What's for Dinner?

It is a challenge having dinner with someone that doesn't eat vegetables. How do I add them in? Well his soup just didn't have any bok choy in there. But don't tell him. There is Chinese cabbage and bunching onions in those wontons. I pureed them with the seasonings and shrimp in the food processor. Then mixed in the ground pork. I found them much lighter than the ones we get at the Chinese restaurants. And much easier to cut through with my fork.

I had some left over mix of Chinese cabbage and some other veggies. Probably from making the wontons. I needed to use them up. So I tossed them inside some pot sticker skins and fried them up. Technically you aren't supposed to fry two sides of a pot sticker but I did anyway as the bottom was starting to get too dark. They were so good but anything is tasty with the sauce that goes with them. These were just for me. Sometimes it is nice not to have to share.

And speaking of pot stickers. Here in Boston we have always called them Peking Raviolis. Supposedly the name is unique to our area. Though it is rare to see a vegetable one. They are always pork. I've always wondered whether the name is just used here or it is an internet fable. Has anyone else heard them called that in other parts of the country?

Ah mac and cheese (or in this case ziti and cheese). It is such a comfort food. The recipe I use is healthier than normal. Though I use whole wheat pasts to increase that. I love the taste as it is a bit like Welsh Rarebit - a cheese sauce I've loved since I was a child. I of course added veggies to mine (fava beans, snap peas, and garlic scapes). I put ham in my husband's.

Yesterday we had terriyaki chicken on a homemade whole wheat bun. The sides are Boston baked beans (with beans and mustard from the garden) and some grilled sweet potatoes and garlic scapes. I thought those two veggies would meld better. Sometimes contrast is good. But nope. I ended up picking them apart. They were both good, just not together like that.

I had leftover chicken from last night that I wanted to use up, so I made a fried rice. I put in two normal things, snap peas and bunching onions. But the third was kind of a weird thing for a Chinese dish. I put in about a quarter cup of chopped parsley. It made it taste not Chinese at all. But it was very good and it brightened it up a lot.

I was surprised that I took photographs of all five dinners I made this week. Joel and I love going out also and typical go out twice a week for dinner. So those would be the missing two dinners. We have a new restaurant opening up just two blocks from our house. We can't wait to try it. Finally a new restaurant that isn't Italian. It isn't that I don't like Italian, but our neighborhood is historically filled with a lot of Italians and Greeks. The problem with that is we had five Italian restaurants (Maria's - best thick bread pizza, Franchescha's - best cannoli, Olympia, Olivio, and Sabatino's - best thin crust pizza) in the neighborhood already when we were getting our last new restaurant. And of course it was another Italian one (Comella). I kept thinking we didn't need six of them in our little area. Oh and I wasn't even counting Za which is a gourmet pizza restaurant which weirdly I give the title of best interesting salad and they use local farms to source their ingredients too.

We even got a new deli this spring that ended up being Italian. Joel and I were so sad to find out it was Italian. When we think deli, we think Jewish deli. Ah for knishes and matzo ball soup.

But I digress. I always thought we could use a good Irish pub. What we got was the Menotomy Grill and Tavern. Menotomy is the name for the town before it was changed to Arlington, so it is an American bar and grill with a historic theme. We are now both praying that it is good since it was one kind of food really lacking in our neighborhood. That and the bagel bakery. Yes we will be all set except for our bagels. Right now we pay for our bagels in sweat as it is a three mile round trip walk.

Weeding

You can't tell from this photo but I had a lot of weeding to do under my row covers. I finally finished the cabbage bed and I weeded by the compost piles. But I hadn't opened up the chard and broccoli bed for a long time. The chard was getting out of control. I'm supposed to pick it at least every two weeks once it gets big. As you can see it got big without me noticing. Row covers are like that you can lose track of how things are doing underneath.

Close up you have a better view of the weeds. The chard was so tall that it was blocking the view of all the weeds, but there were plenty there and some were starting to go to seed. I try never to let that happen.

I hate putting the noxious weed seeds into my compost pile. The pile isn't hot, so I separate my weeds. The ones that are flowering or have seeds on them go in one bucket and the second bucket is for everything else. It goes into the compost. The other goes to the town's yard waste pickup. They compost things at high temperatures.

Since the chard was getting out of control I chopped it back. I harvested just over 10 pounds of it. That is a lot of chard. I had to send out to my email list to get rid of it. I only had one response, but Allie took all 7 lbs of it. Thank goodness. I do want to freeze more chard, but I'm pretty busy this weekend and into the first half of the week. And there will be much, much more chard over the summer. I'll have plenty of time to do it when I'm not as busy.

This bed contains one row of chard along the long end of the bed. I plant at about 9" centers. Last year I put in two rows, but I think the other row wasn't doing much as it was shaded too much by the broccoli. And as you can see one row of chard is more than enough. Dare I say too much? I suppose not though if I can keep getting rid of the extras. As long as someone is eating it. Oh and as I was picking the chard I was noticing how much dirt had splashed up on it. So I'm experimenting. I put some salt marsh hay on one side of the row and not on the other. I'm hoping the slugs don't take up residence. I often forgo mulches to keep them down.

The other side is the broccoli. Last year I had two rows, one with 5 and one with 4. This year I still did two rows but only with 4 and 3. So again less crowded. As you can see my first head is forming. It looks like it is going to be just huge.

In the middle of what should be my broccoli patch I found this. One huge kohlrabi. My other Winner kohlrabi are so small. I only gave them an 8"x8" spot and they still haven't grown large. But this one had a 2'x 1.3' spot and it was so much larger. I hope it isn't woody at its center. I'll have to remember next year to give them more space if I like the taste of this variety. Kohlibri grows well in the smaller space, but this one seems to need a little elbow room. So now I have only 6 broccoli plants. I really should pay more attention to what is going on under those covers.

The Worst Most Horrible Hated Reviled Chore in the Garden

A lot of people don't like garden chores. I like weeding for the most part. It is either a very meditative chore or I do it with my headphones on and listen to audio stories. Either way it is enjoyable - at least when the weather is nice. I don't mind digging the beds. Even double digging the beds means that I will have gotten my exercise for the day and done something useful to boot. I pretty much like all the aspects of gardening. Except one.

This morning I was going to weed. I hadn't been under my row covers in quite a while and they needed weeding. From a distance it doesn't look too bad.

But when you get up close you can see the problem. The earwigs had shredded my Napa cabbage. They hit my last Michihili cabbage too but not quite as bad. So I got a big bucket and filled it with water. I harvested all the cabbages and shook them out over the bucket. Then I proceeded to cut out the bad spots. For the Napa cabbage this meant working my way down to the core until I found some unblemished cabbage.

This is a most unpleasant task as the earwigs eat right through the cabbage. Unlike slugs that tend to stay toward the outside, earwigs can work their way to the middle if given the time. And they really try. Earwigs give me the heebee jeebees. And as I peeled each layer off I found more. Ick. This year the earwigs were much worse than last year. But I've really only seen them in the Chinese cabbages. I hope they don't get anywhere else. One year earwigs at all the silks off off my corn. Now that would be a tragedy.

Of the four Napa cabbage I only got one small head and two half tiny tiny heads. One was a total loss. Michihili doesn't have tight heads like the Napa. Also unlike the Napa they don't eat the rib parts. So I cut all the green parts off and washed the ribs down well. To me the ribs are the best part of the cabbage. The last Michihili was over 5 lbs. The harvestable parts of this one barely made it past 2. So sad. As it is I probably lost about 10 pounds of cabbage. Which is sad, but not the end of the world. My husband was noticing that my yearly totals haven't been as good as this time last year. This is very true. I'm not too worried though. I still can't eat it all. It just means I won't have as much to give away. I think my townhouse mates aren't getting any Chinese cabbage this year. Sorry guys.

Cold and Rainy Days

Yesterday afternoon a front came in that brought rain and cold weather. Sadly I planted out the last of my sweet potatoes. I hope they don't die from the shock of it all. Of course cold in June isn't all that cold. Today we had a high of 64F (18C). To me that meant it was a good time to use the stove. Yesterday afternoon I was jamming.

I haven't been getting a lot of strawberries at one time so it is small batch jam making. My recipe is very simple. I use a ratio of 1 cup of crushed strawberries (so the liquid fills up all the cracks), 1 cup sugar, 1 T lemon juice. One batch I made last week only had exactly that amount. Not much at all. This week's batch had twice that. As you can see I can barely it into my 10" fry pan without it coming over the top. Anything more and I have to go to a sauce pan. I like to use the wide fry pan if I can though. It means the jam cooks down fast and sets up well. Also I use my half cup jars so I don't have to bring out the huge canner. I use my smaller pots. My little Revereware pot can hold three little half cups and my three quart sauce pan can handle four of them. Sadly neither of them can handle a tall half pint jar. I really wish I had a pot that was tall but not all that wide.

Today I made granola as I was getting low.

And I do love my granola for breakfast. Not that you can see much granola in there. The strawberries are such photo hogs.

Remember a week ago on Harvest Monday when I showed you all those greens? Well I'm still trying to use them up. I think I have them about licked now. The above greens along with some mizuna got put into some biscuits. I used 2 cups whole wheat flour and 1 cup corn meal as my whole grains to add. And as you can see quite a mix of greens. Also part of my greens was about a quarter cup of garlic chives. I thought it would go well with the mix of greens and cheese.

I'll be eating one for dinner along with some wonton soup. I saved one of my boc choys for the soup. After that I'll only have salad greens and a half a bunch of mizuna left. I think I did a good job with those greens. Though I confess my townhouse mates did better, but they cheat. They have four people that will eat greens in their house and I only have one. Which means that tomorrow I'll have to go out and start picking again. Or I can wait and eat up my kohlrabi and garlic scapes.

Harvest Monday, June 10th, 2013

My first harvest was for ingredients for potstickers - bunching onions, cilantro, and garlic chives.

Though I didn't photograph them all I had several herb harvests to dry. I picked more thyme and some dill.

Though the snap peas weren't quit ready, they were still tasty small. I know I'll have too many soon, so small is fine. I ate them and the turnips with a yogurt dip for lunch.

I harvested all my garlic scapes. There are so many things you can do with garlic scapes. I've made scape dressing with them. I've put them on pizzas and done stir fries.

From the grill: flounder, whole wheat bread, mixed vegetables

But one of my favorites is grill them. Sometimes I grill them with other veggies as you see above (bok choy and scallions). Last night I had them grilled by themselves with some terriyaki beef. I have a friend that thinks it would be too much to eat them alone, but I think they mellow just enough with cooking.

Sauteed shrimp and Michihili cabbage with a lemon butter sauce, saffron rice

Scapes weren't the only thing I was eating this week. I'm still trying to finish up all those veggies I picked last week. I'll be working through them all week long.

• Alliums 2.14 lbs
• Herbs 0.98 lbs
• Peas 0.11 lbs
• Roots 0.28 lbs
• Weekly Tally 3.50 lbs
• Yearly Tally 56.81 lbs, -$159.78
• Fruit
• Strawberries 1.27 lbs

Harvest Monday is a day to show off your harvests, how you are saving your harvest, or how you are using your harvest. If you have a harvest you want to show off, add your name and link to Mr Linky below.

Timing

My last post was mostly about how I messed up my timing. Well yesterday I hope I got it right. My planting times this year are skewed a bit. I'm going to be gone in the middle of July for two weeks. Certain crops ripen in the middle of July. Beans, cukes, zukes come to mind. And though my townhouse mates will still be here and I could ask them to pick while I'm gone, I've found in the past that even when I tell them that something NEEDS to be picked every few days or they start to go to seed (in this case beans), it doesn't always happen. I guess not everyone's life revolves around the garden. Such strange people, right? I also don't want to miss that first big flush of cucumbers for making pickles. Timing is everything this year. I want all the spring things out of the garden before I leave and to not have the summer produce start until I get back.

The cukes and zukes take about 50-60 days to start to fruit. So I planted them yesterday. My schedule said June 4th, but I was too tired before to do it, so it got done two days late. The bed for the cukes and zukes was a mess.

It was just full of weeds. Not only that but the ground had netting on it (to keep the cats out) and it was a pain to weed.

But it got done. I planted three Costata Romanesca zucchini. And a row of Cross Country pickling cukes. I don't grow the typical slicing cukes as I like the pickling cukes better. This year I'm not growing another variety of either. I'm hoping to save seed from both of these. I put them under the row cover to protect the cukes from the cucumber beetles that were so bad last year and gave the cucumbers wilt. And it will protect the zukes from the squash vine borer that always kills my plants at the beginning of August. I'll take the row cover off the cukes when I get home, but will leave it on the zucchini for longer. I'll hand pollinate for a while. Hopefully I can still get the cukes trained up the trellis then. You can see the start of the trellis at both ends of the bed. I have some netting that I can string up across it. It will have a middle support when the cover comes off.

And can you see the nice stand of favas in the photo above?

They are doing the best they ever have. No signs of aphids yet. And their stems are covered in flowers. Usually I'd get a bunch or two of flowers but this year they are all the way up the stems. Those aphids really did suck the life out of the favas.

I do have one plant that looks like it was burnt. I'm guessing what caused it was the four days above 90F that we had. But for all I know it is some weird disease. It seems to only be effecting one plant. I hope it stays that way as the favas are just starting to form. Michelle eats her favas as pods as well as the beans inside. I've never tried that. I wonder if I should pick some pods young and try it out. Anyone else eat them like this? Do they taste like beans?

The other vegetable starting to form is the snap peas. I have a pretty good stand going along the back of a whole 16' bed.

And the peas are starting to form. I'm guessing I'll start picking tomorrow. I can't wait. It is about now that I stop eating salads for lunch and start eating veggies with dip (usually a yogurt or honey mustard dip). I'll have radishes, turnips, kohlrabi, and peas.

And eventually the carrots will join the party, but they are still way too small right now.

Lazy Not Quite Summer Days

I love to be in the garden right now. When I go through my arch I smell the roses. Along the side are the sweet alyssums.

When I turn to the side I can see and smell the dianthus. If you can't tell, I love scented flowers. To me a rose is only a rose if it does smell sweet. I've never really understood planting a rose without a scent. I've really been enjoying being in the garden, but I haven't got much work done. I should. I need to get in my cucumbers and zucchini. I need to weed. But I've been too tired to get anything done.

At least this morning I got one important thing done. I covered my onions. Last year I had onion maggots which rotted out quite a few of my onions. So I read that the first flight is usually around 700 GDD. I keep an eye on the GDD using Cornell's website. What I wasn't paying attention to was that the GDD on Cornell's site is a base 50 GDD and the onion GDD is base 40. Whoops.

If you don't know what a GDD is, it stands for growing degree day. It takes the daily mean temperature and subtracts it from the base of the GDD - in the case of onions 40 (though they use a maximum temp of 86F for base 50, not sure what they use for base 40)). That is the degrees over a certain temperature that an insect (or plant) will see for the day. It is a better measurement on when something will happen in nature than what the calendar says. The GDD in Boston is about 450 right now at base 50. I'm guessing the number is about 300 off from the base 40 GDD (based on previous years' records). So we are probably at about 750 GDD in base 40. Ack! I'm too late. I should have put the row cover on before that heat wave hit and I would have been fine. Well there is nothing I can do about it right now. My onions either have eggs on them now or they don't.

I probably should remember the time based on what happens in nature. One typical marker in nature around here is to plant corn when the oak leaves are the size of a squirrel's ear. I'm sure there are lots of markers but my rose buds are hard to miss, so maybe I should cover my onions when the roses start to bud.

There is some good news however. When I was covering the onions I noticed my scapes were ready to pick. Now I have lots of scapes to eat. Yum!

And I've been busy in the kitchen too. I made more vegetable potstickers. I've been vacuum sealing them in packets of 8 each. I now have 18 packets. I think that is enough. I still want to make pork ones as they require some Chinese cabbage too. I'll probably do that tomorrow.

And the first grilled pizza of the season got made. Mine had bok choy, onions, and oyster mushrooms.

Harvest Monday, June 3rd, 2013

For a start I think I'll write about my expenses, something which often gets into my tally, but I don't often write about. I bought three bales of salt marsh hay this week. One went to the asparagus patch and one got spread on my newly planted fruit trees along the rock wall garden. The other will be for my other fruit trees on the rock wall garden, but I won't do that until the strawberries are done because I want to move them around when they finish fruiting. It added $41 to the expenses, split between the fruit and the vegetable spreadsheets.

I do both spreadsheets differently. The vegetable spreadsheet is done year by year. I do amortize the cost of really big things, but all the little things or something that lasts just one year is always added to the year it is bought. The fruit spreadsheet works differently. I'm keeping yearly track of what I spend and what comes in, but my final totals are a running total for all the years. Fruit often doesn't produce anything the year it is planted. Getting paid back for your effort takes patience. So if you look the the tally on my sidebar you will see I keep track of where I am in getting paid back for those expenses. Right now at the beginning of year three I'm pretty far down. I'm hoping my fruit trees and berry bushes pay off and they will more than pay for themselves, but it still remains to be seen.

Now on to the good stuff, what was picked this week. And I picked a lot. Much of it was picked to make way for summer crops to go in (Asian greens, radishes, spinach, onions).

Tuesday's Basket

Chocolate Mint that I dried for tea

The last of the radishes

The spring spinach that was pulled

Bunching onions

A small sample of the Asian Greens that were harvested

All the lettuce was harvested before the heat wave hit

A huge Michihili cabbage that was thinking about bolting

So many Asian greens were picked, but this baby bok choy wasn't much of a baby

One of a couple strawberry harvests

The first time I've picked garlic chives in more than snippets

English thyme for drying

It was a huge harvest week. I kept some for myself, but a lot was sent over to my townhouse mates. I am trying to preserve some in potstickers (I need more wrappers) and my townhouse mates froze some in vegetable rolls. I think maybe I should have used my email list to get rid of more, but I didn't so I'd better use it up somehow. I still have a lot in the fridge.

• Alliums 0.36 lbs
• Greens 5.17 lbs
• Greens Asian 16.28 lbs
• Herbs 1.02 lbs
• Roots 1.32 lbs
• Weekly Tally 24.15 lbs
• Spent $14
• Yearly Tally 53.13 lbs, -$186.56
• Fruit
• Strawberries 0.81 lbs
• Spent $27

Harvest Monday is a day to show off your harvests, how you are saving your harvest, or how you are using your harvest. If you have a harvest you want to show off, add your name and link to Mr Linky below.

Heat Wave

I don't know if Boston hit at last 90 for three days in a row, but I certainly have. The last two days were 97F. Hot hot hot. This morning I went out the door to go for a hike (very early to beat the heat) and I was struck by the most wonderful smell.

My roses were blooming. The yellow on is a Knockout rose, but the pink climbing rose is an old fashioned rose, Zephirne Drouhin. I'm hoping in a couple of years it will make it over the arch. But I'm really impressed by its blooms. Right now it is escaping more to the side than over the arch. To the side are my electric and gas meters and it is draping over them looking beautiful. My mint pots are in front of it and it makes a good background. I really wanted to make some rose jelly to see what it was like, but I couldn't bear to pick the petals. It is just too pretty and the scent is heavenly.

I've been thinking about how to save some of my Chinese cabbage for the winter. I thought some vegetable potstickers would be perfect. I changed up the recipe a bit. I doubled the cabbage and used Chinese cabbage. I used bunching onions instead of red onion. Is red onion something the Chinese even use? Bunching onions seemed more apropos not to mention that I'm picking them now and the red onions are tiny. I used less white pepper. My carrots were from last fall's frozen carrots so I sliced them into sticks instead of shredding them. It is actually a pretty good spring dish to make as I could get so much from the garden.

I put them in the freezer and will vacuum seal them once they are solid. Sadly this only took up two cups of cabbage. I have so much more. I ought to make a lot of batches, but I'd need more dumpling wrappers. They take a long time to form, but I was getting faster at them. I did it in front of the TV so it wouldn't be so boring. Oh they smelled so good. I love the smell of garlic chives but a whole cup is a lot and the house still smells of it. If I can get a few packages of wrappers I'll make more and make some pork ones too.

Except for my hike I hid in my air conditioning. But still such a hot day deserves a frozen drink and since the strawberries are coming in I made a frozen strawberry margarita. Yum.

Tomorrow is destined to be another hot one. I have a garden chore list made out and I'll try to get as much done as possible before I hide inside again. I need to plant my beans under that trellis I made earlier. Harvest and dry some herbs - either mint or thyme. Spread the salt marsh hay under the fruit trees and asparagus. Clean my husband's car that was used to bring home the hay - it made such a mess. Water the planters and seeds that were planted this week. Circle the tree trunks with tanglefoot so the ants quit farming aphids in them. On Monday the heat is supposed to break and It will be nice to be outside again. Hopefully it will rain again for us too.