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Sunday, November 28, 2010

Thankgiving Weekend



I have a lot to be thankful for this year, beautiful son, the best husband, a warm house while it snows outside, you get the picture. So I am super lucky, I won't dwell on it. Here's some of what we did this weekend. I'm sure its not surprising, but it involved a lot of cooking.

The "main" dish. This Turkey is from Whyte Farms in Ogden Utah. Its a local free range turkey. It will probably be the only bird we will cook all year, but it came out pretty beautiful. We thanked the turkey for being on the table. We thanked the farmers for providing us with healthy food.
This melange is most of the ingredients for lentil soup. All of the ingredients pictured came from our backyard garden. The lentils came from Idaho. It was delicious!!

Home made bread. I am on an ongoing quest to make the perfect loaf of bread in my oven. I'm getting close. This obsession was inspired by my friend Diane who is a bread guru.
This is a cranberry cheesecake pie. Can you say Yummm? I have been saying this a lot. I learned how to make this from a blog called Created by Diane (this is a different Diane, not my friend who makes bread.) I don't know this Diane, but after a few slices of this cheesecake, I'd like to give her a hug. Thanks lady.

Next week, Tyler's birthday and maybe a party. We'll see.


Sunday, November 21, 2010

Potatoes


We grew potatoes for the first time this past summer and I think it was a swimming success given that I didn't really make a special bed or think a lot about sun exposure and drainage. I figured geographically speaking I'm in proximity to potato Mecca aka Idaho, and what could go wrong. OK so my spuds were not perfect, but went well overall.
I grew 3 varieties: Purple Viking, Milva, and Red Norland. All were procured at Millcreek Gardens, my local garden supplier.


Our first harvest is above and took place late August. I did not mean to grow such an array of sizes but the white flies were starting to descend on my plants so I employed whole plant removal and this was the result. We ate the really small ones right away, pan fried with butter and salt. DELICIOUS.

We stored our potatoes in well ventilated baskets like this one with burlap sacs over the top in our basement. This is what 1 basket looked like after 1 month of curing.

This is Papas con Rajas. Perhaps my favorite thing to make with potatoes, but the options are endless.
Next spring a bigger potato patch? Yes, certainly. But do I dare try fingerling? I'm not sure.

Thursday, November 18, 2010

2010 Summer Garden Highlights

Raw ingredients for pickles
The best garden helper ever
A bountiful Garlic harvest
Strawberries, so sweet

It was a good summer garden even through we encountered challenges including late snow, white flies, and hungry birds. All in all we did OK. We ate a lot of fresh food this summer and learned a lot about some new plants to us, like potatoes and fava beans. Perhaps more on those later.

Winter, finally (and seriously)

I planned to start this blog last spring as my garden flew into action, but then got into the actual work of gardening and abandoned the task. However, today its winter, really winter. I'm wearing long underwear and sitting under a blanket and I'm still cold.
Today is the shortest day of the year so from here on in it gets better. I look forward to longer days, that's for sure. But I'll also tuck in and enjoy winter's freeze and snow, it does mean skiing after all. Maybe more importantly is the snow pack - without snow there isn't water for the West.
The end of the year and the solstice are a good time to think back on the last 365. I have no reason to complain and feel really lucky about the last year and really hopeful about the year to come.