Wednesday Potluck: Green chile chicken enchiladas

Delicioso! Magnifique! Yummy! All words used to describe Sarah's green chile chicken enchiladas. We had a few visitors, all with properly-accompanying side dishes. I think we're going to do a salad bar next week. Any takers?

Preserving Mustard Greens

Today we preserved a bunch of mustard greens. I don't have a kitchen (or any) scale so I'm not sure how much it was, but it was a lot.

The mustards were one of the first things I planted and they really took off last week with the heat followed by nice rain. Some of the leaves were over 18" long.

I whacked off most of the leaves, and thinned some more, and got set up to freeze them. Here's how it goes:

1. Double-wash the leaves. Remove any very large stems.
2. Boil a large pot of water.
3. Toss in a bunch of leaves and let cook for about a minute, or until the water comes back to a boil.
4. Pull out the leaves and carefully, tediously, open each one up to lay flat on a towel.
5. Blot off the leaves using another towel.
6. Stack or pile up, slip into freezer bags and freeze.

The boiling and unfolding and laying out was very painful so about halfway into the process we switched to just straight bagging after the double-wash.

Now we have about 8 bags of frozen greens. In a couple weeks (months?) I'll pull em out and see if we botched it with the second batch.

Planting Hobbs & Hopkins' "Fragrant Herbal" lawn

Ever since we moved in (three years now), the back yard has been the zenith of urban blight: garbage, weeds, rough ground, inhospitable. But what with the foundation on the house falling down, yard beautification was a low priority. Well not any more! In a stunning feat of rapid decision-making, we decided to plant a new lawn.


First off, I cleared out all the junk. Piles of decomposing yard debris were consolidated into two pretty, hand-made composting bins (top right corner of first picture), the remnant concrete from various homeowner projects was dug up and hauled away, Lily's sand box was removed, and the place was generally straightened.

Next, I rented a BIG rototiller and chopped up the whole yard. The ground was incredibly compacted and full of hills and valleys. I raked it all around to smooth it out, filling in the low areas. At this point, portions of the now-gone 100 year old cherry tree were obviously sticking up out of the ground so I borrowed a neighbor's chainsaw and together with my pickaxe, was able to remove enough woody stumpage to make a smooth area.

Then I used a rolling compactor (which I rented from Hobbs & Hopkins) to compact the soil to some exacting standard. I've read that a properly-compacted soil will leave 1/4 inch depressions when you walk on it and this compactor seemed to do the job perfectly.

Finally, I hand-broadcasted the seed mix, about a pound of it, all over the dirt. The mix was Fragrant Herbal by the local company Hobbs & Hopkins. They do mail-order as well. It was chamomile, yarrow, alyssum, strawberry (tall) and pipolina (short) clover, along with two kinds of dwarf grasses. You don't have to mow it, but we will, once the plants start to make flower heads, so the bees don't take over the entire yard. It's also self-fertlizing and specially formulated to the hot, dry Pacific Northwest summers, so it doesn't need watering to stay green. Sounds like a miracle lawn, right?

With any luck, we'll have a lawn in a couple weeks.

Wednesday Potluck: BBQ Chicken

Last week we had a Bring-Your-Own-Meat on the grill evening, which was complemented by fantastic weather. About a dozen people enjoyed our new back deck (still a work-in-progress missing some railings and paint). Sarah and I made the classic Moosewood's cole slaw with apples, toasted nuts, raisins, and other non-traditional cole slaw ingredients.

This week we did another grill day, but only cooked a BBQ chicken. A simple dry rub marinade followed up with saucy sauce, combined with baked beans, cauliflower, fresh corn and zukes. Emily and Luke were visitors, recently moved here from points east.

NPR: Grow-Your-Own Veggies a Boon to Seed Companies

Good story, nothing new, but it's nice to see home-based food production getting more media attention.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90714696&ft=1&f=3

Garden update: 5/20

Everything is doing well in the garden, as you can see. I planted four tomato starts recently, which you can see in the cages. Two cherry tomatoes (Sweet 100s and an heirloom) and two slicing tomatoes (early girl and Willamette). The peas that we re-planted are coming in, but very late, and I fear we won't get a good crop this year, which will devastate Lily. The Sumo snow peas are in serious need of some trellising and the lettuces, salad mixes and chard are all growing like gangbusters with the heat. I've also built a new raised bed, bringing the total to five beds and 320 square feet. Waaaaay in the back of the picture you might notice smoothly leveled dirt. We put in a new "alternative lawn" full of dwarf grasses and edible. See the next post for the details.

The ramada is finished!

The final piece of building to do on the deck was the ramada. (We prefer that term to "arbor" since it lends an exotic, mediterranean feel to our property, which we're cultivating as a counterpoint to the generally cold and dreary climate.) The upright posts (4x4) went in as deck foundation posts, but I've neglected to put on the crossbeams and the joists (for which I'm attaching connectors in the picture). Now we're all cushy on the deck, we have two grapes and a hardy kiwi (Actinidia arguta) planted at the base to vine up and provide cover. Bring on the summer!

Wednesday potluck: fritatta

This week's potluck was veggie fritatta, and I managed to capture a couple pictures of it before it was all eaten. We've got zukes, green beans, mushrooms and onions. It was a small crowd (I'm writing this later so I can't remember who), but we only ended up with a few pieces as leftovers. Sarah and I love fritatta, and what with the chickens starting to lay soon (fingers crossed!) and the garden producing fruiting veggies, I think we'll be eating fritatta at least weekly. Okay by me!

NY Times: Urban Farmers

Great article from the NY Times, including a reference to City Slicker Farms. This article is a good reminder that urban farming doesn't only work in locations (like Portland) where the major consumers are foodies and the growers are young and white. Growing your own food is a universal right.

Attack of the pods

I split the second of the doubled-up raised beds last weekend and made a cloche frame for the new bed. Nothing is planted in there now, but I've got tomato starts (4 heirloom varieties) and a basil start along with a bunch of seeds: lettuces, cukes, zukes, summer squashes, and chard. Must sow soon!

Dry-laying bricks in a walkway

Along the side of our driveway we've always battled mud, weeds, tripping hazards and parking difficulties. It's heavily shaded by the house, so more garden wouldn't do well and we'd always be squishing things as we come and go in the car, truck, bike, stroller or wagon.

I've been collecting free bricks from Craigslist for a few months and finally had enough to make a start along the driveway and to finish off one side of the deck.

First, I removed 4.5 inches of soil below the grade. Then I added about an inch of 3/4 minus crushed rock (gravel), about an inch of sand and then set the bricks on top of the sand. Each layer received a thorough tamping, and the bricks got set into place with a rubber mallet. Once set, I swept sand into the cracks between bricks, set them again with the mallet, then swept more sand. It's been about a week or more, and it's due for another sweeping of sand. Eventually, all the sand particles will settle down.

Wednesday Potluck: Cincinnati Chili

Last week we had Cincinnati Chili, which was made all-the-more realistic by the inclusion of potluck attendee Norris who used to live in Cincinnati, but does not recall ever partaking of that city's version of chili. Our version was tasty, with hints of cinnamon and other non-standard chili flavors. Norris brought a "wild" greens salad, but that term is highly overused. After all, he picked all the ingredients from his own yard.

This week we're doing frittata. Come one, come all!