2011 Locally Grown Patio Produce

The crazy rains throughout May/June in New England, followed by some ridiculously hot temperatures and more rain have been good for my plant babies. Everyone talks about eating local and organic these days, but the money and access is always the rate limiting factor.

We are lucky enough to have our own little patch and okay weather to grow a bit of stuff. A small elevated patio, however is not really productive enough to feed our family of three which includes a ravenous toddler. Yes, you heard me... ravenous. We have yet to see the "picky" moniker that is so common these days. Probably because she has never really been offered dinosaur shaped nuggets, we never order off of the "kids menu" and she would rather eat a whole apple or pear than a Delmonte fruit cup. I can't tell you how many times people stop us and say, "is she going to eat the peel on that whole fruit?". Hmmm... why not, I eat the peel. Fruit cups have brainwashed society into thinking that kids will choke and die on apple and pear peels.

I think also the fact that she "helps" plant the garden by "digging" in the dirt with her kid sized trowel gives her an idea of where the food actually comes from. Post a comment or email me and I can send you some peer-reviewed journal articles providing positive evidence for this. And these are actual community based research trials done in schools, so it's not just anecdotal.

All that being said, I also belong to a organic produce delivery service, Boston Organics and have coordinated set-up a cluster distribution point for the World Peas Community Supported Agriculture group in Charlestown. Boston Organics takes care of the organic and World Peas does the local part (and often organic, but because they are small farmers, they can't afford the USDA certification most times).

Anyway, here are some of my backyard babies before they bear fruit (well more precisely veggies). I'll update the pictures once we get more blooms!

Happy growing!


Snap peas.


Sage and thyme (foreground) Bell pepper (background)


Zucchini (I think I need to thin these out)


Grape tomatoes, lavender and scarlet flax (in the smaller pots in front)


Chives atop of my rain collecting barrel.
We don't have a hose hookup since our patio is on top of the garage on the 2nd floor and the house hose hookup is downstairs by the back door. This is better anyway, because why let all that good rain go to waste?

Grilled Pork Stuffed Squid Tubes

I had a craving for this Vietnamese dish after watching a documentary on the Discovery Channel about the Humboldt squid invasion.

I found a couple of recipes online that described how to make this yummy treat that my mom used to make when I was a kid. I used to act as sous-chef, helping her clean the squid of its guts, ink sac and pseudo-spine. However, one of the aforementioned recipes said that to make life easier, I should buy the pre-cleaned frozen version.

So off to HMart we went on Memorial Day to procure the ingredients. Shopping with a toddler is always dicey, so I grabbed my items without carefully reading the labels.

To make sure that I didn't give us all food poisoning, I opted to stir-fry the ground pork, mushrooms and shallot filling the morning before I was going to stuff the tubes. Then, to my surprise, when I got home from work and pulled the defrosted box of squid out of the fridge, I noticed that there would be more work to be done!

Eek -- they weren't cleaned - eyes, guts, pseudo-spine and everything! Thankfully, L had fallen asleep in her stroller on the way home from school, so I had a window of opportunity! My childhood skills came in handy and I was able to de-gross the squid tubes handily!



Stuffed and grilled and delicious! I used toothpicks to "sew up" the tube ends so that the filling didn't come exploding outwards on the BBQ. Great with hot sauce!

The Littlest Sous-Chef

Okay, so this isn't really about food, but it does demonstrate an alternative use for all your pantry items. A warning that this takes a little creativity and concentration... especially for an 18 month old budding executive chef!

Crunchy, Salt, Pepper and Vinegar Kale Chips

We got a huge bunch of kale from Boston Organics on Friday and I wasn't totally psyched about it, until I saw this recipe for Kale Chips.



I modified it a little by not adding very much salt (used sea salt) and also adding pepper for some spiciness. Pretty tasty, I must say. I bet I could even get L to try it because she loves all things crunchy... all the better to crunch with (using all 8 of her choppers!)



But right now, she's too busy playing with her cardboard box from Target.

Happy 4th Fruit Pizza

This is about as patriotic one gets when one is a Canadian living in the U.S.!

I made a tasty tasty fruit pizza with refrigerator pizza dough, ricotta cheese, lemon zest, shredded fresh ginger, strawberries, raspberries and blueberries. The recipe that I modified called for grilling the pizza dough on the BBQ, but I thought it would give the pizza a strange meaty smoky flavour, so opted to do it in the oven instead.





Delicious!

Then Linnea got to try some cherries for the first time which made her look like some sort of patriotic blood sucker.


Hope everyone had a great weekend. Stay cool!

1st two times for Nom Nom Nom

Boston Organics Avocado and Breastmilk Mash!

Can I get a woot woot?!

Next step = Mum Mums with Momma...

Wanna try mah mum mum?!

Now I can smear mum mum AND avocado on mah face!

Wanna see me in action???!!

Spring has Sprung - It's time for Baby BBQ!

Spring was here briefly in New England which prompted us to break out the BBQ for the first time this season. Unfortunately it snowed again a couple of days after we BBQ'd, so I haven't been out on the patio since.

And don't worry, I didn't BBQ the baby, but I just noticed looking at these pictures that there were a lot of "baby" foods in this BBQ -- brussels sprouts = baby cabbage, baby corn and baby shrimp! Well these shrimp aren't really baby sized, but they are considerably smaller than the super jumbo shrimps I usually splurge on.




How can you not love any type of food called "Mr?". Although I don't really like "Mr. Sub" for all of my Canadian readers out there.



I have discovered that BBQ is a good way to cook when you have a baby because:
1) there is usually minimal clean up because it is done outside, so who cares if it's messy
2) daddy is more likely to help out because BBQ'ing is considered to be more "manly" than regular cooking
3) it forces you to go outside for some fresh air which sometimes is hard when you spend a lot of time with a cranky baby and don't want to be embarrassed by her "bad" behavior

Sprouts update

I'm pretty impressed at how quickly the mung beans have grown. They have already been harvested, cooked and enjoyed and it has been less than one week. The mustard sprouts are still growing their way into a sandwich so I'll give you another update on those later. I also recently received a Zesty Salad and Sandwich Mix, so that is next on my list to grow.

Here is what the mung beans and mustard sprouts look like after having soaked under water in the jars for night and being cozy in their new sprout home.



Then check out the mung beans after only 24 hours!



36 hours later...





And 96 hours later being showered before they meet the stir-fry pan.





Here they are featured with some grilled scallops that the hubbie grilled on the BBQ because he likes to think that grillin' is a man's job.



I probably could have waited a few more days before harvesting them so that they would get longer, but I was too impatient and wanted to taste them ASAP. Nice and crunchy and no worries about pesticides, fertilizer and dirt residue!

I think this would be a great science experiment/kitchen activity for kids. You could put them in charge of the twice daily rinsing of the sprouts so that they don't go funky and then they could be very proud of their involvement with meal prep. The added bonus is that the results are super fast which appeals to both the level of patience of me and that of a toddler!

Burnt Marshmallow Hot Chocolate (parental guidance advised)

I bought a bunch of Halloween themed Peeps intending to make Ghost Hot Chocolate, but everyone was too stuffed after eating the food that we never got around to making it. A few years ago, we inherited a culinary torch from a friend that was moving overseas. I don't make many desserts that require torching, so the torch has stayed in the original packaging until I had a very morbid yet delicious idea for its use.

I was a bit of a pyromaniac as a child. I never really burnt anything of significance down, but as my older brother will tell you, we used to spend a lot of time frying various critters of the insect kind with a magnifying glass in the backyard and also putting grapes in the microwave to start little mini-globe shaped fireworks. I also distinctly remember my brother putting a piece of raw meat near an open window with a screen and flaming the mosquitoes that landed outside with a lighter and an aerosol can. It's a wonder that we didn't turn out to have antisocial personality disorder with all the torturing of insects we did as children, but I guess that applies more to kids who torture animals that are cuter than bugs. Anyway, I digress.

I much prefer the taste of charred marshmallows to just melty ones. I know that the carbon is a carcinogen, but it's not as if burnt marshmallows are a staple of my diet, so I figure just once in awhile is okay.

So here goes, step-by-step:

1) Make some hot chocolate and buy some marshmallows (peeps or otherwise)



2) Float marshmallows in HC



3) Fire up your torch! Boooooooooo!!!



4) Ooh! A little too burnt, but smells lovely!



5) Turn crisped mallow over to get other side which will be a little harder to torch because it is wet, but will look quite lovely and inviting to drink!

Autumnal Crafts - Shrunken Apple Heads!

I don't normally like Martha Stewart but here is something that I saw on Boston.com that was Martha Stewart inspired that I got really excited about.

Shrunken apple heads! I remember making these with my babysitter when I was a wee one. She had a little wooden rocking chair and would make little bodies for them and everything. I am not that crafty, but I thought I would try it out since I am having a Halloween/Housewarming at the end of the month and these shrunken heads would add to the decor.

Assemble the ingredients for the shrunken head making. Essential items are the lemon and the salt so that the apples don't get all brown and nasty.



Here is what my apple heads looked like on the day of their birth...





And what they look like at two days old.



The green one started to get a little mold growth because I think I didn't have them stored in a dry enough place, but I tried to salvage him by carving off the mold. (image not shown because it was a little icky) I will post their progress through puberty into ripe old age over the weeks to come...

Let's "cook with a book" - cooking with kids!

Here goes some shameless family promotion. (For significantly more, see "My bro's page" in sites that make me hungry on the right hand side.) My niece, Fionna is both extremely cute and extremely smart. I'm saying this not only from a biased auntie's perspective, but from a professional perspective. I've seen a lot of kids in my line of work and Fionna and Abby (my younger niece) rank in the top 99th percentile of cute and smart. Yes, the confounding factor is the reporting by a family member, but I've already fully disclosed that conflict of interest.

Contributing to their cuteness/smartness factor, may be the fact that Fionna attends Montessori school where "play" is "work" and they are taught from the beginning that finding their own stuff to be interested in is key. This is clearly demonstrated by the phase that Fionna went through of shining silverware. She had a little toothbrush that she would use to clean some sort of candelabra at school so this translated into a lot of clean, shiny things at home as well.

So recently, she saw her mom cooking in the kitchen and so demanded that she also be allowed to "cook with a book". Only thing is she picked this book! Apparently to a young thing, all books can be cookbooks despite the lack of cooking instructions in this picture board book.



The following kitchen fun ensued and thus she will have a higher likelihood of being in the kitchen when she is a teenager than standing in the line at McDonald's? Is this how we should be addressing childhood obesity? Maybe, if only we could encourage her to make vegetables instead of cupcakes in a 10:1 ratio then we'd be successful!








If our vegetables containers had cute silicon feet like this cupcake holder, I bet it would be easier. Also of note, is the way our genetics cause us to "house" food in the same manner.