Henderson Bush Lima Beans

After 13 days, my February 11th bean planting has yielded some green!  Still no activity in most of the bed, but the Henderson Bush Lima Beans woke up today.  Phew.  Also still no progress in the watermelon bed.

Tomato, Tomatillo, and Pepper Starts Progress

It's been thirteen days since I indoor-started the tomato, tomatillo, and pepper seeds.  Click here for more on that.  After a week I was still seeing no life.  I thought that maybe the plastic top was the problem.  It was keeping everything super damp and almost moldy.  I took it off, and I feel like I saw sprouts the next day, but that could have been a coincidence.  The peppers seemed to be a little slower.  I've been moving them into the sunlight throughout the day when I pass them and notice them sitting in the shade.  There are a few compartments with several sprouts.  I guess I should remove all but one?  I'll ask an expert (mom or dad) tomorrow.




Wisconsin Lakes Pepper, Hartmann's Yellow Tomato

Black Sea Man Tomato

Green Husk Tomatillo, Joe's Long Pepper

Dr. Wynne's Tomato, Black Plum Tomato

These are my February 5th starts after 19 days.

Salt's Cure Valentine's Day

We went to Salt's Cure, one of our favorite restaurants last night.  They do a lot of curing and pickling, and the food is fun.  We went there for the first time a few months ago with our friends Jim and Norm who were in town from Seattle on a food tour/rampage of Los Angeles.  I miscalculated and made breakfast tacos at 10am, not realizing that we had 2 food stops planned that day before our big food tour finale dinner at Angelini Osteria at 7pm.  Jim had read about the charcuterie case at Salt's Cure, so we figured we could just get something to go. We showed up on a very rainy Sunday late morning with very full bellies.  The place had a 45 minute wait and we were told that the charcuterie case was closed until February.  As we stood outside under the eave trying to figure out what to do in LA on a rainy day besides eat, the hostess came out several times to tell us what was sold out.  We explained that we weren't really even hungry, we probably weren't going to stay, and we were just trying to figure out what to do in LA in the rain.  Somehow we were still there after 45 minutes, and the hostess implored us to come inside and at least have a beer.  Even though they were about to close and out of almost everything, chef/owners Zachary Walters and Christopher Phelps offered to figure out something for us to eat.  And they did.  And it was incredible and interesting and involved cured pork.  We've loved them ever since (postscript: Because of our second breakfast, we were forced to play Just Dance on the Wii for 4 hours to prepare the way for Angelini.  It worked, and we ate like champs)

Last night we sat at the bar, and they brought house rolls with sage butter.  We ordered the pickle plate, which came with house-made sauerkraut, pickled onions, pickled black radish, a half-hard half-soft pretzel and a honey mustard sauce (it's not too soon, the 90s started 20 years ago, and that shit tastes good).  Next up were the grilled oysters, yum.  I hadn't eaten oysters in awhile that weren't raw or fried.  Next we had beef medallions in a red wine sauce.  They were perfectly rare and melted like butter in our mouths.  We bravely ordered the charred treviso radicchio.  It was good, but very very bitter.  I could handle a few bites, but Matt really liked it.  We didn't order dessert, but they brought over chocolate truffles with cardamom on account of it being Valentine's Day and their 6 month anniversary.  We left very full and very happy.   

salt's cure

the honey

the board

pickled onions

what was left of the truffles

A Carrot Sprout and Seeding Arugula

The first carrot sprout appeared today (I think).  It's super cute. 

And in other news, my established arugula plant has flowers all over it.  Oops.  Luckily my new arugula patch seems to be coming along. 

I now have 100% germination my first batch of tomato seeds.    

Smoked trout and celery salad

From the yard: celery


Another rough presentation, but it tasted good.  I will work on making the food actually look appetizing.  


The cod came from McCall's.  It was local, but I can't remember exactly from where.  I salted it and smoked it over alder chips in the below stovetop smoker.  The smoke alarm did go off, but it was worth it.  It took about 10 minutes.  I also made a salad with yard celery*, comte cheese, toasted pecans, olive oil, champagne vinegar, salt, and pepper (other variations: bacon, marcona almonds, parmesan).  The most important parts are very thinly sliced celery at an angle (more thinly-sliced than below), a cheese, a nut, and a smoked meat.


The meal is pretty much ripped off from a cooking class I took with Rene Erickson from Boat Street Cafe in Seattle.  She also made vanilla bean risotto pudding topped with poached rhubarb and bay that killed.  And a couple of wonderful gratins -- the zucchini was particularly delicious.    

More gardens and more dirt

There's a nice area by the North side fence that I recently cleared of morning glory for a seating area.

I decided today to clear a little more of the morning glory and plant beans and peas to replace it.  I cleared the vines, dug up what I could of the roots, put some found wood around the edge, and added soil-building compost to the top.  I mixed the compost in about an inch and planted two little rows (from left to right) of Henderson Bush Lima Beans, Champion of England Peas, and Painted Lady Improved Runner Beans.  I put the wire in to protect the beds from the dogs.  I will put a trellis in the middle for the front row to grow up.  The back row will go up the fence.  I actually found a little tag from some pea starters indicating that someone else had the same idea about this stretch of ground at some point in the past.

This is the watermelon patch reclaimed from morning glory, a weird black box that says 'up' in red, and a small trash can with charcoal in it.  I put 8 seeds in a 12" mound to the right.  I need to find out if I can use the rest of the garden.  I'm not completely sure how watermelons grow.  The package says that you shouldn't create these mounds closer than 8' from each other, but I don't know if you can put other stuff in there.

I put soil-building compost around the kale and arugula in the patch adjacent to the back of the house.  I also did a little weeding which ended in me ripping up one of my 4 kale seedlings.  I replanted it and am hoping for the best.

These are the tiny kale seedlings.  I think they are anyway.  They are too small and sparse for me to actually taste one to be sure.

A new planting flat and some hopeful-looking tomato sprouts

I bought this little seed starter flat for $9.99 at Sunset Nursery. I could have used a mishmash of egg cartons, but I decided to splurge so that I can easily move the whole mess into the sun throughout the day if I feel like it. It's got a nice plastic top to create a little greenhouse. I planted Dr. Wyche's Yellow Tomato, Black Sea Man Tomato, Hartmann's Yellow Gooseberry Tomato, Black Plum Tomato, Wisconsin Lakes Bell Pepper, Joe's Long Cayenne Pepper, and Green Husk Tomatillos.  I actually used a soil-building compost to instead of potting soil just because that's what I have.  I'll see how this works.

The Dr. Wyche's Yellow and Black Plum Tomatoes that I planted last Saturday have started to sprout.

In the garden, I'm still waiting on the Danver Carrots, but I re-read the package and it says that germination is slow and erratic, so be patient.  So I'm being patient.  I think I saw a little fennel sprout in the fennel patch.

Reclamation - Carrots and Fennel

Last Saturday February 5, rather than laying newspaper on the grassy bed beside the driveway and letting the grass die over the course of a few weeks like I was probably supposed to, I took to ripping the grass out with my hands.  I tried not to disrupt the soil too much in the process, but I'm sure I did.  Below is the outcome.  I mixed in a little organic fertilizer, and planted a row of Canver Carrots in the middle.

There was a flowering plant in this little bed beside the back stoop.  My mom said it was 4 O'clock, but I'm not sure.  It has hollow stems that pop off when you try to dig them up.  Although the fennel seed pack said to start indoors, I decided to just go for it, since it's pretty warm here during the day already.  We are going to have to put extra effort into not running over this bed trying to cram our car into the parking space by the house.  Also yard legend has it that others have tried and failed to get rid of the mysterious flowering plant.  So we'll see if the fennel grow some and own this bed.

Seeds!

I ordered a bunch of seeds from Seed Savers Exchange, a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving rare seeds. I'm pretty sure that the first thing I ever grew from seed was the beets that I planted last November. I grew up on a plant nursery, and I was surrounded by beautiful plants in different sized pots 4", 6", 1 gallon, 5 gallon, and on up. But as much as I intellectually understood that you can grow these plants from seeds, I clearly had never really stopped to think about how amazing that fact is. I'm still marveling at the six medium-sized beet plants sitting in my garden that came from six tiny seeds. My decision plant from seed is partially an economic one. It makes sense to pay $.10 for something that without much effort at all can turn into something that would cost $2.50 to buy at a nursery. Another advantage of growing vegetables from seeds is variety. You can grow crazy nearly-extinct vegetables that have gone out of fashion due to the economic pressure of industrial farming. A purple watermelon with splotchy yellow stars all over it? Thought to be extinct, the Moon and Stars Watermelon was rediscovered a few years back on a farm in Macon Missouri.  

Below is my haul.

Tomatoes, peppers, and tomatillos (seeds to start indoors).  

Seed Savers had a huge selection of tomatoes.  Our yard neighbor Anna, who we share the yard with, grew tomatoes last year in the front yard raised beds.  They were wiped out by early blight.  My mom told me that one of the reasons that heirloom tomatoes are not farmed commercially is that they are not nearly as disease and pest resistant as those tasteless red globes from the supermarket.  So I will try growing these heirloom varieties in pots in the backyard this year to see if I can avoid the blight.  I've got Dr. Wyche's Yellow Tomato, Black Sea Man Tomato, Hartmann's Yellow Gooseberry Tomato (the only cherry tomato in the bunch), and Black Plum Tomato.  I started the Black Plum and Dr. Wyche's Yellow inside last Saturday February the 5th in a 6-pack.  I've kept them on my sunny kitchen table in the morning and on my sunny desk in the afternoon, but I haven't seen any green yet.

A couple of peppers survived in the front yard raised beds, but I thought I'd add a couple more varieties.  I picked Wisconsin Lakes, an early-yielding bell pepper and Joe's Long Cayenne Pepper. 

I love tomatillos and picked the Green Husk Tomatillo for no good reason.  

Peas, beans, and cucumbers (things that climb)

I bought A&C Pickling Cucumbers and Parisian Pickling Cucumbers (where cornichons come from).

The Champion of England Pea can grow 10 feet, and can produce a lot in spall spaces.  I also bought the Henderson Bush Lima Bean, and the Painted Lady Improved Runner Bean.

Squash and Melons

One of the seeds I'm most excited about is the Moon & Stars Van Doren Watermelon.  I started making watermelon-strawberry frescas a couple of summers back, and this summer I discovered that limes are a delightful and much cheaper alternative to the tartness of strawberries in the drink.  This summer, I will be using my Meyer Lemons.  

Although I rarely cook with zucchini (I think it made too many appearances in the bland beginner vegetarian dishes I was surrounded by in Seattle in my early 20s), I do have a great recipe for zucchini gratin, and I think that zucchini bread is heavenly.  So I'm going to plant some and see how it goes.

Random Seeds

Fennel and carrots are lovely, but pretty straightforward.   The other seed to end up in my  random seeds category is mysterious and exciting -- Strawberry Spinach.  It is also known as Strawberry Blite (not nearly as nice a name).  You can eat the berries and the greens!  Seed Savers says that it was grown in Europe for centuries, but is now very scarce.  Wikipedia says that it is native to North America and that the leaves should be eaten in moderation.  Hmm.

sausage and greens with sauerkraut

From the yard: kale, bok choy, thyme, onions

This super-simple meal turned out really well and, and a good part of it is from the yard.

Dividing onions from the yard.

Yard kale and yard bok choy. I think we might be at the end of the bok choy. A couple of the plants started to bolt a few weeks back and I immediately started eating them. They are actually still very good, very flavorful, but I fear that they aren't long for the world.

I softened the onions in olive oil and butter, added the house-made pork fennel sausage from McCall's Meat and Fish, and after the sausage was browned, I added the greens.

Here's the final meal with green and bold = yard food.  Sausage, onions, and greens topped with homemade yogurt and *outstanding* sauerkraut from Farmhouse Culture.  Mashed sweet potatoes (to save time, boiled not roasted, and not as good).  A thyme and brie egg-white omelet (I had left over whites from a cake I made a few days back, this is not an attempt to save calories by removing yolks).

Making a compost bin

Convinced by The Urban Homestead, by Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen, that I did not need to purchase a fancy composter, I bought a plastic trash can and drilled some holes in it using my electric screwdriver.  I put quite a few holes in the bottom so that the worms could crawl in from the dirt, and I drilled about 10 on the sides.

Here's my husband Matt feeding it the inaugural kitchen scraps.