Introducing the young to gardening on Strawberry Sunday

I so enjoy helping someone new to gardening learn about its joys. It’s especially fun when that person is a child. Whether working with an adult or child, however, I believe in mixing the “chore” with the pleasure.

Since she was able to overcome her fear of bees to go into garden with me, I’ve been gardening with our goddaughter, Anna. She’s a fourth-grader now who also helps her dad in his garden. When she asked if she could come over on Sunday, I told her yes, if she would work in the garden with me. Knowing we have ripe strawberries to pick, she readily agreed.

We started out with the most laborious task—weeding a couple rows of the garden. The weeds aren’t too bad yet (even though it has rained so much) so that didn’t take us long.

Next, we planted two rows of beans. I decided to experiment this year with kidney beans and pinto beans. I’ve never eaten either of them fresh so would like to try that. Plus, we can leave them on the vines to dry and use in the winter. Sounds like an easy plan to me.

Then, we came to the strawberries—so ripe that they’re almost purple,
 so juicy that you just have to accept you’ll have a few pink spots on your shirt if you nibble while picking. Anna kept exclaiming that she had hit the jackpot as she found cluster after cluster of strawberries just glowing as if shouting “pick me now!”

With Jim’s help, we gathered so many strawberries that we had more than enough for a good batch of jam. So we decided to start with chocolate-covered strawberries. We melted dark chocolate chips then dipped, dried, dipped, dried, sampled, dipped until the only chocolate left in the pan was what we could scrape up with a few more berries.

Then Jim took over for the jam-making lesson. They separated berries, removed the stems and leaves, added the ingredients to the pot, sterilized the jars and lids. “It smells like cotton candy in here,” Anna said. And so it did.

While the jam cooked, we went outside for some fresh air and to harvest asparagus. I showed Anna how to cut it under the surface and we carried in a good bunch that we could eat for supper. I cut it, tossed it with balsamic vinegar, olive oil, salt and pepper then put it in a foul pouch with some sliced onions.

After Jim finished the jam, he put the vegetables and Rainbow trout on the grill while I made us green salad. Neither Ann nor I had ever tried Rainbow trout and we both loved it. When Jim pulled the crunchy skin from the foil, Anna first turned up her nose at the idea of eating fish skin. Then she decided to try it, declaring, “I can’t believe I just ate fish scales.”

Of course, we had chocolate-covered strawberries for dessert.

Now if we can just get those weeds out of the raspberry patch, maybe we will have a raspberry Sunday sometime next month.

Getting started in the garden

After a weekend of hours outside in the yard, my muscles screamed in relief at being exercised once again in the garden. Yes, the digging and bending and squatting reintroduced those muscles to their typical spring soreness, but it’s a welcome ache.

In order to eat from the garden all year long, it’s necessary to either garden yourself or find a reliable local food source in your community. This is the time in Kentucky when the weather typically allows us to begin stepping outside to get started on this year’s planting adventures.

So what is it gardeners should be doing in March? I learn a little something new every year, from articles I read as well as fellow gardeners who are always happy to share what they know. Here are a few tasks to consider:

1) Decide what you want to plant. If you’re new to gardening, start small and purchase plants that are easier to begin from started plants (cabbage, broccoli, tomatoes, peppers, etc.) and buy seeds for what can easily begin in your own soil (corn, squash, lettuce, greens, etc.).

2) Think about the best places to plant in your yard. Where do you get the most sunlight during the growing months? Remember that the sun shifts throughout the seasons so the sunny spots you see in your yard now might not be so at the same times and for the same length in two months. Also, trees will be recovering their leaves, which will provide a shade you likely don’t see in your yard now.

3) Make a garden plan on paper. It will help you decide how much you can put into your space. Keep in mind that tall crops, like corn, can shade some vegetables around them. Crops that vine, like cucumbers and pumpkins, will travel around your garden. And, because that cauliflower plant is small when you buy it doesn’t mean it will stay that way. Allow space for plant growth.

4) If you do decide to start seedlings yourself, put them in a very sunny, warm window in the house, keep the soil moist and cover with a plastic top or plastic wrap to promote the heat and humidity that encourages sprouting.

5) Prepare your soil. If the soil is heavy and clay-like, you’ll want to add compost to improve it. Your local Extension office should be able to test the soil for you if you have questions about its acidity.

6) Get a hoe, shovel and pruning sheers to use throughout the season.

7) If you already have fruit bushes or trees in your space, as well as flower bushes, March is the time to prune.

I’m hoping we can get our onions and potatoes to plant within the week. That would be an even stronger sign to me that spring really is on its way!

The urge to grow

I rejoiced two days ago when I noticed the arugula I planted in a pot in my home office window had sprouted. I’ve been so tired of not having fresh herbs that I decided to get some pots, soil and seeds and try to start herbs in the sunniest window in the house, with the hopes that I might be eating them within the month. Now the chives are peeking up and I can see one tiny thyme plant jumping up ahead of the rest.

What is this urge that some of us have to grow? I suppose it’s sort of like the desire to cook; some people love it and some people would be happy eating from restaurants their entire lives. The difference doesn’t seem to rely on upbringing, as far as my observations go, so perhaps it’s something innate we’re born with or not.

I do think some of us develop an interest in what might have been planted early on but abandoned because we find reasons we should want to do it. Although I liked planting with my dad when I was young, I can’t say it’s something I missed when I lived in New York City for four years. As soon as I left the city, though, for an apartment in Maryland, I planted a rose bush by my patio and buried compost around it. I don’t think it actually survived (I had no idea how to care for it and don’t remember studying the subject) but nonetheless, the urge was there. And when I came to Kentucky and found a place to garden, I dove in enthusiastically, asking everyone else who I spied carrying gardening tools or vegetables for advice.

So now I wait to return to the garden and try to occupy myself with small growing projects indoors. I also planted sprouts last week and have been eating them on sandwiches this week. I find they’re a good sandwich addition when I don’t have fresh lettuce.

The snow is supposed to be coming. Sounds like a weekend for soup and perusing the seed catalogs.

What I know about food

It’s that time of year when the lists begin for all of those improvements we want to make in our lives when everything starts anew. This year I’m going to take a different approach this year. Rather than listing what I want to do, I’m going to make lists that reminds me of what I already know. If I can remember my lessons learned and add to that list at the end of the year, it’s bound to put me on a better path. So here’s what I know about food:


1) Refined sugar is addictive and does little more for me than offer a temporarily tasty treat. I doubt I’ll ever cut sugar out of my diet totally, but I do want to remember that once I eat it two or three days in a row, I’ll begin to crave it. When I go without it for a week or so, that craving disappears.

2) Naturally sweet alternatives make me happy. I can make zucchini bread (with chocolate chips to get my chocolate fix) and one slice will satisfy that urge I might otherwise fill with ice cream or a candy bar. I’ve uncovered several recipes this year that work for me and incorporate some of the garden’s goodness, like sweet potato cake, pumpkin bread and butternut squash muffins.

3) Eating regularly fends off headaches and lethargy for me. I also feel better when I eat small portions rather than one huge plate of food.

4) Waiting before piling up a second helping works best for me. If I take seconds immediately after finishing one plate, I inevitably feel overfilled 20 minutes later. I do better if I wait that 20 minutes, ask myself if I still feel hungry then, eat just a little bit more if the answer is yes.

5) Growing the food I eat and being in the garden is refreshing for my body and soul. Every year I learn more about gardening and I don’t plan to stop.

6) Cooking gives me joy and a creative outlet. If I need to focus my creativity elsewhere temporarily, then I might want to plan ahead with leftovers so I don’t zap the creative well in the kitchen.

I’m game for sharing lessons with anyone who wants to contribute what you know about food. If you have a food lesson learned this year, post it as a comment and it might help us all become healthier in 2001.

Feeling Wealthy

It’s uncomfortably cold and wet outside, but I wandered into the garden anyway to rescue the vegetables that are still faithfully growing—greens, a couple of tomatoes, green peppers, ancho peppers, lettuce and arugula. I even found two deep pink zinnias still adding their beauty to the garden, as well as a number of nasturtiums that continue to bloom on the pea trellis.


Our garden is about to go to sleep for the season, so I was surprised when a friend brought us a bucket of corn and a bag of pears this week from his farm. Having so much fresh food makes me feel like a wealthy woman! I immediately searched for recipes to use the corn, which will get starchy if I don’t cook it up. I already have frozen plenty, so I’ll use some of it to make vegetable soup and corn bread for friends tonight. On this chilly October day, the warm soup will be a welcome comfort.

Preparing for a week of creativity

I’ve learned that when I channel my creativity into cooking, I direct it less toward my writing. Since this will be a week of finishing revisions on one novel and making progress on revisions of a second, I won’t be able to spare creativity for cooking. In preparation to be able to easily nourish my body, mind and soul, I spent yesterday cooking.

Our kitchen did smell good! First, I baked bread and raspberry muffins, using more raspberries from the garden. Next, I tried a new recipe for pasta and salmon with two garden vegetables—butternut squash and Swiss chard. Finally, Jim made a big pot of chili using our canned tomatoes.

Butternut squash is one of my favorite vegetables. It’s relatively easy to grown and tastes almost like dessert while delivering important nutrients. It’s also easy to preserve. If you cut it from the vine with a small stem still intact, or buy it from the farmer’s market in that way, then you can store it in a cool corner of your house that doesn’t get a lot of light and it will stay good until spring. My winter squash vines gave generously this year so I look forward to eating it throughout the winter.

Swiss chard is also one of the easiest greens to grow and has a fabulous nutritional profile. Check it out at World’s Healthiest Foods, a site my holistic nurse recommended to me for good nutritional profiles of food.

I’ll check in this week with short updates about how our Sunday preparations fared for the taste buds throughout the week. For now, I’m off to let those nutrients that are feeding my brain and energizing my fingers show off their ability to also inspire my creativity.

Learning from the two Marias

I like to experiment with a couple of new vegetables in the garden every year. Last year I tried jalapeno peppers and couldn’t use them all. This year I experimented with ancho peppers. My understanding was that they aren’t one of the hottest peppers but are commonly used in Mexican cooking. When I asked my friend Maria Turner, she said her mother always used them to make chili relleno.

Since Maria’s suggestion is to stuff the chili relleno with Mexican cheese, I thought it would be an ideal time to also try Maria Ruiz Scaperlanda’s Cuban Black Bean Soup. Or rather, her mother’s. I grew black turtle beans a couple of years ago to dry and use in black bean soup. I found the beans so tedious to hull after drying that I haven’t grown them again since, but I still have some stored in a glass jar, then the main ingredient is already in the kitchen.

I figured out I didn’t have an innate Latina cook skill when the black beans didn’t get soft. I failed at the very first step! But I proceeded anyway, trying everything I could think of to soften them and when I could finally bite in without chipping the enamel on my teeth, I added seasoning.

The chili relleno began with roasting the peppers and taking the skin off. That was new to me and also tedious, but I’ll try it a different way next time to see if it’s easier. Here’s the basic recipe I used after listening to Maria and reading a few recipes online when I realized I had more questions. We used one of the many jars of salsa we canned a couple of months ago for the last step.

Chili relleno
Roast and skin peppers.
Combine Mexican cheese with salt, pepper, thyme and garlic.
Whip two egg whites to soft peaks (this was a good amount for seven peppers).
Roll stuffed peppers in whipped eggs.
Roll in corn meal.
Fry in a skillet with enough oil to do cook one side at a time. Turn until each side is completely browned.
Put them in a serving dish then top with your favorite salsa.
Jim’s soup rating: 7, with expectations that the leftovers will improve to 9 as the seasonings continue to go through the soup.
Beth’s soup rating: 7

Jim’s chili relleno rating: 10
Beth’s chili relleno rating: 10 (when I added sour cream to calm the spiciness of the peppers)
Thanks to the Marias and their mothers for the lesson!
This week: Butternut squash and greens pasta