Kohl-Robby

Before we left for the beach, we picked the garden clean (thus the shock when we came home and found the mutants).  We brought with us on vacation beautiful beets, green beans, cucumbers, pickles, swiss chard and lettuce.  We have a tradition - first night fried beach food and clam chowder (and pizza for the kids) and the next few nights meals that get rid of the vegetables before they go bad (remember #1 goal).  This year we also had the addition of my bro-in-laws CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) vegetables.  He brought a TON of lettuce, basil, beets and swiss chard, fennel and most importantly - Kolhrabi.  As different as we are, he has the same goal as we do - these garden gifts should never be wasted, so he worked hard to get Kolhrabi on our table.

Kolhrabi is a member of the cabbage family, but it looks like a turnip with floppy leaves on thin stems growing from the top (sometimes called cabbage turnip).  If they are very young and fresh, the leaves can be sauteed like greens, but the little green bulb is the sweetest part to taste.  Cut off the leaves and stems, peel the bulb, and eat it raw or boiled or steamed.  It is a high-carbohydrate, high potassium, high fiber veggie that is an excellent source of vitamins B and C.  It is also high in calcium, iron, and phosphorus. 

Needless to say, the Kolhrabi became a vacation joke.  We even encouraged Gina to have another baby so they could name him Cole Robert (you had to be there).  It was fun and the Kolhrabi recipe he found was delicious.

His CSA is from Cropsey Farm in New City, NY.  They've got an amazing site and recommend those close to New City support this local farm.  Their website is http://www.cropseyfarm.org/.  It has some really great recipes and ideas.  And while we're on the topic, our local RI CSA is Simmons Farms in Middletown, RI.  Their website for their CSA is http://simmonsorganicfarmri.com/csa/.

I did find a great Kolhrabi recipe that you could use with the Tzatziki recipe from last night....

Kohlrabi Cakes

4 Kohlrabi bulbs
1/4 cup chopped scallions
2 eggs, lightly beaten
2 tablespoons dried bread
1 tsp salt
1//2 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp dried red pepper flakes, crushed
Freshly ground black pepper to taste

1/4 cup olive oil

1.  Peel and shred the kohlrabi bulbs.  Squeeze out any excess moisture.

2.  Combine all ingredients (except oil) in a mixing bowl.  Stir until well blended.

3.  Heat the oil in a large skillet, and drop the mixture into it by large spoonfuls.  Saute the cakes until golden, 3 to 4 minutes per side.  Drain on paper towels.

Serve with Tzatziki

 

We took a two week vacation...the garden did not

We just returned from an amazing two week jersey shore vacation.  My plan was to keep blogging (my advisers recommended I do so), but the sun and the beach had other ideas.  My plan is to spend the next few blogs catching up - working backwards and I will try not to whine too much.

Let me set the stage.....we were gone a little over two weeks.  Had a blast (separate blog) and enjoyed beautiful weather, amazing family, and great friends.  We drove home early Sunday morning.  The first sign the day was not going to be as planned was the humidity and the pouring rain.  Pulled into the driveway around 10am and bee-lined for the garden (tiptoed thru the knee-high grass (weeds really)) (also separate blog) and stumbled upon the mutants - cucumbers so big they turned yellow, green beans so big they were like branches, and describing the size of the zucchini would just be cliche.  We picked and weeded in the pouring rain.  The good news was nothing died and all plants were thriving.  It wasn't a very pretty garden but it was doing what it was supposed to do. 

Getting the big inedible fruit off the plants in order for them to flower and continue producing was job #1.  It goes against everything I believe in to throw food away, but we had no other choice.  We did employ pickers while we were away and I am thankful for their help, but next year we will have to have a more organized effort.  This is prime harvest time for the cucumbers, green beans, zucchini and eggplant.  Picking every other day or so is required.  The winter squash garden looked amazing.  No red tomatoes but any day now.  Brussel Sprouts, cabbage and cauliflower don't look great - further investigation is required.  Salad garden pretty much done; we will work this weekend of getting the fall crop in.  Lawn - disgusting.  Flowers - long story.  Pepper plants are CHOCK full.  Jalapeno poppers anyone?

We wheeled what we could back to the house and started researching recipes and cooking (in between unpacking the car and going grocery shopping).  It is important to repeat our #1 goal - to never ever have any vegetables rot on the vine or in the refrigerator.  Vacation puts a crimp in that goal but I'm learning to let go a little and not be so obsessive.

I'm not ready to share the recipes of everything we cooked as I'm still not sure they are worth sharing.  However, here's a list of what we cooked:

Froze 2 lbs of green beans (but threw away about 5 lbs - boo hoo)

Baked and froze 2 zucchini breads

Cooked and ate for lunch zucchini fritters with fresh tzatziki

Made a ginormous pot of Caponata (used about 5 giant japanese eggplant)

Made a delicious pot of Pasta Norma for dinner (used a giant globe eggplant and left out the Ricotta Salata)

Shredded and froze 4 1lb bags of zucchini

The rest of the stuff is in the downstairs fridge.  Oddly the only thing I'm going to post is the tzatziki recipe.  It's beyond delicious and so, so easy.  Tomorrow night will share Caponata.  Fritters need tweeking.  The rest of the recipes will be posted before end of week.

Couple of things.....I am always looking for ideas and comments.  FB me, send me email or comment right to the blog.  My thought is to start a conversation.

Thank you to my wonderful friend Patti for the beautiful flowers and  the wonderful welcome home Zucchini Pie.

Tzatziki
One 6oz container of Greek yogurt
One seeded cucumber - grated
Couple sprigs of mint
Juice of half lemon
Course salt and pepper
One garlic clove - minced

Combine and adjust seasoning to taste.  Eat alone or put on everything you can find.  Delish!

Pickles - the conclusion

A very busy day indeed!

First, let's discuss the outcome of our dill pickles (see yesterday's blog for recipe).  After a somewhat biased taste test, both CH and I both agree that these dill pickles are a huge delicious success.  They are not very pretty looking.  If you are looking for a Clausen, these may not be for you.  But if you are looking for crispy, dilly, garlicky pickles - give these a try.  I cannot stress how easy they are.  If you are not growing pickling cukes, go buy some.  Farmers markets/CSA's are probably giving them away.

Garlic has been harvested, dried in sun and now in basement for a couple more weeks to dry out.  I cannot tell you how amazing they smell.  Again, easy easy easy.  You need space and sun, but otherwise they remain unattended for 10 months (save the scape harvest).

Harvesting the garlic left a wide open space for planting our Kale seeds (first of many fall plants). 

Finally, three more pints of those big, juicy beautiful blueberries.  Truly our miracles.

Some not so good observations - I may have jinxed myself for mentioning cucumber beetles last night.  Today we found a bunch.  They have wiped out my entire squash/cucumber crops in the past.  This is not a good sign.  Also, something browning the leaves on the cauliflower/brussel sprouts/cabbage.  Not good at all.

Leaving for vacation in a few days is not ideal, but we are so looking forward to it.  It's during that time that you have to let go a bit and hope that these beautiful plants survive on their own.  We have good friends who I hope will come reap the benefits.  ALL are welcome! 

Pickles Part I

Every year we grow both regular and pickling cucumbers.  We've had amazingly good luck and amazingly bad luck growing this seemingly no-brainer of a plant.  This year happens to be a pretty good year (so far).  Cucumber Beetles have taken out our crop more times than not.  As of today, so far so good and only a hand full of beetles (another blog for another day)

We have historically made bread~n~butter pickles and canned them (we will also cover this topic another time).  This year we are experimenting with dill pickles without using the canning process.  We will refrigerate and eat quickly instead. 

As of blog time, we are midway thru the pickling process and will catch you up with how they are coming tomorrow night.  We tasted and they are actually good.

You will need:
1/3 Kosher salt
2 lbs pickling cucumbers quartered longwise (same size if possible, washed and cleaned)
5 cloves smashed garlic (the fresher the better.  check the local farmers market if don't have your own yet)
Large bunch of fresh dill (we had to purchase - ours is not ready to pick yet)

Combine the salt and boiling water in a large bowl; stir to dissolve the salt.  Add a handful of ice cubes to cool down the mixture.  Then add all of the remaining ingredients.

Add cold water to cover.  Use a plate slightly smaller than the diameter of the bowl and a small weight to keep cucumbers under the water.  Keep at room temperature.

Begin sampling the cucumbers after 4 hours. 

According to Bittman (our food guru), it will take from 12 to 24 or even 48 hours for them to taste "pickle-y".  When they are ready, refrigerate still in brine.  The pickles will continue to ferment as they sit.  They will keep well for up to a week and we'll blog tomorrow night with an update. 

Garlic Day

Ch -  Blogger du jour...  

 

Garlic is one of our more unique crops, but probably the easiest and in need of the least amount of attention.  You cannot compare fresh garlic to what you get in the grocery store.  The fresh garlic is crisp and white and you can actually smell and taste the difference - taste it's freshness.  Definitely worth considering.

 

Garlic is planted in September and isn't harvested until the following July (now).  I consider this 2011 crop 2nd generation in that the cloves we planted in 2010 were from cloves we harvested the year before which were from the heads we bought at Sweetberry Farms the year before that (confusing right?).  I used the biggest heads as my seed heads (one clove = one seed) because that usually produces the biggest heads the following year.  We started with 46 plants (46 cloves).  I wanted to make sure we had enough to use during the 3-4 months after the harvest and also had enough to plant for next years crop.  Also, we wanted to start some for Gina and Tony in NY. 

 

Two months after planting, it started to look a lot like the garlic had gone crazy and started sprouting too early - before the snows began vs. after they finish in the spring. "OMG, did I plant too early?" (I had to get a little texting language in there - LOL)  "Will the cold kill them?"  When spring finally arrived, the sprigs started to grow again (although we did lose one plant over the winter - which still bothers me to no end.  What did I do wrong with that one?)  Enough... I'll stop obsessing.  Ok, so now  we have 45 huge stalks that gave us a mess of scapes about a month ago.  Scapes are the curlycue stalks that come out of the top and would eventually turn into flowers if you didn't cut them and immediately put them on the grill.  Cutting them off also helps enlarge the heads under the ground - that's what you want, big heads. 

 

OK, so today was the day.  I went out this morning... nice and early and started pulling up garlic.  The stalks had brown leaves and were ready to be pulled.  About midway through the aroma reminded me of a trip I took with my son several years ago.  We drove from San Francisco to Yosemite to go backpacking. 

 

 

 

Along the way, we went through the Garlic Capital of the World! Gilroy, CA and boy, could you smell the garlic for miles....  If you are ever in the area, make sure you roll up the windows.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After a little reminiscing, I got all the garlic out of the ground, cleaned a little and laid out on the deck to start the drying process.  I'll move it downstairs to the closet to continue drying before we head to the beach on Friday.  

 

          If its anything like last years crop, we should have plenty of garlic for the next few months, enough to plant and a few to give away. :-)

A full circle moment

It's impossible to imagine what actually happens in a garden when you turn your back on it for a minute (in our case, 2 days - hence the blog down time).  It's a miracle, actually.  We are having the perfect summer for a perfect, productive garden.  The harvest rate is accelerating, so being prepared to do something with all your vegetables (and fruit) really bocomes a full time job.

Getting it all into one weekend is hard enough....getting it all into one day is exhausting.  I have mentioned before the garden is basically in maintenance mode.  The heavy labor part is done.  Now it's weeding, and watering, and weeding some more, and feeding, and weeding, and staking, and weeding.  I think you get the picture.  We're still covering the garden in grass clippings, so while he mows, I'm weeding and spreading the grass.  Once we get the whole thing covered the weeds should subside.  Right now, they are loving the heat and the lack of rain.  In addition to the weeds, the Japenese beatles are rearing their ugly heads.  I'm always crawling around looking for any sign of the pests that can potentially take out perfectly healthy crops.  A garden needs daily supervision and TLC.

Anyway, we got home expecting to harvest green beans (another 1.5 lbs).  What we didn't expect was to see the Japanese Eggplant ready to be picked!  That was amazing.  Two days away and there they were!  Basil......completely out of control.  We picked to the bare bones and spent most of the afternoon making pesto and freezing.  It's really very easy - just leave out the cheese (see recipe in Blog dated 7/10/11).  All you do when you defrost is add the cheesse and you are good to go.  Today we made 6 batches of pesto (24 cups of loosely packed basil leaves and there still more to go.  We just ran out of pine nuts and walnuts).

So the day took a turn I didn't really expect.  We needed to do something with the basil before it went to seed.  Waiting another day would have been too late.  So not a lot of housework got done.  Stepping around piles of laundry is part of our summer tradition.

The best part of the day was dinner.  In the back of the freezer we had eggplant parmesan frozen - it just needed to be reheated.  The eggplant was from last year's garden.  I even had a gravy frozen (also from tomatoes from last year's garden).  All we needed to do was cook the pasta.  It was easy and it was delicious.  It was truly a full circle moment.

Blueberries for Breakfast

Finally Blueberries for breakfast!  Our one productive bush outdid itself this year for sure.  Some were as big as quarters and the heat from the sun made them sweeter than any year before.  If I could I would have an orchard of blueberry bushes.  That's in the someday column for now.  They require no work except protection from the birds.  My dad and CH created a cage that keeps all the hungry birds away from the ripening fruit.  This bush is about to outgrow it's confines, but their contraption has done what it's needed to do for more than a few years now. 
















Taking the cage off takes two people.  We picked, we ate, and then brought the rest to the house to add to our yogurt and cereal.  Have plenty left over for tomorrow and more on the bush just needing a little sun to help them ripen. 

Yum!

Christmas in July

That's the first thing I thought of when I prepared to write tonight's entry.  An odd thought given it was almost 100 degrees today and humid as hell.  But Charles spent the morning freezing a batch of freshly picked green beans and my thoughts automatically went to the cold, short days of December when we plan our dinner around our green beans from our garden.  There is something gratifying and humbling about pulling out a bag of beans dated 07-12-11 and preparing them for dinner in the middle of a New England winter.  They are perfectly green and perfectly delicious.

Freezing Green Beans could not be easier.  You do not have to grow them either.  Pick up some locally grown and freeze them yourself.

We freeze in 1, 1.5 and 2lb increments (I'm anal that way).  The smaller the bean the better.  We weigh them, wash them and cut them into 2 inch pieces.

Have a  large pot of salted boiling water ready and a bucket of ice on standby .  Put the green beans into the boiling water and start the clock - 3 minutes.  After those 3 minutes are up, place them in the ice bath for 3 more minutes.  Drain completely.  You want the beans pretty dry before freezing.

We use a Food Saver, but baggies would work fine.  If you do use a Food Saver, freeze the beans in the open bag BEFORE you suck.  That way the beans keep their shape. 

As an aside, we are not beyond purchased grocery store green beans.  Frozen vegetables in any form are amazing supplements when out of season.

Escarole (tonight without the beans)

When I was young, the words "escarole and beans" were dreaded.  We gagged it down (literally).  We pronounced it different and we were the only kids on the block that had to suffer through it.  It was not good.  Today we're using the american pronunciation in deference to my "american to the bones" husband (to his credit he does say "mapina").  And I'm happy to say as I have matured, so has my palette.  Escarole has become a staple in our house.  I usually buy it when I'm in NY (M&M's has it sometimes for $.99.lb)  But it did make sense for us to grow it. 

We've tried and tried without success.  We start it from seed the same time we start our lettuce.  It comes up without a hitch, but bolts pretty much immediately.  One of my jobs this past weekend was to pull all of them.  Not one plant would be harvested.  Luckily one of the farmers at this weekends farmers market does have tremendous success.  These heads of escarole are beautiful.  Not a blemish and not a piece of sand or dirt.  It made our failure easier to take.

Here's our problem with beautiful escarole...I'm so enamored with these beauties that I over-buy.  Buying local is one thing.  Finding enough nights in the week to cook it all is another.  We haven't found a way to freeze or preserve escarole, so eating it before it goes bad is important.  Our standby is the way my mother made it.  Yes, the same dish I swallowed with huge gulps of water is our favorite.  I am embarrassed to say I had some help with a recipe.  I wanted to do it right.  Our friend Giada De Laurentiis must have had the same upbringing (with a  bit more money).  She re-created our memory.  Here's the link to the recipe.  As an FYI - Dave's Market sells the rinds to the cheese.  It makes all the difference in the world.

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/giada-de-laurentiis/escarole-and-bean-soup-recipe/index.html



Proofing the blog



A Perfect Summer Day!

The original intent of our blog was to keep an electronic archive of recipes that we find year after year (rather than the manila folders jam packed in one of our drawers).  It's the same "problem" each year - once we begin to harvest, we live noses buried in cookbooks looking for the perfect recipes to use as many of our vegetables as we can.  Rotting vegetables is not an option.  We find some recipes that work, some that don't.  For example, today we are knee deep in basil and green beans.  We found an amazing recipe using both (supplemented by some items from the farmer's market).  I will always give credit where credit is deserved (today the tried and true Martha Stewart).  We also like the idea of a blog to track our gardening progress from the planning stages to the fall clean-up.

Speaking of which, the picture you see in the banner is this years sketch of our garden.  My husband, Charles, drew it with his pencils once we decided what we wanted to plant.  I LOVE it and it is to scale.  The pictures you see of the garden, the spacing and the positioning of the plants, were all planned in advance.  The work is both labor and mentally challenging and worth every minute and morsel.

Most of the labor intensive work is behind us.  A lot of the blog will be catch up.  This weekend was a little bit of maintenance and a lot of hanging by the pool.  The dinner we picked was one pot.  Only used 8 oz of green beans.  The rest we will freeze (another posting at another time).  I forgot to take a picture of dinner today, but have others to show you.  Specifically the picture of the garden picnic Charles had waiting for me when I returned home this morning.  The garden is our Eden, and the picnic he planned was heaven. 

Finally, you do not have to have a garden to enjoy these recipes or this blog.  We are not totally organic, we do not always eat healthy, but we do try to eat local.  My only thought is that as often as possible you visit your local farmers market or farm stand.  If you have the resources, maybe join your local CSA.

Pasta with Pesto, Potatoes, Green Beans
Serves 4 (but we ate the whole thing)
From "Great Food Fast.  Everyday Food from the Kitchens of Martha Stewart Living"

2 waxy potatoes - about 8oz (we got fresh from farmers market so we did not peel)
course salt and fresh ground pepper
8oz Cavatappi (or something similar)
8oz Green Beans trimmed and halved
1/2 cup pesto (recipe to follow)

1.  Cut potatoes into one inch cubes.  Place in large pot of water and bring to boil.

2.  Add one tablespoon salt and the pasta.  Return to boil and cook for 2 minutes.

3.  Add green beans and return to boil.  Cook until vegetables are tender and until the pasta is al dente. 

4.  Drain and toss with pesto.   Season with salt and pepper.  Serve warm or at room temperature.

Pesto

1/2 cup toasted pine nuts
4 cups fresh basil loosely packed
1/2 cup finely grated cheese (we use pecorino romano)
1 clove garlic (we got fresh from the farmers market)
Salt/Pepper
1/2 cup EVOO

Combine everything except EVOO in food processor.  Process until finely chopped.  With machine running, drizzle in oil.  Season to taste. 



The Garden - by Charles Herndon



Perfect