Experimentation season begins

Every year, my gardening adventures include at least one or two experiments. I learn and adapt my approach as needed for better future success. This year I’m incorporating lessons from past gardening seasons and trying a few new tactics.

Greenhouse growing

We received a small, plastic-covered greenhouse as a gift a few years ago and enjoyed it immensely. It turned out to be a wonderful location for growing our seedlings to planting size. We also sprouted some of the seeds in the greenhouse once the weather warmed. Plus, on the cooler days, one of my joys was walking into that warm greenhouse.

However, our greenhouse only lasted two years. We originally placed it too close to the edge of our garden where Jim ran over a piece of it with the mower. Once the plastic ripped in one place, no amount of taping repair could keep the rip from growing and replicating in other places.

This time, we’ve placed the greenhouse further into the garden. When we no longer need it for spring growing, I can take it down to spare it standing in summer weather it doesn’t need to endure. Then I can put it up once again when I need it for the fall. Since it doesn’t take more than 30 minutes to assemble, once I know what I’m doing, it isn’t a big job to re-locate it.

There are seedlings in it right now and on sunny days I need to raise the door flap for awhile to cool it off. The herbs, cabbage and broccoli inside look happy, just as I am when I enter that warmth.

Vegetable choice

Two weekends ago I was thrilled to spending one of my sunny weekend days planting seeds in the garden instead of working inside my heated house to fill pots with soil and seeds. I made spaces for spinach, kale, kohlrabi and rutabagas. One of the spinach varieties (Dolce Vita) is new to me and I’ve never even eaten a rutabaga, much less grown then. When they sprout, I’ll need to find photos of what the leaves are supposed to look like to I don’t weed out the actual plants, a problem I had the first year I tried to grow jicama. If my experiment makes it to the harvest stage, I’ll also be searching for recipes for this root vegetable.

Lasagna gardening

Three months ago we built a “lasagna garden” bed on one-third of our garden. After laying out the cardboard, we covered it with compost topsoil then straw. Now it’s time to begin planting there.

My plan for this year is to use it for seedlings rather than seeds; I assume the straw layer would prohibit germination. So I’ve started with a few cabbage, brussell sprout and onion plants. When I first separated the straw to find the soil into which I could plant the onions, I was surprised at how difficult it was to work through the straw. Eventually, however, I found a good routine and became less fearful of moving some of the straw so it would be easier to make a space for the plant. So far, everything looks happy.

Experimentation adds fun to my gardening adventure. What experiments are you trying in this year’s garden?

Creativity with Leftovers

As I clean the kitchen on Saturdays, one of my tasks is to check the refrigerator to see what leftovers are still lingering from the week’s meals. This weekend I found three items that looked like they would work well together—meatballs, pizza dough and roasted vegetables.

I’ve been making olive oil pizza dough from the book Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day for several years. I often add whole wheat flour to dough but other than that, I stick with their recipe. I’ve long wanted to try making my own calzone, so this looked like the perfect opportunity.

My first calzone experience was at the Festival of San Gennaro in New York’s Little Italy when I lived in the city. The calzone is a great walking sandwich for a festival since it’s a substantial, Italian turnover which typically has cheese or meat inside. I remember the turnover dough being so hearty that I wasn’t sure I would be able to finish it.

I wanted to roll my dough thinner than what I had eaten so it wouldn’t be so carb-heavy. I rolled it out to approximately 8” by 10”.

Next, I spread a thin layer of tomato paste on the dough and topped it with thinly sliced garlic and a healthy sprinkling of shredded Swiss cheese. Then I cut the three leftover meatballs in two and placed them in the center of half of the dough. The roasted butternut squash and beets came next. I placed them on both sides of the meatballs. Don’t over stuff the calzone.

 You’re almost finished. Top the meatballs and vegetables with lots more shredded cheese.

The final step is to lightly moisten the edges of the dough. Fold one half over the meatball filling and lightly pinched the edges together. I finished mine with a ravioli roller then brushed on a little olive oil.

At this point, I sprinkled cornmeal onto a pizza peel, put the calzone on top of the cornmeal and put the pizza peel on top of the oven. As the oven and pizza stone inside warmed to 450 degrees, it gave the dough time to rest and rise a little. Note: if you don’t have a pizza peel, try using the bottom side of a cookie sheet.

As the oven was ready, I slid the calzone onto the pizza stone and cooked for 12 minutes. When it was browned, I removed it.

I cut into it and could see it would be delicious. I was right!

How are you being creative with leftovers this week?

A recipe for Ash Wednesday

Since this begins the Lenten season for Christians around the world, I thought it was a good time to re-post one of my recipes that uses no meat but has gotten rave reviews. As my goddaughter says about most of what I cook (yes, I did say MOST—she is a teenager after all), it is “nutritious and delicious!”

However, before we get to the recipe, I want to remind you that the Catholic tradition of not eating meat on certain days can help us, Catholic or not, identify with people around the world who don’t have an opportunity to add meat to their diet. For many years, I’ve participated in the Rice Bowl campaign during Lent, through which I save money I might have spent on meals out, special foods, etc. to donate to the good work of Catholic Relief Services throughout the world. As a former employee of the organization, I’ve seen this good work in person and it’s has impressive results. 

A fun part of Rice Bowl is that they publish a calendar of simple recipes, along with stories about the countries they represent. To find these recipes, go to the website and click on the Stories of Hope tab. This year they’ve also added a video that shows some of the preparation steps.

Now, here is my recipe that I hope you’ll enjoy.  

Fall Navy Bean Soup

1 1/4 cup navy beans

½ yellow onion

½ red onion

1 carrot

3 medium beets

1 small butternut squash

salt, pepper, garlic powder

baking soda

1 sprig fresh majoram

1 sprig fresh thyme

1/3 cup chopped parsely

2 sage leaves, chopped

1 ½ TBSP vegetable bouillon

Soak beans in salt water a few hours to soften. Rinse. Put in soup pot, cover with water, sprinkle in salt and baking soda then bring to hard boil for 10 minutes.

While beans cook, peel and chop onions, carrots and beets. Drain beans through colander and rinse. Return to pot and cover with about 2 inches of water. Add vegetables and bouillon plus salt, pepper and garlic powder. Cover and bring to boil then simmer 1- 1 ½ hours until beans are soft. Add squash and cook until soft (10 – 20 minutes depending on their size). Remove 2 cups soup and puree in blender. Return puree to soup pot with fresh herbs. You can puree more if you want to make the soup thicker without cooking it down. Stir and cook without lid until you like the soup’s taste and consistency. Enjoy!

Vary your first meal of the day

It’s easy to fall into a rut with breakfast. Oatmeal. Cereal. Toast. Eggs. In our house there’s a sort of unspoken every-other-day rhythm of a grain-based meal alternating with an egg based meal. On the grain-based days I typically eat yogurt and fruit instead.

When it gets boring, I like to try something a little different. This morning I recalled that French Toast that my mom made when I was a child. It was one of my favorite breakfasts. Store-bought white bread dredged in an egg and milk batter then cooked on a griddle in a little oil to crisp it up, topped with butter and syrup. It was sweetly good.

Today, I add more nutrition to my French Toast, as well as local products. Did you harvest walnuts this year? Toast pumpkin seeds? Freeze some of those fresh berries when they were in season? Maybe you even made a syrup that you preserved. We still have some strawberry syrup. Or perhaps you bought pure maple syrup, which is now available in Kentucky. Gather what you have to top your French Toast and you’ll come up with something that will give your day a good start.

Easy French Toast for Two

2 slices bread (I use homemade, honey wheat bread)

1 small egg

1/3 – ½ cup milk

½ tsp cinnamon

Salt and pepper

Small handful of each topping you want to toast (like pumpkin seeds and walnuts)

½ cup fruit (berries and pomegranate seeds are good choices)

Break egg into round cake pan or bowl with flat bottom that’s big enough for your piece of bread. Whisk in milk, cinnamon and a couple of sprinkles each of salt and pepper.

On a griddle or in a large skillet, melt butter or oil to coat the pan on medium high heat. When melted, turn down heat slightly. Quickly soak bread in egg mixture then place in pan. Cook 2-4 minutes then turn.

In same pan, drop seeds and nuts next to the bread and turn them frequently. Push them to the side when toasted. 

When second side of bread is finished, put one slice on each of two plates. Butter bread if you prefer. Sprinkle on toppings. Drizzle syrup and serve.

Note: One slice of bread is plenty for us because I cut relatively thick pieces of my filling wheat bread. You might vary your amounts depending on your bread choice.

What toppings do you like on French Toast or pancakes?

Last-minute Christmas Gift

 My god daughter and I spent our afternoon doing some holiday baking for friends as well as treating ourselves. A month or so ago I came across a great set of six mini-bread tins mounted on a holder that connects them all for easy handling in and out of the oven. So we mixed up a batch of my favorite nutty pumpkin bread and poured it into the tins.

Lucky for us, we had some left over. Anna had the idea of copying something her mom does; we added chocolate chips and used the rest of the batter to make mini-muffins. After all, the cooks deserve a treat for ourselves.

Treat yourself and your family well and have a Merry Christmas!

The gingerbread tradition continues, sort of

It’s been a tradition in my family for three generations—making a gingerbread house before Christmas, enjoying its scent throughout the season then breaking it and eating it to celebrate the New Year. It was when my grandparents were living in Chicago and my mom was a baby that a neighbor taught Grandma how to create the house that we still make today.

So no, this has nothing to do with the goodness of my back yard garden or any other local food producer. This story is related to the garden of our memories and family traditions that, when we share them, unknowingly touch countless people through the years.

I was reminded of that this year when I posted updates on my Facebook page about making the gingerbread house. Friends from college, work situations and family all commented with their own memories of the gingerbread houses they’ve partaken of along with me—even so far back as in my dorm room in the 1980s! And you’re right, no one else in our residence hall had a gingerbread house in their room.

As a child I always looked forward to helping Mom decorate the house, but even more to the fun of breaking and eating it. I’ve shared that with the children of many friends over the years. My most recent and constant gingerbread house companion has been my goddaughter, Anna. This year, we also invited a younger girl who had helped break it when she was smaller (so young that she didn’t remember it).

I baked the gingerbread on Saturday so we would be prepared to build on Sunday. It was quite rainy, so I was concerned about the gingerbread hardening properly. Mom has always warned me that when the weather is too damp, the gingerbread softens. Mom’s, of course, know best.

So when I checked the gingerbread pieces on Sunday, they did feel softer than I wanted. I put them in front of the fireplace for a while hoping that would dry them out. The weather didn’t help. The rain continued to drop outside.

When Anna arrived, we chose the driest pieces and went to work. First, we made the sugar water “glue” then stood up the pieces to construct our house. We had a hard time with the front but when all four pieces of the house’s base stood steady, we put on the roof then drizzled our glue as if it were an ice storm. The house stood.

We gave it a small test, leaving the house for 30 minutes or so to go pick up Jeneimy to help us make the snow icing and decorate. When we returned, the house was still standing, Hurrah! So we cooked the icing and continued with the fun until we had our beautiful house.

That evening, I put it on a table in the living room, thinking it was a drier room than the dining room. As I sat near it, I enjoyed the rich, molasses scent, imagining the days until New Year’s as a time to relax with the family tradition by my side. How sweet.

It rained all night. It rained hard. It had been four days since we had seen the sun. Yet, when I woke in the morning, it the gingerbread house stood.

Until sometime before noon. When I walked into the room after lunch, the house had collapsed as if an earthquake had struck.

I admit, it was very damp and the one wall that caused the collapse could have simply buckled. But as I spied my cat napping on a chair I wondered if someone had been too curious when I had my back turned. I’ll never know. But what I do know is that I treasured the experience of creating the house with my two friends. And now I don’t have to wait until New Year’s Eve to eat it.

If you want to try to make your own house, find a dry day then follow this recipe.

Grandma’s Gingerbread House

Ingredients:

2 ¾ C flour
3 tsp. baking powder
1/3 tsp. salt
1 tsp. ginger
2/3 C Brer Rabbit molasses
½ C brown sugar
1 egg
1/3 C butter, melted

Sift together flour, baking powder and ginger. Cream together butter, egg and brown sugar. Mix well then add molasses. Slowly mix in dry ingredients. It will be thick and take some work to get in all of the flour. Heavily grease cookies sheets with butter then grease patterns pieces. You can cut them from a graham cracker box. Start with a little over the size of a walnut. Place dough on cookie sheet and pound with heal of hand to the size and thickness desired. Make it as thin as you can without making it so thin you see through it. Put greased form on top and cut around it with a butter knife. Bake 10 minutes at 350 degrees. I typically make twice as many pieces as I need in case one breaks during construction.

Choose the best looking pieces for your house. Make glue from water and sugar. Start with 1 cup sugar and a little water. Cook to medium thickness. Put some on a heavy board to stand a piece in. Put an adjoining piece next to it and use a spoon to pour the sugar glue over the joint. Sometimes it’s easiest to begin with two sides and the front. When you get to the roof, put some of the glue icing on the underside of the roof where it will sit on top of the house base. Next, use glue icing on the top seam. You’ll be continually making more glue throughout the process.

Next, make the snow-boiled icing to finish and decorate the house.

Ingredients:

1 cup granulated sugar
1 TBSP water
1 TBSP white syrup
½ tsp. vanilla
1 egg white 

Cook until soft ball then add 1 egg white and beat with mixer until you have enough to spread on board. Add ½ tsp. vanilla. You’ll have to double or triple this amount to cover and decorate a large board and drizzle some on the house to look like snow. When the snow-icing is still soft, add miniature trees and whatever other decorations you have purchased for the yard. Use jelly beans or other candy to make a walking path to the from door. Let your imagination go wild with the decorations!