Category Archives: Gardening

Picking Fruits and Veggies

Posted on September 6, 2013 by AnnieRie

The end of the peach season is upon us. Soon, the rest of the 15 varieties of apples will be ripening at Larriland. We need to get back out there and pick some white peaches for the freezer. You can’t beat a day with this view.

I have also never picked grapes out there. Or, quite a few other veggies. This lovely weather makes me want to hit the farm and get a few more good items to put away.

The web site also tells us that the tomatoes will be good through October. I may go there and get a large quantity of romas, just to finish the sauce processing.

This year, my romas and paste were way down from previous years. Even with more plants. I know it is time to move the garden out to the field even if it means twice the length of hose to irrigate it. We are now down to seven hours of sun a day, maximum, on the current garden site.

I do have quite a harvest of heirlooms still ripening. Most get picked before I get stink bug or something chewing on them. I think it’s the squirrels. I need to get a dog. Seriously.

Not only are the squirrels getting into my plants, they are chewing on the cedar siding around our doors.

All in all, though, I did get, and I am still getting quite a haul of heirlooms. Finally, pineapple tomatoes, hillbilly tomatoes, and Amana orange, all producing fruit almost every day. Another full windowsill.

I do love this mild, low humidity weather that we are experiencing. I could get used to working outside without that heat and humidity.

hocofood@@@

Fall Sneaking Up on Us

Posted on September 3, 2013 by AnnieRie

Signs that we are heading towards that change of season.

My first Thelma Sanders squash, hidden under the leaves in a corner of the garden.

Berries on the crab apples. A bumper crop of berries. Here’s hoping we get the cedar waxwings who love to feast on the berries.

Rhododendron buds are really plentiful this year as well. Last year there was lots of growth but not that many blooms. This year, all the rain was good to them and they put out huge amounts of buds, which means lots of flowers next May.

Morning glories completely out of control. I didn’t prune them back this year. A friend who grows grapes told us in rainy seasons to let the flowers and weeds get close to your garden. In the case of a very wet summer, their competition for the moisture will be beneficial to keeping your veggies and fruit from diseases caused by too much water.

A basil plant that decided to rise from the ruins of the bunny devastation of last spring. I have no idea how it came back from its puny little nub left after the rabbits got to it.

Newly mowed meadow. Ready to be baled. Driving my sinuses nuts, but it really looks forlorn, where once there was all this tall lovely grass.

Lots of green tomatoes still out there, hiding and in plain sight. I figure we have about four or five more weeks before the weather changes for good, and I have to bring them in if they don’t ripen. Right now I am still getting lots of slicing tomatoes, but all the paste tomatoes are about finished for the year.

Weather is lovely, isn’t it? Temps in the low eighties and high seventies. Cool nights.

The blue basil is going to seed. Time to do the last big harvest and make another boatload of pesto.

Enjoy this weather while we can!

hocofood@@@

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Posted in Food, Gardening, Hobbies, Howard County, Nature, Weather, West HoCo and tagged Food, gardening, heirloom tomatoes, hobbies, Howard County, tomatoes, weather, West HoCo. Bookmark the permalink.

Garden Update

Posted on August 30, 2013 by AnnieRie

The garden is hanging in there but the stink bugs are out in force, so I have resorted to picking the tomatoes just before they get ripe and sweet. Cuts down on the damage.

The one on the top left is an Amana orange heirloom. It will turn orange on the windowsill. The other larger heirloom is a mortgage lifter. This year they are not getting huge. The weather hasn’t been hot enough. A couple of orange romas, one Polish linguisa, a handful of cherry tomatoes, and one lonely sun sugar.

The supersweet 100s are done. I have yet to get a ripe pineapple tomato, even though right now there are dozens of green ones on the vines. Got what looks to be the last Paul Robeson yesterday. The hillbillies and the boxcar willie plants also have dozens of green tomatoes on them. Hope we continue to have nice days, in order to ripen them.

I am glad I put in 48 plants, as many of them are underachieving this year.

I have gotten my share of weird plants too. Like this one.

I could have put it in the fair for strange looking plants.

The CSA has also given us some winners. Like this eggplant with a “nose”.

Garden and CSA veggies played well tonight for dinner, where I made my ratatouille pie. Using Breezy Willow bacon and feta, England Acres eggs, Trickling Springs milk, and a combination of CSA squash, eggplant and onion, and my tomatoes for the ratatouille base. I really love this pie. Like a quiche.

I used store bought pie crust this time. Being lazy. Bake the pie crust until almost done. I used two crusts for this. One on the base, and one hand torn and placed around the top of the deep dish.

Mix two cups of ratatouille with 1/4 cup grated cheese and about 6 strips of crisp bacon, torn into pieces. Dump on top the crust. Mix together four large eggs with 2 tablespoons of milk and 2 tablespoons of flour. Dump on top the ratatouille. Bake at 375 degrees for 40 minutes.

Great with a Cabernet. Enough left for lunch this weekend.

hocofood@@@

It’s Ratatouille Time!

Posted on August 22, 2013 by AnnieRie

Sung to the tune of “It’s Howdy Doody Time!”. This week, the 14th one of our Sandy Spring CSA, we got the makings for some serious ratatouille.

The List:
2 pieces Green Zucchini – Windy Hollow Organics
1 bag Green Beans – Freedom Acres Farm
1 pint Sungold Cherry Tomatoes – Liberty Acres
1 bag Lemon Cucumbers – De Glae Organic Farm
1 bag Red Roma Tomatoes – Healthy Harvest Organics
1 bag Mixed Heirloom Hot Peppers – Outback Farm
1 bag Japanese Eggplants – Maple Lawn Organics
1 bag loose Orange Carrots – Red Fox Organics
1 container Cremini Mushrooms – Mother Earth Organics
1 bag Garlic – Friends Road Organics
1 bag Purple Viking Potatoes – Bellview Organics
2 pieces Delicata Squash – Green Valley Organics

Yes, those are baby bellas in the back. Mother Earth is a member of our cooperative of farms. Nice that some of the best mushrooms come from the same area as our farmers for the CSA. As for those lemon cucumbers, I need to find some interesting recipes for them. We have gotten them in the past. I never got very creative with them.

I found a recipe that uses pesto, cucumbers, and ends up with shaved Parmesan and freshly ground pepper. I think that will work.

As for the ratatouille. Here is last year’s masterpiece, my ratatouille pie made using leftover ratatouille and with a recipe from Diary of a Locavore.

As for making ratatouille, my list of ingredients.

1/4 cup olive oil
1 1/2 cups small diced onion, I use sweet white
1 teaspoon grated garlic
2 cups medium diced eggplant, skin on
1/2 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves
1 tsp dried oregano
1 1/2 cups diced green, red, yellow, orange (whatever you have) bell peppers
1 1/2 cup diced zucchini squash
2 cups peeled, seeded and chopped tomatoes, preferably all colors
1 tablespoon thinly sliced fresh basil leaves

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Make it in a cast iron pan if you can. A deep one. Put the veggies in, using the order above. That is, onion and garlic to soften, then the eggplant, then the peppers, then the squash and tomatoes. Add the basil at the very end.

I let it cook low and slow until all the flavors meld.

I will post pictures of this year’s batch, over the weekend when I make it.

As for my cooking of CSA foods, here is today’s goodie. Golumpki. Made with a combination of CSA veggies, my tomatoes, and a cabbage from Catoctin Mountain Orchards market. The sauce base was from my last container in the freezer from last year. Added some Orchard Breeze sausage to it. Not bad, but I wasn’t that happy with the final stuffing. I need to work on this recipe.

Now, I need to figure out what to do with those heirloom hot peppers, and the delicata squash.

hocofood@@@

4 Comments

Posted in CSA, Food, Gardening, Locavore, Real Food and tagged cooking, CSA, Food, foodie, gardening, heirloom tomatoes, Locavore, real food. Bookmark the permalink.

You Say Frittata …

Posted on August 21, 2013 by AnnieRie

… I say crustless quiche. Although technically they are a bit different in composition and preparation.

One of the staples in this house, particularly when there are lots of eggs, is the frittata. An Italian, or Spanish originating one dish meal. Most of the ingredients are the same, just the proportions differ.

Whenever someone asks me how I deal with the large amount of veggies left from the CSA, this is my go to preparation. The picture above is the finished version that I slid out onto a pan to cut. I make my frittata in an oven proof frying pan, with a non stick surface. Not good to cut on.

Tonight we had a bloggers party. I didn’t want large amounts of fried foods, so around 3 this afternoon we had a late lunch of leftover frittata. Left over from Monday night dinner.

Monday I wanted something easy as I was still processing tomatoes from the garden and the CSA. This meal, definitely in the easy category.

Find some greens. Any greens. I used arugula and chard from my garden. Find some onion and garlic. I used scallions, and some of those perfectly roasted garlic cloves I made last week.

Pour some oil in the pan. Add the onion and garlic. Chopped up first. Once they soften, add the greens. Let them wilt. In the meantime whisk 4-6 eggs in a dish. Depends on how many you are feeding. I used 6 for this recipe. Add a splash of milk. Any kind of grated cheese. I used pecorino romano. Italian herbs. Salt. Pepper. Wing it.

Microwave one yellow or white potato until it is slightly soft. Slice it. Pull out some tomatoes (like maybe some sun dried). I used some of my tomatoes that I had oven roasted, but you can substitute sun dried. Like the ones from a salad bar.

Here is the picture before I added the potato, mozzarella, and meat.

If you want to add meat, crumble it and add it. I put a pound of pork sausage in the oven earlier Monday. I wanted some of it for this, and saved half of it for stuffed cabbage later this week. A simple way to multitask. Either bacon or pork, in the oven, crumbled after it is done cooking. Use it for multiple meals. Don’t put the heavy stuff, the meat and potatoes, on the frittata until it starts to set. Just before moving to the oven, add some soft mozzarella.

Put it all in a 400 degree oven for about ten minutes. The bottom will have set on the stove and the top in the oven.

We get two meals out of a frittata. Usually a dinner and a lunch. This is such an easy way to use up greens and tomatoes from the CSA, you really need to make it a regular meal at your house.

Now, I just have to decide what to do with the Thumbalina carrots, the only thing not touched from last week’s CSA. We get more stuff tomorrow, and I am surprised. There is nothing left but the carrots and a few potatoes. Oh, there is half a watermelon, too. But, we are plowing through that on a daily basis.

hocofood@@@

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Posted in CSA, Food, Gardening, Locavore, Real Food and tagged cooking, CSA, Food, foodie, gardening, Locavore, real food. Bookmark the permalink.

Waste Not, Want Not

Posted on August 19, 2013 by AnnieRie

The philosophy I grew up with. Back when you ate everything you were served, or went hungry. Back when food wasn’t engineered to be “pretty”.

I can’t help but cringe when I see obvious waste of good food. I had to write this post after a number of incidents that reminded me just how spoiled we have become. And how we turn up our collective noses at food that isn’t perfect.

The latest largest example was Larriland on Wednesday. While picking peaches, we looked over a few rows from the Coral Star peaches we were picking, to a row where a large pile of peaches had been “dumped”. Maybe a wheelbarrow overturned. But, for whatever reason, dozens of ripe peaches were sprawled across the ground, bruised and left for garbage (or seconds).

Whenever we go to Larriland, we see evidence of the waste. If something isn’t perfect, it gets tossed on the ground. For whatever reason, people seem to think that only flawless looking food is worth buying.

It amazes me, what is wasted. Back when we went to the Amish picnic, and the farmer from Bellview offered us “seconds” from the fava bean harvest. Forty plus pounds of unsellable beans. Nothing really wrong with them, just small amounts in the pods, or a surface fungus.

And, then there is the constant reminder that wormy corn isn’t bad. That the worms come because they are sweet, and they aren’t liberally doused in pesticides to ward off the worms. I would rather break off the ends and have sweet corn with no chemical residue, than worry that a worm was chomping on the end of the corn.

My cucumbers are weird looking. They curl on the ends. These types of cukes wouldn’t sell in a market, or at a grocery store. There, we have to have waxed cucumbers, as if wax was something I really need in my diet.

This weekend, at the Food Bank gardens, we saw perfectly good tomatoes rejected, because they had flaws. Really? Heirloom tomatoes aren’t desirable if there are flaws on them?

I just don’t get it. People go nuts about GMOs, but they brought it on themselves, by rejecting natural fruit and veggies that have flaws. The next step from hybrid seems to be GMO. Make veggies the insects won’t touch, so that they can be sold blemish free. Higher yields. Less waste.

Me, I will just continue to buy ugly fruit and veggies. Who cares about stink bug holes. Just cut out those parts. Once you garden, you understand, and have no problem eating “ugly” food.

Well, off my soapbox today. My chard in my frittata was ripped up on the ends. My tomatoes had spots that were cut out. My basil, the same thing. Cut off the mutilated edges and process.

It still tasted great.

hocofood@@@

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Posted in Commentary, Farms, Food, Gardening and tagged commentary, cooking, farms, Food, heirloom tomatoes. Bookmark the permalink.

The Bug Man Cometh …

Posted on August 18, 2013 by AnnieRie

… and he brought his wife. And, they talked about butterflies, pollinators and so much more. At the Howard County Conservancy last Saturday, we were treated to a “twofer”. Dr. Mike Raupp, and his wife Dr. Paula Shrewsbury, spent a few hours talking to the crowd gathered around them in the picnic area.

Looking at bugs. Talking about bees. Going on a hike through the gardens, looking for pollinators, and identifying butterflies, moths, insects and bees.

Fun for all ages. Mike has this ability to connect with all ages, from the youngest enthusiasts, to the master gardeners, and master naturalists there to learn even more than they might have known about insects.

I always learn something new from his talks. And, from his wife’s, too. This time I learned about solitary bees. And, how to attract them to make a home in our yards and pollinate our vegetables and fruit. Like making bee hotels.

The last part of the program was a hike out into the meadows to see what they could find there, amongst the grasses and the milkweed.

Getting back into the swing of things, most of us volunteers are preparing to take the refresher training, for the fall field trips at the Conservancy. I see there will be new activities for the school children and we will be learning how to present them.

One of my favorite parts of my volunteer “job”. Learning new things, and then seeing them through the eyes of the children. The training schedule is here, for those who want to join our group of volunteer hike leaders. And then, just like me …

… you will then know the name of this plant, and the butterfly. Answer: Joe Pye Weed. Eastern Tiger Swallowtail.

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Preservation Hall

Posted on August 16, 2013 by AnnieRie

The new name for my kitchen. I spent most of today preserving fruit. Yes, tomatoes count as a fruit. As do the blackberries and the peaches.

First, some oven dried tomatoes.

I got a pint container in the freezer out of this batch. My orange tomatoes, some Amish paste, and the CSA romas, all slow cooked at 200 degrees for two hours in the oven. They had scallions and shallots, salt, pepper, sugar and oregano on them, then drizzled in olive oil. Sometime this winter, the pasta I make with this mix will be a breath of summer in a pan.

Blackberries. Boiled down with some super fine sugar, balsamic vinegar and a pinch of pepper.

Then I ran them through a very fine sieve and made two trays. One the simple syrup for dressings, and the other, the blackberry ice cubes for sangria.

When you cook blackberries low and slow for a long time, the seeds almost disintegrate, so I don’t mind putting them in the freezer and using them. Some people do throw them away, but I like that texture for a few applications.

Now, for those peaches. I did about half of them today. The rest will become peach puree tomorrow. Except for a few we will keep to eat.

I quickly blanch them in simmering water. Sixty seconds or so. Then, peel them.

The nicest ones I freeze as half peaches. The rest get sliced. I got six bags full today.

All in all, a very productive day. Besides the preserving, I made red pepper hummus and potato/green bean salad. The salad for my husband to take to a dinner meeting in northern VA tomorrow night. The hummus. Well, that is one of my favorite snacks.

Time to give the kitchen a rest.

hocofood@@@

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Posted in CSA, Food, Gardening, Locavore, Real Food and tagged cooking, CSA, Food, foodie, gardening, heirloom tomatoes, real food, tomatoes. Bookmark the permalink.

A Picture Perfect Day …

Posted on August 14, 2013 by AnnieRie

… for picking peaches. Oh, and Blackberries, too. At Larriland.

I dropped my husband off at his monthly Glenwood DX Association radio group’s luncheon at Town Grill in Lisbon, then headed off to pick blackberries.

An hour or so later, and five pounds of berries in the back of the car, I picked him up so he could help me pick peaches. Twenty seven pounds of peaches in less than 20 minutes.

Gorgeous peaches at $1.25 a pound if you pick more than 20 pounds. Tomorrow will be peach blanching, freezing and blending day.

The weather was perfect. There were lots of people at the peach picking sites, but I had most of the blackberry bush area to myself. My own row, as a matter of fact.

After a stop back at the red barn to get some canning supplies, an eggplant and a couple of red peppers to top off the ajvar, and home to process berries.

The best berries go into the freezer whole, are flash frozen, then packed in small bags. I got eight bags with about a cup of berries in each one. The ones on the top left are the less than perfect. I will drop them into boiling water briefly using a strainer, then put them in the blender with a little honey and just a touch of balsamic. They will be strained into syrup then put in an ice cube tray to freeze. The basis for vinaigrettes all winter. The top right are the “Eat Now” berries. For cereal. Yogurt. Salads. Snacks. They will be gone in two or three days probably, they are so good.

As for a few of the ripest peaches, they became part of dinner tonight.

Right on the grill with lemon olive oil and balsamic glaze.

Served with some Breezy Willow kielbasa, a local wine from Big Cork, and some pesto pasta salad.

Head on out to Larriland. The peaches and blackberries are down the road from the farm entrance (stay on Rte. 94 south) and a right turn into the picking areas.

hocofood@@@

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Posted in Farmer's Markets, Farms, Food, Gardening, Hobbies, Howard County, Local Businesses, Locavore, Real Food, Weather, West HoCo, Wine and tagged cooking, farmer's markets, farms, Food, foodie, gardening, grilling, hobbies, Howard County, local businesses, Locavore, real food, weather, West HoCo, wine. Bookmark the permalink.

Whackin’ Back the Basil

Posted on August 13, 2013 by AnnieRie

Every once in a while you need to go out there and harvest basil. Before it gets completely out of control.

Today I harvested three cups of basil. Mostly African blue basil, with some Genovese and a little Thai basil in the mix. That meant a triple batch of pesto to be made.

First, toasting a cup of pine nuts. Over low heat. Watching them the whole time.

The three cups of basil, cup of pine nuts, cup of cheese (I used Pecorino this time), six cloves of roasted garlic, all went into the food processor.

Then, the olive oil drizzling, addition of salt and pepper, none of this measured, by the way, continued until I had the taste and consistency I wanted.

This meant I ended up with three one cup containers of pesto. Two for the freezer, one in the refrigerator. My husband, of course, then wanted pesto pasta for dinner. Thankfully, there were bay scallops in the freezer, easy to defrost, and some dried artichoke pasta from The Common Market in the pantry.

The final dinner. Pesto pasta with sauteed bay scallops, scallions, and red pepper. A couple of sliced heirloom tomatoes from my garden and some mixed greens with feta. Oh, and a homemade balsamic vinaigrette.

As for the wine match, we decided to test two local Virginia Sauvignon Blancs against one another. Both from 2011. Linden Avenius versus Doukenie. The Doukenie did well, standing up to the Linden but that wonderful Fume Blanc style of the Avenius was just a bit better. Way to go, Doukenie, for making a very nice SB.