January Garden

January is a slow month in the garden itself, but we have more than welcomed the regular additions of backyard kale, carrots, and occasional greens to our winter diet.

Even though the growing is slow, there is still a lot to do inside and outside.  I'm in the process of trimming back my gangly grape vines and cleaning up garden beds with skeletons of summer plants when the soil thaws enough for me to do so.  Its good to have reasons to get outside in the sunshine even if it is cold.

Our spirits are pretty good considering that it has been a dry, snowless winter so far.  This month we will get into the work of planning for the spring and summer and the fun of thumbing through garden catalogs.  I'm going to continue to work on crop rotation this year and am excited to see what new things we can grow along with our old favorites.
Happy 2012.

Garden Recipe 1: Greens Tacos

I know what you are thinking, that this is some sort of vegetarian hippie thing, but you would be wrong.  These are authentic and delicious.

First you will need some greens

I'm partial to Swiss Chard in this recipe but you could use Kale or Collards or even Spinach.   The most recent batch I made included a few collards in addition to Swiss Chard.

Rinse greens and cut into 1 inch strips and trim stems

Blanche greens (although I skip this step when using spinach) until just shy of tender to remove any bitterness and soften ribs.  For Chard this is about 2 minutes.  Drain then Rinse in cool water.
While these hang out and drain.  Next you will want to sauté 1/2 of a medium onion, I'm partial to red onion, in olive oil until soft then add 1 clove fresh chopped garlic.  After 1 minute, add greens and cook together until greens are soft, about 5 minutes (longer if using kale or collard greens).

Warm up a few corn tortillas and assemble as preferred.  I'm partial to sour cream as a base, then greens topped with cheese and guacamole.

Yum.  Recipe based from Greens Taco in "Everyday Mexican" by Rick Bayless.

Thanks.

I'm pretty thankful this year.  Lucky in health, happiness, and being surrounded by wonderful family and friends.  I'm also thankful to the friends that I've encountered on the web through my blog here, KGI, and FB relating to the garden/cooking world.
So, I've decided to embark on a little project to share some of the love.  Over the next few weeks, I'm going to post a series of garden based recipes.  Some are quick and easy, some are a bit more involved.  That said, I am not a chef and things just don't get too complicated around here given that we are dodging a 2 year old at most turns.
Here are some teasers.  Recipes to follow.

 Quick Fridge Dill Pickles

 Autumn Tomato soup with herb Foccaccia bread

Papas con Rajas

Fresh Pasta with Fava beans and English Peas

Happy Thanksgiving from my family to all of yours.

-Johanna

Food Politics

I am neither a food professional or a politician.  However, I am a human who eats food, a mother, a healthcare provider, and a gardener.  I think I may be as well qualified to weigh in on national food policy as the average congressperson, perhaps more so.
I'd like to discuss the big headline story about pizza being classified as a vegetable by Congress.  Well, that's not exactly what happened, but as this Washington Post article discusses, the whole vegetables in school lunch issue is so muddy at this point that its no surprise that we are hearing about the 1/8 cup of tomato paste on a kid's pizza getting extra credit.

I'd like to approach this from a different angle all together, as a person who loves pizza, and vegetables.  Why is the tomato sauce the only vegetable on the pizza?  You see, I feel like pizza could, in the right hands, be a regular vehicle for good.  I 'm not talking about the pre-made frozen factory stuff.  I'm talking about homemade pizza for our kids.

Like this one, it doesn't have any tomato sauce at all but has ricotta, wilted kale, and caramelized red onions.

Or this one with tomato sauce (which actually contains tomatoes, onions, garlic, celery, and carrots), spinach, and sliced red bell peppers.

Are you starting to get my gist?  I am totally OK with feeding my kid pizza if its put together like this, with a balance of components that equate to more than just grease, carbs, and salt.  How do we produce this en masse for entire schools?  I've watched the Jamie Oliver programs about school lunch and I'm convinced that its completely doable and pretty economic when done in bulk.  I'm OK to keep pizza on the menu as long as we get rid of the nonsense and really get down to the work of feeding our kids healthy, tasty food.

The survivors

I'm slowly learning that which varieties are cold hardy and freeze tolerant.

 Here are the details, in the above bed are bulls blood beets, sputnik arugula, red champoin radishes, and a few Chiogga beets.  Below are Napoli and Royal Chantenay carrots.  Both of these beds are currently being protected by row cover only.

 This bed contains Cortland yellow onions, Rossa di Milano red onions, Lincoln and Scotland Leeks.  These are under plastic and are going to get an added mulch of leaves and straw in the next week, we're hoping to overwinter these until spring.

Rainbow Chard above, before a good trim down so that we can place some row cover without breaking too many leaves.

I haven't pictured them here but I still have Lacinato Kale, Waltham broccoli, and Champion collard greens without any extra cover at all.  We're going to eat these up then pull them out once the snow flies.

It turns out that this part of the garden maintenance is pretty low key and very high yield for the amount of time and work I'm putting in.  And yes, I have some help as always.

Hard Freeze

We knew it was coming, but it has been such a beautiful mild autumn that we almost forgot.  Yesterday we readied the winter garden as best we could and said farewell to our warm season crops.   For us that amounts to bringing a lot of "almost ripe" tomatoes inside, picking some baby eggplants and small okra, and picking every last pepper that looks close.
We also draped some row cover over our greens, carrots, and root veg.

Also, on our last trip to California we made a stop at Peaceful Valley Garden Supply and procured some 6 mil greenhouse plastic to establish some tougher hoop houses for this winter

The low last night was 28 degrees F, so after I finish my second cup of coffee this morning I'll go see what survived and how my winterizing projects are going.  I'll let you know.

To the coast ...

Last week, we headed to California for a vacation.  There is something magical about the Northern California coast.

Despite cool weather and cold water, we couldn't resist some time on the beach.

We got a little more cold and wet than planned.

We also spent some time in the Napa Valley where we took a hike in Robert Louis Stevenson state park.

Yes, it was a little chilly, but none of us really minded, we had fleece and hats.

We tasted some beautiful wines, of note we visited 3 biodynamic wineries which turns out to be a really fantastic integration of organic farm and vineyard.  Thanks to Quivira, Truett Hurst, and Littorai for allowing us to check out the gardens as well as tasting beautiful wines.
The kind people at Failla gave us a tour of their cave and Carson got to check out the grape crushing process.
On our last day, we visited the Hendry winery where we had one of the most informative tastings I have ever had, not to mention a really kid friendly environment.


Upon our arrival home our own garden was full of produce that survived the 40 degree nights while we were gone.  We're pretty much eating out of the backyard this week.

It was a great trip.  Its also really nice to be home.