Brussels Sprouts Harvest

Perhaps you remember the Brussels Sprout Tragedy that happened around Thanksgiving time. Happily, in August I had also planted two tiny brussels sprout seeds in a different area, as back up. (I've had enough garden failures to learn not to put all my proverbial sprouts in one basket.) I have been patiently waiting for the stalks to resemble the beautiful things I have purchased at the grocery store or farmer's market. However, yesterday I determined that they were as good as they were going to get and decided to harvest them before something else did.



The stalk was short and the sprouts were tiny, some of them beginning to open up, but they were almost completely aphid-free and tasted delicious! As with every other vegetable, freshly-picked brussels sprouts have an entirely cleaner, more nuanced flavor than the ones you buy in the store.



These were just so fresh that I couldn't bear to put them in the oven, so last night we had our first ever raw brussels sprout salad. The recipe needs a little tweaking so I won't publish it until I've perfected it. But I'll just say this: shaved brussels sprouts plus parsley plus celery plus apple plus some-sort-of-dressing-that-DOESN'T-have-too-much-mustard-in-it plus toasted almonds and avocado = delicious! I have one more stalk out there in the garden and I have a feeling I will be bringing it in the house soon.

Winter Harvest

Every Friday I find we are running low on veggies. I try to buy most of our produce at the Farmer's Market on Sunday, then supplement with whatever organic stuff I can find at Safeway when I go grocery shopping on Monday (and the Safeway stuff NEVER tastes as good as the produce from the Farmer's Market, plus it is more expensive, so I try very hard not to buy too much of it). No matter how stocked the fridge is at the beginning of the week, Friday and Saturday are a struggle for me. Since I eat primarily veggies, I can't just skate by on grilled cheese sandwiches and eggs, so running out of vegetables is not an option around here. This has necessitated many last-minute trips to the grocery store on Friday afternoons as I try to fill in that two-day gap with green stuff.

Today, however, I didn't have to buy anything because my winter garden is growing like crazy! This is the first time I've ever gotten a winter garden right, and it was so therapeutic to go out there and harvest a huge bin full of broccoli and kale. In the greenhouse, I found that the baby bok choy I've been growing had flowered... not sure if this is a bad thing as it is with lettuce? I will steam them up tonight and decide. Nevertheless, my fridge has been replenished with green stuff and it looks like I will make it through the week without having to go to the produce section. Have a wonderful weekend! P.S. Next week we'll start our seeds! This weekend plan on getting some good organic potting soil (I buy mine at Orchard Supply) and seed starter trays or plastic cups you can poke holes in the bottom of.

Processing Sunflower Seeds

Last week while it was dark and rainy outside, I decided to "process" one of my sunflowers. It has been hanging in the pantry to cure since mid autumn, and it was nice and dry and ready to be dealt with. Also, I had run out of sunflower seeds, which I usually toast and put on salads, and wasn't in the mood to drive all the way to Whole Foods to replenish my stash. Why spend money when I had a huge sunflower hanging right in the middle of the house?

I had a helper for the first and most satisfying part of the operation: getting the seeds out of the flower. Something about picking those seeds out and seeing just how many there are is very satisfying. Then we were on to phase two: hulling the seeds. My helper quickly lost interest as it became apparent that this is a tedious and SLOW process.

Before I even harvested my sunflowers, I looked into sunflower seed hullers, and it seems there isn't much available for the non-commercial, home sunflower grower. If you want to build a huller (or want to build one for me,) you can find instructions here. I was excited at first, but then I read the "tools required" part of the instructions: Table Saw. Drill Press. Band Saw. Saber Saw. Frankly, it would be easier and cheaper to patronize the bulk foods aisle at Whole Foods every week than build my own sunflower seed huller. This article gives a few at-home methods of hulling the seeds; the first two didn't work at all. Maybe I wasn't smashing the seeds hard enough?

I resorted to hulling my sunflower seeds like a squirrel - biting the shell to crack it and using my fingers to pry the inner part out. After an hour and a half I had just under 1/4 cup of edible seeds. Which, by the way, I couldn't in good conscience share with anyone else, since every single one of them had been in my mouth. Definitely not time effective. They sure tasted great, though. I earned those darn sunflower seeds! When every last seed had been cracked and opened up (and about a third of the seeds in the flower were just empty shells), I had about 1/2 cup of sunflower seeds. Again, neither time nor cost effective. My dreams of making my own sunflower seed butter had disappeared and I began revising my garden plans: maybe filling an entire bed with sunflowers doesn't make sense after all.

My husband tells me there is an old tabletop grain mill in the barn, which I plan to dust off and try using. Everything I've read indicates that is the most effective at-home way of hulling these yummy seeds. I still have three dried flowers hanging up, waiting to be processed. I'll let you know how it goes.

Beets

It's official: beets are the DIRTIEST thing I have ever grown and then brought into my house to eat. Ever. Their dirtiness only slightly tarnishes my love for them, though. There is nothing better than a handful of previously-roasted-then-chilled beets tossed into, well, anything. I usually put them in my salad. And you can eat the tops, too! This is new to me, actually, since I have never grown beets and only ever bought them at the store where their dirty tops were already lopped off.

So far I've put beet greens (as you can see, these are actually purple rather than green, but some of the tops of my yellow beets are green) in stuffed pumpkin and quiche. Tonight I have some sort of sweet potato scenario planned for the remaining greens in my fridge. And there are plenty more out in the garden. Talk about an easy crop - these were literally a plant-it-and-leave-it experience, which rarely happens for me in the garden. No pests, lots of big shiny leaves... I will definitely be growing beets again.

And, on a quick side note, does anybody know what these are? I planted "Mixed Chinese Greens" in my Cursed Garden Bed, and these are the only things that came up. I harvested them and dumped a bunch of horse manure and compost in the bed, in hopes that I can grow peas there this February. But now I have these pretty green things that I don't know what to do with. Should I cook them or eat them raw? If it looks familiar to you let me know!

Belated Thanksgiving

This Thanksgiving I was reminded that Thankfulness is just as much a decision as it is an emotion. It is easy to celebrate Thanksgiving when everything is going to plan and you find yourself facing a long weekend to spend relaxing with friends and family surrounded by delicious food. At those times, thankfulness is an emotion, something that wells up out of you without bidding. It is easy. And such has been the case with all of my Thanksgivings to date.

This Thanksgiving, however, I found myself quite sick. After a month of ever-increasing symptoms of Candida, I woke up on Thanksgiving feeling as if I had been hit by a truck. I follow an extremely strict diet of mostly vegetables, chicken, and fish, and this has helped me make great strides towards recovering from Candida infection. However, little bits of cheating here and there coupled with stress and not getting enough sleep had taken a toll on my too-sensitive system. Needless to say, THANKFUL was not the emotion at the top of my list. I actually felt quite sorry for myself. It just didn't seem fair that everyone else in the world could sit down to a delicious meal while I had to eat only the salad, and, if I was feeling crazy, a small piece of turkey. Mashed Potatoes? Too starchy. Stuffing? Full of gluten. Papa's famous green-bean casserole? Nope, there's dairy in there. Sweet Potato Pie? Forget it. So I followed the rules and ate a gigantic plate of salad with turkey on top, and woke up the day after Thanksgiving feeling even worse. And the death-knell to any residual feelings of thankfulness: when I went out to water my glorious patch of brussels sprouts, I saw that the chickens had gotten in through the protective fence and eaten every single sprout and half the leaves off all my plants.

As I trudged my sick sorry self back to the house I found myself thinking dark thoughts about thankfulness. I am not thankful this year! And then I stopped. What in the world was wrong with me? Here I was in my new cozy sweats walking outside in the most glorious California weather, surrounded by happy chickens, my two healthy kids playing together in the sand pit, my amazing husband doing the dishes, with the full use of my body and mind, and I was telling myself and the world that I wasn't thankful??? Shame on me.

So, in the absence of thankful feelings, I resolved to be thankful anyways. Yes, I felt sick but I wouldn't use that as an excuse to be grouchy or tune out my family. No, I couldn't eat any Thanksgiving left-overs, but I wouldn't complain or feel sorry for myself. I would take the necessary steps to feel better (in this case it meant going on a 3-day green juice cleanse: YUCK), but wouldn't paint myself the victim or broadcast my misery to those around me. I would bask in the late-November sunshine and be happy that I live in a place where brussels sprouts can be bought if the winter crop is decimated by rogue fowl. And, as has happened so many times in my life, when I made the decision to be thankful, the emotions followed.

Today, as we launched back into real life, I am thankful for my darling family, my super-hot husband, our too-small but cozy house, and the fact that my 3 day juice cleanse is OVER! I am thankful that I didn't wake up with a headache, ringing ears, and a rash for the first time in over a month. I am thankful that God has committed to change me from a self-centered person to someone a little more wholesome. And I am thankful that this morning I harvested the last of my tomatoes and the first of my broccoli. It may be a few days late, but I am thankful. I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Tomatillo Sauce

Happy Friday! And it has been a happy friday over here, for no other reason than the fact that I had NOTHING PLANNED. For the first time in a week I was able to stay home and do more than dash around making sure the animals were fed. And this meant that I had time to tackle the enormous pile of tomatillos that has been hogging precious counter space since last week.

Last week I decided to thin the brussels sprout bed, and it became apparent that it was finally time to say goodbye to my lovely accidental tomatillo plants. They were ranging all over the place, knocking down brussels sprout plants, growing through the bird netting and blocking sunlight. So I pulled out the four plants and harvested every last tomatillo, even the teeny tiny ones. This required quite a few trips between the garden and my house with my pockets crammed full of the hard green fruits. (Now that I am writing about it, I wonder why it didn't dawn on me to take a bucket out there with me... though that would have required finding a bucket, which would have taken me down a long path of sequential events that would have distracted me totally from my initial mission: thin out the brussels sprouts. I guess pockets weren't such a bad idea after all.) I filled my only two mixing bowls with tomatillos, put the bowls on the counter, and launched back into the garden to finish tending the precious brassicas.

The only reason I processed the tomatillos today was because I wanted to make banana bread - the black bananas in the fruit bowl were threatening to ooze onto the table, so something had to be done. Since both mixing bowls were full of tomatillos, I decided to make something with them first (see what I mean about getting distracted? It seems I am in need of more vessels around here). A previous vote had shown that the family prefers the tomatillo soup to the tomatillo salsa, so I decided to process the tomatillos into the sauce needed for the soup. All. Six. Pounds. Of. Them.

That's right. Not only did those four accidental seeds that dropped into the brussels sprout patch grow gigantic beautiful plants, they ended up yielding approximately 9 1/2 pounds of tomatillos. And they would have continued producing if I hadn't needed to sacrifice them for the greater good of our winter harvest. I will definitely be planting tomatillos in the future. My freezer is full of tomatillo sauce just waiting to be made into stews for cold winter nights and i couldn't be more pleased. Such a nice way to start off the weekend.

Salsify

Early in the spring, as I was perusing the Baker Creek seed catalog, I came across "Salsify," also known as "oyster plant." I was immediately intrigued - a plant that tastes like oysters? That probably sounds terrible to you, but to someone like me who can pretty much eat only vegetables, a vegetable that tastes like a sea creature is a very exciting concept.

I ordered the seeds, planted them, and hoped for the best. About a month later I almost ruined all my salsify efforts when I thought the salsify sprouts were weeds. They look exactly like orchard grass - long, straight, green, and ugly. Not like carrot or parsnip tops, which is what I thought they would look like. Fortunately I realized that the "orchard grass" was ONLY growing in the spot I had planted the salsify seeds, and avoided pulling them all out.

Over the weekend I discovered the worst part about growing salsify: harvesting it. Those dang roots are almost impossible to get out of the ground. They are like a super long, skinny, hairy beige carrot. Carrots can be tricky to pull out of the ground, but salsify was ten times more difficult. I lost track of how many salsify roots snapped off leaving their bottom halves buried in the dirt. But I managed to pull everything out, and had just enough to make Roast Garlic Salsify Soup. That is, after I prepared the salsify for eating. The second worst part about growing salsify is getting it ready to eat. I scrubbed and scrubbed as much dirt off of them as I could, then meticulously peeled their bumpy hairy still-dirty skin off. By the end of it my hands were stained brown with salsify sap. But I held onto the hope that my oyster plants would turn into an amazing meal. And, happily, they did! I don't know if I would say it tastes like oysters, but the salsify lends a very subtle delicate umami flavor.

Now, the soup does not LOOK good. Cooked salsify and lentils combine to create stew the color of, well, old vomit. But it tastes delicious. I'm really not sure if you can find salsify in any stores, and I haven't even seen it at the farmer's market. But a packet of seeds will only set you back a couple of bucks, and this time next year, you too could be the proud owner of a garden bed full of oyster plants waiting to be dug up.

Sunflower Seeds part 2

Never to be outdone, my dad has completely upstaged my sunflower success. Early in the summer, he casually mentioned that it might be nice to plant a few sunflowers, and wondered if I had any extra seeds. My four sunflowers had happily sprouted, so I gave him the half-empty package of seeds and told him he could keep it. He proceeded to plant and grow TWENTY gigantic sunflowers.

These things are mammoth! The stems are probably 4-5 inches in diameter, like small tree trunks. And I can't even fathom how many seeds he is going to have once they are all dried up.

The boys and I had a blast harvesting the flowers with Papa. Each newly cut flower was a challenge of strength: who would be strong enough to carry THIS ONE to the basement??? By the end of it we were completely covered in dust and sunflower sap, but it was the best kind of fun. My dad seemed pretty proud of his haul - and his basement is looking like a real farmer's larder. One shelf full of pumpkins, another of winter squash, and twenty enormous sunflowers hanging from the ceiling waiting for their seeds to dry out. It is awesome.

Harvesting Seeds

Do you ever harvest seeds from your garden? Aside from harvesting and eating the actual vegetables, harvesting and saving seeds from your mature plants is one of the very best things about gardening. Today I harvested the leek seeds - this took a while since leeks are biennials, meaning that they take 2 years to flower and produce seeds. Luckily, these were planted in a part of my dad's garden that has been neglected for, yes, two years, so the seeds were left to mature unharmed. Above you can see the dried up leek flowers (it was all I could do to not pick them when they were huge fluffy purple balls of beauty. But I held strong, waiting for the seeds to form.).

Here you can see that each flower is made up of tons of buds, each of which produced one tiny black leek seed. When the buds crack open and you can see the seed inside you are ready to harvest.

I still haven't gotten all the seeds out - I think I'm just going to rub the flowers between my hands and sort out the seeds after everything is all crumbled up. Now I have to decide if I want to do the messy job in the house and deal with the dusting and sweeping, or outside and deal with the scavenging chickens and wind. Hm.

These are rutabega seeds that I gathered from the same neglected section of garden. I'm actually not even sure what to do with a rutabega, but now I can figure that out after these seeds grow into a nice crop next year. Rutabega seeds are a lot easier to harvest - they just come off clean in your hand when you gently squeeze the dried up flower.

Have I inspired you to harvest your own seeds yet? Well if I have, there is just one more thing to know. You can only harvest and reuse the seeds from open-pollinated plants. Many seed companies sell you seeds that have been genetically tampered with so that plants grown from their harvested seeds are inferior and not able to produce vegetables. Sometimes they won't even grow at all. Why would a seed company do that? So that you will have to buy more seeds, of course! Here is a brief article that will tell you a little bit more about open-pollinated seeds. Because people have been getting more and more interested in growing heirloom, open-pollinated crops, there are more and more places to get these seeds. My very favorite is Baker Creek; they have an amazing selection of seeds for your traditional garden vegetables as well and tons of rare things you could never eat unless you grew it yourself. Plus they always seem to send me free seeds with my orders. AND their catalogue is as beautiful as a coffee table book. Did I mention I love them? (And, no they didn't bribe me to say all those great things about them either.)

I'm especially proud of my kale seeds. I grew them all by myself (rather than foraging them from my dad's neglected garden!) and it took great self-control not to pull those plants out of the ground before the seeds were mature. I have pretty limited gardening space and there were many times that I wanted to pluck them out and stick in seeds for something different. Now I have a ton of pretty little kale seeds that I can plant in the spring next year - enough to share with my friends even. It is such a great feeling! It's funny how something so simple and, well, old-fashioned, could make someone feel so good. It's right up there with making a batch of jam. :)

Salsa Verde

It happened! I made and canned my first EVER batch of salsa using my accidentally-home-grown tomatillos. Fortunately, I did a bit of research beforehand and learned that you must use a recipe that is specifically for canning, since some fresh salsa recipes don't contain enough acid (vinegar or lemon / lime juice) to safely preserve the salsa in jars for a long period of time. I'm not sure exactly what will go wrong (I think botulism???) but everything I read contained the words "DANGER" and "DO NOT ADJUST THIS RECIPE" and other scary things that made even a recipe-changer like me walk a very straight line while making this.

The pantry finally contains ONE set of jars holding something I can eat. And eat it I will - does anyone else eat salsa straight out of the jar with a spoon? I pretty much expect to have heart burn for the entire duration of salsa season. Happy gardening!

Tomatillos

Today I come before you with my head hung in gardening shame. Remember my bountiful crop of Chinese Lanterns? Well, yesterday I went out there having made up my mind: though they are pretty, they needed to be pulled out. They were beginning to sprawl all over the place and were choking out my brussels sprouts. I decided to pull up the plants and take the "flowers" inside to dry and use for decoration. I yanked out the first two huge plants without much trouble, then reached down to pick up one of the pretty green flowers that had fallen off during the yanking. To my surprise, I found that inside the "flower" was a golf-ball-sized fruit, nothing like the "Chinese Lantern Berries" I had read about. This looked and felt rather like a hard unripe green tomato... almost exactly like a... TOMATILLO.

Still in dumb-dumb land, I stood there wondering if maybe Chinese Lantern Berries are really really big and somehow in the same family as tomatillos? I picked all the mysterious green, um, things off of the plants I had uprooted (I later discovered that I had harvested 2 pounds of them), took them inside and hit the internet. I believe my search was: Chinese Lanterns or Tomatillos? And what did I discover? Well, first of all, and probably the most obvious flaw in my original and hasty diagnosis is that Chinese Lanterns are ORANGE. Sheesh, how did I miss that? What I had accidentally grown, and then blogged about incorrectly like an idiot, were TOMATILLOS. The only bit of information I found to make me feel less stupid is the fact that Chinese Lanterns and Tomatillos are in the same family, the husks of the tomatillo closely resembling the Chinese lantern in all but color and size.

This actually makes a lot more sense, because I do have tomatillo seeds, which could have easily gotten mixed in with my brussels sprouts seeds. (My seed storage system consists of all seed packets stuffed happily into a gallon-sized ziplock bag and jammed into the linen closet.) I tried sprouting my tomatillo seeds in February, at the same time I started all my tomato seeds. They did not do well. All you need to do, apparently, to grow tomatillos, is toss them in some good dirt around August and wait to see what happens. Now I know.

Possibly the worst part of this whole thing is that I KILLED two tomatillo bushes! I would never in a million years do that on purpose, even if I was worried that they were shading my brussels sprouts. Maybe I could have pruned them back or something. Fortunately, there are still 2 bushes left in the bed, both of which are covered with tomatillos. I think the ones I accidentally harvested are a tad under ripe, but from what I read that won't make too much of a difference in the salsa verde I plan to make with them. The ones left on the bushes to ripen are destined for this Chicken Tomatillo stew, which looks divine. My excitement about having a bumper crop of surprise tomatillos almost overshadows my embarrassment over telling you all they were Chinese Lanterns. I'm sure some of you were suspicious ... you are much too nice. :)

Purple Plum Harvest

The purple plum tree on my dad's property looks terrible. It hardly ever has any leaves and its branches are dry and brittle, the bark is scaly and the whole thing looks like it is on its last legs. But every year it produces an abundance of the most delicious BIG purple plums. Last year I missed harvesting them - I think between vacations and starting Kindergarten and the blue jays visiting we ended up donating most of the crop back to nature. This year I've been meaning to get out there for over a week and today it finally happened.

That crazy old tree has so many plums on it I am surprised the branches aren't breaking off. I reached up to shake one so the ripe plums would fall off and the entire branch broke off in my hand. I think I got one third of the plums on the tree and have enough for a double batch of jam.

Of course there will have to be plum cobbler, and a plum pie (per the request of my 3 year old - he always wants every fruit turned into a pie). But I must make jam - I can't resist the chance to add to my almost-full jam shelf.

While I was giving the plums their photo shoot, this happened:

Of course, I was happy to share. She snatched a plum off the top of my pretty pile and gobbled it right down. The other chickens got wind of her find right away and all came running, so I had to make off with my pretty plums before they all got eaten. I threw out some of the smaller ones for them, though. It's the least I can do after stealing away all their eggs this morning. :)

Zucchini Madness

It's an old story, really. Late summer and a sudden insurmountable influx of zucchini. No matter how many you eat and give away there are still more. You start carrying huge zucchini around in your purse and car on the off chance you can find someone to foist them on. This is how I find myself. After all my complaints about poorly producing zucchini plants (mine are still turning out a pathetic one zucchini per week) my dad went out of town, leaving me in charge of his garden for a week. That's his garden, in the first picture. Only one of those huge garden beds has zucchini growing in it, but there is absolutely no hope for me. I just can't keep up with them. The first day he was gone I harvested 4 the size of my arm. I lugged them into his house to put them in the fridge and found TEN similarly sized ones already in there! Plus four really big yellow summer squash.

So I've been looking for zucchini recipes. On the off chance you find yourself in the same predicament as me, and are out of people to give your zucchini to, here are a few places to check out. This post from Kalyn's Kitchen has TONS of great zucchini ideas, as well as links to lots more yummy looking recipes. I didn't even have time to check them all out, but I'm pretty excited about these yummy stuffed zucchini bites.

And this zucchini pasta salad by my friend Kristy (of the famous Keepin' it Kind blog - seriously, have you not checked it out yet???) looks absolutely amazing. I'm planning this for tomorrow night. Or morning. Or in an hour or so...

And finally, a zucchini bread that I can eat, which means it is gluten free and candida-friendly. Actually, it is grain-free and calls for a bit of chocolate and natural sweetener, both of which I leave out. Even without those things it tastes delicious, so if you are on a less strict diet than me I'm sure you will find it divine. I have three loaves of this waiting for me in the freezer as we speak.

Man, all this talk about recycling zucchini into food is giving me the itch to cook. Please please share your zucchini recipes with me - I need anything I can get!

Goals for the week

We're a LONG way from being self-sufficient around here, but both my husband and I want to become increasingly able to provide for ourselves with what we grow, raise, catch, or somehow russle up. So this week my goal is to not buy any meat or fruit, using just what we have around here.

Earlier this year we raised and "harvested" chickens for meat. "Meat birds," as I call them, or "Fryers" as my great-grandma used to call them, are a special breed of bird that is much meatier than your average laying hen. They grow up fast, too, so don't cost very much money to feed during the time you are raising them. I'm sure all my vegan and vegetarian friends are considering removing me from their blog reader list... sorry! We aren't vegetarians around here, and in an effort to raise hormone-free, organic meat that doesn't cost a fortune, this is the solution I came up with. No, I don't love killing the birds, but we feel good about the fact that they have a very nice life while they are with us. Lots of sunshine and fresh air, real food (leaves, grass, snails, you know: the yummy stuff chickens are supposed to eat) and lots of attention from the kids. Despite my warnings to them not to get attached to the meat birds, my kids couldn't help but sit around with those big white chickens and play with them. I was surprised that the kids didn't get upset on "harvest day." They have seen us slaughter chickens before, but I thought that since they had played with these ones they would be sad. However, the kids knew that the birds were destined for the freezer since day one, so they were ok with the whole process. They even get more excited when they know we are eating "one of our chickens" rather than a store-bought one. Plus, they taste better. Much, MUCH better.

SO. This week we will be eating chicken, as well as a couple trout that have been waiting in the freezer since my husband's last fishing trip. As for fruit, blackberries are just coming into their prime. Aside from a few straggly vines creeping into my garden, there is a huge patch of blackberry bushes just up the road. I'm looking forward to walking up there with the boys and our buckets - it's one of my favorite end-of-summer traditions. We also have one tree full of little cherry-sized yellow plums. I'm hoping we have enough to make jam, in addition to whatever my three-year-old fruit monster consumes this week.

Of course, we also have eggs. I always make at least one egg-based dinner per week since that is one thing we always have more than enough of. Probably an egg and kale frittata or something... we'll see. There is some bounty from the garden. To be truthful, I have been disappointed with my garden this year. The zucchini haven't been nearly as productive as they were last year, and my tomatoes aren't ripening. I simply didn't plant enough seeds to grow as many vegetables as we eat. But, there are collard greens and a bit of kale, plus the occasional zucchini. It certainly won't get us through the week in terms of veggies, but we'll do what we can. Either way, we are much more self-sufficient than we were last year, and progress is good. I'd love to hear what you are growing!

Mini Harvest

Last year I read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver and was totally inspired to grow all my family's vegetables on our own land. You should definitely read the book - it is non fiction written like fiction and is super entertaining. Plus it will make you more excited about gardening that you have ever been in your life. Anyways, this year I set out to grow at least 5 times more vegetables than I did last year. But in spite of the fact that I planted tons more seeds than I normally do, my 30% success rate has held fast, and we are left with a decent garden that is producing only about one third of the vegetables we eat. Oh well.

I have never been a natural gardener - I am one of those people who can't even keep house plants alive. But I have learned over the last 11 years, particularly in the area of fending off pests. Up here on the hill we have to protect every crop from every side. I grow all vegetables in raised beds with gopher wire on the bottoms, then cover them with bird netting over the top. This keeps pretty much everything except bugs out of the crops and has helped things survive a bit better. But I can't for the life of me get carrots to grow. This year, despite planting literally hundreds of carrot seeds, I grew 5. These three we ate yesterday, and I'm leaving the remaining two in the ground to get super big so I don't feel so cheated. I'll be trying for carrots again in the fall.

This is our first mini harvest: in addition to the carrots, there were a zucchini, a little crook neck squash, and two purple beans which miraculously grew on a bush that had every single leaf munched off by snails. We ate this stuff in a flash, and I was left wishing I had planted a bigger garden. All this just fuels my plans for fall, and I've been going through seed packets getting things ready and hovering over my current plants wondering how to make them grow faster or if I should pull them out in favor of more promising fall items. I guess this impatience isn't a good quality in a gardener. The tomatoes are the one thing helping me bide my time - every day I go outside I see that a few more of them are approaching ripeness, and I remember my husband's salsa, and I decide to let the poor garden work on its own schedule.

In case you have a harvest more plentiful than mine, I thought I'd share a favorite recipe of ours - this is a nice make-ahead dinner idea that my kids love, always a bonus when you are using up extra veggies.

SUMMER QUINOA SALAD
1 cup dry quinoa, rinsed
1/2 cup olive oil
juice of 2 lemons
1/2 red onion, finely diced
hand full of fresh basil, chopped
diced tomato
diced avocado
whatever other fresh veggies you have on hand, chopped

1.) Cook the quinoa according to package directions, and put in the fridge to cool down while you cut up all your veggies.

2.) Whisk together the lemon juice and olive oil, the pour over quinoa and mix well.

3.) Stir in all the veggies, mix well. Season the salad with salt to taste.

4.) Serve as is, or in lettuce cups (I just use big leaves of butter lettuce, but any lettuce will do as long as it is large-leafed) or with chilled grilled chicken.

Enjoy!

Apricot harvest

This afternoon I happened to have time to both go to the bathroom AND look at myself in the mirror while washing my hands (fellow moms know what I mean) and noticed that my shirt was on inside-out. *sigh* I wonder if the people at the grocery store and bank noticed? Last night I made apricot jam. The kids and I picked a huge bag full a few days ago, and those things do NOT keep for long. By the time I started cutting them up about half had gone moldy. But I had more than enough for the 5 cups I needed. My dad has 2 apricot trees on this property and they are very sporadic producers (I think that is because he is a very sporadic pruner, but I could be wrong). We've had no fruit at all for the last two summers, but this year the trees made tons of gigantic delicious apricots - enough for the blue jays, wasps, AND all of us.

I used a packet of Sure-Gel that I had left-over from last year's jam making, but if you are going to make jam and you can find it, I highly recommend using Pamona's Pectin. It doesn't rely on sugar to make the jam set up, so you use about a third of the normal amount of sugar. This batch I made required 7 cups of sugar. SEVEN CUPS!!! And if you use less the jam won't set - you'll be left with jars of drooly sticky fruit sludge, which will be very disappointing. If I'd had some Pamona's on hand I think it would have asked for 3 cups.

This morning I woke up to 10 jars of jam on the kitchen table in the morning sunlight. They are the most beautiful color! I think this is my favorite color of jam... probably plum is my favorite flavor. The boys weren't quite as enamored with the color of our jam as me ... they were too busy discussing the rules of "whip tag," ie. does it count if you whip someone in the head as long as you do it softly, etc.

Making jam is so satisfying - keeping that home-grown fruit from going to waste by turning it into something that will last a whole year. I still have a bit of jam left from last year, so we're going to have to hurry up and eat a lot of toast or something. Or maybe give it away, or trade it for tomatoes since the dog keeps burying dead squirrels under my tomato plants. The non-jammed apricots are in the food dehydrator. I've never made dried apricots before, but one of the farmers nearby lays hundreds of them outside in the sun on screens every summer, so I figure it is a pretty fool-proof process (famous last words, I know). I'll keep you posted on how those turn out.