Korean inspired dinner from the garden

For dinner tonight we enjoyed homegrown lettuce filled with dry brined, oven roasted, pork topped with Oliver's homemade sauces (sweet chili and ginger scallion). We ate in the backyard because it's quite hot in the house but it's also too early in the year to turn on the AC. Side note: On Facebook I keep seeing these photos of my Chicago and Boston friends bundled up in gloves and hoodies. It's hard to believe it's not already summertime all over the USA. To those people, enjoy the rest of your winter gardens! I believe this is the very last of ours. Onwards to summertime foods! 

Dinner salad from the garden: in pictures

 

 

Dinner: London broil (from last night's dinner) served cold on a bed homegrown lettuce with a side of black beans (made for this week's lunches). Our garden lettuces have been so easy and so prolific; I hope more people will give them a try in their own home gardens. It's a been a fun and satisfying experiment!

Spring vegetable garden 2012

 

  

February 18, 2012: The start of our vegetable garden for 2012! This is the first time we've planted in front of the house; until now there has been a slowly dying, ancient dogwood in the same space. We chose the spot because it gets the most direct springtime sun (something all of these plants require). The side and backyards get hardly an hour or two but we will return to them for tomato and eggplant season. (Speaking of tomato season - notice the grape tomatoes in the Blood Mary. They're the ones Oliver pickled from our very last summer 2011 harvest. Dill flavor, yum!)

I'm excited about the possiblity of eventually eating all of our pretty little plants but I'm equally apprehesive about squirrels running off with them. It's a problem I'm not sure how to address. Also, we're not sure the leeks are actually leeks. How could they be? They're so densely packed and skinny? Time will tell. Oliver thinks they are mislabled chives. And finally, was this too early in the season to put plants in the ground (as opposed to seeds)? Guess I'll be watching the weather closely and be ready with a ground cover if needed! Wish us luck!

Honey I shrunk the garden...

The frigid temperatures snuck up on us. After weeks in the 50's I wasn't even following the weather. The second night with unexpected (to me) temperatures in the teens shriveled the garden greens. In particular the bibb lettuce, bok choy and pepper plants. The romaine lettuce and kale look like they might pull through. It's disappointing that we didn't get to eat them but at least we learned. To be honest, part of me believed these little plants would pull through until spring! 

As I said to Oliver after I realized what had happened "It's a good thing we can go to the grocery store. We'd make terrible pioneers." Live and learn! I don't think I'll make this mistake twice.

Home ground chuck roast burgers and collard greens

Oliver picked up this chuck roast from YDFM today. Rather then tossing it into the crock pot he ground it with the Kitchenaid attachment. The ground meat was then formed into very loose patties and grilled over charcoal in the backyard. 


He paired the burgers with collards greens; a choice prompted by a conversation we had last week about the "worthiness" of some leafy greens. It started when Oliver wanted to add cabbage to our kale soup. I objected explaining that I found cabbage on par with iceberg lettuce. (In my opinion iceberg lettuce is completely worthless; at best it's a vehicle for blue cheese and bacon). When it comes to leafy greens I'm only interested in the darkest leafy greens (hence why I wanted to make kale soup). Though we disagreed about where cabbage should fit into my ratings he ultimately convinced me that cabbage does have many nutritional benefits. That and it was actually good in the soup. 

With the home ground, loosely formed burgers and collard greens we enjoyed our first taste of the home brew Oliver and his sister made the day after Thanksgiving. Vanilla bourbon porter - delicious! We were even able to eat dinner on the back patio because it is still so unbelievably warm here in Atlanta. 

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It drives me nuts that I don't have more control over the type size, kerning and leading on this blog. My sincere apologies to all the other designers who are also irked by the occasional, awful spacing.

Dinner from the garden - bibb lettuce with poached eggs

Tonight we ate the biggest, prettiest head of homegrown bibb lettuce for dinner. It was a simple salad: oil, vinegar, shallots, poached eggs, walnuts and some left over red pepper. A perfect dinner to follow a week of heavy holiday eating. 

For dinner last night we finally had left over turkey sandwiches. Delicious!


Tomorrow we're back to YDFM. I want to make a jalapeno, roast butternut squash soup. Oliver will be picking up groceries for our Saturday SEC championship tailgate party at the Georgia Dome. Geaux tigers!

From the comfort of his Macy's shopping bag, Topher would like to wish you a month of easy and affordable holiday shopping! If you're looking for gift ideas for locavores and foodies please check out the gift guide I put together on Etsy. It's full of gorgeous work by other Etsy crafters: click here!

Fall Planting - 4th update

It's the Sunday after Thanksgiving and I'm looking forward to a week of "normal" food. That's not to say our Thanksgiving meal* wasn't normal food. In fact it was surprisingly healthy (for Thanksgiving) and comprised almost completely of real food from the farmer's market. The only pre-packaged/processed foods were sugar, flour, butter, a couple of boxes of crackers and a tub of roasted red pepper goat cheese. Everything else, from the cranberries to bread crumbs, were purchased fresh. To meet the non-dairy needs of two family members Oliver substituted organic goat milk almost everywhere dairy was called for. (The exception was the creamed spinach; it was full on dairy loaded with marscapone and cream cheese.) There haven't been any extravagant left-over Turkey sandwiches but we've made up for it with homemade cinnamon rolls for breakfast every morning and bowls of oyster dressing for lunch. 


So I guess what I'm really looking forward to is a week of eating light. And what could be better for eating light then enjoying our first homegrown salad of the season! I think one of the Bibb Lettuces is ready to harvest - and the bok choy isn't too far behind. The fate of the littlest bibb lettuces, the ones we grew ourselves from seed, still seems undetermined. I think they may still be too little when the weather finally turns cold (it's 70 degrees now but will be in the 30s by the end of the week). The kale, onions and peppers are doing great. 

  

  

 

*Photo of Oliver's oven schedule for Thanksgiving day. I was so impressed with his ability to organize so many dishes all at once. He really did a perfect (and delicious) job with a very complex meal. Thank you Oliver! I love you.

Fall Planting - Round Three

As I write this post about my fall vegetable garden the "historic October snowfall" is just getting started in Philadelphia and NYC. If I lived there I'd be so disappointed to see all my work disappear so early in the season! Thankfully the weather here in Atlanta is still conducive to growing and my only challenge seems to be squirrels.

The chicken wire cage I improvised on Tuesday night is successfully guarding my plants from whatever animals might like to eat them and I think the bok choy will eventually rebound. The lettuce sprouts are delicate but growing quickly. And I added two kale plants from a local nursery. I can't tell a thing about the onions.

There is still a good amount of room for more vegetables so I'm on the look out for more plants to add.

Fall Planting - Round Two

Wow. So there is currently a lot going on in our little garden. I'll start in the back of the house with the fall salad greens.


The bok choy, romaine and bibb lettuce plants we purchased at the Grant Park farmers market are doing great. They're getting bigger by the day. When we returned to market two weeks later for more the vendor wasn't there (he was probably at the Field of Green's Festival). Instead of waiting another week for plants we decided to try a row of seeds. I'm very excited to report the seeds have sprouted! Yay! We may even need to thin them a few weeks down the road.


On the side of the house the peppers and tomatos are going nuts. If you read the "Fall Planting - Round One" post you might remember the fish emulsion fertilizer we used when planting the salad greens in the back. Well we used the left over fertilizer to water the tomatos and peppers. BOOM. Almost overnight we had triple the number of tomatos that we've over the last five months. There are at least two dozen tomatos on the plant right now. But of course, it can't possibly be that easy to have and keep such a profilic plant. Now the tomato plant has caterpillars.


Before you scroll down to the tomato photos (and the rest of the tomato/caterpillar story) I want to admit that our tomato plant is ugly, unkempt and out of control. New branches are resting on (and blocking) our stone pathway. It wasn't always like this... but we also weren't expecting it to go on into October.

 

 

We've had tomato caterpillar problems before. But it was a different sort of destruction (think locust-type annihilation). So when we began to notice green tomatos with small chunks missing I thought it must be squirrels. The damage seemed like just the right size for a rodent snack. Every few days we'd notice another tomato had been ruined. This morning I spotted what I think is probably caterpillar poo. (Ew, caterpillar poo!) I took a photo of the poo and the ruined tomato and came inside to upload them.


It wasn't until I had the tomato photo enlarged on my computer screen that I noticed the teeny tiny, camouflaged caterpillar. The little pest was eating my tomato while I watched and I didn't even see him! I ran back outside with a bottle of Ortho Max. Our tomato plant is no longer organic but hopefully we will eventually get to eat a few of these late season tomatos before the little caterpillars do!

Fall Planting - Round One

Fall planting has begun! This year we're trying a few new things. For starters, we're planting our leafy greens in bi-weekly waves. The last few seasons we've found ourselves with more ready-to-harvest greens then we could eat while they were ripe. After the perfect month of greens had passed there wasn't much left in the garden to eat. By planting new greens every few weeks we will hopefully spread out the harvest time thus providing garden fresh greens throughout the fall and into the winter. We're starting with Bibb lettuce, Romaine lettuce, and bok choy. We'll be adding kale, arugula and spinach.

We're also trying a new fertilizer recommended by an organic vendor at the Grant Park Farmer's Market. It's a liquid fish emulsion. Smells terrible but supposedly produces great results.

And finally, onions! We've never tried growing root vegetables because frankly - how are we supposed to know when they're ready to be picked? These onions were an impulse buy at Home Depot. They were cheap so we decided to give them a try.  Oliver planted them in the raised bed that previously held cucumbers.