Tag Archives: gardening

Three More Days into Buying Locally

Posted on July 28, 2012 by AnnieRie

The nine days will be finished tomorrow. The other two posts for how I started have shown it is simple to find good food from around the Howard County area, by shopping at farm stands and the markets.

Here is the update for Wednesday through Friday. Does farming include crabs?

We did get a few to have as an appetizer Friday night. This is with local lamb from England Acres, served with chocolate stripes tomatoes from my garden coated with a gooey smoked cheddar from Eve’s Cheese.

And yes, I did char the lamb while searing it, but the inside remained a lovely pink. That was dinner Friday night, after the crab appetizer.

Thursday we grazed on homemade salads. Cucumber salad from the garden, with onions from Butler’s Orchard. Ratatouille also included one of their candy onions. The watermelon is from Catonsville market, and feta from Bowling Green Farms.

The colorful potato salad included CSA potatoes and green beans, and was finished with hard boiled eggs from TLV Farms.

In my CSA post prior to this one I talked of making gazpacho on Wednesday which showed up for dinner that night, along with the other two burgers from England Acres farm, and corn from their farm.

Three days. Three dinners. Lots of local foods. Here it is Saturday night and there will be local salad and maybe a dessert if I get the peaches done. The peaches were bought this morning from Lewis Orchards at the Glenwood market, along with some just picked spring mix from Breezy Willow. Both will serve in some way in dinner tonight.

It is one of the pleasures of living here. Hitting the market to see what looks good, and bringing it home to have for dinner the same day.

hocofood@@@

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CSA Week 12, Tomato and Corn Season

Posted on July 26, 2012 by AnnieRie

My favorite time of year. The CSA starts sending us multiple varieties of tomatoes and we get sweet corn.

Sandy Spring CSA Week 12 Full Share

I had to take the picture on the island as the counter by the window is full of my heirloom tomatoes. Between them and the CSA I am officially in canning and freezing mode. What did we get today? Eleven items this week, all certified organic

6 Ears Bicolor Sweet Corn
1 Bag Purple Majesty Potatoes, 3 pounds
1 Bag Red Tomatoes, 2 pounds
1 Italian Eggplant
3 Green Zucchini
1 Bunch Fresh Red Onions
1 Pint Jumbo Cherry Tomatoes
1 Bunch Red Beets
1 Bunch Italian Parsley
1 Bag Heirloom Mixed Tomatoes, 1 pound
2 heads Garlic

The heirloom tomatoes were particularly beautiful this week.

Mixed Heirloom Tomatoes

They are destined for a salad with some chevre, just like the one I made the other night. As for tomatoes, the 2 pounds of red tomatoes went into the pot to be blanched and are already peeled and sliced in half and in the freezer.

I also blanched and froze the last of the green beans left from an earlier delivery, and oven roasted some of my yellow plum, yellow pear and green grape tomatoes to make an oven dried sauce that is bagged and frozen for use this winter.

Mixed tomatoes in oil, salt, pepper and sugar, prior to roasting

Tomatoes after roasting, at a low temperature for two hours

And, it wouldn’t be summer without gazpacho. I made gazpacho yesterday with my orange blossom tomatoes, augmented by a few from the Catonsville farmers market, a white bell pepper, scallions, shallot, lemon cucumbers and eight pieces of Wegmans Italian bread soaked in water. It all goes into the blender with white wine vinegar, olive oil, salt and pepper. A cup for dinner last night.

Doesn’t get any fresher than that.

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Midway Through Buy Local Week

Posted on July 25, 2012 by AnnieRie

And how am I doing? It is so easy to make things from the farmer’s markets in the area. Summer goodness in every bite. Monday night these were the star of the meal. We did have a small naan pizza that I added ratatouille as a topping.

Local corn and my tomatoes

The corn was from England Acres. The goat cheese in the salad was Firefly Farms Allegheny Chevre, picked up at Atwater’s in Catonsville while I was buying bread. Tomatoes and basil from my garden. All my vegetable and herb plants were bought at farmstands, farmer’s markets, local farms or nurseries. That is an easy way to support the farmers. Buy plants at the Howard County markets in the spring, instead of Home Depot.

As for Tuesday, we went to an amateur radio club picnic at Centennial. The dish I took was my infamous watermelon, feta and mint salad. I forgot to take pictures. Here is an earlier version.

Watermelon, feta and mint salad

Watermelon was bought at the Sunday Catonsville market. Feta was not Bowling Green as I didn’t get there in time. You can easily make this salad after a visit to one of the county markets. Bowling Green Farms feta is awesome.

We also took England Acres ground beef to make hamburgers, and topped them with Eve’s Cheese smoked cheddar, bought at England Acres Farm Store in Mt. Airy. There are no pictures from the picnic since I forgot my camera. Just the package that is in the freezer of the same ground beef patties we used last night.

Local meats have become very easy to find these days. Besides England Acres, I buy much of my meat from TLV at the Howard County farmers markets. Like bacon, and chicken.

They go to almost every market from Wednesday to Sunday across the county. Freshly processed free range meat is so much better tasting. It is worth it to buy. The only place they don’t sell is Thursday East Columbia.

If you want another local treat worth the effort, search out local eggs.

The little ones are pullets from England Acres, hand picked right out of the basket the day that the hens laid the eggs. The really large one is an extra large from my dozen last week from TLV, bought at the hospital market.

The eggs were in my zucchini fritters earlier this week, and I made a frittata Saturday for breakfast, that also fed us lunch Monday.

You have Thursday through Sunday to stop at one of the local markets in the county and support Buy Local Week.

hocofood@@@

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Taking the Buy Local Pledge

Posted on July 23, 2012 by AnnieRie

Maryland has been promoting the Buy Local Challenge for five years now. The Governor hosted the Kick Off picnic, last week.

It is easier these days to participate in the challenge. What with all the farmer’s markets in the area, the farm stands, the local CSAs, and stores stocking MD farmer’s items, you can find enough local items to complete the challenge. One item a day for nine days from a local source. July 21st through the 29th.

The challenge is promoting Maryland farms, and you will find VA, WV and PA farms at our markets, so do they count or not? For my purposes if they are participating in our markets, and are close enough for them to drive here and sell, I am not going to be that parochial about it. But technically, this challenge is promoting Maryland agriculture so I will try to identify the sources for what I choose.

My sources will be on my Local Resource page, updated as I find more local sources.

Saturday Dinner: The corn is from England Acres near Mt. Airy. The cippolini onions are from Butler’s in Germantown, MD. The lima beans were bought at Jenny’s Market but I don’t know their source. The filets were bought at Boarman’s in Highland, not local beef but a local butcher.

Sunday Dinner: Included tomatoes from my garden, and tzatziki made with my cucumbers. Why is this local? The plants and plugs were bought at Sharp’s Farm in Howard County MD, in April, and planted in my garden. I buy my plants from her farm in order to support her business as a wholesale source of vegetable and flower plants.

The chicken again is from Boarman’s. The zucchini from my CSA, which is sourced from PA farms. The scallions in the fritters are from Love Dove Farms, bought at the Howard County farmer’s market. They are local.

It isn’t that hard to eat locally sourced foods here in Howard County in the summer. If you haven’t signed up to do the challenge, you can still try and eat locally, even if it is just going to the restaurants and ordering from their Farm2Table menu.

hocofood@@@

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A Window Full of Sunshine

Posted on July 18, 2012 by AnnieRie

Varieties of tomatoes ripening on the sill

This is my favorite view in the kitchen. Dozens of almost perfectly ripe cherry, grape and pear tomatoes all reaching their peak of ripeness in the morning sun.

And, yes there are larger ripe ones these days.

Orange Blossom Tomatoes

Caspian Pink

The Caspian Pink is a new one for me. It looks wonderful, but I did have to pick it a bit early because it was cracking and I didn’t want a storm to water it down.

Detail of small cracks forming on top

I don’t have any chocolate stripes ripe yet, but they are getting close. They have the most tomatoes on each plant so far. I have three plants of them. Crossing my fingers that they ripen before that forecasted four or five days of rain late next week. The rains last year really watered down the flavors of the heirlooms.

Two weeks from this coming Saturday, the Howard County Fair starts. I will be picking which heirloom has the best taste. That is what I will enter. Taste, not looks, does better in the heirloom category.

The sweet olive is my most productive small tomato so far. They are predominant on the windowsill picture above. They also have a wonderful flavor, but cherry and grape tomatoes are judged on looks alone.

Have you ever entered anything in the fair? This year, besides tomatoes, I will again enter herbs. Definitely the basil, but haven’t chosen the other two yet.

African Blue Basil

This year I am also considering entering some of my photographs, particularly my little feathered friends, like these.

Bluebirds Rule the Bath

Put the Fair on your calendar for something great to do. It runs August 4th through 11th. We get a $20 pass for the entire fair and go almost every day. If you want to see a real hoot, go watch the zero turn mower competition. If you want to see something amazing, go watch the 4Hers show their animals.

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CSA Value Assessment

Posted on July 14, 2012 by AnnieRie

I didn’t post my savings until I got some updated numbers from local markets and vendors. Week Ten CSA was delivered Thursday. It looked like this

Sandy Spring CSA Delivery Week Ten

and I wrote about it here.

With this week’s savings, of $9.65 over weekly cost of $29.75, I am now $89.80 ahead in total for being 40% through the 25 week season. If anyone doubts the value of joining an organic CSA, they just need to look at what organic foods cost in stores, markets and at farm stands.

The breakout from week ten is this:

Corn, 5 ears, 50 cents an ear, $2.50
Carrots, $3.50 a bunch for heirloom varieties
Fennel $1.69 each for 2 of them, rounded to $3.40
Pickling cukes, white variety, a bargain at 2/$1, there were 8 of them, so $4
Slicing cukes, 3 large ones, $4.50 total
Garlic, two heads, $2 each at market, so $4 total
Heirloom red radishes, $2.50 a bunch
Blue Viking potatoes, 3 lbs at $1.50 a pound, $4.50
Zucchini, one very large, over a pound, so $2
Green beans and Rattlesnake beans, $3 each basket, so $6 total
Jalapenos, 5 medium to large size, $.50 each, so $2.50

What is missing in all this number crunching is that intrinsic value. That freshness of taste. That discovery of a new and interesting variety of vegetable not encountered before. For me this week, rattlesnake beans are a new addition. I read up on them and found that young and tender, treat them like green beans, older with heavily developed beans, take them out of their pods and cook them.

Young rattlesnake beans

As for the garlic, I love getting organic garlic, and later this year, I will put aside a few heads in order to plant them this fall. Victoria over at The Soffrito planted hers in pots and heavily mulched them over the winter and got lovely garlic, including scapes prior to digging up the garlic to cure. Supermarket garlic won’t sprout; it is treated with an anti-sprouting agent.

Organic garlic, perfect for planting in October

This week with my other CSA goodies, I will be making potato salad, pickling some cukes, and also making tzatziki using some of Wegmans Greek yogurt and their organic lemons and mint from my garden. And, yes, I will be grilling some corn. I love it when corn season arrives.

Oh, and if I get a few more large tomatoes in the next two or three days, there will be gazpacho on the menu. Maybe on one of those hundred degree days that might come next week.

hocofood@@@

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Friday Morning Garden Report

Posted on July 13, 2012 by AnnieRie

The tomatoes have finally arrived for real. That is, the big ones, and not just the cherry, grape and plum tomatoes. I harvested the first orange blossom and Amish paste tomatoes the past two days.

Now, I just need those chocolate stripes, or the legend, or great white to ripen, to see what will be submitted to the Fair in three weeks. These tomatoes need to move into high gear. I know they shut down and go into survival mode during excessive heat, which is what they did for those 90-100 degree days we had. After a quick start, they are moving along at a snail’s pace. I did get the first of the red fig tomatoes, a very interesting heirloom I bought from the Howard County Master Gardeners on Earth Day this spring.

The rest of the little tomatoes continue to put out new growth and are giving me a few a day. I got the first green grape tomato today, in the middle of the sweet olive, yellow plum, yellow pear and red figs in the bowl, there is a lone green grape, just about ripe. I pick these just a bit early to minimize pest damage, like stink bugs do.

They will ripen on the windowsill. As for other garden goodies, the stealth cucumbers are still out there. This one was hidden down in a crevice behind all the tomato plants. The vine had climbed over the bunny fence and dropped down into the fence post corner, where it hid until it reached mega size for a pickling cucumber.

We are actually attempting to make this monster into a dill pickle, which should be interesting.

On the flower front, the gladiolus plants are winding down, but hanging in there. The first marigolds have bloomed, and this one was saved after the bunnies chomped it off its stem.

Herbs are doing well in spite of the heat. Hope we get a little more rain to get the gardens around here in better shape again. I know there are water restrictions due to the water main break repairs. That doesn’t bode well for gardens in intense heat. Being on a well with a high water table right now, I am thankful to be able to water the herbs in the pots and keep them going.

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Tonight We Fiddle, Saturday We Farm, Later We Look for Fairy Houses

Posted on July 12, 2012 by AnnieRie

My volunteering schedule is pretty full this week. We held a planning meeting Wednesday for upcoming events at the Conservancy, and this is the busy part of the summer.

Fiddlers and Fireflies, a picnic with music and crafts, is tonight starting at 6 PM. It costs $10/car, and the music is great. Bring a blanket, chairs and a picnic dinner. The event is held in the lower front yard, where the sisters had their garden.

This Saturday, the 14th, there will be one of the monthly Wonder Walks, that focuses on living and farming on the 230+ acre property. We will be leading groups down and around the buildings and talking about what it was like to live here from the early 1800s until the time that the sisters gave the property to the Conservancy.

Naturalists will be leading groups. The event starts at 10 am, and is no cost. I will be leading a group and we will be visiting the out buildings, the barns, the gardens, and take a walk down to the grasslands to see how the farmers used their land to the best advantage to grow crops and keep their farm animals.

A little farther out this month there will be another special event. Looking for Fairy Houses in the forest. It is on the 28th of July. Another free Wonder Walk that is geared towards the little ones, ages 4-10.

It looks like there’s lots to do around here, and I am certainly not bored in my retirement.

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The YEMMies are Coming!

Posted on July 11, 2012 by AnnieRie

What’s a YEMMie? A new term I found reading Barron’s last week. It seems many younger mothers are becoming selective about buying unprocessed and natural foods, instead of highly refined or processed items to serve their families. Barron’s calls them Young Educated Millennial Mothers, or YEMMies.

Updating to say that clicking on Barron’s takes you to a preview page. The article is from July 7th, so you have to click again on the correct date to get it to open.

From Barron’s perspective, it is a reason to seek out investments in areas like Whole Foods and Hain Celestials.

From the healthy living perspective, I know I have seen this attitude in those who belong to the CSA with us. Many mothers making their own baby foods from the organic veggies we get every week. Trading for things like squash and sweet potatoes, to puree for strained foods.

The popularity of smoothies. It is another reason people join CSAs. Organic produce, without waxes or sprays, chemical free, allow you to use the entire vegetable and not lose the nutrients found in the skins. When I make cucumber salad, for example, with my own cucumbers, or those from the Lancaster Farm Fresh Coop, I can leave all or part of the skin on them, without having to eat waxed cucumber skins.

Organic oranges, lemons and limes give me wax free and chemical free zest.

Later this summer I will be pickling watermelon rinds, and I will also be making preserved lemons. In both instances, I search out organic. Now that Wegmans has arrived, with over 100,000 organic items, they will be my source for what I need to cook and preserve.

Those of us who have changed our habits to buy more raw ingredients, and cook more from scratch, are finding lots of company among the younger adults. Add to that the resurgence in young farmers and the explosion of farmers markets, and it seems maybe better food and more choice for organic is the result.

If you attend Miller Library or Howard General’s markets on Wednesday and Friday, say Hi to John Dove, of Love Dove Farms, who was profiled in the Howard Magazine lately. He is just one of the local farmers growing things without chemicals. The article mentions TLV and Breezy Willow, two other good sources for veggies, meat and eggs.

It is almost Buy Local Week here. the last week of July. Are you supporting the Buy Local challenge? I am. Make at least one local meal or item in a meal from foods bought from a Howard County Farmer!

Local greens, radishes, cheese and blueberries in salad

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Stealth Cucumbers …

Posted on July 5, 2012 by AnnieRie

… again, and other things found out in the garden. I posted a while back about cucumbers having a mind of their own and trying to escape. My garden in west Howard County is a source of many home grown meals in summer. Cucumbers and tomatoes will make great gazpacho, if the tomatoes will start coming in before the cucumbers stop.

The cucumbers are still going crazy, and still trying to escape the garden confines, only now in the back of the garden. This one was outside the fence hiding under a sticker bush.

I get weeds between the bunny fence and deer fence, which I leave alone as a deterrent to little critters trying to squeeze in. This cucumber plant decided to plow through two fences and climb the sticker bush. I didn’t find it until it was this large.

I have others coming through near the gate, and also winding their way into the tomato garden, so this year they are taking over. That does give us enough cucumbers, though, in order to make lots of salads, pickles and to can some. Not a bad year for them.

As for tomatoes, they are getting bigger, and the small ones continue to ripen. They were all lined up on the windowsill waiting to become part of last night’s dinner.

The gladiola have exploded. Never have they given me this much bounty. Maybe two or three per plant, but not there are dozens. In the heat, they will wilt quickly so I have been cutting them and keeping a large arrangement on the table.

Tomato update shows all but three plants with tomatoes, two pineapple tomato plants and one of the great white tomato plants. A few are suffering in the heat. The yellow pear, last year’s big producer, both plants look a little ragged. At least this year, the green grape, sweet olive, red fig and yellow plum plants will keep me in tiny salad tomatoes.

Sweet Olive tomatoes, lots of them

The chocolate stripes are getting bigger. And, on the three plants there are dozens of them.

While out there, I spied a visitor. A spicebush swallowtail. We have one Carolina spicebush, and two butterfly bushes in the yard, so butterflies are frequent visitors.

Plus, one little pest, who is probably mamma to the babies who are eating my herb garden.

At least she can’t get through the bunny fence. Her little ones still do, though, so I have to be vigilant for a few more weeks. It’s not like there isn’t enough other things out there for them to eat. The garden seems to be doing well, so far this year, and I hope to start seeing big fresh Maryland grown tomatoes soon. I will be out there with a bucket of water and a salt shaker soon. Nothing like fresh tomato, rinsed clean and lightly salted, eaten minutes after picking. Best lunch I get in west county!

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