It's that time of year again

Last year, I didn't blog much about gardening despite ending up with a pretty rockin' garden. Energy that could/should/would have been spent on blogging instead went into the new puppy, dealing with the garden, dealing with the new house, etc, etc. Last summer was overwhelming.

My first priority was peas. I knew a "real" garden would take some work and planning and money and sun, but I could handle peas. (Please disregard the super-high-tech, dog-proofing twig fence; March 21, 2010):


The few that I got were pretty tasty. I didn't really "amend" the soil, and they didn't get as much sun as I'd hoped. And then Lucy (the new puppy) dug them up.

I brought a really beautiful strawberry plant home from the Union Square Greenmarket. It transplanted well into the sort-of-raised-bed (complete with amended soil) B created. But then one day I came home to this (June 25):


It was OK, though, because the rest of that garden had turned into this jungle (Lucy's in the back left. June 25):


We grew zucchini (July 7):


And purple green beans (July 7):


They turn green when cooked (Note super-duper-high-tech kitchen implement to keep half a bean out of boiling water; July 8):


An attempt was made at eggplant (July 7):


All seemed to be going well in Gardenland. Until... (July 12)


Something went wrong and bugs got into the zucchini. Not just the zucchini fruit, but into the vines themselves. I think they might have been some kind of borer. I remain the only person on earth unable to grow tons of zucchini.

Luckily, we had little hot peppers to distract us! Look at all those jalapeños trying to flip us off (July 12):


There was a tomato (July 12):


An ominous sky artsily framed with tomato blossoms (July 12):


And even more ominously, a wild dog with no regard for chicken-wire fences (July 12):


To be continued...

A three-attachment weekend

Over the weekend, I made:
Really fucking good plain ol' white bread - subbing local honey for sugar.
Lemon bars - with Meyer lemons I brought back from my parents' yard.
Butternut squash and apple soup - with more local veggies!
Lemon, cream and pepper pasta sauce - with more of those same lemons and Hudson Valley Fresh cream.

I used all three attachments that came with my stand mixer, and the immersion blender.

That was a tasty weekend.

(I also pulled up all but three plants in my little garden - the bok choy is hardy as hell and still going. It was such a bummer to pull up the tomatoes. Maybe they'll do better next year.)

Seriously?

"Last published on April 29, 2010"

I can't believe it. I mean, I can, since the evidence is right there, but that kind of updating (in)frequency is downright embarrassing.

This summer has held so many great food experiences, and my garden (I have a kickass garden!), but... in May I got a puppy who, in the course of teething, decided to chew through the photo uploading cable. And my camera needs a silly proprietary Casio cable, not a mini-USB one like, oh, everything else. And I have been too poorlazy to order a new one. Though a quicker solution would be to buy a USB memory-card reader. Sigh.

Once I've got pictures, I'll post. Promise.

"Gardening" update

Well, we've been in the house a month this week. There are still boxes to unpack, but during the bouts of dry weather we've had, I've been able to work a little bit in the yard.

The lone length of fence that seems to get the most sunlight was overrun by maple seedlings and saplings, so it's taken some work to clear that out. As soon as I cleared one section, I mixed some potting/garden soil in with the dirt that was already there, formed the dirt into mounds about 2 inches high, and got my peas in the ground. There were frost warnings the past two nights, but 1) peas should go in the ground as soon as it's workable, and 2) because we're so close to the (temperature-moderating) river, we can usually disregard the frost warnings after April 15.

If you know me, you probably won't be surprised that *I* was surprised that "pea seeds" are nothing more than dried peas.

The week before we moved, in late March I guess, I started these little Home Depot seeds in a mini-greenhouse plastic-eggcrate-looking kind of kit. We bought one "kitchen herbs" one, with basil, chives and parsley, and one "pepper selection" (or something) one, with two hot peppers and one kind of sweet pepper. Each species got two pots. On one end of the herb container, the basil is growing and is overdue for transplanting... One chive sprouted on the other end, but has since withered. In the middle, where I thought I'd see parsley, nothing so far...

With the pepper one, two pots on the same end are doing really well and are probably ready to be transplanted. The middle pots have slightly smaller sprouts bursting through. The third set hasn't seen any activity yet. I actually have no idea which peppers are which, because although I wrote the plants' names in Sharpie above them on the lid, I rotated the lid at least a few times in the watering process... So I guess we'll see how those turn out.

I meant to start lettuce like, oh, I dunno, maybe two months ago. I still haven't done it. It's frustrating, but I hopeknow it will get done when the time is right, after I feel like I've contributed enough to getting the house in order.

Other things we've bought that need to get in the ground: asparagus shoots(?), two kinds of grapevines (this will require more clearing of the baby maples), and seeds for purple green beans (ditto), tomatoes, squash (I think?) and bell peppers. Maybe I go a little crazy with the seed-buying... but I get excited and can't help it! We've been looking at dwarf fruit trees, too. But we can't do those until the hulking, behemoth trees in the front get taken out.

In other kitchen news... Haven't been cooking nearly as much as I'd like. Especially lacking in kitchen time are new-to-me dishes, and some of the good stuff I made during my last months in SLC. (I'm lookin' at you, lentils, onions and rice. I'm lookin' at you, teriyaki chicken.) I keep saying it'll happen once we're settled in — seriously, there's no shelving below head height in the pantry — but I just need to make that happen. A few days ago, I cooked an entire meal from things we had on-hand, and it felt like a big accomplishment. How sad is that?

One of B's relatives gave us a $100 Williams-Sonoma gift card. It may take a while to get used, because I want to save it for something "good." I'm not sure what that means, really, but I just want to make sure that it's not wasted on froufy dish towels or gourmet croissants, when we could really use "x." Does that make any sense? What would you get with it?

Teeeeensy update

Got the house, with big backyard. Need to map it out a bit.

Seedlings for three hot peppers and three herbs (basil, chives, and uh, something else) started.

Seeds for peas, beans, and red sweet bell peppers purchased.

So excited!

Sorry to have been so absent. I have tons of ideas scribbled down for posts, including a roundup of lunch-spots in my work neighborhood. Can you believe that the best tacos I've had in New York (by far) are from a place called Bagel and Schmear? Well, believe it.

Garden porn

This story has me really anxious to find out whether B and I got this house. I am itching to map out garden space in my (hopefully) new big backyard! There's something about dirt between the fingers that just feels so good... If I'm already really excited about the first three plants mentioned, it can only get better.

:D

Home sweet garden

If I figure out a way to buy a house in the next year, it will be because I want a real food garden. I'll probably end up spending all of my money on plants and seeds and garden-y stuff, and I'll crash on the floor of a woefully underfurnished room in a sleeping bag.

But I'll have squash next year, dammit!

Would having chickens be going too far?

Guess I should get the yard first, before I think of the chickens.

This book has done a number on me.

A victory, of sorts

That looks so gross. But it's *my* gross. Thyme and parsley from my little pots that sit on the kitchen floor. The rest of it is fixings for chicken stock, which will become chicken soup tonight.

Last night, I finally got the chicken (his name was Gary, by the way) in the slow cooker with onion, carrots and celery. The recipe called for a parsnip and another vegetable I can't remember. Didn't have them, so I ignored that part. I feel really ridiculous for needing a recipe to make chicken stock in the first place. I mean, really. It's hot chicken water. How do you screw that up?

The recipe also called for a bay leaf, parsley and thyme. Alright, I thought. I have a package of bay leaves that have been in the back of the fridge for almost a year. It's dry in there, and they still look great, so I used a couple. You can sub extra bay leaves for a parsnip and that other mystery vegetable, right? Totally.

It was exciting though, to find that the parsley that hadn't been growing so great outside has really done better since I moved the pots inside about two weeks ago. So that's in there, kinda hugging the right side of the slow cooker insert.

The thyme, well, it hasn't done so hot since the move. It was in a pot with some insane, ravenous chocolate mint, and I think the mint might have screwed things up for the whole pot. Roots running around the perimeter of the pot are a bad thing, right? At any rate, the mint seems to have burned itself out, and there were still teeny sprigs of green thyme. They're in the mix too, right on top. Poor baby thyme. You get your own pot next time.

So it's all sitting and stewing as I type. Hopefully the joint's not burned down when I finally get home tonight, and making soup is easy. At least I don't need a recipe for that.

It's been too long...

I used to blog in the mornings or early afternoons before leaving for my 4 or 5 p.m. shifts at the newspaper. I'd make coffee, maybe an egg or some yogurt concoction, then settle in for a morning of paying bills and snuggling with the dog and reading blogs and news. A couple days a week, I'd go for a hike with my puppy, Leo, either up Mount Beacon down to Dennings Point. Once in a while, I even made real food, like bread or scones, before heading in to work.

But then I got a day job—my dream job—for which the hours are Monday through Friday, 9 to 5. I catch the train at 7 in the morning and get home around 7 at night. I love everything about it.

The pace of the work suits me—no more 11:28 p.m. anxiety attacks while someone wants to change a headline and my boss is telling me to just send the page.

I'm smitten with a good deal of the content—the best hot cocoa in the world, anyone?

I learn something new every day—even if it's just that ATMs at Duane Reade are fee-free to me.

The train ride is often breathtakingly beautiful—pink fog rising from the Hudson this morning, stellar sunsets for the past two months (not anymore, of course, with the expiration of daylight savings time).

I'm exposed to things I'd never have the chance to try anywhere else—a fancy-schmancy French wine from 1995 that showed me what "elegant" means. Balsamic vinegars from Italy that poured like motor oil, aged 12, 25, and 100 or more years.

But getting home at 7 means that adventurous cooking goes on the back-burner (so to speak), a little bit. After two months in this schedule, I think I'm getting used to it, and will be able to figure out a routine that involves more cooking. Once my weekend days opened up, I got roped into (often literally: we climb) more adventures in the great outdoors. Now that the weather has chilled substantially, I look forward to spending more days in the kitchen. That said, I've saved a fair bit of money by making quick dinners at home, even if, like last night, it's just mashed sweet potatoes and stir-fried frozen veggies with Asian-inspired seasoning. That was on the table before 8, and I even played ball with Leo for a while.

I did some freezer-oriented cooking a month or so ago. I had really ambitious plans one day to make vegetable lasagna, butternut squash-apple soup, sweet potato chili, a spicy carrot-cabbage Chinese kimchi kinda thing, and ... and I can't remember what else. I took a picture of the table laden with all the food I planned to cook that day. I'll put it up here when I get home (if I remember).

It probably goes without saying if you know me, but I didn't quite get through everything on the table. I got the lasagna and chili done and frozen, and the butternut squash roasted (it's easier to prepare if it's cooked first). We went through the lasagna pretty quickly. There are still two big yogurt containers full of chili in the freezer. Unfortunately, the squash didn't get made into soup until its already-roasted freshness was already questionable, and it just tasted "off" no matter what I added to the soup. Also unfortunately, that will finally get chucked tonight so I can use the big pot for chicken soup.

There's most of a roasted chicken in the fridge, see, and I don't want it to meet the same fate as the squash. Since B and Leo will be at B's parents' place tonight to celebrate his sister's birthday, I have an empty kitchen to work with. Can't wait!

Coming soon... A roundup of some of the awesome and not-so-awesome (but usually cheap) places I've had lunch since starting the new job, and thoughts about agriculture/farming/conscientiousness since reading Barbara Kingsolver's "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle." It's amazing. And what happened to that garden on the back deck, anyway?

Starting from scratch

Nothing but Miracle-Gro Organic, a bunch of tiny seeds, and crossed fingers.
Everything we bought in May was already sprouted, beyond seedlings, nascent little plants. Like, toddler plants. Things went well, for the most part.

I got ambitious. I bought seeds. I probably waited too long to plant them.

So on July 24, I buckled down and did it. Here's the lettuce (mesclun mix), basil, zucchini (One seed in the packet? Are you kidding me?) and sunflowers. Lettuce and sunflowers are in the full-size egg cartons; basil in five of the six nooks in the smaller one, zucchini in the last niche:

Tomato blight? Not in my backyard.

A horticultural pandemic is sweeping the Northeast.

Late blight, the same fungus that killed three-quarters of Ireland's potato crop in 1846, has taken a severe toll on tomato plants around New York. It's been confirmed in 30 or so of the state's 60ish counties, and Margaret McGrath (a Cornell vegetable epidemiologist) said on today's Brian Lehrer show that plant authorities simply haven't checked the remaining counties.

The fungus is highly contagious, and this spread is starting mainly in backyard gardens. Most outlets are saying that the main source of the blight in the Northeast is plants from big-box stores such as Home Depot and Lowe's. One supplier in the southeastern United States seems to be at the root (no pun intended) of this outbreak. The supplier, Bonnie Plants, says it isn't to blame and that its plants were somehow affected along the supply chain... To the company's credit, they've aggressively worked on recalling all of their plants.

Yellow leaf? yes. Telltale fuzzy spores? No.

Cherry tomatoes. Yum.

Sure, my plants have yellowing and even browning leaves. But that likely has more to do with the nearly nonstop rain this summer, and the fact that a fairly big plant is in a fairly small pot. Are our plants faring better — they're not dropping dead, at least — because we bought them from a local greenhouse? It's possible that quality control is easier when the production scale is smaller. I wonder what, if anything, the GMO-ness of our tomatoes has to do with their hardiness.

Here is McGrath's Cornell blog.


The one on the left was ripe enough a couple days after this was shot.

During the cage installation, three tomatoes fell off of the big plant; we kept them outside anyway. Today I ate one; half of it was good. (The other half was a bit more mealy than I'd have liked.) We've eaten several of the cherry tomatoes, and they've been great.

Last September, I took an incredible daylong class at the Culinary Institute of America right up the road in Hyde Park titled "Taste of the Hudson Valley." It was more than a Millbrook Winery this, Sprout Creek Farm that, Stone Barns blah blah. It delved deeply into food as politics; more deeply than many of the participants were comfortable, I imagine.

Among the hottest topics were the buzzwords "local" and "sustainable." Late blight appears to be neither. Although produce with either of those labels is often more expensive, it seems to be worth it, so far. Does produce come more locally than from my back deck (not that I have a front deck)? I'm still in my first season as a wannabe farmer, so I'm not sure how sustainable this endeavor will be.

The class' instructor reminded us that we vote with our dollars. And it's a deeply personal, and political, decision to just say "no" to big agribusiness. Now, I'll be the first one to admit that I buy the majority of my fruits and vegetables at the local supermarket, but the transition to local/fresh/sustainable feels pretty good. I've been hitting up two local (haha, I had to throw that in) farmers markets and loving what I've come home with.

It's also really cool to me to be able to have a conversation with the person who actually is doing the growing. Maybe I just like to talk; maybe the investment and exchange of ideas appeals to me. But after last Thursday's trip to the Fishkill market, I realized that nowhere else would someone have offered me a plum, even while I was checking out the blueberries. Nowhere else would someone have jogged across a parking lot to tell me I had money hanging out of my back pocket. Nowhere else would a farmer give me advice on what to do with my own fennel, as I wasn't buying hers...

I think I'll go back and see them again tomorrow.

Hi there

Has it really been more than two months since I've trolled around here?

I've got no excuse, I suppose. Have had a to-do list as long as I am tall, but who doesn't, really? I got some big items checked off of it over the past few days, which feels good, but that doesn't write blog posts, now does it? Even when blog-writing has been on said to-do list, it still hasn't happened. To my blogging friends: How do you keep it up? Do you write whenever you're inspired? Adhere to a schedule? I need to figure out how to do this on a regular, disciplined basis, despite the pushes and pulls of everyday life.

Maybe my barrier has been one of opportunity. I've been getting outside, hiking with my puppy a lot more than I thought. Despite this summer's torrential downpours, Leo and I have had a great time. Many of the excursions have been marked with opportunities for urban foraging: mulberry trees everywhere, from a branch inching toward my bedroom window, to berry-laden fronds hanging over a trail near where we climb, to another path at Dennings Point. There's even a white varietal a few blocks over.

There are wild black raspberries growing everywhere, too: along just about every trail I hike on, including both of the aforementioned trails. On windy country roads near B's parents' house, even in their yard. I've seen wild strawberries around Dennings Point, with hypersaturated red berries. A few weeks ago, B, Leo, and I were making our way around the Beacon Reservoir and spotted blueberry bushes. Along the fence bordering our landlord's property, blackberries are peeking out from among the overgrown vines. This is stunning...

Maybe the next time I head out (tomorrow?), I'll remember to bring a clean container for collecting. Recipes like this one, for rosemary ice cream with mulberries (the same dappled ones I've seen more of recently), have inspired me to do something with the mulberries before it's too late. I'm new to this gardening stuff, and newish to the Northeast, and totally new to making ice cream (that one time in preschool where we shook some container of something does not count), and I have no idea when "mulberry season" is over, so I guess I better get on this.


Late-spring dinner. Fiddlehead ferns sauteed with shallots, butter and some lemon juice (thanks, Lesli, for the prep idea). Garlic mashed potatoes, half-sweet and half-red. Thyme-poached salmon (thyme from my pots!) with a random concoction of a yogurt-sour cream sauce with tarragon (tarragon from my pots!).

I've still been cooking up a storm — fiddlehead ferns have been among the more unusual ingredients around the kitchen. There's a nascent container garden on my deck, too: fennel, onions, rosemary, lavender, basil, parsley, tarragon, lettuces, red and green bell peppers, jalapeño peppers, eggplant, cucumbers, three kinds of tomatoes (small, medium and large), chocolate mint, thyme, broccoli, and collard greens. The photo above is from May 13...

From around the same time, here's a view of Leo in the "garden," before seedlings and starters from Adams were even potted:


I took new pictures today, and can't wait to put them up for comparison.

The lettuces in the pot right now aren't doing so hot, so I bought some seeds, which I need to start. It rained for a month straight starting around Memorial Day, but we've had some hot, sunny days in the past week so I hope the plants start really growing. But not like the lettuce and basil that bolted. Still not sure what to do about those.

I see things every day and think of content I'd love to write about, but never get around to it. Among those items: my newfound love of kimchi, this article from the NYT, how much I miss food editing, and my summer food love adventures... all of it TK, as we say in the biz. Which reminds me - also TK was more info on the tubers... Did I ever finish that? No? Well, that also is TK.