Using up the Garden: Turnip Greens

I haven't been here for quite a while now. A little over a month ago, I broke my right hand. Since then, I haven't been doing much of anything except for taking pain medication, napping, having surgery on my hand, and then lots of hand exercises. Fortunately this coincided with a slow period in the garden, so I didn't lose as much produce as I might have. I couldn't chop anything or even eat much, so I did lose some, but an abrupt turn to colder weather meant that the warm weather crops mostly died off all at once, before the cooler weather stuff was ready to harvest.

I am starting to feel a bit better now, though, so I have been anxiously awaiting my Brussel's sprouts and beets and turnips. I have been reminding myself to be patient, even though I always want fresh stuff from the garden all the time! But when Marsha came to take care of the garden yesterday, she pointed out that I could get something from the garden now--turnip greens! When I was growig up, my family was not really the greens eating type (more like the canned green beans or corn type,) so it just didn't occur to me that I could eat the green part, too, even though I have eaten greens as an adult. I was very excited to realize I could go out and pick something for dinner. That is my favorite part of the garden--the way I go out right before I start cooking and pick some ingredients. So cool!

I went out tonight and picked a big pile of turnip greens and an Anaheim chili. Marsha left me some collard greens yesterday, so I used those, too. I de-ribbed the greens, then washed them and chopped them and put them in boiling water for about 10 minutes. While that was cooking, I chopped up the chili and a shallot (I am getting better, but I am still a bit slow...) Then I took the greens out of the water with a slotted spoon, and added a pound of whole wheat pasta. While the pasta was cooking, I put a good amount of olive oil in a skillet, and added some minced garlic from a jar and the shallot and chili. I was using the last of the garlic, so I ladled a little bit of the pasta water into the jar to get all the garlicy goodness and set it aside. When the veggies were softened, I added a few shakes of red pepper flakes, then the greens, and cooked for about 2 more minutes, tossing to coat them in the garlicy oil. When the pasta was done, I drained it quickly, then added it to the skillet with the greens. I added the extra garlicy pasta water from the jar at this point, too. If I was using fresh garlic, I would have taken some of the pasta water out before draining to add to the greens and pasta.

This was so good! I was worried I might find it bland, but it had a nice warm finish without being too spicy, if that makes sense. Even the girl liked it (the boy is off spending the night with a friend, but I am sure he would have liked it, too.) This garden is definitely the gift that keeps giving--fresh, healthy food, and new vegetables that the whole family enjoys!

Adventures in sustainability: gardening

I have been thinking about environmentalism for a long time, and what kids of things I can do in my life to be more environmentally conscious without sacrificing my comfort or adding a bunch of work that I don’t enjoy. So, I am a vegetarian, in part because I think that the way we eat meat in such large quantities in this country is unsustainable, but I actually find that I eat a wider variety of interesting foods on a vegetarian diet. I am always trying new things with veggies and legumes, and I actually enjoy cooking. And I have a garden in my backyard because that is the most locally grown food you can possibly get, but I hired someone else to install and maintain it. This way, I get great food with no fossil fuels expended to ship it to my table, but I don’t have to weed, or have a lot of gardening knowledge.

In this vein, I came across the coolest article in my local paper about a couple who are trying to make their suburban home more sustainable. They put in a geothermal heating and cooling system, which sounds like something I will need to save my money for. I am not needing a new heating and cooling system at the moment, which is good, because the initial investment is steep ($18K - 21K.) They also grow a lot of their own food, with a combination of raised bed gardens, trees, containers and food plants worked into the regular landscaping. Mary Deweese is a professional landscape architect, so she is definitely more equipped to design a yard this way than I am, but there are some ideas I can take from her landscape design.

First of all, they grow a lot of fruit. So far, we have planted cantaloupe, watermelon and strawberries, in addition to the sour cherries and raspberries that were already in the yard when we moved into this house. I have been planning to pay someone to remove my Bradford pear trees (non-fruit producing) in the backyard in the spring, and then I will replace them with a peach tree and an apple tree, but now I am thinking maybe I can do even more with fruit. I want to look into doing a fig tree in a container on my patio. Figs are expensive! Growing my own will make for an improvement in both personal sustainability and the variety of fruit we eat, because I can rarely afford to buy them at the store. Also, I had no idea you could grow kiwis in St. Louis. My daughter *loves* kiwi, so it would be awesome to grow some of our own. They have a slightly wider variety of vegetables, too. For instance, I would love to do artichokes, cauliflower and cabbage. Although, I may be getting cabbage for the fall planting--I know that Brussel’s sprouts are coming then. Last year, I went out on Thanksgiving morning and picked the last Brussel’s sprouts for our meal, which was awesome.

However, it is clear that the biggest difference they have from my garden is that they devote a lot more space to growing food than I do, which is a good idea. One good way to do this is the container gardening that they do. I would like to do some potatoes in containers to conserve some ground space. Last year we grew sweet potatoes, and got only about enough for one meal, so I would love to maximize our space for growing more potatoes, and more kinds of potatoes.

Even with the container gardening, I think we are going to have to do more ground space. This year I have been making more effort to use up the produce before it goes bad, so we are getting more out of the garden than last year, but it still isn’t as much food as I would like to have. I didn’t have much to preserve for the winter, so once the summer/fall were over, that was it. I keep looking at what we are getting and thinking it could be a lot more. I am thinking that maybe we could double the main area of the garden by building out into the yard. I am wondering about the front yard, too. It seems a shame to be thinking about pulling up the young tree in the front yard and putting in a fruit tree instead, but the front yard does get a lot of sun. I wonder if I could get the tree transplanted somewhere else?

I even find myself thinking I wouldn’t mind doing a bit more of the gardening work myself, which is surprising to me. As time goes on, though, I am much more excited about the whole gardening concept, and the work doesn’t seem quite as bad (except when it gets to 100 degrees out there!) Maybe I could start with a few containers and see how it goes?

Is anyone else getting into growing their own food? What are you doing?

Using up the Garden: Mint

Last year, when I had my garden for the first time, I loved it, but I wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. I wasn’t really prepared for getting a lot of some things while getting none of others, and I wasn’t ready to start cooking with whatever I had on hand. I had long been a menu planner, but I was a grocery store menu planner:

• Think of what sounded good
• Make a menu and grocery list
• Go to the store and buy it

The difference between this kind of planning and garden planning is that grocery stores usually have whatever you want, produce-wise, whenever you want it. Gardens produce whatever is in season, whenever they happen to be ready. I just wasn’t prepared for that shift, from starting with a menu and getting whatever produce went with it to starting with the produce that I had and making a menu from that.

This year, however, I was determined that things were going to go differently. I would plan ahead, searching out recipes, and adapting the recipes that I have! We would eat squash every night if necessary! Veggie soup! So far, I haven’t been perfect (a few things have gone to the compost bin), but we have actually eaten the majority of produce to come out of the garden. I want to start keeping track of what I have done and lessons for next year here, starting with mint.

Several weeks ago, I started using my mint in nearly everything. There was so much, and I didn’t want to waste any of it, because it is really good stuff! I made mint juleps, and sweet mint tea, Lebanese lentil salad and tzatziki-like herbed dressings, herbed chopped salads and mojitos. All of this did use up a lot of mint during the growing phase, but once all the mint started flowering and reaching the end of the season, I needed to do something fast, with a LOT of mint.

A quick search of the internet quickly led to a list of liqueur recipes, and I was hooked. It is the perfect way to use a lot of mint, and I can give some of the results away for Christmas presents, not to mention having some homemade liqueurs right here at home. Unfortunately, I also found a lot of other liqueur recipes that I am making with things not from the garden, but that is a story for another time. I settled on this recipe, and started it once as stated, but that barely even touched the huge amount of mint out there. Clearly, more drastic measures were needed.

Yesterday, I went out and cut off all of the rest of the mint in the garden. I used my kitchen shears and cut under all the leaves, but not all the way down to the ground, because I am hoping that more mint comes back in the fall. This may seem crazy when you consider how much work it was harvesting the mint yesterday, but I do love having fresh stuff from my garden! Here is the mound of mint waiting to be processed:

As you can see, some of the leaves don’t look so good, but much of it was usable. I got about 5 ½ lightly packed cups of mint leaves out of this mound. I stood at the sink for probably 2 hours or maybe a bit more, broken up into two stretches, pulling leaves off the stems, washing them, spinning them in the salad spinner (as an aside, the garden has changed my salad spinner from a slightly expensive indulgence--I used to buy pre-washed produce all the time--to an almost daily use kitchen gadget, which I think is pretty cool,) and making mint syrup and more mint liqueur.

For the mint liqueur, I decided to use rum this time, both because I had some rum on hand while I am out of vodka, and because I am just not a vodka fan. I guess it doesn’t matter since it is going to be so highly flavored with the mint and sugar syrup, but I wanted to try it with the rum anyway. Since I already started some with the vodka, I will be able to compare and see which one is better. I put about 4 cups of mint in with 9 cups of rum, playing a little loose with the recipe proportions. Although, really, that is only about a quarter cup extra mint, which will just make it extra good, I am sure. Here is a picture of what I have so far:


Since the jar is so big, it looks like it is not much, but it really is a lot! I have smaller jars for when it is ready to start aging and being sent out to friends as presents (or going in my liquor cabinet.)

For the mint syrup, I brought three cups of water and 1 ½ cups of mint to a boil, then added about 2 ½ cups of sugar. I let that return to a boil, stirring, then turned the heat down, put a lid on the pot and simmered for about five minutes. Then I runed off the gas, took off the lid, gave it a quick stir and left it to cool and steep. When I got back around to it, I drained the syrup through a colander to remove the mint leaves, put a lid on the bowl and stuck it in the fridge. We are going to get some vanilla ice cream today to have with this, and I may make some tea with it, or maybe some lemonade. I made lavender lemonade with a sugar syrup infused with dried lavender flowers and fresh lemon juice recently, and the kids loved it, so mint lemonade may be a hit, too.

Lessons I have learned from mint:

• I could have started liqueurs long ago. While the mint was going strong, anything I took off came back within days, and it was all fresh and healthy. I would still do this end of season thing, but I could have gotten a lot more out of my mint if I had used it more at the beginning.
• I need to look into drying some of these herbs. I assume I just need to get some kitchen twine and tie up a bunch in the basement, but I need to look into specifics.
• I got more mint this year than last year, and chances are I will get even more next year.
• I need to start saving all glass jars that I use during the year. I can save a lot of things in jars.
• I could use even more minty recipes.

Overall, I know I did a much better job using the mint this year than I did last year. I am very excited about my homemade mint liqueurs, and I cannot wait to give them to my friends for holiday presents. Now I just need to see if cutting back the mint now leads to another crop in the fall. I am hoping that it will, but if not, I know that I will be better prepared to use even more of the mint next year. I am calling this one a definite success!

Planning

Very soon, I am going to have a LOT of yellow squash coming out of my garden. On the one hand, I am super excited about this—I love yellow squash, so does my mother, and last year we didn’t get nearly enough. Last year, we didn’t get a huge amount of anything from the garden. It seemed to be a fairly universal problem, and conventional wisdom said that it just wasn’t hot enough. This is what having a garden has done for me—actually made me think there is such a thing as a summer that wasn’t hot enough! I never thought I would see the day.

Anyway, this year it is much hotter, and the garden does look more productive. The yellow squash plant in particular is brimming with produce. And, to top it off, a couple of weeks ago, I consulted with my gardener and we couldn’t remember if there was a yellow squash plant already, so we planted some more. Those plants are still pretty small, but eventually, they will start producing even more vegetables. So, today I am looking for recipes to try out. I am not sure what to do with so much of one type of vegetable! I hope that my children aren’t going to get too tired of it.

As usual, a consultation with the internet turned up many delicious looking recipes. I am gathering them all together here so that I can find them again when I am trying to figure out what to do with all of those squashes:

• From FatFree Vegan Kitchen, a wonderfully fresh looking soup
• Also from FatFree Vegan Kitchen, roasted yellow squash and onions
• From Vegan YumYum, a great method for pan-seared balsamic baby squash
• From Veg4Health, an interesting vegan squash casserole
• From Robin Robertson’s blog, Vegan Planet, another take on vegan squash casserole, which is more like a guideline than a recipe

This should get me started, along with my standard side dish of yellow squash, broccoli and sautéed onions. Now, I just need to be patient and wait for the bounty to begin!

Vegan picnicing

We went to the Shakespeare festival last night. We generally go early and eat a picnic dinner so that we can participate in the festivities before the play starts. They have jesters wandering around, and a fire eater and a juggler, and various dances or talks. It is all very fun, and a nice way to spend the evening with family and friends, topped off with some great free entertainment.



As I have said, I have been trying to eat mostly vegan, so the thought of a completely vegan picnic wasn't as daunting as it could be. I just feel so pleased with myself anyway, that I had to share what we are had:





For our main dish, we had falafels. In search of a healthier sandwich, I pan-fried half of them, but then I wasn't 100% sure that they were cooking all the through, so I baked the rest. On the right of the falafels in the back is some spicy hummus from Trader Joe's, which is very good. In front of that is a salad I made with tomato, cucumber, avocado and a Tzatziki like dressing (with some extra dressing on the side.) For the dressing, I used Tofutti Better than Sour Cream, fresh herbs from my garden and garlic powder. I was thinking that a little bit of mayonnaise would make it nice and creamy, but I was determined to have a vegan picnic, and I had bought a big jar of mayo right before I decided to go vegan, not Vegennaise. However, I looked at the jar of Trader Joe's reduced fat mayo, and saw that it is eggless, so I was thrilled to read the list of ingredients and find that it is vegan! It's like it's stealth vegan--they say no eggs, because vegans know that eggs are the non-vegan mayo ingredients, but then they don't have to scare people away with the v-word, ;-). In front on the left is tahini sauce with lemon juice, water, fresh cilantro and parsley, and lots of garlic, which was so yummy. Rounding it all out are whole wheat pita breads.




For dessert/snacking, I made up a quick fruit dip from La Dolce Vegan, which was so simple. Silken tofu, maple syrup and cinnamon in the blender--could it get any easier? It feels like a treat, but it is healthy--my favorite kind of food. I brought along pears to slice when we were ready for them:

Not pictured, we brought along whole wheat bread, peanut butter and bananas for the picky girl and her friend, and veggie chips and kettle corn and Sobe life waters, and juiceboxes and a bottle of wine. It was a great night, with friends and good food and a wonderful play, too!

Exciting discovery!

I just now discovered that Pi Pizzeria has Daiya cheese as an option for their pizza toppings! Vegan pizza! At a very popular restaurant (one that even our president likes!)

I am not usually so exclamatory, but this is pretty darn exciting. This is a place I can go out to eat with my not-even-close-to-vegan friends, and we can all be happy. Plus, we just discovered the awesomeness that is Daiya cheese at home in the past month or two, so I know it is delicious and the kids will be happy, too. But really, the awesomeness of the part where we can go out with our friends cannot be overstated.

Yay!

More transitioning

Last night I finished reading Eating Animals, by Jonathan Safran Foer.

Damn. Now I have to become a vegan.

Not that I am opposed to veganism. Much of the food that I eat is vegan. But now all meals with other people will be fraught with tension. People will feel judged, and I will feel left out, and the sort of community that you get from eating with other people will be even less available to me than it is now. I can’t un-know what I read in that book, though. I actually cried while reading some of the descriptions of animal lives and especially accounts of what happens in the slaughter houses. So, we are changing. We are going to go ahead and eat what we have in the house (if I can stomach it), but then no more.

The hardest thing for me will be the eggs. They are so useful when it comes to cooking. And a quick omelet is an easy dinner when I am feeling uninspired. I do have at least one vegan omelet recipe online, though, so that should help. Oh, and I have made tofu frittatas before, and those were awesome! The internet in general should help a lot. I have many vegan blogs bookmarked. And, this past year or two of being almost vegan will make for a less traumatic transition (for me at least—I don’t know about the kids.) Speaking of the kids, I am going to have my daughter read the book, too. I think this is really important.

Wish me luck!