Pickin' the Purslane

Kris Young recently blogged about growing and eating cactus. I have a lovely cactus plant in a pot that he gave me 2 years ago. It is doing well.

When I took the plant, I thought I would eventually eat the fruit, but I was unprepared for how beautiful the plant is all by itself.

Last weekend, I enjoyed freshly-prepared nopales in Monticito, where the prickly pear cactus grows in large and sprawling groves near the older homes. The nopales dinner reminded me that it is always a good thing to work towards getting and using plants that don't need so much water.

Enter purslane. I didn't know that it was edible until a few years ago. It has become my favorite spring salad plant, hitting the plate after the lettuce, and before the cucumbers. It's a succulent, and, like the prickly pear cactus plant, it is considered not too pretty. I disagree, and I like to think of it as a trailing jade plant.

I pick and nibble on a bit of purslane when I go out to the garden in the morning. I let it go to seed. It is everywhere, and that will be so for years.

Enjoy!

Here's Kris' blog post: http://turning60consciously.blogspot.com/2011/05/day-233-smart-food-for-humans-on.html

I AM an Urban Homesteader

I don't usually count and weigh my produce. I eat it.
But, now that we are keeping score, here's some of what I am up to:

1 blackberry vine
2 grape vines
3 berry bushes
4 fruit trees
5 plots golden sunchokes
6 varieties of winter squash (red kuri, butternut, buttercup, baby pam pumpkin, Cinderella pumpkin, acorn)
7 varieties of summer squash (zucchini, yellow, pattypan, caserta, cocozelle, tatumi, round)
8 fava bean plants
9 colors of chard (white, cream, pink, green, lemon yellow, gold, orange, red, magenta)
10 sources of rescued spinning fiber (2 Ragamuffins, 2 Siberian Huskies, 1 German Shepard mix, 3 Spaniel mixes, 1 samoyed, 1 angora rabbit)
11 kinds of hot pepper (Bhut jolokia, serrano, jalapeno, giant cayenne, cayenne, poblano, NewMex Joe E. Parker, Espanola, Anaheim, bird, black pearl)
12 months of veggies!
No partridge. No pear tree. (yet)

The Big Haul

Cherry tomatoes have been taking over my patio. Things were getting out of hand. I was harvesting one to two cups a day, turning them into sauce and juice, or just eating them on the run.
I went away for a couple of days and when I returned, I thought there would be too many for me to handle, but when I went to take a look, I found all the plants were stripped. Now I am getting two or three a day. I am not sure what took them all. Squirrels? Crows? People?

Malabar Spinach

Today I took a bit of time for the backyard garden, before the rain starts. I have plenty of smaller cat litter buckets that I use for hauling soils and compost, and they are neatly lined up underneath the roof drip-line to catch any new rain.
And I have another reason not to believe much gardening advice I read on the internet. A couple of years ago, I brought home a cutting of red malabar spinach. I planted it in a tub and left it for a couple of years, with hardly any care. I was afraid I had lost everything during last year's hard frost and the flooding of my basket of saved seeds during a storm.
The barrel is now mostly filled with errant Detroggia beet seedlings, but I started pulling out those that didn't look like beets. Now I realize that most were all malabar spinach seedlings. As I started to transplant them, I noticed tons more seedlings. I can probably get 50 or more seedlings if I want to take the time to transplant them. I read that the seeds don't germinate well, and I sure don't believe that anymore.

The Tea Gardens

During the past few days, the temperatures have risen, the sun has brightened, and I find that if I don't put a thick layer of sunblock on, I'll get a sunburn. Of course, it is my usual intent to go outside "just for a minute" to see if everything is OK. Recently, these dashes into the garden have resulted in more and more time spent in the sun. There is always "just one little thing" that can be done before I dash inside for sunglasses and a hat.
This weekend I have spent quite a bit of time in the backyard, transplanting seedlings, getting new containers filled with new soils, trimming dead winter leaves and dividing the mint plants and dealing with compost. I started a dozen varieties of basil, plus summer savory and hyssop. Almost every planting pot I emptied contained a sprouting coast live oak acorn. The squirrels sure have been busy.
I have started a "tea garden" in an old recycled plastic tote. Since the container is fairly shallow, it will only work for plants that don't need to grow too deeply, like all the mints. When the new plants are established, I will drag the container to a shady spot for the summer. My vision is to have a few of these containers perched along some old steps in a remote and shady part of the garden. I have four kinds of mint and some lemon balm.
I have another "tea garden" tucked under an old olive tree. I just added a new layer into a new worm bin, and harvested the "tea" underneath. I just hope I didn't kill my worms. The bin was full of water after last week's rain, and I didn't see much evidence of worms. I added several new worms just in case.

Day 15 - Too busy to Cook

I have been on the run since the weather turned for the better and I realized that I had better get the garden prepared if I wanted any summer food at all. Can't live on dehydrated parsley and leeks forever.
For breakfast I had coffee from partner Irene, toast from partner Arlene, almond milk from partner Igor and garden greens with some butter.
In the morning, I snacked on snow peas and broccoli at the garden.
For lunch, I had a protein shake from partner Igor.
For a snack, I ate raisins, cookies, orange juice and cheese crackers, all from partner Nate.
For dinner, I finished the second batch of vegetable soup with turkey from partner Cindy, toast from partner Arlene, butter, broccoli, lettuce, beets and corn salad.
For an evening snack, I had a few almonds from partner Igor and some lime juice with limes from partner Colin.
I made a batch of squash soup with almonds from partner Igor, celery, leeks, vegetable broth, salt, coriander and black pepper from partner Ophelia. This will be for Monday.
Trading partner Ophelia has also been decluttering yard and garden supplies and the trades will really help to keep my garden expenses low for the coming year and beyond.

Day 3 - Settling in

Today I continued to settle into my early-springtime routine. I am busy preparing the garden, cramming in as much as I can between the rains, and cooking with tons of leeks and celery.
Like yesterday, I woke up early and felt like cooking, so I started making almond milk and broth from all the vegetable scraps. I also put two more trays of parsley into the dehydrator.
I made a wheat berry salad using a similar recipe as yesterday's potato salad. I added the bits of leftover pimento gracing the bottom of the olive jar.
I was pretty hungry this morning, so I had a packet of the nutrition drink from partner Igor, some cooked garden-grown amaranth seed with honey, a bit of the leftover vegetable stew with rice medley, some Earl Grey tea from trading partner Virginie and a few pond scum tablets from partner Igor. I had to fight off the cats to get the pond scum for myself. This isn't from a local pond, it's from Japan.

Oops! I Did it Even More Again (The Sequel)

Didn't I learn anything about squash this year? I grow plenty on my own, and now I am getting plenty of chayote to eat and pass around. Recently I planted a sprouting chayote on a little plot in the backyard. There is plenty of room for the squash vine to grow up some evergreen bushes, reach the olive tree, climb over to a grove of baby live oak trees and continue on down the street into my neighbor's yard, all the while clogging sewer lines, disrupting cable, irritating the Homeowner's Association Police.
I know better. I just couldn't help myself.

Hard Frost

This week, I went outside to find that a heavy frost killed several basil plants and the rain that had collected on a container lid was freezing into large sheets, trapping a lone chayote seedling. Unfortunately, I did not move all my tomato and pepper plants out of harms way. I will know in a few weeks which plants will survive and which I will have to replace. The ice-locked chayote seedling is doing well, but unfortunately, another larger seedling located in an open area has died back. Hopefully it will regrow.
The dehydrator is bursting with peppers this week, filling my living room with the scent of sweet peppers and sending me into coughing fits from the drying habanero's.

Salad competition - Locavore potluck redo

Kris posted his salad, but now we need a salad-off. Since I don't have a camera, I'll have to describe what I got to eat this week. I started with spinach from R, freshly plucked from his garden, crispy-tender and very curly. I added my own freckles romaine baby lettuce, and plenty of lettuce that B gave to me. (She was in Ojai this Sunday and went a little hog-wild at the farmer's market.) The varieties look like cos romaine, red oak, lolla rossa and buttercrunch. She also gave me some tender new asparagus, so I steamed it along with the haricot vert string beans and baby broccoli from my garden. I chopped a huge orange sweet tequila sunrise pepper and a small but deadly orange habanero and added it to the mix. The radishes came from M's garden. They were large and pink, with pink markings on the inside. I also slivered my own celery stalks, scallions and baby fennel.
I did have a dressing, made with local olive oil, sea salt, lime juice from La Casa, Italian and lemon basil from my patio, and R's dried marjoram. I topped the salad with sweet pomegranate seeds that P gave to me.

Bean Wars

My late beans are finally in! They seem to take so long this time of year, but well worth the wait. The first of the new crop of haricot verts was in this Monday, and now we are fighting over who gets to eat them all. I have only a few plants, but I am getting about one serving per day.
I had such good luck with this variety in the cold spring that it is here for another round. Hopefully the crop will keep going until the peas are ready. That may be a long time, since the first planting of peas is being trimmed mightily by some hungry animal.

Pumpkin at the Potluck

The pumpkin soup I had been planning all year for the potluck was a hit! The hardest part was growing the pumpkins. I started seedlings in February, and got some of them into the ground by March. The Cinderella pumpkin seedlings were transplanted a bit later in April. Both pumpkin patches had lots of compost that I made through the spring and summer of 2008 with horse manure from a friend, food waste from the local food bank and garden refuse. In the early spring, I cleaned out a friend's chicken coop, so the chicken manure was also added to the soil.
Now that I have shared the recipe for the compost and the soil, here's the recipe for the soup. I cooked the squash and made the broth the day before, prepared the tureen on the morning of the potluck and then did all the other stuff shortly before eating. I fully cooked the tureen two days later and it will take us another month to eat it all. That was one big pumpkin!
Soup
1 butternut squash
1 small eating-type pumpkin (I used Baby Pam)
1 Cinderella pumpkin
1 orange or red sweet pepper
2 red serrano peppers
1/2 cup raw walnuts
2 leeks
several green onions
several ribs celery
1 clove garlic
1 t coriander
olive oil
salt
water

Cut the squash and small pumpkin into pieces, remove the seeds for another use, and simmer in a large pan with 1/2 inch of water, covered, for 20 minutes. Let it cool gradually while you are doing everything else.
Soak the walnuts for several hours, and throw the soaking water into the compost pile.
Chop the bottom part of the leek, the white part of the onion, the bottom part of the celery, peppers and garlic, reserving the veggie tops, leaves and skins for broth. Saute the chopped veggies in olive oil until tender and let cool until they are easily handled.
Finely chop the veggie tops and leaves and put in a pan and cover with water, simmer for 5 minutes, cover and let cool for 15 minutes.
Strain the broth and add to a blender with the walnuts. Puree on high until smooth. Pour into a large pot.
Add the sauteed veggies to the blender and puree with additional water until they are smooth. Put the veggies through a food mill and add them to the large pot.
Scoop out the squash and small pumpkin pulp and put through the food mill and add it to the large pot. Add more water or broth until you get the desired consistency.
Toast the coriander seeds until they are fragrant and then grind with a mortar and pestle, and add to the pot. Season with salt to taste. Heat on simmer, stirring, until warm enough to serve.

Tureen recipe.
Cut an opening in the top of the Cinderella pumpkin like for a Jack-o-lantern, scoop out the seeds and strings, put the lid back on and place on a large baking pan and bake at 350 for 30 minutes. This is enough to get rid of the raw taste but not enough to cause the pumpkin to cave in. The flesh of this pumpkin is not scooped out and used for the soup.
While the tureen is still warm, add the hot soup.
The tureen will store very well in the fridge with the lid on for a couple of days, and can then be fully cooked and used for even more soup. You can also toast all the pumpkin and squash seeds the next day as long as they are washed and dried well.

My syncretic Food Culture – Part 2

Dad was from the heartland, and we lived there, too. He grew up on a farm, and even though he eventually went to school and work in the city, he always had a huge vegetable garden. It wasn’t too fancy by today’s standards, but we had all the basics. The garden was strangely ark-like; there were two kinds of lettuce, two kinds of squash, two kinds of beans, etc. We also had two kinds of apples: wormy macintoshes and wormy yellow delicious.
Summer mornings were spent picking, washing, weighing and delivering tomatoes and squash for sale to all the neighbors. I lined up the tomatoes by size to dry on the patio before packaging them in paper lunch bags. I weighed the tomatoes on an old baby scale, decorated with blocks and a stork. It was not legal for trade, but nobody turned me in to the authorities. As I recall, I did not collect or turn in any sales tax either.
Summer evenings were spent on the porch shelling lima beans or cutting worms out of fruit. Mom made peach and strawberry jam and several batches of grape jelly, and they were lined up in a large red cabinet in the basement, all topped with slabs of creamy white wax. Every year Dad put up a huge ice-cream tub full of sweetened apple sauce that nobody else would eat because of all the “worm juice”. It disappeared into the freezer and I am not sure what happened to it after that.
We lived near a woods that we explored and caught craw-dads. During a thunderstorm, a big old tree was struck by lightening and fell over the creek, simultaneously shortening our travel time to the other side considerably, and revealing a secret and extensive honey stash. Well, you’d think that Dad and discovered El Dorado, and soon we had a pot of honey on the kitchen table.
I was endlessly entertained by Dad’s stories on the farm, especially when he grossed everyone else out at the dinner table with his hog-butchering stories. It really helped if we were eating pork steaks or bacon. And this was often, as most food that wasn’t boiled was cooked in bacon fat. I am not sure how many containers of bacon fat we had in the back of the fridge, but the selection was extensive.
Except for summertime, our other food came from the suburban supermarket. The butter came in a plastic tub, the fish was square, the round steak was flat and the corn, sprouting what looked like a serious case of periodontal disease, was stripped and lobotomized on both ends and placed under plastic wrap. Nobody ever called it sweet corn. I learned that it was supposed to be sweet only after I moved to New York.

Potato disaster

I finally harvested the last of the potatoes after I found a large one on the open pathway with an animal bite taken out of it. I still rescued a few, and was busy daydreaming how I would eat them in the winter sometime, when it really matters.
When I opened my kitchen cabinet this week, I was disappointed (and a little grossed out) to see that a few of the potatoes had these weird sack-like pro"tuber"ances, and worms were crawling all over the shelf.
Oh well. Those visions of local potato chips might never be translated into reality, at least this season. I just hope the Jerusalem artichokes do as well as I need them to do. Right now they are towering over everything in the garden.
I am also very grateful that I have another kitchen cabinet. The other potatoes are still fine.

Squash Update

As I had predicted, the squash fruits were ready starting this week. The first were in the home garden, which, due to milder weather and hot pavement, can be up to two weeks earlier than the community garden plots. Since no male flowers opened up, I decided to harvest all the baby squashes and their blossoms. The first meal was a basil and cheese-stuffed and fried squash blossom. Next, I added some baby squash in a stir fry, and then diced some fresh squash and added it to a rice salad. Today all the pumpkins bloomed for the first time, but there were no male flowers anywhere around, so I harvested five of the fruits. I am fairly pleased with the results of my summer squash medley roulette. I have two round zucchini's, two straightneck yellow's, one tatume, and one caserta. This week I will be running around to check up on my donated plants. I hope someone has a cocozelle for trade.

Local potato chips

No, not THOSE potato chips, mine! Every year I try a few potato plants, mostly because they seem to come up on their own. I had never had much success with them, due to my soil conditions, hot weather, and my lack of knowledge. This year I planted some potatoes in a bed filled mostly with trucked-in soil and protected with hardware cloth on the bottom. They had been growing pretty well, so I hilled the soil up a couple of times. A few days ago, one of the plants wasn’t doing too well, so I decided to dig out anything that might be there before it rotted away. I was surprised to find 5 large, very high quality potatoes and one smaller one.

I had had instructions to bring home a leek or two, to cook a favorite chicken dish for my husband. When I arrived home and proudly displayed the potatoes, he said,

“Oh, potato leek soup!”

Now, that wasn’t what I had in mind at all. While doing other gardening chores, all I could think of was samosa filling. I didn’t have all the spices, or the pastry covering, but with a few substitutions, the re-engineered samosas could hopefully feed my Indian food craving. While I have eaten potatoes at my exception meals and out of town, the last time I cooked and ate a real potato was on Thanksgiving. Someone brought some Jerusalem artichokes to a locavore potluck, and they were wonderful, and surely something I will grow from now on, but there’s nothing like the real thing.

After much discussion about potato allocation, I realized I was too tired to make either dish, so I just whipped up a quick stir-fry and saved MY potatoes for later.

Last night we had potato leek soup. I still have four more opportunities, plus a bit for a pot of vegetable soup. Will one of the dishes be home-made potato chips? If so, they will have to be fried in home-churned butter or in what’s left of my gallon of local olive oil.

Going Global

Well, one of the plants in my International Basil Garden bit the dust. I guess there will be no Thai-inspired green bean casseroles this summer unless I start some more planting. But I continue to go global, with Greek spicy globe basil. It has it's own large container so that they can expand into all their spicy globalness without competition.

April Exceptions and the Promise of Summer

I am back to turkey, rice and mayocoba beans.
I have been working like crazy to get summer seedlings started. I have been double-digging my summer beds. I am looking forward to enjoying some new garden selections in the coming month. My snap peas are mostly finished, but my fava bean plants are flowering and should be producing fresh beans by the end of the month. The bush string beans and the teparies aren't far behind. The cucumber, squash and okra seeds have sprouted. Three tomato plants are in their final lanes and roaring along. The corn is in! This afternoon I planted a tiny international basil garden with Italian, Japanese, Thai and Persian varieties.

Why I am called the Chard Lady

Swiss chard is sort of like zucchini, only flatter. One plant will provide more than enough for a typical family, and more than enough to exhaust all your friends. But like zucchini, no good gardener plants just one chard plant. First there are a couple of plants, just in case one dies, then a neighbor plants a couple of other colors and soon there is chard envy and pretty soon there is every color of chard growing in every available corner and chard stuffed in a gaggle of bread bags in the vegetable crisper. And that doesn’t even account for what happens in the next year, when the plants start to send up a seed stalk that needs to be chopped back daily. Pretty soon the greenship is overrun with chardlet tribbles. You know you are really in trouble when the chard starts finding its way into smoothies and breakfast cereal.

I have a really great garden, and some of my friends do as well. Sometimes we grow just a little bit more than we can eat. I’ll admit that I am just a little bit like octomom when I get to gardening. If I get great germination, well, I need to plant each and every seedling, regardless of how I might take care of them or whether my tiny plot is already full. After all, they’re my seedlings, and I am not going to kill them, even if in the end it kills me. I never had chard when I was a kid and now I want to create that perfect chard garden that I longed for in my youth.

Sometimes my friends and I go on long vacations during the peak seasons, so we harvest for each other. Faced with my own surplus, and that of my neighbors’, I started taking all the extra chard to the local food pantry. After a couple of years of almost-weekly delivery, the director started calling me the Chard Lady.