Showing posts with label garden. Show all posts
Showing posts with label garden. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

illegal gardening

adventures in fire escape gardening-
arugula covered in cayenne in an attempt to keep squirrels away. mostly it works!
the spinach in late may. see the red chard spouts behind it? we let it take over...the red chard harvest of this week - a good fist full, maybe a $3 bunch at the farmer's market, but about one serving in the pan. but i grew it!

Thursday, December 06, 2007

how to occupy time when marginally employed

1. make salsa.
now, i do love burritos, but from the amount of postings i have here about salsa, you would think that I have some kind of obsession. however, this is really just because we grew tomatillos in our community garden plot this year, and they exploded! i know of nothing else to do with these green paper-covered citrusy fruits but salsa. so with jen's goading and the feeling like we shouldn't let such bounty go to waste, I turned to tomatillo-roasted jalapeno salsa.

it was mostly home-grown, though not entirely by us. some jerk pulled an entire jalapeno plant, full of fruit, out of the ground, and left it, and all the peppers, in the compost pile. I greedily stripped the peppers off the plant, swearing about wasteful americans and trying to imagine what i would do with two pounds of jalapenos.
So, into the oven they went, (400F for 20min) until roasty and skins black, sneezing in the house because of the capsicum in the air.

Next, spent a long time online trying to find a salsa recipe that was appropriate for me for canning (tasty, and not giving me botulism). Ultimately bought Ball's Blue Book of Preserving at trusty Frager's Hardware. I was sure they wouldn't give my friends botulism.
spent about half the day making a double-double batch of tomatillo salsa, canned with the aid of some of dave's beer brewing supplies, and a veg steamer at the bottom of the pot instead of a canning stand. by about 10pm, there were 9 pints of salsa cooling on the table. expect to get some in your stocking.

The kitchen has been busy this week. Professor Burpy is gurgling again, filled with a lambic-like prickly pear cactus wheat beer. it smells sweet and is electric pink, flavored juice of the prickly pear, picked by the side of the Beach Rd. in Southern Shores, NC, thisby the thankseating. a loaf of vegan banana-raisin bread has already been devoured, and i may make some coffee cake soon, too.

other projects include: intense planning for hot new years dance party, knitting a balaclava, scheming on some xmas crafts, mustering the courage to ask for a tarot reading, yoga, bicycle-hunting, dreaming up other projects.

do you have a job for me that requires brain power ?

Thursday, November 15, 2007

picture-gifts

happy birthday mom! nice cake, L!
carrots from the lovejoy garden. we grew these! thanks earth! thanks dave for buying seeds!
Korean lunch at a place with a waterfall and white piano. glass noodle mushroom stirfry, tiny sides of two kinds of kimchee, spicy tofu, ambrosia salad, smoked shrimp-something yummy, fish cakes, pickled jalapenos... followed by a barbie pink 'strawberry' bubble tea. thanks amy!
awesome maker of a doclab film about origami sent me this today. anyone know what this kind of shape is called? it's 5 interlocked pyramids - a 20-point star? thanks vanessa!

Monday, September 24, 2007


Went home to this weekend and was happy to see that our community garden plot was overflowing with the tomatillo plant. Good to get into the garden and squeeze the papery husks trying to figure out what a ripe tomatillo might feel like, pick green-beans and see what our neighbor-growers have going.

With our bumper crop and two batches of Tomatillo-Lime Salsa under my belt, dave, jen & I made a tasty, citrusy Tomatillo Ratatioullie with 1 medium homegrown eggplant (stolen from a lazy harvester), a glut of tomatillos, 1 can diced tomatoes, onion, garlic, basil, cheap white wine and wholepaycheck's 'sicilian spiced' green olives (with mustard seeds?). pretty tasty served with polenta and some Chimay hard cheese. a fine end to the last day of summer.

Dave finally found a suitable case for the theramin he's been working on all summer; so stand by for his photos & hopefully sounds of that... I love that so much is home-made here; somehow there is time & space & creativity to make all sorts of homebrews (including dave's recent endeavor with our bumpercrops - basil infused vodka). basil-lemon beer to follow? I miss the falling apartment, and I can't believe that the Chois (our bodega-running Korean landlords downstairs) are thrilled to see me and give me free bottled water on my depart. Dave & I are like their weirdo foreign kids. It only reminds that this is where i'd much rather be; if only the rest of DC were so inviting....xoro

Wednesday, August 08, 2007

lovejoy garden plot















tomatillo flower and my finger















'flying saucer' squash leaves with some powdery mildew and spined soldier bugs

out of focus cellphone camera pics