Toppings for Breakfast Bars

I love Farmgirl Fare Susan's Breakfast Bars. I've made Blueberry and Strawberry and I've just eaten the last of the Harvest Fruit. Harvest fruit was apple, pear and cranberry.

I'm only mentioning it because Harvest Fruit was really, really good and I want to remember it for next year.

You like me! You really like me!

So after much debate, several rounds of cutbacks and five or six charts of where I'm going to put stuff, I have finalized my seed list for 2009.

The Winners for This Year's Garden Are:

• Leek - King Richard
• Kale - Russian Red
• Mache - VIT
• Lettuce - Claremont, Romaine, Green Oakleaf Galisse, Black Seeded Simpson, Buttercrunch, Iceburg, Summer Crisp Loma, and Green Forest Romaine
• Pepper - Islander, Ace, Lipstick and Early Jalapeno
• Broccoli - Gypsy, Packman, Marathon
• Radish - Shunkyo
• Scallions - Hearty Evergreen
• Spinach - Space and 7 Green
• Swiss Chard - Magenta
• Pumpkin - Racer
• Watermelon - Moon & Stars (thanks Deborah!)
• Peas - Lincoln
• Fennel - Orion
• Zucchini - Raven
• Cucumber - Little Leaf
• Summer Squash - Yellow Crookneck
• Celeriac - Brilliant
• Brussels Sprouts - Oliver
• Cabbage - Storage
• Shallots - Pikant
• Carrots - Nelson and Bolero
• Beans - Provider
• Tomato - Juliet

Many of these varieties are my classic favorites. Since I'm really starting the garden from scratch this year, I thought I'd go with what I know for the most part. The scientist in me can't help but try new varieties though and so I have a couple of experimental plants. I've never grown celeriac or cabbage before and although I have grown beans in the past, Provider is a new variety for me.

Also on the list for this year are two plants that I hope will become long time fixtures. First is the new asparagus bed. My previous asparagus bed was much smaller than I would have liked but now that I can build a new one to suit our needs, I'm looking forward to using all the crowns that I order. The old garden had Jersey Kings which have been replaced with Jersey Supreme in the Johnny's catalog. Since I can always scoot back to the old garden and "borrow" a cup of asparagus stalks from Kronk, I'm interested in the potential differences in growth and flavor.

The second new perennial is cranberries. I have the soil they like. I have the moisture they like. I love those tart little berries, so this seems like the perfect match. Johnny's is selling 4 year old plants which already have flowers. With a little luck, we might even be able to pick a few this year. Yum.

Well Stocked Pantry

After cleaning out the cupboards back around New Years, we had some interesting meals of things that had been hanging around for too long and needed to be eaten or thrown away. It got me thinking about what should be in my pantry at all times.

Much like my heirloom cookbook post, this one will change as I think of new things.

Baking
Flour
Sugar
Brown sugar
Confectionary sugar
Salt
Baking powder
Baking soda
Yeast
Unsweetened chocolate
Unsweetened cocoa

Canned Goods
Spaghetti Sauce
Tomato Paste
Canned whole tomatoes
Canned crushed tomatoes
Cannellini Beans
Tuna

Freezer
Peas
Broccoli
Corn
Hamburg
Chicken Breast
Chicken Thighs
Roasters
Local shrimp

Dry Goods
Breadcrumbs, Panko
Breadcrumbs, Italian style
Popcorn
Spaghetti or Linguini
Ziti
Rotini
Farfale
Elbows
Ramen
Udon
Rice- Basmati
Rice - Arborio
Couscous

Liquids
Vegetable Oil
Olive Oil
White vinegar
Molasses
Chicken Stock
Soy Sauce
Worchestershire Sauce
Tobasco Sauce

The dog, cat and husband ate my garden.

Like most Americans these days, Husband and I have cut back to a more conservative spending lifestyle. I don't think that it's a bad thing and this period of budgetary evaluation is helping us pay down debt and identify some of the needless spending that we do.

The garden was never one of those areas that was up for cutbacks - that is, until our beloved Muttley started having seizures. Then George the Cat had kidney stones. Then Husband needed his wisdom teeth out. All in the same week. Yeah, it was a little bit busy.

We are responsible enough as consumers that none of these setbacks are going to break us, but we decided that it would be financially irresponsible to leave these things on credit for any length. I feel positive about that decision, but it comes at a rough time for the garden. I have already cut back on a handful of vegetables and now, to make sure we don't go broke installing this new garden, I've had to make some deeper cuts.

I've replotted this garden about four times now. As you can see, it has become quite a project and when my projects become complicated, the area I need to figure them out gets pretty large. I brought out the battlemat that we use for D&D Tuesdays and turned it into my Team Play Board, figuring out what will fit, what I have to have and what can be axed until another year. I should have my final picks by tomorrow, but as of right now the following vegetables have not made the cut:

Turnip and Parsnips - I'm the only one in the family that really likes these. They'll make it onto the list again sometime, but not this year.

Cauliflower, Romanesco and Eggplant - I'm pretty bummed about these three. I've never grown them and was looking forward to the challenge. While there are still new plants in the scheme, these three will have to wait until next year.

Potato - While the Great Potato Experiment was fun and the potatoes were very tasty, these are getting the axe this year because it's just too much of an expense with the other things we need to do. I live in Maine. Potatoes are cheap and local. Simple math, if you ask me.

Beets - My folks are expanding their vegetable garden this year. I'm hoping I can steal some of theirs.

Fava beans and Pole beans - I'm growing bush beans, so we won't be completely bean free. I need to see how much space the bush beans are going to take before I start adding giant trellises of beany goodness to the mix. Fava beans were definitely an exotic luxury.

Before you feel bad about what I'm not growing, I say maybe a little financial restraint isn't such a bad thing. I'm really starting from scratch with new beds, new soil, new compost, new fences and yes, even some new plants. That's a lot of new to worry about already, nevermind the three other kinds of peppers, the two varieties of onions and the cantaloupes that got cut in the first round. Perhaps the recession will lead me to some much needed garden restraint which could lead to the best crop of veggies yet.

That would make this a very rich year indeed.

My first seeds of the year are here!

No, I haven't finalized my garden for the year, but Deborah (who I'm claiming for my dream neighbor on the other other side of the house) over at North by Northwest had some extra seeds she was willing to share. The Moon & Stars watermelon just looked so cool that I simply have to try it. Of course, this means I have to re-re-rearrange the garden, but I was going to have to do that anyway.

I'll be sure to take extra documenting care with my swapped melons this season. If anyone out there has some extra vegetable seeds that they would like to swap, I have some extra Ace bell pepper seeds that had a 90% germination rate - even if they took their sweet time about it.

Not at all the direction I was hoping for

At 2:53 last Tuesday, I became Officially Ready For Spring. I held out longer than I thought I would. Despite having snowbanks that reach the birdfeeders again, this year the snowfall has come in clumps rather than snowing every day. It also seems to fall mostly after sundown, which sort of makes us like Camelot. You know, if the knights all rode around in plowtrucks and such.

So this is the back yard. See the mini-hoop? No? Me either. I know I need to strap on the old snowshoes and go clear it off but it's hard to get the motivation when I know I've still got at least a month before I can even get into the thing.

Oh Spring! Where art thou?

An heirloom cookbook

I've been working on a handbound, handwritten cookbook filled with all of my best notes and recipes. The project has been in the works for a while and I've just decided how best to organize it. I'm dividing the individual folios up into categories like "apples" or "Christmas" or "Italian". I'll save a couple of pages at the beginning for a table of contents since the organization inside is somewhat random.

To keep the recipe sections straight, I've been working on defining what sections there will be and what recipes will go into the section. I'll add to this list periodically.

Chinese
Hot and Cold Peanut Noodles
Ginger Chicken with Green Beans
Potstickers
Fried Rice
Sweet &Spicy Chicken Wings
Orange-Ginger Cookies

Soups
Lobster Bisque
Fish Chowder
Black Bean Soup

Chicken
Brined
Chicken Cornbread Pie
Chicken Penne
Chicken Tetrazzini
Roast Citrus Turkey

Fish
Fish cakes
Fish chowder
Tuna noodle casserole
Poached Salmon with caramelized onions on potato pancake with sour cream caper sauce
Fish Pie
Swordfish with salsa & spinach

Snacks & Appetizers
Popcorn Toppings - Rosemary lemon, cinnamon sugar, italian, curry, southwest, garlic dill, cocoa?, cheddar
Swedish Meatballs

Needs to be catagorized
Stromboli

Dinner and a Movie Night: Princess Mononoke

Due to the weather, the plans Husband had for this evening were canceled and the Dinner and a Movie night he had in mind won't work out for today. Instead, I have taken over this week and we're watching Princess Mononoke and having donburi which is a Japanese involving rice topped with some sort of cooked meat or vegetables. I'm making a chicken and egg donburi and plan to break out the chopsticks.

When I think back over the movie, I remember the characters are frequently seen eating rice dishes, so what could be more appropriate?

Princess Mononoke Donburi

• 1 tbsp oil
• 3/4 pound skinless, boneless chicken, cut into strips
• 1/2 onion, thinly sliced
• 1 cup chicken broth
• 6 mushrooms, sliced into strips
• 1 carrot, julienned
• 1 tbsp white sugar
• 4 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 tbsp mirin
• 1/2 cup peas
• 3 eggs, beaten
• 2 cups cooked rice
  

In a large frying pan set to medium-high heat, saute the chicken strips and onion in oil for 5-7 minutes. Add the mushrooms and carrot and stir-fry a couple of minutes. Stir in the chicken broth, sugar, soy sauce and mirin and let simmer for a 3-5 minutes. Sprinkle in the peas, stirring gently. Turn the heat down and pour beaten eggs over the chicken mixture, and simmer until the eggs are cooked through.

To serve, scoop rice into bowls. Place chicken & egg mixture on top of rice.

New Green Magazine - Online!

Get your own - Open publication

Having once worked in the print media biz, I find that I still love the feel of paper when it comes to my reading material. I'm also a magazine junkie and that means that I end up with stacks and stacks of periodicals that I have trouble parting with. It drives Husband crazy.

Issuu kinda cool because it offers all of the full color glory of a magazine with none of the paperwork. It's essentially a PDF with better online controls. The magazine above is new from South Africa and is called Shared Earth. Not only is it interesting to read "foreign" views on sustainable living (they're not really all that foreign, but you get my meaning), this particular issue has a neat section on wind turbines, natural pest control and drying foods at home.

Issuu has magazines on all sorts of topics from all over the world. It makes me want to publish a garden magazine!

Garden Blogger's Bloom Day

I'm a little late, but really, that's nothing new for me.

Still nothing blooming in the house for this month's GBBD. I'm really ready for stuff though and by next month I should have lots of happy seedlings on the grow shelves.

In lieu of something pretty to offer, I present last summers surprise violas.

These were one of those serendipitous discoveries last spring. I didn't plant these, but of all the violas I grew last year, and there were many, these were by far the nicest.

I hope they come back this year and bring their offspring.

Dinner and a Movie Night: Men In Black

It's an easy thing, once you have a child, to forget that once upon a time it was just you and your spouse. Husband and I have recently come to that discovery. Since our prime babysitter Kronk is in Florida until the snow has gone away and our other prime babysitters live in New Hampshire, we have taken it upon ourselves to create Dinner and a Movie Night.

The idea comes from the TBS show of the same name. If you've never seen it, it's part movie, part cooking show. The hosts choose to make a dish that is in some way reflected in the movie and then break into the movie at strategic points to show the next step in the dish that you're supposed to be making.

We have chosen Wednesday nights to be Dinner and a Movie night and we take turns picking out the movie and food. My choice last Wednesday was Men in Black with Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith. I made potato, cheese and onion pirogi. It makes a brief appearance in the movie. Watch it and see.

Men in Black Ah! Pirogi!

The dough

• 2-1/2 cups flour (plus a little more for rolling)
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 egg
• 2 tbs sour cream
• 1/2c lukewarm water

The filling

• 3 medium potatoes, boiled & mashed
• 1/2 onion, diced and sauteed in butter or olive oil
  
• 1/4 c sharp cheddar, grated
• salt & pepper

Mix all the ingredients together until a kind of lumpy dough is formed. Kneed the dough a few times. It should be sticky. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate a couple of hours or, even better, overnight. Meanwhile, prepare filling by mixing together the ingredients listed. Flour a surface and roll the dough out to about 1/16 inch (very thin, like ravioli). Use a cookie cutter or a glass to cut rounds out of the dough. Place a teaspoon of the filling in the center of the dough, brush the edges with water and fold in half, pinching the edge to seal the filling inside.

Bring a pot of water to boil and drop in pirogi 5 or 6 at a time. Let them boil until they float. You can serve them like this but I like to saute them in some butter. I serve them with sauted onions and muhrooms and sour cream. Yum.

AHHHHHH!!!!!

GAAAHHHH!!!!!!!

Still trying to get maximum fit in limited space. Refuse to cut any more plants. Saw the Van Doren Moon and Stars watermelon (purple and yellow!) in the Seed Savers Exchange catalog. Don't know what to do.

Would that all of life was as pleasantly diverting (and exasperating) as sitting on the sofa, eating Valentine's Day chocolates and trying to plan the garden.

Time's ticking by! Gotta at least get the leeks started soon.

Firewood in February

This is all that's left of the dry firewood. Let's hope this warming trend continues.

For those folks thinking about switching to firewood to heat their houses during the winter, I offer this bit of advice. If you live in a small cape, are heating exclusively with wood, have a modern, high-efficiency woodstove insert, and live someplace like Maine where the cold weather starts in October and can go until April, get three cords of wood. Two just won't cut it.

We wondered how much wood we would go through. Now we know.

Guess who's coming to dinner?

I'm sad to say that due to the limited size of my February Fantasy Dinner Party (sponsored by VP at Veg Plotting), there had to be some snubbing. Perhaps my "B" list guests will forgive me and attend a future Fantasy Luncheon sometime.

My first guest is promptly escorted to the kitchen to help me prepare dinner. Rob Evans of Hugos in Portland does amazing things with local products and while we're cooking, I plan to grill him for interesting things to do with radishes.

We're cooking a seafood feast straight from his menu and filled with lots of local things. We start with a lobster and parsnip bisque with homemade oyster crackers, then move on to Maine shrimp risotto with parsley, smoked tomato butter and preserved lemon. Next, we celebrate the fact that the state allowed some scallop fishing this year with Maine sea scallops, braised endive, cranberry, and orange butter sauce. Rob and I debate back and forth on dessert and decide that we're going to serve both the bittersweet chocolate brownie with vanilla creme fraiche, espresso caramel ice cream and cashew croquant and the local blushing granny apple confit with brown butter ice cream, cider froth, cinnamon doughnut and caramel.

My great Uncle Lester shows up with armloads of forced forsythia and narcissis. He eyes dinner with a bit of suspicion, but I smile because I know that once he tastes it, he's gonna love it. We chat about the house and where my gardens are and we discuss my veggie garden space problem and he suggests ways to take over the rest of the yard with gardens.

As if on cue, Eliot Coleman arrives with a basketfull of fresh veggies picked this morning in his hoop house. Rob whips up something totally amazing with the surprise bounty and conversation shifts to the best place to put the hoop house, how to make the most out of growing all year and ends up with Uncle Lester and Eliot discussing the best way for me to build a root celler. I dash off to get a notebook so I can remember all the ideas later.

My last two guests arrive together and right on time. It turns out that Eleanor Roosevelt offered to give Jane Austin a ride to the party. They have been discussing the merrits of having a garden and how it is good not only for the spirit, but also how it benefits society.

After dinner, I resort to bringing out photos of last year's garden to give my guests an idea of what I'm working with. Eliot and Eleanor solve my vegetable garden space issue and Jane and Uncle Lester work out the landscaping for around the granite benches and in the flower beds by the pool. I show Rob sketches of our outdoor kitchen idea and he suggests some herbs that I never considered growing.

We finish the evening with boardgames, Tom Dean, and coffee and only when it's too late do we realize that it has been snowing since Jane and Eleanor arrived and now everyone has to stay over. We'll have to continue all the food and garden goodness over breakfast!

Who's coming to your dinner party?

To Brandywine or not to Brandywine

I'm still charting out seeds to make sure I have room for all the stuff I want to grow this year. There are already items that have been cut like the butternut squash, the watermelon, one of the two varieties of cauliflower and the onions. There's just no room in the veggie beds this year.

The Brandywine tomatoes are teetering on the edge of being axed from the list. On the one hand, I'm not really fond of tomatoes, I am already growing plum tomatoes which are great in sauces, salsas and dried and Brandywines have a fairly long growing time - almost 20 days longer to maturity than the Juliets that I'm definitely growing.

On the other hand, I want to like tomatoes more and Brandywine has a reputation for exceptional tastiness. Tomatoes have always grown well for me and I'm intrigued by this variety. Oh, the delemma!

Anyone out there grown Brandywine tomatoes and can offer a perspective?

Photo used without permission from Johnny's Seeds.

Portland Flower Show

This year's Flower Show is almost here! Doors open to the public on Thursday, March 12 at 10AM and it goes until the plant auction on Sunday.

Tickets can be purchased at most of the larger local greenhouses and at Hannifords. You can find more information about this year's show on the PFS website. Now, pardon me while I go do my happy dance of "It's Almost Spring" joy.