Archive for the ‘gardening’ Category

The Infamous Fruit Salad

April 5th, 2010

When getting together with family or friends, I always try to bring a dish to share that is family friendly really meaning the adults will like it and the kids will like it, too. I am the one in particular in the family that is also known for being super health conscious and particular about food choices. I love when I bring dishes that are loved by all.

To me, the fruit salad is one of the best choices in the world. It is easy to throw together, can be made with so much variety, what is on sale or wild and exotic and everyone around the table loves it.

Be creative and think in season and see what you can find that is fresh and local. In the summer, you can make a lovely red white and blue salad with organic strawberries, organic blueberries and chunks of apple. Or go for a more tropical bowl of mango, banana, papaya and kiwi. It is also fun to hollow out a watermelon and fill it with fruit when it is in season. In the fall, go for the plums, pears and grapes with apple. In the winter, I slow down on the fruit salad since there is not much in season but you could do a melon, banana, apple type dish.

Today we are going to visit family and I am bringing the fruit bowl. I cut up cantaloupe and tossed it with small oranges and grapes. I added mint cut chiffanode and a drizzle of honey. Of course, I taste tested along the way and can’t wait until later when I can have a whole bowl full.

Adding the mint is another area you can be quite creative. Mint is a favorite of mine for fruit salad but again you can vary this depending on what is growing in the garden and what fruits you have in your salad. Seeds like hemp, poppy and sesame also add a new twist.

Any leftover fruit and herbs can be put in the blender and whizzed up for a smoothie or freeze the fruit whole and take out for frozen little snacks. There is really no way you can go wrong with the fruit salad and I just know it will be enjoyed by everyone.

Dig in!

Comments ( 4 )

local food made easy

March 17th, 2010

Inspired by the rave reviews of a few friends, I decided to take the plunge and place an order with CT Farm Fresh Express (CTFFE). Deb Marsden started CTFFE to connect Connecticut farms with the customers who don’t have the means to travel to farms for food each week. Farm fresh food delivered to your door — what more can you ask for? Their website has a lovely, easy-to-use online store. In addition to a description of each item, you can learn more about the  farms or artisan who sell their products through CTFFE, as well as listening to some of the media outlets Deb has appeared on highlighting CTFFE. They carry everything from soaps and cleaning products to gluten-free baked foods to maple syrup, greens, sprouts, meats and cheeses and more. In the summer, you can get a wider range of vegetables than what’s available in early March in CT when I ordered.

You can order until Tuesday, she contacts the farms on Wednesday to let them know what she needs, she picks up at the farms on Thursday and Deb, her husband and 3 other drivers delivers to you  on Friday. She operates out of East Haddam, so the delivery charge is based on your town’s proximity to EH, and ranges from $5-$15. She communicates very well via email about what you can expect and what you need to do — which is basically leave a cooler big enough for your order near your door, and a check to cover the invoice that was emailed to you on Thursday.

CTFFE orderI placed my order before arranging the Aiki Farms field trip, so the first item I put in my cart was the Aiki Pea Shoot 8oz bag (big bag at far right of picture). Oh my gosh, we LOVED these. I did the usual things with them like top my salads or just dress with some oil and vinegar, but Luke found some creative ways to use them,  putting chopped sprouts into the eggs he made for Lucia. They are crunchy and juicy and LOVELY to eat.

We also ordered microgreens from Two Guys from Woodbridge (small plastic box in center of pic), not having tried them before. These have a light peppery flavor and again, I loved the added dimension they gave to my salads. Given large quantities (I only ordered 1oz) I could find myriad uses for these little greens with the small bite. Microgreens are densely nutritious and have a much more delicate flavor than their full-grown counterparts.

Next were the greens, which were all intensely flavored and blew anything I’ve gotten from the grocery store out of the water. The lettuces (romaine next to pea shoots going counterclockwise, then Shisho, Lettuce Bouquet, Sorrel, lastly arugula with a generous wad of fresh cilantro in the bag just under the microgreens)  were more flavorful and less like iceberg than the romaine I get at shaws or even whole foods. There is a sense of fragility to these leaves, in that I don’t think they would travel 2000 miles very well like their counterparts in the stores, but since the farmers don’t have to concentrate on shelf life, flavor is the priority and it shows. We made a simple green salad with just the romaine, pea shoots and slivered onions with a splash of balsamic vinegar and olive oil. Great flavor, simple food. Doesn’t get much better than that!

local saladI’ve got some sorrel seeds to sow this year, and while I’m familiar with wild varieties of this plant, I haven’t tasted the cultivated forms. OH MY! Run to your computer or local farm and get your hands on a head of this absolutely fantabulous lemony green. Succulent and sweetly sour, it was gone in minutes. What I hadn’t added to the salad, that is. And the lemony tartness sent our green salad to heretofore unattained heights. If you come across sorrel, definitely pick it up and try it.

The arugula was as tasty as that we grew in our yard last year, so it’s lovely to have an off-season source until we build a greenhouse. The shiso was a new flavor, and its deep purple leaves looked pretty admist the sea of green, tho they all seem to have gotten tossed beneath in the picture. Quoting Dante upon taste-testing a leaf “This tastes like nothing I’ve ever had before”. It’s in the mint family, and the purple shiso is used to dye umeboshi red. High in calcium and iron, this “green” is definitely worth a try. It can be used whole or cut into strips in salads or stir fry.

We also ordered a bag of potatoes, but had some that needed using up first, so I stashed them in the basement and will be bustin into the bag this week. Organic and local — gotta love that!

We have tasted the Two Guys from Woodbridge mesclun and pea shoots at a friend’s who kindly fed us between acrobatics and skating this past weekend (Thanks, Marcella!) and the pea shoots from there were very different, so I recommend trying both.

Food starts to lose nutrients and flavor shortly after harvest, so it makes sense that this option for local food is a good thing. And CTFFE makes it as easy as pie! Have you tried CTFEE or a similar service? How was your experience?

Happy local fooding!

Comments ( 6 )

, , , ,

labels in a can

March 16th, 2010

Today we’re heading back to the garden for some more seed-starting ideas. Specifically, making plant labels from aluminum cans. Recycling AND making something you can reuse again and again. Perfect!

It was harder than I expected to lop off the top and bottom of the can with scissors, so I used the tin snips to make it a little easier. Perhaps your scissors would be up to the task, but alas, not so mine.

snippin cans

Cutting a ring around the top, then straight down one side of the can and another ring around the bottom left some rough edges, which I was easily able to trim off with my lame-ish scissors.

rolled and ready to go

The metal was still fairly curled, holding fast to memories of its previous incarnation as a can, so I rolled them the other way and had rubber bands hold them this way for 20 minutes or so. Not a necessary step, but this did make it easier for me to do the rest of the cutting, etc. Once I unrolled one, I folded it in half, making two 4-inch long pieces of metal, which I then cut into four 4-inch by almost 1-inch wide strips.

strip!

Since the kids help with these, I trimmed most of the top edges into a rounded shape. But you can see that I experimented with alternatives to this as well. I also folded the opposite end as you would starting some paper airplane folds to make a pointed, reinforced edge to stick into the soil.

The last step is writing in the plant names. I did it both ways, with the “Tomato ‘Sioux’ ” sample being written directly on the silver side of the marker. I also tried the alternative (says “Tomato ’sweet pea’ ” which, for me, involved writing the words backwards on a piece of paper, and then copying the backwards letters onto the printed side of the can. This gives an embossed appearance to the letters. After doing a few and getting my brain into the backwards letter mode, I didn’t have to write them out on paper first, but it did take a few attempts before I was in the ‘zone’.

tomatoes!

I can’t say I do this for seed starting, I like my popsicle sticks with a sharpie jes’ fine for the many labels I need. But I would consider labeling the many new herbs we’ve decided to grow this year with these more weatherproof markers. I probably won’t limit myself to the small, utilitarian labels above, but make bigger labels with some decorative touches like scrollwork, etc. as well.

I found details for this idea at little house in the suburbs, and I love the herb label they ended with and plan to make something along these lines for our own until we’re more familiar with them and can identify them in the blink of an eye.

rosemary label

Comments ( 5 )

, ,

Newspaper seedling pots

March 10th, 2010

Well, the new moon is on March 15, so we’re in a big rush this week to get our newspaper pots up and running by then. We’re experimenting with various garden techniques this year, and lunar gardening is one of them. I read some interesting info, having noticed that the Farmer’s Almanac includes “planting by the moon” information on their calendar. Many studies have been done to validate the folk observations of the effects of the moon on plant growth, and I figure I could use all the help I can get growing more of our food and herbs. I found several books on the subject via ILL at the library, and a website called gardeningbythemoon.com.

Last year we made newspaper pots to house our seedlings until they were ready for the garden. Definitely more time consuming than buying seed trays, but you can plant the entire thing in the ground making transplanting much less traumatic. And I imagine the newspaper disintegrates faster than peat pots since it’s so much thinner. Plus we’re keeping materials out of the waste stream rather than purchasing a single-use piece of plastic, with all the environmental burden that carries, or the peat pots, another non-renewable resource. Needless to say, it eliminates the need to sterilize seedling pots, a task I detest.  AND we have well-read seedlings, up on the latest town politics. Either way, it’s a win-win, n’est-ce pas?

So, first step. I took the local paper that comes each Friday (smaller than a NYT type paper, so if you’ve got one like that you might have to adjust or use a bigger form), opened it and cut along the center crease. Then I turned it 90 degrees and cut along the fold. Lucia took some shots to illustrate.

I now had what I needed to make one pot. I turned it so the shorter side was near my stomach, and folded that up about 1.5 inches. After creasing that fold, I brought the opposite short edge under the one I’d previously folded, not coming all the way to the fold, but perhaps a half inch or so back from it.

Next, with the smaller fold folded over the bottom fold, and keeping this thinner fold toward the top of the jar, I wrapped it, folds inside, around the jar, leaving a little less than half the newspaper hanging off the bottom of the jar. Can I say fold a few more times and confuse you? Fold down the larger fold, fold the shorter fold over it, keep that nearest the top of the jar. Phew!

newspaper pot step 2

Turning the jar on it’s lid, I folded the newspaper down to cover the bottom. For these small jars (Bionaturae glass jars, though cans work as well, just give a bigger pot), I had to fold it down in 3 sections.

newspaper pot step 3

Done folding down the bottom, I turned it over and slid the jar out. Now it’s time to tuck the part of the top that wraps around into the slit created by the first fold.

newspaper pot step 4

You need to keep pushing down at the same time to keep the bottom folds from popping up and destroying the pot. I found that it took a couple of tries to get the hang of it and then it was pretty easy.

newspaper pot step 5

Voila! Ready to fill with potting soil and put in the container. Definitely fill it as soon as you fold it, because I didn’t and half of them came undone when I picked them up to fill a while later.

newspaper pot step 6

Ready for seeds.

newspaper pots ready for seeds

Comments ( 6 )

, , ,

Farm Field Trip this Friday!

March 1st, 2010

We have been invited to Aiki Farms in Ledyard, CT this Friday, March 5th at 6pm.

Aiki Farms offers high quality produce including organic-biointensively grown sprouts (lentil,  mung bean, wheat berry &  pea shoots) and vegetables, as well as instruction in Aikido and serious Zazen meditation.

Their product is certified by NOFA (Northeast Organic Farmers Association) to ensure that our customers know they support the effort of organic growers to stabilize and deliver a healthy food product.

We’re going to make a short video featuring the farm, and Mr. Burns has generously offered the following activities as part of the trip:

  • an aikido demonstration with his students
  • an introduction to zazen (sitting meditation)
  • a tour of  his sprouting operation
  • a pot luck dinner including their greens
  • possibly some fiddle music
I realize that this is short notice, but if you are interested in joining us and are available to be part of this special experience, please contact me as soon as possible via our facebook page.  There is no charge for the event, aside from bringing a potluck dish to share, but they do accept donations if you are so moved.  Thanks and I hope you can make it!

Comments ( 5 )

, , , , ,

Viva la revolucion!

March 1st, 2010

The always awesome celebrity chef Jamie Oliver is starting a food revolution!

Watch his impassioned speech upon receiving the 2010 TED Prize, which is awarded annually to an exceptional individual who receives $100,000 and, much more important, “One Wish to Change the World.” Visit his TED Prize page to offer your support.

TED: Ideas worth spreading is a series of “riveting talks by remarkable people”. So much here to watch, so little time. I put it on while I make dinner, clean, or sit down to do something that doesn’t require my full attention, like knitting or crocheting. If you haven’t checked it out, give it a whirl.

You can help initiate change on the smallest of levels — in your own home.

  1. Ask yourself: Where does this food come from? How did it get here in our home — how far did it travel, what was it exposed to (chemical fertilizer, pesticides, irradiation, etc). How was it produced? Opt for the least amount of processing whenever possible.
  2. Look at the ingredients on the food packaging. In general try to avoid things that aren’t food — preservatives, artificial colors and flavors. (see our Resources section for the CSPI’s Safety of Food Additives to learn more)
  3. If you have children, teach your kids how to read labels as well. And bring them into the kitchen when you cook! Have a  special “kitchen date” once a week where they pick the meal they want to learn to make.
  4. Eat a variety of fruit and vegetables from local, sustainable farms and from the ocean. As Michael Pollan says “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”
  5. Support your local farmers. We’re so lucky in CT to have CTFarmFreshExpress.com which makes doing so a breeze. Don’t forget the hidden costs of shipping food from long distances when comparing the prices to the corporate grocery store. Produce begins to lose nutrients from the moment it is picked, and the fossil fuel required to get it from far away to your door has a cost beyond the price per gallon.
  6. Explore wild foods – many “weeds” are higher in nutrients than the plants you grow in your garden. Nettles, chickweed, lambsquarters and dandelion just to name some common in our area.
  7. Nutrition is one of the most important factors for health. Be mindful of what you put in and on your body! Add more and more fresh fruit and vegetables in, crowding out the less healthy choices.
  8. Grow some of your own food. During the food shortages of WWII, people across America rallied and started Victory Gardens. Let’s revive the Victory Garden!

As long as we’re on the topic of revolution, have you seen the Homegrown Revolution? Look at what this family has done with 1/5th an acre (1/10th is cultivated). No space is too small! Get your seeds today!

Comments ( 4 )

, , , ,

must-see tv

February 23rd, 2010

We interrupt this regularly scheduled Smoothie Extravanza to bring you this important message:

Over the last few years, we’ve watched some documentaries that have had a profound impact on the choices we make on a very mundane level. We’ve stopped using skin and body care products from the store, stopped buying water in plastic bottles, and our grocery cart looks vastly different than it did even a year ago and more.

Today on the Western Mass Permaculture list, I saw a message that I’d like to share with you. It was a link to Spread the Word’s Must Watch Documentaries. If you scroll just a bit to the first documentaries listed with summaries, you will find Food, Inc., Food Matters and Flow. Scroll a bit more and you can watch the Story of Stuff.  Even further and you find Earthlings, the truly horrific film narrated by Joaquin Phoenix about the way modern civilization treats the animals we use. I have not seen this movie because I’ve seen some of the footage before and am already a vegan so I saw no point. And I got nauseous just watching the trailer.

Others I haven’t seen on the featured page but are on my wish list are films like The World According to Monsanto, The Secret Life of Plants, Manufacturing Consent, The Corporation, Who Stole the Electric Car,  The Disappearing Male, Consuming Kids, Simply Raw, Fractals: The Color of Infinity. Have you been wanting to see a documentary but found it to be unavailable to you? Check their list of all documentaries.

They have a 14 part series called Extraordinary Animals, HOME, Forest Gardening with Robert Hart (love this one, 15 minutes long), Sweet Misery,  Sweet Rememdy, The Fog of War, The Future of Food (excellent explanation of just what genetically modified food is, how it’s made in the lab), The Illuminated Chakras, Jesus Camp, The Life of  Buddha (been looking for this one for a while, NOT the Keanu Reaves one), and so many more! Get your thoughts ready to be provoked and check the list to see if there’s one you’ve wanted to see!

Comments ( 0 )

, , , , ,

Carrot Cake Smoothie

February 21st, 2010

carrot flowersBotanically, carrots belong to the Umbelliferae family, which also includes fennel/anise, celery, parsnips, dill, cilantro/cumin, parsley, caraway, Queen Anne’s Lace and the poisonous hemlock. Many of the popular plants in this family works well in the garden as a companion plant. Largely because the tiny flowers forming the umbels, for which the group is named, are perfectly suited for parasitic wasps, ladybugs and predatory flies which drink their nectar. These beneficial insects will then dine upon insect pests on nearby plants. Some of the more fragrant herbs in this family possibly dilute the odors of nearby plants, or the pheromones emitted by pest insects to signal to other pests.

Raw carrots contain vitamin C, vitamin B6, thiamine, folic acid, potassium and magnesium. Carrots are one of the best sources of carotene which is a strong antioxidant and is converted by the body into Vitamin A. Also most of the goodness is actually in, or just below the skin. Many people do not realize that numerous antioxidant compounds are located in the skin of fruit and vegetables, so buy organic where you can for fruits and veggies that have edible peels and don’t peel them before using!  You can get some vitamin K by using the greens on top of the carrot — the carrots themselves don’t have much of this important vitamin, so save those greens for your next green smoothie! Carrots are also known for their sweetening, antianemic, healing, diuretic, remineralizing and sedative properties.

This smoothie isn’t as simple as my usual morning fare, so I only tend to make it once or twice a year as a treat. It’s also incredibly sweet, so seldom is probably better than frequently anyway. But I’ve been thinking about it for a few weeks now, and bought an extra bag of carrots to satisfy my craving.

We are lucky to have gotten a juicer from Luke’s parents when our old one broke, but if I didn’t have this I would probably just make a pulpier version in the Vita-Mix. Since I do, I juice the carrots ahead of time. I was making enough for myself and the kids, and while a better juicer might yield more juice with less carrots, I nearly used the entire 5lb bag!

I poured all the carrot juice into the blender and set the pulp aside for a later use (I’ll post that later this week — Luke ate all that I made so I am dehydrating the second batch for pictures).  The kids were playing Harry Potter and had a hard time settling to smoothie, so I’m here to confess that I didn’t push this sweet treat too hard and found an alternative use for the extra smoothie.

Carrot Cake Smoothie

  • 3.5lbs carrots, juiced
  • 2 carrots
  • 1/2 cup walnuts
  • 2 bananas
  • 2-3 dates
  • cinnamon, ginger, cloves, allspice, nutmeg, etc  to taste
  1. I juiced all the carrots, poured this into the blender.
  2. I roughly chopped 2 carrots, added to the blender, along with the bananas, walnuts and spice. I opted for only cinnamon this time to keep it simple.
  3. Blend til smooth. My old Oster blender never managed to get all the little walnut bits, so I had to chew that smoothie more, but this one was pure smooth goodness.

If our ice cream maker hadn’t started leaking freezy fluid, I would pour this in for a  delicious and different raw ice cream. It’s incredibly rich. If making this as a smoothie, I would probably leave out the dates and perhaps one of the bananas. Did I mention that I found this to be incredibly sweet? I don’t remember thinking that at all in the summer when I made this last, so either my carrots were much sweeter or my palate and sensitivity to sweetness has changed. At any rate, it was a lovely, rich treat on a cold winter day.

YUM!

Comments ( 12 )

, , ,

Berry sweet

February 20th, 2010

My honey took the kids to a UCONN hockey game and open skate afterwards today, so I was able to do some final research on growing some fruit in our yard this year.  We had considered planting apple trees, but my research concerning  growing apples organically in CT left me discouraged. Apple trees are prone to damage from several insects and diseases in this area, and while  it is possible to keep them at bay or to a minimum, I’m not willing to divert my limited time and efforts to the required tasks at this point.

Thus, I focused on the more expensive fruits we consume — berries. High in antioxidants and vitamins, frozen organic berries are expensive. Our local Shaws carries 10oz bags of organic raspberries for $4.69.  Sometimes we can find them on sale, but even then they’re more expensive pound for pound than most other fruits we buy. In general, berry bushes are less susceptible to disease and easier to care for than fruit trees.

I was hoping to find a relatively local organic supplier but had no luck. If you know of one in the southern New England area, please let me know! I pored over the Stark Bro’s (fruit tree/bush supplier to Ballek’s Garden Center in East Haddam, a personal favorite) and Fedco Trees catalogs, but both are far enough away to face different climate challenges than mine. In the end, I chose a nursery in Western MA called Nourse Farms in Deerfield, MA. The kids have been asking to revisit Magic Wings and I’ve wanted to explore  Historic Deerfield, which are nearby so I saved the shipping and opted to pick up my order at the farm.  I opted to save an additional 10% and order the combination since I had all 3 varieties of blueberries in my cart already. I did the same with the raspberries, although I confess I had only planned on getting two varieties.

I also rediscovered a nursery I’d found last year while looking into edible landscaping and permaculture.  Tripple Brook Farm, located in Southampton, MA, has a large selection of unusual or native edible landscape plants that are hardy in our area, and am hoping to arrange a tour of their place this spring. Comment below if you’re interested. Like many nurseries, they give a discount if you buy more of a species, so if you aren’t interested in a visit to the farm but want something specific, I would be happy to coordinate a group buy of popular varieties as well, along the lines of the bulk seed buy we did last year.

I found it to be relatively difficult to find detailed information about growing fruits organically online outside of this diverse resource: the ATTRA National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service Master Publication List for organic growing guides. Lots to chew on there. Support for growing organically can be found in the Connecticut chapter of the Northeast Organic Farmer’s Association (CTNOFA) Resources for Gardeners.

Happy growing!

Comments ( 4 )

, , ,

Seeds! Seeds! Seeds!

February 1st, 2010

It’s that time of year again here in the Northeast. The holiday whirl has subsided, we’ve had a month for quiet reflection and a string of family game marathons. We’ve peeked into our nooks and crannies and donated the things that don’t fit. Well, we’re still working on that last one, actually. It’s tough for a family of packrats to let things go easily.

The spring-like weather of the past week has gotten us thinking about what new plants we’ll try to grow this year. Some of our seed catalogs arrived back in December, when we didn’t have time to pore over the rainbow within. Today, now that the bitter weather has snapped back into place, we’re happy to snuggle up inside and do just that. I ordered online last year from several of these companies, but it’s lovely to have a paper catalog to leaf through.

gardening when it countsLast year, I stumbled on an interesting book called “Gardening When It Counts: Growing Food in Hard Times” by Steve Solomon. As a previous owner of a seed company himself, he offered some ‘insider’ information about the quality of seeds offered for the retail market, and how to ensure that you get quality seeds. The bottom line is that, for the best results, you want to be sure that you buy from reputable companies. He recommended several, and I’ve parsed that list to include companies that sell seeds which thrive in the New England area, as well as those with a strong committment to sustainable agriculture and a non-GMO approach.

Baker’s Creek Heirloom Seeds offers open-pollinated heirloom varieties, presenting a collection of unusual, colorful and flavorful varities from around the world.

Seed Savers Exchange a non-profit, member supported organization that saves and shares heirloom seeds — more than 25,000 endangered vegetable varieties, most having been brought to North America by members’ ancestors who immigrated from Europe, the Middle East, Asia and other parts of the world. SSE is the largest non-governmental seed bank in the United States

Seeds of Change offering 100% certified organic flower, vegetable and herb seeds, many heirloom, native and hard-to-find varieties

Johnny’s Selected Seeds is an employee-owned seed producer in Maine selling heirloom and hybrid vegetable seeds; medicinal and culinary herb seeds; flower seeds; cover crops, farm seed, and pasture mixes; fruit plants and seeds, and high quality, problem-solving tools and supplies for both the home gardener and larger customers. The opportunity to purchase in bulk abounds in this catalog.

Richters Herbs offers a wide variety of culinary and medicinal herb seeds, plants, extracts and herb-related products. If you need an obscure herb, this is your source. Last year was my first ordering from them, and I’m excited to see how my “leftover” seed germination rates are this year. They also offer bulk packaging.

Comments ( 2 )

,

Next Entries »