circle I used a hose to get the curve and then marked the outline of the bed with a line of flour - applied with a funnel.

And now...are you ready?  Here is a recap of where we started:

Step Four:  Plant and Enjoy!  I started planting some things as soon as February but most items waited until mid-May - our safe planting date.  Planting in a lasagna garden is a piece of cake - you just pull the layers aside and tuck in the plant.  Or, if you are seeding, just sprinkle the seeds onto whatever the top layer happens to be and then cover with the recommended depth of peat moss. 

So, here we are on June 3rd.  Tomatoes are in with nasturtiums and purple cone-flowers anchoring each end of the curve.  There are actually 4 bins - the ones you see here have carrots and gold nugget squash.  The other two are planted in strawberries and butternut squash.  Blanket is installed for reading and knitting.  The kids love this morning ritual.

   

And that first bed we created?  Here's a shot from the opposite direction.  Planted in it is (front to back) Super Anna, edamame, chard, garlic, beets, dill, 3 varieties of lettuce and yard-long green beans.

And the second bed.  Home to 4 varieties of potatoes, walla walla sweets, and green beans.

     

But WAIT, you say.  Today is not the 3rd.  It's the 17th!  So true.  I intended to post this on the 3rd but...well...for many reasons it didn't happen.  Obviously.  So here's what the garden looks like TODAY.

There are now eggplants between the tomato plants (some with ripe tomatoes) and watermelons with the strawberries, which were a bust.

  

We added 2 kinds of basil and a second planting of lettuces.

 

You can't see the onions but they are pretty wimpy, the beans are strangely yellow but the POTATOES!  I can't believe the potatoes!

 

This garden has been a pure delight.  We spend a lot of time as a family in it.  Checking it's progress, watering, weeding...I just love it.  Love, love, love it!  And the first tomato?  The stuff of dreams.

 

lawns are soooo overrated

Mainly because I can't keep one alive to save my life, but this is so AWESOME!

I apologize for the strange formatting, it copied this way and I'm not sure of a quick way to fix it.

-   -   -   -   -
Obamas Ready to Start a White House Garden
by Rebecca Cole

WASHINGTON - This year, the vegetables served at the White House will be as locally grown as possible--right on the South Lawn.
U.S.
first lady Michelle Obama joins White House assistant chef Sam Kass (L)
and 5th grade students from the Bancroft Elementary School during a
groundbreaking ceremony for the new White House Kitchen Garden in
Washington, March 20, 2009. The garden will grow about 25 varieties of
fruits and vegetables which will be harvested by the White House
kitchen for consumption at the White House. (REUTERS/Jason Reed)After
a campaign by gardeners and sustainable food activists, the First
Family has decided to dig up part of the White House grounds for a
vegetable garden. In a ceremony Friday, First Lady Michelle Obama and
local elementary school students will break ground for the project.
It's
part of the first lady's promotion of healthy food for her daughters,
Malia and Sasha, as well as for the nation. But like many parents, the
Obamas have had mixed results: Michelle Obama recently said a version
of "creamless" creamed spinach by White House executive chef Cristeta
Comerford still was a bit too "green" for the kids.
More than
100,000 people asked the president to plant a garden on the White House
lawn, according to Kitchen Gardeners International, a coalition of
gardeners whose mission is to inspire and teach people to grow their
own food. The group's Eat the View campaign to plant "high-impact
gardens in high-profile places" specifically urged the First Family to
plant an edible garden within the first 100 days of the Obama
administration.
Launched in February 2008 and spearheaded by
Roger Doiron, a gardener in Scarborough, Maine, the movement hoped to
have the president's family set the right example in terms of healthy
eating or "gardening for the greater good," as Doiron said.
"It
begins at home," he said. "That's where we start. And if we get a
number of people together carrying out these small actions it will
speak volumes and add up." Since the early 1990s, food-activist
pioneers such as Berkeley, Calif., restaurateur Alice Waters and author
Michael Pollan have lobbied for an "edible landscape" across the 16
acres of White House grounds.
While the Clintons did have a small
rooftop garden that grew vegetables and herbs and Laura Bush made sure
organic foods were served in the residence, this is the first
full-scale planting on the lawn in more than 60 years--since Eleanor
Roosevelt had a Victory Garden during World War II.
"I'm just so
gratified that this idea, that seemed as right as rain from the
beginning," has finally taken hold, said Waters, owner of the renowned
Chez Panisse.
"Food is precious. It comes from the land," she
added. "And we have to take care of the land in order to nourish
ourselves. It's very hard to talk about food without talking about the
garden."
Pollan, author of "The Omnivore's Dilemma," praised the
Obamas for starting small. "The mistake gardeners make is starting out
too ambitious," he said.
Responding to reports that the Obamas
would be planting arugula, Pollan said he specifically warned the
president against planting the leafy lettuce. "I said be careful about
arugula or you'll be accused of elitism."
From his chilly corner
of Maine, Doirer's small plot yielded $2,100 worth of produce from 35
different crops last year. The message, he said, is that even in these
difficult economic times, when families are struggling monetarily and
psychologically, people can find creative ways to put healthy food on
their table.
"Even if families can start with something small
this season they're going to come away feeling empowered," Doirer said.
"There are things that we can do, even though we feel like we are up
against incredible odds."
Waters said she was especially pleased
that Michelle Obama chose to start the garden surrounded by children--a
topic near and dear to her heart.
As a founder of The Edible
Schoolyard, a program in Berkeley and now New Orleans to integrate
organic gardens into schools, Waters wants children to learn that
vegetables and fruit come from the ground, not a store.
"If we
make a beautiful place that children can walk though on tours of the
White House, we can broadcast that message around the world," Waters
said. "It's such a beautiful picture. It's confirming and affirming
their interest in the garden."
Copyright © 2009, Chicago Tribune

The original post can be found here: http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/lifestyle/health/chi-garden_web-frimar20,0,6609234.story

how we eat - day 6

Before I publish our day's menu I'd like to share an annotated list of my favorite food related publications.  Some I've had for quite some time and are well-worn, others I haven't had for very long but I can tell that they will be classics.

Gardening
Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew.  This book is awesome because it makes gardening very accessible - you just have to think about your garden one square foot at a time.  We've never had space for a huge garden but the amount of food we've been able to grow using this method has been remarkable - even with my greenish-black thumb.  The "Guide to Growing Crops" in the back is worth it's weight in gold.

Four-Season Harvest by Eliot Coleman.  This book was a revelation for me!  Growing food year round completely changed how I think about food storage.  His techniques are creative, low-tech, and intuitive.  If he can be harvesting fresh salad greens all winter from his Maine garden, surely I can be doing the same in our comparatively mild climate!

How to Grow More Vegetables* (and fruits, nuts, berries, grains, and other crops) *Than You Ever Thought Possible on Less Land Than You Can Imagine by John Jeavons.  First, I love this title!  He writes just like I do (I love parenthesis and impossibly long sentences)!  This book is similar in concept to Square Foot Gardening but more scientific.  It is really intriguing and strongly argues for the need of closed-loop living. 

Lasagna Gardening by Patricia Lanza.  I will be trying this technique for building soil this year.  We'll see how it works.  You essentially build the soil from the existing ground up.  You just layer different organic ingredients until you've got about a foot of goodness and then plant right into the layers.  Fascinating!  I love that there is no digging involved.

The New Seed Starters Handbook by Nancy Bubel.  This is the Holy Grail of seed starting.  Every thing you need to know and more.

Locavore Living
Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan.  A super interesting book in which he researches and explores several meals - conventional, sustainable, and hunting/gathering.  I love his style of writing and he poses some very interesting points and dilemmas (surprise!) that we face as eaters.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver.  She has long been one of my favorite authors.  Now she is elevated to sainthood in my eyes.  How I would love to have dinner with her!  Read here for a long Kingsolver love-fest.

Cooking
What's For Dinner by Maryana Vollstedt.  This is my go-to book for meal planning.  I've tried almost every recipe in there and save one or two flops, each recipe is a gem.  The meals are simple and delicious. 

The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters.  I just checked this book out from the library but it has now been added to my wish list.  She breaks recipes down into 17 areas such as sauces, pasta, soups, beans, and roasting.  She outlines a few simple methods in each of those areas that can be infinitely adapted to whatever the fresh food of the season may be.  Alice Waters just may be my Kingsolver of the cookbook world.

Real Simple the magazine.  They have stellar recipes.  I rip out the ones that look good and store them in page protectors in a three ring binder.  I have them organized by season.

cooksillustrated.com.  You have to subscribe to their site but IT IS SO WORTH IT!  Every recipe ever published in the magazine is in a searchable database so when you have a pound of...say...belgian endive (I don't and never have but the name is so delicious!), you just type in "belgian endive" and up pops...well, let me check...holy smokes!  10 recipes!  How about Braised B.E. with Bacon and Cream or Grilled B.E?  You can sign up for a FREE 14 day trial - do it!  You'll love it!

www.everydayfoodstorage.net.  This is a fun site dedicated to helping you incorporate food storage into everyday meals.  I really like it for her recipes using whole wheat.  She's obsessive about food storage.  I like that in a girl.

There you have it.  A peek at my foodie bookshelf.

Here's a peek at our menu.

Breakfast:  Russell, Grant and Anna:  Cheese and Toast and Apples ala Grant.  Toast and butter for me.  I meant to have some applesauce but ran out of time.  I barely managed the toast.

Lunch:  Tuna Pasta.  This is a family staple.  Read here for the recipe.

Dinner:  Split Pea Soup, Cornbread, and Salad.

Auntie Katie's Split Pea Soup

2 carrots, sliced
2 ribs celery, sliced
1 onion, diced
1 parsnip or potato or both, large diced
1 ham hock
1 3/4 c. green split peas (1 lb) washed, stones removed
1 bay leaf
1 tsp. dried thyme
4 c. chicken broth (I use 4 c. water and 4 bullion cubes for this)
4 c. water

Add all ingredients to a large soup pot, bring to a boil and then simmer for at least an hour OR dump all the ingredients into a crock pot and cook on high for 7 hours.

Season with s&p.  And fresh parsley if you have it.

Mom's Cornbread, Jennified

1 1/2 c. white whole wheat flour
1/3 c. evap. cane juice sugar
1/2 c. cornmeal
1 Tbsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1 1/4 c.  milk
2 large eggs
3 Tbsp. butter, melted

Combine dry ingredients in medium bowl.  Mix wet ingredients together and then add to dry, stirring just until combined.  Bake in a greased 8 x 8 pan at 350 for 35 minutes or until golden brown.

I feel that I need to add, lest you think we are obnoxious purists over here, we will be scarfing down some brownies from a box in just a couple minutes.  You've gotta do what you've just gotta do.
 

XXX

They have arrived.

Oh, yesssss!

Author Michael Perry says it best - "seed catalogs are responsible for more unfulfilled fantasies than Enron and Penthouse combined."

the garden

I can't tell you how much thought and love has gone into our tiny little garden.  I am finding that growing our own veggies is deeply satisfying for me.  AND, being a shameless and incurable Type-A individual, gardening is proving to be a natural fit with its rows, rotations, and succession plantings.  I've got graph paper for layout and a tabbed folder for tracking vegetables planted.  It's a beautiful thing.  A really beautiful thing.

The books that I've really enjoyed reading on the subject are Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew and The Four Season Harvest by Eliot Coleman. I just recently got the latter and I can only read little bits at a time because I get so excited. 

So here's the first pictures of the year for our little spot.  At the time this was taken, the peas and beets and greens had arrived.  The cool, wet weather has prevented a stellar start but as long as warm weather comes and the plants can out-race the earwigs, we should be okay.

russell built the supports for me - it's so nice having a welder-at-the-ready!

strawberries are in the buckets in the corner.  i can't tell you how i dream of ripping up the side yard and turning it into a big garden.  we have a great landlord who is allowing chickens - rototilling the yard may be asking a bit too much.

summer!  starts and sandals.  this year i invested in a tabletop light that i put in the basement and started seeds with.  it was so much fun watching all the different plants grow!  pictured here are nasturtiums, painted daisies, miscellaneous tomatoes, tomatillos, eggplant, sage, basil and cardoon.  i'm keeping my fingers crossed that i won't kill them once they are in the garden.  they look so happy right now.

#9

Read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle - CHECK!

How I loved this book!  Barbara Kingsolver is one of my most favorite authors and by the end of the book I was ready to move in with her. 

Here's some of my own background info that puts this book into my own context: When I was in high school I worked for a summer as a tour guide for the Alaska Railroad.  Prior to that, I really didn't appreciate the beauty of Alaska but seeing it through the eyes of visitors, it really woke me up to the stunning scenery.  Since then I've loved being outside and feel so deeply satisfied and rooted when I am enjoying lovely natural spaces.  After college which had afforded me some incredible traveling experiences, I moved to Vermont, where I lived for a time with a lovely family who had a large garden...I remember coming home one evening and they were out digging carrots.  It was really cold (frost was predicted that night).  I got on my knees and helped dig.  I remember my achy fingers, racing against the ebbing light, trying to get the harvest in.  I felt so alive and so, I don't know, RIGHT.  That experience stayed in my heart as Russell and I started putting down roots of our own.  With the addition of a child and then another, I felt all kinds of nourishing urges.  I wanted to know where our food was coming from.  I wanted to feel a sense of community.  I stopped shopping at Wal-mart (over 4 years, baby!).  I started focusing on keeping my life more local.  More rooted.

So, anyway, I have felt like my passion was becoming more focused - I was finding I had the same appreciation for the astounding red rock formations in southern Utah and the taste of a sweet pea straight from the garden.  I had all these thoughts about food and earth and community and sense of place but no real framework on which to hang them.  NOW I DO!  Kingsolver's (I feel like I should call her Barbara) book offered the most beautiful thoughts and voice to an eating style (lifestyle, really) called a locavore - one who eats that which is local.  What a beautiful concept - one that offers sustainability, community, variety, incredible nutrition, appreciation...all the things I've been mulling over for the last 10 years or so.  Don't you love that?  When you find something that acts like a lens and focuses all the pieces so you can really see what's going on?  I'm panting.  Seriously.  I love this stuff.

So, as a teaser, here is one of the quotes that made me leap out of bed and start pacing as I thought about how profound the statement was.

"The main barrier standing between ourselves and a local-food culture is not price, but attitude.  The most difficult requirements are patience and a pinch of restraint - virtues that are hardly the property of the wealthy.  These virtues seem to find precious little shelter, in fact, in any modern quarter of this nation founded by Puritans.  Further more, we apply them selectively: browbeating our teenagers with the message that they should wait for sex, for example.  Only if they wait to experience intercourse under the ideal circumstances (the story goes), will they know its true value.  " Blah blah blah," hears the teenager: words issuing from a mouth that can't even wait for the right time to eat tomatoes, but instead consumes tasteless ones all winter to satisfy a craving for everything now.  We're raising our children on the definition of promiscuity if we feed them a casual, indiscriminate mingling of foods from every season plucked from the supermarket, ignoring how our sustenance is cheapened by wholesale desires." p.31

Couple that with a verse from the Doctrine and Covenants (a part of the scriptures that I LOVE!): Every herb in the season thereof, and every fruit in the season thereof; all these to be used with prudence and thanksgiving.  (89:11)  It was like the light was turned on.  Eeeeeeeee!   I love it!

So.  I have a clearer vision now.  I am changing the way I think about food and its connections.  Its growth.  It feels great.  Thanks, Barb!