Getting lost in the weeds

Whoops, I wrote this back on January 16, and forgot to post it. Just an update - I spent a while the other day racing the weather to try to get a good amount of weeding done before it started raining. But now it's going to rain forever again.

After a LOT of rain and stormy weather here, I've finally had a chance to get out to the garden. Which, by the way, is still quite wet, so I can't really do much. And I'm dreading going back that first day that it's dry enough to work, because what I will have to do is weed. And weed some more. And then even more. Because weeds are everywhere. Except, amazingly, around the brassicas. For some reason.

The worst part is that they grow very well right around the above-ground watering system we put in, which is really difficult to weed around because 1) the pipes get in the way of weeding, especially when the weeds are rooted underneath them and 2) I can't really use my weeding tools for fear of destroying a part of my system. So my main strategy up until now has been to ignore them.

I planted some kale and broccoli right before the big storms hit and they haven't really done much. Neither, unfortunately, have the spinach and chard. What's going on with my dark leafy greens this year? Last year we were so sick of chard! We ate it sauteed, I added it to soup, I made stuffed or rolled chard with any kind of stuffing, and I added it to everything I could think of, like risottos. But now I miss it. Maybe I should have planted more. I need my dark leafy greens!

I picked a bunch of turnips, and I have a lot more coming up. I'm tempted to plant even more because they are so easy. And relatively fast. I'm also going to plant radishes pretty soon, and I'll be happy to have them in my salad, even if the boy groans about it.

The garlic's coming up! And I saw at least one of the shallots, since it's my first year I'll be happy with even that.

I had hoped to do well with carrots this year, but my first planting is just coming up so slowly, and the second planting is overgrown with weeds. Weeds, argh! So maybe that will be a vegetable that I conquer next year, instead. I do seem to have trouble with plants that I grow from seed. On the bright side, we should have cabbages soon, they're forming heads about the size of a, um ... small melon? I can't think of anything that's actually the right size to describe them.

My biggest worry right now is figuring out what I still have time to plant before I need to start getting ready for the summer veggies. I'd love to plant more carrots, turnips, and cauliflower, and maybe some peas, but I don't know how long they'll really take. I should keep better track of these things.

I wish I had another plot for experimenting and growing plants that either 1) take up a lot of space or 2) take a lot of time to grow. I would plant melons, potatoes, peas, onions, and maybe more winter squash. I mean, wouldn't that be worth another $50 per year? Plus all of my free time?

Artisan bread and bruschetta recipe

One thing I've neglected writing about lately (partly because I've neglected doing it lately) is making bread. For a traditional bruschetta recipe from Piemonte, I created a partly whole-wheat chestnut bread. To make it, I dissolved active dry yeast in warm water, then added equal parts bread flour and whole wheat flour and a bit of salt (equal to yeast, or a bit less). I tended to add a lot of yeast, b/c both the chestnuts and the whole wheat flour make this bread a difficult rise. Then I chopped up a bunch of canned chestnuts and tossed them in, mixed it up, let it rise for a while, shaped it into long loaves, let it rise again, and based until brown and hollow-sounding when tapped.

To make the bruschetta, we sliced the bread and slathered on a layer of cream cheese and then a lighter layer of creamy gorgonzola, then topped it with chopped walnuts. Bake/toast until the cheese melts. Heavenly!

Tonight, I am making a pre-ferment for a recipe from Maggie Gleazer's Artisan Baking. The recipe is for Royal Crown's Tortano, a beautiful large round bread with a hole in the middle (like a donut). I have had a lot of luck with this bread in the past, in terms of delicious flavor, great texture in the crumb, and a wonderful crispy, crunchy crust, which is notably difficult to achieve in my old electric oven. It involved making a pre-ferment the night before, and then requires about 7 hours in mixing, rising, and baking time the next day. It's well worth making on a weekend day when I'm at home anyway, though, and with the crazy storm we're having right now, there's no reason not to spend a lovely day at home baking some delicious bread.

A new sun rises

It's January, 2008, and I'm not sure I'm ready. It's cold outside, and the rainy season is finally kicking in with full force. It's great for my watering schedule, but terrible for the weeds. It's also nice to sit inside and listen to the rain with a nice bowl of soup - winter cooking and baking bread are favorites this time of year.

The garden is doing well. Today I harvested a bag of lettuce, a huge head of broccoli, a rather sad little head of cauliflower, and some turnips. The second batch of turnips I planted is coming along, and the beets finally seem to be doing something as well. It looks like it will be a while before we really have spinach, carrots or leeks, but the red cabbage heads are getting a bit bigger. I'm looking forward to cooking and eating those. I also planted some last-minute broccoli and kale before a few big storms start sweeping through tomorrow.

Cooking has been a bit spotty lately. Some nights I cook up some wonderful dishes and we experiment, other nights we have salad, cheese, and bread. Our local Co-op is undergoing a renovation, which is wonderful in terms of the new varieties of cheese and various other products that are available. I suppose like everything in life, though, it will take some getting used to.

Since we have so many rainy days to come, I have to think of things to do to keep myself from being frustrated by not being in the garden. One thing I've been planning is to make a quilt out of my old college T-shirts. I also have to clean out some closets and make some tough decisions on what to do with some things that I've been putting off for a while. There's my old KitchenAid mixer sitting in a box, in desperate need of repair. And it's taking up a lot of space, too!

In short, I'm trying to look at this time as a way of working on the inside things. The inside of my closets, the inside of my house, and perhaps the inside of myself. I'd like to spend some time writing, some time sitting by the fire with some art or craft, some time standing over a warm stove stirring something that takes a while to cook, and some time nurturing a slow-rising loaf of bread. And in general, as perhaps my most important resolution of the new year, now that the sun has reached its lowest point and the days will gradually start growing longer, I'd like to spend less time in front of the computer as a virtual me and start spending more time as the real me. I guess we'll see how it goes.

And yes, the title comes from LOTR.

What to plant in December

So I have all this space in the garden and now it's too late in the year to plant anything. I don't know what to do.

I did just plant some shallots, but only 5 of them. That's all they had at the nursery. I planted them just under the surface of the soil at the edge of my garlic area. The nursery also didn't have cauliflower, and their spinach was pretty pathetic. I might as well grow them from seeds myself.

The plan now is to plant some more spinach (Loris really prefers it to chard), hopefully some more cauliflower, and maybe some peas. And radishes! Sorry Loris, but I really need something for my salads besides onion. And we're certainly overdosing on lettuce these days. Yum! But some of these things will have to wait until February.

And in the meantime, I have to get through Christmas.

Some cauliflower recipes

Cauliflower soup

1/2-1 onion
Butter and/or olive oil
1/2-1 onion
2-3 boiling potatoes
1/2-1 cauliflower, broken into florets
broth
3-6 cloves of garlic
a handful of drained canned or cooked garbanzo beans
Mushroom broth (optional)

Chop the onion and the potato, peel the garlic (and cut any large cloves in half), and break the cauliflower into florets.

In a medium-large pot, heat the olive oil and/or melt the butter over medium heat. Add the onion and saute for a few minutes until it is soft and translucent (but not browned). Add the potatoes and garlic, stir for a minute, then add broth to cover. If you have some mushroom broth, add it too. Cook for 10-15 minutes. Add the cauliflower and garbanzo beans, and more broth to cover. Leave as is if you prefer a thicker soup, or add a bit more broth if you prefer a thinner soup. Simmer until all the vegetables are soft, then blend with a food processor or blender. Boil soup to make it thicker, or add broth to make it thinner (optional). Serve warm.


Cauliflower and turnip risotto

1/2 to 1 head cauliflower

5 turnips

1 cup arborio rice

1/2 to 1 onion

olive oil

broth

wine (white would be best)

parmesan cheese

Peel the turnips and dice them. Boil them in the broth until they start to get tender, about 5 minutes. Remove them from the broth and set aside.

Chop up the cauliflower and add to the broth. Cook until tender, then lower heat to low, but keep warm.

Chop onion finely. In a medium-large pot, add olive oil and onion, turn heat to medium, and cook onion gently until it becomes translucent, but not browned.

Add the rice. Add more oil if necessary so the rice is coated in oil. Stir constantly so the rice does not stick and burn. After a few minutes, the rice will start to make a sound like beads knocking together. At this point, add the wine (about /2 cup to 1 cup). Stir constantly but gently until the wine is absorbed.

Now start adding broth, about a ladle-full at a time. Stir the rice gently as the broth is dissolved. After a few ladles of broth, add some of the soft cauliflower as well. Try to mash the cauliflower as you add it.

Meanwhile, if desired, saute the turnips until slightly browned. After adding broth to the risotto for 15-20 minutes, begin to taste to see if the rice is done. When it is done, remove from heat, strain the remaining cauliflower from the broth, and add the cauliflower and turnips to the risotto. Serve with parmesan cheese.

December garden update

I haven't had much time for the garden recently. The weather and the rest of my life have been conspiring against me. It hasn't rained much, or actually it hasn't rained almost at all, but it has been windy and the wind can be bitterly cold. Especially during the few hours I ever have free, which are typically early in the morning or in the evening.

We have been eating broccoli and cauliflower lately. We still have peppers in the fridge, although some of them aren't in the best shape. The pepper plants are still in the garden, but they're very sad-looking. I really need to get them out along with the weeds that grew up around them. I'll have a huge space freed up as soon as I take care of that.

Recent meals we've had include a broccoli and cauliflower frittata, cauliflower and turnip risotto, pasta with broccoli and ricotta, and lots of roasted peppers. I'd like to try making some cauliflower soup pretty soon. Really, I need more ideas for cooking with broccoli and cauliflower. Which is funny, because I used to put broccoli in EVERYthing! Pizza, pasta, stir-frys, everything. And now I'm stumped for ideas. I did make a delicious creamy broccoli soup last year, I'll have to see if I can remember how I did that.

I just planted garlic, and I've been considering planting shallots as well. Especially since I have a decent amount of space available, and apparently they grow like the garlic does. I'll have to follow up on that if I end up planting them.

We have a lot of green lettuce, but the red lettuce isn't really big enough yet, nor is the chard or spinach. I'm looking forward to some chard and spinach, I've been craving greens in general lately. I don't know if that's because my stomach has been leading a minor revolt against fried and heavy foods. I can't tolerate that stuff at the moment, which is unfortunate, but it does encourage me to eat more healthfully. But I even had a reaction to the frittata.

Loris has been pointing out that we're not eating much of the food that I froze - mostly zucchini and peppers. I hate to point out that we still have fresh peppers to eat. I don't know if the frozen zucchini would do well in soup, but I don't see why not. I'll have to try experimenting with that sometime soon. We haven't eaten any of my canned dill pickles, either, I'll have to drag them out of storage. Ditto for the strawberry syrup, strawberry jam, and butternut squash jam.

Veggies still to come include leeks, carrots, and beets. I'm excited about all of these, because I've never tried growing beets or leeks before, and I haven't been terribly successful with carrots. It's certainly difficult to keep these veggies weeded. And I can't forget the cabbage. I think we only ended up with one cabbage last year, but it was delicious. This year, we should get 6 greens and 6 reds. I'm very excited about that!

pre-Thanksgiving update

It's Thanksgiving, and the garden is going well. I STILL have peppers! I probably could have kept the eggplant around longer, but I just wanted the space. We still have eggplant in the fridge in any case. And now it's finally getting cold, so the peppers won't last much longer.

The turnips are doing well. We should be ready to eat some of them really soon. One mistake I made was to not thin the first planting well. I tried to thin them recently, when the actual plant is pretty big, by moving the ones that haven't really formed bulbs yet, but they don't look great. Even if they recover, that was a royal pain. For my second planting, I've already thinned them, even though they barely have two sets of leaves. There's no point in having 5 beautiful plants that don't have space to form even one nice turnip.

The carrots seem to be doing well also. They grow so slowly that it's really hard to tell. The leeks seem fine as well. They are very difficult to weed, because they blend in with the grass sprouts. They are also planted behind some of the peppers, which I think are probably blocking out some of the sun. I really didn't expect the peppers to still be there at this point!

I just planted 32 garlic cloves, mostly big ones. I think they're from approximately 5 or so bulbs, so hopefully that will be enough variety. More notes on those later, when they actually start doing something!

The mixed lettuce I bought from the nursery is doing great, keeping us well supplied for our salads. It's really fantastic to have home-grown salads again, I'm loving it. I planted some red lettuce too, which hasn't quite recovered from being transplanted yet. I think next year I will try again to grow from seed, I'm learning a lot from growing the leeks, carrots, and turnips this year.

The cauliflower is really impressive - 7 out of 8 are producing, and 4 already have decent-sized heads. We're picking one for Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow. Loris will bread and fry it and we'll serve it with lemon. He did the same for some fresh porcini mushrooms we found at the farmer's market. I know we're both looking forward to it.

The broccoli is starting to form little crowns. I suspect they'll be ready soon, which is great! I love broccoli. The cabbage is also starting to form little heads, but I think it'll be a while before we eat it. They can grow to be quite big. The chard and spinach is not growing too quickly yet. Unfortunately, the first spinach I planted is really being overshadowed by one of the red cabbages. Whoops.

I think there's a very good chance that the peppers will come out this weekend. I will probably plant turnips or beets in the spot by the leeks. In the larger spot, I might plant carrots and possibly peas. I had no luck with peas last year, but I have learned an awful lot since then.

In general, I've learned a lot about the importance of weeding. I think it's made a huge difference since last year. It does take a lot of time, but when I put in 20 minutes after work a few days a week, it's not such a big deal. My plants are all so much bigger and healthier than they were last year, and growing much faster.

I also have a different layout. Last year I did 6-7 rows, but it was hard to move around the garden, and hard to weed. This year, I have four large beds with three walking rows. It's not always easy to reach the middle of the beds, but I've created areas where it's ok to step into the beds, so it works pretty well. The automatic sprinkling system has so far adapted pretty well, especially b/c I bought some sprinklers that use a finer spray which is much better for seeds.

All in all, it's so far turning out to be a successful fall!