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!

Liquore di basilico 2

My basil liquor is more or less finished. It's bottled anyway. We have around 4 1/2 bottles. We unfortunately spilled some when we were bottling it, but I guess you have to make sacrifices sometimes.

I boiled a LOT of sugar and water, and then let the syrup cool. After that, we combined everything into a large bowl and used a tiny funnel to bottle it (hence the spilling). Then my hunky husband pounded some corks into the bottles (b/c I wasn't able to do it), and now they're waiting a couple weeks.

Not that we didn't taste it first, of course. Delicious!

As an afterthought, though, it doesn't seem to be as green as I expected.

Remember the ketchup?

I'm not sure I ever wrote about the ketchup I made - the last post I can find is about the long process of actually making it. Which turned out not to be all that long after all. Although my directions said to boil for 6-7 hours, I found that it was sufficiently thick after only 2-3 hours. I think I made around 6-7 small jars, which is plenty since we don't eat all that much ketchup.

I don't know how to describe it except that it's delicious. After Loris constantly telling me how superior his parent's homemade ketchup is, I expected it to have a very different taste from standard, store-bought or fast-food ketchup. The strange thing is that it really didn't - it tasted like ketchup. But a lot better. It didn't have that overly sugary sweetness (Loris was surprised to hear that his parent's recipe had any sugar at all). This tasted of fresh tomatoes, the tang of vinegar, the sweetness of a sprinkling of sugar, and that distinctive flavor of cloves that gives ketchup its, well, ketchupy taste.

Giardiniera with friends

A few weeks ago, Candace and Beth came over to make giardiniera. It was quite a production, with 2 large pots and one small one on the stove, and an extra burner set up for boiling jars. We had three large canning pots going at one time, and ended up with 41 jars! I think they're pretty happy with what they accomplished.