Archive for the ‘Food’ Category

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Grape Leaves, Rain, and Bears

5 June 2010

So I’ve started reading Stalking the Wild Asparagus, which I’ve known about almost since its publication in 1962, but have never read. I resisted reading it because I didn’t know what it was and it quickly became a cliche. But better late than never.

Anyway, I read about eating grape leaves in STWA and decided to give it a try, especially since the season was right and I knew of a wild grape vine on our property putting out a lot of new leaves after I hacked it back. I stuffed them with a mix of beef, rice, sunflower seeds, onion, parsley, dill, and olive oil (recipe from Joy of Cooking), and they came out very good. G ate them but D did not. Grape leaves, dill, parsley from our yard, beef from across the street.

Meanwhile, we’re on the verge of having too much rain. It’s raining hard again right now. You watch, now that I have 250 gallons of rainwater stored, it will rain every 5 days all summer and the garden won’t need any of it.

We also apparently have some bears living in southern Wisconsin now, and a few at least visiting our town.

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First Salad

4 June 2010

Had the first salad mostly from the garden tonight. Used looseleaf lettuce, a few baby beet leaves, a few kale leaves (from the stuff that survived the winter), a bit of the new purslane (from the seeds I bought — it’s lighter green, larger-leaved, and more upright than the common one), a little parsley, a leaf of swiss chard (which I don’t like raw much), plus some dill and chives. The chives are from a plant growing up between cement blocks underneath a maple tree — we surely didn’t plant it there, but it’s a big and healthy-looking plant.

You look at one thing and you think you can’t possibly have enough for salad for everyone, but then you walk around picking a bit from this and a bit from that, and pretty soon you have enough. It was awesome, too!

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Not Done Yet

31 May 2010

Planted more in the garden, but not done yet, dammit.

Planted mangles (don’t even know exactly what those are other than a vague idea of some hyper-beet — are they even edible by humans?), black garbanzos, more swiss chard, three pepper plants (Margaret’s Hungarian), last two tomato plants in spot between pear trees. Reseeded a few kidney beans.

So in that big bed just south of the pine tree, starting from the east, there’s a row of collards, then swiss chard, then kale, then mangles, then another row of swiss chard.

Also Butternut (5 hills Waltham, 1 hill [farthest to the NE] saved seed) and 2 hills of pumpkin for seed (Kakai) in south end of main garden. It’s really getting shady down there, hope they do okay. Too many damn trees in our yard that aren’t doing anyone any good.

Mulched 2nd row of collards with grass clippings, as they’re in a sandy spot.

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Onions

28 May 2010

Used the last of the stored onions from storage yesterday. Pretty remarkable. I loved having all those onions in storage, mostly because I love onions.

The seeds sown directly in garden look almost as good as the ones I started from seed inside two months ago, so that’s probably the answer to that question.

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Food and Stuff

20 February 2010

It’s Saturday, my turn to make dinner. I made chili (served with plain Greek yogurt, yum), cornbread, and winter squash, it all came out really good, and between cooking, serving, and eating, was a very satisfying experience. From the garden, I used kidney beans (dried), onions (from the basement), and red peppers (dried) in the chili, and Butternut and our sole Acorn squash (from the basement) — wow, that’s a lot of food from our garden to be eating in February. (The meal also included The Three Sisters from the Northeastern Native American cuisine.) I’m liking those dried red peppers quite a bit, more than I thought I would. I also ground wheat berries from storage to make flour for the corn bread. Awesome.

The biggest challenge was making the chili taste like chili without making it too spicy for my boys. G ate it, but not D, so I was at least partially successful.

Another great family note is that G, my 7-year-old, spent about half an hour reading our Thomas collection on the couch by himself. It’s not the first time he’s ever read a book on his own, of course, but it was great to see him spend time doing it independently.

I purchased and received a rocket stove. It looks good, although I haven’t used it yet. I made the contribution to purchase a stove for someone else in the world who needs one.

So that should cover us for cooking without utilities, between cooking on the woodstove, the kerosene stove, the sun oven, and the rocket stove. Finding enough woody stuff around here for cooking on the rocket stove should not be that difficult, no matter what happens. We could probably cook for a year just using the wood we have in our brush pile.

I do have the nagging thought that I’m trying to buy my family into being prepared, and no doubt that is partially true…but I am moving us forward. And at this point in my life I have more money than time.

The biggest issue remains water. I’d like to get another layer or two in place for drinking water. Just buying a big filter would be a step in the right direction.

Meanwhile — only five weeks or so until seed-planting! I can’t wait.

I could be planting kale for some early greens in the greenhouse. So???

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