Spring?
15 Mar 2009 Leave a Comment
Well the weather isn’t quite spring-like yet, and I haven’t seen buds on the trees, but our garden is growing. This photo is almost a week old now, and woefully inadequate, but here it is:
Our cucumber plants are growing curlicue vines that are wrapping themselves around the tomato plants with a fair amount of tenacity. At this point we have separated the two since the cucumbers can’t seem to play nice.
We are also closing in on harvest time for our green beans. I probably won’t get more than one evening’s side dish out of these, but for 6 seeds, we’ve got an impressive number of these little babies.
Not bad for a little indoor apartment garden huh?
News… now with more pictures!
19 Feb 2009 Leave a Comment
in Farm Fresh Foods, Off the Needles
In addition to working and ranting and raving over here, I’ve had some projects in the works. Although I can’t show you all of them yet (March is Birthday month for the family!) I do have a few peeks into what I’m doing that I can share.
First on the list is the indoor garden. As you can see we’re doing pretty well. From left to right that’s our cucumber plants, little tomato plants and, of course, the BEANS of DOOM. Not really pictured is the planter with tiny carrot green sprouts.
The lettuce, onions, and broccoli have been declared failures since none took to the new planters well and pretty much ceased growing. They have been replaced with red and green bell peppers, and some seeds that Wes pulled from a pepper at our local On the Border. Remind me not to eat those. Finally we have transferred the herbs. So far we’ve got lots of little basil plants and some cilantro. I can’t wait to have fresh pico de gallo!
The other project that I finished recently was a knitted bag that I’ve been eyeing for a while.
The Pattern: Celtic Tote from Interweave Knits, Winter 2007
The Yarn: Lamb’s Pride, 3 skeins of Tahiti Teal and 1 skein Charcoal
The Needles: US 8′s
The Verdict: I love this bag! I modded it to make it just a bit bigger envisioning it as a project bag. I purchased some plastic mesh at my local Michael’s to make the bottom a bit sturdier, and frankly the bottom of the bag design is really genius! This one felted up pretty quickly with only one cycle through the washer. I still plan to line the bag, and I have some interfacing to add to it in the hopes it will create a sturdy durable bag. I’m 100% pleased!
Behold
31 Jan 2009 1 Comment
in Farm Fresh Foods, Learning to be a Midwestern Gal
I CAN HAZ COT GARDENZ.
MAH BEANS OF DOOM.
Awash in squash.
22 Sep 2008 1 Comment
in Domesticity, Farm Fresh Foods
Fall is upon us (officially today!) and squash is in season. For the past few weeks we have been receiving generous portions of squash in our CSA basket. So Wes and I have been trolling recipes and experimenting. We made this one last night and it was TASTY!
Sausage Stuffed Butternut Squash
courtesy of Cooks.com
1 butternut squash (cut in half)
1/2 lb. Sweet Italian Sausage
3 slices of bread, cubed
1 egg, well beaten
1 small onion
Garlic
1/8 to 1/4 cup parsley.
Place squash cut side down in greased shallow baking dish. Bake at 350 for 40-60 minutes until squash is tender.
Meanwhile, remove sausage from casing and fry until brown and crumbly. Add onion and garclic and saute until onions are soft. Stir in egg, parsley and bread. Remove from heat.
Scoop seeds from squash. Remove squash meat and add to sausage mixture.
Spoon mixture back into shell. Return to oven and bake another 15 minutes until top is golden brown.
P.S. In full disclosure, I sidelined myself last night early in the game with the knife, so Wes did the actual cooking. DELISH!
Fresh sourdough bread.
16 Jul 2008 Leave a Comment
I’d mentioned to Wes a while back, that now that I’m living in Kansas I thought I would like to join a CSA. (Los Angeles isn’t exactly rife with farm life…) If you’re not familiar with the term CSA it stands for Community Supported Agriculture. Basically you join a group and deposit some money and then you receive a share of one or more farms’ fresh fruits and vegetables each week, usually throughout the summer.
So Wes texted me last week, in the middle of the work day, to announce that his company was one of the sponsors of a CSA and that he had signed us up on his lunch hour. Our pickup times would be Monday evenings at the local grocery and for the lean price of $25 per week we would dine in farm fresh foods!
This past Monday night we reported to the market, two canvas sacks in hand, and were duly loaded up with a half gallon of skim milk, 8 ears of sweet corn, 4 large tomatoes, 1 lb of ground chuck, fresh rosemary, two green peppers, a dozen peaches, a loaf of FRESH sourdough bread and some lip balm, as well as some recipes to try with these ingredients. All of these came from local farms and arrived in minimal packaging.
So far the produce has been varied – one of the tomatoes didn’t fare too well, but the rest look great. We haven’t gotten into the corn yet (but it looks great!), and the peaches need a little time to ripen. But what I like about this is that it isn’t preserved with pesticides or chemicals – it’s real, fresh, natural vegetables. And the Sourdough bread, I’m happy to say, is FABULOUS!
I like knowing that we’re doing our part to support local farms and since I’ve been listening to Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma I’ve been starting to at least think more about the way we eat.
More updates on this soon.
