Garden Recovery Soup

This soup was made after I pruned back a few of the garden plants after our torrential week of rain.  I used odds and ends from the garden and kitchen, so feel free to adjust amount or play with ingredients according to what you have on hand.  Basically, veggies + greens + broth = delicious.

The ingredients:

- 1/2 tbsp butter
- 12 baby carrots
- 6 small beets with greens
- 1 large zucchini
- 1 lb kale
- 1.5 boxes of chicken or beef broth (I used both)
- 3 chili peppers (adjust to your heat tolerance)
- 1 tsp chili paste (optional)
- salt and pepper to taste

Wash zucchini, kale, carrots, beets and greens well.  Chop zucchini, kale, carrots, beets and beet greens into bite sized pieces (~ 1-2").  Thinly slice chili peppers.  In large pot, saute the beets, carrots and zucchini in butter with a dash of salt for about 5 minutes over medium heat.  Add beet greens and kale, and cook for another 5 minutes.  Add chili peppers and paste, and cook for 1 minute.  Add broth and bring to simmer.  Simmer on low until veggies and greens are tender.  Add salt and pepper to taste.

Enjoy!

The toll of Hawaiian weather...

So...the garden has grown a wee bit.  The last few weeks have had interesting weather here in the islands.  We had torrential rain for a week that culminated in a hail storm with tornadoes.  The Canuck and I were trying to figure out the best watering schedule for the different plants.  I think he was watering too much, and he thought I didn't water enough.  Anyway, nature taught us that different plants like different amount of water (go figure...).  So, to remind you, this was the front of the garden before:

Nice little lettuces, kale, etc.  We had the week of flooding rain, and then were away from the garden for a week...we came back to this:

The lettuces had bolted like it was nobody's business...  Bolting is basically when a plant goes to flower and seed.  Those tall stalks on the lettuces are the bases of their flowers.  Unfortunately, when many plants bolt, it causes the leafy bits to become bitter.  The plant focuses all of its energy towards flower production, and sugars are channeled away from the leaves.  The result is inedible lettuce (well, you can still technically eat it, but it doesn't taste so great).  I think this happened because after the week of rain the plants got no water and began to stress out.  So, there goes the lettuce.

Next, the Thai basil did the same:

It had the biggest flowers I'd yet seen.  I'm not sure if I've saved it yet...might be too late.  I'll try some leaves this weekend, but I took off all the flowers.

And the back?  Well...as a reminder, in the beginning it looked like this:

Now after:

Here, the snow peas on the end are going crazy.  No pods have really developed, except for skinny ones, but there are lots of flowers so the crop may be around the corner.  The zucchini were huge as you can see, but I think they got too much water.  You can see the leaves beginning to turn white and wilt.  I think it's a mildew problem.  I need to fix that this weekend.

Before:

After:

 It's like a jungle out there...  Granted, the weeds aren't helping, but the plants have gone crazy.  The bok choy, basil, tomatoes and string beans obviously didn't mind the rain so much.  Even the bell pepper plants are finally producing healthy fruit.  Good to know...some plants will just receive more water now than others.  The pumpkins did not fare so well.  They were all shriveled and not happy looking.  The cucumbers were done for...but that had been happening for a while.  This weekend the garden needs a good weeding, sluggo treatment, and pruning like whoa.  Last night I made a delicious soup from the garden though.  I harvested the kale, a couple hot peppers, a zucchini and some carrots and beets!

Aren't they so cute?  Tiny little things, but soooo tender and delicious.  I do believe those were the most delicious beets I've ever had.  So, using the carrots, beets, beet greens, 2 types of kale, zucchini, hot peppers, and some spices, this is what I got:

Yum.  Oh so yum.  It was a ton of food (I felt like I put so many veggies in), but I think it will only last me another serving and a half...I'm glad the Canuck likes the garden meals I prepare, but I forget how much boys eat...  I'll put a simple recipe for the soup up, but you'll soon learn my recipes can be frustrating.  I'm a cook through and through, not a baker.  I throw stuff together until it looks and tastes good...there is no regard for "proper" amounts or times.  It's all estimation and nothing is quite the same way twice.  But, they will be good guidelines for basic meals. 

Clocks always seem to move slower on Fridays...is it pau hana yet?

The Garden - and then there was green...

This is a post from my other blog about the garden I'm currently working on.  This weekend I'll take some more pictures because the plants are continuing to explode (but we're dealing with some casualties...tomatoes and cucumbers are proving difficult).  Happy reading:

I started a garden!  Well, I had some help.  And by help I mean the Canuck is sharing space in his yard, cut down trees, weeded, watered and got most of the seeds/seedlings we needed for the first round.  I think gardening is going to be a lifetime hobby for me.  As a biologist, I've never been squeamish about getting my hands dirty (which came in handy this week after an encounter with an animal infected with flesh eating bacteria...yeah....), and digging around in the dirt is something that makes the little kid in all of us smile.  I shall post updates of the garden as it grows because this will be a learning experience for me as well.  My family moved from an apartment to a townhouse so there was never much outdoor real estate to be had.  Plus my parents both came from large urban centers and their idea of a garden is the produce isle at the local market.  We had a communal garden plot for a year, and that was a lot of fun. A weathered old Spaniard named Nick helped us plant a garden full of pumpkin (we didn't grow a single pumpkin, even though every seed he handed us he called "pumpkin"...).  Unfortunately, we were not diligent in the upkeep of the garden, and I can only hope Nick is still there helping some other hapless suburbanite family plant another garden of "pumpkins."  Anyway, the garden began as a weedy pit of despair.  Then a month ago we weeded it, tilled it, shook our fists at it, and after enough blood, sweat, and tears were sacrificed to the garden gods, we had a bed that looked like this:

I apologize for the darkness...it was New Year's Eve and I had just remembered I should probably document this momentous event.  The gist of the picture is, it was nice clear soil with rocks demarcating the separate sections for plants.  All that was left of the Canuck's previous garden was an old rosemary bush.   Now, the garden looks like this:

It's alive!  Above we have Manoa lettuce, another kind of lettuce, kale, mint, chives, Thai basil, tomato, rosemary, tomato and lavender in the pot.  Here's the far end in more detail:

So that Thai basil plant there?  I've already cloned it, bwahaha!  Cloning animals has been an incredible and very recent achievement of zoological geneticists, but it turns out botanists have been doing it for millennia...who'd have thought?  All I had to do was snip off a branch from the basil plant, stick it in a cup of water, and a week later it had developed a new root system.   After the trials my sharks have given me, it's making botany look rather tempting...  Here is my new little basil plant between the pepper plants out back:

Yes, there is more garden!  And yes, it needs weeding...  Here we've got snow peas, squash, our high-tech scarecrow, my sad attempts at garlic, and potatoes:

Also, there are hot peppers, bell peppers, more tomatoes, cucumber, pumpkin (for real!), string beans, carrots and beets:

Let me tell you...carrots are very, very difficult to distinguish from the weeds that frequent the backyard.  I hope the carrots are what I left...  Here are some of the resulting pregnant plants!  A tomato (and a Canadian's attempt at using the macro setting):

Hot peppers!

Cucumber! Spiky little guy...

I could spend hours out there... 

So it begins...

Welcome to yet another enabler for my procrastination!  So what's the deals?  Deals is, I love food.  It's part of who I am as a human.  I am an organotroph and proud of it.  We humans cannot produce our own energy and so must consume organic compounds to survive.  Where do we get this organic matter?  Life has conveniently given us tasty little packets of energy called basically every other life form on the planet.  Animals, plant, fungi, bacteria, algae...I like 'em all.  This blog is a peek into my foodie thoughts.  I'm a researcher so I'll include sciencey food tidbits.  I've started a garden so I'll include gardening tips and tricks (although to be honest this is my first garden, so it'll be a learning experience for both of us).  I'm dirt poor so I'll be including ways to eat well on a budget.  Finally, I'll also include some recipes because I love cooking but can never manage to cook the same thing twice...perhaps this will help... 

So, my dear fellow organotrophs, please enjoy this little tribute to the most wonderful lifelong affair...eat well!

(above: a spice offering to the food gods, as prepared by Liz)