Don’t Forget the Flowers

What brightens your spirits in the middle of winter?  My secret pick-me-up is a stop by the supermarket floral department (Trader Joe’s is my absolute favorite).  Flowers keep me happy when the sun is not shining and let’s be honest, a little bouquet of daisies or spray roses costs as much as a specialty coffee from corner shop and it lasts a whole lot longer.

My favorite treats are the mini potted individual bulbs of hyacinth, tulip, or daffodil.  You can find them everywhere this time of year.   I buy a few, pop them in my own white ceramic pots and “plant” them around the house for little bursts of happiness wherever I turn.  **sigh** Spirits lifted.

To be fair, we’ve escaped the bitter chill of winter in Atlanta so far, and it is sunny and nearly fifty degrees as I write this, but still.  There are a lot of gloomy gray days left in this season and I like to be prepared.

Back to the blooms … they don’t last forever but don’t be hasty and toss them in your trash. Now, I’m not suggesting you plant the bulbs in your yard.  It’s a time for snuggling on the sofa, not digging in the dirt.  Forced bulbs rarely bloom again, but they are a great treat for your compost pile.  They may send up a few leaves, but I can almost guarantee that unless you’ve got a hardy daffodil that simply has to bloom, you’ll only get a few leaves in your garden as a reminder of your bulb’s former glory.  Save yourself and feed your garden.  Compost.

Here’s a look at the pretty hyacinths that scented my kitchen for two weeks.

Are here is a glimpse of the leaves & spent pink blossoms from two bunches of stock (that’s really the sad name of a pretty, fragrant flower) that I have in my living room and foyer. Remember, to help cut flowers last as long as possible, change the water and trim the stems every few days.  I know that’s extra work, but it really helps extend bloom time.

You can also see butternut squash peels in the bucket. You can’t see the red onion skins, thyme stalks, dirty mushroom stems (ugh) and carrot peels but they are there.  I roasted all those veggies and mixed them with some brown rice, fresh arugula and a quick vinaigrette for a simple, filling but not heavy, school night dinner.

Here’s to sunny skies and fresh blooms in your neck of the world …

 

Toss It Tuesday: Blackberries

Did you ever notice that non-organic fruit seems to last FOREVER?  I bought this giant container of blackberries about two weeks ago and apparently they were not appealing to anyone while my house was fighting the flu.  Back to health, I pulled out the container, which looked perfectly fine, but one sample berry revealed that they were soft, squishy and perfectly horrid.  Onto the compost pile they go and I pledge not to be seduced by pretty fruit in giant containers again.  Even if it is cheap.  Ok, maybe especially when it is cheap, imported and non-organic.

 

 

Composting Love

It’s no surprise that I’m a big fan of Sunday supper, where everyone can come together to share the day, rehash the week and enjoy a delicious meal.  It’s something I try to serve up each week, regardless of who is sitting around the dining room table, but with kids in all directions and one out of the house, those times when our immediate family is all together are infrequent and all the more precious when they happen. This week, due to college schedules, we got to enjoy Saturday breakfast instead.

The day dawned rainy, which was just what my family needed.  Not just a balmy drizzle but a cool, pouring rain, satisfactorily hammering against the windows.  The kids were snug in their respective beds, my hubby was snoozing on the sofa with a dog, and I was enjoying one of those great moments, an unexpected gift of grace.  How lovely to have my all kids home, asleep on a rainy morning, with no immediate pressing schedule (time enough for that later) and me awake to enjoy it.  The only way to improve the morning would be a great breakfast to start the day.  After a bit of quiet time, I started frying bacon.

It had the intended effect.  My husband opened his eyes and we shared a “wow, life is pretty great” moment.  I popped some cinnamon rolls in the oven.  (I had this in the fridge; not homemade but not bad.)  Kids started coming downstairs and flopping on sofas.  I started scrambling eggs with shallots and spinach and arugula.  Orange juice and cups of tea, our definition of cozy, were consumed.  A little sweet cantaloupe.

We didn’t all sit at once and we didn’t all actually eat, but we shared the morning and our love of rainy days and a whole lot of unspoken love.  And then it was time to pack up my oldest and get him out the door for a two week trip.  The spell was effectively broken, but my middle boy loaned his brother his own nicely tailored blazer for the conference and THAT was a silent act of love.  His sister folded all his tee shirts.  I put a warm loaf of homemade bread in hands as he climbed into his car and we stood in the drizzle waving goodbye.  I don’t know what everyone was thinking, but I was thanking God for those little fleeting pockets of time.  And for the inspiration to start frying bacon.

Here’s the breakfast bucket…

What you can see (clockwise top to bottom):

• cantaloupe seeds (I normally don’t compost seeds but these local melons were so delicious I wouldn’t mind some volunteer plants in my spring garden)
• cantaloupe rinds
• lots and lots of eggshells, a dozen to be exact
• shallot skins and stem ends (hiding under all those eggs)
• a whole lot of love (hard to see but you know it’s there)

I wonder if all that love will compost … actually, I think it’s the ingredient that really makes our compost great.

 

 

Toss It Tuesday: Garlic

If you are composting, it’s likely that you don’t use a lot of processed products, right?

We try to keep processed things to a very bare minimum around here and when we do buy packaged items we choose the highest quality, least processed products, without any added chemicals, and especially without high fructose corn syrup.  Of course, every now and again, I find a convenience item that I just can’t pass up.  In this case it was fresh whole peeled garlic cloves from Whole Foods.  Bad move.

Long ago I gave up the jarred chopped garlic.  For one thing it doesn’t taste like garlic.  For another thing it smells like formaldehyde to me.  Plus it has a shelf life of … forever.  That’s not my idea of “fresh” food, so I take the time to peel garlic cloves every time a recipe calls for it.

I buy and peel a lot of fresh garlic, so when I noticed this little tub two weeks ago, I thought, why not give it a try?  The ingredient list reads: garlic.  Although the flavor doesn’t seem too off, it’s not as good as fresh from my pantry.  Maybe it’s just that keeping garlic in the fridge isn’t optimal.  Whatever the case, yesterday when I opened the container this is what I found:

Yuck.  Furry garlic.  I didn’t even toss this in the kitchen bucket but took it out and buried it deep in my compost pile.  Peeled garlic might be convenient, but it’s not worth the cost and certainly not worth the compromise for me.  How long had this mold been brewing?

Do you have any “fresh” convenience foods that you regularly use?

 

Keep It Clean

You might find this a good reminder or an utterly unnecessary suggestion, but I feel compelled to remind you to clean your kitchen compost bucket regularly.

Unless you are ferrying scraps to your compost pile in a plastic bag that you subsequently toss in the trash, your kitchen container can get mighty germy.  I had some super slimy mushrooms that got pushed to the coldest side of my fridge & froze.  When I tossed them in the bucket they decomposed immediately in one day and the slime I dumped on the compost pile was enough to gag me.  Clearly this bucket needed an immediate wash.  For obvious reasons I have also spared you a photo of this disgusting mess.  

Cleaning is simple.  Fill your bucket, whatever kind you have, with hot water.  Add a squirt of dish soap and a slug of bleach.  Let it sit until the water cools (I usually leave mine in the kitchen sink overnight and scrub the sink afterward).  Dump out the water, swipe any bits off the insides and top with a paper towel, rinse, and air dry.  Good as new.  Wash whenever things start to look grimy, when you have a surprisingly slimy bucket or about every two weeks.  If you have the kind of bucket that has a charcoal filter on the lid to keep down any smells, make sure to change that according to your bucket instructions.  Remember, while you want good bacteria to break down the contents of the compost pile, you don’t want bad bacteria growing in your kitchen!

 

 

Glorious Summer With Veggies

Are you just reveling in S U M M M E R right about now? We keep switching between the signature Atlanta weather profiles: hot and muggy with a side of steamy OR breezy, blue and utterly blissful.  With an afternoon shower of course. Sixties in the morning, nineties (in the shade) in the afternoon, but heck, it’s July so I’ll take them both. I stay in Atlanta for the seasons and they rarely disappoint.

The garden is producing like crazy and we are knee deep (ok, I exaggerate but backyard farmers are like fishermen; always out to impress) in cherry tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, and squash. Aren’t these colors gorgeous?

 

I planted over a dozen tomato plants this year because I was tired of having just a few tomatoes rolling in piecemeal over the summer and the plan is working.  We harvest huge handfuls of cherry tomatoes (Super Sweet 100) every day (not including the sun-warmed ones we steal from the vines) and now the big fruits are starting to ripen.  The yellow variety is Lemon Boy and the lighter orange is Early Girl.  Although I’m not a huge Early Girl fan, they were they only reliable tomatoes to produce last year so I had to have at least one plant!  The small bright red tomato (upper right of basket) is a plum tomato and the vines are filled with these.  I have visions of one small jar of tomato paste dancing in my head …  Finally, those medium reds are Parks Whopper, which I find amusing since they are distinctly un-whopper in size.  The small purple green cherry tomatoes are an heirloom, possibly Cherokee Purple, but my tag is missing.

Naturally, the question is “what do you do with all those tomatoes?”.  Eat them, of course!  Tomato sandwiches, tomato tarts, tomato jam, oven-dried tomatoes, the possibilities are endless.  I rarely use a recipe and even more rarely have a plan for what to make.  I think you just have to look at the tomatoes and let them silently suggest a dish.  Hmmm, I like the idea of tomato meditation … a quiet communication with nature … Now that I ponder it, I silently admire them each morning as I water, letting the hose sprinkle them for exactly one Hail Mary per plant before I move on to the next one.  It’s pretty easy to pray the Rosary when the birds are singing, the sky is brightening, the water is gently streaming, and you are surrounded by the sheer beauty of the ordinary.  So many blessings right in front of us if we only open our eyes, but I digress.

One summer several years back, I made fantastic tomato marmalade from a huge harvest of tiny yellow pear tomatoes but I have never again either found that variety or gotten it to grow.  I’m wondering if I can turn my tiny red jewels into something similar  … hmmm … I can still taste that tart, sweet, addictive, weird goodness!  I’ll keep you posted.  And as a caution, if you are canning, please ALWAYS use a recipe!  Botulism is bad.

Aren’t the squash pretty?  I’ve been picking them small because we’ve got a lot of birds, rabbits, and caterpillars who would love to make a meal of these (and everything else of course).  We cut these up, tossed them with olive oil, soy sauce, garlic and salt then roasted them with sliced red onions in a grill pan on the grill for five minutes. Right off the grill I added a splash sesame oil and  second splash of soy.  You don’t need protein when you’ve got veggies that good!

One more photo of my meager bucket for the day …Remember every little bit of green adds up!

What you can see (clockwise top to bottom):

• homegrown cucumber peels & stem ends (a daily snack or salad component)
• core & outer leaves of a cauliflower
• banana peel hiding underneath

Less in the bucket means more on the plate, right?  I pan roasted some wild Keta salmon and paired it with oven roasted cauliflower with lemon & salt, plus baked sweet potatoes.  Normally, since we don’t drench the potatoes with anything rodent-attracting I compost those skins, but my dogs were acting like human compost machines yesterday.  They enjoyed both the salmon AND sweet potato skins.  Either way, no extra green waste hit the landfill!

Soon, I’ll post some photos of the compost pile.  It’s looking surprisingly like soil for the lack of effort I’ve been putting into it!  I’m feeling great things for the fall…

 

 

 

Wash Your Produce All At Once

It’s been kind of a quiet on the home front kind of summer.  One boy is working all kinds of crazy hours and my girl is dancing from morning till night.  That means I’m spending more time in my car than in the kitchen and more meals away from home (packed by me, but still, not many meals as a family).  Half empty buckets …

What you can see (clockwise top to bottom):

• grapefruit rind
• raspberry herb teabags (for iced tea)
• squishy cherry tomato
• limp leaf lettuce leaves
• spent Abraham Darby roses

Even thought there’s not much in the bucket, that means that all the fruits and veggies from our farm share are being consumed and that’s a good thing!  Clearly, the grapefruit was part of breakfast that included muesli and the veggies comprised the daily salad.

On a different note, do you wash your produce when you bring it home?  When I shopped exclusively at the grocery store I would just unload the produce right into the fridge (or pantry).  It’s all plastic wrapped or bagged and doesn’t require any immediate attention.  Produce from the farm, on the other hand, requires a bit more immediate attention to make sure that everything stays fresh.  So, I wash it all at the same time, they store away accordingly.

Basically, I fill the sink with cool water and toss in a cup of white vinegar (or a scant teaspoon of bleach if it seems super dirty), then soak and swish for about ten minutes.  There is a surprising amount of dirt, and often tiny bugs, left floating in the water.  Plain water alone is not quite enough to wash any residue from the produce.  In addition to vinegar and bleach, hydrogen peroxide is an excellent wash additive, but it’s never in my kitchen when it’s veggie wash time, so ….

After the quick ten minute or so soak, I pull out the veggies, drain the sink, fill it one more time with cool water, immerse it all and then put it on the counter on towels to dry.

I toss in pretty much everything except onions and garlic and this method seems to keep everything fresher longer, with the added bonus that you can skip the wash step when you are trying to get a meal on the table.  There is nothing I like better than crisp, clean lettuce ready to go!

 

Isn’t it all so pretty?  And it was pretty delicious too!

 

Back To Buckets

Summer is in full swing and that means lots of fruit and veggies at every meal, as well as lots of scraps in the compost bucket.

You know how some buckets are just a great mix of color and texture?  This is not one of them.  In fact, I put it on the deck, left it overnight and then photographed it this morning after the ants and slugs began to make a meal of it.  Not pretty, but authentic I guess.

 

What you can see (clockwise top to bottom):

• ants on watermelon chunks, these were very pale and not very tasty
• lots of banana skins, six to be exact
• squishy grapes and grape stems
• the curly stem on the watermelon rind, it was very cute and piggish
• eggshells (for banana bread)
• past-its-prime peach, turned inedible overnight
• past-its prime apricot, turned inedible overnight
• more eggshells (for waffles)
• spent William Shakespeare rose

In addition to cheese waffles for breakfast and “leftovers” salad for lunch (arugula, chicken breast, garden tomatoes) I baked up two kinds of banana bread.  Yes, two kinds.  It was rainy, plus I had time AND inclination.  Here are the pans waiting for the oven to heat.

I was thinking that the Double Chocolate Banana Bread (on the right obviously) would be my favorite, but surprisingly, Jacked Up Banana Bread with walnuts and bourbon was my top choice.  This might be because I increased the butter and doubled the bourbon, but it could also just be that my initial intentions were for banana goodness as opposed to chocolate goodness.  That said, the chocolate bread is nearly gone.  I’m not the only one in the house nibbling …

 

 

 

Toss It Tuesday: Spinach

It’s been a long time since I’ve completely forgotten some produce but this was a spur-of-the-moment purchase from Costco.  I was positive I needed LOTS of spinach and I did, but I got some fresh

from my weekly farm share … and so this huge package was sent to the outside fridge where I permanently forgot about it.  Of course when I did pull it out, it was a week past its sell date.  Never, NEVER use pre-packaged greens past the sell by date!

So, salad for my compost pile!

What did you have to toss this week?

 

Toss It Tuesday: Cherries and Pie

The grocery store checkout racks are filled with magazines featuring pies on their covers this month so, succumbing to the subliminal marketing messages, I’ve been craving one.  Normally, I’m not a pie fan.  I’d much rather eat my fruit raw, swirl it into a smoothie or bake it into a pound cake, but the pie allure is strong.   When my farm share last week included local sour cherries I could see the writing on the wall.

But, and it’s a big but, LOCAL sour cherries?  Remember, I live in Georgia where cherries don’t just grow on trees.  You’ve got to get them from Michigan or Washington.  But somehow, thanks to the perseverance of my farmer, there they were.  Beautiful, local cherries.  Just making plans for them made me feel so virtuous.  I mean, when my grandmother got food from the store it was ALL local.  She would not have thought twice about the origin of her cherries.  She would probably have thought, “great, cherries are in season,” bought them and baked her pie.  But, in today’s weird food climate, find these beautiful local gems was kind of like winning a gold medal.  I bought two more pints and planned my pie.

Every single day for a week I woke up planning to make that pie and every single day something else took precedence.   Life is funny that way.  I kept the magazine with the recipe I wanted to try right on the kitchen counter to remind me.

Finally a stretch of spare hours….  I excitedly pulled the containers from the fridge and tipped all those beautiful bright jewels into the colander and alas, they were more delicate than I realized.  Many had not survived the week.  I had killed the local cherries from neglect.  My grandmother would never have kept her cherries waiting.  She knew the fragility of real produce.  In one week I went from proud locavore dropping hints of my virtue into any conversation I could, “Did I tell you I found love gorgeous local cherries?  Yes, local!”  to food heathen unworthy of nature’s bounty.  Shaking off the food guilt, I rolled up my sleeves to redeem this situation.   I set to work to pit the little beauties and would make it work.  No time to waste adding up the cost of this very expensive Toss It Tuesday.

As an aside, have you ever pitted tart cherries?  They are TINY.  The fruit is hardly bigger than the pit, especially when you’ve got to pare away little bruised bits.  Especially when your cherry pitter broke last year, you never replaced it, and are now working with a paring knife.   But really, who cares?  Local.  Sour.  Cherries.  My virtuous stock was rising again.  I kept waiting for someone to call so I could say I was making a cherry pie with local sour cherries and an interesting almond crust.  The phone was silent.  I was being punished for wasting my treasure.

Look how pretty this fruit is!  That’s lime zest on top.  I didn’t follow the recipe exactly.  By now you may have guessed I never do. You were supposed to infuse the sugar with the zest, but I got carried away with the colors and it was really zesty.

Sadly, I was two pounds short of three pounds.  Even if every cherry was perfect I would have been short.  Throwing off the local medal of honor that no one but me knew or cared about anyway, I amended  my pie plan and hauled from the fridge an industrial size plastic container of sweet cherries purchased at my local Costco, shipped from the not so local state of Washington, onto the counter and continued pitting.  They were quite gorgeous too.  Giant, probably like the orchard them came from.

 

Here they are, local and industrial, mixed together in a baptizing bath of organic sugar (i.e., evaporated cane juice) and organic cornstarch that balanced everything.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here’s the crust with made with butter and almond meal.  Doesn’t it match my countertop exactly?

Limey cherries happily snuggled in the nutty crust.  The recipe does not call for butter but have you ever made a pie without it?  Not my personal favorite.  Plus, I’d already veered from recipe authenticity.  I added some chunks of grass-fed goodness.

 

Didn’t it turn out well?  It looked exactly like the magazine cover.

 

 

We ate it before I ever took another picture.  I promise it looked exactly like this.  Possibly prettier.  And it was delicious.

When the blueberries ripen I’m making this one too.  How about you?

P.S.  Full disclosure: I did not put all the pits into compost, only the cherries.  I just liked the “cherriness” of that “Toss It” photo.