October Garden Goodies

Just a quickie update from the garden.....

We're in a big harvest mode right now.

It's the end of the season for lots of the greenhouse stuff...

The cucumbers are toast.

They've been replaced by winter crucifers...

Which is basically a bare bones version of the stuff that's outside...

Cauliflower, broccoli, and cabbages of several varieties.

It's kind of our emergency backup if everything outside goes to heck.

Peppers and basil will be the next to go.

But first let's take a moment to admire the sweet peppers shall we??.....

 They took for-pickin-ever to get ready....

And I can't say I blame them since we never did really get a solid month of summer weather.

But aren't they purty??

 I would say they qualify for the certificate of visual coolness.

Which, as you know,  is the highest honor awarded in my garden world.

Spinach, lettuce, mache and arugula will take their place soon...

And carrots will replace the tomatoes...

But we're letting them stay for as long as is reasonably possible....

Cause we love making salsa and we still have a lot of habanero peppers waiting for a purpose.





And check this out would ya please?

Sweet peas in OCTOBER!

 How crazy is that?

An absolute indicator of the lack of sun and heat here on the Oregon Coast this summer...

And I'll bet you thought I was whining...

Well.... I was.

Our strawberry days are probably numbered as well....heavy sigh


With the recent rain deluge the squash vines finally gave up their indecision over whether or not we might be starting summer soon.

Luckily the Carnival acorn squash ....

You guessed it....

Selected entirely on the basis of potential for visual coolness...

came through for me.

Aren't those little zucchinis just a little sad?

They fought hard all summer and went in fits and spurts. 

Some of them took on the oddest shapes due to the crazy weather changes.

Rich pulled out the whole row of exhausted squash and melon vines but left the much debated green plastic mulch.

One of two things will happen.

Either it will act as a weed block and save us lots of work come next spring  (and alleviate further plastic guilt having served a dual purpose) 

OR it will create the perfect insect overwintering vacation house ever and create a disaster.

Just another of my unscientific experiments I thought I'd share with ya.

You're welcome.

I'll keep ya posted.

Cath

Roasting Green Coffee - Keepin' Em Guessin'

There are some perks to parenting.

When the kids are babies you can make them wear goofy hats that amuse you.

A little older, and you can sucker them into things like matching up all the socks in the white laundry load.

You call it "The Match Patch Game"  and the guy who matches up the most pairs wins... a nickel! Woohoo!

Still  older, and you can do things that keep 'em guessin'

When Collin came home from school a few weeks ago he walked into our kitchen one morning and said two things.

The first was "What is that?"

It seems he was not well acquainted with an air popper.

We've always been oil and an old pan for popping corn kinda people.

I did try once to convert the guys.

It didn't fly.

No amount of persuasion could convince them that they were better off with popcorn that tasted like cardboard. 

Really, I tried.

The second thing Collin said was accompanied by a sympathetic shaking of his head.

"You just never know what you'll find when you come home.  Really guys?  Popping your coffee?"

So of course we sensed an opportunity and went for the...

"Well ya!  Of course!"

Like duh.

Gotta keep em guessin'.

I've always been inordinately amused by doing the unexpected.

Ask my mom.

She'll tell ya.

So back when our coffee maker broke and we were researching coffee makers.

I found Sweet Maria's and their plethora of coffee nerd stuff.

There's a whole coffee library where you can waste  spend hours educating yourself about coffee, coffee roasting, and equipment.

Fast forward to a few months ago and we could resist the nerdiness no longer.

This was our latest order:

The differences in color and flavor are fascinating.

One of the really cool things about Sweet Maria's is that you can read about each coffee and the farms they come from.

I love that.

This time around we ordered (from top to bottom)

Sumatra Takengon Classic Mandheling,  Honduras Organic Marcala -Cocosam Coop,  Ethiopia Organic Shakiso Sidamo "Maduro",  Hawaii Kona - Moki's Farm ,  and  Colombia Finca Buenavista -Carlos Imbachi .

We have an amazing amount of fun learning about the differences in climate, roast recommendations, and flavors.

Go ahead and be sad for us if you want.

We understand.




Sweet Maria's recommends storing green beans in cloth bags that can breathe.

We take the labels off the plastic bags they ship in and tie them on so we can easily choose what variety we want to roast up.

The simplest (and cheapest) version of roaster is an air popper.

Our first one croaked but I easily found this one at a thrift shop.

There seems to be some difference in roasting time.

We're not sure yet whether that was due to a different heating mechanism or the different beans we roasted.

More testing will be needed.

Anyone for a coffee tasting?


The main thing to look for according to the information sheet (some listing of brands there too) is this sort of interior venting on the popper:

Don't even try this if yours has the screen thingie in the bottom as most of them do now.  It won't work.

There are even web pages by people who modify their poppers.

It's a crazy coffee nerd world out there.

Be very afraid.


Today we are roasting the Ethiopia Organic Shakiso Sidamo "Maduro"

We generally roast about a third of a cup at a time.

Get the popper heated up and dump.

We replace the butter cup with this little glass bowl for two reasons.

1) We can see better.
2) We're not partial to the smell of heating plastic.





We like to roast near the sink and just let the chaff blow into the sink but this new popper doesn't have a long enough cord so we have to use a bowl to catch the chaff during the roasting.

There are also information sheets about roasting levels.  We do it by sound and color.

I would never want to be too scientific about it.

That takes away some of the magic for me.

I just watch for color and go with it.

Rich, however, loves scientific perfection.

He sets timers, listens for the first and second "crack".  The whole deal.

His, of course, are much more consistent.

But I'm sure mine are magical....somehow.


The description for this Ethiopian variety said we should look for "quakers" and remove them after the roasting.

So I had to Google "quakers" to find out what exactly we were supposed to be finding.

They are apparently unripe beans that do not turn dark when roasted.

You can see a few there on the pan that we picked easily enough.

They say you should leave the roasted beans exposed to air in order to vent the CO2 for about the first twelve hours and then store them in air tight containers. 

It is recommended to roast no more than about 5 days' worth for the best flavor and freshness.

As it turns out, this is all way more entertaining that I thought it would be.

Which may or may not mean that I am way more nerdy than I thought.

Hmmmm.

Contemplating nerdiness and the wonders of keepin' em guessin',

Cath

Walking and Eating In Eugene

Memorial weekend found us in Eugene for Day 1 and Day 2 of the Oregon High School State Track Meet.

Rich and I decided to stay in downtown Eugene and get to see a bit of the city.

We like the idea of walking to the track and to local dining and coffee venues.

We arrived late on Thursday and on Friday morning we got up and started patrolling the streets for some good coffee and potential breakfast. 

Apparently the residents of Eugene are not early risers.

Most of the places we found didn't open til 8 or 8:30... and started walking around 7...

So we did a lot of walking and read the menus at promising looking houses of yum in anticipation of a good dinner at days' end.

We eventually did find our way to the Bagel Sphere thanks to a really nice local who pointed the way.

The bagels were excellent.

I had a multi grain  bagel with avo, sprouts, cream cheese  and tomato.

Rich had a veggie sausage and egg bagel.

We both thought we should have gotten what the other ordered... and since they were cut in half  we swapped halves and had both. 

Good stuff.

The coffee was just OK so we set our sights on finding an improved version the next day. 

Our good fortune, though, was that while we were walking and reading menus we happened upon belly.

It billed itself as having "Rustic, European Farm House Soulfood". Using local organic suppliers and changing their menu seasonally to reflect the best of what's available.

The menu looked really interesting:

And then there was the award in the window 2009-10 Restaurant of the Year.

So we put that in the memory bank and returned after Day 1 at the track.

We were told that there was a 45 minute wait.

No problem.

Plenty more things to peruse in that part of town.

They took our cell # and said they'd call when a table was ready.

Cool.

When the 45 mins was almost up we were getting pretty hungry so we headed back over to hover near the door.

As we waited people came out saying to each other "That was so good".

Excellent.

Just what we wanted to hear.

Finally our table was ready.

We entered the cozy space with about 10 or so tables and a bar.

We checked out the fun and unpretentious drink menu written on a giant flip chart next to the bar and ordered up.

Making a decision about what to order from the dinner menu was no easy task.

For starters I went with the grilled hearts of romaine with buttermilk-bleu dressing ....ahhhhmazing.

Rich chose the bay shrimp, butter leaf, avocado, saffron rice and bacon with a roasted red pepper vinaigrette.

He made happy noises too but I was so absorbed in my buttermilk-bleu I could not be distracted.


For the main course I finally settled on the Duck leg confit, and Rich ordered one of the specials,  linguine alfredo with chicken breast and morel mushrooms.

Oh. My. Goodness.

This was one of those meals.

The ones you can count on one hand.

The ones you smile all the way though cause it's that good.

The ones you wake up thinking about the next morning.

Fab. Fab. Fab.

People listen up!

If you ever find yourself near here you gotta do this.

I don't think you could possibly go wrong no matter what you ordered.

We were actually really stuffed and happy after that but absolutely knew we would regret it forever if we didn't try whatever happened to be on the dessert menu.

So the Shaker Lemon Pie it was and some coffee.

Coffee arrived first.

Best coffee we had the whole time we were in Eugene....wonderful.

More smiling...even the coffee was amazing.

Neither of us had ever had a shaker style lemon pie before and it was wonderful as well.

A pretty different beast from the lemon meringue we've all grown accustomed to.

It's a double crust pie with layers of Meyer lemon slices.

Loooved it.

As we sat back and looked around  every table was full of smiling laughing patrons.

Happy to be there and to be sharing their meals with friends.






As we walked back to our hotel and got into the elevator I overheard...

Yes I admit I was eavesdropping...

"The farmer's market will be open tomorrow behind the hotel"

Excellent.

Put that in my feeble memory bank before I fell into a blissful sleep.




Of course I had already forgotten by the time morning arrived.

I had already begun trying to decide where to hunt for the morning java when I peeked out the balcony window and saw this:

Woohoo.

Happy dance around the room.  Farmer's market setting up right behind our hotel.

Yes!

So we sort of started to gather our stuff together for Day 2 at the track to give the vendors a little more time to set up.

Lucky for us we didn't need to be at the track til noon.

When we could stand it no longer we headed out and found an early bird vendor set up for espresso and crepes.

We scored a great cup of coffee and a couple of spinach, feta crepes and chatted with the vendor who knew a guy from Brookings that Rich knew from sailing with Sean and port life in general....small and yummy world.


Soon the farmers started to open and we had a field day check out the amazing produce and baked goods.

I mean seriously...check out these carrots and beets

It was crazy.

And made us feel like garden underachievers....in the best possible way


And since you can never have too many peppers plants we had to get one more.

Holy moly do these Hideaway Bakery people know their way around a pastry, and a bread loaf....and coffee....thumbs up.

Rich found this cool mug too for his green tea.

It was a whole festival of everyday gifts.

My kinda weekend.

Cath

Cool Stuff: Kitchen Edition - La Chamba

I first saw La Chamba cookware when we were in Jacksonville last summer for the amazing Britt Festival concert experience. Before the concert we walked around in Jacksonville.  Jacksonville is a town whose roots go back to the gold rush in the 1800's.  It's a great place to spend an afternoon.  One of the shops there had La Chamba cookware and we were smitten.

It was beautiful.

A Fair Trade product.

No glazes.

No toxins.

The cookware is handmade in Columbia from an ancient clay that ends up black when it's fired.

You can see the artisans' finger grooves in the stuff..

None of it is perfectly symetrical...I love that!

I pilfered the following photos of the cookware being created from lavidaverde.com.  They are importers of La Chamba and you can see more of the different kinds of cookware in the line at their site.

We didn't buy any that day in Jacksonville.

We did the..."Well it's kind of expensive. Let's think about it and come back." thing.

And of course we didn't go back.

But I did a whole lot of thinkin about the La Chamba stuff.

And every time I pulled out my 9x13 pans I wished it were La Chamba that I was cooking in rather than whatever cheesy metal they make those things out of.

Cooking in metal gives me the heeby geebies any more....except for my cast iron... I love that stuff still.

Anyhoo... I finally got some La Chamba for my birthday in March.

I use it every day.

No joke.

Loooove it.

And as a side note the black makes the food look really purty.

You care for it a lot like clay pie pans or pizza stones.

You don't preheat your oven because they can crack.

We have an electric stove (unfortunately) so the pots can't go directly on the stovetop to cook but they do offer an adapter that goes between the pot and the burner so it's a possiblity.

I plan to expand my collection of this gorgeous stuff.

Enjoy the weekend!

Cath

Spring Garden Update

We had a fabulous sunny Sunday last weekend.

I love when that happens.

One thing about living on the Oregon coast is that you learn to really appreciate when sun lands on the weekends in the winter or spring.

Sunday's haul from the garden:

Tons of lettuce. And baby carrots that we planted in the greenhouse as our backups in case the outside stuff didn't work out.  It's almost time to replant our summer stuff in the greenhouse so we've been feasting on the baby carrots.

Beets from last fall.  This was an Autumn Harvest blend so there were white, yellow, and red beets.

And if there's one thing you've learned about me by now it's that I'm all about gardening for visual coolness.

The beets did really well early on in the Fall but as soon as it got cold they kind of came to dead halt and just sat there.

As the spring warmed up they started up again but we decided to pull em and make the beet salad and move on.

Time to get the Chioggia's planted. 

I love me some target beets.

Things are looking good in the garden.

The garlic is right about where it should be.

While I was gone last weekend Rich got the tomoatoes started in the greenhouse.

Good news locals.

Once again I got carried away with my basil planting.

It looks pretty happy so save a space.

That little guy in the lower right is celery.

It'll be my first time trying celery.

And the catalog said it's best not to to do seeds indoors and transplant.

I'm off to a great start don't ya think?

I just can't ever totally follow directions... not sure what that's about, but it's a fact.

Maybe it's a trust issue I should persue in therapy.

Like I said things are looking good in the garden .

Arik's dog, Duke helped out on Sunday too.

He even pulled a few weeds when he saw what Rich was doing.

Now there's a skill Arik should follow up on don't ya think?

I mean really any old Lab can chase ducks....but weeding...

So last year we had a dismal squash crop ... as you may recall from this post.

As I was perusing the Territorial Seed catalog that lives on our kitchen table this time of year I found a product called Green Mulch that said for vining crops it could increase yeilds 20-40%.

It works by heating up the soil...our main problem.

Look no further.

Sign me up.




But then as I was rolling out this 2mm plastic sheet of wonder, I had a rush of guilt.

Here I am...

Miss Organic Gardener

Miss Double Bin Composter

Miss Clean Living

Rolling out 23 feet of (albeit very thin) plastic in my organic garden.

This one will definitely require therapy...maybe I can squeeze in the thing about not following directions at the same time.

I did notice the soil heating up immediately though and...after a thermometer check... went ahead and got my zucchini planted.  The melons will need to wait another week or two for the temps to rise a bit.



To alleviate my guilt I immediately recycled one yogurt container and made some plant markers.

That oughta make up for it huh?

Rich busted out the catalog again and found two possible alternatives for next time so that I wouldn't keep him up all night talking it to death.

There is one called Bio Film that composts into your soil in 90 days....which would give us just about the right amount of time...And one called Planter's Paper that will also biodegrade.

Neither of these have claims quite as lofty but  they do say they heat the soil....and I would sleep better.

BUT while we were searching the mulch section he also spotted the Silver Mulch  which is plastic like the green stuff but claims to drive away certain pests including aphids...which he battled all summer last year on his pepper plants in the greehouse. 

Life is so complicated.

I'll keep ya posted

Thanks for listening.




I got a few new herbs for the garden...

Some English Thyme

This one is a Rosemary variety that they call Barbeque because the stems can be used as kabob skewers...how fun is that?  It's supposed to get to be 4-5 ft tall....I'm hoping it won't get out of control. 

Rich is the pruning master so I'll leave that one in his court.

And some Lavender Grosso.

I've been missing lavender.

My last one got weed wacked several years ago.

It happens.



Here's another crazy adventure we're trying this year.

Shitake Mushrooms

I should have taken pictures before....

They send you little dowel pieces that have been inoculated with spore and a little book of instructions

I think Rich decided to use Tan Oak logs for ours, since we see mushrooms in the forest liking Tan Oak stands.

After you let the logs sit for a few weeks you drill little holes and stick the dowel peices in and then seal in with beeswax.

The spore is supposed to colonize the log and hopefully in a few months we'll start having shitake mushrooms.  The normal mushroom season here is after the first rains of fall ....so late October thru early December.

It'll be fun to watch and see what happens.



In other life events this week.....

We have another funeral to attend tomorrow.

Rich's Grandma Molnar passed away Sunday night.

She was a sweet lady who fed people wherever she could and spread the love via apple strudel...a lost art.

We'll miss her sweet spirit but are happy that she has been able to leave the difficulties of this earth behind and join her Lord and her much missed husband in a peaceful eternity.


Life is short.
Get out there and share the love,

Cath

310 Days

Once upon a time,  In the spring of 2009 a girl made a plan.

It was a grand plan and she sketched it out carefully.

She carefully recorded the varities of vegetables, rotations, days to germination, plant spacing, and days to readiness off of each seed packet since she knew her feeble mind could never remember such details.  

 

She got a little dirt on the plans on their excursions to plant but no matter.

It was the information that was important.

A girl can never have too much information,  dirt smudges or no.

Spring turned into summer and most of the plants behaved just as they should.

Just as the plan showed they would.

And summer turmed into fall and most of the spring plants were finished and were replaced with new seeds and a new plan.

Late in the fall the girl's husband wondered aloud about a particular plant that did not seem to be following the same schedule.

It just grew and grew.

Lots and lots of leaves but nothing else.

"Oh well"  said the girl  "I don't remember what that is and we don't need that spot anyway. Let's just leave it and if it still hasn't done anything by the next spring we'll pull it out then"

And so it went.

And then one day in early February the girl saw something.

Something purple was showing in the center of the mounds of leaves.

So she got out her plan....her record of important information.

"OK! It's Purple Cape Cauliflower! But it sure is huge and why in the world did it take so long?" 

You see the girl had forgotten to write down the days to maturity for this plant. Nada. Zilch.

And it happened that she had used the end of the seed packet so she didn't have that either.

And when she looked it up in the seed catalog it wasn't listed in the latest edition.




You see the normal cauliflower did just what it was supposed to do and caused no angst at all.

But neither did it peak the girl's curiosity.

But this:

This amazing thing went on for 310 days!

About 10 months!

Finally with the failure of her informational system, the curious girl looked online to see what it was really supposed to be.

And she discover that it should have been 240 days to maturity... off by a mere two months.

But she was very glad indeed to see this monstrous cauliflower.

And so she took some pictures to show her friends.

And she put a bucket next to it to show scale so her friends would be able to tell how large it was.

And because she thought the bucket was amusing as she pondered what sort of parent would not notice their child's feet sticking out of a bright yellow bucket.

She finally harvested the huge cauliflower and the abudance of inner leaves.

And remaining outer tough or eaten leaves went into the compost pile.

She decided that a roasted cauliflower and leek soup would be just the thing and that it would go great with the extra loaf of whole wheat herb and asiago bread that she had made two days before.

She took some more pictures so that her friends could see how the size compared to a cup measure.

And how it was light colored underneath.

The girl had a reputation for choosing vegetables to grow for no other reason that visual coolness.

She chopped the cauliflower and tossed it along with some garlic cloves and leeks in a little olive oil and oven roasted them  for about 30-40 minutes. After which she pureed the stalkier parts and garlic with some chicken broth and left most of the florets whole....cause she was that kinda girl.

Then she added some sauteed shallots and chopped carrots, the florets, and a basic roux to thicken the soup.

While that was all going on she made one of her stranger inventions.

You see when the "normal" cauliflower and brocolli had started to be ready for harvest the girl and her husband had developed a liking for roasting them. 

And since the girl was sometimes a little lazy she didn't always take off the leaves closest to the head.

She just tossed them in the olive oil and salt and peppered them with the rest.

And the two started to fight over the little leaves.

She doesn't really know if she invented this by accident or if there is a place in the world that they eat these all the time.

She thinks it would have to be a place where they grow their own food cause you never see leaves like these in the stores.

And like I said she is sometimes lazy and doesn't take time to Google these things to find out if she invented them.

What she does know though, is that if you roast them just like your other vegies...

except not quite as long....they can be sensitive...

they turn out just like a short of crunchy chip thing.

And she will have wrestle her husband for them.

THE END.

Cath