Category Archives: Cookin’

Gotta get it now: Durable Plants

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From Fulcrum publishing

This may be the book of the year for Rocky Mountain garden lovers. The Plant Select organization has showcased all 74 of their tried and true outstanding plants in one concise, beautiful volume.

This wonderful handbook includes:

* multiple color photos of each plant in various seasons
* plant characteristics and detailed descriptions
* background on why each plant was chosen
* recommended landscape use
* native range of each species
* exposure, soil, and elevation range recommendations
* advantages and disadvantages of each plant

I thought I was pretty well versed in plants available in our area. I have to admit, after reading this book front to back, in a single sitting, I have discovered at least three incredible new plants for my garden.

The delightfully named Moon carrot is a chubby looking version of Queen Anne’s lace. Seseli gummiferum will find itself showcased in my garden straight away.
moon-carrot-resized

I don’t believe I’ve ever come across the gorgeous Kintzley’s Ghost honeysuckle until reading this book. The flowers open pale yellow, with silver dollar size bracts, fade to pale orange, followed by orange to red berries.
kintzleys-resized

I can’t get over this shrub: Mock bearberry manzanita. “Extremely tolerant of dry conditions,” and “low-growing glossy-leaved groundcover shrub” positively sets my hair on fire. Glossy-leaved? Do you know how hard that is to come by in the desert? Hard, I tell you.
manzanita-resized

Just when you think you can’t ask more of a garden book, several other great features should be noted: the inclusion of the drawing of a person, next to the plant, showing the relative size of each plant. Brilliant. Easy. Helpful. Included are lovely botanical illustrations for each plant, created by students at the Denver Botanical Gardens. A section on Design Considerations will help every gardener. Last but not least, the reference Table of Plant Characteristics detailing, name, seasons, height, water requirements, and exposure.

One last kudo: the authors repeat, over and over phrases like this: “too much water will cause the plant to be straggly; extremely tolerant of drought; very tolerant of drought; dry, not too wet”. This is music to my ears……and to any gardener in the sagebrush steppe of the American West. Ohhhhh, you are going to love this book.

Find this masterpiece at www.amazon.com for $16.47 plus shipping.

Soup Nazi it’s not

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My CSA farmer Casey offers an extra service that really floats my boat. Its a soup CSA and I highly recommend it. It is the perfect answer for the “what to cook on Monday night” dilemma that seems to come my way once a week. Homemade, hot, fresh, organic soup and a big loaf of bread or a bag of rolls ….well, it doesn’t get any better than that. If fact, I seldom get home with all the bread. It smells so good I tear right into it on the way home.

Here’s how it works:

Earthly Delights SOUP and BREAD CSA

Each week Casey makes a different soup with ingredients from my garden as well as from other local farms, and her mom bakes a really yummy loaf of bread to go with it!

12 Weeks of delicious homemade soup (and bread, if you want it), available for pickup or delivery. November-February, with breaks at Thanksgiving and Christmas/New Years. Last year’s menus included
*Idaho Potato Chowder with Dill Rye Bread, *Spicy lentil and Winter Squash Stew with Whole Wheat Bread ,*Snake River Minestrone with Rosemary-Feta Foccacia Bread.

SOUP: $96/Season ($8/quart/week)
BREAD: $72/Season ($6/large loaf/week)
DELIVERY: $35/season (in delivery area)

I go for the whole thing, $14 a week for soup and bread. It makes at least two meals, and you have bread for sandwiches or croutons or toast.

I highly recommend participating. Or, how about doing a soup exchange with a couple of friends?

And the gold has been awarded! and the silver and the bronze.

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Idaho Gardener has had a bang up time judging the Gardening Olympics. Here’s a list of the entrants and the winners:

Gold Medalists for Excellence: Three Winners, ($25 gift certificates to the online store of your choice.)

Prairie Rose Garden for the beautiful one hundred year old shade tree. Enough said.

Carol of May Dreams Gardens for the inspirational one of a kind performance of “Hoeing,” complete with sound effects. Brilliant.

Krissi of Swimmom, because a 13 foot sunflower, well, is 13 feet. I am impressed.

The Silver Medals are awarded to:($15 gift certificates to the online store of your choice).

Red Dirt Ramblings,for her red red rose – so red I could hardly stand it. RED!

Ellis Hollow takes a Bronze for his gi-normous Inula, tall, strong and 4 foot leaves.

For the largest reported collection of colchicums, the award is given to Cold Climate Gardening

Bronze medals are cheerfully awarded to :( $10 gift certificate to the online store of your choice, remember, small but thoughtful?).

Mr. McGregor’s Daughter for her boo-berries on the totally weird plant. Are you sure those aren’t blue Christmas balls?

For the flawless Brandywine tomato (and maybe the only flawless one I have seen), the award is given to My Skinny Garden.

And Life on the Balcony won the judge’s heart with her entry of Best Looking Casualties.

**************
A special award, forevermore, and henceforth the symbol of the annual Gardening Olympics will be the Five Garden Rings, created by the hoe-p-full May Dreams Gardens. I know the athletic Olympics are but once every few years, but since I created these, I say we do it every August, because we can!!!

I will contact each of you so you can select your gift certificate.

Thank you all for participating.

Now, for 2009, on your mark, get set………..

This spud’s for you

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CSA Number 8

Famous Potatoes

It’s tater time in the garden patch this week. The stars of the show in this week’s grocery bag are the dozen or so small red new potatoes. And boy, oh, boy do I have big plans for these: wash, rinse, toss with a little olive oil and salt and pepper and wrap in aluminum foil and put on the grill. Turn the packet a couple of times while you are cooking the rest of your dinner. You could also just put them in a baking dish and roast them (uncovered) in a 400 degree oven.

Golden beets also made their appearance this week. All the rage in fancy schmancy restaurants, cold beet salads are a snap to prepare. You COULD put them in a separate package of foil and bake them in the over when you are roasting the new potatoes. Or you can cut the tops off, leaving about an inch of the greens, then boil in salted water for about a half hour. Let them cool and slice and serve. Delish on a bed of fresh greens, maybe a bit of feta or goat cheese crumbled, blue is terrific, too. A dd a little dressing. And a glass of wine and you have heaven on a plate.

One more batch of collard greens will become one more batch of sautéed greens with a little purple scallion added for good measure and flavor. The purple scallions are quickly becoming one of my favorite kitchen standbys-they are a little stronger than the regular green onion/scallion and in a salad they add a pretty little bit of color. I think they have a more pronounced onion flavor………..so go easy at first when adding them to dishes and salads.

The garden is really starting to rock and roll. If you hadn’t already guessed we are in the full swing of summer with 99 and 100 degree temps outside, the bounty of the garden will tell you: yellow patty pan squash and zucchini are on the menu this week as well. Since we grill our dinner almost every other night, these will be cut in half lengthwise, brushed with oil and salt and pepper, and cooked maybe MAYBE 5 minutes a side. Don’t over cook them as they become the dreadful mush you know you hate. Poke them with a fork to check for tenderness after 5 minutes.Then turn them over and go another five. If need be, you can do another few minutes after turning one more time. But remember, the fresher the vegetable, the higher the water content and the faster they cook.

Thai basil has come on this week. While I am still pining away for fresh tomatoes, I will toss the basil with my other salad fixins. Basil, parsley, cilantro, and other bits of herbs add a wonderful surprise flavor to a tossed salad. It is one of my favorite ways to spice up a tossed salad. People will wonder what makes it taste so zingy. Great little trick and you learned it here.

We received another two heads of magic garlic this week…..I am starting to stockpile it. A clove or two will be crushed and added to the homemade salad dressing, the rest will be set aside.

Another great cookbook for cooking fresh from the garden, Blue Eggs and Yellow Tomatoes by Jeanne Kelley, a former food writer for Bon Appetit. This book is as lovely to look at as it is to read

If, after eating fresh-from-the-garden potatoes, you should need another reason for growing your own potatoes, go get a copy of Fast Food Nation from the library. Read it. Grow your own.

you asked for it

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For my Red Dirt Girl who said SHOW ME,here’s the scene from smokin’ hot Idaho. I hate to say it, but as I type I think I see a nasty smoke cloud……just over the horizon. 105 in the shade and we aren’t even in July yet. Everybody into the pool!

So Dee, here you have a few snaps of my weekend.

Coral is my darling niece. Tells me she is two and won’t be three until her birthday next week. And she wants cupcakes AND a cake. I will have to dust off the cupcake tins…..

The wispy graceful echinacea is spending its second season in the garden….they are lovely. I bought them online last year, from somewhere in the Midwest.

The cottony scale looks like someone threw dryer lint on my apple espalier. I went in and pruned hard (undoubtedly part of the problem…..all things in the garden are overgrown or languishing due to benign neglect). I will try to knock it down with some water sprayed from the hose. If not, well, you have heard me before, “I am organic except when I’m not.”

For BOTH Debra and Dee, I wish I could tell you that the little plants were a gift. They weren’t freebies. No siree. I paid good money and THEN let them sit there hanging on for dear life. Fortunately, many things survive in spite of me.

From Mary Jane’s Ideabook……

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This recipe is from Mary Jane’s Ideabook. It appeared last week in the Spokesman Review newspaper and was forewarded to me by the one and only, Mary Jane.

Gotta tell you, I am groveling for more scapes from my farmer woman Casey. I can’t wait to try this. I have all of four scapes. I don’t think I have enough. Note to self: Grow your own. If nothing else, the curly-cues will make you giggle. But I digress:

Mary Jane’s Garlic Scape Pesto

From “MaryJane’s Ideabook, Cookbook, Lifebook” (Potter, 2005)

1/4 pound garlic scapes

1/2 cup olive oil

1 cup grated parmesan cheese

3 tablespoons fresh lime juice

Salt

Puree garlic scapes and olive oil in a blender or food processor until smooth. Stir in parmesan cheese and lime juice and salt, to taste. Yield: 3 cups

Roasted Garlic Scapes

From “MaryJane’s Ideabook, Cookbook, Lifebook”

8 whole garlic scapes

1 tablespoon olive oil

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place garlic scapes on foil and drizzle with olive oil. Bake for 20 minutes, or until scapes are softened.

Yield: 2 servings

Garlic Scape Frittata

From “MaryJane’s Ideabook, Cookbook, Lifebook”

1 1/2 cups garlic scapes, chopped

1/2 cup scallions, chopped

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

1/4 cup hot water

4 large eggs

Salt and pepper to taste

Place garlic scapes and scallions in a 10-inch skillet with 1 teaspoon olive oil, the hot water and a pinch of salt. Cook, covered, over medium-high heat until tender, about five minutes. Drain well.

Beat eggs with salt and pepper.

Add remaining oil to skillet. When the oil is hot, shake the skillet to spread the greens evenly and add eggs. Cover and cook over medium-low heat until top is set (2 to 3 minutes). Cut into wedges; serve hot or cold.

Yield: 2 servings

Garlic Scape Risotto

From “MaryJane’s Ideabook, Cookbook, Lifebook”

10 whole garlic scapes

3 tablespoons olive oil

1/2 cup finely chopped shallots

1 1/2 cups Arborio rice

4 cups chicken stock

1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese

2 tablespoons butter

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place garlic scapes on a sheet of foil and drizzle with 1 tablespoon of the olive oil. Fold in the edges to make a packet. Bake for 20 minutes or until scapes are softened. Puree in a food processor until smooth.

Heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil over medium-high heat in a large sauté pan. Add the shallots and cook until soft. Add the rice and stir until lightly golden brown, about 3 to 4 minutes. Add 1 cup of the stock and cook until absorbed completely. Add enough chicken stock to cover risotto and stir until the liquid begins to be absorbed. Continue adding more stock to cover the rice until the risotto is tender to taste. Risotto should be creamy, but not soupy.

Remove from heat. Add the scape puree, Parmesan cheese and butter, and stir to combine.

Yield: 4 servings

Another great ‘no cook’ sauce recipe for summer

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This is another way to beat the heat and eat well…….the recipe is from my tattered 1982 copy of the Silver Palate Cookbook.

Linguine with Tomatoes and Basil

4 ripe large tomatoes, cut into 1/2 inch cubes

1 pound Brie cheese, rind removed and torn or chopped into irregular pieces

1 cup clean, fresh, basil leaves, torn into pieces

3 garlic cloves, minced fine

1/2 cup good quality olive oil (original recipe calls for a cup – start with half, add as you see fit)

1 Tsp. salt (again, I use a lot less and you should adjust for your taste)

Fresh ground pepper

1 pound linguine

freshly grated Parmesan

TWO HOURS BEFORE SERVING, combine tomatoes, Brie, basil, garlic, oil salt and pepper in a large bowl. Set it aside, covered, and at room temperature. This will not harm the Brie so don’t panic.
When you are ready to eat, cook the linguine in a pot of salted water, about 8-10 minutes. Drain the pasta, do NOT rinse, and immediately toss with the tomato sauce. Serve immediately with fresh pepper and Parmesan cheese. Feel free to add some finely chopped onions, shredded bits of salami or proscuitto, or whatever else looks good to you.