Mulligan Fire Roasted Cherry Tomato Salsa

July 31, 2016

A few weeks ago I finally had enough cherry tomatoes to give the Fire Roasted Cherry Tomato Salsa recipe I wrote about in February a whirl. The cherry tomatoes I had in abundance were two varieties of yellow tomatoes and I thought that would work nearly as well as the red. I was mistaken.The salsa was flavorful and had the perfect amount of heat, but without the red tomatoes it lacked the acidic tang this salsa needed to balance the sweetness of the fire roasted onions.So last week I tried again with farmer's market red cherry tomatoes.The kitchen smells unbelievably good during and after the fire roasting step!And the finished product!The mulligan Fire Roasted Cherry Tomato Salsa was delicious and I will need to rethink my yellow/red cherry tomato planting ratio for next year.

Imma Be - Black Eyed Peas In the Garden

July 23, 2016

So maybe the July garden isn't classically beautiful, but it does have a quirky beauty...While bolted lettuce is a tall, straggly creature on its own, the Tom Thumb lettuce is also a bit elegant against the backdrop of collards:The glass gem corn is doing incredibly well (note, strawberry popcorn is not nearly so prolific):The blueberries are abundant this year:The figs, while still green, are also abundant this year:The asparagus is still throwing up occasional spears:And the tomatoes...all those tomatoes!But the star of the late July garden for me is my first ever harvest of California Black Eyed Peas! These cowpeas were planted to fix nitrogen for the corn they are growing next to and up, but now that I am seeing the beginning of what looks to be a good harvest I am excited about them for their own sake:

July Garden Update

July 12, 2016

Under the best of circumstances July is an awkward time for the garden.Spring greens (spinach, lettuce, cilantro) still in the garden have bolted or browned, strawberries have stopped producing anything but dozens of straggly runners and asparagus has transmogrified into its less known, fuzzy small tree form. Between these only-a-mother-could-love-them beauties are the bare spaces where sugar and snow peas and pak choy have been removed but it is still too early to sow fall plants, July may be the worst time to have a garden guest.I have a garden guest coming next week.The wonderful REALTOR that patiently waited and watched while I stood in potential back yards mentally calculating full sun hours and painstakingly measuring for raised beds that were at the time, stored in a rented garage, is coming to see what I "have done with the place" and late July is the date we picked for dinner and a garden tour.This post is half garden update, half convincing myself that there are still beautiful things to be seen even in this straggly season. Here goes:The blackberries are huge and I should still have a good mix of ripe and unripe next week.I always overseed plants like basil so I can use the thinnings on meals while letting the main plants mature.There is only one butternut squash on the vine so far, but many blooms.I picked my first round of Envy edamame with only a handful left in the garden, but I had left the wonderful nitrogen fixing plants in the garden as companion plantings to everyone else.And the rest of this story is tomatoes, the beauties of summer. These are some of the Blue Cream Berries cherry tomatoes before they ripen and take on that creamy yellow color.The roma tomatoes are thick on the vine and ripening at a steady rate.A pretty average harvest day with a double handful of roma tomatoes, a couple of Mortgage Lifters, a bowlful of Hartman's Yellow Gooseberry cherry tomatoes (the most prolific and tallest of my cherry tomato plants this year) and my first Black Beauty zucchini of the year.Here's hoping she really likes tomatoes ;)

Roma Wasn't Built In a Day

July 9, 2016

Roma math:A decent batch of homemade tomato sauce with enough to freeze or can for future use requires a minimum of 15-20 lbs of roma tomatoes.The average day on the urban farm (with 16 roma tomato plants in high season) results in anywhere from 1-3 lbs of roma tomatoes.I struggled with this math last year as I watched ripe romas edge toward over-ripeness while waiting for enough companions to be ready at roughly the same time to make a batch of sauce. Out of desperation I started searching "freezing whole tomatoes" and low and behold:Not only CAN you freeze whole tomatoes, there are a couple of benefits to doing it. Freezing, especially for short term storage doesn't have to be particularly fussy. Just clean, pop in a bag, remove most of the air and voila - a partial batch of sauce! Also, when frozen tomatoes are thawed to make sauce, the skins just slide right off, saving the blanching step.

(Nearly) Nose to Tail Cooking

July 8, 2016

Chef John from Food Wishes (on YouTube and BlogSpot) has become a permanent presence on my laptop and in my kitchen over the past 6 months. In addition to being an award winning chef, he is a gifted educator and my go-to guy for recipe ideas for farmer's market finds, cooking techniques and new takes on old dishes.Recently I have made two of his recipes that were particular standouts for me. They were easy, delicious and used parts of the vegetable or animal normally thrown away without a second thought.I have been cooking with broccoli stems for years, but it is not often I see them in recipes. For his broccoli angel hair pasta recipe he calls for simmering the diced stems until soft as part of the garlic sauce and for his paella recipe, he calls for sauteing the shrimp shells to add extra flavor and body to the sauce.Briefly my results followed by Chef John's fantastic recipe videos:

Eating Local Never Tasted So Good - Seafood

July 7, 2016

I grew up in America's rural heartland calling catfish and crappie 'seafood', but in truth, it would be far more accurate to call it riverfood or lakefood. Real seafood was reserved for restaurant dining and with cautions from in-the-know types to not order on certain days of the week based on restaurant order delivery norms.When I moved to the Raleigh area 3 years ago, one of the bragging points about this region is that we are 2.5 hours from the mountains and 2.5 hours from the coast. But knowing that still did nothing to prepare me for this sign at my local farmer's market:Most Saturdays, Carolina Catch Seafood has a stand at the Apex Farmers Market, selling fresh fish and shellfish, caught the day before and packed on ice, but never frozen. It's like winning the Local Food Lottery!The NC Catch organization has this handy chart of seasonal availability of NC seafood which will be used like the seasonal produce charts to help me meal plan around the season's best. I love shopping the farmer's markets to supplement what I grow and support local, sustainable food producers. Getting to support local fishermen (and women) is a new concept for me, but one that I (sorry, mandatory bad pun) will take to like fish to water!

Food With a Story - Mortgage Lifter

June 29, 2016

When was the last time you ate a tomato and considered the intrigue and controversy surrounding it's provenance?This big guy, sold by Baker Creek under the name Mortgage Lifter is almost ready to harvest and when I save the seeds after enjoying my first taste of this storied heirloom fruit, I will be thinking of the dueling stories of where it originated. A little food for thought ;)

Towering Tomatoes

June 19, 2016

The view standing next to my Hartman's Yellow Gooseberry Tomato.The view a few steps back. This tomato plant has already over taken the 8 foot bamboo support pole and I need a step ladder to access the top with many months of growing still ahead. Watch out Charles Wilbur...

Precisely

June 5, 2016

Miniature cooking is a thing.

Getting More From Morels

May 16, 2016

In mid-April I had to concede defeat in my attempt to grow morel mushrooms and turned my attention to procuring dried morels instead. After a lot of price shopping I decided to try LifeGourmetShop.com and while I waited for my package to arrive, I started researching how to use dehydrated morels in place of fresh ones.The available information on rehydrating morels is generally straightforward with a few notable exceptions. Mushrooms should be placed in a liquid for around 20 minutes. What type of liquid is at the discretion of the chef, but most agree that water is just fine. Some people recommend hot water while other say that hot water will pull more of the morel flavor from the mushroom to the water.Taking the more conservative approach, I have used cold water with great effect and based on the heavy morel perfume and coloring of the cold water after a 20 minute soak, I think cold is the best approach. For the past month I have been enjoying morels that look, feel and taste *almost* like fresh morels in everything from omelets and pasta sauce to mixing them in with ground beef for hamburgers and stir fries. But what to do about all that mushroomy goodness left in the water they were soaked in?Luckily, one of the sites I searched had a great tip - filter the morel water and use it as a partial or whole replacement for water or stock in recipes that would be complimented with a bit of umami.A paper towel tucked over the opening of a container makes a great strainer to remove any grit or debris that may have been tucked into the folds of the morel for fresh uses (next 2 days). Strain and pour into ice cube trays, then pop out the cubes and place in a freezer safe bag for a longer shelf life.Since learning this trick I have been using the golden liquor to replace potions of chicken, beef and vegetable stock as well as added to water for boiling pasta. It's a great way to stretch my borrowed harvest for this year into many more dishes and over a longer period.My 6th grade Home Ec teacher would be proud!

22+ Reasons to Love Stone Barns Center

May 9, 2016

There are many more reasons to love the Stone Barns Center for Food & Agriculture than the 22 that inspired this post, so after you have finished reading here, click on over to their site and see what the + is all about.Like so many others, I first learned of the farm at Stone Barns and the gifted Farm Director, Jack Algiere in Dan Barber's brilliant book The Third Plate, but it was not until last weekend that I actually visited the Center's website to see what I could learn about the farm itself.What I found was the truly inspired and inspiring gallery of images from each of the 22 weeks of the farm's 2015 CSA (community supported agriculture).Inspired because in addition to the beautifully photographed produce with variety labels, perfect for those of us looking to expand our varietal repertoires, the images also include a couple of lines for how to prepare them, sometimes individually and sometimes in combination with other items from that week's box, answering the ubiquitous CSA question of "Okay, I have it, now what do I do with it?".Inspiring because all the suggestions are for whole foods, so simply prepared that there are no recipes or even need of recipes.Part of the Stone Barns Center's mission is "to create a healthy and sustainable food system" and teaching a new generations of farmers how to grow healthy soil while growing healthy food is part of achieving that mission, but so is educating the consumers of that food system because it doesn't matter how healthy and sustainably food can be produced if the people shopping for food do not know what to do with a variety of fresh produce.Kudos to the Stone Barns Center for Food & Agriculture for this simple, but powerful idea to better serve their own CSA customers, but also for going a step further and making it available to anyone who might find themselves staring at a bunch of carrots (or leeks, or beets, or peppers, or kale, etc.) and wanting to make a great meal starting with whole ingredients!Click through the full 22 week gallery of their 2015 CSA and "Farm-Driven Cuisine".And a special thanks to the Stone Barns Center for allowing me to use two of the images from their gallery - in this case, a picture is worth four hundred and eleven words.

WNGD

May 7, 2016

aked Gardening Day!Whether you see this day as an opportunity to celebrate noted, nude gardeners such as Adam and Eve or just get a little extra Vitamin D in those hard to reach places, today is the day to let nature be your clothes.

Seeing Red (And Green)

May 2, 2016

Today's garden science lesson: pill bugs can produce offspring up to 3 times per year and they like strawberries. Not all of the strawberries, of course, just a pill bug sized sampling of each.I picked berries between the intermittent rains this morning and for every two berries I put in my bowl, another one went into the compost some with the pill bugs still happily munching away.The leaf litter from last year's growth coupled with the shade from this year's lush growth has provided the perfect habitat for pill bugs and now that the berries are ripening, they don't even need to leave home to get dinner. I am going to try to clean as much of it as I can before I get to do the hard cleaning for winter.The Sugar Ann snap peas are coming in by the handful now. Enough to snack on while walking the garden.

Let Them Eat Bread

May 1, 2016

Naturally leavened (ie. lacto-fermented) bread is believed to share a timeline with agriculture itself, dating back to the Neolithic age.Modern bread is an entirely different end product as a result of divergent ingredients, chemical reactions, processes and cooking methods. The distinction between what has been called bread historically and what we call bread today, is not a small one.This fascinating article from the Whole Grains Council highlights one Italian study using a particular strain of sourdough lacobacilli and fungal proteases to ferment dough and results in a bread that it meets the standard for gluten-free labeling without any additions, deletions or adulteration. As these sorts of studies continue, it will be interesting to see what else we learn about historic bread's nutritional composition and that made it uniquely poised to persist as a staple for almost every known culture over the last 10,000 years.

The New Normal

April 24, 2016

The phrase "the new normal" usually has all the cheer of a dark, grey storm cloud with it's reference to sluggish GDP growth, wage stagnation and growing wealth inequality, but there is another new normal that is happening parallel to the business one that has a bit of a silver lining quality to it - the rise of urban and suburban farming.There has been a definite uptick in the number of news stories about urban agriculture over the past couple of years, but I found this recent bit of research by Redfin particularly illustrative of how the backyard garden has moved to the forefront. With my own metro ranking #10 and fully 12.7% of listings studied having the word 'garden' presumably as a selling feature, urban and suburban food production might just be the new normal.

I Break For Blossoms

April 24, 2016

I took a break between tending to existing plantings (pruning, mulching, thinning, tying up) and starting on seeding new plantings (cilantro, cucumber, edamame, squash and zucchini) to enjoy the blossoms that beginning to pop up around my garden.Sugar Ann Sugar Snap Peas:Blue Berries Cherry Tomatoes:Ahhhhh! Okay, back to work.

Berry Delicious

April 23, 2016

First* strawberry of spring!*technically the third one to ripen, but the first one that I beat the birds to. The strawberries are now covered enough to keep birds and squirrels out but let the pollinators in.

One Boy, Three Sisters

April 23, 2016

Me: Let me snap a picture before you plant the rest of the seeds.9yo: Sure, but let me grab the dibber first!I served in an advisory capacity last weekend as my 9 year old planted Glass Gem and Strawberry Popcorn, two beautiful heirloom varieties of flint corn he chose for his own garden crop this year. I chose California Blackeye Peas and a gift of Italian squash seeds called Zucchino Tondo Chiaro Di Nizza to be planted with the corn over the coming weeks to create our own Three Sisters planting with our crops growing together, supporting and benefiting each other.As we worked we talked about proper spacing (math), germination (biology), the magic of life held in each one of the seeds in his hand (reverence), and of the future harvest (patience).There is more growing in my garden than just food, I am growing a person.

A Berry Short Haircut

April 19, 2016

Last fall I had a niggle as I watched the lush, green growth of the strawberries yellow in some places and brown in other. I made a cursory search for winterizing strawberries and fall strawberry preparation and did not find what I was looking for, so called it good and lived in ignorant bliss all winter.This year, as spring sprung and my strawberry plants reached an almost concerning level of denseness while thickly mulched with some of last years dying and crumbling growth, I searched again and still came up with nothing and went back to my bliss and the rest of my to-do list.Then a few weeks ago I saw a video from Curtis Stone visiting a farmer in New Zealand, who, by the way, fetched 661 lbs. of strawberries off of his 600 first year plants discussing between 3:55 - 6:05, cutting down the current year's growth to force the plant into new, disease and fungus free growth for next year.My June Bearing Strawberries are already thickly in bloom, covered in green strawberries and tonight I saw the first blush of pink. Since I cannot do anything else until the end of this year's growing season, I went back to my research and found that a slightly different search term (cutting back strawberries) yielded the result I was seeking.This is one of those bad news/good news things.Bad news: The only thing I can really do between now and the end of season when I can cut back the green growth and make clean beds for next year, pulling out the older plants, making room for newer growth, is hand cleaning some of the decaying leaves, using them for mulch on very different plants so as not to transmit any fungus or disease between cultivars.Good news: In this case, that persistent niggle is my good news. I am far from an expert and I don't hold the title Master Gardener, but I am beginning to have a real intuition, a sense of what might need to be researched and considered for my various plants. I do consider myself a pretty good researcher and on this one I missed my target more than once, but I am feeling good that I have an idea of which questions need to be asked and will listen even more closely going forward. Answers, clearly, may vary!#Kaizen

Green Mulching

April 18, 2016

While looking for a readily available, organic mulch to compliment my semi-composted pine needles, I have learned that the list of mulching styles and materials is truly endless. The list of possibilities include but is not limited to: sheet mulching, lasagna mulching (which does not actually involve pasta), plastic mulching, deep mulching, green manure mulching (which is green, but not manure), straw mulching...as I said, endless.The option I found most interesting is green mulching, using plant matter that would otherwise go into the compost bins, instead applied directly on the soil as a biodegradable mulch, effectively cutting out the middleman.I have begun this process primarily with weeds in my yard and the few volunteer plants that come up in my garden. This week the main contributor has been the Yellow Woodsorrel that has popped up in clumps all around my yard.Yellow Woodsorrel, so called for the small, yellow flowers it produces, is an edible forage green that is commonly called 'false clover' in the midwest. It has appeared this year in such abundance that I can both have my cake and eat it too by using it as a primary green mulch. Below is the result of just a few minutes worth of pulling sorrel and mulching between asparagus crowns.For my foraging friends, the other edible forage plant I have in abundance this year is Common Chickweed. It has been blooming for months so I use it as a wild edible, but not as mulch to avoid introducing new seeds into the garden.The trick with using any plant you find in your yard (weed, grass or otherwise) as green mulch is to make sure you do not include the flowers or seeds. Even when the flowers seem small and closed it is better to pluck them off before tossing them between plantings."Earth knows no desolation. She smells regeneration in the moist breath of decay." ~ George Meredith

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