Welcome Home

After a fantastic two week paternity leave, it was time to head to New York for the first time since Matilda was born.  Lynne handled both kids like a champ, and I was so excited to get home to see my girls.  I was only gone 3 1/2 days, but the garden also welcomed me back with lots of surprises.

Not pictured – more and more raspberries (yum!) as well as a few cantaloupes growing from seeds that were in our compost!)

In New York, I was able to spend some great time with my team, have productive meetings, and enjoy good eats:

• Momofuku Noodle Bar – decent ramen, but amazing pork and shrimp buns
• Red Hook Lobster Truck – not cheap, but the most delicious thing I ate on the trip were their lobster rolls (both the Maine and Connecticut style)
• Asiadog – hot dogs with a variety of tasty Asian toppings, the Sidney was the best (I hit up a lot of food trucks this trip)
• Bon Chon Chicken – still the best wings and fried chicken I’ve ever had (as well as scallion pancakes, zucchini fries, and fried tofu
• Kickball in Central Park! – we lost (DC.org went winless this summer), but it was so much fun and made me feel like a local
• Great New York beers, including
  • Brooklyn Brewery’s Highline Elevated Wheat (made exclusively for The Lot)
  • Captain Lawrence Liquid Gold
  • Ommegang Rare Vos
  • Southern Tier Crème Brûlée Imperial Stout

Time to Cook

As Lynne shared previously, she was able to spend some time before the baby’s arrival making a bunch of meals we could freeze.  Having two weeks of paternity leave also freed up my time to watch Eliza, work in the basement, and get back in the kitchen, too.  Below are some fun dishes I was able to make this week using up some of our vegetables from the garden.  If you don’t keep up with the high yields, you end up wasting produce, and no one likes that!

Lamb pitas with Greek salad

Since we had a lot of cucumbers and cherry tomatoes ready to eat in the garden so I found this great recipe for a Greek salad (I love recipes that have a “100% would make again” score!).  Of course, some delicious veggies in a pita weren’t going to make a filling meal, so I thought it would be nice to add some lamb.  I found this recipe for some lamb patties to add to the pitas, using a bunch of spices my parents brought us from Turkey.  We tweaked the recipe using Turkish coriander, cumin, and oregano, as well as mint from the garden (and nixed some things like the allspice and the sauce), and the patties turned out delicious and crispy (ala falafel).

This may be one of my favorite meals I’ve had at home recently, since it’s definitely something I’d order at the local Mediterranean sandwich shop.  I was also really excited to use the cherry tomatoes, since they are growing so well and I didn’t even plant them this year.  Last year I had tried planting some cherry tomatoes from seed (and two years ago I had tried planting some Roma tomatoes from seed), and neither ever took until this year they all started growing randomly in different areas of my garden!

Tilapia with mango salsa and roasted beet salad with oranges

As I mentioned before, Lynne asked me to grow beets in the garden this year.  She enjoys them but I have bad childhood memories of disgusting sickly-smelling canned beets.  Well, they grew very easily and now we have lots of beets to eat!  I knew I had to find a recipe that got me excited, or else I wouldn’t want to try them again. I found a roasted beet salad that featured oranges and made use of the beet greens (they’re kind of like chard).

Overall, I was pretty happy with it.  The oil and vinegar took away some of that “beet smell” that I didn’t find appetizing and left them a bit sweet and sour, and the oranges were a very nice touch.

My parents’ neighbors brought them some large mangoes from Miami, which they were kind enough to share with us, so why not make some mango salsa?  These were hands down the best mangoes I’ve ever eaten in this country (almost as good as Thailand!).  I also added some mint to the salsa, which I think made it even better.  If you like your sweets spicy, you could also add some minced jalapenos or cayenne.  The salsa went great with some simple grilled tilapia.

 Homemade quiche with kale, onions, and toasted garlic

We’ve eaten a lot of Lynne’s delicious homemade quiche (the best crust in the world! Just ask Eliza), and since we have a plethora of kale in the garden (that didn’t make it into the quiche), I figured the two would go well together.  I simply sautéed the kale with some onions, but the fancy touch (and bit of a mistake-turned-awesome) is the toasted garlic.  

Corn – Raw(r)!

This one definitely doesn’t qualify as a recipe or anything I cooked.  The garden is full of corn, and on a whim I decided to pick a smaller ear for Eliza, since she loves eating corn on the cob.  Since the kernels were a bit smaller, we both enjoyed it raw about 30 seconds after it had been picked.  This was amazing!  I had never eaten corn on the cob that wasn’t boiled, grilled, or microwaved, but it was even better fresh and raw.  I’m not sure if store-bought corn would taste the same uncooked, but now it’s the only way we’ve been eating it, big and little ears alike – talk about easy!

Garden Update

I’ve been remiss in blogging about the garden this summer.  Spending most of my free time working on the basement doesn’t mean that we’re still not enjoying a bountiful harvest!

So far this year we’ve enjoyed the following produce (and so have many of our friends, family, and coworkers since we’re constantly giving our overabundance away!):

Spinach – always the first thing to go once the summer heat arrives, we used in a variety of salads and then harvested the remainder for a large batch of creamed spinach

Radishes – hundreds of radishes have been devoured plain, dipped in ranch, on salads, or pickled (with rice wine vinegar, coriander seed, and black peppercorns – try it!).  Some are still pickling now!

Green beans – we had a lot and enjoyed them with a homemade Thai curry, a great recipe my Aunt introduced us to, and pickled

Kale – sautéed and simple, but there’s so much left and it would be great in some potato or miso soup I think

Peas – We had a lot of peas, and Eliza ate almost all of them – raw.  I don’t know what she liked more, eating them or opening the pea pods and trying to get them out.  Just wait until she meets her first crab leg!

Cucumbers – it took them a lot longer this year, but the cucumbers are finally ripe. We’ve been dipping them in ranch and pickling them in the same concoction used for the radishes, and maybe we’ll try this simple recipe.

Chard – three different types, all just as delicious, sautéed with onions or garlic, and for one batch I added some leftover ground breakfast sausage – the perfect one bowl meal

Lettuce – we went overboard again and have been eating about 9 different kinds of lettuce (including Bibb, one of Lynne’s favorites) and spicy arugula

Green onion – last year’s remainders made it through the winter and got more than four times the size of your store-bought green onions, went to seed, and still taste great!

Herbs – cilantro galore (planted via last year’s seeds), dill, basil, parsley, mint (one of my coworkers even made awesome mint-iced brownies when I took some of the harvest to our New York office)

Raspberries – the best fruit in the world, and it’s nice having a couple handfuls of berries every two or three days – although Eliza will eat them as fast as Kobayashi if you let her

Things that are almost ready to pick/eat:

Cabbage – we have lots of loose green cabbage to pick, but I still have no idea what to do with it – recommendations?

Carrots – guessing from how long my other plants develop their root systems, and the fact that these bad boys still aren’t ready, I’m guessing they are going to be ridiculously long carrots

Beets – we picked one and have a dozen more ready to go.  I’m not a fan, but Lynne is, and she says that fresh homegrown beets will convert me…we’ll see!

Tomatoes – we planted three different kinds this year (yellow, pink, colorful heirloom), and they’re doing well, but not quite ready yet.  To my surprise I also had dozens of new plants spring up from some red tomato seeds I planted last year that never took

Peppers – also way behind this year, I think only two plants made it :(

Things that need a bit longer:

Corn – growing well though!

Okra – I won’t be experiencing any record yields like last year.  The wet June really slowed down the growth, and I’d just be happy to get any okra by August this year

Fennel – year two of the experiment, only one plant grew (just like last year) and it’s not looking very full

Leeks – my wild tomatoes overtook them, so it’s hard to see if they’re even there at all

While this picture only showcases a section of the garden in the background, it’s way more entertaining than staring at vegetables and leaves!

So Long, and Thanks for All the Okra

We had a big nasty frost this week, and it slaughtered some of my remaining crops.  Poor guys.  All the okra, green beans, basil, and peppers are now dead, so I thought I’d share the final results.  My “jolly green giant” okra plant ended up measuring 14 ft. 11 inches, which included 2 full feet of root.  The other okra plants averaged about 8 feet.  Also, much to my amazement, I ate two ripe raspberries off my bush last night, and there are two more ripening right now!  When will it stop?  I’m hoping never!

Sorry for the subpar photo, the good camera is on vacation in Washington, D.C.

Midnight in the Garden

This may be my last post this year about our garden.  We had the driest August in Indiana history and the hottest since 1974, so the crops have been a bit confused.  Coupled with our 40-degree weather in early October, it’s made for a strange growing season, and it may be getting back into the 80’s again this week.  Poor confused vegetables!

Right now we still have some traditionally early summer crops that are ripe, like cucumbers and raspberries (which Eliza continues to devour).  My late summer planting of green beans is about ready to harvest, and our Swiss chard and herbs continue to grow strong.  We’ve harvested about half our leeks and green onions for various dishes (including some excellent potato leek soup).   Our tomato plants, after a slow start, went crazy.  Our yellow tomatoes have been the best, and after only one pink heirloom tomato, we now have had many, and they continue to grow (although I’m a bit worried since none have turned from green to pink in about a week).  Poblano, jalapeno, and other bell-type peppers are growing great now too after a slow start.

The real star of the show is the okra.  I have about 20 plants which have all been providing regular pods for months.  We’ve had to give some away to family and neighbors since we have so much, and that’s even with Eliza eating a bunch every other day and us eating it daily throughout July and August.  While growth has slowed, I’m still harvesting daily.  One over-achieving okra plant has now grown over 11 feet tall!  Maybe I should let Guinness know?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Otherwise, I eagerly await my fall crops – radishes, lettuces of many types, peas, and more green beans!

Best. Flank. Ever.

We’re definitely fans of flank steak, and Sunday night we had one to grill up.  Looking through my fridge, I didn’t have a marinade I wanted to use, so I checked my standard default cooking idea site – epicurious.com.  Little did I know that a simple search would result in the BEST FLANK EVER!

I didn’t have that many ingredients on hand, so I was planning a simple marinade with soy sauce and lemon, since we always seem to have those.  Typing in “lemon soy sauce marinade” brought me to only a few options, and I clicked on steak in lettuce rolls.  I wasn’t planning on serving anything in a lettuce roll (seems more like an appetizer to me), but I thought it would give me a nice marinade plan.  Of course, the recipe immediately looked like a winner in every way: it was specifically for flank steak, it was from David Chang at Momofuku, and it included a scallion salad.  I have so many scallions growing in the garden that I can’t find enough things to do with them.  The salad also called for chiles, and since I have a multitude of jalapenos in the garden, it seemed like a quick and easy substitution.

The marinade included slices of onion with instructions to remove them from the marinade once the steak was on the grill and then cook them on the stove to add to the steak later.  Instead, I thought it would be interesting to reduce the entire marinade, onions and all, to make a sweet sauce.  And what to serve with the steak, salad, and sauce?  Since I was out in the garden, Swiss chard, which we still have tons of, seemed like the obvious choice.

The results? The steak was cooked perfectly and the marinade was excellent.  The chard was as delicious as ever.  But what really made the dish was the scallion salad and the marinade sauce.  The sauce was sweet and the salad (which we ate like a sauce) was the perfect salt/vinegar combination.  In fact, the scallion salad was so delicious I made a double batch of it again today and had it on my eggs for breakfast (happy Labor Day!).  Click the link above for the entire recipe, but here’s the salad:

Scallion Salad

• 1 large bunch scallions, finely chopped
• 2 red chiles, seeded and thinly sliced
• 3 tablespoons rice vinegar
• 2 tablespoons low-sodium soy sauce
• 1 teaspoons dark (toasted) sesame oil

I know this picture isn’t as good as the pro-food-bloggers out there, but I think it’s close.  It’s hard to spend time photographing food when you want to eat it so badly! (And I don’t know how to edit photos like Lynne, so this isn’t touched up)

One Day it Will End

Don’t tell Eliza that the raspberries can’t grow all year round. This week I (or Kirk) have gone out and picked them everyday for breakfast. She isn’t going to know what hit her come fall…

Corn-ucopia

The garden continues to do pretty well. Getting to eat okra every day is such a treat – I can’t believe that until last year I barely ate the stuff! Also, cucumbers are so delicious, and I love having them daily, too. My tomatoes are starting to slowly gain color and grow, and I’m really looking forward to them (pink and yellow varieties). We’ve devoured all the green beans but planted more, have tons of chard, herbs, and lettuce. I was so pleased to find out today that some of my peppers are growing. The first round I planted failed miserably this year, but some from my second round have just started showing signs of life.

The green onions have gotten enormous but still taste fantastic, and the leeks are getting thicker and thicker. I can’t wait to have some leek soup this fall and put some on the grill. I’m also collecting dill and cilantro seed to keep in with our spices (they taste fantastic). Also, my fennel is still growing strong and getting thicker, so I look forward to experimenting with my (disappointing) fennel allergy to see what I can actually handle without getting sick.

The big news (and reason for the title of the post) is that my corn came in! This is my first year growing corn, so I am really excited that not only did it work well, the first ears have tasted delicious! And since Eliza discovered her love for corn ON the cob this weekend, she’s already helping me eat it. She’s got some chompers on her!

Garden State

So it’s been a long time since I’ve posted an update on the state of my garden.  Overall, things are going well, but the abnormal Indiana weather in May definitely caused some problems.  Also, it took me a good week to do some serious weeding when we got back from Paris.  Some weeds had gotten so large it was hard to tell if they were things I planted or not!

Let’s start with what is going/went well:

We harvested a nice-sized crop of peas that we’re still eating through.  Truthfully, their mostly for Eliza since they used to be her favorite, and she’s actually enjoying the rediscovery even though she’d rather eat other foods (carbs!) instead of vegetables.

I’m devouring our second round of radishes with a third round to come in a few more weeks (hopefully).

Our herbs are apparently on steroids, judging from our 5 foot dill and cilantro and basil (we limited our herbs this year since we still have tons saved from last year).  Also, the mint is taking over…anyone need some?

As usual, the various lettuces we planted are thriving and no matter how much we eat, we hardly make a dent.  We have a variety of green leaf, romaine, arugula, and spinach.

Yes, the arugula has gone crazy, too.  This year we planted three different kinds of chard (rainbow, dark green, light green), and so far they have all been equally delicious (honestly I can’t tell them apart by taste once wilted).

We already have green onions ready to eat, and the leeks nearby are making good progress (better than last year’s which I planted far too close together).

Our okra is also coming in well, pretty much on pace with last year.  This time we planted two kinds, the standard green from last year and some red okra.  The red are growing the best, I think.

Two different kinds of green beans are growing in the garden, both of the “bush bean” variety (not pole beans).  One batch only grew sparsely but are pretty much ready to eat.  The other batch is growing really well, but still quite skinny.

Finally, our raspberry bush is about 10 times larger than last year (with tons of new plants springing up) and we’ve been able to eat a handful of berries that have already ripened.  Eliza loves them!  The bush is an ever-bearing variety, which means berries form every year (as opposed to every other year), but usually a little later in the season than regular raspberry bushes.  I’m thinking we should plant some more berry varieties for future years.

We also have corn growing steadily as well as a couple types of tomatoes, but they still have a while to go (our tomato plants have had a slow start).

So what isn’t going well?  I don’t think any of the pepper plants (from seed) have made it.  Last year we had dozens of jalapeno plants, a few poblanos, and two bell pepper plants, all from seed.  This year it was a bust, both from seed and the starts I transferred from the house in May.  The tomato starts I tried from scratch also didn’t make it once I transferred them outside.  Also, I planted a batch of cucumber seeds, and only one plant has made it.  I planted another round about 10 days ago, so I’m hoping those do better, but it means more than likely we won’t have cucumbers until late summer (if at all).  Other failures: lemon grass – it just won’t grow in this climate despite my best efforts.

When You're Not Watching

In the spring, Kirk built up a pile of dirt and sod when making our garden. This fall he and Jerry put the dirt back into our garden, added the old dead grass as compost, and tilled it all up. As Kirk was taking some of the top layers of sod off of the pile, check out what he discovered!

Bees! Lucky for him, only a few flew out of the hive when he unearthed it.

Sadly, it was not a honey bee nest! Kirk promptly poisoned the hive, which had about 20 bees in it, and then had fun peeling the layers off to get a better view of the hive and cells. He was glad that it was a cold day so that the bees weren't too active.

The Garden

I realized that I write often about our garden, but I hadn't posted any full pictures. So here they are! We dug up the sod along the fence line this year to add to our quarter-cicle garden in the far corner, which came unsodded with the house. This gave us ample space for lots of things to plant, and next year, after seeing what worked well this year (i.e. what we have too much of!), we'll plant more diverse things.

Here's a shot of most of the backyard and garden.

Some flowers that get beautiful right behind the house

More colorful flowers behind the house

Jalapeno peppers! Last year we had two small potted plants we bought as starters, and this year, we planted one starter and the rest from seed and they are doing great! I've already eaten one that was way ahead of the pack, but there are dozens growing now, and the plants from seed are just as big (or even bigger) than the starter plant.

So I planted a lot of leeks and green onions. I find leeks to be expensive at the store, so apparently I planted a lot of them, just in case. They aren't huge, but they are larger than full size green onions at this point, and even though they are still immature, they taste great chopped up.

Here's a pic of the back corner, which was our entire gardening space last year. You will see the following:

-massive chive and flat leaf parsley in the front

-blank rows that used to be home to a lot of spinach. it was delicious, but sadly died out about a month ago, and we don't know why (maybe when you start picking it, the plant doesn't like it?)

-rows of swiss chard, so good (and also way cheaper to grow than buy in the store)

-a lettuce mix (mesclun I believe) that has some green leaf, red leaf, arugula, bitter frondy things, some mini-romaine type leaves, and some curly greens

-misc. green onion and leeks around the edges

-mint that I almost forgot about from last year that popped up along the edge

-garlic in the back

-yellow tomatoes in the back corner. we gres these last year and one plant yielded more than 50 tomatoes. this year we are harvesting less, but we're just happy to have any. many of our friends haven't had luck with tomatoes this year, since it wasn't hot enough (or dry enough?) and many others have had tomatoes that stay green and don't change color

Here are our yellow and misc. bell pepper plants. we heard they didn't do well from seed around here, and the tall one we bought as a little starter. he's doing great and has a few peppers already getting a nice size. the ones from seed are still pretty small, but we'll see!

More swiss chard along the north fence line! It takes a lot of this when you wilt it down (with some olive oil and onions, yum!) so you need to grow a lot if you want to eat it often (which I do).

More lettuce! It actually grew far better along the fenceline than in the corner, so I'll probably plant it here again next year, but definitely won't plant as much of this variety. I'll likely do some specific kinds, like a batch of romaine, because I love a good Caesar salad.

Anyone need any basil, thai basil, or sage? We have a ton, and we already made a boatload of pesto. We also have dill and cilantro growing.

Okra up close! So good in so many ways! these were from seed and are doing great.

Here are some shots of the okra plants, definitely a few feet tall now.

That's it! You can see I'm already planning for next year. Also, not pictured is the raspberry bush that almost died, I had to move, and now is doing OK and should produce fruit next year. The blackberry starter sticks failed miserably, so next year I will have to get some starter bushes. Cucumbers and radishes for sure (even though Lynne doesn't like the latter), but I'll take suggestions on things you've had success with, so let me know!