The Tipping Chicken

Tipsy

Tipsy has a drinking problem. It’s getting better now, but when we first noticed it (at about 2 days of age), we were a little concerned. Would she survive with such a severe behavioral defect? Would it compromise her ability to function like a normal chicken, especially in stressful situations where quick reflexes are needed?

I’m not giving my chickens beer, I promise… Tipsy just appears to be a little bit “special.” While all the other chicks quickly learned to sip a bit of water and tilt their heads back just a smidge to swallow, Tipsy would take a sip, sit back on her haunches (do chickens have haunches?), tip her head WAAAAY back over her back until she was looking backwards, and swallow that way. Except that half the time she lost her balance and fell over onto her back, causing a big commotion because she’d have to scramble and flap wildly to get herself upright again, inevitably disturbing some other chick’s peaceful moment.

At first we laughed heartily at this, thinking she’d figure it out in an hour or two. Then a day or two. She didn’t. This went on for days, and when I tried to gauge the normalcy of this behavior by asking more experienced “chicken people” about it, they frowned and said “that doesn’t sound right.” Great. It so happened that Tipsy was also significantly smaller than the other chicks. I decided she was a runt, and instantly felt something between despair for her and anger at the hatchery that would pick out a runt and ship it to me. Conventional wisdom dictates that runts won’t make it, and it’s better to put them out of their misery right away than let them suffer the overwhelming cruelties of life.

But after a bit of thought, I realized that if someone had to inherit a runt, it may as well be me. Here in her spacious run, with only 4 other chickens to contend with and plenty of daily personal attention (not to mention food), she could be as special as she wanted or needed to be, truthfully. And she is just too cute. Besides, I was a runt of sorts when I was younger. I know what it means to be smaller and skinnier than the other kids, and to be picked on endlessly because of it. I turned out ok. So I resigned myself to the fact that I have a runt, and resolved to pay special attention to her.

Well, she doesn’t really need it. Tipsy is tipping less, though I still catch her doing it once in a while. She’s still smaller than the others, with lots of fluff left and not much of a tail while the others are practically 100% feathered out by now. But this is one quick, tenacious little chicken. She chases down bugs with total precision, and often is the first to jump up and snatch a treat out of my fingers and take off with it (though her ensuing high-decibel, excited cheeping gets her in trouble immediately and she usually loses the prize). She protests vocally when pushed around, so I can’t be convinced that she’s on the bottom of any emerging pecking order. I think this girl is a survivor.

Tipsy is a Buckeye, a ‘critically endangered’ rare breed of chicken developed in Ohio (where else) long ago by an enterprising woman who wanted a docile, cold tolerant egg laying breed. The American Livestock Breeds Conservancy describes Buckeyes as having “a personality all their own. They are a very active fowl and are noted for being especially vigilant in the pursuit of mice, some breeders comparing them to cats in regard to this ability. They tend to have very little fear of humans and are possibly too friendly.” Well, little Tipsy is quite fearful at this stage in her life. Perhaps she’ll grow out of it, but she screams bloody murder when I try to turn the light out, so the girls are still sleeping with a lamp on at night which I guess is normal for now. She’s flighty and the least easy to handle, screaming bloody murder (again) when caught. But as with all chicks, her personality is evolving quickly. She is eyeing my lap more curiously, and she steps readily into an open hand - just fights like a banshee when grabbed. It’s truly impossible to contain her and I end up carrying her perched on my hand and flapping rather than ensconced in any secure way. Her agility when chasing bugs makes me think that the bit about catching mice may yet turn out to be true, and quite handy too because we have those now, after the resident cats moved out a few months ago. The only thing I doubt is that she will be six and a half pounds. But we shall see. She’s certainly proved herself to be a unique and uniquely keep-able girl.

Tipsy at one week of age; a tiny, dainty little thing.

Tipsy is the smaller yellow chick with the brown spot on her head.

Miss Tipsy at 4 weeks of age, about a week ago. She's getting browner.

In Season - July

Here’s a quick run-down of what’s growing in my garden right now. I’m doing this largely to keep a record, for next year, of what comes around when; perhaps it will also be of some use to others gardening in high and dry places around 5000+ feet, wherever you are. If you live at high altitude, drop a comment and tell me what you’re getting out of your garden in mid-July!

Ready for the eating:

Rainbow chard

Collard greens

a few last heads of Romaine

Zucchini - still enjoying them grilled with olive oil and Penzey’s special seasoned salt; eventually I expect we’ll tire of that and start looking for other ideas, but for now I can’t keep them on the plate.

A mystery hybrid squash that volunteered in last year’s old squash bed; it’s producing small yellow rounded fruit, kind of like a patty-pan crossed with a yellow crookneck (could be exactly that, but who knows? I’ll try to eat one and see what it does…)

Red onions - I just yanked the whole batch and used them in the chard and onion quiche I made last weekend; had I not done so I’d still have several good ones.

Sorrel

Parsley, basil, tarragon, thyme, oregano, lots of mint, sage, chives

ripening: currants, gooseberries, apples!

On the vine, looking pretty green: lots of heirloom tomatoes and cherry tomatoes of all shapes and sizes. I’m expecting cherry tomatoes to overwhelm us soon: we have black cherry, Sungold, Galina’s (a yellow cherry tomato) and one called Matt’s Wild Cherry that I think will be red. It will make for pretty salads no doubt! The other tomatoes that are looking very promising are an Old Ivory Egg and Grandma Mary’s Paste. A few, like the Carbon, Brandywine and German Heirloom Striped, are setting fruit but look a long way from edible - these are supposed to be BIG tomatoes and so far aren’t, so those will be a longer wait.

That’s it for now; I’d almost call it a lull in the garden, if it weren’t for the zucchini that has gone from nothing to rampant in just a few days. I’m glad for the chard to give us at least a little variety in our diets!

My Chicken has a Mullet

So about four weeks ago, June 9 to be precise, I got a small package in the mail with five loudly peeping chicks in it. I should have blogged about it immediately, but it was all I could do get a few lousy blurry photos that whole week - I was consumed with chicken care and worry, their box was lit with a red lamp that is horrible for shooting photos, and they were at all times moving WAY too fast for snapshots, especially snapshots in a dim red light. That’s my excuse. In case you’re curious, I got 5 different breeds, and I got them at My Pet Chicken - a great website for browsing fun photos and descriptions of dozens of crazy heritage breeds.

In the meantime, they are growing by the minute and changing every day. It’s high time I got them up on this blog, since they will be an integral part of my kitchen garden, after all. So instead of trying to tackle a summary of the whole lot of them in one post, I am going to go the route of posting profiles for each of them. While this may seem extreme, I think that they are developing enough personality by now to justify the attention… and according to the amount of chicken activity out there on the web, I am NOT alone in thinking that this is one cool pet. Worth writing about. So here goes; first up is:

Popcorn

Popcorn is a Polish Crested chicken, a Bearded Gold Laced Polish to be precise, and she is really just here for fun. Polish aren’t supposed to be great layers, and they’re apparently not even all that hardy in the cold - two criteria I had set for all the other girls in the lot (the third criteria was a calm personality, which all 5 breeds were described as having, though it’s all relative I guess… I ended up with a couple of slightly bizarre characters). But for pure entertainment value, you can’t beat this chicken.

From the beginning Popcorn was both the most mellow and the most curious chick in the lot. In the first couple of days, when I picked her up, she instantly fell asleep in my hands. That’s pretty cute stuff, but it turns out that all day-old chicks will do that if you hold them a few minutes - it’s the warmth of your hands I guess. They need lots of sleep - and Popcorn was getting more of it than the rest. This chick was always sleeping. She was always getting rudely awakened by other chicks trampling over her, and we worried that she was a little too lazy and maybe something was wrong with her, but I think it’s just her personality. In the following weeks, while two of our other chicks quickly began flying up to the rim of their cardboard box and perching, Popcorn slept on - she had all the feathers and wingspan and no motivation. I don’t think she even really tried until about a week ago. Now she’s flying just fine. Some chickens just need a little more time, I guess.

Popcorn’s curiosity also stood out - she was always the one to crane her neck up and cock her head to look at us when we approached the box. Everyone adores her - between her fancy headdress and this adorable head-cocking behavior, she gets all the oohs and aahs. While she doesn’t hop onto my hand or into my lap as readily as my Ameracauna, Sesame, she is quite tame and when I set her on my leg, she’ll often just settle down and stay put. She also doesn’t squawk and run around in fear when I get too close; I can stroke her feathers when she’s passing by my hand without setting off alarms. She’s often a bit of a loner, doing her own thing while all the others cluster around a new object or head off as a group to check out a new area of the coop (where they are spending just a few hours a day at the moment). And she doesn’t say much. Some of these chicks just will not shut up, and one (Tipsy) cries loudly in the most vaguely stressful of situations, but Popcorn is a pretty quiet chicken. She’s basically a sweet, gentle and slightly eccentric girl with really silly hair.

I’m including a few photos of her at different ages along the way. The best is definitely yet to come; these birds feather out into a truly dramatic topknot and I just dare you to keep a straight face when looking at one. You can see one here - though it’s a different color than Popcorn, it’s a gorgeous picture of what I have to look forward to.

Popcorn at one week old. Still sitting calmly in my hand.

3 weeks. Trying to be tall for the camera.

4 weeks. That’s Sesame on the right: “Whoa! Get a load of her hair!!”

Blurry, but the only decent side shot I have. That, my friends, is a mullet!!

Swiss Chard and Onion Quiche

We had a little party for our 5 new baby chicks last night - they are one month old and getting ready to move out to their new digs in the garden, so we called it a “coop-warming party” and invited all our friends. Everyone was quite entertained by the idea - one couple, who it turns out also has 3 chickens of their own, thought it was the coolest party they’d ever been to: proof that other “normal” people have chickens too. 

In addition to tours of the just completed chicken coop and plenty of time for everyone to pet and play with the chicks, we served up a buffet of summer patio fare: in addition to the obligatory brats and whole grain rolls, we had salad of watermelon, feta cheese and red onions, grilled tricolor bell peppers, zucchini and yellow squash, grilled polenta cakes, orange cream cheese frosted brownies, a white balsamic custard tart with fresh fruit that went over very well indeed, and cream cheese with fresh chives and garlic from the garden stirred in. The most popular item of the evening, though, appeared to be the chard and onion quiche (I’d made two in the hopes that we’d have generous leftovers to enjoy this week - both were polished off in their entirety, so we will have to cook again tonight - too bad).

1 pie crust

large bunch chard, stems trimmed off and chopped separately, leaves roughly chopped

red onions, sliced - I used several small ones, but I’d say 1-2 large ones would work

grated Pecorino-Romano cheese (again guesstimating, I grated about a saucer full)

3 eggs, lightly beaten

1 cup milk (I used 1%)

1 cup cream (I used table cream that was left over in the fridge)

 a few toasted pine nuts

salt, fresh ground pepper, dash nutmeg and dash cayenne pepper

Directions:

preheat oven to 400 degrees

Saute chard stems in olive oil until softened; set aside

Saute chard leaves in olive oil, seasoning occasionally with salt and pepper, until wilted and tender; set aside

put onion slices in pan with olive oil, sprinkle with salt and a generous dash of sugar; over medium heat let them cook until well softened and beginning to caramelize; try not to stir much to allow the caramelization to begin to take effect

line a pie plate with pie crust and fold over edges

fill bottom of pie with onions

layer chard stems and leaves on top of onions

sprinkle most of the grated cheese over the chard

mix together cream, milk, eggs and season with salt, pepper, cayenne and nutmeg

pour egg mixture into pie crust

top with remaining cheese and sprinkle with pine nuts

bake at 400 degrees for 15 minutes

lower heat to 325 and bake for 35 more minutes, until golden brown and slightly crusty

let sit for a while before serving - at least 30 minutes, but quiche will taste fabulous hours later or the next day

I was paid the highest compliment on this quiche when a native French woman had some and pronounced it truly excellent; she commented on people’s tendency to overbake theirs until the eggs turned runny, and on the excellent flavor of the vegetables. You might as well just call it “garden quiche,” because it could just as well have had any other combination of greens and veggies in it; this is just what was ready for the taking yesterday. I can see by my fast-growing vines that we will soon have the opportunity to try cherry tomato and zucchini quiche, for example. Any good cheese and any tasty combination of vegggies, sausage or other kinds of meat would surely be just as wonderful. Let your imagination run on this one - as long as you have the basic base down, you can’t mess up a quiche!

In Season - June

It’s early June and here is what is growing (and edible) in my Colorado garden.

Spinach (just getting from tender salad greens to cooking-quality leaves)

Chard (we just enjoyed our first batch)

Collard Greens (also just had a first batch a few days ago, looking forward to more!)

Radishes (finishing off the last of these)

Pea shoots, peas are on the way

Mesclun greens (assorted including arugula and others)

Speckled heirloom lettuce

Romaine lettuce

Red leaf lettuce

Herbs: chives, 2 kinds of basil, tarragon, 3 kinds of sage, oregano, thyme, 4 kinds of mint, flat-leaf parsley, sorrel. Yanked the last of the cilantro a few days ago.

The red onions are looking great but I’m going to be good and wait for the shoots to dry up and wilt…

On their way (i.e. fruit already visible, just a matter of patience): Currants, gooseberries, celery, peas, zucchini.

That’s it for now… the abundance of greens is certainly testing my culinary creativity, but boy does it feel good to eat them! I will miss them greatly when they are gone, though I have a late crop of Tuscan black kale seeds in the soil in hopes of a mid-summer plethora of dark green goodness. And the chard tends to last really well through the summer.

Happy gardening - and eating - it’s finally feeling a lot like summer!

Tarragon Vinaigrette

Today is the first day of the rest of my life - my life without store-bought salad dressings, that is. Not that I haven’t ever made my own salad dressings before… but they were always a luxury, something you did for a special dish that called for it, or when you were really motivated, or found an irresistible recipe (like this one, which I will always go to for an extra-indulgent special occasion dressing - at least until I find something better, which may very well never happen).

But today, in the early hot days of summer, as I was trying to restore order to the jungle that I returned to after 10 days away from my newly planted vegetable garden, I saw herbs gone wild, overflowing their raised beds. I remembered last year, when I planted all these lovely culinary treasures and then let them go to seed - only to find myself needing fresh oregano or fresh thyme when I should have had it, and didn’t. This is not going to happen to me again, I thought; I am going to harvest and preserve this stuff if it kills me.

But it’s only May! Ok, June 1st. But the specter of being functionally herb-less in the middle of summer haunted me. The tarragon has been flourishing there in the back of the garden since March, and all I’ve done is pinched off a few leaves to garnish a salad - once. Am I going to let these $3 plants pay for themselves this year, or not?

So right now in my kitchen, there is an alarmingly large pile of oregano drying on 4 paper towels, waiting to be picked over and frozen. The tarragon plant was even scarier - two feet high and almost as thick, waving happily in the breeze. For some reason, that one screamed out “salad dressing.” Maybe because I once had a bottle of tarragon vinegar that I never did much with and still feel I tragically wasted. Maybe because my greens are growing faster than I can eat them, and the selection of bottled dressings in the fridge is getting really depressing, and wholly unworthy of the endless bounty of melt-in-your mouth fresh lettuce. So after harvesting two armfuls of 8-inch long tarragon clippings, I dove into the recipe books. Martha Stewart whetted my appetite with a lovely-sounding herb vinaigrette, but I didn’t have a shallot handy (though I regret that, because I often do and I think they’re an overlooked staple), nor sherry vinegar. Silly me. The Mediterannean Herb Cookbook suggested a dreamy-sounding creamy yogurt dressing, but alas, no yogurt (we usually have tons, but we just got back from Europe and the fridge is still empty… an odd sight).

Time to improvise. After a quick visit to Google to look at basic dressings and a reference back to Martha for quantity tips on the extras (sea salt, garlic), here is what I ended up throwing together, and BOY IS IT GOOD drizzled over a salad of just-picked spinach, mesclun mix, baby romaine lettuce, radishes, green onion, chopped walnuts and sunflower seeds. I’m full.

Tarragon Vinaigrette

1/4 cup white wine vinegar

3/4 cup olive oil (I went for the good stuff, a bottle from Hania, Crete - it is strong though - and expensive - so I would consider diluting half of it with standard EVOO next time)

1 large clove garlic, minced

generous grind of fresh black pepper

1 tsp sea salt

1 heaping Tbsp chopped fresh tarragon

1 tsp chopped fresh chives

Whisk together ingredients in a small bowl. Toss with fresh greens and enjoy!

Does it get any easier than that? Hardly. This recipe makes 1 cup of delicious summery dressing, which is plenty more than 1 serving so I have a nice little jar left over to use for the rest of the week. That gives me just enough time to whip up something else, maybe using some of the mint we planted last month or a bit of the forest of chives in my rock garden. Suddenly, there’s just no excuse for buying bottled dressings at the store. Except maybe just one for backup - a nice Newman’s Balsamic or something basic like that…

I should note that this recipe used up only the teeniest, tiniest fraction of the mountain of tarragon I hacked out of the garden today. But in my recipe research, I read that tarragon freezes ridiculously easily, and can just as easily be hung up to dry - and the dried stuff you buy in a jar apparently loses its taste within a year, so mine must want to be replaced. So I’m off to find some twine with which to string up my tarragon bounty. Who needs to spend $5 for a tiny spice bottle at the store when there are more herbs in the garden than you can shake a stick at?

 

Garden Fever

Mother’s Day is here, and it’s finally ok to plant tomatoes! And everything else tender… so of course, not 24 hours after getting them in the ground, it is now snowing. Or about to snow. It’s already raining viciously, some kind of super-cold sleet-like stuff. There’s nothing like running about the vegetable garden after work in your office clothes, covering things with upside-down yogurt containers, old buckets, tupperware, and whatever else might double as a small temporary dome while winter gets its last hurrah.

But of much more interest, to me at least, is the long list of great heirloom and unusual vegetable and herb names now gracing my garden:

Minnesota Midget Canteloupe, Giant Heirloom Rhubarb, Cosmic Purple Carrots, Purple Artichoke, Lime Thyme, Margarita Mint, Chocolate Mint, Pineapple Mint (imagine the tasty mojitos), Pineapple Sage (a ridiculously prolific and fragrant plant that nobody should try to do without), heirloom collard greens and butternut squash and a white acorn squash, Green Striped Cushaw Squash, and the tomatoes: Silvery Fir Tree, SunGold, German Heirloom Striped, Old Ivory Egg, Grandma’s Paste, Mike’s Wild Cherry, Black Cherry, Galina’s, and Carbon (a black tomato, could you guess?). There are just two repeats from last year, SunGold and the German Striped. Both were too incredible to pass up for a second round this year. The Carbon is now taking the place of the Cherokee Purple, a gorgeous, delicious deep burgundy-green tomato that just didn’t quite bear enough fruit and also had some annoying problems with cracking: the search for the perfect black tomato is on. The Old Ivory Egg, a cream-colored tomato the shape of an egg, is my replacement for the pretty, but less than spectacular Russian yellow tomatoes I put up with last year. I’m going with three cherries this year: red, gold and black - they’re so easy to eat, so prolific, and so early that they alone make all the gardening seem worthwhile, as if it wasn’t worthwhile in its own right. Grandma’s Paste took the place of a standard Roma tomato, which needed so much pampering last year that I lost handfuls of fruit before I correctly gauged the amount of water and supplemental calcium it would take to get a decent Roma out of it. I decided to take the plunge and go ALL heirloom this year - no hybrid backups. We’ll see what the season bears!

 

 

The Much-Maligned Bean

There are so many ways to eat beans. I feel like every time I talk to someone about beans, they can’t imagine eating them daily (horrors!!). Yet one of the healthiest things you can do, especially if you are vegetarian (and maybe even have to avoid soy on top of it all) is to eat beans, and to eat them every day.

Beans have huge amounts of fiber. We know this, because of what they do to your digestion. Turns out that your body adapts over time and your gastrointestinal reactions will simmer down, so to speak. You can in fact eat beans every day and have no problem - you just need to start doing it! How can you get to the recommended level of 35 grams of fiber PER DAY without the massive fiber punch that these little nuggets are packing? I don’t know. A bowl of grape nuts is just not going to cut it.

Then there’s protein… goes without saying. Except that what’s worth saying is that it is no longer considered necessary to eat beans AND rice, or beans AND any other starch, at the same time in order to consume a “complete protein.” You can eat them any old time, all by themselves, and it will all end up in the right place and be properly put to use by your body. Less worrying about food combining - always a good thing, if you ask me. I never could get my head around that.

So how many ways can you eat beans? Well, let’s think of a few ways I’ve had them since I started this new anti-cancer, vegetarian diet thing last November.

• tossed into salads (I use them from a can, rinsed; or make a batch from scratch on the weekends to use for whatever ideas come up along the way during the week).
• hummus, red pepper hummus, green chili hummus, garlic hummus, I could go on.
• refried beans, popular on restaurant menus but also available in cans with NO FAT and no lard or any of that nonsense. Seasoned with lime juice, this is a great spread for any sandwich or taco or piece of toast.
• for that matter, any bean dip in a jar, if you can be careful to get something without sodium, additives or any other junk, is another great spread for sandwiches, wraps and other concoctions, and for dipping as a pre- or post-dinner snack of course.
• Bean soups: blended, chunky, pasta e fagiole or minestrone or one of my favorites: white bean and sweet potato soup from Claire’s Corner Copia, yum.
• Geez, I feel like I haven’t even scratched the surface. I practically live on Chipotle’s fajita burrito bowl (without the tortilla) - black beans, rice and fresh sauteed veggies with a good dollop of guacamole and I’ve covered most of my bases for the day (I eat an avocado a day, too… still not tired of that…).
• baked beans, such as ridiculously easy and delicious vegetarian baked beans in a can.
• Dal! So many great ways to make this wonderful Indian lentil stew. I recently made a lusciously sweet and spicy one that I’ll have to post here - I used several kinds of terrific lentils (all but the boring brown European kind), various Indian spices, coconut, and olive oil and it was fantastic. We scarfed it down in short order, even Tomas who has an aversion to lentils (from growing up eating too many of the boring brown European kind I suppose).
• Lentil soup.
• Split pea soup.
• Black bean soup.
• Chili.
• Cuban black beans and rice. This super-tasty dish deserves its own bullet to remind you to make it once in a while! I will have to post a recipe soon.
• Falafel. My problem with this is that it’s fried. I tend to avoid it.
• Veggie burgers - order the fresh ones made in restaurants (yum) or check the ingredients of store-bought ones for those with beans, lentils, or chickpeas. There are some awesome recipes in vegetarian (and any other health-conscious) cookbooks as well, everything from black bean burgers to who-knows-what else.
• Succotash.
• Black-eyed peas. Cooking Light had several great recipes in a row for black-eyed pea stews and soups right around the holidays and New Year’s, including a vegetarian version.
• Black bean and corn salad. Black bean salsa. Seasoned black beans right out of the can, or at most heated briefly and dumped over some rice or veggies.
• Five bean salad.
• All kinds of bean salads.
• Frijoles… any old cooked beans they happen to have around when you are in Mexico, or the terrific refried beans always available for breakfast, lunch or dinner with eggs or anything else you might want.
• White bean pesto dip. White bean salad from the Moosewood Cookbook.
• Spiced chick peas, popular at Indian buffets, just as easy to make at home.
• Speaking of Indian, all those divine curries and masalas with beans, lentils, chickpeas, kidney beans or combinations. After your appetizer of dal of course.
• The Italians have some splendid, simple ways of cooking beans that you would just never get tired of. White beans in a simple soup with tomatoes, kale or spinach, and sausage if you want it - now that’s comfort food.
• White beans sauteed in a pan with some spinach, garlic, olive oil and a dash of parmesan.
• How could I forget 7-Layer Dip? Not the healthiest though. Unless you just go for the beans and guac and avoid the sour cream and cheese…

Good lord, I’ve written 850 words about beans and I’m only just getting started. Get your basket into the bulk food aisle at Whole Foods and your nose into a cookbook or two (Italian, Cuban, Indian, all great places to start) and enjoy your beans!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Awesome Garlic Toasts

It’s high time I started posting recipes again. I really want to download my photos from Baja and post some of the great food I ate there; but that will take me a few more days to organize. In the meantime, I keep playing with my food, and discovering new ways to incorporate the super-healthy fats from avocados, nuts, flax and olive oil - things I try to eat every day now (and believe me, this is going to take some creativity!).

I needed a quick snack the other night, and a way to use up the rest of a nice loaf of whole grain bread without resorting to butter. As the idea for garlic toast was floating through my mind (and sounding rather good on an empty stomach) I realized that all I had to do to make this unhealthy idea into a nutritious one was sub in olive oil for the butter. So here goes:

Awesome Garlic Toasts 

half a loaf whole grain bread, something nice and crusty

3 cloves garlic, finely minced

olive oil (your standard cooking variety will be fine since you are heating it; don’t squander your expensive extra virgin here)

parmesan cheese

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees or so.

2. Slice the bread into 1/2 inch slices or rounds and arrange on a baking sheet.

3. Pour a good couple of tablespoons of olive oil into a small dish and stir in the minced garlic.

4. With a pastry brush, brush oil onto each piece of toast, taking care to get enough - but not too much - garlic onto each slice.

5. Shake parmesan cheese onto each slice to taste (not exactly tasting it, but eyeballing it for the amount that makes YOU want to eat it! This is totally subjective…).

6. Stick the baking sheet in the oven and keep an eye on it. Your toasts may be done in just a few minutes - you’ll know when the parmesan has started to bubble a bit and start to look a bit gooey (it won’t exactly melt, just spread a bit and generally look hot and ready to eat).

7. Remove from oven, distribute onto small plates and eat immediately.

Isn’t this so scientific? I’d love to provide more accurate quantities and instructions but it just is so unnecessary - you can do this with any amount of bread, garlic, oil and cheese and it will probably taste fantastic. I really slathered on the olive oil; some might like it less drippy. In any case, there should be very little guilt involved when eating the results.

Spring in the Air

Spring is in the air - albeit intermittently. We are still getting snow every other day it seems, just when things were warming up tantalizingly and drawing us outside to bask in the increasingly warmer sunlight. Various bulbs are poking their green shoots into the air. I can’t remember what I planted or where; this is the fun of bulbs, it’s a little like Christmas for yourself every spring when they come up. Were those tulips? Maybe the red ones? Did I plant red ones? And so the wonderful mysteries of the garden begin to unfold, reminding you why you are so hooked on the warmer seasons.

My compost pile is still a giant ice cube, so I have to content myself with dumping kitchen scraps on top of it. But today I am itching to start cutting back the winter’s yellowed grasses - Miscanthus, Little Bluestem, Nassella and others. There’s just going to be too much other work to do in the garden later; I feel compelled to get these easier, little tasks out of the way now, even though it means I am removing the one bit of structure from our winter landscape. And it’s supposed to snow tonight, so today is my chance, really, to enjoy a few minutes of sunshine and work outdoors.

This weather is also making me yearn for my vegetable garden. I can content myself for now with planning it, which I’ve miraculously put off all winter - what with holidays, vacations and health worries, I never really sat down to dream about vegetables. I didn’t order any rare or curious seeds from heirloom plant catalogs; we have so much variety right here during spring planting season that last year I’d filled my garden right up with Minnesota Midget Canteloupe, Hopi Beans, Cherokee Purple Tomatoes and Tequila Sunrise Peppers and there was no more room for mail-order wonders. So I figured this year I’d just do the same thing and see what sort of bounty it brought me.

In honor of the spring kitchen garden, I want to remind everyone of the 10 Reasons to Eat Local Food (the article is titled 10 Reasons to BUY Local Food, but for me so much is about growing a large portion of it yourself that I can’t limit myself to that outlook!). These pointers, in and of themselves, are inspiration enough to make our green thumbs itch with anticipation!!

Happy Gardening…