Monthly Archives: July 2009

What We are Eating Right Now

Posted on July 22, 2009 by Annette Cottrell| 4 Comments

I have a million pictures to post from the garden but I need to get to bed tonight so hopefully I can resize them and get them up tomorrow.

It’s of course the millions of zuchini month but I’m not sick of them yet. Tonight I sauteed them in garlic then added fresh tomatoes, basil & parmeson over angel hair. Another favorite meal (with Azure Standard pasta, organically grown & made in Durham, OR) is sauteed or grilled zuchini with our preserved lemon, basil & parmeson. We’ve also had zuchini scrambled eggs and zuchini morning glory muffins. Somewhere I have an old casserole that calls for zuchini sauteed with onion, canned green chilies then mixed with egg, cottage cheese and monterey jack and baked with a bread crumb topping. Always a crowd pleaser but I have yet to make a good monterey jack or try cottage cheese…

Fresh beets from the garden in the form of radicchio/arrugula salad with Wynoochie blue cheese from Estrella and Holmquist hazelnuts. Harvard beets are great to have in the fridge as well and I plan to pull out the last of the beets when we get back to pickle them for my sour patch kid.

Chicken Little ate the first marketmore cucumber from the garden tonight and a good helping of carrots and the we are harvesting the second round of salad greens grown in the shade of the corn. I pulled most of the last of the blueberries off tonight and new round of strawberries is ripening, although the chickens are making short work of them. The artichokes are ready but we haven’t had time to cook them.

One new discovery for me that will certainly keep until our return – I haven’t yet pulled out the bolted mustard and they have formed seed pods. I tried them green and they are like a mild wasabi, in the way that green peppercorns have a distinct flavor that is not the same as dried peppercorns. I’m trying to decide if I should save them to make a sauce for Loki salmon or let them dry and grind them into mustard (or save to plant more next year.) So many choices for the extremely curious…

I have some pictures of monster pumpkins, both pie & jack-o-lantern, the little heads of cauliflower that finally made an appearance deep inside the plants just as I was about to give up and tear them out, and the scarlet runner bean pods finally starting on the vines. The narsurtiums finally decided to check in as well. These are a beautiful red variety with dark green leaves. I started a black narsturtium variety in the backyard but the chickens have been pecking at them – and I thought they were also behind the ragged popcorn plants until I saw the dog eating those the other day. It looks like we may get one or two ears from them which will be plenty to try and see if they pop. They were free seeds from Pleasant Valley so I had nothing to lose.

I finally fought the aphids off the cardoons and then got a new round of them before I had a chance to harvest them. By now the stalks are getting old and tough but I’ll fry them anyway just for grins. I harvested some green garlic that is curing out front and need to finish digging up the rest of the potatoes since the plants are dying back now and the testers I dug up look fully grown to me.

My Meyer lemon tree just arrived (finally!) from One Green World so I can put it in the waiting pot. I’ll move it indoors this winter and hopefully we’ll get some fruit off it year round if the description is accurate. I’m also looking forward to moving the basil indoors and seeing how long it lasts. Why I’ve never thought to do that before I have no idea. I’ve been keeping useless houseplants alive for years but this year I’m getting rid of anything we can’t eat and using that space for sprouting and tender herbs.

And did I mention the apricots? I still have 3 bowls of them in the fridge hoping to eek out time for one last batch of jam, one last cobbler or fruit leather if we don’t get too tired of tripping over the dehydrator. When we get back I’m hoping to see the first of the summer apples at the market – and then I’ll really be busy! I put up 40 pounds of applesauce in December and we’ve run out.

First thing upon our return though – buy another freezer!

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Posted in Growing Groceries - Plants, Seeds and Growing Tips, Preserving Food

Reality Check

Posted on July 21, 2009 by Annette Cottrell| 9 Comments

So, so remiss on posts lately…summer is here in full force with all it’s watering requirements, putting food up and busy trying not to miss summer.

We are preparing for several shortish trips and of course it’s looking like all my efforts on the tomatoes will end up going to the neighbors because true to form things are looking like they will be ripe just when we are gone. My 30 tomato plants for canning, freezing and drying are just beginning to blush. The corn is looking like it needs about another week. My shiny dark eggplant (first ever) will be ready next week. Nuts.

I’m especially torn up about the tomatoes since they are the food we eat all winter long. I buy cases of BPA-laced cans full of tomatoes grown out of state for salsa, pizza, pasta, winter stews, barbecue sauce, chutney and dried tomatoes. I’ve even been dreaming of making tomato preserves to flavor ice cream. And they go and cheat on me like this. So fickle.

The reality check for me was two weeks ago. While this blog is a labor of love for me it’s generally not until after the midnight hour when I finish my kitchen experiments and real computer work and sit down to record my locovore trials and tribulations. I knew the whole food supplement I had been taking was responsible for quite a bit of my energy but it’s really hit home the last two weeks.

Through an ordering error we ran low and in true mom style I had stopped taking them so that there was enough for everyone else. I’ve been running down, finally getting a horrible head cold and trying to continue on but I’m just barely hanging in there waiting impatiently for the new supplements to arrive. You would think with all this produce growing outside my front door that would be enough but frankly we haven’t been home long enough to prepare things lately. I try to eat a few leaves while I water but it’s clearly not enough. I have to admit defeat there.

Once you start a chain of events ordering food from the farmer or other buying clubs you have committments to meet.

I had ordered too much milk which means I needed to stay up a few nights making cheese. I had ordered way too many apricots from Rama farms which meant making jam, fruit leather, gallette and drying. I got an email Saturday night when I sat down at the computer around 10 p.m. reminding me that the chickens from Pastured Sensations had been delivered and were sitting in a cooler on someone’s front porch across town which meant I had to jump in the car and drive over and back before I could begin processing the 20 pounds of apricots on my counter.

And then just when you think there may be some rain and you don’t need to spend precious free time outside watering you check the forecast – no rain in sight. In fact it’s going to break 90 tomorrow and you need to make bread which involves heating the house.

All of this sandwiched in between T ball lessons and soccer lessons and swim lessons for two little boys who want to go to the zoo and the beach.

I felt guilty but the week of my head cold (which happened to coincide with my husband being out of town) I bought some convenience foods for the kids since I was only eating chicken stock from the freezer and not up to cooking. I didn’t have the energy to bake a cake for the three year old’s birthday and we had a party planned for the day my husband came back in town so I bought a box of cake mix. I tried not to read the ingredients but I couldn’t help myself. I was disgusted, both by the ingredients and the flavor but I have to admit it was easy. While at the store I let both boys pick out a box of crackers which still haunt my car.

There have been a lot of concessions lately and I don’t feel good about it. The worst part about it is we come back from a short trip just in time to leave with the kids on a longer trip and I have no time in between or even this week to cook enough meals to take on vacation so I’ll be buying snack foods for the beach and we’ll be eating out. It’s nice to have a break from cooking though. I really should have been a Jewish grandmother. The guilt around food – OY!

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Potatoes and Corn

Posted on July 14, 2009 by Annette Cottrell| 3 Comments

Here it is not quite the middle of July and we have EARS OF CORN. That’s right, not just knee high stalks but EARS of corn. Wacky!

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Tonight just for grins I took my spade and carefully dug through the outer edge of one of the burlap bags and found this little beauty. My first Ernst Roesling potato, the perfect size for potato salad or hash browns. In fact, I could have dug them up weeks ago and had a nice little Swedish potato boil. These are a very rare and pricey type of potato that I bought from Olsen farms in early spring. I was so excited to find them and now I’m twice as excited to be eating them!

ernst-roesling-potatoes

I’ll find out tomorrow how many potatoes I have in that bag. That is the bag that I didn’t end up hilling because it fell over and I didn’t get around to righting it before the potatoes started growing. In fact, they grew through the burlap bag so I ended up just cutting holes so they could stretch their legs. I’m really curious to see how many potatoes I get from the Yukon Gold whiskey barrel that I did hill. We’ll see if hilling is really so worth the effort for someone with a limited supply of non-clay dirt…

Here is a potato mystery that still has me scratching my head. Of course this is the first time I’ve grown potatoes (but it certainly won’t be the last!) but I can’t figure this one out. I found these strange looking fruit on the Yukon Gold plants.

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And then found a random blog post about them on that wonderful thing called the internet. It seems mine aren’t the only potatoes to ever fruit. Strange! And good to know not to eat them, although I had already guessed that since I had heard the only non-toxic part of the potato plant is the tuber.

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Posted in Growing Groceries - Plants, Seeds and Growing Tips

Garden Update

Posted on July 9, 2009 by Annette Cottrell| 11 Comments

Here we are not quite 3 months into this. Around April 23 I planted the first things in the new beds. Here is a before picture taken:

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And after, about 10 weeks later:

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Soon to be eating artichokes:

se-artichokes

Carrots:

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Bell Peppers (and jalapenos) are almost ready to salsa:

se-bell-peppers

We’ve been eating the beets and harvested the last of the first round of arrugula from the brussel sprout bed in the background. The mustard has bolted and needs to go onto hamburgers this weekend and there is another round of arrugula started in that bed already.

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The cucumbers are getting larger and the first of the fall squashes are showing up daily – butternut, acorn, jack-o-lantern and sugar pie:

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I have this romantic image of all the neighbor kids coming to my yard to pick out their jack-o-lanterns this year. Maybe we can give red wagon rides and drink Rockridge apple cider.

Now, for my dirty little secrets. I saw something on the zuchini plants today that stopped me in my tracks. The plants are amazingly healthy, full of young fruit but there was this one that I’m hoping is a fluke:

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In my heart of hearts I think it’s blossom end rot. It could be I don’t have enough lime in that bed, or it could just be that one fruit didn’t get pollinated. I’ll know soon enough if more of the fruit yellow at the end and rot away. If you have any insight I’m all ears. Of corn that is – seriously, my corn is over 6 feet tall! What happened to knee high by fourth of July?

And here is another skeleton:

se-necrotic-peas

Every year after the first big push of peas is over the plants suddenly wither and die. True, the backyard is clay and not well amended. I let it dry out and generally ignore it until the plants look like this. Any insight here? Suddenly the plants are overrun with black aphids but that could be because they are in such ill health. From what I hear the secret to keeping pests under control is really great soil health. I’m still working on that, especially in the back.

This one takes the cake:

se-aphids-on-cole

Cabbage aphids suddenly. They are on my cardoons, kale and deep inside the brussel sprouts and cauliflower. I’m not sure what to do about them. You can’t really pick them off when they are so deep inside a plant. I know BT is somewhat controversial and I’ve never used it. It seems that most organic gardeners like the Modern Victory Garden do actually say it’s ok to use BT but not BT enhanced seeds.

I’d love any ideas, suggestions, or musings. I’ve not a clue what to do on this one…

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Posted in Growing Groceries - Plants, Seeds and Growing Tips

New Territory – Homemade Lotions, Shampoos, Cleaners

Posted on July 7, 2009 by Annette Cottrell| 6 Comments

home-made-salve

A quick apology for the lack of posts lately – We’ve been entertaining, had a slew of birthdays, putting up food that is coming ripe, lack of school for the kiddos since it’s summer time and I’ve been very busy experimenting with some new things.

I hope very soon to be doing some posts on lotion making, making household cleaners, shampoos and other things you would normally buy at the grocers. You all know that since we’ve stopped buying most things from the grocery store we’ve been sourcing them directly from the farmers or growing them ourselves.

The hard part for me is that I still need to buy soaps, lotions, shampoo and things to clean my house with. Even the quality products that I can find at PCC are made from many ingredients that I have no clue what the heck they are. And the cleaners? Don’t even get me started.

I’ve been researching essential oils, studying their properties and learning techniques for making them myself. I just got a stick blender last week for my birthday and I’ve put it to good use. Since it’s not really cream soup season I’ve used it mainly for homemade mayo and last night I finally managed to set aside a few hours when I should have been updating this blog to make shampoo and lotions.

This year I had stopped buying my fancy pants European face cream and it’s been showing on my over 40 skin. And you can imagine the toil all this food preparation, coop cleaning and gardening has been taking on my hands. I am happy to report that I’ve successfully made an amazing face oil that helps fill in those cracks, found a quality MSM supplement and US mined dietary minerals which I mix with my drinking water and now conquered the lotion barrier.

True I’ve only made one body lotion so far but it is the most luxuriously rehydrating lotion I’ve ever encountered. And it’s true that I’ve only used the shampoo once and my hair isn’t quite dry yet but my cuticles and hair are behaving abnormally well. I have curly hippy hair that requires a ton of product to keep under control, especially now that natural highlights (in the form of silver) are cropping up.

All of the ingredients I used for the lotion, cleaning agents, shampoo and conditioners (along with all the other lotions, salves, hydrosols, toothpastes, salts and mouth rinses, soaps and bubble baths I have bookmarked to try) are grown and produced in the US, with the exception of some of the essential oils, the coconut oil, the shea butter and the cocoa butter.

Many of the herbs and medicinal flowers I’m using now I’ve started in my garden and am hoping at some future point to be able to distill my own essential oils. For now I’m infusing carrier oils with the dried flowers and herbs and adding that to my lotions. Hopefully next year when we get bees the beeswax will even come from my own hives!

For now I’m content knowing what I’m using in my house and putting on my and my young children’s skin and hair. It’s such a great feeling to know that everything I’ve made is from food grade ingredients. Not that you would want to eat something made with shea butter but at least it wouldn’t harm you if you did. The cleaners are made from high quality essential oils mixed with various ingredients, occasionally vodka for disinfecting or vinegar for changing the pH that allows bacteria to grow so you wouldn’t necessarily want to taste those – but if you did you wouldn’t need to be rushed to the hospital to have your stomach pumped.

Stay tuned…although looking at our July calendar it will likely be August before I’m confident enough in all my recipes to share them. If you are interested in making a Weleda-type lotion along with me you may want to start now by buying some chammomile flowers in the bulk section at PCC, putting them in a glass canning jar covered with olive oil and letting them sit in a sunny window for 3-4 weeks. That is probably when I’ll be getting around to posting the lotion and you’ll be ready at that point to follow along.

Sustainable body care – both inside and out!

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