On Vacation

Sunday, September 24, 2006

I am experiencing a serious case of Reisefieber (travel fever) today, as I am about to embark on a much-anticipated vacation. I'll be away for a few weeks, and I won't be blogging at all during that time. I won't have Internet access, and that's actually a good thing. Traveling, for me, is all about breaking away from the routine and soaking up everything that is new and different.

While I'm away, the garden will continue to settle into its rhythm for the cooler months. In the ground right now, my fall plantings are coming along fairly well. I have French breakfast radishes and a two rows of healthy-looking carrots.


I planted some Red Russian Kale for the first time. I like its purple stems and the interesting shape of its leaves.


This is also the first time I've planted arugula. I'll have to get out to the plot today and pick some, since I know it will probably be too big (and too bitter) by the time I get back.


Also in the ground, I have Purple Top White Globe Turnips. These I like to grow because they are just so beautiful. I wasn't crazy about their taste when I tried them last year, but I think that's only because I hadn't found a good way to prepare them. But I am willing to give them another try. (Hint, hint: Please tell me about your favorite turnip recipes!)

I also have a few red onions that were given to us by our friend Juan, and white ones from our plot neighbor, Albertino.

In the herbs category, I have a fresh crop of dill. And yesterday I harvested another handful of sage. Both will make great additions to steaming bowls of hot soup on chilly days.


And then there are the strugglers: Bok choy with a lot of ants on it at the moment...

And a gigantic Brussels sprouts plant that is really having a difficult time setting out sprouts.


So there they are, my cool-season crops. I predict one of two things will happen while I'm away: They will grow like crazy and I'll have a cornucopia of things to harvest when I get back, or it will have been too hot, too cold, or too wet/dry and there won't be much at all -- except weeds. I predict lots of weeds in any case.

Please visit again for all the updates. I'll be landing back in the blogosphere sometime on or around October 22. Until then... Ciao!

What do snake eggs look like?

Saturday, September 23, 2006

"Oh, no. Are these snake eggs?!" I mumbled to myself when I discovered these near the front gate of my garden last week. "Oh, no. Oh, no! Eeeewww!"

There is a real possibility that they could be snake eggs, given that there were warnings about snakes in the community garden earlier this summer.

"Nah, maybe they are just mushrooms," I mumbled to myself again. It had rained recently, so maybe there was enough moisture in the ground for mushrooms to grow. But then again, I'd never seen mushrooms in my garden after a few days of rain.

So I went home to check the Internet and I found that snake eggs do indeed look something like this, and just before they hatch, the eggs begin to deflate. In the garden this morning, I took another look and... Oh, no! Some of them are deflating! Yikes!

OK, fellow bloggers, are there any snake experts among you? Am I overreacting? Are these really snake eggs? And what should I do about them? Without poking around them too much, I counted at least 20. Twenty baby snakes in my garden?! No thanks. I would really like them to be... somewhere else. Far away.

Should I move them? And if so, how? I have also had the terrible thought of bashing them up with a shovel. But I'm not one for killing things. Even if they are things I don't really want in my garden. All advice is welcome.

Green Blog Project: Crookneck Squash Recipes

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

Those of you who have been following my gardening adventures for a while will recall that, earlier this season, I learned a lot about crookneck squash flowers. (For a recap, go here.) Today, I am happy to report that I successfully grew three beautiful crookneck squashes. The first two are shown in the photo above.

Since this was the first time I've grown squash of any type, I wanted to cook them in a special way. I didn't want to grind them up for soup or bury them in too many other ingredients. I wanted to do something that would really feature the whole squash as the main ingredient.

My first choice of recipes was this one: Marinated Zucchini and Summer Squash by Giada De Laurentis. It was a simple-to-make marinade that included fresh garlic and thyme, which I also had on hand from my garden. The vegetables soaked in the marinade for about four hours and then, after baking, they were wonderfully flavorful and fragrant. If you like lemon and garlic, you will love this recipe!


The third squash I used in a recipe of my own invention. To start, I gleaned a bit of guidance and inspiration from a fabulous book called Culinary Artistry. This is a book that lists all kinds of ingredients and provides a compilation of all the foods, herbs, and spices that pair well with each one. It's essentially like having a color wheel for food.

Ingredients that go well with summer squash include: onions, bacon, Parmesan cheese, paprika, cinnamon, saffron and lemon. I used the first four of these, plus a little bit of parsley and plain bread crumbs, to make a stuffing. First, I cooked two slices of bacon and set them aside. Then, in the same pan, I cooked a medium-size onion. I added some chopped parsley, bread crumbs, the crumbled bits of bacon, and a little water to help it all stick together. Then I brushed olive oil onto each half of the squash, added the filling, and topped everything off with Parmesan cheese and a few shakes of paprika. I baked them at 350 degrees until the squash became soft.


My invention turned out beautifully! The bacon gave the squash just the right amount of saltiness and flavor, without making this dish too heavy. Michael liked it so much that he wanted another one! The only change we'd make would be to add more parsley next time, and maybe even more onions; we love onions. Other than that, I was really happy with how this turned out, especially since I was not working with a precise recipe. (My mom would be so proud of me; I actually cooked something without a recipe!)

Two more squash await me in the garden. This will probably be all... until next summer.


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This is my contribution to the Green Blog Project, a blogging event created by Inji Pennu at Ginger and Mango. She encouraged fellow bloggers to grow something edible and then write about how they used the plant, vegetable, fruit, or herb as the main ingredient in a recipe. I like that she even encouraged people without a garden to try growing something in a container. Having a small space for my own garden, I've come to really appreciate all of the things that I've been able to grow there. Even if it's only a handful of squash, I've enjoyed watching them go from seed to soil to supper.

If you'd like to participate in the Green Blog Project, it's not too late. Go to Ginger and Mango for all the details and then check her blog again on October 1, 2006, for a roundup of everyone's posts. It's a celebration of homegrown food!

Thai basil and hot, HOT peppers!

Sunday, September 17, 2006

This is how our plot looks these days. To some people, it might look like an unruly bunch of weeds, but I like to think of it as... lush... and... productive. Yeah, that's what we'll call it. Productive!

In amongst all of the productiveness is our Thai basil plant. We started this from a transplant that was about 4 inches tall. It's now about 2 feet tall and at least as wide. I like its purple flowers and decided awhile ago to stop deadheading them.


So the Thai basil has been growing like crazy and all along I've been wondering what to make with it. The obvious answer is Thai food, but I don't have much experience with Asian cooking and I often feel intimidated by recipes that call for unfamiliar things like fish sauce, red curry paste, hot chili peppers and so on. While I do enjoy Thai food quite a bit, I've always felt it was best to leave it to the pros at the restaurants. And Washington, D.C. certainly has a decent selection of Thai restaurants. But even so, I thought, why grow this enormous Thai basil bush and then not cook with it? So I had to give it a whirl.

I found this recipe for Spicy Chicken and Basil Stir-Fry on Williams-Sonoma's Web site and thought it wouldn't be too complicated. The only new-to-me ingredient was the fish sauce, and it called for 3/4 cup of Thai basil. Perfect.


The recipe also called for three other ingredients that I was able to use from our garden: scallions, garlic, and jalapeño peppers. My husband loves jalapeño peppers and will eat them in all forms -- fresh, cooked, pickled -- you name it; the heat doesn't bother him one bit. As for me? Well... let's just say... I am a little more sensitive to hot peppers than he is. Read on.


The recipe calls for one or two jalapeños. I decided to play it safe and just use one. While I was cutting the pepper, I remembered the time when I had my first dreadful encounter with a jalapeño. It was in a bowlful of salsa made by two of my former roommates who were Mexican-American. And let's just say... they liked their salsa extra, extra picante! I found out the hard way and they seemed quite amused when I had to put my tastebuds on ice afterwards. Painful. Very painful.

So cutting the pepper, I wondered if the ones we grew in our own garden were even all that hot, and... can you see where this is going? As I was scraping away the inner membrane of the pepper (which is said to be the hottest part, by the way), I decided to take a little taste. I did no more than touch a tiny piece of it to my tongue and... YYYEEEEOOOOOOUUUWWWWW!! It's hot! It's hot! Get some milk! Drink milk! Oh, the milk trick isn't working for me! (Let me guess, it doesn't work with skim?!) Get ice! Get ice! My mouth is burrrrning!!


Fifteen minutes later, I am still standing in the middle of the kitchen -- lips are bright, burning red and I am sucking on an ice cube. Michael comes home and sees me in this state of severe pain. "What's wrong?," he asked. And all I had to do was point to the cutting board where the offending pepper remained in its partially cut-up state, and he knew. "Did you eat some bread? Try some bread; it will remove the jalapeño oil from your lips." So I tried that and, thank goodness it worked.

And this was supposed to be all about the Thai basil, right?


Well, after that traumatic run-in with the jalapeño, I only used a tiny bit -- maybe one quarter of it -- in this recipe. It turned out great, although... would you believe?... After all that, we thought it could have used a little more kick. It needed more spiciness to make it taste like real Thai. But I was a little apprehensive after that taste-test incident, you know?

This goes down with the distinction of being The Most Painful Dish I made with our garden ingredients all summer. It is my contribution to Weekend Herb Blogging, which is being hosted by Piperita in Italy at The Kitchen Pantry. Visit her site on Monday for a roundup of hopefully-less-painful-to-make recipes.

Figs

Friday, September 15, 2006

These are a few of the figs I picked from the trees at the community garden. I've been collecting a handful every couple of days and letting them sit on our countertop to ripen. I've been trying to collect enough to make some kind of recipe -- maybe a cake, a salad, or jam. I would like to bake a few and try them with gorgonzola cheese or prosciutto, but I don't think I'm ever going to get that far. I keep eating them all -- just plain! It's like having a plateful of candy staring at me everytime I step into the kitchen. Oh, I'll take just one. And then one more. And before you know it, they're gone again. Too good to resist.

Tomatoes: Ugly but Good

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

They aren't always pretty, our tomatoes. These were the ones I picked yesterday, fresh from the vine... dents, cracks, blemishes and all.

On the outside, they look like the motley crew of a grungy garage band. But on the inside? They're a world-class symphony of tomato flavor -- tuned to perfection. Sweet and juicy, with a hint of tartness. Delicious.

We've been enjoying our ugly-but-good tomatoes in all sorts of ways. We've put them in panzanella...


... in eggplant parmesan and on sandwiches...


... and heaped on top of a taco salad.


Ugly tomatoes? Yes. But they sure do clean up well.

Sunflowers: Here and There

Monday, September 11, 2006

A dried sunflower in my garden.

My sunflowers are nearly finished blooming now and the birds -- mostly finches -- have been feasting on the seeds. Sunflowers are one of my favorite flowers in the garden because they are always cheerful and I never tire of watching the wildlife they attract.

Years ago, I spent some time in Spain and, to this day, I still recall how amazing it was to see the fields upon fields of sunflowers that grew there. I was mesmerized by the expanses of flowery terrain; it looked like miles of smiling faces -- an entire landscape dotted with golden-yellow sunflowers, thousands of them, all turned in the same direction -- towards the sun. The Spanish word for sunflower is girasol, which is derived from girar (to turn) and sol (the sun) -- turning to the sun. In French it is similar: tournesol means "turn with the sun."


Spain seemed like a logical place for sunflowers to grow. When I was there, it was warm, dry, and, well... very sunny! So it was interesting to learn that, while sunflowers are native to North America, it was actually Russia that first cultivated sunflowers on a large scale as a commercial crop. Today, Russia is the world's third largest producer. And the sunflower is so important in Russian history that it was even named Russia's national flower.

When I think of Russia, I envision ice and snow and thick, wooly coats lined with fur. Who would have thought... Sunflowers?

The Scent of Tomato

Friday, September 08, 2006

How would you describe the scent of tomato leaves?

Anyone who has grown a tomato will know what I mean. When we brush against the leaves of a tomato plant, a distinct scent wafts through the air; it gets on our clothes and on our hands. It stirs in our minds the anticipation of that first, red-ripe bite of garden-grown goodness.

In my mind, the scent of tomato leaves evokes words such as "earthy," "green," "fresh," "warm," "herbal", and "savory." Unmistakably...tomato-y! The scent alone, early in the season, is enough to trigger visions of tomato sandwiches... dancing in my head.

So it was interesting to read "What the Nose Knows by Heart," an article in The Washington Post last month. In it, writer DeNeen L. Brown noted the ways in which summertime scents evoke certain memories from our lives. They might be good memories (the scent of watermelon, for example, reminding us of spitting seeds from the front porch), or they might be bad ones (like bug spray... and perhaps the terrible recollection of all those bites you got on a camping trip).

But how is it that we are able to recall these particular scents?


Here's an interesting quote from the article: "It has long baffled scientists who wonder how people remember smells despite the fact that 'each olfactory neuron in the epithelium' lives about 60 days."

Only 60 days?! So if the cells that enable us to remember certain scents die every 2 months, then how is it that we can recall our favorite scents?

I don't know how it all works, but I'm glad it does. On a blustery cold winter day, I'll be able to remember that warm, savory scent of tomato leaves. And with it, the pleasant memory of my summer garden.

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Read the article: What the Nose Knows by Heart: Summertime Scents Make Memories -- Sweet or Not -- for a Lifetime, The Washington Post, August 17, 2006.

In Bloom Today: Celosia

Wednesday, September 06, 2006

I planted two, new-to-me kinds of celosia in the garden this year. This first one (in the photo above) is called Pink Candle. Their color isn't quite the deep shade of pink that was shown on the seed packet, but I've learned not to rely too heavily on those photos; they tend to provide only a ballpark representation of the real thing (as in, this flower is *somewhere* along the spectrum of pink and, where it lands, you will soon find out!). A deep pink probably sells better than a pale one; that's my guess. Or maybe mine just didn't get enough nutrients. Anyway, I am not crazy about pale pink flowers, but I do think the shape and texture of these are interesting. Like other celosias, they are dry to the touch -- like straw -- and they last for a long time, making them ideal for dried flower arrangements.

The second celosia is more up my alley when it comes to color. I love bold colors in the garden and these fit the bill perfectly. This type of celosia is called New Look and it is just starting to open now -- giving a "new look" to the otherwise ratty-looking area of the back part of my garden plot, where I'm having a bit of a problem with a bindweed invasion. (More about that another day).


The New Look celosia is a compact plant (no more than a 12 - 18 inches tall) and it was very easy to grow from seed. They even survived the drought with little extra help on my part.

I love the contrast of the red, feathery plumes against the green, red-veined leaves. I learned here that "celosia is derived from the Greek word 'kelos,' meaning burn, which describes the flamelike colors and inflorescence of some cultivars." Seems a perfectly fitting description for this one, doesn't it?

Hummingbird Visit

Monday, September 04, 2006

Here is the female Ruby-Throated Hummingbird that visited my garden the other day. While I was taking these photos, I was thinking to myself the whole time: Oh, please, please, please let the camera be on the correct settings. I was using a manual-focus lens and I didn't want to put the camera down to adjust the aperture, etc. I knew the hummingbird's visit would be fleeting and I didn't want to miss a moment of it. So I fired away and hoped for the best.

I was lucky this time around and I am very happy with how these shots turned out.

Lady hummer even sat on the fence and posed for a rare moment. I think she's resting up and gathering strength for the long flight to her wintering grounds down south. I know one day soon I won't see her anymore. Until next year.

Got Basil? Drink it up!

Sunday, September 03, 2006

We still have plenty of sweet basil in the garden and most of the plants are flowering now. I enjoy listening to the hum of the bees as they buzz blissfully from one flower to the next.

I know that it won't be long now before this year's crop of basil fades into nothing but memories, so I've been trying to think of different ways to make good use of it while it lasts. Eventually, I'll make a batch of pesto to freeze for the winter, but for now, I want to use it fresh -- as much as possible.


Following my successful experiment with basil lemonade, I decided to invent a new basil drink. For this creation, I was inspired by food blogger Virginie over at Absolutely Green, who made a Peach & Basil Juice using nothing more than fresh peaches and basil, plus a little bit of water and sweetener. She herself was inspired by the gorgeous photo of the jus de pêche au basilic on Roses et Poireaux.

My second source of inspiration was the Watermelon Sorbet with Wine Basil Gelee that I discovered at Epicurious. Although I haven't tried the recipe, it made me curious about the pairing of basil and watermelon. It sounded like a refreshing combination. So this week, when I had watermelon and basil on hand, I thought, why not invent a Basil & Watermelon Drink?

I cut and seeded several pieces of watermelon and added them to the food processor along with a few leaves of fresh basil. I didn't use any sugar because watermelon is so naturally sweet and I'm trying to cut down on the amount of refined sugar I eat. (Well, at least in theory I'm trying to cut down on it.)


Blend everything together and give it a taste. If you want more of the basil flavor, add more basil. If you want a thinner consistency, add a little water. Strain the juice through a sieve. Pour it over ice, and... Voila! The result is a refreshing and unique summer drink.

This is also a very nutritious drink. Watermelon is high in vitamin C and lycopene, an antioxidant that may help reduce the risk of certain cancers. Basil is a good source of vitamin A, magnesium, iron and calcium. (Read more fascinating facts about the health benefits of basil here.)


I really enjoyed the combination of these two flavors. The savoriness of the basil cuts through the sweetness of the watermelon, and that makes this drink a real thirst-quencher. (I always find that overly-sweet drinks just make me more thirsty.)

Though I didn't try it this time around, I thought this pairing of flavors would also do well with the addition of cream, ice cream, or plain yogurt -- to make a creamy lassi-style drink.

This is my submission for Weekend Herb Blogging, which is being hosted this week by Genie, The Inadvertent Gardener. Visit her blog on Monday for a recap of other posts featuring herbs, fruits, flowers and vegetables.

Swallowtail Butterflies

Friday, September 01, 2006

I never get tired of watching butterflies, or taking photos of them. This one is an Eastern Tiger Swallowtail -- one of about six or seven that I saw visiting a butterfly bush in a nearby plot. They are called Swallowtails because the slender tips on the end of their wings resemble the tails of swallow birds. With a wingspan that can be as wide as 6.5 inches, Swallowtails are the largest butterfly we have in the D.C. area. (I learned that at our National Zoo, which has a butterfly garden.)


Female Eastern Tiger Swallowtails can be either yellow or dark blue. When they are dark, they look similar to another butterfly called the Pipevine Swallowtail, which eats a plant called pipevine. The pipevine plant contains toxins that make the butterflies poisonous to predators. So as the female Tiger Swallowtails mimic Pipevines, it helps them survive. I also learned here that when Swallowtail caterpillars hatch, they resemble bird droppings -- which is another mechanism to fool predators.

I always find it interesting to learn things like this -- how different species have adapted to survive. I've always been a bit of a wannabe biologist, and I think the garden helps me satisfy some of my natural curiosity about the world. Plus the photos... I just love taking the photos.