Oops I Did It Again

I swear, every time I get a little inspiration from my garden, I plan out this wonderful menu.  I'm not the best cook in the world by any stretch of the imagination - probably not even the best cook on the block.  But what I can make, I can make really well.  So my intention is to photograph the grown or local ingredients, make something, and then photograph the finished dish.  The problem is that some time in between completing a dish and then getting the family rounded up and to the table while it is still not, I completely forgot to take a picture of the finished product.  And I have done this more than once.  So, let's just pretend that I took all those after pictures. 

Before pic: the zucchini blossom photo from the last entry
After pic: deep fried zucchini blossoms stuffed with anchovy ricotta served on a bed of pureed tomatoes and basil

Before pic:  dill from last entry
After pic: roasted wild Pacific salmon with sour cream lemon dill sauce served with short grain brown rice

Before pic:  assorted colored carrots and watermelon radishes from the farmers' market
After pic: said root vegetables cut down and sauteed in butter and a little brown sugar (technically my hubby made this one, but it would have been a beautiful pic)

Envision it all in high resolution, well lit, mouth-watering glory.  There.  I will try not to forget again.

The First Day

Today is the first day of no school.  We celebrated with another trip to pick strawberries.  This time, it is near the end of the season.  So the farm we visited was a bit overgrown with weeds and many berries were over ripe and rotting.  But we were able to collect a sweet gallon of berries plus a local melon and a small cup of sweet onions.  The scents were so heady that after a brief stop for lunch, we came back to a car overwhelmed with the strong smell of berries and onions - nice.
The turn of the lifestyle season from the rigid 6am rising to a more pleasant 7:30 debut to each day is welcome.  Then there is a languid meandering to the breakfast table after a quick check of the e-mail; a more relaxed evening after a late supper.  I love it.  Hello summer, it's good to see you again.

And Down Comes the Rain

Woohoo!  There have been fantastic rains followed by nice periods of bright sun for 2 weeks.  The garden is prospering for the most part, and I am stoked!  I have lots of great pics to share with you.  Check out the corn!  Wow is all I can say.  I am pretty impressed - especially with the fact that this has taken very little effort up to this point.  We are even doing a great job of feeding the birds and squirrels our ripened strawberries.  Jon built a chicken wire coop around the berries the other week, and lo and behold, a few days later, we come back to find a spot where the "fence" had been slightly raised and half a giant red strawberry gone.  Really - it went under the coop.  And why did it eat only half the strawberry??  Would it not be more prudent, if you were already stuck under the coop, to go ahead and eat or take the whole thing?  Stupid smart squirrels.

I am thinking, and certain people are telling me, that we got too late a start on the sugar snap peas.  That is the plot that we worked the least, so the weeds seem to out number the plants about 50:1 right now.
So, what do you think, anyone?  Do we try to let it ride or rip them out and wait for late summer to start working on some fall tasties?  I was thinking about some bok choi or this Chinese spinach like thing called Gai Lan.  I'd love to hear some other ideas.

But back to the gardening.  You will see, I have a lot of dill coming out.  I had 4 plants last year, and it just seeded like crazy!  The basil did not seed as aggressively, but I still have about 6 or 7 little beauties coming out in the plot in our front yard.  I'm already thinking about some homemade pickles and gravalax and salmon with dill cream, . . . and I have no idea what else I can do with dill.  Perhaps dill zucchini, because that is the first veg I see coming.  So beautiful.  I can't wait.

Envy and Pride

I spent this last week far from home in La Jolla, CA.  It was picturesque, tranquil, and completely what I expect from California.  Even though I was in the desert, generally speaking, Californians have it so easy with the food chain and all.  They have the best weather, the best views, the best land in which to grow and raise just about every kind of food that you could ever want.  They have great wine and great cheese.  They provide more produce for the rest of the country than any other state.  And then, they have beaches, mountain, desert, snow, sun, rain, and movie stars.  I can only think of the joke I read in a novel about how France (insert California here) is blessed with all the same great things - great weather, bountiful food, delicious wine and cheese, etc.  So the rest of the countries of the world complained to God that it was totally unfair that France was blessed with all these things and many of the other countries received none of these blessings.  So, being a fair deity, God saw this as a reasonable complaint and evened everything out by creating the French people.  I am not knocking the French people, by the way.  But I can't even say that God has evened things out with Californians; pretty much everyone I know from this state is a pretty cool person with no more than the average amount of quirks embedded in the rest of the country's general population.  Perhaps it is the earthquakes and the cost of owning property that evens things out.
But, anyway, I got back home on Friday morning to a gloriously humid and sunny day.  I felt like I was having hot flashes and the back of my neck got sweaty as soon as I walked out of the airport.  But uncomfortable as I temporarily was, it was good to be home - sweet home Alabama.  Later that day, I was thinking about all the good food that I ate and tasty wine that I drank.  It would be nice if I lived somewhere that I could get almost everything that I want to consume within my home state.  Alabama is not exactly quite there yet.  But I am proud of the foods that we do produce.  We have fantastic goat cheese produced in Alabama, delicious strawberries and sweet potatoes.  And I can't wait for the peaches!!  The local summer farmers' market season has begun.  In a few weeks to months, my garden will be, hopefully, overflowing with zucchini, beans, corn, and all sorts of other yummy goodies.  I am psyched!  So while California this ain't, I am so proud of the efforts put forth by the hard working people of Alabama, and my family, to produce bounty for our tables.  Cheers to all!

Eat Dirt You Worm!!

Actually, I think that the correct phrasing would be something like "Poop dirt you worm" but that just doesn't really sound like an insult.  And it isn't.  But its what my little colony of red worms and red wrigglers have been doing since the beginning of the year.

Out on the not so cutting edge of green farming and green living is this little "dirty" practice called vermicomposting.  Oooh, sorry, I couldn't resist that word play.  Call me a dork.  Anyway, its foreign to most of us that live in urban and suburban environments, but its been around for pretty much forever.  Here it is in a nutshell:  Worms eat rotting organic matter - dried leaves, lawn clippings, food scraps/garbage; worms poop a super nutrient rich dirt called worm castings.  This soil is dark, fine, and light and fluffy. They also create a liquid by-product called worm tea.  These by products are fantastic for your garden, lawn, and potted plants like a sort of organic super fertilizer.  So, while, this is what I've been doing with my garbage for the past 5 months independent of my garden., its now something that I do for my garden.

I have to admit that while I've been completely gung ho on this idea for a couple years now, my fears of the icky and stinky plus some good old fashioned procrastinating have delayed my venture until this year.  But I can testify now that this is fantastic!  There really is no smell.  This winter we kept the bin indoors by the kitchen.  It was out in the sun room for spring, but I'm going to have to move it into the garage before it gets too hot.  The compost actually has a really fresh earthy smell to it like right after you have turned the ground after a rain and are really to plant for spring.  The bin doesn't get buggy either.  I keep a layer of shredded newspaper on the top tier to create a barrier for flies.  And, finally, I'd much rather have my kids playing with these worms and dirt than digging big holes in the front yard.

But, the best part about this whole process, to me, is that while my worms are having a great meal and doing their part to help my gardens grow, I am also reducing my waste footprint on our precious planet.  Almost no vegetative waste goes into our garbage cans now.  Eggshells, coffee grounds and filters stay out as well.  And the amount of newspaper that is having to be recycled is also reduced.  When I reduce my waste that goes to landfills, I also help to reduce the methane that is produced at said landfill.  Both my kids get excited about collecting food scraps and wanting to feed the worms.  It is so cool when your 4 year old points to the tough outer skins from broccoli that I have peeled for dinner and says, "Can the worms have this?  Can I put it in the bag?  When the bag is full, can I help you feed the worms?"  That is so awesome.  She doesn't see it as reducing waste or changing our carbon footprint on the earth.  She just sees it as the way we do things.

And this is the way we recycle our garbage.

If you want to start your own vermicomposting bin, there are many ways to do it.  You can purchase your needed materials like we did or you can make your own.  Here are a couple links to get you started.
Worms Wrangler
How to build a worm bin  This video is just plain fun to watch!