Growing Green

I'm movin' on...

2010-08-04T08:05:00.000-07:00

My blog has moved and I hope you'll come with me!

Growing Green is now Seattle Seedling (www.seattleseedling.com)!

Same ideas, same mission, same blog, just a different name, a name that's much easier to share and remember than the old one.

Here's to new beginnings!

Cheers!

-Stacy

An Incredible Feast!

2010-08-01T16:56:00.000-07:00

I just bought my tickets to attend the 6th annual fundraiser farmers' market dinner titled, An Incredible Feast – Where the Farmers are the Stars, and I am SO excited!! Last year, I didn't see the poster for this event until the day before and I was so bummed. By then, it was too late to get it together to go. I just told Jake this week that I've got to look up the event information ahead of time so I don't miss it this year and to my delight, on Saturday, there was a chalkboard at the U. District Farmers' Market advertising this year's dinner.

I talked to some of the girls at the market and they gave me to the scoop. Basically, all these amazing local chefs convene to create lots of gourmet dishes with local produce, showcasing our local and seasonal bounty. The flier says it best, "guests can sample over 30 gourmet dishes, enjoy excellent local (Salmon Safe certified!) wines and beers, and meet the chefs and farmers behind the food." And this year, because it's a 21 and over event, you'll be able to walk around and enjoy the food and festivities with your wine or beer in hand rather than being confined to a wine/beer garden area. I also heard through the grapevine that one of the fun country-fair-style games might be skee-ball! It doesn't get better than that! Oh! And bring your own plate and fork to the event and you can be entered into a drawing. I love that!

The tickets are now available at brownpapertickets.com, which you can access while also getting more information about the event by visiting seattlefarmersmarkets.org. I can't speak from experience, but I think this is going to be a delightful event and I can hardly wait!

Simple Pleasures

2010-07-31T15:26:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, the littlest things make me so happy. Like this reclaimed wood caddy I got at Red Ridge Farms in the Willamette Valley. I filled it with a bunch of differently sized tin cans my dad's been saving for me. I lined them with plastic, punched drainage holes in the bottoms, filled them up with potting soil, and used them to pot up the little broccoli, kale, chard, and bok choy seedlings I started a few weeks ago. I filled the smallest ones with chives. Now, every time I go through the front door, I see them and smile.

Now, I've got to talk basil. Maybe I missed the boat and everyone already knows this, but I just learned that putting freshly harvested basil in a jar full of water is the best way to store it until you're ready to use it. I used some basil the other day that had been in the mason jar for a week and it was still vibrant and just like new. This has been a simple, but amazing discovery! I've always had a hard time harvesting and eating all the basil I grow before it starts to flower, but now, I know I can harvest it and keep it fresh for a bit until I'm ready to use it. Plus, it makes a beautiful bouquet! Right now, I have a jar of fresh picked basil next to a larger jar of huge dahlia blooms from the garden and it's the best centerpiece I've created in awhile. And it smells great too!

Seed Saving Class, this Saturday!!

2010-07-30T07:24:00.001-07:00

It's not too late to sign up for the Saving Seeds class at Seattle Tilth, which will be held tomorrow, Saturday, from 10am to 12am. I stumbled upon the class listing in a Seattle Tilth e-newsletter this week (not sure why I didn't see it earlier) and faxed my registration just yesterday. Unfortunately, because of low enrollment, it might not actually happen. And that would be such a bummer! It is being taught by the author of the book Edible Heirlooms, which you might remember hearing about in this post. I saved my own tomato seeds last year for the first time and I've got to tell you, it's the coolest thing to have tomato plants flourishing from them this summer. I think the class will be super interesting and informative! You should join me!

Here is Seattle Tilth's class description:

You can grow vegetables from your own seeds. Save your favorite variety, make your plants truly local, perpetuate and pass on heirloom varieties and save a bit of money in the process. The class will cover pollination types, how to choose your seed plants, how to hand-pollinate, how to save seeds using dry and wet methods, and how to harvest and store seeds.
Bill is the author of the recent book “Edible Heirlooms: Heritage Vegetables for the Maritime Garden,” which tells the lore and cultivation of more than 100 heirloom varieties of favorite home-garden veggies.

I heart summer!

2010-07-29T18:19:00.001-07:00

Oh, summer! How I love thee! Let me count the ways!

I love peach and blueberry pie!

I love how happy the chickens get when they graze on the sun-kissed lawn.

I love leaving the car at home and riding my shiny new bike for business (trips to the market) and pleasure (jaunts down the boardwalk at Alki).

I love the amazingly beautiful blooms that adorn my new pathway and love the bees that visit them!

And I love enjoying fresh basil and the first zucchini from the garden!

Zucchini Basil Pizza

Adapted from Local Flavors.

This recipe is almost too simple to post, but I want to share because I just devoured way more of that pizza than I should have. I used the pizza dough recipe from Deborah Madison's cookbook, Local Flavors. It always turns out amazing!

homemade pizza dough

1 medium zucchini, cut into thin slices (about 1/4 inch thick)

8 or 9 large basil leaves, slivered

Chevre

olive oil

red wine vinegar

salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 500 degrees. Roll the dough into a circle and place on a pizza pan.

Place the zucchini slices and slivered basil leaves in a bowl. Drizzle with olive oil and a couple splashes of vinegar. Add salt and pepper to taste. Toss zucchini until well coated.

Brush the dough with olive oil and spread the zucchini slices on the dough, covering completely if there's enough. Dot the pizza evenly with crumbled, fresh chevre.

Bake for 15 minutes. When the crust is golden, remove from the oven and brush the outer crust with olive oil. Cut into wedges and enjoy!

Willamette Valley Wineries: A Green Getaway

2010-07-25T12:22:00.000-07:00

Jake and I were originally supposed to go backpacking this weekend, but Jake injured himself while running this week, so we had to change our plans. A quick, last minute search on the Internet and Sunset.com led us to the Willamette Valley in Oregon, about a half hour outside of Portland, for the perfect low-impact activity – wine tasting!

I've never visited any of the local wineries in our area, but it's something we've been talking about doing for awhile. Especially after traveling to Mendoza, Argentina for Malbec tasting. Granted, we didn't trek all the way to the southern hemisphere just to taste wine, but once we did, we had so much fun, we talked about checking out the wineries available in our own backyard (or hemisphere). Washington and Oregon have many to choose from. And what a fantastic discovery it was!

I had no idea how lovely our local wine country is! It is absolutely beautiful! We left Seattle early Friday morning, which put us in Dundee Hills, one of the large winery areas in the Willamette Valley, just after noon. Before we started our tour, we stopped in at the Newberg visitors' center for a winery map. They gave us several vouchers for free tastings at two different wineries and were also able to give us some good recommendations, which was nice since there are so many wineries to choose from. On our first day, we visited the following wineries: Four Graces, Winderlea, Lange, and Erath. This area is known for its Pinot Noir, which is one of Jake's favorites. We're normally partial to red, but were suprised to discover several whites that we really liked, especially the Chardonney from Lange.

After a hard day of wine tasting (wink), we had both worked up an appetite and I was delighted to find the most perfect restaurant for dinner, right in our hotel. First, I've got to say that the Inn at Red Hills, the boutique hotel in Dundee where we stayed, was lovely! I loved everything about it – the organic/farmhouse chic decor was right up my alley and the owner, Kendall, was super welcoming and cheerful.

Even the gifts they sold in the lobby were adorable! I loved everything – the ceramic farm kitchenware, the reusable bags, the "Who's your farmer?" bumper stickers, the hand carved, wooden pig bookends, and the turquoise bird salt and pepper shakers that I just couldn't resist.

And the restaurant! The lovely, little restaurant in the hotel called Farm to Fork focuses on creating delicious meals with locally sourced and super fresh ingredients. Our dinner and breakfast, which we ate at the restaurant, were amazing! Saying that Jake loved their delicious and uniquely crisp breakfast potatoes would be an understatement.

And it was all I could do to focus on the meal and stop making comments like, "Oh, Jake! Look at that picture of chard! Oh, I love those tables! Aahh, look at those wood pigs! Oh, I should put my lavender cuttings in vases like these!" There was no doubt that we had found the most perfect spot!

Our second day in the Willamette Valley was lovely as well. We started by taking a drive to Carlton, another little winery town in the valley. We didn't end up doing any tastings there since we weren't quite ready to start drinking wine before noon, but we decided we'd have to come back when we were. It was definitely worth the drive though – I was able to hit up some cute antique shops there, including a sale in a big red barn!

We actually ended up back in Dundee, where we stopped off at Red Ridge Farm for olive oil tasting and lavender smelling! The farm was amazing! Their beautifully fragrant lavender plot was teeming with bees! The buzzing sounds and lovely smells could have kept me entertained for hours.

I eventually lured myself away for our visit to Domaine Drouhin, Bella Vida, Crumbled Rock, Torii Mor, and Penner-Ash. The pinots were delicious, the views were incredible – the whole trip was so worth the short drive from Seattle. We finished off our getaway with another delicious, localtarian delight – dinner at the Farm Cafe in Portland. I'm eating the other half of my Farmhouse Veggie Burger on ciabatta bread as I type this – it's unlike any burger I have ever had. Did I mention they posted the recipe for said burger on their website? Yes, I will most definitely be making it as soon as I see eggplant at the market this summer.

I didn't mean to write a novel today, I just had no idea this amazing place existed. And just a quick car ride away! The whole experience was so lovely. I can't wait to explore even more of our local treasures!

Pie in a Jar

2010-07-18T20:31:00.000-07:00

It's blueberry season, people. I've been waiting quite patiently for this time to come back around and it's finally here! The weather has finally warmed up enough to ripen those beautiful berries and the U-pick farms around Washington are open for business! I could not be more thrilled, which is why I went to Bryant Blueberry Farm in Arlington on Thursday and picked my first 28 pounds of blueberries.

Ok now, I know what you're thinking. 28 pounds of blueberries?! Quoting my bff, "What does one do with 28 pounds of blueberries?" That's a perfectly valid and logical question. So to start, I have to explain the oatmeal debacle. Last year's blueberries ruined us for plain oatmeal. Jake and I were going along just fine, eating plain old oatmeal everyday before work until I started putting blueberries in it. Later in the year, I'd make it with frozen blueberries that I'd preserved from my picking and it was equally delicious. And then, when we finally depleted our blueberry reserves and had to start eating plain oatmeal again, it was a total letdown. It's like this episode on Seinfeld when Elaine and Jerry are on the same flight, but Elaine is in the mundane, crowded coach seat and Jerry is in the decadent first class seat. He tells her he's been in first class and knows what it's like now and can't possibly go back! Having blueberries in your oatmeal is like flying first class; I can't go back to coach now! So, Jake, being the smarty mathematician that he is, dutifully calculated how many pounds of blueberries I'd have to pick in order for us to eat a 1/4 cup of blueberries in our oatmeal every weekday of the year until blueberry season comes again. According to his calculations, I'm going to have to pick around 51 pounds! I know, you probably think I am crazy to be actually contemplating picking 51 pounds of blueberries for oatmeal. Having blueberries in your oatmeal everyday is not a necessity – I realize this. However, if it means I get the day started off right with some antioxidants and a smile, plus have an amazing time picking each and every one of them (at only $2 a pound for organic, local berries), I think it might be worth it.

So, because I couldn't possibly store all of those berries without enjoying some of them while they're especially ripe and spectacular, I put some of them to immediate use this weekend. I made blueberry butter. And by making said blueberry butter, I officially became a canner! That's right – I made a canning recipe that I processed using the boiling water method and can proudly say that I'll be storing those goods on the shelf, thank you very much! And the result (because yes, I already opened one jar – can you blame me??) – toast never had it so good! Believe me, if you think apple butter is good, try this recipe ASAP. It is phenomenal!!

Blueberry Butter

Adapted from Slow Cooker Blueberry Butter, foodinjars.com

According to Ashley in Canning and Preserving with Ashley English, the book I've been reading before bed (yep, I'm just puttin' it all out there now), a fruit butter is "a fruit and sugar mixture where cooked fruit is pureed and then combined with sugar and heated until smooth and velvety."

I'm finding that a frying pan splatter screen is a valuable canning tool. This recipe makes a mess. Oh! And note to self - don't wear white while simmering this dark blue butter!

I highly recommend that you check out the original recipe for this butter, which uses a slow cooker. I will most definitely try it out some time. Naturally, I had ten million projects going on at once when I made this, so I just made it on the stove. But, it turned out delicious all the same – like pie in a jar without the crust!

Makes approximately 3 pints

8 cups of pureed blueberries (about 12 cups of fresh blueberries)*

2 cups sugar

2 teaspoons cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon of nutmeg

Put the blueberry puree, sugar and spices in a stockpot and bring to a gentle boil over medium heat. Reduce the heat to low, and simmer for about an hour, until the mixture has cooked down and is dark and smooth. Make sure to stir often so the mixture does not stick or burn.

Ladle the blueberry butter into your sterilized mason jars, leaving 1/4 inch of headspace. Process for 10 minutes in a boiling water bath.

*Blueberries puree beautifully in a blender, no added liquid necessary.

Tin Can Lanterns

2010-07-15T18:43:00.001-07:00

I've got art on the brain for some reason. This may be obvious, considering my last post and the newly added page to this blog, The Art. It's just such a big part of my garden and my life, it's gotta be part of this blog. So, my latest endeavor to beautify my space has been to create more garden lanterns.

I started creating mason jar lanterns last year after reading this post of Willi's. I put lids on the jars in the fall to keep the rain out of them and they held up just great through the winter. Of course, I don't light them during the cold and rainy winter months, but they make me happy just seeing them hanging in the trees. They keep me thinking about the sun that is soon to come.

This year, I've moved on to tin cans a la Martha Stewart. And I love them! They are just so precious and easy to make. Plus, they're green – transforming recyclable tin cans into functional art!

Just rinse out the can, fill it up with water (leaving about 3/4 of an inch of space from the top), and stick it in the freezer until frozen solid. The frozen water helps the cans keep their shape. Then, using a variety of nails to create different sized holes, pound a design into your can with a hammer. Don't forget to add two holes near the top on both sides of the can for the hanging wire. I forgot to do that on the first one and when I tried to pound them in later, I completely dented the can. Now it's resigned to be a table lantern.

I used some thick, but pliable wire to create simple hangers and used my needle nose pliers to bend a spiral shape into the ends of the wires, a feature that also keeps the hanger attached to the can!

I have the tin can and mason jar lanterns hanging all over the maple and apple tree out front and when they're all lit, it's the most welcoming and cozy sight I've ever seen in the city. Makes me feel like I should have a porch swing!

My Mosaic Mural

2010-07-14T19:11:00.000-07:00

Those of you that have been in my garden know that art abounds around here. I think one of the things I love the most about having a big yard is having space to decorate outdoors. I love me some color and even more, I love mosaics! (Remember these and this? Oh! And who could forget him?) I was blown away by Gaudi's mosaics when I studied abroad in Spain during my college years, so when I came back to the states, I immediately found a mosaic stepping stone class. That class created a monster and I have since been mosaicing an abundance of surfaces around my home, inside and out. Well, this month marks the three year anniversary of my biggest project yet, a 12 foot by 5 foot tumbled stained glass mosaic mural, which adorns the back wall of my detached garage and is the backdrop for my patio. It took me exactly 31 days to complete, the whole month of July 2007. I worked for six to eight hours a day putting up every piece by hand, and three years later, I'm still loving every one!

The blank canvas, before

Tile backerboard and a quick sketch

Mountains and a tree line, an idea which didn't come about until a quick trip to Bedrock for more glass. I was driving over the hill towards Ballard, saw the beautiful Olympics in the distance, and thought, Yes! That's what I need! A tree line!

Treeline complete. The interminable application of grass blades begins.

Filling in the tree and...more grass.

Another tree!

Blue skies with pieces of mirror to reflect the natural sunlight

Yep, more grass

Sunshine and Ria's bluebird, a little tribute to my bff, Radhi.

Complete!

Thousands of blades of glass, which I cut by hand out of four different shades of green stained glass

What's a barbecue without the mustard?

2010-07-12T21:51:00.000-07:00

It has been so sunny and beautiful lately. I love summer in Seattle! And to make things even better, I've got time off to do all my projects. So, I've finally made a couple of recipes from the super cool book, Jam it, Pickle it, Can it. I made mustard!

To make this classic barbecue condiment, I mixed together organic yellow mustard powder, sugar, vinegar, and salt. I let it sit in a cool, dark place for two weeks and just in time for my dad's birthday barbecue, the mustard was ready!

It's delicious – tastes like dijon honey mustard. The consistency is a little odd. It's thick like peanut butter, so you have to spread it with a knife. I spread it on the crust before baking the delicious Romanesco cauliflower tart with carmelized onions I made for dinner tonight. I was raving after every bite!

Tonight, I made the recipe for ketchup. It has to sit over night, but judging by the taste I had while it was simmering, it's going to be delicious too. I had no idea mustard and ketchup could taste so good!

Our Second Spring!

2010-07-11T08:39:00.000-07:00

I learned in a Seattle Tilth class last year that July is our second spring. That means that now is the time to start planting your fall and winter garden. I use the Seattle Tilth Maritime Northwest Garden Guide for direction and make sure I buy seeds for overwintering plants or plants that are meant to be planted for the fall. A lot of times the varieties will be slow-bolting, which means the seedlings hold out for our cool, fall weather longer than varieties we'd plant in the spring that would quickly go to seed in our hot summer weather.

The key is to keep that seed bed moist – you don't want the soil to dry out before your seeds germinate. One way you can do that is by draping some floating row cover over the seed bed. It is a special type of agricultural fabric that is designed to let light and rain water in, while keeping a lot of pests out. You want to drape it loosely on the seed bed with some slack, so when the seedlings start growing, the fabric will move and "grow" with them. Just remember to keep it watered under there!

This month, you can plant:

Overwintering Carrots

Oriental Greens, like Pac Choi

Broccoli, Cauliflower, and Cabbage

Swiss Chard and Kale

Snap and Snow Peas

In late July and August, plant:

Spinach and Lettuce

For a complete listing of all the delicious vegetables you can grow during the fall and winter, check out the Maritime Northwest Garden Guide. On my Pacific northwest urban farm, it's indispensable.

Homemade Hiking Sustenance

2010-07-08T14:22:00.000-07:00

I went for an amazing hike on Tuesday with a couple of my girlfriends to Noble Nob near Mt.Rainier National Park. I was really excited about it because I have never done any hikes in that area, nor have I spent much time that close to Mt.Rainier.

We were lucky to have beautiful, sunny weather. The temperature was perfect – not too hot, not too cool. The hike is seven miles round trip and there's only about a 500 ft elevation gain, so it's not too rigorous a hike. We had to traverse a few snowy patches, some that completely covered the trail, but it was fun and melting snow run-off that flowed down little waterfalls made for some interesting scenery along the way.

Because I am the ultimate planner and wanted to bring localtarian snacks to eat along the way, I made homemade energy bars. They are chock-full of whole grains and will keep in an airtight container for up to two weeks (or could be frozen), so they can be fodder for other outdoor adventures as well.

Peanut butter cranberry energy bars
Adapted from Sunset, October 2008

Cooking oil spray or neutral-tasting oil, like Canola oil

Dry ingredients:
1 cup regular rolled oats
1/3 cup oat bran
3 tbsp. flax seeds
1 cup whole-wheat flour
1/2 tsp. each baking powder and salt
1/2 cup raw pumpkin seeds
1/2 cup dried cranberries

Wet ingredients:
3/4 cup natural peanut butter (I get mine freshly ground in the bulk section of the PCC)
1/4 cup milk (I used almond milk)
1 large egg
1/2 cup honey
1 tbsp. lemon juice

Line a 9 x 13 in. pan with plastic wrap, leaving some to overhang on the 9 in. sides, and coat with cooking-oil spray or brush with canola oil. In a large bowl, stir together the dry ingredients until well blended.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat together the wet ingredients until well blended.

Add the flour mixture (dry ingredients) to the peanut butter mixture and beat until completely blended. Scrape the dough into the prepared pan and, with wet fingers or a rubber spatula, pat to fill the pan completely and evenly. The dough is sticky so you may need to wash your hands a few times. Chill the dough, in the pan, until firm, about 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees. Invert the pan onto a work surface, lift off the pan, and remove the plastic. Using a bench scraper or knife, cut straight down lengthwise through the middle, then crosswise to make 16 bars, each 1 1/2 in. wide. Place the bars about 1 in. apart on a baking sheet lined with parchment.

Bake the bars until lightly browned and somewhat firm to the touch, about 20 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool completely.

Special thanks to Hollis for taking these beautiful pictures and Stacey for posing in one of them with me!

Basil Lemonade

2010-07-07T21:20:00.000-07:00

Well, summer officially arrived in Seattle this week. The highs were in the 80s today and the weathermen were saying it's supposed to be around 90 tomorrow. A few of my girls came over today and to keep them cool and refreshed, I made a pitcher of basil lemonade. It was super delicious. So, if you're sweltering too in your neck of the woods, I highly recommend that you try it.

Basil Lemonade
Adapted from The Herb Companion, July 2010

1 cup fresh squeezed organic lemon juice, about 5 lemons
1/2 cup sugar
6-8 large genovese basil leaves (more or less - this is not an exact science)
Sparkling water (I used local brand Talking Rain Sparkling Water, Lemon Zest flavor)
Ice

Combine the lemon juice and sugar in a mason jar with a lid or cocktail shaker; shake vigorously until combined.

Put the basil leaves, ice and lemon juice mixture into a pitcher. Fill up the pitcher with about a liter of sparkling water (I used about half of a 2 liter bottle). Give the lemonade a good stir and serve it in cold glasses with a basil leaf or two.

Makes one pitcher (about 6 -7 pint glasses).

Enjoy and stay cool!

My first tomatoes...in June!

2010-07-05T17:48:00.001-07:00

I harvested my first ripe, Stupice heirloom tomato for our Fathers' Day BBQ. My first tomato... in June, thanks to my lovely plastic-covered hoop house structure! I tempted fate when I put those seedlings in the ground so early, but I guess they got enough heat in their little house. As for the peppers and tomatillos...I'm not so sure. I'll have to keep you posted on those.

Those beautiful tomatoes came from the seeds I saved last summer, my first attempt at saving seeds. I guess it worked!

Jake and I were diggin' this series of photos. Basically, it's the super simple, but ridiculously delicious way I put this first tomato to use.

Home-made French walnut bread with fresh Chevre

I can't get enough goat cheese lately. After giving up dairy last year for my allergies and hearing that goat cheese is more easily digested, I've been giving it a try. Actually, I think "giving it a try" is a major understatement at this point.

Fresh basil leaves topped by delicious Stupice tomato slices and a healthy drizzle of olive oil

Devoured with pleasure

Peas with a little cello

2010-06-29T18:27:00.000-07:00

I harvested my first peas of the season yesterday. I find harvesting peas to be so intriguing. I get into a groove, picking peas like crazy, and then, when I stop for a minute because it seems like I've picked all the peas in an area, I find more.

If you stare into the pea vines long enough, you'll find more right in front of your nose. I know it sounds strange, but when you think about it, most of the things we harvest (think zucchini and strawberries) are a different color than the plant that surrounds it, so they're easy to spot. But peas, and beans for that matter, and their surrounding leaves and vines are the same color, so they are easily camouflaged amongst the legume foliage.

I toted my little red ipod around with me all day yesterday as I gardened and harvested those delicious peas and just couldn't get enough of my new tunes. I usually garden to the sounds of the birds and the city, but I recently discovered a musical gem that has made my gardening doubly entertaining. While listening to one of my favorite podcasts, Radio Lab, I heard Jad, one of the co-hosts of the show, interviewing Zoe Keating. Zoe is a cellist that fuses together different melodies, created with her cello, to compose songs that sound as if they were being played by an orchestra. After replaying that podcast episode several times so I could hear the sample songs she played, I finally bought her new album. It's not even on iTunes yet, but you can download the mp3 version of the album directly from her web site. I don't know how many times I've listened to track two, Escape Artist. Cheesy, I know, but I find it breath-taking.

Got chicken wire?

2010-06-28T19:24:00.000-07:00

Well, my summer vacation is in full swing and I am in project mode – big time. Jake came home on Thursday evening to find me in the middle of painting the bathroom. It was time to make it a little more farmhouse chic like the rest of the house. And nothing quite says farm like a little chicken wire, at least on my little urban "farm". So, I put some extra chicken wire to use this weekend by making a funky and practical girly bathroom accessory, an earring holder.

I just painted an inexpensive, wood picture frame from Ikea. Once the paint was dry, I cut out some chicken wire with my fantastic tin snips and used a heavy-duty stapler to attach the wire to the back of the frame. If you don't count the time it takes for the paint to dry, this craft takes about ten minutes to complete. It almost takes more time deciding which pair of earrings to wear.

The Ladies: Three and half months old

2010-06-27T17:41:00.000-07:00

Lucy

Ethel

Penny (a.k.a. Henny Penny)

Now that's a perennial!

2010-06-23T10:52:00.000-07:00

When I was 17, I got a purple pansy tattooed on my leg. My dad went with me when I had it done and it was something I was happy with for years. But, this winter, I started getting the itch to revive my tired, 13 year old tattoo with something new.

So, I made an appointment with an amazing artist, Andrea, at Slave to the Needle in Ballard, waited four months to finally get an appointment with her, and endured a little over two and a half hours of pain to have this beautiful new tattoo. Sure, having a pansy on my leg as a gardener was fitting, but this one just feels a bit more like me – more grown up, more botanical knowledge under my belt, more creative and artistic. The beautiful bee design I chose is not my artwork. My dad found it on some farmers' market poster. It's all healed now and after all, this week is National Pollinator Week, so what better time to make its blog debut.

The Bee's Knees

2010-06-22T07:36:00.000-07:00

Did you know it's National Pollinator Week? It's the perfect time to get some beautiful, pollinator-friendly blooms into your garden if you haven't already. Plants, like squash (summer squash and winter squash), require pollination to produce fruit. So far, to attract bees to my garden, I've planted nasturtium, six different varieties of heirloom sunflowers, three different types of lavender, zinnia, and tons of dahlia tubers, not to mention all of the showy blooms I planted down the wild flower path. According to Sunset, you can enter your zip code at pollinator.org/guides.htm to get a list of pollinator-attracting plants for your area.

Need some inspiration? Check out the Pollinator Pathway, a mile-long pollinator-attracting garden planted in the parking strips (the band of grass between the sidewalk and the street) along Columbia Street in Seattle.

Want to have your own hive, but not sure where to start? Check out Ballard Bee Company and consider hosting a hive. The Ballard Bee Company will place a hive in your yard, maintain the hive, and will even give you a jar of honey for your efforts, not to mention all of the bees you'll have in your yard to pollinate your plants.

You can also support our local pollinators on a larger scale by getting involved in The Great Sunflower Project, a scientific effort to understand urban bee populations. Be a citizen scientist by joining the project, planting beautiful sunflowers, and observing bees in your own garden!

Farmers' Markets Galore!

2010-06-21T15:36:00.001-07:00

You know it's summer when there's a farmers' market open somewhere in Seattle almost every day of the week. I love this time when I don't have to wait until the weekend to see what the local farmers are harvesting. With so many options, I can get a jump on buying more strawberries to make into jam. And you know how much I hate to wait.

Here are just a few of your weekly farmers' market options:

Wednesday:

Columbia City Farmers' Market, 3pm - 7pm

Wallingford Farmers' Market, 3pm - 7pm

Thursday:

Lake City Farmers' Market, 3pm - 7pm

Friday:

Phinney Farmers' Market, 3pm- 7pm

Madrona Farmers' Market, 3pm - 7pm

Saturday:

University District Farmers' Market (Year round), 9am - 2pm

Magnolia Farmers' Market, 10am - 2pm

Sunday:

Ballard Farmers' Market (Year round), 10am - 2pm

West Seattle Farmers' Market (Year round), 10am - 2pm

Broadway (Capital Hill) Farmers' Market, 11am - 3pm

Meadowbrook Farmers' Market (new and off the beaten path), 11am - 3pm

Wild Flowers in Mt.Hood, Oregon

2010-06-20T19:06:00.000-07:00

We rambled through fields of these beautiful yellow and purple wild flowers today on our way to our friends' post-wedding picnic brunch. I felt like Julie Andrews should have been skipping beside me singing, "The hills are alive with the sound of music!" It was gorgeous and is exactly what I hope my "wild flower" stepping stone path will evoke.

My First Batch of Jam

2010-06-16T17:59:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I'm noticing another little pattern (didn't I just reveal a neurotic part of my personality last week?). Here's the thing: I get really excited and inspired about an idea and I want to do it all...right now. Then, when I'm in the midst of taking it all on at once and have way too much on my plate, I have a little stress breakdown and have to assess the situation. To my friends and family, this is old news. In fact, they're the ones that usually get to listen to me vent and talk through how I'm going to make it all work without going crazy. Luckily, because of my energy and enthusiasm, I always follow through. I may get a little stressed out in the process, but you'd better believe I'll finish what I started.

So, when I finished reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and decided to go seasonaltarian, my first instinct was to dive into it full steam ahead – start going to the farmers' market, grow my own food, make my own bread, can my own tomato sauce, and so on. But, for some reason, I really took things one step at a time. I decided to start off by really learning to grow food year 'round. Then, I bought the no-knead bread cookbook and started to master making my own bread. Last summer, when my garden was bursting with seasonal bounty, I thought about learning to can, but felt unprepared (literally lacking all the necessary canning supplies) and preoccupied with all my summer harvesting and winter garden plans. So, I ate my fresh summer vegetables and froze the rest.

Until now. I decided that this would be my year for canning. And after my "mother in law" hooked me up with all things canning for Christmas this year (a bath canner, canning rack, jar lifter, jar funnel, mason jars and lids), there was no turning back. So, on Sunday night, I completed my first "canning" project: strawberry jam. I have to say though that this doesn't really count because I made freezer jam and I have yet to process a canning project using the hot water method...but it's only a matter of time.

I decided to call this freezer jam because it is super low in sugar and since sugar is a preservative, I wanted to make sure it would keep. That being said, I got this recipe and canning advice from a Master Gardener colleague, Greg, and he didn't say anything about freezing it, so I'm sure it would be fine. Being the germophobe and hypochondriac that I am, I like to be on the safe side.

Like I said, I was thrilled to hear about Greg's strawberry jam because it has hardly any sugar. Most of the recipes I find call for almost equal parts fruit to sugar, if not more sugar. I just didn't want that, and I hit the jackpot because this jam is amazing. I still have a lot to learn. It took me twice as long as he said it would, but it was worth every minute.

Greg's Strawberry Jam

I used organic whole cane sugar, which is what I think gave the jam it's rich, Merlot-like color and flavor. I also discovered that chardonnay tastes even better with a few strawberries floating in your glass and helps the work of prepping strawberries go by in a flash!

1/2 flat deliciously ripe, organic farmers' market strawberries (about 9 generous cups)

1 cup sugar

Wash, hull, and cut the strawberries in half. Put them into a large mixing bowl with the sugar and let them sit overnight.

Strain the fruit from their juices and put the juice into a heavy stockpot on the stove. Adding the berries later will help them keep their form. Bring the liquid to a soft boil, stirring frequently. The goal is to slowly boil the sugar/strawberry juice mixture, without burning, until it starts coating the spoon (this is called "sheeting," I'm told) and reaches 220 degrees, which you monitor with a thermometer. This takes about 30 minutes.

Then*, add the fruit to the pot, bring back to a boil for about 5 more minutes and you're done.

Yields 5 (and 1/2) half-pint mason jars.

*This is where things went awry for me. When I added the strawberries to the mix, it obviously changed the temperature and I guess because of the juices that were present in the berries, the gelled nature of the mixture I had just created changed. So, I continued to boil the mixture for another 30 minutes – the amount of time it took me to get the mixture back up to 220 degrees again and start sheeting.

If it wasn't clear before I started, I am new to this whole canning business and should probably talk to Greg about what he thinks about my 30 additional minute conundrum. That second 30 minutes of boiling probably wasn't even necessary, but it just didn't seem right. The beauty of the whole thing is that the result was delicious! And I am hooked and ready to can again. I can't imagine that this recipe, the way I've presented it at least, will be helpful to you, considering the fact that I can't actually tell you how long you should boil it. But I can tell you that the experimentation was worth it. I can foresee many canning posts in the months to come!

Blog love: A local gem

2010-06-12T17:00:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, I met Kate. We sat next to each other at a birthday dinner at the Palace Kitchen in Belltown. Besides the beautifully mosaiced rooster sculpture in the entrance way, the restaurant has amazing food and coconut cream pie that is to die for. I'm not sure whether it was the meal or my inherent ability to initiate garden-related conversations, but it wasn't long before we were talking about cooking and growing food. And then, as if that wasn't enough, I discovered her blog. I've only been reading Good Egg for a few weeks now, but I know I'll be another one of her future followers. Her writing is beautiful and the pictures are lovely. I haven't tried a recipe yet, but my peas finally have blossoms and she posted a delicious-looking risotto recipe, so it won't be long before I do. And now she's starting a garden, so I can only imagine what she'll do with her own bounty. I don't want to gush, but I just had to share my local blog love. Gardening and turning your harvest into a gourmet dinner is an amazing learning experience and the more resources we can find to help us along the way, the better. Enjoy!

Drum roll, please...

2010-06-06T17:11:00.000-07:00

When I first bought my house, I noticed a pattern arise. Every time I gave someone a tour, I would say things like this, "And this is the kitchen, but I'm going to take this out, I'm going to paint this, I'm going to put in a new _________, this isn't going to stay like this," and on I'd go describing my vision to my guest. It was as if I wanted them to see the place as I could see it in my mind, to see all the potential it held. In my ideal world, nobody would have seen it until I had made my vision into a reality. But then, as I settled into home ownership, I realized that the house will never be finished – there will always be projects and things that can be revamped, improved, or redone.

So, when we started working on the chicken coop, I recognized this perfectionistic, visionary attitude as it began to creep in again. I really didn't want to post any pictures until our masterpiece was complete. But after months of hard work and many requests, I'm giving in. Now for my classic spiel...it's not completely done yet. We still need to put trim on all the doors, which will be in the contrasting light green color, put a door on the storage cabinet, redo the run door, which will also be light green, and adorn the hen house doors with super cute rusty house numbers. But I have to concede that it is looking pretty amazing and it's about time for it to shine in a post.

Words cannot express how proud I am of my amazing boyfriend. I realize that my coop could have been way more bare bones than it is and the girls probably would have been perfectly happy, but he spent hours engineering and crafting the coop to be just the way I hoped it would be. We have learned that we're horrible estimators of time – turns out we have no context for knowing things like how long it will actually take to install a drainage system and prepare a roof for planting. We have put months (literally months – almost three and a half months to be exact, from planning to almost-completion) of blood (yes, blood has actually been shed – two words: hardware cloth), sweat, and thankfully, no tears. So here it is, our coop in all its glory, almost finished! I'll share more photos of the finished coop and a detailed post about our green roof soon!

Jam it, pickle it, cure it

2010-06-05T07:27:00.000-07:00

I first discovered this book in September while we were killing time in a little book store in Orcas Island. It was featured in a section all about canning and preserving food. But what's different about this book is that it's not really about canning. Jam it, Pickle it, Cure it by Karen Solomon does have some classic canning recipes, like strawberry jam, but it primarily features tons of recipes for typical processed foods. It also gives you storage information for each food. Since I've been avoiding buying processed foods, I was thrilled to find this book. I can't wait to try the recipes for DIY mustard and ketchup, graham crackers, and butter. Does anyone wonder what I'll be doing during my summer vacation this year?

Chard Pie

2010-06-03T18:49:00.000-07:00

I love to cook one-pot meals. I love dishes that put to use a big surplus of vegetables, like the spinach that is billowing out of my garden right now! During the fall and winter, I cook big pots of soup pretty much every weekend. But once spring comes around, I'm usually ready for a change. I think that's why I just can't get enough of Maria's savory vegetable pie.

The beauty of this recipe is how versatile it is – you can pretty much make it with whatever veggies you have on hand. I've made it with lacinato kale, chard, spinach, and roasted asparagus – each one in a separate pie, although I'm sure a combination would work out just fine. I bet broccoli pie would be delicious! The one recommendation I have is to use a lot of greens, especially greens like spinach that cook down significantly. It's the best when you fill up the pie pan almost completely with the greens so that the egg mixture simply holds it together. That way, when you slice into the pie, the delicious vegetables are the stars rather than the egg, like a quiche.

Chard Pie

Adapted from The Joy of Cooking

I make this pie completely dairy-free, but I'm sure that some cheese would be a delicious addition.

The Crust:

Position a rack in the lower third of the oven. Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

In a medium bowl, mix the following ingredients with a fork until thoroughly blended:

1 3/4 cups whole wheat flour

3/4 tsp. salt

1/3 cup olive oil

1/3 cup milk or water (I use almond milk)

The dough will be difficult to roll, so press it evenly into a 9 inch deep dish pie pan or 11-inch tart pan. Bake until the crust is set and lightly golden, about 15 minutes, pricking once or twice if it bubbles. Meanwhile, prepare the filling.

The Greens:

2 Tbsp. olive oil

2 - 3 shallots, thinly sliced

1 lb. + chard leaves or other greens, stems removed*, washed and chopped

2 cloves of garlic, chopped

2 Tbsp. fresh oregano or basil, minced

salt, pepper, and crushed red pepper to taste

In a large skillet, cook the shallots in the olive oil over medium-low heat until softened, stirring occasionally, about 5 to 10 minutes. Add the oregano, salt and peppers. Increase the heat to medium and add the greens and garlic to the pan. Cook until tender, about 8 - 10 minutes (less for spinach).

* If you're using chard or kale, don't throw out the stems! Chop them up and saute them with the shallots. They take a little longer to cook than the greens, but are very nutritious and delicious!

The Filling:

3 eggs, lightly beaten

1/3 cup almond milk

a little salt and pepper

Combine the ingredients above in a bowl and then add the greens. Scrape the mixture into the prepared pie crust and spread evenly. Reduce the oven temperature to 375 degrees. Bake until the filling is golden and firm, about 25 - 35 minutes. Let cool to room temperature before serving.

Enjoy!

Now that's what I'm talking about!

2010-06-01T19:50:00.001-07:00

You may remember me saying (here) that I probably wouldn't be growing broccoli again after my first stab at it last year. I grew broccoli from seed last year, which I started inside, and for all the time I put into nurturing them, they just didn't seem to give me enough bang for my buck. But then, this April, my neighbor offered me a pack of nine broccoli starts (Packman variety) because she bought too many. Since I would never turn down a free plant, I graciously accepted them and put them into a few open squares in my raised beds. Well, besides two plants, which I lost to cabbage maggots, the plants have really thrived, surprising me with several large heads! I harvested a few for the first time this season and they were delicious! I prepared them by cutting them up into small florets, tossing them with some olive oil, salt and pepper, and roasting them on a baking sheet for about 10 minutes at 400 degrees. I served them on a bed of Jake's fresh pasta with a little olive oil that I warmed and flavored in a saute pan with some fresh, slivered sage leaves. Needless to say, after tonight's meal, I may need to reconsider my decision. This vegetable is just too good to abandon.

It ain't easy being green

2010-05-30T19:06:00.000-07:00

I'm beginning to notice a trend. I can't speak for others, but I'm noticing that for me, being a sassy, city girl gardener means getting comments from random people that question my farming abilities. Like when I was in the feed store buying my chicks and the farmer behind me in line, purchasing 25 of each of several breeds compared to my three, asked if I had named them already. The same farmer wrapped up our conversation by saying that it'd be just a matter of time before I started painting their toenails. And then today, when my neighbor leaned over the fence to check out the progress we've made on our incredible coop (pictures to come soon!), he asked if I was building a coop or an apartment. These off-the-cuff comments don't faze me much, but I'm wondering if they come with the urban farming territory. I was never in 4-H, I didn't grow up with chickens, I don't live in a rural environment, nor have I ever. I wear artsy galoshes, dangly earrings and a bohemian fabric garden tool belt, and just in general, probably don't look much like a farmer besides the dirt under my nails and stains on my jeans. But, there is more to me than meets the eye. I've done my homework – I've accumulated enough gardening and chicken books to start a library. Plus, enthusiasm goes a long way. An expert I am not, but I'm not as green as I look.

Honey Bee Mosaic

2010-05-26T20:12:00.000-07:00

After I got the flagstone path installed for my wild flower garden, I discovered that we needed one more stone to make for a smoother transition across the grass. So to fill the space and honor the pollinators that I hope to attract, I made a honey bee mosaic stepping stone with tumbled stained glass. Here is the stone from start to finish.

Cutlery Plant Markers

2010-05-16T06:51:00.000-07:00

If you read my blog, you've heard me say before that I've been known to enjoy instant gratification. But my garden is teaching me to slow it down and be patient. There is nothing better than sowing seeds and discovering a little green sprout pushing up through the soil.

Right now, I'm being patient with my wild flower path garden. Since I gave all of the new plants the space they need for their future growth, a lush flower bed it is not...yet! I have visions of this garden being dense and bursting with blooms. In fact, I left the little colored picture plant markers next to a few of the plants, so when I walk down the path, I'm reminded of the beauty that is yet to come. Many were recommended by GreatPlant Picks, so I have high hopes. So far, I've planted:

Six purple artichoke plants
Two English lavender plants
One Spanish lavender plant
Three different types of Echinacea (Great Plant Pick)
Shasta Daisy (Great Plant Pick)
Rudbeckia
Two varieties of Coreopsis
Marigolds
Several mounds of Blue Oat Grass (Great Plant Pick)

To keep myself busy while I wait for everything to fill in and look beautiful, I've taken to make cutlery plant markers. I was first inspired when I saw this post on Willi's blog. But like most crafty things I see, I think to myself, I can make that! A trip to the Goodwill left me with a bag full of old forks, knives, and spoons for under $5. Of course, they're not all actually vintage, but it's the overall look that really appealed to me anyway, not the fact that they were actually antique.

Since I tend to be a pretty artsy girl, I sat down and hand-painted a bunch of the spoons and knives. A little acrylic paint, a thin paint brush, and some clear sealer will go a long way.

The forks are really my favorite though and are very easy to make. I found a thin sheet of aluminum at my local hardware store for around $10. I cut it into thin strips by scoring the metal with an Exacto knife and snapping the strips off the main piece of metal. Make sure to wear gloves to protect your fingers from the raw edge. Then, I wrote the name of each plant on a strip with a sharpie and wedged it in between the tines of a fork. The perfect afternoon project for an antsy girl, waiting for her flowers to bloom.

Buyer Beware

2010-05-05T16:12:00.000-07:00

It's week seven and the girls are getting plump, feathered out, and seem generally content. But at this point, I am almost literally counting down the hours until we get the coop constructed and get the chicks outside. Jake and I thought that it would probably be a good idea for me to write a post about what life is like living with chicks in your spare bath tub when they're seven weeks old so that those of you who might be considering getting chickens really know what you're getting into. Don't get me wrong, the experience is delightful and I would make the same decision in a heartbeat. Chickens have very unique and charming personalities and I look forward to seeing them everyday. But it has its downsides, which I think you should know.

Chicks are typically raised inside or in a brooder with a heat lamp until the chicks or pullets (young hens) are about eight weeks old or are fully feathered out. The cardboard-box-in-a-tub setup has worked out really well as far as the brooder size to chick size ratio is concerned. But when they hit about five and a half to six weeks, I began spending a lot of time fretting about the chicks' growing lack of space and about where I could transport them if I decided to try and find a bigger space. Create a bigger brooder (where, I don't know) for one more week?

Because they're bigger and more active, they do an incredible job tearing up the new clean newspaper and bedding I lay down. At this point, I clean out the brooder every day. And as soon as I get everything nice and cleaned up, I hear their feet happily scratching it all up again. I can't blame them – that's what chickens do. But as long as they're in such tight quarters, with so much energy to spare, it's what I have to do and it's starting to get old.

Jake and I will be furiously working to finish the coop this weekend and next week, I will start gradually easing them into their new digs. To help get them prepared, I've been turning the light off in the brooder at night. They are a little frantic at first being in the dark, but they eventually settle in to sleep for the night. Like I said, I've enjoyed many aspects of hosting these house guests, but I can't wait to take back my space. I'm sure my little hens will be much happier as well.

*Thanks to my student, Maddy, for the hand-drawn chicks and bees. She knows me well!

Small Measures

2010-04-28T17:17:00.000-07:00

I recently found a kindred spirit/blogger, Ashley English, and her blog, Small Measure. It is right up my alley and is super inspiring. Her new book, Keeping Chickens, is on my wish list. It was actually my girl, Radhi, that made it happen when she tried to win me a free copy of Ashley's chicken book in a contest on Design Sponge. This might be old news to you, but if you haven't seen her blog, check it out! I'm really excited about my new find!

City Goats

2010-04-24T17:19:00.000-07:00

It was Seattle Tilth that made me aware of city goats, first on the chicken coop tour and then at their display at the Northwest Flower and Garden Show. If you have a big enough lot, you can actually keep a mini-goat in the city. They have a class called City Goats 101, which will tell you all about it.

I do not plan on getting goats. I'm still trying to get Jake to support my bee hive idea. But I do think they're adorable. And they're also pretty efficient weeders – you can actually rent goats to nibble away at your unwanted vegetation.

So to satiate my goat desires, Jake, who knows me so well, bought me a (metal) goat for my birthday. As I mentioned before when I wrote about the metal rooster I bought for my garden, I love rusty, metal garden art! So now, we have this amazing white, metal goat grazing under my Japanese Maple in the front yard. Jake joked that this substitution for the real thing went over so well, he should look into buying me a metal beehive. I don't think that will have the same effect. Sorry, Jake!

And on that farm she had a dog...

2010-04-21T21:59:00.001-07:00

The chicks have been getting their first taste of sunshine lately. Not for long periods of time – just short outings right now. Beans was allowed to join in on the fun this time. I think he's still not sure what to make of them.

He was very gentle, but pretty cautious. When they got too close, he slowly inched away. The chicks were confident as could be. They had no qualms about walking right up to him – beak to nose. And he never even got a pecked!

I did have to step in when he tried to roll over on top of them. I think he was starting to feel a little too comfortable at that point. The chicks are just a little too similar to some squeaky toys of his.

Besides the fact that my chicks starting running around inside the cloche with the new tomatillo and tomato starts I just planted, their introduction to the backyard and our family dog was a success. The chicks are getting bigger by the day and I get the sense that they are just itching to get back out there. Just three more weeks to go!

Taking stock

2010-04-17T16:46:00.000-07:00

This week has been a hectic one for me. So rather than rush around my garden today, trying to accomplish a million different tasks, I decided to walk around with my camera to take stock of what's been happening in my little urban oasis since spring arrived.

The lettuce and spinach bed that I planted under a cloche on February 20 is ready for its first harvest! It won't be the biggest salad of the season, but it will be delicious. I can't wait to eat super fresh spring salads again! Isn't that speckled lettuce from Territorial's Cascade Harvest lettuce mix the best?

And my peas sprouted! I planted pea seeds in February with the lettuce, but they never germinated. I think they were too old. I probably should have taken Willi's advice and tested my seeds for viability. I bought a new pack and sowed some pea seeds (Territorial's Super Sugar Snap) again on March 25. And this week, they finally sprouted. Looks like we may have snap peas this spring after all!

The rhubarb (those big leaves in the middle of this bed), which I thought had died, came back with a vengeance. My raspberry canes are vibrant green and thriving. And those little green shoots that look like onions are just a few of the heads of garlic I planted around the yard last fall. They've overwintered and are just about ready to harvest. This is my first time planting garlic, so I can't wait to see how it turns out!

Last, but not least, this bareroot peony 'Shirley Temple' that I planted in the fall survived and is actually growing! I really don't know a thing about peonies besides the fact that I love when they make an appearance on fabric and think they're beautiful in Pike Place Market bouquets. But this fall, I got carried away ordering seeds for my winter garden and ordered a bareroot peony too. Truth be told, I actually planted two, but only this one survived. So this afternoon, when I realized how big it had gotten, it literally stopped me in my tracks. I just can't believe it's working!

Ch-ch-changes

2010-04-14T18:24:00.000-07:00

Since I started raising chicks in my bathtub, the water situation has been a problem. If you recall from one of my first chick posts, the water started drying up over night. That led me back to the feed store to purchase a larger, gallon-sized waterer. This was a little overkill for three small chicks, but I wasn't going to risk waking up one morning to three dehydrated chicks.

Once I switched to the large waterer, they didn't run out of water anymore, but it created a whole new set of problems. First, there was the balance problem. One large waterer plus a cardboard box plus a slightly concave surface (think of your bathtub floor) plus feisty, energetic chicks that jump all around and on top of it equals water leakage and soggy cardboard. So, I had to solve that fun equation by rummaging around in the garage to find an old board that I could put on the floor of the brooder. That mostly solved the balance problem, but the water challenges continued.

The second problem I faced was chicken scratching. Chicks and chickens naturally scratch at the floor with their feet and peck at the ground – like they're looking for worms. I found this fascinating when I was observing my day old chicks displaying this instinctual behavior. The only problem is that when you've got chickens in a confined space, eating and drinking from a feeder and waterer, that scratching and pecking can create quite a mess. I knew about this and was planning on suspending the adult feeder and waterer in the run that we're building outside. But for some reason, I didn't think I would be having to deal with this issue until then. I was wrong. Here's how most of last week went: I'd take the chicks out of the brooder, clean up all the old bedding and droppings, put down fresh newspaper and shavings, put the chicks back in, and then before I knew it, I'd have to deal with shredded and soaked newspaper and shavings from the frenzied chicken scratching. Not only that, there would be so many shavings in the water trough, I'd have to clean and refill it again too. I read in my books that chicks can catch colds and diseases from wet shavings, so I knew I had to deal with it quickly. After getting to the point where it felt like I was cleaning the brooder every ten minutes, I decided to start looking for some solutions.

That brings us to the ch-ch-changes I made to the brooder, which are turning out to be amazing fixes. I started by putting the waterer on top of two cement pavers that I had in the basement. I started with one, but found that Lucy could still scratch water out of it at that height, so I added one more. It turned out to be the perfect height for them to stand comfortably at the waterer and drink with ease. The ultimate test was watching them scratch the shavings around the feeder – only a few ended up in the waterer!

The second change I made was to make a cone out of paper to slip on top of the waterer to keep the chicks from roosting on top of it. Although I found it quite charming for the girls to jump up to get a closer look whenever I came into the bathroom, it created more work for me. Their droppings would get into the water and then I'd have to clean the waterer up again. I made an anti-roosting paper cone for the feeder too, for the same reason.

Finally, to save money on all the feed that I was losing as my chicks scratched it into the old shavings that I would ultimately clean up and throw away, I placed the feeder on top of an old terra cotta flower pot saucer, which I flipped upside down.

These changes were so simple and didn't cost a thing since I used found items, but man, have they improved my chicken-raising way of life! I don't mean to sound overdramatic, but all the brooder cleaning (Come on, two to three times a day?!) was getting to be a bit much. I can't tell you how many times I have gone into the bathroom since I made the changes, expecting to find a huge, waterer mess to clean up. But now, all I find are my fast-growing chicks!

City Chicks: Week 3

2010-04-10T13:05:00.000-07:00

Remember Ethel? The cute, little blond Buff Orpington in the picture above?

This is her now, at three weeks old. Little adult feathers are quickly replacing baby fluff. Ethel has a really cool temperament – just a little more laid back than the other girls. Well, she made a big developmental leap this week - she learned to perch!

At the risk of sounding like a crazy chicken lady, we were super excited about this achievement. Jake and I both happened to be in the bathroom, watching the chicks, when she made the leap. It has so precious to see her little talons awkwardly griping the perch while flapping her wings to avoid losing her balance. It's not too often that you get to witness a bird so young it doesn't know how to perch with confidence.

Before I put the new wood dowel perch in, Lucy and Penny would jump on top of the feeder and waterer. It's really pretty endearing since they always seem to do so when someone comes into the bathroom, like they want a closer look. The only problem was that they would leave poor little Ethel behind. She would walk around the brooder making loud, lonely peeps (of course, I'm projecting my human emotions on to her). So, mama hen (a.k.a crazy chicken lady) came to the rescue and installed a new and more elevated perch.

Now, we often find all three of them roosting together. I guess birds of a feather really do flock together.

Garden Gem: Great Plant Picks

2010-04-08T09:17:00.000-07:00

If you haven't heard of Great Plant Picks yet, I'm here to tell you about this fantastic resource! It is a list of plants that work great in maritime northwest gardens. They provide you with beautiful pictures and information about the plants' sun needs, growing habits, and hardiness. I used this resource to do some research before buying some plants for the beds that were recently exposed when I tore out the ivy and put in a new front fence. The plant lists I printed out were actually my saving grace when I was at the nursery because they kept me focused on my agenda... sort of. Did I mention I have no will power when I'm at a nursery?

I chose the striking Hosta 'Sum and Substance' for under my Japanese maple. It just doesn't get enough sun for the lawn and moss is taking over, but I think the hostas will love the shady space.

I also planted some accent grasses, Acorus gramineus 'Ogon' (Golden Variegated Sweet Flag). It has beautiful yellow-green blades that contrast with the Blue Oat grass I plant everywhere. I just can't get enough of the decorative grasses!

*Pictures courtesy of GreatPlantPicks.org

What's the point?

2010-04-05T19:05:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, Jake brought home a book by James McWilliams called Just Food: Where Locavores Get it Wrong and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly. Just reading the title, my first reaction was to get defensive, almost offended that Jake checked it out from the library. He made a valid point though that it's good to look at both sides of an argument and that it might be interesting to see what the "other side" is saying. That's one of the things I love about the debates I always get into with Jake (don't tell him I said that) – it challenges me to really understand and justify my convictions.

I haven't actually read the book yet, but what I understand from my heated discussions with Jake is that according to the author, it actually may be better for the environment to ship large quantities of food across the globe than it is to eat food that travels fewer miles. It is more efficient to import a ton of blueberries from Argentina than it is to get them from a farm several miles away when we're looking at the ratio of fuel to blueberries. The book also states that relying on local food sources and small farms is not sustainable since they cannot support the food demands of our large population the way industrial agriculture does. The glaring message I was hearing was, "Listen, locavores. Eating locally isn't all it's cracked up to be."

I have to admit that at first, I felt a bit defeated. Turns out, not eating locally is better for your carbon footprint and all this time, I thought I was going green. At the height of my over-dramatic reaction, I said to Jake, exasperated, "So, what's the point?" And he aptly deflected the question back to me, "So, what is the point?" And this is what I told him.

I eat locally because it completely changed the way I see food. Before I became a locavore, I saw food the way most supermarkets present it – a price. I never once stopped to think of where that food came from or if it was in season. I like to know how my food was grown and how the animals were treated. Large-scale food producers may be more efficient, but they are much less transparent to the average consumer.

I eat locally because knowing where the food came from helped me get more in tune with nature. When I see a non-tropical food, one that could be grown in the Northwest, from the Southern Hemisphere, I know it's probably not in season.

I eat locally because buying produce from the farmers' market, as any good locavore would do, has given me an education. What's selling is what's in season. And what's in season in December, for example, forces you to expand your culinary horizons. After all, you just don't come across kohlrabi and Jerusalem artichokes everyday. Not only that, my farmers' market inspires a sense of community – people who value local farmers and delicious fruits and vegetables that were not engineered or grown just to be transported.

I eat locally because it supports my local economy. I love this state and I want it to thrive. If a food can be grown in the Northwest, I want to eat it from the Northwest when it's naturally intended to be eaten. Maybe we can get blueberries from Argentina in the winter, but as I discovered this summer, nothing tastes better than the beautiful fresh ones you pick right off the bush. The fact that it has inspired me to transform my yard into my own local food source goes without saying.

While being a locavore may not have reduced my carbon footprint, it has made me more aware of the choices I make everyday. I may never know what effects my new green lifestyle has on the environment, but I can say for certain that it has definitely had a positive impact on my life.

The chick antics continue!

2010-04-04T08:15:00.000-07:00

The girls are growing up so fast! It seems like just yesterday they were little balls of fluff and now they're transforming before my eyes.The temperature in my bathtub brooder is now 80 degrees – it started out around 95 when they were just a few days old. Lowering the temperature by five degrees each week helps them start to grow their little adult feathers, which is what chickens use to keep themselves warm. Lucy's filling out the fastest.

The chicken antics continue! Lucy and Penny think it's great to jump on top of the feeder and waterer when I come in. They especially love to fly back down towards calm little Ethel, in a dive bomb-type fashion. One morning this week, she made the leap from the waterer to the side of the cardboard box. So, they got a new addition to their brooder – a chicken wire ceiling. It makes it a bit more difficult to clean and change their water, but chasing chicks around my bathroom sounds like a more challenging task.

I read in one of my books that I might give the chicks a worm as a special treat and that they would act like they were dying of ecstasy. But what it failed to mention is that you better have one for each of them. My innocent gesture created a riot! I dropped one into the brooder and it took only a few seconds for Lucy to realize that it was worth picking up. Then, Penny proceeded to chase her around the brooder like crazy, vying to get some of the goods. I ran outside to get another, but when I dropped it in the brooder, Ethel scored the worm since she hadn't caught on that she should be chasing after Lucy. In the end, they all got their first taste of a worm and it was clear that they'd love to peck around for more.

On another note, when reading the new post on Garden Rant, one of the many garden blogs I follow, I discovered the Mouse and Trowel awards for garden blogging. I love it! What a great way to celebrate the craft! Gardening can be a somewhat solitary activity, which is something I really value about the hobby since it's such a contrast to my job. But while I love the blissful quiet and time alone, I really enjoy commiserating and learning with other gardeners. I feel like I know the gardeners who write the blogs that I follow. The more posts I write and the more blogs I follow, the more inspired I am to keep writing and experimenting in my garden. So, here's my shout out to the creator of the Mouse and Trowel awards, garden blogger and writer Colleen Vanderlinden, for creating a forum that celebrates garden bloggers and shows them some love!

Teaching the Messengers

2010-03-30T20:39:00.000-07:00

Every spring, since my first year of teaching six years ago, I've been teaching a science unit called Life Structures, which investigates the cycle of life of plants and snails. But never have I been so excited about it until now. The timing of this unit really couldn't have been more perfect. A few weekends ago (on the first day of spring to be exact), I graduated from my Master Gardener program and became an intern. That means that I now have to complete my 90 hours of master gardening community service over the next two years. I've got lots of fun volunteer opportunities coming up that will rack up quite a few hours. But what I didn't realize is how my training would impact my teaching and how I'm reaching the greater community through my students.

To give you some context, the science unit starts out by teaching the students about plant parts and seeds. We started germinating seeds today. But where the unit lacks in providing the students with a real-life context for the information or practical gardening tips, I'm now supplementing with my ever-expanding gardening knowledge. And as I found out today, my enthusiasm is beginning to spread! One parent emailed me and said that her daughter came home ready to make plans for a vegetable garden. The same day, upon picking my students up from the school library, another student was anxious to show me the two seed books she picked up to learn more information.

I gave each of my students a spiral-bound notebook today and told them it would be their garden journal. I didn't want them to seem like just another curriculum material, so I gave them to my students as a gift that they would be able to use to keep track of their observations and scientific discoveries in their own gardens at home. I'm going to bring in my own garden journal tomorrow to show them how I keep track of my garden successes and failures.

I have trouble finding the words to describe how exciting it has been to share what I love with these curious kids that I spend so much time with. They just soaked it up and can't wait to learn more! I can't think of anyone who would be more excited about germinating seeds then they were today. When I began my Master Gardener program, I knew that I would be working to educate the community in sustainable gardening practices, but I never envisioned it happening in my classroom in such a natural and entertaining way. I also never thought about how that information would travel through my students to their parents, and maybe beyond.

The path of least resistance

2010-03-28T20:36:00.000-07:00

A few months ago, I wrote about spending an afternoon conjuring up a beautiful plan for a wild flower path that leads to my backyard garden. The idea came to me while listening to an amazing Master Gardener lecture about organic gardening – all the talk about attracting beneficial insects to your garden, like bees, must have gotten to me. Originally, I thought I would install the flagstone path myself (read: Jake would have gotten sweet talked into installing it). I also thought I would use the sheet mulch technique to turn the uneven sod into organic material-rich beds along the pathway, but upon closer inspection of the area, it would have required much more tilling and digging than the sheet mulching would have accomplished. Since Jake's got his hands full building our chicken coop and I would like to get things planted and established this spring, I decided to get some help with the project.

With a new fence installation and a little landscaping, this once neglected part of my property got a face lift and new life. The path turned out absolutely amazing, and I really don't think I could have done the same work myself. Plus, now that the infrastructure is in place, I can focus my attention on the part I really like – the planting! Next week, during my school's spring break, I plan on transforming this blank slate into an inviting, meandering corridor to the garden out back. Stay tuned to see the transformation.

On another note, after finding Penny perched on top of the waterer multiple times last week, I thought it was time to install a roosting bar perch in their brooder. I just cut a wooden dowel to size and stuck it through the two notches I made in the sides of the box. It took them a while to get used to it – most of the time they just walked over it back and forth. I tried to set them on the bar and help them balance, but they didn't seem to appreciate my little tutorials. In the end, Penny finally got the idea and I caught her sleeping on the bar. At this point, it's a little advanced for Lucy and Ethel – they mostly just walk over it and sleep around it. But I think it's only a matter of time before they're copying Penny and are perching on it too.

Spring has sprung!

2010-03-24T20:54:00.000-07:00

Today I celebrated the arrival of spring. The forecast called for sunny skies and temperatures near 70 degrees, so I decided to take advantage of the lovely weather and longer days by doing some after-school spring planting. Last week, we put another big chunk of lawn to use by building a new raised bed in the front yard. It's 4o square feet of gardening goodness. So, to break it in, I planted 40 strawberry plants today, or 10 beautiful squares. I know it seems excessive, but I decided that I'd actually like to see a crop of strawberries this year, rather than eating the one or two that appear on random strawberry plants around the yard. Plus, strawberry plants will last for three to four years, so they're really the gift that keeps on giving!

When I was driving home from the nursery this afternoon, I thought to myself, it's officially spring and I actually have spring chickens! So I dyed a half-dozen beautiful farmers' market eggs in their honor. In this month's issue of Sunset, I read that dying brown eggs can result in amazingly vibrant colored eggs. Confirmed. And then, as if things couldn't get any better, I had a beautiful ceramic egg carton to put them in. Thank you, Claudia, for the most adorable chicken-gift ever.

The Learning Curve

2010-03-21T06:44:00.000-07:00

I've finally got the chicks all settled in, but I must say, it's been quite an ordeal getting everything dialed in. The main problem I've had is getting the temperature just right. Now I know that I'm a bit of a perfectionist and most likely, if the temperature in the brooder was a little off, they'd probably be just fine. However, the high, fluctuating temperatures in the brooder have caused other problems.

According to my books, the temperature should be between 90 and 95 degrees. I am creating that with a heat lamp suspended from the ceiling. Until my little pullets (young hens) have their adult feathers, they won't be able to monitor or create their own heat. That's why they have to stay inside the brooder (my bathtub) for the first eight weeks of their lives. Well, what the books don't say is to consider what effect your micro-climate will have on the brooder's temperature. There's a heat vent in my small bathroom where the brooder is so when the heat's on and the door's closed, the bathroom gets pretty hot. I learned that when I woke up the next morning, after the chicks' first night in their brooder, and discovered that the water in their waterer had completely evaporated over night. That means the chicks were in a hot little brooder for hours with no water! Dehydrating your chicks, or any animal for that matter, is one of the worst things you can do to them.

So, the next day after school, I made an hour-long trip during rush hour to the feed store to get a gallon-size waterer. This is way overkill for three little chicks, but I'm happy to report that now the water doesn't dry up.

Another change I made was taking the divider out of the brooder so that they can now access the entire space. Penny is a week older than the other girls and the woman at the feed store said they'd be fine. I think she's right, but what I didn't consider was the fact that she'd have different temperature needs than the others. My books recommend lowering the temperature in the brooder by 5 degrees every week. So Penny would probably be more comfortable in a cooler environment. That was confirmed when I found her sitting in the waterer, as far as she could get away from the lamp. After finding her in this position twice, I decided to take out the divider to give them more room. I think they're more cozy now.

Jake told me that his friend, who's family raised chickens when he was growing up, said that they kept their chicks in a box in the basement with no heat lamp and they were fine. And like I said before, I'm sure they'd probably survive without all my fussing. But the fact of the matter is that I have a huge learning curve. I am only recently an urban farmer and my only real experience raising animals has been with dogs. Give me a puppy and I'll raise him just fine – I've got puppy signals and behavior figured out. But chicks, now that's a whole other ballgame. I'm trying to learn what behaviors are normal and which are not. I'm trying to figure out if the chicks are giving me signs that they're distressed or are just being chicks. All I can really do is just keep reading my chicken books and observing their funny little ways, and hopefully everything will turn out in the end. I'm savoring every moment of this delicate and ridiculously cute time in their lives because they'll growing up quick and it will be over before I know it.

Lovely Ladies

2010-03-17T20:06:00.000-07:00

Today was probably one of the hardest days of work I've had in a long time. I had to stay focused and productive all day knowing I was going to get my chicks today. I felt like a kid! The farmer in line behind me at the feed store, who asked for 25 Buff Orpingtons and 25 Americaunas, asked me, "You already got 'em named?" Of course I do.

This is my little Buff Orpington, Ethel. I don't think I should be picking favorites, but I think she might be mine. The other girls are so feisty with each other, but she's mellow and just rolls with it.

The little redhead, a Rhode Island Red, is Lucy. She and Ethel seemed to enjoy pecking around together so I thought their names were fitting.

And this is Penny, my green-blue egg-laying Americauna. She is a week older than the other girls and is by far the feistiest of them all – she'll push right through the other girls and is not afraid to peck them either. If there really is a pecking order, I think she'll be on top.

So now they're all tucked into their bathtub brooder and I'm trying not to go into the bathroom every five minutes to see how they're doing. I've already raised and lowered the heat lamp chain at least four times to try and get the temperature just right. There's nothing quite like the contented chips I hear – I can tell I'm turning into a crazy chicken lady already. More updates to come!

Bathtub Brooder

2010-03-12T13:10:00.000-08:00

No one can ever question my will power after today. I went to the Bothell Feed Center to buy supplies for my chicks and did not buy chicks! My plan was to be practical by getting everything I need to raise chicks in my bathroom and then bring the babies home on Wednesday, when the Grange is scheduled to get a new delivery of day-old chicks. Since I'll be at a double dutch tournament this weekend, I wouldn't be around to keep a close eye on my new little brood. But, when I walked into the store and saw the precious little balls of fluff, it was all I could to do stay focused on my agenda and leave without chicks in tow. A quick call to Jake from the parking lot of the feed store was inevitable, "Remind me why I shouldn't buy chicks today?"

In the end, I resisted and made it home with only the supplies I needed to set up my bathroom brooder. I have to give credit to Amy Stewart at Garden Rant for her inspiration and guidance. Reading her recent chick updates have made me giddy with anticipation.

In a nutshell, baby chicks need a place to grow with an artificial heat source since they can't maintain their own body temperature. The chicks' mother usually provides this warmth so I'll need to provide it for them. The chicks will be living in my bathtub, which we don't use by the way, for about eight weeks, until they are fully feathered-out and ready to be outside.

Today I bought the following supplies:

two 20x20in cardboard boxes
one big bale of pine shavings (bedding)
chick feed (non-medicated – sanitation will be the key so they don't get sick)
a chick waterer and feeder
heat lamp and chain to suspend the lamp from the ceiling
thermometer

Amy estimated that the supplies would cost around $80 and I found that estimate to be pretty accurate. I am willing to bet it will be worth every penny!

To make the brooder, I put the two boxes together to make one large box. I did this by cutting one side of each of the boxes down the middle. I bought a long length of chain, which I connected to the heat lamp. I suspended the chain from a plant hook in the ceiling and luckily, the placement of that hook couldn't have been more perfect. The lamp is suspended right above the box on one side so the chicks can go under the lamp when they want to be warm and get away from it when they want to cool off.

According to Amy, when the chicks are really young, they can wander away from the heat lamp and may not be smart enough to get back to the warm area that they need to survive. So, I brought two of the side flaps together with a binder clip to create a cardboard divider. Later, when the chicks get bigger and are used to their surroundings, I can just remove the clip and let them take advantage of the whole brooder.

To finish the brooder, I put a couple inches of bedding material in the boxes and put the feeder and waterer in place. Now all I have to do is hurry up and wait!

Beans, beans, the musical fruit...

2010-03-06T16:34:00.000-08:00

According to our new mayor, Mike McGinn, 2010 is "The Year of Urban Agriculture" in Seattle! But for me, it's going to be the year of heirlooms. After saving seeds from last year's heirloom tomatoes, I decided to grow more heirloom vegetables this year so that I can save more seeds. I love the idea of growing and saving my own seeds year after year, rather than breaking the bank on seeds from the multitude of catalogs I get each spring.

One heirloom cycle I'm looking forward to starting is dried beans. If you're interested in trying your hand at saving seeds, I think this is the place to start. You can eat the pods as fresh green beans and then let the last crop dry on the vine in order to harvest the dry beans.

Here are a few bean basics:

There are basically two types: bush beans (compact type that don't need a trellis) and pole beans (trailing varieties that need the support of a trellis).
Bean and pea trellises are lovely. Check out Willi's latest pea trellis post!
In our climate, you can start sowing your bean seeds in May.
Beans are best sown directly into the ground as seeds since they don't transplant well.
In a square foot garden, you can grow bean bean plants or eight pole bean plants per square.
When you see pods on your plants, you've got to harvest them so that your plant will keep producing. This can sometimes be a daily project during the summer.
Green beans freeze beautifully. Just wash, pat dry, trim the ends, seal in a freezer bag, and pop them into the freezer.

Today, I was lucky to score the great resource, Edible Heirlooms by Bill Thorness, at a book sale during my Master Gardener classes today. It has great tips on what varieties grow best in our maritime climate, how to grow and harvest heirloom vegetables, and the best part, how to save each plant's seeds. I haven't had a chance to read the entire book yet, but so far I've learned that the bean seeds I bought from Seed Savers Exchange, Cherokee Trail of Tears, were actually carried by American Indians on that historical forced march. I am deeply humbled by the idea that I will be able to sow a few of those seeds in my garden because of their foresight in collecting and saving them.

Check out the following seed companies for lots of beautiful heirloom seeds:

Sow many seeds, so little time

2010-02-20T17:28:00.000-08:00

This week, one of the sunniest February weeks I can remember, was my school's mid-winter break. I could not have asked for better weather and as you've probably already guessed, I played outside in my yard all week. Since I had so much free time, I was able to start my lettuce bed under the cloche outside and was able to start my pepper and tomato seeds inside. I even planted the heirloom seeds I saved last year! This is the earliest I have ever started spinach and lettuce outside, but the cloche is doing an amazing job warming up the soil – the soil thermometer registered 60 degrees in that bed! Those little seeds will germinate in no time.

Recently, several people, who are planning on growing vegetables for the first time, asked me for seed suggestions and gardening tips. So, in today's post, I'm going back to the basics and will share a few things I've learned about growing veggies.

Despite getting tons of seed catalogs each year with beautiful photos of unique and exotic varieties, I select seeds of vegetables I like to eat. The beets always look beautiful, but I don't like to eat them so they never make it into my garden.

When I choose seeds, I also consider what will grow well in our climate because I want to set myself up for success. We have long cool springs, so it's a good idea to choose vegetables that do well in cool weather, like kale, lettuce, spinach, chard, and peas.

If you're just getting started, I would suggest planting a salad garden. Lettuce is pretty easy to grow from seed and can provide you with a continual harvest – just pick off the outer leaves and they'll keep on growing back! If you plant several of the beautiful and delicious varieties, you can have an amazing mixed green salad. I buy most of my seeds from the local seed company, Territorial Seeds. Last year, I grew Jericho, Deer Tongue, and Merlot lettuce from Territorial. This year, I'm growing the same varieties plus the Cascade Lettuce Mix that I got for free from the Cascade Harvest Coalition at the Flower and Garden Show. There is nothing better than a salad, just picked fresh from your garden.

Lettuce seeds are really small, so plant them carefully. In a nut shell, seeds need water and warmth to germinate. Since lettuce seeds are so tiny and could get washed away with a watering can, I water the soil thoroughly before sowing my seeds. Then, I make a little indentation in the soil, pour some seeds into my hand, grab a pinch of seeds, and put them in the little spot I created. I carefully cover them with a little soil (not too deep!) and give it a little press to ensure that I got good soil to seed contact.

I also have to plug the Nasturtiums. I LOVE these beautiful edible flowers and grow them every year. I can't tell you how lovely it was last year to watch huge bumble bees squeeze themselves inside the big red and orange blooms. Plus, you can harvest the flowers and put them in the salad you just harvested. It's important to pick out a variety that is compact, since they have the potential to trail like crazy. I love the Empress of India variety. This year, I'm going to try the Black Velvet variety as well. It's important to note that in addition to attracting lovely beneficial pollinators, they also tend to attract aphids (in my case, little black aphids), so if that happens, just spray them off with a strong stream of water or pull them out and plant something new.

Finally, if you haven't done so already, plant some peas. According to my Seattle Tilth Maritime NW Garden Guide, it's tradition in our area to sow peas by Presidents' Day. Peas are easy to plant, fun to guide up a trellis, thrive in cool weather, and will provide you with a generous harvest. The Maritime NW Garden Guide, a planning calendar for year-round organic gardening, is worth the money, by the way. It is designed for gardeners in our area and gives recommendations as to what to plant and where (i.e. sow outdoors, sow indoors, sow outdoors under a cloche) for every month of the year.

Starting seeds indoors merits a post of its own. It's not terribly complicated, but requires some special materials and a little extra planning. So, if you're not ready to dive into indoor seed starting this year, but still want to try growing some delicious heirloom tomatoes or some other interesting vegetable, you're in luck. There are two amazing plant sales coming up that will have tons of fabulous starts (young plants) for your garden. The Master Gardener Foundation Plant Sale will be on Saturday and Sunday, May 1 and 2. After King County cut the funding for the Master Gardener program, the Master Gardener Foundation took over and made it possible for the program to continue. Without the MG Foundation, I wouldn't be in the program right now! The MG plant sale is one of their biggest fund raisers, so you can buy the vegetable starts you want to grow and support an amazing community gardening program. Seattle Tilth is also having an Early Spring Edible Plant Sale on Saturday, March 20.

A garden journal can be a handy tool for keeping track of your garden experiments. Jot down what and when you plant and note later if it worked or not. Your notes can help you make decisions when you're planning your garden next year. Remember, practice makes perfect. Pardon the pun, but it's best to just dig in, plant some seeds, and have fun with it. You'll probably have more success than you expect. Happy planting!

All in a day's work

2010-02-18T10:48:00.000-08:00

When I started making plans to start my seeds indoors again and decided to sterilize (bake) the seed starting medium I already had on hand, visions of this scene popped in my head – an old fifties ad with a put-together woman in pumps and an apron, single-handedly managing to keep a clean house, cook a balanced meal for her family, and prepare soil for the seeds she'll cultivate for her family's future meals. An ad that convinces housewives everywhere that sterilizing their own soil is a snap. You can have dinner on the stove and your soil in the oven and both will be ready in a jiffy!

Actually, it was a pretty easy process and since I'm trying to use as many sustainable gardening practices as possible, re-using soil I already have makes a lot of sense. Using sterile soil is critical for healthy seedlings. Most garden supply stores or nurseries sell sterile seed-starting medium, so if you're starting out with that, you're already good to go.

To sterilize used seed-starting medium:

1. Spread the soil on a baking sheet. The soil should be moist, but not too wet. I moistened the soil and mixed it around a bit to make sure that it was moist throughout and not just on the surface.

2. Cover the baking sheet with foil and put in a preheated oven set at 200 degrees. I have an oven thermometer in my oven so I was sure that my oven wasn't hotter than what I set it at. Gauging temperature during this process is pretty important because over-heating the soil can produce plant toxins.

Here is the slightly tricky part. According to my Master Gardener handbook, the goal is to get the soil to a temperature of 140 degrees and keep it there for thirty minutes. In other resources, I read that it should be 180 degrees, but no higher than 200 degrees. I set the timer for 10 minutes, then pulled it out and checked the soil temperature by inserting a meat thermometer in the center of the pan, right through the foil. I found that I had to do this several times before the soil temperature registered 140 degrees. Once I got the soil to 140 degrees, I set the time for 30 minutes. When I checked the temperature after 30 minutes, it was registering 170 degrees, but since it was still below the 200 degree range, I think I'm OK.

3. After 30 minutes at 140 degrees, take the pan out of the oven and let it cool. Keep the foil in place – the smell of fresh baked soil is not nearly as appetizing as bread. Trust me on this.

4. Finally, make sure you sterilize the container you're going to use as well. I used a very diluted bleach and water solution to clean out the flat that I use to start my seeds.

That's all there is to it. Just a few simple steps and you're on your way to a bountiful harvest. Now isn't that swell?

Making Room

2010-02-14T07:49:00.000-08:00

When Jake walked in yesterday evening, I greeted him with an enthusiastic squeal, "The chicks are coming!" The chick delivery schedules are out at several local feed stores, which means it's almost time – this is happening for real. For over a year now, I've said that I would get my chicks in March and now I have a real, prospective date: March 17. Of course, when I called the Grange to ask some questions, the woman told me that it's first come, first serve and that people line up, waiting to get their chicks. I don't think I can justify calling in "sick" and getting a substitute to go get my chicks, so I'm just going to have to hope that by the time school ends that day, there will still be three healthy chicks for me. I've got my hopes up for one Buff Orpington, one Rhode Island Red, and one Americauna (for the fun green-colored eggs). Seeing as how they're expecting a delivery of 300 chicks of each of those breeds, I think I'll probably be OK.

In the meantime, it's time to make some room. Last weekend, I went through the process of moving one of three garden beds from the space where we're going to put the coop, to the lawn, just above the first garden bed terrace. In my Master Gardener class, I learned that it is not a good idea to till the soil when it is really wet because it can damage the soil structure, but I had to make the sacrifice in order to make some room.

I dug out all of the soil in the raised bed and made countless trips with the wheelbarrow to a large tarp on the lawn. Then, I found the spot on the lawn where I wanted to put the new bed and turned over the sod to ensure that it would smother the grass and not start growing up into my veggies. It probably would have died off without this step, but after hearing about my friends' experience trying to control the grass taking over their raised beds, I wasn't taking any chances.

Finally, I put the frame over the new spot, lined the bottom of the bed with landscape fabric, and filled it up with all the soil that I had transferred to the tarp. Now, all it needs is some early spring peas, which I plan to plant on Tuesday, some lettuce and spinach seeds, and a spring cloche.

Today, for Valentine's Day, Jake and I are going to work on designing our coop. Last year at this time, he was building me a retaining wall and now we're moving on to a bigger project. I know I am a lucky girl. When I told my sister what we were doing for Valentine's day, she said, "Birds of a feather flock together." I couldn't have said it better myself!

The NW Flower and Garden Show: Where Garden Junkies Convene

2010-02-05T17:52:00.000-08:00

Today, right smack in downtown Seattle in the immense convention center, I got my first taste of spring. A fellow gardener in my Master Gardener cohort described it perfectly when she said you walk in to the NW Flower and Garden Show and the smell of soil immediately meets your nose. She wasn't kidding. And when it did, I felt like I'd made it home.

Needless to say, the show was amazing. I went by myself and was perfectly content, wandering around in garden bliss for the entire day. Here are some highlights:

Turns out, I have a thing for rusty garden art. You might have noticed the rusty flowers I have "growing" in my garden already. Well, the booth of Home and Garden Art of Ballard was just too much to bear. I've been looking for a rooster to accompany my future hens and I found one today. I also managed to snag an amazing metal sign. Pictures of these new additions to my garden will be coming soon.

The Seattle Tilth and NW Bloom display garden was stunning – complete with a chicken coop and a goat! These cold frames were the highlight though. Cold frames keep crops like lettuce warm during the colder fall and winter months so you can have fresh veggies all year long. I loved the chartreuse-painted reclaimed window that they used for its lid - and a wagon wheel hatch to boot!

Seattle Urban Farm Company had an amazing vegetable garden display in an old truck. Wild strawberries grew vertically out of the side of the truck. Stalks of corn filled the bed. To top it off, there was a chicken coop along side the old truck with a couple of beautiful hens inside. Their nesting boxes were in the cab of the truck.

Speaking of reclaimed materials, I discovered that Re Store offers classes on how to transform new finds into treasures. I also attended an amazingly entertaining seminar by one of the co-authors of the book, The Salvage Studio. I haven't actually gotten my hands on the book yet, but judging by the pictures I saw and awesome ideas I gleamed during the presentation, it would definitely be worth purchasing.

Also, the recycled bottle rain chain (created by Bedrock, the company that keeps me stocked with all the tumbled stained glass for my mosaics) was amazingly beautiful. If I hadn't just purchased a metal rooster, I just might have splurged on the chain to funnel rain water into the new rain barrel I'm going to install next week.

Finally, I stumbled upon the Cascade Harvest Coalition, an organization dedicated to connecting farmers and the community, thus supporting the local food system. They gave me this super cool farm guide with all the user-friendly information I could want about tons of local farms in our state, from CSAs to U-pick farms.

In the end, I left with some 4 inch pots of sage, some metal accessories for my garden, lots of new information, and inspiration to make my garden as beautiful as it can be. I think it's safe to say that I will be a repeat visitor to the show in the years to come.

Planning Makes Perfect

2010-01-31T16:45:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, while listening to Amy Ockerlander – a Garden Hotline Educator from Seattle Tilth – talk about mulch and the other delights of organic gardening, I quietly tore a sheet of paper out of my Master Gardener spiral notebook. It started out innocently enough – a list of things to do that occurred to me while listening to the lecture. But before I knew it, I had a vision of a wild flower garden in my head and a list of tasks I'd need to do to bring it to fruition.

You don't have to tell me twice how lucky I am to have a canvas of a yard to whip into a masterpiece with all my new knowledge. If there were more hours of daylight right now, I think I'd barely see the inside of my house. Sure I've done a lot to it already and a blank canvas it is not. But the beauty of gardening is that it is an ever-evolving process. "Empty" spaces can be filled and tired places can be reinvented. And that is exactly what the side of my house is – tired and in need of some botanical TLC.

The plan that got scribbled out over the course of an afternoon lecture is to turn that worn-out, uneven strip of grass into a beautiful corridor of perennial wild flowers that leads to my garden and beacons beneficial pollinators. I've been pining over seed packets of lovely echinacae and chamomile flowers, knowing that I'd need to find a more permanent place to plant them. But instead of rushing out to buy those seeds as my impulses are so urging me to do, I am going to use this season to lay the foundation by having Jake put in a new paver path and by building the soil in my future wild flower beds.

This brings me to sheet mulching, the Master Gardener gem of the week and catalyst for the plan that keeps on growing. I am going to use the sheet mulching technique to smother the grass, carve out bed space, and build the soil – no shovel required. Apparently, all I need to do is put wet cardboard down on the surface I am going to prepare and then cover that with whatever organic material I have (fallen leaves, straw, sawdust). Then, it breaks down over time, helping add nutrients to the soil, while also smothering out grass and weeds in the process. I guess if I start the process in the fall, I'll have beds by spring with almost no labor. All I need to do is be patient, but I can hardly wait!

And if that wasn't enough, all my seeds came in the mail last week. It's just about seed starting time and I've got lots of yummy vegetables in the works. I'm going to try and start a salsa garden hoop house (a plastic cloche over the bed throughout the summer) with tomatillos, red bell peppers, jalapenos, tomatoes, and cilantro. I bought lots of new heirloom seeds from Seed Savers, with the hope of being able to save seeds from twice as many vegetables as last year. I am most excited about the Trail of Tears black beans that I'm going to grow this year. I discovered them at the farmers' market last year. Can you imagine eating a pot of beans with salsa, all grown in your own backyard? My mouth is watering just thinking about it!

Roasted Butternut Squash and Black Bean Soup

2010-01-27T16:00:00.000-08:00

It's been the year of the soup around here. Jake will probably tell you I'm obsessed. I've made just about as many soup recipes this year as I have bread because what goes better with a fresh and rustic, crusty loaf of bread then a delicious bowl of soup? Not much, I've found. So today, I came up with my own concoction – a spin on one of my favorite things: butternut squash.

I've had lots of inspiration. Heidi Swanson's Adzuki Butternut Squash Soup is probably my all-time favorite soup. I decided to start my soup in the same fashion since I thought the spices would go really well with black beans, something different than the all-too-popular cumin. Willi, of Diggin' Food, introduced me to the butternut squash and black bean combo with her recipe for Butternut Squash Tacos. Then, if that wasn't enough, I stumbled upon a recipe for Black Bean and Pumpkin Soup on Smitten Kitchen and it was over. My local, in-season (no tomatoes), vegetarian creamy squash soup was born.

I made the beans for this soup the day before. I have recently rediscovered my crock pot and don't know why I've been neglecting the poor thing all this time. It seems like more work than just cracking open a can, but honestly, the whole process probably took me the same amount of hands-on time. Let the beans soak while you're sleeping and then throw the beans in the pot in the morning and cover generously with water. Don't add salt – it will harden the beans. Add salt at the very end. Put the crock pot on low and come home to a fresh pot of beans. It's fantastic!

Roasted Butternut Squash and Black Bean Soup

The only thing that could have made this soup better would be toasted pumpkin seeds sprinkled on top. Just put a handful of raw pumpkin seeds (the little green ones you see in the bulk section of natural foods markets) in a dry skillet over medium heat and stir. The seeds will start darkening and will begin to pop with they are toasted. Watch them carefully! They can go from olive green to charcoal in just a few minutes. I sprinkle them on just about any creamy vegetable soup, but especially orange ones like squash and carrot.

Makes about 7 cups

1 medium butternut squash (about 1 1/2 to 2 pounds)

2 cups of black beans, cooked and drained

1 medium onion, large dice

3 cloves of garlic, minced

1/2 teaspoon ground coriander

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 salt

3 cups vegetable stock

~2 tablespoons of olive oil, plus some for brushing

1. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Meanwhile, cut the butternut squash in half, lengthwise, and scoop out the seeds.* Brush the skinless sides of the squash with olive oil, place them face down on a cookie sheet, and put them in the hot oven for about 30 minutes, or until a fork inserted into the thickest part meets no resistance. Once the squash is tender, remove the skins and puree the "meat" until smooth.

2. In a stockpot, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add the coriander and cinnamon to the oil and stir for a minute or two, then add the onion. Stir the onions around to coat them with the spices and let cook for about ten minutes.

3. Next, add the garlic, squash puree, stock, beans, and salt and bring to a boil. Turn the heat down to low and simmer to meld all the flavors.

4. Puree half of the soup until smooth and return the puree to the pot. Serve sprinkled with toasted pumpkin seeds and enjoy.

*I have to end this post with one final plug for home-made stock. Simply combine 2 onions (cut into large chunks), 3 smashed cloves of garlic, a couple sprigs of thyme, 1 1/2 teaspoons of salt, the seeds and pulp from the inside of the squash you just cut, and 2 quarts of water. Let simmer for 30 minutes while the squash is roasting. When it's done, just strain it and you'll have an amazingly delicious stock for your soup. You'll even have two pints left over! Just fill a mason jar (leave some head room so your jar doesn't crack) and freeze. You'll be so happy you did.

Abundance

2010-01-24T08:45:00.000-08:00

You've heard me say it before, but I just have to say it again: we are SO lucky to be able to go to our amazing farmers' market year round, right in the heart of Seattle. I keep thinking about the part of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, when author Barbara Kingsolver talked about going to her farmers' market in early spring, braving the elements with a few other hard-core patrons for some baby lettuce and green onions.

Even though I'm at the market every Sunday, I am still delighted every time I see the incredible abundance. There is stall after stall brimming with vibrantly colorful winter vegetables like kale, rutabagas, beets, and carrots. Don't get me started on the beautiful leeks and winter apples.

I think even as I begin to grow more and more of my own food (I've got a new 30 square foot bed in my plans for my front yard vegetable garden), I'll still go to our farmers' market. If not for vegetables, for the camaraderie – a place where foodies and garden lovers commune.

And while I don't particularly love pushing myself through crowds of people, I am grateful that so many Seattlites see the value of this gem – a plethora of fresh, local vegetables in the dead of winter. It is an opportunity that I know that many of my friends and family members in other chilly parts of the country would love to take advantage of.

Now on a different note, I wanted to share a link to a website I discovered during my Master Gardener class yesterday. It's called Hortsense and is a resource with easy-to-access information, with color pictures, of our area's most common plant diseases and pests. The menu bar on the left side of the site will take you to all the different options.

The really nice thing about this site is that it gives you a variety of non-chemical solutions to try before using a pesticide. I learned some pretty disturbing information yesterday about how people misuse pesticides and the scary thing is, most of the time, the original problem with the plant wasn't even caused by a pest! It is so important to really understand what is going on in your backyard ecosystem and recognize that there are many creative and non-chemical solutions to very common and pesky garden problems. My new goal is to learn about one plant disease and one pest per month. After all, a girl can never have too many New Year's resolutions.

And all this time I thought they were petals!

2010-01-16T16:43:00.000-08:00

I just got home from my second day in the Master Gardener program and am still grinning from ear to ear with all the fun I had today. I have made a mental note not to talk to any of my close friends right after I leave a session until I have had the opportunity to come down from my high and reflect through my blog. My lovely friend Radhi got fifteen minutes of Botany 101 and amazing facts about flowers when I called her upon leaving my class today. It's just that what I learned today rocked my world and shook up what previous understanding I had about plants and flowers.

In about six hours today, we dug into the world of botany – from the plants' cells and chromosomes, to their internal vascular system, to the inner workings of the plants' structures (roots, stems, leaves, and flowers). Besides all that, we discussed plant physiology and things you'd probably remember from high school biology, like photosynthesis and plant reproduction. Then, to top it all off, we learned how to begin identifying plants with a key by looking at the different features of their leaves and flowers.

So, in an effort to not completely lose you with my garden nerd discoveries, I will just share a few incredible factoids:

All those layers you see when you cut open an onion are actually leaves – scale-like leaves stored with "food". The small part at the base of an onion where the little root hairs stick out is the stem!
Each kernel of corn is actually a fruit that contains a seed inside. Also, if you're going to plant corn, it's best to plant it in a block rather than in a row so that you have better luck with pollination. This is my understanding in a nut shell: the part that sticks up at the top of a stalk of corn is the male part of the plant, which releases pollen to the wind. That pollen then needs to get blown down to the female plant part, the little corn silks sticking out. If the pollen gets down from the male part of the plant to the female silks below, you'll get a baby corn! So, if your corn plot is in a block, there's a better chance that the wind will get that pollen on to your plant. Isn't that amazing?
A potato is not actually a root – it's a fleshy underground stem (a tuber)!
There's always a bud at the base of a leaf. So, something that may look like a stem with little leaves on it, may actually be a bunch of leaflets that together make one leaf! Find the bud and you'll have a leaf!
A fruit (and tons of vegetables for that matter since many of the plants we call vegetables are actually fruits) is a mature ovary that has been fertilized with pollen and has developed into a fruit with seeds.

Finally, the most incredible news of all: I learned today that the members of the Daisy Family (ASTERACEAE) – Chrysanthemums, Cosmos, Dahlias, Black-Eyed Susans, Marigolds, Sunflowers, and Zinnia, just to name a few, are actually small flowers in a head which looks like a large flower. In other words, each of those beautiful "petals" is actually a flower. Those "petals" on the outside of the flower, the ones that are colorful, are called ray flowers and contain the female flower part. The short squat structures in the center that sometime look like one solid mass, are actually little flowers too called disk flowers. They are the male flower parts that produce pollen. Even as I write this, I am still blown away at how amazing it is to be receiving this new information. It's just more proof that so often, there is way more than meets the eye.

Surprises in my Winter Garden

2010-01-09T16:23:00.000-08:00

This afternoon, when the alluring northwest sun graced us with an amazing sun break, was the most calm few hours I've had since the whirlwind of the holidays and international travel came to an end. I've been away from my garden for the past few weeks, but today we got reacquainted and despite what I thought, my garden was far from asleep. Of course, that was the original plan. I started planting my fall and winter garden in July with the intention of harvesting vegetables year-round. But that was when I was still in the carefree time known as elementary school teacher summer vacation. Once September came around, I got swept up into the hectic life of work again and rarely made it out to the yard, except to harvest some kale and lettuce a few times a week. Our amazing year-round farmers' market has been my best friend – providing me with delicious, local greens, while saving me on energy when I need it the most. Not only that, when it's cold, rainy, and not to mention dark by the time I get home, I have no desire to be outside. And then, after our out-of-character-for-the-northwest cold snap pretty much wiped out all of my delicate little fall greens, I lost my momentum even more.

So today, when I went back out to the yard to take stock of what was still hanging around, I was delighted with what I found. Huge rutabagas, bulging out of the ground. I've never grown rutabagas before so I'm not sure if that's what they're supposed to look like, but regardless, I was thrilled. I learned during my Seattle Tilth Winter Gardening class that rutabagas are one of the most reliable winter vegetables because they keep so well in the cold ground. I haven't pulled any yet to taste them, but I'm pretty happy with what I can see.

I discovered that my collard greens had survived the cold. They were still as green and as ruffled as could be.

I found my dinosaur kale even healthier than it was in the summer and think I'm on to something. I noticed that during the summer, the bugs were getting to eat more of the kale than I was. But now, during the cold weather season it likes the most, my kale leaves look beautiful and intact. And I think the bugs that were thriving in the summer might have packed their bags and left for the winter. It's amazing, my little ecosystem out back.

I learned that the Territorial Seed Company writes pretty accurate descriptions. Surprisingly, their Wintewunder and Arctic King lettuce varieties survived the huge winter frost. I thought I had lost them all, but was delighted to find these hardy winter lettuces happily tucked inside the cloche.

And when I brushed away some of the soil around the greens growing out of my carrot plot, I was happy to discover bright orange peeking out at me. I pulled a beautiful Autumn King winter carrot out to add to our dinner tonight. While I was no where to be found, my garden was taking care of itself.

Today was also the first day of my Master Gardener program. I was lucky to be accepted, along with 75 other enthusiastic gardeners, to be trained in sustainable and effective garden practices so that I can volunteer in the community. I will be attending Master Gardener classes every Saturday for the next three months. Imagine my delight when I got my January syllabus with course titles such as Botany, Orchard Mason Bees, Roses and Ornamentals, and Organic Gardening for the Home Gardener.

So, I've decided that every week, after I've read my chapters and done my quizzes, after I've attended my classes, diligently scribbling notes into my new binder, I will post the big lessons I came away with that week. Consider this a work in progress – my journey to a deeper understanding of the garden I love so much.

Garden Gem (what I learned from week one of Master Gardener school):

Soil is the basis for everything we do in the garden. It provides our plants with some pretty critical elements: nutrients, water, air, and physical support. I also learned that nitrogen is the nutrient most needed by plants and it's the nutrient that promotes leafy growth. It's also the first number you'll see on a fertilizer label. Finally, I learned that the nutrients in the soil that plants need are not in a form that are readily available for plants (i.e. in their soluble form) until nutrients that come from the minerals in the soil are weathered or until organic matter in the soil is broken down and nutrients are released by helpful organisms like bacteria, fungi, and insects. I learned a long time ago that it was a sign of healthy soil to see earthworms squirming around in it, but now I understand that that's because they are helping my plants access the nutrients they need.

Adventures in Argentina

2010-01-02T14:41:00.000-08:00

Well, if my vitamin D levels were low before my winter break trip to Argentina, they are replenished now. It was sunny and beautiful in the Southern hemisphere and was a much-needed break from our cold and drizzly winter.

Being able to eat ripe and in-season summer foods like tomatoes and blueberries was one of the things that excited me the most about the trip. After all, right now the Argentine blueberries in my local organic market are six months out of season. I felt lucky to be able to eat them from the source, during the season in which they are harvested. I made sure to take advantage of lots of summer season delights.

Buenos Aires is a city with a very European culture, especially Spanish and Italian. The Spanish accent there sounds beautifully Italian. The city also abounds with delicious Italian food. I had the most delicious grilled pizza and amazing pasta dishes with fresh tomato and basil.

Red meat is also abundant in Buenos Aires. Argentinians take their grilling very seriously and high-quality, grass-fed beef is the norm. I am typically not a big carnivore, but I did eat my fair share of grass-fed beef while on our trip and found it surprisingly delicious. I think my iron levels are doing just fine right now as well.

By renting an apartment in the city with a kitchen, I was able to delve into Argentine life by grocery shopping, one of my favorite ways to experience a country's culture. In most neighborhoods around the city, there are store fronts that sell fruits and vegetables. Unlike at the farmers' markets or the produce department of a supermarket in the US, the customers don't touch the fruit. Instead, the shopper engages in an interaction with the shopkeeper, reminiscent of what markets must have been like in another time in history. You tell the shopkeeper what you'd like and about how much and he picks out and bags the product up for you. Then, you go to another store for eggs and meat, and yet another (an amazing, delicious bakery) for bread.

When I reflect on the trip from my ever-developing green perspective, the biggest thing I took away from the experience was a greater appreciation for my home-town environment. Living in Seattle, just four hours from the progressive, green city of Portland, it is easy to critique and enumerate ways our emerald city can improve. But we have come a long way in terms of going green. For one, I am grateful for our city's recycling system – a system that even allows us to compost our food scraps without having to put much thought into it at all. In Buenos Aires, you see city government-sponsored billboards just encouraging people not to litter, to throw their garbage in the trash.

I think a change in eco-consciousness is on its way though. In the big United Nations park in the classy neighborhood of Recoleta, there was an amazing temporary art installation made entirely of brightly painted Tetra-pack containers. The Tetra-pack Christmas trees and half-walls gave the impression that reused and recycled materials can be beautiful.

Being in BA made me grateful that so many Seattlites have started using reusable bags. It's becoming an expected part of our culture – one small step that everyone can take to reduce the impact of our consumption. Now, you can buy reusable grocery bags in any grocery store chain (branded with the store's name, of course). That is why I was overjoyed when I went into a funky little shop in BA, which describes itself as a shop of "objects with attitude", and found the bird bag. The olive green bag, decorated with the company's cute bird logo, rolls up into a tote-able size. The rolled bag is held in place with the best part of all – a brightly colored pieced of fabric with the company's message on it. In bold letters, it declares "No bag, thanks!" Not only that, it reminds people of the classic four Rs (Reuse, Reduce, Recycle, and Remember) and that plastic bags take 1,000 years to disintegrate.

The bags are super cute and for now, are sold in hip stores to a demographic of open-minded people. It is my hope that this trend catches on. It may be just a matter of time before the major Latin American grocery store chain, Carrefour, jumps on the bandwagon and has its own reusable bags for sale too.

Winter Wonders

2009-12-12T07:10:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago, Willi Galloway of DigginFood posted a picture of a beautiful head of red kale covered in frost. Then last week, temperatures dipped well below freezing in our good ol' rainy city and I woke up to find my kale in a similar state.
I have two raised beds still going strong right now in my winter garden. All my delicate varieties of lettuce are tucked into a bed covered by a cloche. When I checked on those, there was nary a frosty leaf in sight. The kale and frosty collards are in the bed of hardy greens, exposed to the elements. It's been a lot colder than I predicted it would be this time of year, so we'll see how long those little plants grow.
Jake and I both agreed that my sweet little pea blossoms looked pretty sad. I planted this crop of peas during our region's "second spring" in July and have been munching on sweet sugar snap peas since September. I'm afraid to say though, that after this cold snap, they may have met their end.
When the cold weather sets in, I start cooking and thanks to all the amazing food blogs I follow, I've had plenty of inspiration. The first recipe I tried, which I highly recommend, is Butternut Squash Salad with Cider Dressing from Sprouted Kitchen. If you follow my blog, you know about my love affair with butternut squash, so I won't try and sell it again. I will say though, that this is a different take on squash. It isn't pureed or served in soup, but rather is featured as a topping on a nice winter salad. Jake and I omitted the pomegrantes to keep it local and used a kale variety from the farmers' market for the greens since kale is abundant at the market in the winter. We also toasted pumpkin seeds in the skillet and tossed them into the salad instead of the pistachios.
I used these beautiful, local cranberries that I found at the farmers' market to make Gingerbread Tart with Cranberry Curd from the blog Not Without Salt. It looks pretty intricate, but it's really just three basic steps: making the gingerbread tart crust, making the cranberry curd filling, and making meringue to put on top.

I do have a couple of notes about the experience. The cookie crust was delicious, but really hard to roll out because it was so sticky. And when she says roll it out really thin, roll it out really thin. It puffs up a bit when it bakes, so my crust was pretty thick.

Also, be careful with the meringue. It says you should watch it carefully when it's broiling and that's the truth - it turns from snow white to golden brown (almost burning) in less than a minute. A few seconds of multitasking could result in a burnt topping.

Finally, I leave you with one more winter gem. I don't have any pictures of this, but you have to trust me when I say the recipe for Vanilla Roasted Pears from Smitten Kitchen is amazingly delicious and super simple. I took this dish to a girly dinner party last night and we devoured every bit of the sweet, caramel goodness. It only cost me $4 to buy everything I needed - local, organic pears, a lemon, and a vanilla bean and I was able to prep it in under a half hour. I put it in the oven when while we were eating so the pears would be warm. I served them with a few homemade gingerbread cookies and was thinking I probably should have served it with ice cream as well. But to be honest, it really didn't need it. This simple dessert is a wonder on it's own.

Family recipes gone local

2009-11-27T12:56:00.000-08:00

I have been hosting and cooking Thanksgiving dinner for the past seven years. But this year, my family and I were invited to Jake's mom's house for dinner. Deciding what I would cook to contribute to the meal led me to reflect on what dishes I really love the most. I concluded that in order for the meal to feel like Thanksgiving for me, I would have to have my mom's stuffing, cranberry-apple relish, and my grandma's yeast rolls.

Every year, I see new gourmet stuffing recipes, but I can never bring myself to deviate from my mom's simple, classic recipe. My mom always made it by cutting up a loaf of cheap wheat bread and I did too until Thursday. The weekend before Thanksgiving, I made a loaf of light wheat bread (a bread that's a mix of white and wheat flour so that it's not as dense as whole wheat bread) and cut the loaf into medium thick slices and then into small cubes. Next, I made stock to replace the store-bought stock or bouillon broth we always used to moisten the bread cubes. I bought celery, onions, and garlic at the farmer's market and cut about 4 sprigs of thyme from my plant on the patio. The only critical ingredient that I didn't grow this year and wasn't able to find at the market was sage. So, I used dried, ground sage instead. It all comes together about 30 minutes before the meal is served. Being a former vegetarian and now hesitant meat eater, I have never actually made the stuffing to go into the turkey. I've always served it as a side dish or stuffed it into roasted acorn squash halves.

To make the stuffing, you put some olive oil in a large skillet along with a tablespoon or two of butter (also local). Then, you saute a large onion (chopped), a few cloves of minced garlic, and a bunch of chopped celery stalks. I add the thyme, sage, salt and pepper to this mixture while it's cooking. After about 5 minutes or when the onions and celery are beginning to soften, I add heaping amounts of bread cubes. I mix them around and then leave them for a minute or two so that they start browning a bit and start getting a little crispy. I add stock by just pouring some around the pan so that the bread cubes absorb some of the liquid. Once the bread cubes have condensed a bit (they will with the addition of stock), I add more bread cubes. I usually add more thyme and sage to the bread cube mixture as well. It's not an exact science by any means. In fact, I don't actually have a physical recipe. I just make it from memory – memories of watching and helping my mom in the kitchen. That's probably why I find this recipe so comforting.

I have to make a quick note about stock – it's something I've built into my routine this year like baking bread. I always thought it sounded like a pain to put together, but I've since discovered that it really requires hardly any effort at all and the results amazingly impact the taste of your soup. To make a simple stock, all you need to do is roughly chop (large chunks and pieces) about two onions, a celery stalk or two, two or three smashed cloves of garlic, a sprig of thyme (or dried), and any other greens you may have left over from your other cooking adventures. I've added kale, leek greens, carrot tops, and more. You saute those ingredients in a large stock pan with a tablespoon or two of olive oil for just a few minutes. Add about 1 1/2 teaspoons of salt and two quarts of water and let it all simmer together for about 30 minutes to an hour. Finally, strain it into two large mason jars and freeze them. When I know I'm going to make a soup, I just take the jar out of the freezer that morning and am able to use it by the evening.

Finally, I'll leave you with the recipe for the rolls I had to have at Thanksgiving. The recipe I follow, which comes from my grandma Inez, is written in my mom's handwriting, so I'm guessing she used to make them too. They are easy to put together and really don't take much time to make, especially considering they're made with yeast. No kneading is required either – a recipe that's just my style.

Grandma Inez's Two Hour Rolls

My original family recipe says to add enough flour to make a thick batter. Therefore, the amount of flour called for in this recipe is approximate. In the ingredients list below, I noted the amount of flour I ended up using the last time I made these rolls.

2 pkgs. yeast

2 eggs (beaten)

1/2 cup canola oil

2 cups luke warm water

1/4 cup sugar

1 tsp. salt

~ 7 cups of flour

1. In a large mixing bowl, beat the two eggs. Then, add all of the ingredients except the flour and mix together.

2. Add enough flour to make a thick batter (about 6 to 7 cups – I know it seems excessive, but it will be worth it). Add the flour 2 cups at a time. The dough will look ragged, but shouldn't be super sticky when you touch it.

3. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let it sit for one hour. Meanwhile, oil two 9 x 13 inch baking pans.

4. On a flour-dusted surface, divide the dough in half. I use a large kitchen knife to cut the dough into pieces. If the dough is sticky, add more flour to the surface and the dough to make it easier to work with. Set one half aside and place the other on your work surface. Divide the first half into 12 rolls – I usually cut the dough into three even pieces and then cut each third into four rolls. Place them in one of the greased pans, evenly spaced. Repeat with the remaining dough and pan. Cover the pans with plastic wrap and let sit for one hour.

5. Bake both pans of rolls at 500 degrees for about 10 to 15 minutes or until the tops are golden brown. Watch them carefully - especially if you're not sure about the actual temperature of your oven. They burn easily.

6. Butter the tops of the rolls upon taking them out of the oven. Enjoy!

Harvest Pie Party

2009-11-23T17:18:00.000-08:00

During Pie in the Park in August, Maria and I decided that we needed to host a harvest pie party in order to enjoy pies of the fall variety. So, we invited a few friends over to my house with one request - that they bring a home-made pie. For some of our friends, just the thought of baking is overwhelming. But those who accept the challenge, generally surprise themselves with their home-made creations. I lovingly bullied my close friend into baking rather than using a ready-made pie crust and she proudly showed up with a key lime pie made from scratch.

The spread was amazing. We had traditional pumpkin, pecan, sweet potato, cranberry tartlets and cranberry cake, pumpkin cheesecake, and more. Jake made mulled wine again – a warm, sugary beverage to accompany our pie.

I made a pumpkin streusel pie, my favorite fall pie since I discovered the recipe in Sunset magazine a few years ago. It is like having a traditional pumpkin pie with pecan pie on top. I roasted a sugar pie pumpkin from the Farmer's market to make puree for the filling. Then, in order to keep the pie local, I substituted the evaporated milk for heavy cream from a local dairy. I used cookie cutters and a knife to embellish my pie with leaves of crust. I had to cook it for about 30 minutes longer than it calls for in the recipe in order to get a knife to come out clean, but I suspect that the cream substitution might have had something to do with it. And though it was a little deflated in the middle, the filling was amazingly flavorful and even more delicious than I remembered.

I couldn't be more delighted with our celebration of the seasons – Pie in the Park, to enjoy the fruits of summer, and now Harvest Pie Party, to taste the fruits of fall. So what do we have up our sleeves for winter? Savory pies!

Robot Flowers

2009-11-19T19:56:00.000-08:00

Please allow me to digress for a post while I share our latest project. It all started with a day at the Re-store in Ballard, where we picked out the old door that would become our headboard. We picked the door that seemed to have the most evenly-spaced and evenly-sized panels (we cut a few inches off the bottom of the door to make it even on both ends).

Jake cut three square panels out of 1/4 inch plywood and drilled four holes in both the wood panels and the panels on the door. He labeled each square of the door with a number that matched a wood panel.

Then, he hammered T-nuts into each drilled hole in the wood panels. Those would later receive the bolts that were screwed into the back of the door to hold the upholstered panels in place. Jake chose this system because the thought of just screwing the panels on from the back and having sharp, pointy screws potentially poking us was unnerving.

Once the panels were complete, it was time for me to take over. I decided to first put a thick layer of foam on to each piece to give the panels some depth and structure. Finding a place to put the huge roll of foam to be able to cut out the squares was quite the ordeal – I ended up draping the roll over a filing cabinet. But, once I had it in place, my handy electric knife (thank you, Christy!) cut them out like butter.

I covered the T-nuts with painter's tape and then used spray adhesive to attach the foam pieces to the T-nut side of each wood panel(right on top of the hardware that is shown in the picture above).

Next, I covered each foam/wood panel with a thick batting by stapling it to the opposite side.

Finally, I got to the best part of all - the amazing gray and yellow Amy Butler fabric, which Jake aptly named "robot flowers." It can be a challenge to put together bedroom decor that is the right mix of masculine and feminine, but I think this not-too-girly modern print does the trick. I stapled the fabric to the back of the panel. Note: If you want to cover a 20in x 20in square, you'll need about a yard of fabric per square. I used 2 1/2 yards to cover these three panels, but I barely had enough and having to literally stretch my fabric made the process a lot more stressful.

To finish the project, we bolted the upholstered panels onto the door. Jake created a French cleat to hang it on the wall. He took a 1 x 4 and cut into two lengthwise at an angle. He attached one piece to the wall and the other to the back of the door. Then, they come together at an angle, one on top of the other. It's secured to the wall, but looks like it's attached to the bed. All in all, it was quite the project, but well worth all the effort.

A year in review

2009-11-13T17:44:00.000-08:00

It's hard to believe, but on December 1st it will be one year since I made the commitment to be a localtarian and to try and grow as much of my own food as possible. So, to begin, I want to recap what's happened on this journey so far.

I gutted a once-unused section of my backyard and transformed it into three fruitful plots. I also discovered Jake's aptitude for using a saw - something he might be regretting now that I've signed him up to build me a chicken coop.

I learned to use a cloche to protect my tender spring vegetables, which allowed me to get the seeds started much earlier during the chilly month of March. I also rediscovered the joy of salad – nothing tastes better than delicate, vibrant greens eaten right out of the garden. And nasturtium (the beautiful red-orange flowers decorating my bowl) – what a beautiful addition to my garden and our salads!

I discovered that I actually can grow carrots, not just little orange stubs. They just need more room or depth to grow.

I learned to start seeds indoors, which helped me grow the beloved chocolate cherry tomatoes. This was really the most fruitful and successful plant I grew – the plant that made me the star of the staff lounge and the best girlfriend ever.

I rediscovered the kitchen and my love for food. I learned how to use squash, starting my love affair for butternut. I learned that a pumpkin can be more than a jack-o-lantern by roasting it, making it into puree, and turning it into pumpkin butter or a delicious pie.

I discovered the resources available around me, like the organic blueberry farm just a few miles from my work. And the year-round farmers' market in the U district that I used to go to on a whim when I was in college. I also discovered a plethora of blogs that helped me along the way by teaching me more about gardening and how to use the foods I grow.

I learned to bake bread and made my own bread every weekend since last November – dutch oven pot breads, white and wheat sandwich loaves, baguettes, focaccia, chile cheese bread, spelt bread for Jake, and the list goes on. I learned that no kneading is necessary, as long as you have a little time and a type-A personality.

While I made many gains this year, I still have a lot to learn. Luckily, I just got accepted to the King County Master Gardener program, which means my intensive gardening education and 90 hours of community service in the name of gardening will begin on January 9, 2010. I can't tell you how excited I am to get some more knowledge under my belt to be able to really understand what is happening with my soil and plants.

In addition to becoming a master gardener, I have a few goals that I'd like to work towards this year:

I want to beef up on my food preservation knowledge beyond freezing. I'm finally going to invest in the materials I need to start canning and we're going to buy a chest freezer for all the grass-fed, local meat Jake is going to buy.
I'm going to get rid of a bit more lawn and add two more raised beds for veggies. Jake is also going to help me rethink our current raised bed layout and see if we can't squeeze more into that space.
We're going to get chickens! As soon as we get back from our little jaunt in Buenos Aires, it will be time for Project:Chicken Coop.
I'm going to make more of a commitment to buy all local grains (besides flour, which I've already been doing) and dried beans.
I'm going to add more herbs to my garden, like sage and tarragon, and I want to be more proactive about drying and preserving them so that my spice rack is stocked up for winter.
I'm going to jump on the blueberry season as soon as it starts and am going to pick and freeze as many pounds as I can. I discovered this fall that blueberries in oatmeal are delightful. Rationing my 30 cup supply can only last so long.
This whole endeavor has helped me learn about how amazing bees are and how much we depend on them for our whole food production. I'm going to grow even more bee-loving flowers than last year, including a beautiful crop of sunflowers.
Finally, I want to try my hand at growing peppers this year.

Here's hoping that 2010 is as productive and fruitful as 2009. Cheers!

Pumpkin Carving Party

2009-10-31T09:04:00.001-07:00

I think I mentioned in my last post that I'm a big fan of Halloween. I love it all, especially the harvest bounty all around me at the farmer's market and in my garden. I think this might be one of the greatest times in the season - when we're still eating the bumper crop of tomatoes and peppers from the summer and also feasting on cool weather treats again like lettuce, peas, and chard. Need I mention the bounty of delicious winter squash? You know how much I love butternut.

So, when Jake and I decided to host a pumpkin carving party again, it was an excuse to plan a fall-themed local and seasonal party spread. It was interesting when I thought back about what snacks I had at our last carving shindig, complete with candy corns galore and a cauldron of punch - corn syrup delights. I don't mean to knock the typical Halloween party fare, but at that time, the thought of what ingredients were in those foods or how many miles they had traveled to get here never crossed my mind. So now, my party planning mind was in a different space - time to get creative and crafty with the seasonal foods around me.

The preparations for this Sunday afternoon get-together began on Friday. I roasted two sugar pie pumpkins and made pumpkin puree, which I later used to make pumpkin bread. I saved the seeds and had Jake roast them for snacking at the party. Then, on Saturday, I got dough mixed together for baguettes and soaked a pot of white beans.

Finally, on Sunday, in a frenzy of chopping and baking, everything came together.I baked the baguettes and then sliced them up with fresh farmer's market carrots, a red bell pepper, and a chocolate bell pepper. I served them on a platter with Moroccan carrot dip and white bean dip (the biggest hit of the party). To satiate a sweet tooth, I made carrot oatmeal cookies and pumpkin bread. Then, I put my green heirloom tomatoes to use by making cornmeal-dusted fried greed tomatoes.

To top it off, Jake made mulled wine. It was delicious and cozy.

Jake and I scored two huge organic jack-o-lantern pumpkins at the Ballard farmer's market for five bucks a piece. They were perfect for carving and have been a lovely addition to my porch this week.

Thank you Hollis Rendleman (one of my fabulous OntheDouble(dutch) teammates) for taking so many amazing photos.

Friday Night Fright

2009-10-17T14:44:00.000-07:00

Halloween is one of my favorite times of the year. I love costumes - they're a chance to reinvent myself for the night. I usually choose positive, fun costumes since I'm not big on the gory variety. But then, Jake and I got invited to a Halloween party and we were asked to come dressed as a way we could die. It seemed like bad juju to dress up as a way that I could actually die, so I started looking at it as the creative challenge of coming up with a new costume idea that I look forward to every year.

After much deliberation, I decided to go with a garden-themed idea: bird flu. And how did I get bird flu, you ask? Why, the chickens, of course! Yes, I went as crazy chicken lady with bird flu. Instead of going morbid, I went over the top. Jake wore his climbing harness with a frayed rope attached, which is both perfect for the party and completely frightening for me at the same time. I think he probably saw my costume the same way. I hope this play on reality isn't actually a preview of what's to come.

My fall garden

2009-10-11T16:40:00.000-07:00

A few months ago, I started planning my winter garden. This was a first for me. I usually garden from April to August and then clean everything up for the winter. Now I know that lots of vegetables can be grown and harvested throughout the winter. Being the type A planner that I am, I mapped my fall and winter garden out in my garden journal before I planted everything. Jake thought this was hilarious, but it was necessary, I swear. For one thing, I had to plant some plants in a bed that would be protected by a cloche (the lettuce, spinach, and fennel). Not only that, some seeds needed to be planted in late July and others in August and October.
Another bed in my fall garden contains hardier vegetables that don't need to be protected with a cloche. I planted peas (which will just last through the fall), rutabagas (which store great in the cold ground), overwintering onions, collard greens, and kale.

On another note, I was finally able to harvest my winter squash. I didn't get as many as I hoped, but this was the first summer I've ever grown winter squash and I'm grateful for every one of them that actually grew. I ended up with four of the largest delicata squash I've ever seen (delicate they are not) and three large butternut squash.
Those of you that follow my blog know about my love for butternut squash. It was the best to crack open my own homegrown beauty for dinner on Saturday night.

I hate to admit it, but when I was cutting it open, I was halfway nervous that it wouldn't be the beautiful, firm squash I hoped it would be. However, I was delighted to discover that is was almost solid "meat" - just a little hole of seeds to scoop out. I peeled it and cut it into little cubes, which yielded about 8 cups of squash. I used five cups of it in a yummy recipe for Roasted Squash and Black Bean Tacos from Diggin Food. I served it with homemade corn tortillas, fried green heirloom tomatoes and chocolate cherry tomato salsa.

The chocolate cherry tomatoes deserve a special tribute. These are from the two plants I started from seed in February and raised indoors. In June, hundreds of little green tomatoes appeared all over the plants and from then on, about two or three pounds ripened each week. It is the most amazing harvest I could have imagined. I don't know if this is normal for cherry tomatoes, but just enough ripened each week for us to comfortably eat and share. I am still harvesting cherry tomatoes from these plants. Last week, I harvested a whopping four pounds. For the past four weeks, I've been bringing in pounds of cherry tomatoes to my staff lounge – they're inevitably devoured by noon. These tomatoes are so sweet and delicious, Jake says I've ruined him for tomatoes. If you've ever thought of growing tomatoes, try planting a few of these. You won't be disappointed.

Super Succulents

2009-09-27T19:08:00.000-07:00

It has been wedding season for Jake and me. When we attended the last wedding of the season, in beautiful Orcas Island, WA, we were lucky to be able to bring home a garden treat.

The groom's grandpa, affectionately called Grandpa Deaton, is an avid gardener, a description that greatly understates his gardening skills. He and Linda, the groom's mom, have landscaped an amazing yard with beautiful gardens at her house in Vashon, which has been part of the annual Vashon Island Garden Tour.

On our way to Bryan and Laura's engagement party earlier this year, we took a quick detour to Linda's house. While Jake went to knock on the door to see if anyone was home, I took a peek at what was growing in their greenhouse. What I found were hundreds of succulents, several varieties, growing in little 4-inch pots. Ultimately, those were the place cards at the reception and we were encouraged to take one (or some) home when we left. Jake and I each took the ones with our name cards in them and a few left behind, around our table.

Then, on our way out, we stopped to tell Grandpa Deaton about how delighted I was to have such meaningful party favors and he offered us the plant with his name on it as well. It was like being served a meal from the chef himself. So now, in my garden, I have a little reminder of Bryan and Laura's beautiful wedding and a garden treat from Grandpa Deaton.

Two gems - off the beaten path in Ballard

2009-09-27T08:16:00.000-07:00

Saturday was date night for Jake and me and we decided to go to Delancey to have a delicious, localtarian meal. Delancey is the gourmet pizza restaurant that Molly Wizenberg, author of A Homemade Life and blog Orangette (thank you Elisa), just opened up with her husband. As most of you know, I stopped eating dairy a few months ago to help with my allergies, but I figured if I really wanted to get the most out of my visit, the dairy ban would have to be temporarily lifted. And it was. We started out with an appetizer of a cheese called Burrata, which they have overnighted from a cheese maker in L.A. Not exactly localtarian, but she was raving about it on her blog, so we had to try it out. It's a little like mozzarella, but softer and more spreadable like cream cheese. They serve it with olive oil and little baguette toasts, and it was delicious.

Then, we tried the pizza, which is the reason for going there. One would really have been enough for us to share, but we ordered two, the sausage pizza and the magherita. I think Jake was a little disappointed that I didn't want to go for one of the mushroom varieties, but I'll have to work up to that. It's wood-fired pizza so the crust is speckled with charred bubbles and is delightfully chewy. The sauce is delicious as well. It really was the best wood-fired oven pizza I've had in a long time.

Then, we had dessert – one of each: plum crumble and a chocolate chip cookie with gray salt. We got the plum crumble because it's the seasonal featured dessert right now, replacing the peaches in white wine that were on the menu last month (the ones I made for the tea party). Plus, Molly just posted recipe for the crisp on her blog, so I had to try a sample from the source.

That brings us to the cookie. A cookie – a simple, normal-sized, chocolate chip cookie. No ice cream, no chocolate sauce, just a cookie. It's what I've been saying we need in restaurants for years! Sometimes you want just a little something sweet after a meal, like a cookie, and not a cookie that arrives like another meal. It was perfect! The gray salt on top, which I can't actually describe since I don't really know what "gray" salt is, was a pleasant surprise. I don't want to seem like a pretentious foodie, but it really added a lot of depth to the flavor. If you've ever made a baked good and forgotten the salt, you know that the salt is imperative for a well-balanced flavor. Plus, this salty accent is subtle, just enough to be noticed every couple of bites, but not as strong as all the salted caramel treats going around.

All in all, it was a delightful experience. We did have to wait quite a while for a table, but the host was very accommodating and even got us a glass of wine to make the wait a little more palatable. You can't go to Delancey, where they only take reservations for 6 or more, and be impatient for a table. It's a small, cozy space with only a handful of tables that are worth the wait. It's hard for me to reflect on my experience objectively. After all, I have been reading Orangette for so long, it feels like I actually know her, like I was visiting the new restaurant of a friend. So, I guess you'll have to go over to Ballard and see how amazing it is for yourself.

While you're there, you should make a mental note to come back the next morning and go next door to Honore. It's my good friends' amazing french bakery. The pastries are amazing and they serve Morning Glory chai (a huge plus for a chai snob like me). I try something different every time I go and I've never been disappointed. Crispy, flaky, buttery goodness - the onion and Gruyere tart is delicious and every one of the fruit tarts I've had has been amazing (blueberry, rhubarb, apple – the list goes on). It's a little place, a hole in the wall, and there's always a line out the door, but I'm telling you, it's so worth the wait.

Pie in the Park

2009-09-07T16:31:00.001-07:00

While it may not be autumn according to the calendars, summer is over in the world of teachers. When we let our new students into our classes on Monday, summer sadly came to an end. But not without a bang! We had Pie in the Park on Sunday. My friend Maria came up with this gem of an idea last year. She invited a bunch of friends to a beautiful park near her house and made a bunch of pies for us to feast on. This event happened to be the night we signed a contract that allowed us to go back to school the following morning, after having been on strike for over two weeks.

When school was coming to an end in June, we vowed to join forces and hold Pie in the Park again. But this time, we would get our guests involved. We asked everyone to bring a home-made dessert to share (if it had butter, it was cool with us) and their own utensils and plates to eat with. I made the localtarian nectarine-blueberry pie with crumb topping in the photo up top. Thanks again for your guidance, Mark Bittman! Maria made the yummy deep-dish apple pie above.

Our friend Kate strapped in her home-made blackberry pie and biked to the park. People broke out of their baking comfort zones, got their hands and kitchens dirty, and actually had fun crafting their fattening contributions. We ended up with quite a variety too with apple, cherry, nectarine, peach, blackberry, and even a creamy key lime. And while pie was the inspiration, it wasn't all we had that afternoon. Our guests brought ice cream casserole, bundt cake, shortbread, cookies, and squash bread too. It was an amazing afternoon and fabulous way to say good-bye to summer, all in name of good friends, sunny weather, and pie!

The Mimosa Dilemma

2009-08-23T20:39:00.000-07:00

In honor of this summer's harvest and all things girly, I decided to have a little garden tea party this weekend. It would give me the opportunity to finally have my double dutch teammates over to my garden since they have been hearing incessant news about it since December. I put my garden's bounty to use in a few choice recipes: Caprese salad (i.e. slices of my heirloom tomatoes, fresh basil, and mozzarella from the Farmer's market with a little balsamic vinegar and olive oil), Disappearing Zucchini Orzo, tea sandwiches (with the crusts cut off!) with homemade hummus and cucumbers, and mini-zucchini bread loaf "favors" (i.e. little loaves, packaged up and ready to go home with my guests).

As a special treat and challenge for myself, I made baguettes for the first time ever to go with the Caprese salad. They came from yet another fabulous recipe in the Kneadlessly Simple cookbook. They were actually pretty simple to make, although it required some hand-shaping and I had to make a baguette tray (a baking pan with two long troughs) out of foil. While they weren't as long and perfect looking as the baguettes you'd see in a French bakery, they tasted delicious. I think with a little practice, I could get it dialed in.

I was inspired by Molly on Orangette to make peaches in white wine. I served them in the beautiful little antique tea cups my friend Gina lent me. It was delightful to eat wine-soaked peaches out of dainty cups and saucers. Plus, it allowed for polite sipping of all the delicious juice after the peaches had been eaten. A bowl just wouldn't do.

Now, this brings us to the title of today's post. When asked what my guests could bring, I suggested a bottle of champagne. Mimosas seem girly and elegant – the perfect choice when you've asked all your guests to wear tea party dresses for the occasion. However, when I made that suggestion, I had no idea I'd be confronted with a localtarian dilemma.

On our way home from the farmer's market, on the day before the party, I realized I had to stop by the store to buy orange juice for the mimosas. Now I know oranges don't grow in the Pacific Northwest, but I was hoping that I could get some juice from the sunny state of California, just a few states away. But since I don't ever drink orange juice, especially now that I started this local/seasonal endeavor, I had no idea how difficult that would be. Jake and I began scouring the store, looking at every brand of orange juice there was, trying to find out where the oranges in the orange juice came from. The most information we could get was that while the OJ might have been packaged in California, the orange juice came from the USA (thank you so much for narrowing that down), Mexico, or Brazil! I wasn't about to buy orange juice from over 6,000 miles away after making painstaking efforts for almost a year to eat foods that come from within my own state.

So with that, we were off to another store, in hopes to find a more local brand of orange juice. When we got to that store and discovered the same 6,000 mile juice situation, we began exploring our options. Maybe another type of juice, we thought. But the other juices we found neglected to specify where the fruit had come from. Besides, when Jake picked up the bottle of carrot juice, I concluded that those exotic mimosa possibilities might deter my guests from ever braving my parties again. So, we decided on option number three: I would buy oranges and squeeze them myself. So I did. I bought six pounds of organic Valencia oranges, grown in California. Then, I invested in a mini hand juicer and set out to juice all the oranges by hand. $12 later, I had half a pitcher of orange juice and the most decadent, labor-intensive mimosas I have ever had. Needless to say, it was an eye-opening experience. It made me look at orange juice – an all-American beverage that we take for granted – in a whole new way.

In the end, except for our California orange juice, it was a localtarian success. The champagne, provided by my guests, who know me all too well, came from Chateau St. Michelle in Woodinville. I'll definitely have a garden tea party again next year to celebrate the summer's harvest, but I'll think twice about serving mimosas.

The Fruits of my Labor

2009-08-18T21:59:00.000-07:00

Our abundantly sunny summer has been good for the garden. It overflows with more food than I can eat. So, in an effort to not let any of it go to waste, I spent an entire day last week preserving food. Thank goodness for the book that has provided me with all the shortcuts and tips. I'd be lost without it. The best way to describe that day would be organized chaos. Ever corner of my kitchen was in use, my blue tile covered with shredded zucchini, tomato seeds, apple juice and more. I transformed seven pounds of zucchini into a quart size bag of zucchini medallions for freezing and 17 cups of shredded zucchini, which later became ten mini loaves of zucchini bread, three dozen zucchini chocolate chip cookies, a zucchini quiche, and a nine cup bag for the freezer. And all of this zucchini (and the zucchini mentioned in all my prior posts) have come from one plant!

I put my apples to use in a rustic apple tart. I also used them to make a pie filling. I put it in a pie dish (sans crust) and put that in the freezer. When the entire mass was frozen, I slipped it out of the dish, wrapped it up in freezer paper, and stashed it back in the freezer. Now, when we're in the dead of winter and I want to make a delicious fruit pie, all I need to do is make a crust, put the frozen filling in the pie plate, cover with a top crust, and bake. I love the possibility of this "bake it later" pie, but I'll have to tell you later how it actually turns out.

I dehydrated five trays of heirloom tomato slices. I am going to pack them in olive oil with a little garlic and basil. Then, when all the tomatoes have been devoured, I can use the flavorful oil for something else. While I was prepping my tomatoes for the dehydrator, I put all the seeds that oozed out into two plastic containers, one for each heirloom variety. I tried to start the process of saving my tomato seeds before we left for Pittsburgh, but when we returned, I found my tomato seeds all dried up and covered in mold. So, this time, I was determined to make it work. And it did. Once the tomato seeds (and juice/water mixture) fermented for a few days, I was able to strain and clean the seeds. Then, I spread them out on a pad of newspaper to dry. Tomorrow, I'll pack them up and save them for spring. We'll see if they sprout. The whole process was so simple, it almost seems too good to be true.

Finally, no urban gardener would be complete without a fabulous fall clutch! The clutch I made last spring served me well, but I was feeling like I needed something to help me ease into the winter. So with Amy Butler's fall-toned floral fabric and some coordinating blue tweed found in the remnants section of the fabric store, my clutch is complete and I'm content as could be. It's like toting my garden around with me.

While you were out...

2009-08-11T16:49:00.000-07:00

Jake and I went to a wedding in Pittsburgh this weekend. We left on Friday and returned Monday night. On Tuesday morning, when I went out to my garden, still in my pajamas, I made the following beautiful discoveries:

Two baby delicata squash

Lots of new dahlia blooms

Two huge zucchinis

The biggest zucchini in the picture above weighed 2 1/2 pounds! Just to put that in perspective, the small zucchini in the picture was about the size of an average zucchini, weighing just under 1/2 a pound. While I love this picture of this morning's harvest, I didn't think it accurately showed just how big those zucchinis were, so I had to take one more:

Wondering how I know how much they weigh? I've got Jake's kitchen scale and I'm discovering that it is a pretty handy kitchen tool to have. Many recipes, like the ones I love in Local Flavors and Super Natural Cooking, call for certain amounts of vegetables by weight, rather than cups. The scale allows me to weigh the vegetables I pick from my garden to see if I'm using the amount that it calls for.

I officially crossed over to the food-nerd world this morning when I weighed out the flour I needed for the bread I was making. Until today, I had been scoping and leveling the flour I used. This strategy works just fine, but I keep getting the message from multiple sources (i.e. Nancy Baggett from Kneadlessly Simple, Molly Wizenberg from A Homemade Life) that weighing your flour is the way to go. So, today I gave it a whirl. I actually tested out the method by weighing one cup that had been scoped and leveled. According to the Kneadlessly Simple Bread book, 1 cup of flour is equal to 5 ounces. When I weighed my scoped and leveled cup, I discovered that it was a little under! Not by much, but when baking, a little of anything goes a long way. I think either way, my baked goods would turn out just fine, but as long I have Jake's scale in my possession, I think I'll keep baking the foodie way.

My Fall and Winter Garden

2009-08-05T15:08:00.000-07:00

I started the day by planting my fall and winter garden, filling up all those seemingly empty squares in the photo above. In late July, I started planting seeds of plants that I will be able to harvest in the fall and throughout the winter. I ordered a bunch of hardy, over-wintering seeds from Territorial Seed Company's Winter Garden catalog. According to Seattle Tilth, July is the second spring in our climate, so it's a good time to plant cool weather crops again, like lettuce and peas. The following crops will hopefully be growing in my garden this fall:

lacinato kale (dinosaur kale) and red kale
collards
boy choy
swiss chard
3 types of bibb lettuce
romaine lettuce
red merlot lettuce
onions
rutabagas
2 types of spinach
6 buckets of carrots

Then, I got out the ladder and precariously gathered all of the apples I could reach off my tree. I have no idea what kind of apples they are, except that they look like little crab apples. They're small and tart, but they bake beautifully. Last night, I made a rustic apple tart with another Mark Bittman recipe. I'm telling you, that cookbook of his is worth checking out.

Finally, I harvested the seeds out of one of my ripe heirloom tomatoes this afternoon. I'm going to take the seeds through a fermenting process that will allow me to store them until I am ready to plant them in February. Thank you Gayla Trail (the author of the book that got me started, You Grow Girl) for showing me the way.

Apples, peaches, pumpkin pie

2009-08-03T18:56:00.000-07:00

I came home on Sunday morning to find a beautiful surprise - a big brown grocery bag full of apples. My neighbors were gracious enough to give me some of the apples that were practically falling off their tree. I didn't even have to scale the fence, which I had contemplated doing many times as I watched those apples ripen and remain untouched. So, as an expression of my gratitude, I decided to bake them a pie. And since I was already going to have the whole kitchen in a mess of flour, I made us one as well.

I used Mark Bittman's recipe for Traditional Apple Pie with Flaky Crust from his How to Cook Everything cookbook. Bittman's recipes are simple and straightforward, usually featuring one or two choice ingredients in each one. When you cook a Bittman dish, you end up with a gourmet tasting meal without having to follow a lot of complicated steps. Needless to say, the pies turned out delicious.

One of the things that I loved the most about the recipe was making the crust in the food processor. I used a similar process for the crust of the Huckleberry (blueberry) Skillet Cobbler I made last week. You literally put all of the ingredients for the crust in the food process and it does most of the work. I'll never make crust another way.

Before I leave the topic of pie, I wanted to make a comment about another super handy kitchen tool: the apple peeler/corer/slicer combo. There are no frills with this contraption. It's a pretty simple, old-school apparatus that really does exactly what it claims. With the turn of a crank, that really takes no effort at all, the apple is peeled, sliced into rings, and cored. It makes the job of baking an apple pie a cinch. I inherited mine from my mom, which she got from my grandpa, but they still sell ones exactly like mine. I just used it again today to prep apples for apple chips. It's the coolest!

U-Pick

2009-07-31T12:40:00.000-07:00

This week, I went to a u-pick farm for the first time. I guess I have been to a u-pick farm before. I remember going strawberry picking once in Carnation, WA with my elementary school friend, Shannon, and her family when I was in the fourth or fifth grade. But since it has been so long since that experience, it feels like the first time. And like most things in my life, I got really enthusiastic about it and ended up going twice in one week - during the hottest week we've had in a long time. Apparently, super hot rays of sun won't stop me.

When I got the bug to do this, I looked on-line for a good spot to go. I found a super helpful website called pickyourown.org that has information on all the local u-pick farms in the different counties in our area. I was originally going to go to a farm in Carnation, which seems to have a plethora of u-pick farms to choose from. But then, I found the Overlake Blueberry Farm in Bellevue, just 20 minutes from my house, resulting in berries even more local than the others. Not only is the farm practically in my own backyard, but it's organic too and they sell the blueberries for only...drum roll please...$1.50 a pound ($1.25 if you have 5lbs or more)!

On Tuesday, my good friend, Nicole, braved the sun and picked blueberries with me for two hours. We ended up with over 10 pounds of blueberries. Today, my sister, Rachel, and I picked blueberries for another two hours. Today, my bucket weighed in at 5.17 pounds - just a little more than what I collected on Tuesday.

So, what am I planning to do with my 15 pounds of blueberries? I have already started freezing a ton, so that we'll have yummy summer fruit this winter. According to the handy book Jake got me for my birthday, The Busy Person's Guide to Preserving Food, the best way to preserve blueberries is to freeze the berries on a tray and then put them in a freezer bag. So far, I have frozen 21 cups of blueberries. The cool thing about frozen blueberries is that they can be used in recipes just as well, if not better, as fresh blueberries.

I have also been making some fantastic dessert recipes that feature blueberries. Like I mentioned in last week's post, the recipe for Blueberry Boy Bait from SmittenKitchen.com is delicious. I also made this amazing Sunset recipe for Huckleberry Skillet Cobbler with blueberries. I highly recommend it. Just don't bake it when temperatures are going to be in the 100s or you'll feel like you're baking too. I learned that the hard way.

Zucchini: How I love thee! Let me count the ways.

2009-07-25T19:55:00.000-07:00

Do you remember that part in Forrest Gump when the character, Bubba, lists off all the different ways to cook shrimp? Over three or four scenes, he rattles off, "There's shrimp gumbo, shrimp creole, coconut shrimp, shrimp stew, shrimp salad..." Well, that's what I was reminded of as I picked four new zucchinis from my garden today. So, in today's post, I present to you the various ways I have used the bounty of zucchini from my garden this season.

1. Simple sauteed zucchini with garlic and olive oil

2. Summer Squash Gratin (sans cheese) from 101 Cookbooks

3. Summer Squash soup with oregano salsa from the Vegetable Soups cookbook by Deborah Madison

4. Home-made pizza with basil pesto and zucchini medallions, inspired by this recipe from SmittenKitchen.com

Thanks to Radhi for the blog recommendation. I love it. The Blueberry Boy Bait recipe is amazing!

5. Fried Squash Blossoms (see July 10th post)

6. Squash Blossom and Baby Zucchini Risotto

7. Health-nut zucchini bread from the Enchanted Broccoli Forest cookbook by Mollie Katzen

8. Zucchini Spaghetti, inspired by another recipe from SmittenKitchen.com

9. Zucchini Quiche, which is actually more like a casserole than a classic quiche. This is an old family recipe from my grandpa, who also grew a ton of zucchini.

10. Zucchini Chocolate Chip Cookies from Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.

These are the recipes I plan to make some time soon:

Zucchini pancakes, another one of my grandpa's recipes
Heidi Swanson's Zucchini Bread with crystallized ginger. Yum!
Heidi Swanson's Chocolate Zucchini Cupcakes
Disappearing Zucchini Orzo

If anyone has any good zucchini recipes that they'd like to share, I'd be more than happy to have them. Cheers!

Oh, the joys of summer!

2009-07-17T13:25:00.000-07:00

We ate the first three ripe tomatoes the other night with fresh basil from my garden and balsamic vinegar. They were still warm from the sun, I kid you not. It's amazing how home-grown tomatoes just seem to melt in your mouth. It was worth waiting for them to arrive through those cold and rainy winter and spring months.

Jake and I made a new delicious risotto recipe using zucchini and squash blossoms from the garden. I've heard that making risotto can be complicated, but it was actually quite easy. You've just got to keep stirring. I think the risotto was even better the next day.

Finally, I pulled this beautiful bunch of carrots up today. I have never grown carrots this large before. I learned that it is a good idea to plant carrots in a deep container so they have lots of room for their roots to grow. It pays off! I'm going to put them to use tonight in a new recipe from Heidi Swanson called Carrot, Dill, & White Bean Salad. I've got a pot of white beans simmering on the stove and a loaf of four grain-honey bread in the oven right now to go with it. It feels like an oven in my kitchen at the moment, but it'll be worth the sweat, I'm sure.

City Chicken Chronicles: Part 1

2009-07-12T15:33:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, something clicked in my gardening-obsessed brain and I started to get chicken-fever. I don't really know what started it all. It could have been the conversation I had in June with some parents at school that have chickens, which made me curious and secretly envious. It could have been all of the times I had to say, "Nope, I'm not going to get chickens" when asked by visitors to my garden. Or maybe it's just a natural progression - first a foodie, second a farmer's market consumer, then an avid kitchen gardener, and finally an urban chicken farmer? Whatever it was, I am officially inspired to have a couple of hens of my own and am now on the quest for as much information as I can gather.

To see if this is even something I want to get involved in, I decided to go on the Seattle Tilth City Chicken Coop Tour. People around Seattle, who are raising chickens in the city, opened up their backyards and let us check out their set-ups in action. Tilth sent me a map of all the participating chicken-owners and then Jake and I toured around to different coops. Of course, Jake will be my much-appreciated handy man in this endeavor, the one who will build my coop, so he accompanied me on the tour. He also brought his camera along so that we could take photos of all of our favorite coop features and details.

Here is what we learned so far:

1) Your coop and chicken run can be all one connected, attractive structure. By having these two areas connected, the birds can go into their coop to sleep and come out in the morning when they're ready, thereby making it a little more convenient for me. We will put hardware cloth, a form of heavy duty chicken wire, on the ground of the run and coop and up the side walls and roof to keep predators out.

2) Building a storage cabinet into the coop is a good idea. Where else am I going to put big bags of feed and bedding? Also, doors in different sections of the coop allow easy access to eggs and other areas for cleaning. The four little doors on the first picture can be opened up, allowing direct access to the little nesting cubbies where the chickens lay their eggs.

3) Chickens like tight, little spaces to lay eggs in. We were talking about the idea of using big country mail boxes for nesting cubbies so I could just open that mailbox door and collect my eggs. Then, Jake joked about engineering a mechanism with a flag on the outside of the mailbox that would let me know when I had eggs. I love it!

4) Chickens need a roosting bar to sleep on. Apparently, they poop a lot while on that bar, so if you put big baking trays or a drawer underneath that bar, you can just pull it out and clean it up really easily. According to the coop owners, they change the bedding anywhere from every 6-8 weeks to once a year. I imagine I'd be in the camp of 6-8 weeks, since I don't want it to stink out my neighbors. Plus, the bedding and manure will make great nitrogen-rich compost for my garden.

5) It's best to hang the food and water containers since chickens like to scratch and peck while they eat.

6) Lots of cute accents can be added to your coop like salvaged leaded stained glass windows or this adorable window box planter. Many coops that we saw feature recycled or salvaged materials.

The next step is to take the Coop Design and City Chickens 101 classes at Tilth for even more information. My plan is to get Lucy, Ethel, and Blanche...um, I mean, the chickens sometime next spring. I am determined to do this with as much planning and preparation as possible, but it is all I can do to contain my excitement.

Updates from my Kitchen Garden

2009-07-10T13:36:00.000-07:00

My garden is in full bloom now. We're eating lots of different vegetables now - peas, beans, zucchini, kale, lettuce, and raspberries.

I've got lots of green heirloom tomatoes and cherry tomatoes growing right now. I noticed today that three big tomatoes on the largest heirloom plant in the garden are finally turning red. I can hardly wait to break into those.

Thanks to Radhi, I'm taking a class on Sunday at Seattle Tilth called Winter Gardening. I got a jump start on those plans yesterday when I started planting seeds for my fall and winter harvest. I planted red kale, Swiss chard, bok choy, carrots, onions, and peas. The picture above shows the new trellis I built for my peas. I have seen this type of trellis in other people's yards around town and have always wanted to build one for my garden. I'm not sure why I like them so much. Maybe because it is so simple and provides the peas with exactly what they need to climb. Stay tuned for pictures of their ascent.

I finally got up the nerve to harvest and cook squash blossoms. It's not that I was scared really, but intimidated for sure. I knew that they are typically filled with cheese and deep fried and that alone seemed like more hassle than it would be worth. In fact, when Radhi was here, we bought a couple from the farmer's market to try. We never did get around to figuring out what to do with them. So, two nights ago, when I was harvesting a zucchini for dinner, I saw all of the beautiful blossoms and was inspired to give it a try...for real, this time. I made a simple batter that consisted of 1 cup of spelt flour, 1 cup of water, 1/2 teaspoon of salt, and some dried oregano (which I grew, harvested, and dried a few days ago). After carefully rinsing the blossoms, I dredged them in some batter and fried them in some olive oil (not deep fried, just sauteed with a generous amount of olive oil in the pan). They turned out amazing. I didn't actually stuff them with anything, but it tasted like I did. As it turns out, it's not that hard to make them after all.

Finally, my class worm bin and the worms came home for the summer. It was good timing, actually, since it was about time to harvest the compost they have been creating since January. To begin the harvesting process, I put another bin, with holes in the bottom, right on top of the old worm bin bedding. Then, I put new bedding in the top bin and had the kids start putting new food up top to entice the worms upward.The top picture shows the top worm bin with new bedding. When most of the worms had made their journey to the new bin, I lifted the bin off of the bottom bin and took the bin full of compost out to my garden (see bottom worm bin picture). Before I started to use the new worm compost, I mixed a third of it back in with the new bedding. After all, I don't want to lose too many worms. Then, I shoveled out bits of compost, worms and all, and mixed it in with the soil around different plants in the yard. Now, I'll just keep feeding the worms (with used tea bags and fruit and vegetable scraps) until I can have my students contribute to my compost again in the fall. It doesn't get any better than that.