Greens to Grub

The greens are coming in while the hot-lovin' summer veggies are starting to bloom. What to do with all those greens? Uber-lemony sorrel, bitter endive, lamb's quarters by the boat load...You planted it, now you gotta eat it {or the chickens are going gourmet for the next several weeks}.

I've found 2 specific recipes will take care of any overload you may have: Sorrel and Potato Soup from Easy Growing and Goosefoot Pancakes from Wild Flavors*.  They both freeze and thaw well for future fast dinners.

I had 2 large heads of frisee, a type of escarole. A bit of bitter greens in a salad is good, but 2 heads was far too much to keep long enough to use up with salad. I wanted to tweak the recipe to bring out the subtle flavors that make escarole unusual; a quick internet search and I learned that people often pair lemon zest and anchovy paste with escarole.  I subbed the escarole for the goosefoot in Didi Emmons' recipe, and added a bit of both lemon zest and anchovy paste. The combination was sublime. 

*Chelsea Green sent me Wild Flavors to review. I haven't done that here yet, because I've been savoring it, reading a bit at a time. The fact that I want to finish it, but I don't want it to end, I want to soak up every single morsel of information, study and prepare every recipe,  and plant or forage every single plant may be review enough.

Where I grow

Every once in a while I've mentioned a community garden here, but I don't think I've explained it yet. See, I like to volunteer my time as much as I can, and in the past I've volunteered with the Matthews Farmers Market. I love the market, the people and all that it stands for, but this year I've switched over to giving my time to the Little Sugar Creek Community Garden. It allows me to combine my love of gardening, creativity, giving to others, while giving me a little social time that has otherwise been pretty hard to find with a toddler. The real gem of a reason for working in this garden? Through it I can give quality food to those in need, all the while fulfilling some of my own needs. From the ACGA site:

This garden is an active Friendship Gardens network member, donating over 10% of its produce to Friendship Trays, the areas meals-on-wheels program. Because of this dedication to the public, LSCG is regularly recognized as "The People's Garden" by the USDA and Keep America Beautiful, Inc.

 

I'm considered a "garden coordinator", which I think just means I've opened my mouth one too many times. I actually just stand back and ask more questions while Nadine (the county liason in charge of compost education) and Katherine do the real coordinating.

There's a sign nearby makes me a little squeamish, but I'm more at ease knowing we don't use that crap to make things flourish; LSC lives off county compost and organic amendments.  Even with the history of working with corporate polluters, this garden feels far more radical than the typical community garden. It's not about growing for oneself, it's about growing for others and, in return, cultivating oneself.

That's one place where I really have room to grow. 

This year things are off to a slow start since we regularly have about 3 pairs of hands to weed, plant, and prettify. If you're in the Charlotte, NC area maybe you'd be interested in bringing a few friends out to help get things done?

Preservation Proclamation

Friday evening I made a big pot of sorrel and potato soup from MizTrail's Easy Growing. It was excellent! Part of the issue with growing non-traditional honky foods is that I have to figure out a way to cook them and use them. Especially when they start coming in by the truck load. Note to self: having 3 sorrel plants for a family of 3 is more than plenty. Thanks in part to the potatoes, the soup was filling enough that it provided dinner for 2 (Mabel wasn't feeling experimental that night), Saturday's lunch for me, and a big enough batch for the freezer that we'll have dinner another night.

I spent a couple hours in the community garden on Saturday morning, first teaching a class (of 2!), then attacking the weeds* that had taken over. Currently the garden consists of 20 mounded rows, each 8' wide and 25' long. We've consistently had 3 people there working on Saturdays and 2 stalwarts who make it out a couple times during the week. Suffice to say, the uprooting of weeds has been much slower than the growth of new ones.


I brought some clear plastic to the garden to begin solarizing a couple of the beds. In return, I came home with a plastic grocery bag full of lamb's quarters, a giant cilantro plant that went to seed, and a bin of red wrigglers. Later in the afternoon I gave my own herb garden some TLC by giving one of the rosemary bushes a trim, uprooting and drying catnip (for our own use as tea), and dividing a few of my plants-gone -wild in preparation of unloading (errr...) giving them away.

This is actually a different batch of pesto than the cilantro pesto I made,

but what can I say, it's Monday and I'm lazy.

To recap: we're now well stocked on rosemary infused oil, rosemary balsamic vinegar, cilantro oil, cilantro pesto, and coriander. I'm still deciding what to do with the lamb's quarters, we have a ton of lettuce to go through before I get to them.

All of this jabber is to get to the point of what my Mother's Day consisted of: preserving. Whether keeping herbs in oil, vinegar, or finding a way to freeze them, I've already got a nice stockpile and the summer growing season hasn't really started!

*Most of these weeds are edible, but we want more mainstream crops producing food for Friendship Trays.

Simply Put

Today my heart aches for my beautiful state. Yesterday a constitutional amendment was passed that limits marriage in vaguely defined terms.

"Marriage between one man and one woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this State. This section does not prohibit a private party from entering into contracts with another private party; nor does this section prohibit courts from adjudicating the rights of private parties pursuant to such contracts."

The implications from this are huge, but more than anything I feel ashamed to  be "privileged" by marriage. Without getting into personal views or furthering hateful speech towards anyone of any belief, simply putting this issue up for vote has blurred the already illegible lines between church and state.

Paloma's Nest tile for the inclusive.

Independent Suppliers: Fire Escape Farms

This is going to sound like a commercial, but I promise this is a little post about an online store that I keep visiting {weekly!} for a bit of window shopping .

Have you ever visited Fire Escape Farms' website? Geared toward the apartment gardener but is packed full of high-quality tried and true products for all kinds of gardeners, the shop is packed full of beautifully designed essentials. Hard working and easy on the eye, that's what we all need more of.

This, though...These pruners are what keep me going back.

The ARS 120S-8 is the cadillac of Pruners. Made of high chrome steel it is coated with hard-chrome to resist rust and sap. A professional grade pruner, it creates smooth clean cuts and wipes clean easily. The metal handle is coated with rubber for easy ergonomic handling and is the perfect size for most hands. 

In the past 6 years I've probably been through as many pairs of pruners. Rusty blades, dirt getting into the spring mechanism, and most recently a chunk of metal fell out of the blade of my Fiskars when I opened them to prune something. I think I pretty much deserve a Cadillac, don't I? Seems it's time to stop window shopping and go in and make that purchase!