Tale of Woe

I have been a sloth for posting.

I have excuses, but those don't mean much. (Vacation, work etc etc)

This weekend I am looking at adding the fruiting bushes and vines to the yard, and we shall see how that goes. My plans are Raspberries, Blueberries and Grapes. While I would love to plant Goji berries, currents and strawberries, I don't think this year it will happen.

The apples are gone (yay), due to a late frost after budding we will have no apples on our apple tree. I am oddly overjoyed. I forgot to spray, and this will help with pest control for next year (no food for the buggers). Not only that, but harvesting would be time-consuming and I don't yet have a way to process them and store them after the harvest. I need to get stuff for canning/drying/cold-storing produce before we have a big harvest.

I lament my inadequate ability to grow tomatoes. Not sure why, but I can get cherry tomatoes to grow too my height from seed, but can't get normal sized ones growing from transplants or seed. And I love tomatoes, and it is one of the things I want to grow the most. Give me a few years and I might finally get the process down.

As for the CSA I have been having trouble as the resident 'chef' to figure out how to use all the veggies. The first part of the CSA season had a managable amount of veggies for just dinners. Now we need to use them for lunches as well, or not use them all in a week. Also my mother is out of town with my grandmother for a month, and my brother is gone for the summer for an internship. So 3 people to handle a medium share as quantities ramp up for the season. Doable, but requires a bunch of work.

I have found that I like Bok Choy, but not to fond of radishes. Perhaps I have not found the right way to use radishes. And I am not sure what to do with beets, given that I try to cook after work and have dinner ready fairly soon after. I have found some oven recipes that would take some time, so only good for a weekend really.

So this afternoon we will get

1. Bok choy - probably the last for the season
2. Radish
3. Lettuce - either Romaine, head or butter
4. Peas - shell peas, snow peas or sugar snap
5. Turnips
6. Kohlrabi
7. Beets
8. Carrots
9. Cabbage
10. Summer squash - assorted varieties
11. Kale
12. Broccoli
13. Onion
14. Spring greens
15. cucumber/spinach/something

Turnips, Beets and Summer squash are the items that may require more thought than the rest of the ingredients.

I hope to do better at posting.

Monday Dinner

Monday we had an interesting dinner using our radishes.

We used a Betty Crocker Recipe for
Citrus Pasta Salad (link)

The overall impression was that the broccoli and oranges did not go all that well for our taste. Perhaps that is because we used frozen broccoli, but it will most likely not be repeated without some adjustments to the recipe.

CSA adventures

Ok due to sickness, schedules etc things got rearranged.

We got the following early last week.

Mixed Greens
Baby Bok Choy
Split Peas
Asparagus
Radishes
Mustard Seed (crushed)
There might have been something I missed.

No interesting Salads but Last Wednesday we had Bul-go-gi (or at least my variation) and included the Bok Choy.

bul-go-gi w bok choy
Originally uploaded by grandnegasax

Bul-go-gi is a Korean dish characterized by meat marinated with soy sauce, garlic, ginger, sesame oil/seeds, salt, pepper and sugar. I can't give a recipe of what I cooked because I tend to be very liberal in the recipe interpretation. The stems of the bok choy were added earlier than the leaves. Sadly the bok choy only provided a mild crunch, and had no other effect. If the ratio had been almost one to one, meat and bok choy, there might have been more of an impact. As usual everyone liked the bul-go-gi, even with the addition of veggies. Served over rice and with salad on the side.

Sunday we braised the Asparagus, but it probably could have used more time as the stems were larger this week. The roast was rubbed with mustard seed, but I think it could have used more. Overall it was very good with the side of small red potatoes.

We will be using the peas in a soup tomorrow and the radishes in a pasta salad today. I also have more pictures and news from the garden, but that will be in a different post.

More culinary adventures

On Friday I was remiss in entering quickly.

Grilled Asparagus with Parmesan
recipe is fairly obvious, butter/oil grill and then serve topped with Parmesan cheese

Thoughts:
Alex like it
Heidi liked it
Wesley thought it was ok
Chris like it
Neil liked it

Overall Opinion: Good one to repeat.

It seems that we have roughly enough veggies for dinners, though currently much of it this week is just having salads. Not a bad thing, just an interesting observation. I don't plan to give reports on basics or simple green salads or other common preparations.

CSA

We recently joined our local CSA Schreiber & Sons and just got our first box. We got a standard share which is designed for four people. My parents are in it with us and we are going to have some fun. I am going to list what we have and our thoughts.

This week we had the following items in the Box:

Baby Bok Choy
Baby Leeks
Chickpeas (Garbanzos)
Mixed Greens
Brown Lentils
Spinach
Asparagus


Wednesday we made the following items:

Meatless Lentil Chili
Recipe from the pamphlet USA Dry Peas, Lentils, and Chickpeas (no recipe link, but they sell a cookbook on their website http://www.pea-lentil.com/)

Thoughts:
Heidi(Wife) likes it as is.
Alex (me) thought it needed more kick (spices or meat)
Wesley(Brother) thought it needed meat (a carnivore to the core)
Chris(Mother) thought it was good
Neil(Father) thought it needed more spice

Overall opinion: Great starter recipe to try again with some variation for personal tastes.

Tomato, Chickpea and Arugula Salad
Recipe found on Schreiber & Son's website (link)

We substituted leek for onion, and spring greens for arugula. Follow directions and layer as we did not and the chickpeas sunk to the bottom of the bowl.


Thoughts:
Heidi thought it was good
Alex thought it was decent, but needed more salt or tomatoes.
Wesley didn't really care for it
Chris thought it was pretty good
Neil liked it

Overall Opinion: Next time layer properly

Now for Thursday night:
Baby Bok Choy with Cashews
Recipe found on Schreiber & Son's website (link)

Substituted leek for onions. Put in a bit much of the sesame seed oil.

Thoughts:
Alex thought it was really good
Heidi thought it tasted to wilted
Wesley thought it was odd, but tasted ok with hot sauce
Neil liked it
Chris thought it was a bit oily but good

Overall Opinion: Would be a great companion to Korean Bulgogi

Lemon Chickpea Cake
Recipe also from the pamphlet USA Dry Peas, Lentils, and Chickpeas (see above in post for link)

Thoughts:
Alex liked it
Heidi liked it
Wesley liked it
Neil liked it
Chris liked it

Overall Opinion: Wow this has chickpeas in it!

Links

I am really looking into edible landscaping. I just have the hardest time with figuring out how to do the front yard.

So here are the sites I have looked at so far, I wish there was more information out there on this.

http://www.communityrootsboulder.com/gardens.html

Spring

So, I have a bit to do now in the garden.

A while back I started Rhubarb, tomatoes, and lemongrass indoors. They will soon be ready to plant in their planters (earth boxes from my father).

In December or so, I started two cherry tomato plants in a large planter indoors. They are now my height and beginning to produce fruit, though none are yet ripe. However I seem to have fungus problem, so I got some spray and things seem to be getting a bit better. I would hope after the next application I will see and improvement.

The compost pile needs to be moved to make way for the herb garden and I need to install the pergola type thing and the fire pit. Then we need to get the trees in, which I finally have measured and marked out. Because of difficulty with cherries in this area, we are planning to do peaches and plums.

I will post more later, and some pictures as well.