welcome, gus!

after many months of searching, we finally found him. please welcome gus to the garden! a weekend in leavenworth led us to this little guy.

pictured here, he's standing guard over the strawberry patch. i'm sure we'll periodically move him to watch over other crops, but he looks quite content in this shot.

said to be industrious nature-lovers, gnomes believe they are responsible for the earth, therefore, they care and nurture all living things with dedicated fervor. rosy-cheeked, smartly dressed and standing at attention, gus, the original garden gnome is the standard to which all gnomes aspire.

i found the above passage on a gardening website and thought it was hilarious. but in all seriousness, we're quite happy to welcome gus.

what's for dinner? (hint, it's not beef)

what's for dinner? a question that most of us attempt to tackle every day. last night, i headed straight to the garden for some inspiration. carrots and chard were looking mighty good, so i plucked away at the two until satisfied.

the chard is really something beautiful. golden stalks and bright green leaves - it would be a nice garden accompaniment even if left uneaten. but let's be real, we're going to eat it, and we're going to like it. fun fact: apparently, chard is in the same family as beets. the more you know...

the carrots took much longer than the chard to grow into what they are today. planted back in april, we've needed much patience to get to this point. when i first put the seeds in the ground, i had this idea that they'd be up in no time. then i read the back of the seed pack. 70 days until maturity. literacy - it's a good thing. little did the seed pack know that we'd have an unusually chilly spring here in the pnw.

we've planted another bunch that are growing much quicker than the first thanks to some steady sunshine. and i'm getting better at thinning them out so each sprout has enough room to grow (really important, i'm learning).

regardless, the carrots are ready now. crisp and sweet, i decided to roast them to maximize their sweetness and caramelize them. gave them a quick boil and stuck them under the broiler with olive oil, salt, pepper, and a sprinkling of brown sugar. we ate them alongside some homemade cheese ravioli that we'd been storing in the freezing for a couple months.

mixed with some sauteed chard, we topped the ravioli with butter, raisins, and goat cheese. the slight bitterness of the greens, the sweetness of the raisins (and carrots) and the tanginess of the goat cheese worked well together. it was a nice way to meld what we had in the fridge with what we found in the garden.

the garden grows

since the sun has been shining everyday for the past couple of weeks, there's been an explosion of growth. the golden swiss chard was about 2 inches high before all of this sunshine. it's now ready to harvest. looking forward to sauteing it up with some butter and garlic. speaking of which, we're experimenting with garlic - just planted a short row of bulbs that had begun to grow in our kitchen. so far, so good! green stems are shooting up. broccoli raab, red kale, french radishes, and gold beets are also on their way up - slowly, but surely. cucumbers, squashes, and tomatoes are nearing production stage!

in other news, the corn is doing extremely well, despite its prior victimization by a yet-to-be-identified garden intruder. (apparently, the corn got over this violation, but i did not. i suppose whatever animal did this was just trying to survive.) back to the corn, though, brian's family has this saying that it should be - "knee high by the fourth of july." well, we didn't think we'd get there a few weeks back, but the corn is definitely up to our waists and climbing. hopefully ears will start to develop soon.

corn is one of my favorite vegetables. i'm looking forward to picking fresh ears and eating it straight off the cob, raw. i also love it in macaroni and cheese. that's right. highly recommended with a side of ketchup. and, over the past several holidays, we've been sauteing it with shallots, butter and a few swigs of half & half or cream. a fresher take on creamed corn. and then there's corn bread, best eaten with honey butter alongside a hearty bowl of chili. alright, this paragraph is quickly turning into something out of forrest gump. enough already - you get it - we like corn.

as i was out in the garden taking pictures yesterday, i was really struck by the transformational beauty that's been taking place in each bed, with each plant. something that really caught my eye were the blossoms on the small red onions. they look like little presents opening up and stretching. we should probably eat those soon.

to market, to market

it's almost here. a farmers market is coming to mercer island. yay! it has been an amazing experience to play a role in the community collaboration that's taken place to get this thing off the ground. many people have dedicated countless hours of time, skill, and energy to make this happen. this has truly been a communion of sustainability and community building. who knew the two worked together so magically?! duh.

the inaugural season will be a short one, but we plan on running a full-season operation next year and beyond. if you're in the area, i hope you'll come check out the market - sundays (11am - 3pm), august 10th - Oct 12th. the website has many more details.

a good read

Just finished reading Michael Pollan's deliberate, funny, and thoughtful account of food and culture via In Defense of Food. The book's premise - "Eat Food. Not too much. Mostly Plants." - couldn't be simpler at first glance. But the rampant marketing of today's agricultural system obscures the simplicity and healthfulness of the foods - the whole foods - that we should be consuming.


At the heart of the book rests the belief that food, health, culture, and the environment are all connected - all working together in a system. To isolate nutrients from a whole food and stuff them into a not so whole food (vitamin-fortified Coke), or to extract one part of a culture and jam it into a diet (ie: the Mediterranean diet or the French paradox) - these creations and adaptations will not automatically result in a fit and healthy person.

Through food, Pollan explores the conception of quick fixes, band-aid health care, and twisted agricultural policies that are America. Sorry, nation.

But, he's not a total Debbie downer, nor is he an irrational idealist (not that there's anything wrong with idealism). In the final section, "Cook, or if you can, plant a garden," he offers the following:

"To take part in the intricate and endlessly interesting processes of providing for our sustenance is the surest way to escape the culture of fast food and the values implicit in it: that food should be fast, cheap, and easy; that food is a product of industry, not nature; that food is fuel, and not a form of communion, with other people as well as with other species - with nature" (p. 197)

So thank you, Michael Pollan, for summing up my own thoughts before I could put them down on paper :)

For more, feel free to borrow my copy of the book. Another goodie is Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma (also have that one, if needed).

visualize whirled peas...and fava beans

so i debated whether to include the following tidbit about myself. i thought about it long and hard, and decided to just put myself out there. plus, i figured that those of you reading this now are either friends or family, so the following won't come as a huge surprise.

when i think of fava beans, i immediately reflect on the slapstick humor of jim carrey and jeff daniels in the perennial comedic classic, dumb & dumber. why? you might ask.

harry: check out the funbags on that househound.
lloyd: i'd like to eat her liver with some fava beans and a bottle of chianti.

no set up for those lines needed. the randomness and hilarity of this movie is just so great.

if you're still reading, first - thank you for not judging me; and second, let's move on to the meat of this post. i wanted to write about fava beans and snap peas for a few reasons - these vegetables are beautiful and so easy to grow.

forget the beans (they're not yet mature), fava blossoms are wonderful sights. the transformation from flower to food is really something to see. we only have a few pods right now, maybe about 2 inches long. these guys will get huge in a short time. ah, and courtesy of jamie oliver, i learned this weekend that fava beans are extraordinary nitrogen fixers, which does wonders for the soil. he suggested planting as a cover crop - i think we'll give that a shot later this year, perhaps in the corn bed (since corn's a heavy nitrogen feeder).

anyway, jamie oliver is awesome. his new show, jamie at home, focuses on eating seasonally, growing your own food, and making wonderful, simple creations. enthusiasm in the garden and in the kitchen is inspiring so many. last saturday, the show featured peas and broad (ie: fava) beans, hence the inspiration of this post. he shared his "incredible smashed peas and broad beans on toast" recipe (link to the recipe and beautiful photo) - cannot wait to try this once the favas are up to speed. it features fresh mozzarella and gobs of olive oil - yum.

with this recipe, i'll segue into the other topic at hand...peas. funny story (at least to me and my siblings). one day, i came home from school late and found my dad in the living room watching the news and eating dinner. his meal of choice? a giant bowl of peas. cooked, frozen peas. i think my mom must have been out. a favorite food of his and a point of family humor. hi dad!

so with that...we planted a ton of sugar snap peas earlier this spring. two varieties - cascadia and oregon giant. they're maturing now, so we've been able to enjoy small handfuls out in the garden and at the dinner table over the past few days. tender, sweet, and snappy (as their name would suggest) - these guys rock.

i snuck some pea vines into dinner the other night - they have a similar flavor and the little curly q's that form on the ends are just so cute and whimsical. one thing i'd note about our pea-planting endeavors...we (alright, by "we" i mean "me" - er, i suppose that would be "i") may have situated them a bit to close to each other, which might be putting some stress on the plants. whoops. next time, we'll thin them out once they sprout up - give em some room to stretch out. a learning process, but at least we get to eat our mistakes along the way.

palatable progress

out in the yard yesterday, it was gratifying to see how far the garden has come in the past few months. it was also amazing to see and feel the sun, and to finally greet summer with open arms. we set out to complete a few projects - mainly to build a couple of bamboo staking structures to support some cucumbers and a kiwi plant. we're most interested to see how this kiwi fares, given it seems like such a tropical fruit. we've gotten a lot of use out of the forest of bamboo in our backyard - it's also holding up the fava beans, and was used to create a tomato trellis. here's an overview shot of the garden where you can see it all (well, everything except for the kiwi):

the closest bed right here has about 6 rows of corn going - planted in mid-may. every seed shot up a little stalk, but once that happened, we lost about 1/3 of the plants to an unknown critter. we've also been noticing little bites missing from our strawberry patch. both beds are doing well to date, though. here's a close up shot of some berries i picked earlier this evening. (more on corn soon. those who know me, know of my obsession on this one)

i love that the berries are not uniformly shaped. and because they're so much smaller than conventional strawberries you'd find at the store, they're terrificly sweet. mmm. strawbries (i love how the brits say it - just rolls off the tongue). these guys didn't last too long - just ate 'em over a bowl of ice cream - perhaps the best way to end a monday.


ah, and speaking of eating (we do a good amount of that here), we were able to integrate a ton of green goodness into tonight's dinner - pasta w/fresh basil, arugula, sorrel, snap peas and some pea vines, and of course, lots of cheese (pecorino romano). let's hear it for left overs.

we were recently introduced to sorrel via our good friend, adam. i'd describe it as a plant that looks a lot like spinach, but as soon as you take a bite of it, it releases an immediate lemony tang. it's really quite unexpected, but has become a welcome addition to salads and other dishes. i bought a couple of sorrel starters at the seattle tilth edible plant sale back in early may, and they've taken off. here's what it looks like:

it's been great to be able to try something new, and then decide to plant it. this process has really expanded our palates and broadened our knowledge of food. things that just a year ago we wouldn't have bought at the store, we're planting like crazy - kale, chard, broccoli raab. man, do we love kale and sausage - the best, jerry, the best.


yeah, we're eating a lot, but at least it's all leafy greens, right?