Beehives Painted!

After hours of skillfully wielding a paintbrush I’m happy to say all the beehive parts I got from the other Mark have been painted. He built them and primed them and then I took over from there.  Starting with leftover paint from the garage—sage green--I purchased a small can each of steel blue and lavender to provide some interest. This weekend, provided the weather cooperates, we’ll be gathering with some children and adults to stencil and paint flowers, bees and who-knows-what on the boxes. The additional artwork and different-colored hives should help the bees keep track of which hive is their home.

 

Tommy Turns 18!

Here’s Tommy on his 18th birthday. It seems like just yesterday that I tucked his little seed into a little wad of ecologically-unsustainable peat but it really has been over two weeks, eighteen whole days. Just look how he’s growing! He’s even cut his first pair of true leaves.

 

Tommy is an heirloom cultivar—a portmanteau word from cultivated+variety—of tomato called San Marzano and has a long and distinguished history. The original San Marzano tomatoes were grown in Italy in the Eighteenth Century and have been prized since then for their flavor.  Since San Marzanos are heirlooms, it means they are open pollinated. A plant of this variety will pollinate itself and produce offspring that are the same as its parents. Hybrid garden plants can’t do this. Because of this, seed can be saved from year to year. In fact, Tommy was grown from seed I saved last year from a plant I got from a friend. With luck I’ll be able to save seed again this year and keep my own supply of this line going.

Here is where Tommy will eventually make his home. This is a view looking northeast.

It’s kind of hard to see the beds with the leaf mulch still in place, but in this view you can see that garden is now twelve beds,  each of which is approximately 8’x3’ in size.  The second and third bed from the grass path there in the far corner have been reserved for the tomatoes and peppers this year. I prepared them in advance by installing the support stakes and then seeding the ground with a cover crop of buckwheat. My hope is that the buckwheat will have time to grow and be cut back before tomato and pepper planting time. It will help loosen the soil and then provide mulch.

Until then, Tommy’s got a lot of growing up to do. I’ll keep you posted on his progress in the coming weeks.

French Sorrel

One of the interesting phenomena of being able to tend the same kitchen garden year to year is the way the so-called garden seasons can overlap. Garlic planted in the fall emerges in the spring. Biennial crops can be overwintered in the ground, root cellar or crisper drawer to be replanted for seed production. Perennial herbs and fruits return--hopefully--like reliable friends every year.

 

It's that last category I used in my first fresh-harvested dish of the season. When I inspected the garden recently one of the emerging signs of life was the French sorrel plant. It's an herb I tried last year for the first time, not really knowing it was perennial. Since I was anxious to say "I cooked something from this year's garden!" I grabbed a couple leaves a week later and sliced them up.

 

 

Tasting them it was evident the fully flavor hadn’t developed yet. There was a faint hint of lemon and sourness but mostly it just tasted green. I went ahead and scrambled the leaves into some eggs with a little butter. In the end, it wasn’t offensive by any means, but I don’t think it added a whole lot either. In any case, I got my first meal featuring this year’s produce.

 

 

Now I’m curious about other uses of French sorrel. It’s a productive plant so when I read the traditional recipes for soup or salmon with sorrel sauce I don’t balk at the amount they call for. I wonder if two of my favorite g0-t0 dishes for green leaves could be adapted to accommodate it, saag and pesto. Do you cook with French sorrel? What are your favorite dishes? Please share in the comments if you have a delicious, brilliant idea.

 

Today’s leafy, spring-green post is part of Post Produce hosted by Daniel Gasteiger over at Your Small Kitchen Garden. Check it out!

Early Spring

You already know it and you’ve heard it a dozen times by now, but this weather is insane. The extended stretch of unseasonably warm weather is wreaking havoc with all manner of botanical timetables. Case in point: our Sargent cherry (Prunus sargentii) that we enjoy so much every year is blooming a full month ahead of schedule. Whatever “schedule” means anymore.  Still, it’s welcome beauty.

 

Meet Tommy

I’d characterize March as the month that has the hardest time making up its mind. The weather changes quickly and even though it looked like this out the back door only a week and a half ago--

--today the temperature was in the lower sixties and crocuses and the early hellebores are blooming.  Curious as to how the vegetable garden was faring I took a walk and found some green poking up through the leaf mulch.

 

Spinach that survived all winter and is now sending out new growth

 

The French sorrel is unfurling red-tinged leaves.

The patch of alpine strawberries seems to have made it as well. I’ll need to divide and separate these early this season since I essentially unpotted the seedlings and stuck them in the ground as a clump last fall.

 

Only a few of the garlic plants have emerged so far. This one is ‘Music.’

 

The biggest surprise survivor is this battered Green Oakleaf lettuce.

 

Indoors the garden is off to a good start, too. I’ve been sowing seeds in the basement and the first batch is starting to germinate. Which brings me to Tommy.

 

At the Co-Conspirator’s suggestion we’ve christened this particular San Marzano tomato seedling Tommy. We’ll be following his progress through the season from the seed starting rack hopefully right to the table. Along the way we’ll share some interesting tidbits about gardening, canning, pickling and cooking. Tommy’s just a little sprout right now, but he’ll be all grown up almost before we notice.

Freezing Garlic

I’ve been having some anxiety lately surrounding garlic. More specifically, I’ve started to worry that all the garlic we grew and stored last summer wouldn’t last until we’d used it.

Garlic is a great vegetable. So many of my favorite dishes include it and it stores so easily that it seemed logical that we should grow a substantial quantity of those funky, fragrant bulbs. In the past, we’ve purchased winter farmers’ market garlic that was dry, dusty and frankly moldy so I wasn’t overly optimistic about keeping garlic in Wisconsin through the winter. When I harvested our crop last summer I hung it in baskets in the basement to cure a while before tying it in garlands to hang in the fruit room/root cellar/server closet—it is the Twenty-First Century after all!

Since that room is visited frequently, I was keeping an eye on the state of the bulbs and have been happy with how they’ve been keeping. Lately, however, I’ve noticed the outer skins on some of the bulbs I’ve brought up to cook with have been more dry and looser. Also, some bulbs are showing sprouting cloves. They’ve got nowhere to grow at this point and are still safe to cook, but I decided that just in case I’d process and freeze some of them. I selected the remaining five bulbs of ‘Tai Lang’ for this project. Incidentally, I’ve found nothing about this cultivar online; Googling it just brings up my own references to growing it. All I know is I bought it at the Westside Community Market and the seller said it was hot.

The first step in processing garlic for freezing is to peel each individual clove. When I’m doing one or two or five for a recipe I just cut off the root end, halve it lengthwise and then flake away the skin with a knife. To peel quantities of garlic I use a faster method. First, separate all the cloves in the bulb and cut off  the root end. Then, lightly crush them with the flat of your knife. Be careful. You’ll end up with a chaotic pile of garlic cloves and papery skins.

Next, get a couple of bowls, preferably stainless steel, that are close to the same size. In a pinch, you can just use a bowl and a plate.  Put your distressed garlic cloves in the bowls and get ready to rumble!

Cover one bowl with the other and sha-a-a-ake vigorously. Listen to the tone and you can actually hear when the cloves have been removed from the skins. It’s pretty cool and I’m sure there’s some big-ass industrial machine out there that uses the same principle to do the same thing. Now you just pick the oh-so-tasty garlic cloves out of the skins and set them aside.

Next, chop the garlic to make it easier to dispense and use. Either coarsely chop it by hand if you have the time and patience. I didn’t so I used a mini food processor. Don’t overdo it. If you want a finer chop later you can always do it then.

The final step is to get some protection on those chopped cloves. Drizzle in a little olive oil and stir it into the chopped garlic. A little goes a long way! The key is to coat the cloves without having them swimming in it. Stir thoroughly so that they’re completely coated. The oil will keep the garlic from turning ugly colors and also make it easier to spoon out the quantity you need when cookin’ time comes around.

Finally, put the oiled garlic in a jar and screw that lid on tightly. Keep it in the freezer and just scoop out however much you need in your future cooking. You’ll thank yourself for putting in the effort now not only for saving yourself the chopping later, but for also saving some produce that may not have lasted until the next crop comes ready.How do you keep your garlic? I’d be interested in hearing new ideas on growing and storing one of my favorite crops. Comment or email to share your ideas.

This riveting, stem-grinding offering is part of Post Produce, hosted by Daniel Gasteiger over at Your Small Kitchen Garden. Check it out!

El Día de San Valentín

On Monday we returned to cold, white Wisconsin from some time in hot, colorful Costa Rica. What a letdown. Fortunately Tuesday was a holiday, I’m still layed off this week, and one of the mementos we brought back from Puerto Jiménez was a cookbook. All the means to compensate for having to come home were in place. The book is “Gallito Pinto: Traditional Recipes from Costa Rica.” I consulted it to devise a menu and went grocery shopping.

 

The first course was a cocktail I concocted with carambola, also known as starfruit. It’s got sort of a weak flavor but some calvados and lime juice rounded it out and the garnish couldn’t have been more obvious.

 

 

For  munching along with the cocktails I whipped up a batch of striped seabass ceviche. We’ve been talking about making ceviche for three years since we had it so often in Ecuador but this is the first time we’ve followed through. It’s so simple there’s really no excuse.

 

 

For the salad I took the easy route and did a pseudo-Caesar but with fancy-schmancy heart-shaped eggs. I briefly entertained the possibility of coloring them pink. Maybe next time.

 

The main course was Bistec Encebollado, better known as steak and onions with Chacletas de Chayote—mashed chayote and cheese stuffed in the exotic fruit’s skin. It was unusual but good. Cheese can make anything good, though. I’d make it again.

 

 

For dessert I whipped up a couple of simple mini flans. They weren’t much to look at but tasted delicious. I only wish I had remembered to put some coconut in them. As it was, they were so good I dug in before I remembered to take a picture.

 

 

One traditional dish we did not have but saw a lot of in Costa Rica was the black bean and rice dish called Gallo Pinto. It was served at any or all of the three meals of the day and with all the hiking we were doing was a welcome, high energy dish. I’ve definitely found a use for some of the black beans I grow every year.

 

Check back to see the wild side of Costa Rica coming soon!