a meal most satisfying & how to roast a butternut squash

and garlic butter naan

On Monday it rained all day. It was the first cool day in Charlotte that really felt like winter. It was kind of a bummer.

So Monday afternoon Abe roasted the butternut squash that we grew accidentally from a seed in our compost.

There are two ways to roast a butternut squash, and if you don't know about them, you should, because butternut squash is delicious and inexpensive (or free! Grow your own for next year by accident):

1. The Fancy Way, where you take the time to peel and chop the squash before you roast it, therefore producing beautiful, perfect bright orange cubes like they would serve you in an expensive restaurant, and 
2. My Lazy Messy Way, which involves cutting the squash once from top to bottom, rubbing it with a bit of oil inside and out and roasting it whole face-down in a pan. The squash cavity can also be a good place to roast a bit of garlic, but only if you have a good pan: otherwise the garlic will burn and your squash will taste foul. Oh, and don't forget to scoop out the seeds and stringy bits -- that would be after you cut, and before you oil.

I'm a lazy messy kind of girl (no sense denying it). I'm ashamed to admit how my arms ache after cutting up an entire butternut squash, and also because the skin does come off easily and nicely after it's roasted.

Anyway, on Monday Abe roasted the butternut squash The Fancy Way with olive oil, Herbes de Provence and love. When I got home, dinner was simple:  We caramelized an onion and sauteed garlic, then added the butternut squash, a pinch of marjoram and vegetable stock. A quick turn with the immersion blender, and we had the best butternut squash soup I've ever tasted.

Only by growing some food for yourself can you become acquainted with the beautiful energy cycle that revolves from soil to seed to flower to fruit to food to offal to decay, and around again. You will be fully responsible for any food that you grow for yourself, and you will know all about it. You will appreciate it fully, having known it all its life.

-Wendell Berry, "The Pleasures of Eating." Please read the whole essay here.

growing seeds from grocery store peppers

Homegrown peppers - second generation from Trader Joe's.
Also, I'm bringing back The Doily.

Everyone who sees these peppers thinks they're spicy. They're not - they're more like tiny sweet bell peppers. These were actually started from seeds harvested from Trader Joe's peppers - those cute mini tricolor pepper-ettes.

It's a bit of a risk trying to grow from commercial seeds (and illegal if the seeds are from Monsanto):  most commercial vegetables are hybridized so that they may not produce, and if they do, the vegetables will be a different variety. But since we'd already bought the peppers, we took a chance, planting a few of seeds from each color pepper (yellow, orange, and red).

Apparently when mini bell peppers are grown commercially, each color is grown separately - they're three distinct seeds with similar size, flavor and shape. As you can see, we got none of the lovely colors from any of the seeds, but we were lucky to get peppers at all, since it turns out store-bought bell pepper seeds are usually infertile.

Have you ever grown anything from the grocery store? A few gardening forums I checked out seemed to indicate decent success growing hot peppers (red chili, habaneros), since heirloom varieties are sold more commonly.

Matt's Wild Cherry Tomatoes

The federal government has sponsored research that has produced a tomato that is perfect in every respect, except that you can't eat it. We should make every effort to make sure this disease, often referred to as 'progress,' doesn't spread.

-Andy Rooney

 

If you're completely overwhelmed when selecting seeds for your garden (and personally, after twenty minutes with a seed catalog, I'm ready to hang it on the wall and shoot darts in lieu of actually choosing), you'll welcome this recommendation:  Matt's Wild Cherry Tomatoes.

We purchased our seeds from Renfrow's Hardware more than two years ago, and we're still going strong. The plants have never given us any problems with pests or blight, and they produce tons of cherry tomatoes all summer long. The fruit is sweet with rich, red flavor, and its seeds produce new tomatoes so easily that you'll likely end up with seedlings next year from this year's plants - perfect for the lazy gardener (a.k.a. me). If you doubt yourself and start too many, let me also suggest Madhur Jaffrey's sweet tomato chutney, which we ate on everything from tofu dogs to grilled vegetables almost every day for two solid months, and still look forward to eating this summer.

the incredible overnight growth of zucchini

We grow zucchini, squash, and some larger tomato varietals in a fenced garden at the back of our yard.  After fighting a desperately impossible battle with devil's grass for two straight years, Abe finally laid landscaping plastic. He used wood from our woodpile to hold the plastic in place over existing garden rows. Then it was as simple as cutting small holes in the plastic to plant the seeds. (We work hard, but we're very lazy gardeners.)

I was in the back garden this weekend picking some veggies. I noticed a small zucchini nestled up under some leaves, and I knew it was almost or probably ready. But my hands were full, so I decided to leave it for another day.

clockwise from 12 o'clock: spring onions, zucchini, cucumbers, summer squash

The next day, that little zucchini had more than doubled in size.  (You can see it in its enormity in the top right.) Lesson learned. 

So for the summer ahead, zucchini are best picked when they're about five inches long and not quite 2 inches around. Younger zucchini (and summer squash, too) is more tender and flavorful. Mammoth zucchs tend to be tough and bland, and are best used for muffins.

corny classified

Me: 26/F, petite, willing to cook. You: husky, golden, DDF. WLTM! Let's get together and make summer magic.

Someone's been eating my sprouts

After work Abe and I went to enjoy some peace and quiet in the greenhouse. Instead we discovered an infestation of caterpillars. They arrived overnight in hordes. They didn't go for the swiss chard (God knows we have enough swiss chard to share): They went straight for the good stuff, because nothing is sacred when you're a caterpillar.  Brussels sprouts are my favorite, and I'm closer to successfully growing them this year than ever before.

So it's on, Caterpillars. Did you think you could hide from me, skulking around on the underside of leaves like the cowardly tiny pests you are? I knew you White Butterfly Caterpillars right away after a thorough search of my Rodale's Guide and the internet:  your attraction to my brassica was a dead giveaway!  And now you're dead, too.

As it would happen, chickens like caterpillars almost as much as caterpillars like vegetables in the cabbage family.  I tried to get a picture, but it was such a feeding frenzy that my tired camera couldn't keep up, and all I could manage was this blurry photo where you can vaguely see something green in the ferocious beak of our Buff Orpington.

My brussels sprouts aren't the only thing getting eaten, and the caterpillars
aren't the only ones to feast in our backyard. 

HOOKED on PONICS

After a slow and demoralizing start, things are finally starting to come together in our aquaponic beds. We're ready for some pay-off after digging out the pond, investing in the liner, buying the clay balls and working to set it all up.  Favorite thing about aquaponics: no weeding required.

How do you solve a problem like broccoli flowers?

I go straight to the experts.

If you've never grown broccoli before (and this is our first time, too) and you're a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-overalls sort of gardener in an unseasonally warm spring, you might get in trouble.  You might start to see tiny buds that resemble broccoli forming on your plants. You might get excited, but acknowledge their tiny size and carry on your business.  The next day, your tiny buds might be flowers and you might scratch your head wondering how you missed part where the broccoli plant grew broccoli.  You might realize too late that your plants are not supposed to flower.   

When you turn to gardening books for advice, they will make you feel like an idiot by giving you advice about preventing the flowers.  They will cause you to fear that it's too late.

But don't despair!  Luckily for all of us, your beautiful broccoli flowers are as edible as the rest of the plant, and they taste kind of like broccoli and kind of like honey.  If the buds are still semi-closed, the flowers should hold their shape if they're cooked, but they're lovely in a salad or as a greenhouse snack. While you're eating the flowers, go ahead and eat the leaves and stalks, too. Put aside your fear that they'll be woody and tough like the stems of the store-bought vegetable: unless you grow your broccoli til the stalks are the size of small tree trunks, the whole plant will be delicious.

chard for all

Between the greenhouse and weather we've had this spring (downright hot), the seeds we started a month ago are already producing more than we can eat.  Today I brought a grocery bag of swiss chard to share with my coworkers.

It's nice to have something to share so early in the season.  Soon I hope we'll have a handle on how much our garden and greenhouse can produce beyond what we need.  At that point, we'll either try a micro C.S.A. or set up shop at the Charlotte Regional Farmer's Market.  Til then, chard for all!

slow growing

We'll be much better friends if you can pretend like you immediately identified this as a sleepy asparagus lady yawning and stretching.  (What? You couldn't tell? Now this is an angry asparagus queen ordering your head cut off.) (These are the benefits of being a terrible artist.)

Lately I've been wanting an asparagus bed.

Like having a trustworthy reputation or good character, the trouble with growing asparagus is that you have to start working on it long before you want it if you're going to have it by the time you need it.

you look radishing

Package of Seeds

They can't see their pictures,
they can't read the label --
the seeds in a package --
so how are they able
to know if they're daisies
or green for the table?

It sounds like a fancy,
it sounds like a fable,
but you do the sowing,
the weeding, the hoeing,
and they'll do the knowing
of how to be growing.

(Aileen Fisher)

This weekend, Abe and I enjoyed the first fruits of the greenhouse (and by fruits, I mean vegetables).  The radishes amazed me.  About a month ago, Abe planted seeds - just tiny specks pushed into the dirt.  He gave them water, the sun gave light, the soil gave nutrients.  And somehow, look!  They became round and red, green and leafy, beautiful, healthy food!

Since I was a teenager, I have struggled to have faith.  But to me, the seeds Abe planted are a miracle.  They don't just grow vegetables - my tiny faith grows, too.