AeroGardening

I have some really generous friends. After complaining about the crap lettuce at LOGS lately, a friend of mine offered to send me some AeroGardens she had bought for herself but never even taken out of the boxes. One thing led to another, and one day the Purolator guy showed up at my place with a huge box full of three 7-pod AeroGardens.

I had no place to put them at first, but as timing & good luck would have it, my dad got a new dining room table yesterday and I got a new bed. Dad came down to help me assemble my new bed and he brought down his old dining room table, and I just set the AeroGardens up on it in my spare room.

This is so exciting! Since I have three, I am dedicating one garden to my dad so he can have cherry tomatoes. The other two are for me; one is for mixed salad greens so I don't have to rely on the crappy stuff from LOGS over the winter (or ever again, for that matter), and the other one is for a 7 herb mix that includes dill, mind, oregano, thyme, and three kinds of basil.

I am totally stoked about this! They are very bright and they make a bit of a humming & gurgling noise because they are pumping water all the time to the bottoms of the seed pods, but that's OK. I can always close the door.

I'll definitely keep you posted!

Panini Heaven

So, this is what I made with my herbed focaccia from the previous post:
OH. MY. GOD.

If I ever open my own cafe, this is a sandwich I will definitely be serving!

Coyote's Ultimate Panini!

Focaccia bread
lemon & garlic mayo
mozzarella cheese
bacon
arugula
caramelized onions
Assemble. Grill.Inhale.

Yeah, this ain't no pedestrian ham & cheese, lemme tell ya! Let's take another look, shall we?Totally fracking orgasmically out-of-this world amazing!

Garden Bounty 2009, Part 1: Arugula Meatballs

Last year's lettuce fiasco in my little garden plot resulted in a rethinking of my veggie plans for this year's garden. I decided not to grow leafy greens that grew in tight bunches, so I opted for arugula. I also had seen lots of arugula appearing in various blog posts amongst my regular food blog friends, and I thought it would be a good idea to try out some new things with it. One recipe that stood out to me was Bellini Valli's chicken & arugula meatballs, seen here. Tonight, after harvesting some young arugula, I made a bison version of this meatball.

I got some bison on special at the local overpriced grocery store. There might have been about a pound or so. I added salt, pepper, garlic powder, and about 1/2 cup of finely chopped arugula.
After mixing well, I got out one of my favourite and most-used kitchen gadgets: my #70 cookie scoop. I scooped out the meatballs and put them in a pan to brown.When they were nice and evenly browned, I added some homemade pasta sauce I whipped up last night using some of the tomatoes I canned last summer.I let the sauce and meatballs simmer until the meatballs were cooked through, then served them over pasta.
Arugula, especially if it's relatively young, has a pungent smell and is quite peppery. I have to say, however, that they didn't add much in terms of flavour to the meatballs. Perhaps I didn't add enough. Who knows. The bison might have been too strong a pairing, too. Still, it was an excellent meal.

Garden Bounty: Basil

Who doesn't love fresh basil?

Such was my thinking when I planted three varieties of basil in the spring: regular basil, purple Thai basil, and lemon basil. As with the lettuce, I was totally stoked about having this homegrown herb, and from what I was told, it would grow anywhere - even in my gravelly garden. I had images of pesto and sauces and roast chickens fragrant with basil. Alas, it was not meant to be.

I'm not sure what exactly went wrong. It could have been our atrocious spring and late summer, and therefore our shorter growing season. In the case of the Thai basil, it was the wind. In the case of the other two varieties, it might have started out all wrong when I didn't label my seedlings so I'd know one basil from the other. I guess I was thinking that since they'd be distinctive, labeling wouldn't be necessary.

Anyway, after our June 10 snowfall and a horrendous windstorm shortly afterwards, I assumed all would be smooth sailing. The basil grew - to a point. The Thai basil reached a few inches and was totally felled by another windstorm and didn't grow any further. It was pretty tasteless, too. As for the lemon basil, it had - and I am not kidding - a distinctly anise-like scent and flavour.

I hate anise!

To top it all off, I guess the lemon basil and the regular basil got mixed up by some stray garden gnome, because what I thought was a nice crop of regular basil turned out to be approximately 80% anise-like. To boot, the plants didn't grow well and never developed a deep green, lush colour; as you can see by the photo above, they are yellowed and spotted with brown (the marigolds kept no bugs out, I tell you! None!).

So, on all sides, a complete disappointment. I picked what I could of non-anise-smelling basil and turned it into pesto - yielding less than 1 cup in total. The pesto itself was OK; you can disguise anything with enough garlic and Parmesan cheese.

Today, however, I did something spectacular with the pesto - and it didn't involve pasta at all. I made pesto pretzels, and I must say they outdid my pizza version by just a tad. Instead of putting on pizza sauce, I just smeared on pesto, added some grated mozza, baked, and Bob was my proverbial uncle. The aroma coming from my oven as they baked was mouthwatering, and the oil from the pesto made the bottoms crisp up very nicely.

So, I got something good out of my basil experiment after all, and it wasn't a complete loss. I have, however, learned some lessons: plant only regular basil and nothing labeled "lemon," and label the baby plants in their starter pots. As for the stunted growth and yellowness...I'm not sure; I cannot control the weather, after all (though God knows I'd love to), but I can put down a bit of topsoil to give my dirt a slightly higher nutrient level. Apart from that, who knows? Gardening has been a bit of a crap shoot for me.

Magazine Monday # 8: Shrimp in Ginger Butter Sauce

Ivonne is back from holidays, so Magazine Monday is back too!

Tonight's edition features one of my favourite things, shrimp. I always have frozen, zipper back shrimp around the house. They became a staple when I was on Weight Watchers a few years ago, as they are low in fat and high in protein. Oh, the shrimp dishes I made as I shrank! After kicking WW (long story), I kept the shrimp around. They aren't terribly expensive and as a single gal one 1lb bag goes a long way.

As I've mentioned before, I have a subscription to Gourmet, which I really enjoy. They have a monthly segment featuring dinners for one or two and in the September 2008 issue, the Shrimp in Ginger Butter Sauce recipe caught my eye. The ingredients were simple and on hand, and the method was easy, too.

This recipe is a keeper! I substituted some dry white wine for the sherry, and I served the shrimp with yellow beans and carrots from my own garden that I sauteed with some olive oil and garlic. The ginger butter sauce was a perfect compliment to the shrimp, but also tasted great with the veggies. And you can never go wrong with cilantro, in my books. The entire meal was delish!

Garden Bounty: Eating Weeds

If you read my other blog at all, you may recall that a couple of months ago my small garden was overcome by a nasty weed. I had some issues identifying this weed, but thanks to my good blogfriend Karen, who took it upon herself to contact an Edmonton greenhouse, I was able to find out the name of the bane of my existence. It was portulaca, AKA common purslane.

After identification, all of a sudden all kinds of people were telling me how nutritious this plant is, with it's high Omega-3 content and other wonderful vitamins and minerals. My friend E, who comes from the southern US, said she remembers putting purslane on salads when she was a child. Another blogfriend of mine even found me a potato salad recipe containing purslane.

I didn't want to hear it! All I wanted was for the purslane to disappear from my life - and my garden! I hold it responsible for the death of my chives, the non-appearance of the onions I planted, and the removal of a couple of marigold plants! Not only that, it's herbicide resistant, and though I wouldn't want to use any nasty chemicals in my garden, I also got very sick and tired of picking this weed. With my gravely soil and the smallness of the plant, not to mention the fact that it was everywhere, it was a major pain in the ass. It made me bitter and resentful, and I eventually gave up the weeding and almost gave up the garden altogether.

And then, lo and behold, the weeding I had done appeared to have controlled the purslane somewhat. I went out after neglecting the garden for a week or two, and I saw that the patches I'd weeded were now portulaca-free. In some spots, I purposely let it grow where I knew it wouldn't harm an already robust plant (like my rosemary and beans, for instance). The other day, I saw that it actually has tiny yellow flowers.

Then, I see that the August 2008 issue of Gourmet has a recipe for Purslane and Parsley Salad. This made me do a double take. I don't know why, but it did. Now, I don't like tomatoes, cherry or otherwise, and you might have read about the lemon juice shortage. I also don't like parsley enough to have it make up the bulk of a salad, and I don't have 6 cups of purslane in my garden anymore (I should have harvested and bagged the stuff to sell at the farmers' market for God's sake - a great missed opportunity on my part!). So, in short, no I did not make this salad from Gourmet magazine. But, I did decide to get wild and crazy and go out and pick some of the purslane to see what it tastes like.

The exeperiment: purslane three ways.

1. Purslane plain. Crisp, juicy, but somewhat tart, kind of like an unripe berry. My purslane isn't very big, though. Perhaps if I let it get bigger, it might sweeten up a bit. But, I don't want it getting any bigger!

2. Purslane with dip. This was much better, but only because of the dip. It disguised any tartness. Like many veggies we see displayed on platters, they are merely a means of getting lovely, creamy dip into our mouths, right? Such was the case with this part of the experiment.

3. Purslane with freshly ground sea salt. Meh.

The verdict: I'm not about to start cultivating purslane/portulaca for culinary uses. In fact, I hope to eradicate it fully from my garden next year by laying down mulch when I put the garden to bed for the winter.

Garden Bounty: Lettuce Surprises

One of the things I was looking forward to this summer was my lettuce crop. I planted two rows of romaine, and they were among the first plants to sprout up out of the ground. But, they were also, therefore, among the seedlings at most risk during our June snow/monsoons and general late growing season. For a week in June, I was covering my lettuce plants with cardboard so that frost/snow/hail didn't kill them off.

Well, they survived! The plants didn't get too big, though, in comparison to the heads of romaine you see in the grocery store. But, who cares? Size isn't everything, right? Right?

I don't know. What I do know is that lettuce at my local overpriced grocery store goes for between 89 - 99 cents per head, and for the last two summers, the lettuce available in the stores has been crappy - really crappy. Brown-edged, buggy, slimy, and without much shelf life. Last week at work, when I was washing the lettuce for the next day's sandwiches, I had to throw quite a bit of our three heads of leaf lettuce away because it was in such rough shape. And it wasn't just at the local overpriced place; everywhere seems to have icky lettuce this year. I have also noticed that other produce has been looking iffy as well. I couldn't find a decent potato two weeks ago locally, but did find a couple that were OK at Save-On Foods, which is in Nelson, and hour away from here. Cabbage has looked off, as have peppers. Many of the apples at my local place also have appeared on the sketchy side. I don't know what is going on, but it's pretty bad. I was hoping to have beautiful lettuce that I didn't have to pay for.

I got more than I was bargaining for.

The big thing I haven't liked about gardening is the bugs. I'm not an insect fan. I planted marigolds in hopes of warding off some of the nasty beasties, but to no avail. My lettuce has been crawling with ants, wasps, earwigs, spiders, beetles, and God only knows what else. Someone - I have no idea who - laid some eggs. I was not happy to see this, and needless to say, I got rid of this leaf immediately and checked all other leaves extremely closely so that I wouldn't be ingesting any extra protein. This was lettuce surprise number 1.

Number 2 was the fact that when I went to cut off the leaves from the plant, a milky white substance oozed forth from where the stems attached to the rest of the plant. It looked like dandelion milk. When I think of dandelion milk, I also think ew, because...well, just because. So, when I saw romaine milk, I was all of a sudden put off my own lettuce.

Surprise number 3 was pleasant: lettuce regenerates itself after you cut the leaves from the plant. I had no idea this would happen. Who'd've thunk it? Certainly not I. I was just expecting to have a finite amount of romaine and I was fine with that. It looks, however, that I'll have more than I know what to do with.

Finally, the verdict. I made my favourite lettuce dish, Caesar Salad. I used Renee's light Caesar dressing, some organic croutons I bought cross border shopping the other week, and some parmeasan from the local overpriced grocery store. I made sure my lettuce was extra squeeky clean and free of unwanted reproductive deposits.

Unfortunately, I didn't like it. It was tough and bitter and I nearly cried because I was so looking forward to it! I could barely chew it. Now, I'll have to pawn off my lettuce to anyone unsuspecting enough to take it from me. I don't know if the newer, regenerated stuff will be better, but man...What I had just wasn't good.

Am I back to grocery store lettuce? I'm not sure yet. I just know that if I plant a garden again next year (still undecided on that front) I will try another variety of this veggie.

Garden Bounty: Beans and Dill

This year I planted a garden. I haven't done this since childhood, but in the spirit of the 100 Mile Diet and general greening, I decided to plant a small veggie patch this year. It's been quite the adventure, and I'm not sure I'm enjoying it as much as I thought I would.

My garden has seen its share of adversity. First, we had a really late spring and summer, so our already short growing season was made even shorter. We had snow on June 10, necessitating my scrambling to cover up my little seedlings - only planted two short weeks previously. The plants I started indoors didn't all survive the transplanting process, which was frustrating and unfortunate. I also had a seriously nasty, bitch of a weed that has caused me nothing but strife! And, let's not forget the neighbourhood cats that were digging around in the garden shortly after I planted it. We also had huge hail twice and a very damaging wind storm.

But, I am glad to say that some things have survived all the adversity! I have an actual bean crop. At first, it didn't look like I'd get many beans, and I jokingly said to my family that I had a whole four beans, but I guess I should have been more patient, because then I had nine beans, and then enough to actually count as a decent serving. And there are still more popping up on the plants! The other night, I harvested the wax beans to have with a meal. I also have healthy dill, which I'm very pleased about. Sockeye salmon is fresh in the stores now, so I made a dinner of wax beans, rice, and salmon with my dill and some lemon.

The beans were good. I mean, they're beans, right? They tasted beany. The dill was dilly - no surprise. The salmon was baked to perfection if I do say so myself. It was quite a lovely meal, actually, and for a few moments I was able to forget all the annoyances I'd experienced in bringing this dinner to my own table. For a few moments, it was all worth it.


Next up: I have a bumper crop of basil and a whack of lettuce I need to do something with.