Garden and Birkshires and kitties!

My newest kitty is still here. I'm not sure what's going on with Lucky. He can be very sweet, but today when I got home he was not a happy camper. He also hasn't pooped in several days... so now we need to go see the doctor for sure. I just hope he's not pooping somewhere else I just haven't discovered yet. I haven't smelled anything suspicious though. I've tried introducing him to Jacques and Swee'pea. It's not going well. Mostly because Lucky is so vocal about his displeasure. He sure is a character.
Had a little bbq last weekend and made some mint ice cream. Pretty yummy stuff! Fresh mint from the garden. I mixed it with the sugar for the cream. It's perfect for chocolate syrup and strawberry jam and... ???
My first zucchini also showed up. I'm a bit surprised that there aren't more. I thought I would be inundated. But I'm not. There is another one growing now. But only one.
My tomatoes are flourishing. I finally have close to ten fruits on the vines. I am really looking forward to those. The fruits are getting quite large too - they must start turning red soon?
Flowers are doing well also - I have lots of these. They are next to my firey-orange cosmos. Looks very beautiful.
Blueberries!! I've got two ripe ones. Watch out.
Basil - oodles of it. I ran out of olive oil so it's all washed and waiting for me to do something with it tomorrow after I buy more olive oil.
And look what I found when I went to cut some parsley! Another caterpillar. Remember Fred? Same little guy (I think). So now the little guy is in a jar chomping on my parsley and well see what he turns into.
And yes I was in the Berkshire's, Western Massachusetts this weekend. It was absolutely lovely. Melanie has an amazing house - now with horses, hot tub, clean air, and a sparkling pool. Very lovely. There are also two barn cats. Who are new mommies. Here is Tiger with the 8 little ones. The litters are about a week apart. They are so cute!

I'm a wild foodie!

Well, I finally did what I threatened to do... try eating my weeds.
Here is a bunch of lamb's quarters growing in my tomatoes. I've always had to weed this stuff like crazy. I don't know how so much of it can seed itself in my yard, but it does. So after the event at the Wyck house I decided to let it grow, so I could harvest some, so I could eat it.
I pulled up bunches of it. made a nice clear space in the tomato garden came inside, cleaned it up, and cooked it in a little bit of olive oil and some garlic.
All of the websites say this stuff tastes just like spinach. Boy are they right! It's pretty delicious. I'll have to try it as a salad next time. Supposed to be just as good. And don't worry - there is plenty left in the garden.
I also have tomatoes coming!!! I'm super excited about these. Of the 12 plants in the garden only one or two have fruits. They are growing like crazy, but I hope the others get fruits soon. I also have some baby zucchini's and a few beets are starting to show up.
In the last few minutes it decided to dump on us. A massive thunderstorm has parked itself over my neighborhood. This is good - we need this! It's pouring. Unfortunately I had sheets on the laundry line. Those will have to be done again. But it is nice and cool for a change.

And then there were three...

No - I didn't get another kitty. This one just showed up. This is Lucky. Lucky is a BIG kitty. He's even bigger than Jacques. He showed up in the yard and was still there the next morning. So I opened the door and in he came. I was going to place an add in Craig's List for a FOUND! kitty. For some reason I thought I'd search first to see if he'd been lost in the first place. Sure enough someone posted him with a picture. And it is him. But I've been trying to reach this person since then and have received no reply. :( Maybe the person is on vacation. Lucky is very lonely, but of course he and Jacques do not like each other. I'm not sure about Swee'pea yet. But I'm also not going pass him on until I've exhausted every possibility to get him back to his owner. He's a big love bug too. Sigh - how do I wind up in these situations?

On a different note - there is a "This American Life" episode - you must all hear. (When you get to the page - click on the red "play" button. The episode is about an hour long. Worth it.) It is a documentation of a group of prison inmates doing an act of Shakespeare's Hamlet. It will really blow you away. Talk about actors reflecting on their life for inspiration for their roles. It's the best acting you've ever experience. I've heard it twice now and I think I'll listen again. It gives you hope for people who recognize their wrongs, but aren't sure they should be forgiven. It's amazing. Check it out!

Garlic Scapes - clarification post

Here we go - this is A garlic scape. If you unwind it it is about 12 inches long. They are the flower part of the garlic that farmers cut off so that the bulb will be bigger. Apparently you can only get them at farmers markets.
And for the recipe I posted in the last post you cut off the flowers, then use the stems. They are very garlicky, but not sharply garlicky - just good flavor. Plus they are just really pretty. I got another bunch of them in my share yesterday. Yay! I might try something different this time... maybe a stir fry? I have two zucchinis as well....

Oh, and do I just have the cutest kitty or what?

Happiness in the small things

My garden is flourishing and I am always amazed at the rush I get when I spend time with it. Here's my bird's eye view: The herbs in a row are happy as clams. They are growing like crazy, and it is such a pleasure to be able to go out and pick exactly what you want to put into dinner. Above is my beautiful mellissa plant (the big fluffy one in the middle). If you don't know this herb it is really lovely. It has a strong lemon scent - completely different than lemon grass. I went to the herbiary yesterday and distilled drops sell for $69. per bottle. That's about $1/drop! But it is pure heaven. Probably the most expensive whiff of anything I've ever put my nose close to. What an indulgence. While I can't afford that - I can stick my nose in the bush in my yard whenever I want to - or cook with it (it adds nice flavor to rice) and I also like to put it in my apricot sauce. mmmm. On the left is thyme and to the right is parsley and then a rosemary bush.
Below is the other half of the row, from left to right: chives, basil, dill (very faint), sage, and green onions (purple poof flowers). I'm also trying my hand at collard greens - they apparently like water - go figure. I say that because they were in the ground for a week not doing anything, turning yellow and then I soaked them and they perked up. Duh.
And the onion flowers. They are so beautiful! The bees really like them too. That's going to make for some funky tasting honey, maybe. So Matt, my partner in crime from the food symposium, keeps bees. I told him in return for honey he could totally park his hives in my back yard. I hope he takes me up on the offer. I have to think about what to plant for yummy tasting honey - we'll have to consult if it works out. The bees really like my echinacea flowers (see top), and the clover that is growing all over the lawn. I have a completely new outlook on my "lawn" after the symposium. I walk around on it and see totally different things in it now. I was going to try to re-seed the lawn with some real grass this summer, but now I think I want to keep it more along the lines of a "tamed meadow". I think I might try a weed salad tonight. I haven't done it yet. But the one plant I've yanked out in hand fulls has flourished by the tomatoes. So I'll yank it out again... The advise on the wild foodies website is to go easy. Eat only a little at first to see how it agrees with you. This is probably good advice since I was going to just go through the garden and pick a whole variety. I'll try them one at a time, see what happens.

It's all about food - Part 2

I had the most amazing day I've had for a long time. (Saturday) (Sunday - it was so amazing it took two days to write about it.)

I attended the Wyck House Food Symposium: Cultivating our Food Roots. My mind is so completely blown that I don't even know where to start!

I guess I'll start with the site. The Wyck House is one of the oldest houses in Germantown (a neighborhood of Philadelphia) and served as the ancestral home of the Wistar-Haines family from the 1690s until 1972. They were Quakers. Today it is preserved as a historic house and farm. They farm as 19th century farmers would have, have programs and the house and its artifacts are open for public viewing. For the Food Symposium, they hosted a food market and fair on Friday afternoon during the same hours as the weekly Farmers Market, and on Saturday hosted four amazing speakers in the gardens under a tent who spoke about food history and more.
My co-worker Matt, is really the culprit for getting us involved in this event. He is my partner-in-crime for getting THE COOKBOOK published. He is in charge of the digitization department and together with Ashley got everything ready for the book. He encouraged us to participate in the market on Friday evening. We decided we wanted to cook food from the cookbook in hopes of enticing people to purchase the book. That part of the plan didn't actually work, but people really liked the food. But it was great to be there.
There were some fantastic people there. First of all, fresh fruits and veggies right from the farm. Then there were other vendors, the first blueberries of the season, there was a historic food re-enactoress, Susan McLellan Plaisted in all her garb - she made a lemon tart - had the flip chart to prove it. And I must say - the tart was amazing. We talked about historic cooking. She was lamenting the fact that so many historic garden were closing and she couldn't get the correct foods to make some of her historic recipes. Who knew this was such a big deal? Well, I do now.
There was also the Wild Foodies. And I think that this is where the mind blowing started. I made the rounds, purchased my local-in-season-cherries and blueberries, and saw this lady with a bunch of pots on her table of... - get this - ALL THE WEEDS I HAVE IN MY GARDEN. So, ya just gotta go see what that is all about, right? And it was all about what to DO with them - how to eat them, how they are edible, how to use them for medicinal purposes. Which ones are anti-bug and post-bug-bite appropriate. I couldn't believe it. All these weeds I've been yanking out are edible! So I don't know about you people, but I have a yard full of all these things and I'll be surviving a nuclear Holocaust just fine thank you. (I hope) But I do have to pat myself on the back - I have been preserving some of them just because they are pretty. Now I know I can use them too! I've got to figure out how to learn more about this. In the meantime - here's what I did learn about the things I can eat in my garden...
We (with the cookbook) were in the back in a tent with Capogiro (the best gilato in North America), the Johnson House (who brought their own ginger beer), Le Dames d'Escoffier (who had a pork roast that melted in the mouth) and Whole Foods (who were making fresh individual pizzas on the spot). Are you hungry yet?
So to back up.... Friday morning, Matt and I cooked. We cooked like crazy!!! We made just over 100 meatballs. A stuffed eggplant recipe that went so fast we couldn't believe it - we'd doubled up on the Cherry bread because we knew that would be a hit and the night before I'd made 150 macaroons. Well, let me just tell you the hit of the day were the meatballs. Thank goodness there were (apparently) alot of vegetarians, because they were stellar and we had enough to have some left over. (page 8 by the way, if you have the cookbook). One of the first gentlemen to try them was a guide for the Wyck house and he raved! Two minutes later his phone rang, he answered it and said, "Hello? - Hi - lemmetellyou - I just had the best meatball in the world. Oh man..." I saw him today at the event and he reminded me that they were the best meatballs he had ever had. And yeeeeaaah, they are kinda good. Too bad he didn't buy a book. I hope he dreams about them and comes and gets a book after all. hee hee.We did break even at the fair. We spend about $133. for the food and such, and we sold a total of 8 books. $20 each. I'm really hoping some people bought the book online. Then we would make a profit.
And then today... - more blowing of the mind.
The symposium was four incredible speakers:
William Woys Weaver, Michael Twitty, Valeir Erwin of the Geechee Girl Rice Cafe, Rose Hayden-Smith, and Ben Watson.
William Woys Weaver started Saturday's mind blowing. I wish I would have heard him speak before publishing THE COOKBOOK. He talked about trying to figure out - in order to recreate authenticity - kitchen gardens of the 18th and 19th centuries. He showed how to read recipes and extract the subtle information from which can tell you so much. I cannot wait to get back to work to start doing some more research. He showed how images are very important to authenticating what we think are heirloom seeds. We have huge "ephemera" collections I will be pulling on Monday to look at to see what treasures are in them.
Michael Twitty - I don't even know where to start with this man. He was an incredible wealth of information about food and the history of the enslaved peoples and African Americans. How did food migrate from West Africa to the Americas - what is the origin of the word "yam" and what where enslaved people's garden's like - how did they grow them - how was it important and why? The origin of the word yam is from the word yahm a common West African word in many languages. He went on today that this is also the origin of the word yum. Here we've got these African Mamies - raising white kids and black kids, telling them to "eat up!" YAHM, YAHM. Michael then went on to say that if you look up 'yum' in the dictionary it says, "origin unknown." to which he said, "that mean us", meaning former slaves and African American people. After listening to him speak I realized - I needed to come home and rethink my entire vegetable garden. If enslaved people could feed themselves on these small 8ft.x8ft. plots - I should be able to do so as well. I can't wait... although it may have to be next year. But tomorrow will be my garden day. I plan on making some progress then.
Valerie Erwin, chef of the Geechee Girl Rice Cafe in Germantown, spoke briefly about how to prepare a meal with local, in season, fresh foods. And then she talked about the lunch menu and how she'd decided on that for our lunch. Eat your hearts out...
We had salmon broiled with a very yummy spice rub, a fresh greens salad with lovely dressing, a bean salad - to die for, black eyed peas, sugar snap peas, red peppers, red onions, all in a savory dressing - oh dear - I had heaps of seconds of that. Then there was corn bread and collard greens, and for dessert - a yellow cake with fresh fruits from the Wyck house (peaches and black raspberries) and home-made whipped cream. I think there were very few people who didn't have seconds. I had to save my dessert for later. It was delicious. Yummy Yum Yum.
After lunch, Rose Hayden-Smith spoke. Rose embodies the politics for the day. She is the Strategic Initiative Leader for Sustainable Food Systems for the University of California, Agriculture and Natural Resources. She is also a US History historian. Her specialty? Victory Gardens. How interesting - how incredibly interesting! She said that the first Federally mandated education curriculum was foods and gardens during WWI. She proceeded to show posters and imagery. She continued to argue in favor of shortening the food mile. She argued in favor of small community or civic gardens. Schools should have gardens - and on and on. She encouraged us to look at the USDA website. and many others besides. I had no idea I could!? The commentary after her speak quickly became a heated discussion of current farming politics.
The last speaker was Ben Watson. Who knew there was so much to know about apples??? Apparently we can thank the bears for them. They are accused of choosing the sweetest apples from trees, walking a way and then pooping the seeds out with a nice, "fertilizer" to get the new tree growing. Ben talked about looking for varieties that have dissappeared, how they are propagated, which are good to eat, which are good for cider, and which are good for insect repellant purposes. I'm seriously toying with the idea of getting an apple tree. Although there is a lot of research that needs to be done first!

To write the above - I sat outside in my weedy garden with Jacques who started chasing the fireflies, which made me decide it was time to go in.

Today - Sunday, I slept in. I felt I'd deserved it. Then I went for a bike ride, came back and decided it was time to tackle the garden. Lawn mowing, hedge trimming and a new examination of what it growing in my garden. Mary came over and dropped off my farm share in the afternoon, mostly the same stuff as last week. So I decided to look up a recipe for what to do with garlic scapes. Again... eat your hearts out....

Garlic Scape Pesto

Ingredients:
1 cup garlic scapes (about 8 or 9 scapes), top flowery part removed, cut into ¼-inch slices
1/3 cup walnuts
¾ cup olive oil
¼-1/2 cup grated parmigiano
½ teaspoon salt
black pepper to taste

Method:
Place scapes and walnuts in the bowl of a food processor and whiz until well combined and somewhat smooth. Slowly drizzle in oil and process until integrated. With a rubber spatula, scoop pesto out of bowl and into a mixing bowl. Add parmigiano to taste; add salt and pepper. Makes about 6 ounces of pesto. Keeps for up to one week in an air-tight container in the refrigerator.

For ½ pound short pasta such as penne, add about 2 tablespoons of pesto to cooked pasta and stir until pasta is well coated.

This recipe is stolen from: A Washington Post Blog, A Mighty Appetite, by Kim O'Donnel

It's all about food

yeah well, it is. My first CSA, crop share association, came on Saturday! In the first haul we have small red onions, kale, lettuce, parsley, fennel, garlic scapes and cherries. Yum - can't wait to get going with those. I think I will freeze most of the parsley a la basil as in the last post. It works really well. I need to eat the kale very soon. the most interesting challenge will be what to do with the garlic scapes.
From my own garden on Friday I pulled a giant bunch of turnip greens, more raspberries and thyme. It doesn't even look like I made a dent in the turnips. which is good because they were yummy and I think I will take a few more bunches before they become actual turnips.
On Saturday night the three pit bulls next door broke out. The youngest mail who got out first did quite a bit of damage to the garden. Not on purpose, but still. I think the worst is that I lost one of my precious tomato plants. I have been worried since I planted them that something would go wrong and I'd lose them. But if this is all - okay. I really hope it's all. I put them into cages this weekend so that should help. And I really hope those darn dogs don't get out again. It was a little scary. The two boys are fine. They like me, but the little girl - oh boy. She's a piece of work. She's been severely abused - but still. She doesn't like me - fine. But that's not great either.
But at the moment she's not my biggest problem. Its these guys:
ooo how I hate them! ugh! They've invaded my house. They are everywhere - I kill them wipe up with vinegar and they come from the other direction. I think their nest is under the porch somewhere. Once I get that ripped up - I hope i find it and I can get rid of them. If they would just stay in the yard! But then they'd probably eat my tomatoes. Ya just can't win with these suckers.

Saturday Harvest

What a great way to start the weekend. Two more cups of raspberries (maybe enough now to make some jam!), an echinacea, more pretty sunny flowers, and a bunch of basil. The basil in the garden in going absolutely bonkers. The bushes are just thrilled to be out there. I probably need to change the earth in the window box or something because for the last two years the basil has been unhappy in there. But maybe I'll just ignore it because I have so much of it outside!
I picked a bunch to freeze and figure every time the bush is overloaded with too many leaves I'll just have to pick some, freeze it and not worry about buying any more.
All you have to do is wash the leaves and pretend you are rolling a cigar in plastic wrap.
Leaves:
Ready to freeze:
When you need fresh basil, just take it out of the freezer, chop and voila! This technique works well with parsley and dill also, both of which I have in the garden. Hopefully I'll have oodles of herbs come winter.
Since I do have a small parsley bush, and I have ground meat stashed in the fridge, I decided to give Ellen Emlen's meat balls a go:I did: a cup of ground beef, cup of ground pork, 1/3c chopped onion, 1T. chopped parsley, 1/2t. white pepper, 1t salt, 1/2 t fresh grated nutmeg. 1 small lemon peel and juice, maybe a cup of bread in the milk, and 1 large egg. (eggs back then were smaller so you don't need as much today).
My beautiful parsley and an onion.

Dinner with some kale. Yum. Don't leave out the lemon. As weird as it sounds - it needs to be in there. Fry in butter - or whatever you want.

That time of Year

Yes it's that time of year, that time of year for so many things...

Strawberries:Strawberries from the Amish Farmer. Beautiful sweet, aromatic, small, perfect strawberries.
And this year, he finally gave me a break on the price - and I mean a real break. He only charged me half the price - normally he just gives me 25¢ off a basket. This time... yippee! So I bought two flats. That's a lot of strawberries. I made three double batches of strawberry jam last night. And by the third batch I figured out my new secret. Spices. Yup. Cinnamon and Cardamom. Next year they will all be like that.
But not only are there the edible ones, there are the wild ones. Too bad they are fake ones. They taste like NOTHING. Its a real bummer because they are everywhere in the garden. They are a pretty weed. They shoot out runners like crazy and take over everywhere. I wasn't sure if I liked them at first. But now I find them quite lovely. They have taken over the three feet of barren land next to the neighbors wall.

I'm letting them do their thing. They aren't hard to weed out - unlike other nasty ugly weeds. If I ever decide to get rid of them, it won't be too difficult.

Raspberries!My first bowlful today! And it seems like I barely made a dent on the bush. I am so hoping to be able to make a more substantial cache of jam from this year. However - this first batch might end up in some homemade ice cream.

And next to the raspberries? - a mystery solved:Hollyhocks. The things that never did anything last year are blooming! I have this pale pink, a darker pink and yellow - so far. They are beautiful! They seem to me to be hibiscus for non-tropical folks. I can't wait to propagate many many more! I'm going to plant them everywhere. And especially since they are tall - they will cover some of the ugliness of my neighbors idea of landscaping. sigh.

Sunny flowers:
A few other things are blooming as well, for example, these fun sunny happy flowers. They are blooming in clumps in a few places.

Kitties:
What scary thing is making Swee'pea stalk it?
The fan.
The fan had to be set up last weekend because the summer inferno hit us full force. I was a die-hard until I couldn't sleep and there were kitties wilting all over the place. Then I put in the window air conditioners. But still, air needed to move...
The fan. Scary scary stuff to have something whirring at you. We spent a good 10-15 minutes on high alert. Then we lay down in the wind's path and looked content. However... then the InCharge Person went downstairs and left Poor Thing on his own. He disappeared into the bedroom where it was safe and apparently forgot about the fan. Because when I came back upstairs after an hour we came back out of the bedroom only to be confronted by the Scary Scary. So we stood by the kitchen counter trying to decide how we felt about it. Poor Thing turned to look at the InCharge Person and the InCharge Person made the mistake of touching the Poor Thing trying to calm him. Swee'pea lept three feet straight up, all claws extended, did major acrobatics, and one of those extended claws came down straight on the InCharge Person's leg from knee to mid calf. After lots of blood and no hydrogen peroxide, tea tree oil was applied and the Scary Scary was moved to a more descrete location. Good Grief.

The other thing my little Swee'pea is still insisting on is pulling out every single ball of yarn to play with in the middle of the night. Fun for him - not for me who has to unravel all the knots and try to wind everything the following morning. I broke down and went to Ikea and bought paper put-em-together-yourself storage boxes. I hope this will work. We'll find out tonight.
But someone else had to claim those boxes first.
Here's my Jacques-in-the-box: It seems there really isn't a preference as to which box we occupy either.
And finally, we have a new toy.
It is a laser pointer mouse.
This is causing considerable consternation. There is a red dot flitting around, that doesn't have an identifying sound, nor does it make any noise. It disappears too quickly. It needs to be moved slowly so that kitties can keep sight of it.
And when you finally do get your paw on it, you can't feel anything. What in tarnation....?