Simply: Home Cooking

Garden planning

Having had time to do a little more reading and research than I did before planting last year's garden, I wanted to share two resources I found particularly useful for beginning gardeners:

Organic Gardening's Seed Starting Chart helps you know when to start your seeds indoors, when to set them out in the garden, and which to sow directly outdoors.

Gardener's Supply Company has a wonderful online tool to help you plan your garden plots: Kitchen Garden Planner lets you play with different layouts and tells you how many plants of each variety can be put in a square foot.

Is it spring yet?

Spring is elusive here in Michigan - we go from snow to rain to "wintry mix" in the space of a few minutes and in constant rotation. But having had a few days of mostly rain, I was thrilled to finally see the snow drift that ate my composter melt and the lid on the barrel thaw. Funny how quickly we got used to composting - once the barrel door froze and the snow piled up so that we could neither add to the barrel nor turn it, I was at a total loss as to what to do with my compostables. What did I used to do with them? Garbage disposal? Trash? I settled for a compromise, faithfully putting stuff in the composting pail...and then grinding it in the disposal or toting it to the trash bin in the garage.. Nonsensical, perhaps, but oh well. I was thinking that perhaps being excited about composting is a bit odd, but then I came across this (com)post on Growing Soil by John Hershey, of RakishWit.com. And who knew that Walt Whitman even wrote poetry about compost?

I was so happy to see bare patches of lawn that I finally stopped moving the calendar item that reads "order seeds" to the next weekend and actually did order seeds! Unfortunately, that was as effective as moving all the winter clothes into storage: the minute I hit "submit," it started to snow.... Well, if the seeds show up soon, I may still be inspired enough to start them indoors under my grow lights, but that may take a few more shifts of the "start seeds" calendar item!

Goodnight, Garden!

Brrrr - not sure I'm cut out to be a soccer mom: even an hour in 27 degree weather is cold when you're not the one running up and down the field! But by the time we got home it was warm enough to put the garden to bed for the winter.

I pulled out what remained of my eggplant, tomato, and okra plants (or should I say okra trees?!?), all of which were drooping after a few nights of frost, and turned the earth well. We've filling our composter since Earth Day, and it was getting pretty hard to tumble the barrel, so the contents were added to the dirt and mixed in well.

The only thing to go in for the winter was garlic - trying out a suggestion from Organic Gardening, which promised me I'd have garlic next year if I did this!

As soon as I was done, the mail showed up...and what should be featured in Organic Gardening but "get your garden winter ready." I guess I should read that and find out what's left to do!

The first year in the garden was predominantly successful, and I definitely learned some good lessons:

• What an okra plant looks like!
• Which plants need to be placed where - I had some rather tall ones (okra) providing too much shade for the lower-growing ones;
• Which plants train well to a trellis: cucumbers, beans, and bitter melon will get theirs earlier next year.
• Tomatoes do just fine on the east side of the house, especially when they're up against the fieldstone wall, which probably kept them warmer longer during cool days.
• Eggplants need more sun than mine got this year.
• Slugs love beer, but eeeewwww - those jars of beer need to be washed out more often.

Now I'm off to browse gardening catalogues for next year's garden. I'm hoping to add 2 more 3'x3' raised beds and expanding our varieties!

Tomatoes!

In recent years, my daughter (the resident tomato fanatic) has grown to understand that tomatoes from the farmers' market - fresh, local, vine-ripe, and in-season - are a garden treat unlike any other. In California, we could get wonderful tomatoes most of the year, fairly acceptable ones the rest of the time. In Michigan, she has come to scorn what she calls "tomatoes in training" (our son appreciates the acronym more than he does any tomato) and has told me not to bother buying them from the grocery store, preferring to wait for the market season. This year we got to try a wide variety of heirlooms, from bright yellow to funny striped ones, and it was fun to compare the flavors.

Tomatoes should be kept at room temperature - a mildly green one will even ripen nicely on a sunny countertop or windowsill - but they're quite delicate and need to be eaten quickly. Refrigerating them is not worthwhile - they lose too much flavor.

This year I planted Roma tomatoes from seed, starting them under lights in the basement (I'm sure my neighbors thought I was growing something else down there, judging by the constant glow emanating from the window wells!) and planting 6 of them along the east-facing wall of our house. I wondered whether there would be enough sun there, but I'd run out of containers and space in my raised beds. My worries were unfounded, though, and I've been harvesting a small bowlful daily - enough for my daughter to eat "as is" with plenty left over for salads and sauce.

While I would need to plant a lot more to make enough sauce to last through the winter, I've managed to freeze quite a few quarts of it. Canning still seems a bit beyond my schedule, although it's something I hope to learn in the future, and freezing is a great way to preserve vegetables. I know exactly what is in my sauce - tomatoes! - and don't have to think about whether the can liner is toxic, whether there are additives/preservatives, etc.

The one piece of equipment you'll need to make sauce from fresh tomatoes is a food mill, which pushes the sauce through while straining out seeds and pulp. It's a great investment for making applesauce, mashed potatoes, and baby food as well!

Washing and cutting the tomatoes into large chunks is all the preparation required for homemade sauce. During the week, any tomatoes that seem near spoiling or any of the harvest I know we won't get through simply gets washed, cut into large chunks, and placed in a quart container in the freezer.

Place the chopped tomatoes (frozen or fresh) in a saucepan, turn the heat to medium, and cover the pot loosely. Once the tomatoes on the bottom start to turn to sauce, turn the heat to medium low, uncover the pot, and stir occasionally. The sauce is done when all the chunks have broken down into a liquid with seeds and skins in it. At this point, you can let the sauce simmer for 10-15 m to concentrate it a bit, or you can simmer it longer, until most of the water has evaporated - this will give you tomato puree.

Turn off the heat and let the sauce stand until it cools to room temperature. Put it through the food mill, pour it into jars, and refrigerate. Tightly covered, the sauce will last up to 2 weeks in the fridge. Once it's chilled, you can freeze it for up to 6 months.

The amount of sauce you end up with varies based on the variety of tomato you use, but in general, a quart container of coarsely chopped tomatoes will yield about a pint (16 oz, 2 c) of sauce.

Garden update

We've harvested our first cucumber from the garden! It was fun to see the kids' eyes widen with the first bite - even Nikolai ate it, and he is NOT a fan of cucmbers as a rule. I planted a longer, thin-skinned, less "seedy" Japanese variety and it looks as though we will have quite a harvest from our 3 plants, which I've trained to a trellis to take up less space in my raised 3' x 3' bed.

The one casualty in the garden has been my crop of pea shoots - some critter mowed each plant down at the base and then didn't even eat the shoots! Instead of fulfilling my visions of a large dish of stirfried pea shoots, I had to satisfy myself with using what had been cut down for mixing with salad greens. From this I have learned a bit about what sort of plants can live together in a small bed - I should have relegated the pea shoots to the same bed where the spinach, amaranth, basil and onions are thriving, since I can keep that bed covered. Apparently the garden raiders consider my cucumber, bitter melon, and long bean plants too tough for grazing already, so when that bed was uncovered, they still left those alone.

Other than the rodent-type marauders, the garden seems to be suffering only from slugs, and they have been taken care of with a very low-tech solution: glass jars buried so that the lip is even with the soil and filled with beer. I comfort myself with the thought that at least the slugs die drunk and happy.

Drying herbs

The herbs have been producing beautifully in their pots on the back steps, so I've started drying the weekly harvest. Dried herbs and spices can be very expensive, so why not dry your own when they're plentiful, whether on the back step or at the farmers' market?

If you have a dehydrator, you can just read the directions - if you don't, try the following method:

1. Soak the herbs in cool water, then lift them out gently, letting the grit settle on the bottom of the bowl or sink.
2. Repeat this process until there is no grit to be found.
3. Arrange the herbs in a single layer on a clean kitchen towel, then blot dry gently with another clean towel.
4. Arrange the herbs in a single layer on a sheet pan or cookie sheet.
5. If you have a gas oven with a pilot light, you can place the pan in there overnight or longer - gas ovens tend to be a bit humid, so the process will take longer. If you have an electric oven, preheat it to the lowest possible temperature - 150º F is optimal. Place the pan in the oven for approximately 2-4 h, checking occasionally.
6. When dry, you can either crumble the herbs between your fingers or leave them more or less whole.
7. Transfer the herbs gently to an airtight container and store at room temperature in a dark place.
8. The herbs should keep for up to 6 months - they may kep longer, but they will have lost much of their flavor.

Cilantro Sauce

The garden is producing some greens so far and the eggplant, tomatoes, cucumbers, and beans are thriving. But what I've been harvesting in large quantities already are herbs: sage, rosemary, thyme, oregano, marjoram...and LOTS of cilantro!

This sauce is not quite a pesto, not really salsa...but quick, delicious, and extremely flexible!

Makes approximately 1/2 c.

Ingredients:

• 1 bunch cilantro (about what you can hold in one hand)
• 1 T very finely minced onion—red, white, sweet, any type will do
• extra virgin olive oil
• salt and pepper, to taste

Method:

1. Rinse the cilantro well (it can be very gritty), gently blot it dry with a clean kitchen towel, then chop it as fine as you can—the food processor tends to bruise it too much, so do this by hand.
2. Combine the cilantro and onion in a small glass jar or bowl, then add olive oil just to cover.
3. Season to taste with salt and pepper, then allow the sauce to rest for about 30 m before using.

Do ahead:

The sauce can be kept in a tightly covered container in the refrigerator for up to a month. Let it come to room temperature before using.

Uses:

• Drizzle for soups (especially black bean).
• Salad dressing, with an added twist of lemon or lime juice.
• Marinade for roasted or grilled chicken, fish, or meat.
• Sauce for grilled chicken, fish, or meat.
• Salsa verde for Mexican-inspired fajitas, enchiladas, tacos, etc.
• Dip with a good baguette.
• Focaccia topping before baking .
• In place of tomato sauce on pizza.
• Sauce for hot or cold pasta.

Download Cilantro Sauce

Garden update!

The seedlings I started a while ago have been traveling a lot recently - under the light frame in the basement, up into the garage, back downstairs, in and out of the garage, in and out of the sun and rain. I've finally decided that spring is here to stay in Michigan and have transplanted them into the raised beds by the house. Now the battle begins: critters vs. first-time gardener....

I'm not terribly optimistic - our first composter turned out to be too much of an attraction for the local wildlife, and after setting it up on a brick platform with mild success, we still decided to try out the turning barrel variety. That's been successful so far, and we now have about 1/4 barrel of stuff that promises to eventually be of use in the garden. But I'm guessing all that dirt and composted manure I've hauled in the last week and the hours spent planting this morning will probably provide...a nice salad bar for our animal friends? Or maybe their taste doesn't run toward Asian vegetables?

Sprouts and compost

The seeds planted a few weeks ago are happily sprouting under the light frames in our basement - in addition to the 2 flats of lettuce due to return to Growing Hope, I've planted a mass of herbs - not only for using in cooking, but to line the edges of my garden to give some protection against deer - and lots of Asian vegetables: Chinese chives, bunching onions, eggplant, okra, cucumbers, edible amaranth, Japanese spinach, and - for Katia - lots of tomatoes. Now I just need to actually get my garden plots figured out - with our deer problem, this whole project might be a dismal failure, but I've gotten lots of advice on how to at least try to stump them without putting up a 9-foot fence (which I'm sure our HOA would NOT be happy about!) And then there are the bunnies, a very large specimen of which is staring at me through my office window as I type...

On earth day, the kids and I assembled a composter, and both ritually tossed in their apple cores - let the composting begin! We're lucky to have a patch of woods at the back of our property, so the "browns" needed for mixing into the "greens" from the kitchen scraps should be readily available. I figure we will use uup most of the fallen leaves by the time the next ones are ready to fall, truly a beautiful balancing act.

Gardening 101

Full disclosure: I am a complete novice at gardening. I think the last time I actually grew something was in one of those elementary school experiments, the seed in the Dixie cup sort of affair. So I'm very excited to be starting a garden. Well, sort of a garden - I think this year it will be limited to some large containers on the front porch. My gardening expert (aka my favorite [and only] stepfather) tells me that to have a garden in deer country I need a 9 foot fence. My boss and organic farming expert laughs and tells me that's a minimum - a deer can clear that from a standstill.... NOT something the HOA will be excited about, I'm sure. So I'm wondering, will these deer actually walk onto my front porch? The brazen way one was staring at me through the breakfast room window last week, it wouldn't surprise me in the least!

But I've decided to give it a shot anyway, so yesterday I visited Growing Hope, a wonderful organization in nearby Ypsilanti that is all about "helping people improve their lives and communities through gardening and healthy food access."

I signed up to become part of the "Seed Starting Squad," which means I'm starting 2 flats of seeds for their use, but in the process I acquire some very necessary knowledge and a light stand, something I will certainly need as I probably will have to start a large number of my plants indoors.

Now I need to decide what I will grow for our family consumption. Katia, of course, votes for tomatoes, as many varieties as possible. Max and I are hoping to grow some Asian veggies - eggplants and greens, mostly. And Kolia will probably be happy with anything that's not mushrooms or eggplants and allows him to get filthy and wet in the growing process.

So stay tuned as the Baker Tang gang tries their hand at gardening....