Feb harvest

Who would have thought that we'd be harvesting salad greens here in February?  To be honest, I've been trying to work out the conditions to achieve this for several years.

This arugula has been growing under a cover of row cover only that is propped up with some wire fencing.  Its gorgeous and nice and peppery.

These lettuces which include Nevada, Frisee, and Merlot are very protected under row cover with a plastic hoop structure 2 feet above.  If balmy in here.

These plants are Lacinato Kale, which I thought were petering out, but which are now growing a new generation of baby leaves below the upper leaves.  The baby leaves taste mild and a little broccoli like.  I'll probably let these continue to do their thing until I get a new crop of Kale started.

Since its going to snow almost all week here, not much else to do outside in the garden.  So, we'll do a little more of this...

However we will be supplementing our itching for the spring garden by eating some of this ...

Vegetable Stock

Early February represents a waiting game this year.  I had already started some seedlings last year by this time, which turned out to have been a bit of jumping the gun.  So this year, I'm exercising patience and will wait a few more weeks before starting some early seedlings in flats.  In the meantime, I'm spending a pretty good amount of time cooking warm winter fare, which today means vegetable stock.  This might be one of the easiest multi-use recipes I've ever come across.  During the summer almost all of the ingredients for this come from the garden.  At this point in the year, we harvest our goods from the grocery aisles.

The vegetables which include 5 carrots, 5 ribs celery, 2 leeks (halved and rinsed for grit), 4 onions, 2 Roma tomatoes, 2 cloves of garlic, a handful of parsley with stems are coarsely chopped and then placed into a stock pot.  2 bay leaves and some fresh oregano and thyme are added along with 4 quarts of water poured on top. Bring to a boil, lower to a simmer, the cover and cook for about 45 minutes.  Allow stock to cool, then strain.  That's it.  Pretty simple, right?

This week, the stock will be a base for vegetarian black bean chili, but the potential uses are broad and this stock gets used up very quickly around our house.  So while its winter outside, it smelled a bit like a vegetable garden inside.  Cooking tends to make us smile around here, see?

Lets start seedlings in a week or 2 shall we?

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.