Lemony Garlic Vinaigrette

First spring salad of tiny baby greens

This could be the world’s tiniest salad. It’s the perfect, tender little harvest from my first few greens that are finally sprouting enough leaves to begin eating them. Isn’t that first handful of fresh baby greens the most amazing taste experience? It’s like eating pure energy fresh from the ground; and each leaf has its own distinct taste and texture. Here in this little collection I have baby spinach, mizuna, an heirloom red lettuce, mesclun mix, fennel, chives, fresh tarragon, the tiniest arugula leaf, several leaves of sorrel and a few pea shoots. Eating it was pure delight.

Naturally, I had to quickly mix up a bit of dressing worthy of the occasion; even my very tasty storebought Balsamic vinaigrette wasn’t really right, and it would have overwhelmed these tiny greens anyway. I spied a few leftover lemons on the kitchen counter from when Tomas was sick last week, and the aha! moment struck. In a nutshell, here is what I did (and the base for it was a few tablespoons of leftover olive oil from our recent camping trip):

Lemony Garlic Dressing

Several tablespoons olive oil

juice of half a lemon

1/4 tsp stone ground mustard (I had a little jar of saffron mustard from Prague sitting in the fridge that has a very delicate flavor and was just the ticket)

1 clove garlic, minced

several grinds of pepper

1/4 – 1/2 tsp salt

a bit of chopped fresh herbs: in this case, I used some frozen dill I found in the freezer because it seemed like it would complement the lemon really well and, well, it was there. It was probably between 1/4 and 1/2 tsp.

Mix all ingredients together in a small bottle and shake vigorously. Taste and season as needed.

This dressing had a distinct lemony bite to it, but could be softened a bit by increasing the oil to lemon juice ratio. I thought it was just exactly right for the snappy, fresh greens that I’d picked 20 minutes ago, which had a little tart bite of their own. I used the dressing VERY sparingly, just enough to add a little bright zing to the greens, not to cloak their uniquely ‘green’ flavor.

This was my salad two days ago. Today I got to add a few leaves of baby bok choi and some small radish leaves. It’s hard to believe that pretty soon I won’t be able to keep up with the overabundance of lettuces, 4 kinds of spinach, and dark leafy greens taking over the raised beds! It’s so hard to be patient…

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Put the ‘G’ Back in HGTV

Not that I watch cable much, but I do watch it, and when I do I often end up on the Food Network. Why not HGTV, since I’m about as much a gardening nut as a cooking nut? Well, there’s no gardening on Home and Garden TV.

So it piqued my interest when I found out that there is an active campaign to press HGTV (by way of boycotting its major sponsors) to bring back some gardening shows. I’ve read about people’s discontent with HGTV before, probably on Garden Rant, but today is apparently the kick-off date of a major campaign. For more, see this HGTV Protest Campaign website.

Quoting Tina’s post directly:

“An estimated 40 to 45 billion – yes, that’s a “B” – is spent on gardening annually in the US. And this number is set to skyrocket this year with at least 7 million new households saying they’ll begin gardening in 2009, a 19 percent increase. Seed sales have shot up by at least 40 percent.
Why HGTV continues to ignore gardeners is beyond me. 40 billion bucks! Talk about a lost opportunity for them to market to the fastest growing demographic in the US.”

So if you want to see some more garden programming, and not just home makeovers, head on over there and check out the protest campaign – it’s going on TODAY.

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Garden Diary: April

From the garden yesterday: 3 eggs, 1 handful micro-greens (thinnings from my broccoli and kale starts – yum). Herbs: chives, sage and tarragon are all ready to use.

Last year's green onions in the garden.

All this hype about Victory Gardens, the White House garden, and recession gardens, as I’ve heard them called, is making me want to try out a little experiment this year: documenting all the food that I get out of my garden this year. I am not alone in doing this; many others are conducting some sort of observable food production science in their yards as well.

What I really ought to do is document the money I’ve spent on the garden as well. I’ll try to find my Home Depot receipts and my seed order total – that should actually not be too hard. I’ll report back on that. Meantime, I’m going to track what’s coming out in terms of edible produce. Hopefully, at the end of the season, this will result in a really fun way to see just how productive and economical this hobby is, or if it’s more, well, just a hobby. When it comes to eggs, I already know the answer – but I’m counting them anyway because they’re worth the effort! I haved 4 chickens right now, and this will help us decide if we want more, or if 4 is just right.

I am also using this blog as a way to keep a garden diary, since I do not have one in reality (well, I guess the internet is real, but I don’t have a physical one!). I want to know what I did when, how long it took for things to come up and mature, what was most successful, and so on.

So here’s what’s in the garden right now. I planted all of these right about at St. Patrick’s Day in March.

• Cherry Belle radishes: came up beautifully, all seedlings have since been nibbled off by a little visitor of some kind. I will have to replant this weekend.
• Helios radish: looking really good. Good-sized seedlings, done first thinning already.
• Cilantro: nothing happened for weeks, now I am finally seeing several seedlings that I have to hope are the damn cilantro finally making its appearance…
• Chives: see notes on Cilantro.
• 3 kinds of spinach: all making progress. One (Melody, planted in a container) is almost ready to start nibbling on; it has a good set of first real leaves and the next round is in the works.
• Mesclun mix: visible.
• Mache: nothing at all. This is a big disappointment. I may reseed and see what happens. It does say on the seed packet that it can take 20 days to germinate, and it even says “be patient,” so maybe I should just try that…
• Mizuna: looking really good. Too tiny to eat yet, but looks like what it is – beautiful teeny toothed leaves.
• Lettuces: Rouge d’hiver, Speckled, Merveille de Quatre Saisons – all have made an appearance and I’m waiting VERY impatiently for them to be harvestable.
• Peas: sugar snap, Alaska, and sweet peas – all came up finally in the last week and I’m looking forward to some pea shoots in my salads!
• Green onions: after a long wait, these too are up, which is a thrill because I thought I was not going to get results from last year’s batch of seeds.
• Carrots: Nantes Little Fingers and Cosmic Purple – the Cosmic came up first, also after a long and breathless wait, and now the little ones are finally making an appearance. I may have gotten lucky with a whole lot of snow at just the right time; carrots NEED to be moist in order to germinate and my luck so far with them has not been stellar, so this crop looks like it will be a good one and I’m thanking the weather gods for that.
• Bok Choy: looking good! Waiting to thin the seedlings till they’re at least the size of micro-greens so I can eat them.
• Swiss chard: very early seedling stage right now. Some of the ones in the first container I planted got smushed by the snow and didn’t come back. I have more seeds and will possibly do a second planting depending on how many of this first batch actually get rolling in the next couple of weeks.

Now for my indoor seed starting project:

I planted a tray of Purple Sprouting Broccoli, Brussel Sprouts, Lacinato Kale, and Leeks. All have sprouted nicely, I just thinned them yesterday, and I’m religiously putting them outside in the cold frame during the day and bringing them in at night, so – knock on wood – they look fairly normal and not too leggy or washed-out. The thinnings made for a delicious tiny salad yesterday!

That’s all for now, but I have plenty of work to do…. thinning the bok choi, cleaning out the coop, turning the compost, watering my ‘soil-building’ project which is going on in one of my raised beds (I should post separately about that as well). Happy April!

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The Great Seed Exchange

Day #2 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog. The task: write a list post. I just did that yesterday, in fact I did it on both my blogs. But I feel like I should do it with conscious intent, after reading the tips and instructions, so here comes another one! I’ve had this one waiting in my mental queue for a while anyway.

My assortment of seeds (these are just the edibles) - to me this represents true wealth!

A few weeks ago (in January to be precise), some colleagues and I got together and ordered seeds from several catalogs together, thinking we’d share them and save some money. While shelling out $60 bucks for seeds didn’t feel like saving to me, that’s just my eyes being WAY bigger than my stomach. Or than my raised beds. The process was lots of fun, the comeraderie was great, and we all have some great seeds to experiment with this year! Next up: summer potluck and fall harvest party…

So here’s a summary of what I managed to dish out so much money on.

The sources:

• Seeds of Change (their seeds come in nifty re-usable environmentally friendly plastic packets)
• Seed Savers Exchange (a most wonderful non-profit in Iowa with fabulous educational programs and a very virtuous mission)
• The Cook’s Garden (the most expensive by quite a bit, but also had a few of the fun lettuces and other rare items that others didn’t)
• Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Company (by far the best deals, seed packets were only around $2 for most varieties; the catalog was a blast to look at with giant color photos and truly quirky characters scattered throughout. This one was a favorite!!)

The seeds (perhaps I shall number them, just to see how out of hand things got with the ordering):

1. Chioggia beets
2. Helios radish
3. Minnesota Midget melon
4. Blacktail Mountain watermelon
5. Purple tomatillo
6. Giant of Italy parsley
7. Genovese basil
8. Broad Windsor fava bean
9. October bean (a gorgeous native bean from Seed Savers, white with PINK slashes and spots)
10. Hidatsa Shield Figure bean (another stunning heirloom; half white, half tan with dark brown flecks)
11. Parisian bush bean
12. Winter Luxury pie pumpkin
13. Squash Galeaux d’Eysines (a gorgeous peach-colored pumpkin shape covered in thick light brown warts)
14. Squash Pomme d’Or (another winter squash)
15. European Mesclun Salad mix
16. Merlo Nero spinach
17. Bloomsdale Long Standing spinach
18. Rouge D’Hiver lettuce
19. Speckled lettuce
20. Merveille de Quatre Saisons lettuce
21. Sugar snap peas
22. Sherwood leeks
23. Summer squash: Cocozelle di Napoli
24. Zucchini: Lungo Bianco
25. Jewel peach melba nasturtium
26. Red Marietta marigold
27. Broccoli Raab
28. Early Purple Sprouting broccoli
29. Lacinato kale
30. Russian Red kale
31. Nantes Little Finger carrot
32. True Gold sweet corn

I guess 32 seed packets, even if you are splitting some of them two or three ways, can’t help but add up to $60+… But here’s the kicker: that’s just the new seeds. Anything I had from last year or the year before I kept and am hoping to reuse as well. I’m learning the hard way, right now, that green onion seeds don’t keep. However, spinach seeds from 2007 are sprouting just fine, as are others (chard, radishes). So here is what I STILL HAVE in my collection; I tossed anything that was more than 2 years old:

• Cherry Belle radish
• Daikon radish (bought last year and never planted)
• Sugar baby watermelon (planted last year, nothing happened; trying an heirlom variety this year, see list above)
• Tomatillo (bought but never planted, got starts instead)
• Cilantro
• Acorn squash: Table King
• Spaghetti squash
• Butternut squash (didn’t go last year either, but I’m too much of a sucker to toss the seeds; must try again)
• Melody spinach
• Mesclun mix
• Mache
• Mizuna (bought last year, planted for the first time this year)
• Lettuce: Paris Island Cos
• Lettuce: Buttercrunch
• Alaska peas
• Edamame (bought last year, never planted)
• Green onions (Evergreen bunching)
• Squash: early yellow straightneck
• Hybrid Ambassador zucchini
• Italian Striped zucchini
• Squash: Early white bush scallop
• Vanilla Ice sunflower
• Red Sun sunflower
• Lemon gem marigold
• Collard greens
• Long Island Improved Brussel sprouts
• Cosmic Purple carrot
• Cucumber: Tasty green burpless
• Rainbow Swiss Chard (bought last year to replenish my dwindling stock of this favorite plant; heaven forbid I should actually run out of a packet and not have a backup already on hand!)
• Bok Choy (bought last year but never planted)

Notice I did NOT number those, because I don’t want to know. A lot of these are duplicates – seeds for which I bought replacements before I ran out of the first packet – or veggies I tried two years ago but didn’t do last year, and still haven’t had the heart to toss. A lot of them were stars in the garden last year, I just didn’t use up the packet and I can’t wait to use the rest of the seeds this year.  (in that category the notables are collards, cucumbers, chard, and all the lettuces).

How do I organize all of these vast quantities of seeds? (never mind where I will plant them all – I’ll try to illustrate that somehow in another post). I keep them in a bamboo drawer organizer that was intended for sorting silverware. Each narrow compartment is perfect for standing several seed packets upright in, in little groups next to each other, so the whole entity looks like fairly neat little rows that I can easily flip through to find what I want. Geek that I am, I have organized them by plant family (brassicas, legumes, etc) – sort of – with the flowers all in one stack and the herbs all in another.

This terrible cameraphone shot shows the compartments a little better...

I was going to get into what I’ve already planted out into the garden and what’s in a seed tray getting moved back and forth from garden (day) to house (night) but it seems I’ve written a pretty long post already. I’ll stop here, and continue that thought another day!

I love making lists. I love that making lists is an acceptable way to blog, and not just some kind of laziness…

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A Greener Elevator Pitch

So, as of right now, I’m signed up for Pro-Blogger’s 31-day “Build a Better Blog” challenge – the 31DBBB to be precise.  Hopefully this is exactly what a blogger like me needs, someone who’s sort of just starting out (i.e. hasn’t done much) and wants to learn how to create a better blog while still having a job and a life.

In any case, there’s a task each day, and I assume that will result in some hastily-created new content this month. Today is Day 1. Task: Write an elevator pitch. I figured I had this all figured out already: my blog is about gardening and cooking at about a mile high, both of which can present their own unique challenges at this altitude. That’s still my pitch, which is a good thing, but the challenge notes got me thinking about this in some new ways. I decided to do a little brainstorming exercise and write down all the buzz-words that came to mind when I thought about my blog and what I want it to be. It was fun, and pretty interesting! Here they are, in no particular order and with no regard to using consistent parts of speech:

altitude

climate

busy (as in, I’m busy but I still want to have a garden, and maybe even cook)

urban farming

can a couple of people possibly live off this garden? (i.e., how much food can I really grow?)

frustrations (sharing them – they’re part of the charm, right?)

techniques

recipes

easy (easy ways to make, and grow, great food – kind of goes with busy)

hobby (again, this is not my real job)

relaxing

learning experience

fun & therapeutic

HEALTHY

vegetarian

simple

Mediterranean (my favorite cuisine)

projects (there’s always a new project to write about! I need to write about them. The new cold frame, the new and improved pea trellising, the indoor seed starting project…)

That’s it for now… I’m sure there will be more as I settle down for the evening and the wheels in my head take over and start churning out ideas (one reason why I keep a pad of paper and a pen next to my bed). But it already has helped me think more clearly about why I started this little blog venture, and where I hope to [mostly] go with it. Not bad for a first day!

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