J'ai besoin de la France

Today's blog is a little self-indulgent--that's what happens when one has too much time on one's hands.

I am patiently waiting for the phase of the moon to change so that I can plant more beets and transplant flowers, more broccoli seedlings, and sage cuttings. In my idle hours, I went to the grocery store and found these beautiful sunflowers marked down. Rambling around the yard, I picked a few things that were blooming, which included Spanish bluebells and vinca major, dogwood, azaleas, a Gerber daisy, and a rosebud.

After arranging them, I noticed I had paired the sunflowers with bluebells and vinca, and this reminded me of traveling to Provence in the south of France where sunflowers adorned linens and lavender bloomed profusely along the roads, especially going into the Luberon out of Apt. I smiled.

And I remembered what I tell my traveling friend Glenna: bring a little of France into your everyday life. So I did. I reveled in my flowers, and tonight I will enjoy a leisurely meal with my husband and a glass (or two) of good wine as I wait for the moon to cooperate with my itchy green thumb!

For the other arrangement, I used the flowers I had enjoyed last week to fill my teapot. I use this teapot only in the spring for the azaleas and dogwoods, daffodils and Spanish bluebells. I waited too late for the daffodils. As I was arranging last week's sunflowers, the petals began to fall off. I ripped them off two of the flower heads and noticed something: They reminded me of Van Gogh's sunflowers. My memory may be poor, but I believe some of the flowers may have been painted without the yellow petals. Either way, they are beautiful.

Well, this is a food blog, so I suppose I should end on a food note! In the garden, I have five potato plants sprouting leaves and two rows of beet seedlings have pushed their way through the soil. I've never grown either before, and I'm so excited to see them growing.

Leave me a comment. Tell me what you're doing to bring a special memory into your home. Or, maybe you're planting something new in the garden. I'd like to hear about it.

C'est tout!

To Be (a Locavore), or Not to Be (a Locavore); That is The Question

That really is the question. After reading Barbara Kingsolver's book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, which is as entertaining as it is informative, I have been plagued by one more aspect of my eating habits. For those of you who don't know the premise behind the book, Kingsolver and her family left their home in California to return to the family farm in the South with a resolve to eat only locally. The family agreed that each person could have one non-local food item (I agree with the selection of coffee and bananas!), and all other foods would come from their garden/homestead or the local farmers market. They began with vegetables but expanded their project to include turkeys, chickens, and beef, as I recall. It was an effort of love, research, patience, and experimentation, all of which Kingsolver chronicles in her book. I would give more specifics, but I think I lent the book to someone (I'm getting more careless/carefree in my lending habits).

We have friends in British Columbia who are growing and buying as much as they can, if not all, of their food locally, but what of the rest of us who don't live on a farm or in a bountiful agricultural area or in an area that supports favorite foods? For example, I love asparagus but am not a huge fan of collard greens. Unfortunately, sources abound for collard greens, but there doesn't seem to be a local source for asparagus even though it can be grown in the South. Instead, we usually have to choose asparagus from Peru or Mexico or some other locale thousands of miles away--so we choose not to buy asparagus except on special occasions. If our experimentation goes well this year, we may plant asparagus next year and wait three years for the first harvest.

I'm sure some people dismiss the idea of eating only locally because it is so difficult to eat 100 percent local fare. Even Earth Fare's idea of local is produce from North Carolina, and they violate the local premise by importing some of their red peppers from Israel and some of their beef from Australia. There are times I must decide if it's more responsible to buy from Mexico or California. In part, that is why we decided to expand our gardening efforts this year.

Anthony and I don't begin to pretend that we eat 100 percent local food, but we do try to be as local as possible. Blooming Colors, which is where I took the above photo a couple of years ago, has a market place offering wonderful, fresh goat cheese from a local farm (in Tallapoosa County, I think) and vegetables from Auburn and the surrounding area. Not everything is local, but quite a few items are. We also participate in Randle Farms CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) and purchase 98 percent of our meat, most of our eggs, and some vegetables and fruit from them. The Randles grow their food using sustainable, organic practices. They offer half shares of meat and you can split a vegetable share with a friend as we did this season. Email them for details if you're interested.

Why eat local? Some say that it saves on fossil fuels, though I found a site on the web that disagrees with that premise. Everyone, I think, could agree that local food tastes better than food shipped from, say, Peru. I know that our decision to eat more locally and grow what we can is based in part on trying to save fossil fuels and having fresher food, but it's also about supporting local, small businesses and farms, and loosening the grip of giant corporations on our food supply. We don't like the practices of international corporations and their increasing control over the food supply. Every little bit an individual does helps, or so I like to think.

If you're interested in starting your own local, food-growing "experiment," you're just in time. The season is right and resources are a key stroke away. I started my planning phase with a book by Rosalined Creasy titled Edible Landscaping. The National Gardening Association has a website with tips, as does Mother Earth News and universities and extension services, including ACES. The good news is you don't need a lot of space in one area because you can spread plantings throughout your front and back yard where the light best fits your growing needs. If you live in an apartment, you can try a method called vertical gardening.

So, get gardening! It's therapeutic as well as delicious!

Good Things Grow in Compost

If you've ever started a new garden in the Alabama clay soil, you know what it means to amend soil. Last year we didn't worry about amending the little garden we started in an area of the backyard that had served as an herb garden because the soil seemed decent enough. This year, we doubled the size of the bed, which necessitated bringing in more dirt in the form of mushroom compost, peat moss, and top soil.

We also decided to start a compost bin to reduce the waste we put into the landfill and to have a source of rich soil we can add each year to the garden. Using some old wooden pallets Anthony found, we built a pretty primitive compost bin, and we've been adding egg shells, kitchen scraps, coffee grounds and leaves. The other day, I walked out to the compost pile to empty a container of kitchen scraps, and what to my wondering eyes should appear but lots of little green seedlings. The organic butternut squash guts that I threw into the pile weeks ago germinated!

Of course, this is the wrong phase of the moon to plant them. I can either take a chance and plant them now (the waning moon and the time for root crops) or wait until Saturday. They appear to be doing quite well in their temporary bed, but we're not adding to the compost pile or able to turn it while they "rest" there. All sources about composting will say that turning is important to speed decomposition. The Alabama Cooperative Extension Service says that a well managed compost pile will decompose in two to four months whereas a poorly tended one will take about a year to decompose. The link above will provide some basic information about composting. Food scraps that don't include meat or fats, grass clippings, leaves, and paper (avoid paper with colored inks and petroleum-based inks) are all good compostable materials.

The benefits of compost are many. Not only do you reduce the amount of garbage you add to the landfill, but compost helps poor soils become more arable. If you are trying to grow food without the use of pesticides and commercial fertilizers, compost is one step in achieving that goal. Mother Earth News magazine's April/May 2011 issue may provide some incentive to begin composting with its article about killer compost. Follow the link to read the entire on-line article.

The article begins with a warning: "Do not bring compost into your garden from outside sources unless you're certain it was made from herbicide-free materials." The article focuses on one particular type of aminopyralid herbicide from Dow AgroSciences known as Milestone and related herbicides sold under the brands Confront, Curtail, Forefront, Hornet, Lontrel, Millenium Ultra, Reclaim, Stinger and Transline. Reports of crop poisonings related to this herbicide come from Montana, North Carolina, Washington, and Pennsylvania. Googling the herbicide, I saw links to reports of problems in the UK as well, and it is evidently used in forestry applications. The thought is that this poison made its way into compost via manure and persists in soil for years rather than weeks as Dow claims.

Mother Earth News suggests contacting Dan Kenny of the EPA's Technical Review Branch at 703.305.7546 or at kenny.dan@epa.gov to voice your concern and to ask the EPA to take action on this problem. According to Mother Earth, the EPA granted conditional approval of Milestone in 2005 despite inconsistencies in Dow's Environmental Fate and Ecological Risk Assessment report.

Though I haven't yet seen an article naming this problem in Alabama, I did find an ACES release listing aminopyralid herbicides for controlling thistle weed on pasture land, so I suspect it may be a problem in our state as well. Sounds like a good reason to start your own compost bin!

Our Daily Bread

As a little girl, I can remember going to my Grandma Flo's house for a week or two in the summer and eating home made bread morning, noon, and night--with real butter. If you need to put on weight, it's an excellent way to do it; unfortunately, I did not need to gain weight.

Ever since then, I've always wanted to make my own bread. I've done it a few times with success, but after moving into an old and drafty house, the temperature is never quite right for letting dough rise. I gave up. Until I read about and purchased Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois. Last night, finding the dough bursting out of every seam and opening in the container, I was forced to make bread before going to bed, but it was soooo easy. The beauty of the basic technique in this book is that you mix your ingredients in a container that isn't completely airtight and that is big enough to allow for expansion of the dough--and you throw it in the refrigerator until you're ready to bake. Your dough keeps for 14 days, allowing you to make up to four one-pound loaves during that time.

When you decide you're ready to bake, simply grab a one pound hunk from your container, shape it, and let it rest on the counter while your oven preheats. When the oven is ready, add a broiler pan of hot water on the bottom rack for steam, and bake for 35 minutes. How easy is that! The bread comes out brown and crisp on the outside while being soft and chewy on the inside. Delish!

Purists will be disappointed that there is no kneading. And, I admit, I miss that a little bit myself. However, it is so quick and easy to do, I can accept the trade-off in order to have fresh bread at the drop of a hat. I can always make a traditional loaf if I have the time and inclination.

Anthony likes the sandwich thins you can buy at the store, so my attempt at doing sandwich thins at home is to make four small, flat "buns" when I make one boule of bread. Caution: You the small, flat buns take less time to cook, so you have to watch them or might might end of with hard discs for skeet shooting. I have four available for anyone who's planning on skeet shooting in the near future.

Again, you can control your ingredients so that you know exactly what you're eating. The book contains basic bread recipes for white and whole grain breads as well as recipes to vary the basics.

Meatless Meals

Our youngest daughter is giving up meat for Lent. Thinking there may be readers out there who are doing the same, I decided to share the recipe--and a few related facts--about this dish: "Two Potato and Beet Hash with Poached Eggs and Greens."

Removing meat entirely--or even partially-from your diet has health and environmental benefits. Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health partnered with other university public health and communications organizations in 2009 to begin a now international movement called "Meatless Mondays" to promote the practice of reducing meat consumption for healthier bodies and a healthier planet. For your health, reducing your meat intake, particularly red and processed meats, lowers your risk for certain cancers, heart disease, and type 2 diabetes. For the planet, a reduced meat diet conserves fossil fuels and fresh water. According to research gathered by Meatless Mondays, 1,800 to 2,500 gallons of water are used in the production of 1 pound of beef, and it takes 40 calories of fossil fuel for every calorie of feedlot beef.

I know, I know. I can already hear some people say that they don't eat red meat, so this information is not relevant to their lives. I think, though, regardless of what meat we may eat, their are environmental costs to producing and transporting that meat from the factory/farm to the grocery store. Our family eats meat, but 98 percent of our meat comes from a local farm--Randle Farms. This family farm uses sustainable practices for meat production and vegetable production.

I've provided a link for the recipe pictured above (just click on the recipe name). I varied it a little bit. We had some leftover butternut squash, which I used in place of the sweet potato; and we had small red potatoes, which I used in place of the Yukon Gold potatoes.

Don't be afraid of poaching an egg. Until last year, I had never poached an egg. I think the secret is adding a little vinegar to the water and having fresh eggs. Usually my eggs are a little ragged on the edges--this is the first PERFECTLY poached egg I have ever made!

If you're interested in adding more flavorful vegetarian meals to your diet, I highly recommend Vegetarian Suppers by Deborah Madison. You can find it on eBay for under $10. Also, check out "Ten Tips for Meatless Meals" on the MedicineNet.com website.

Dressed for Success

This is, admittedly, a terrible photo, but my defense is that I took it with my husband's camera at 6:55 p.m. on manual setting without a flash--I couldn't figure out how to make the flash pop up. Given that, I'd say it wasn't a bad photo, just not what I would like to publish.

This is one of seven broccoli seedlings that I planted Feb. 6. I thought I had planted broccoli and spinach, but after seeing the spinach sprout in the garden, I think that I somehow planted only broccoli.

Broccoli in the spring may be an exercise in futility, at least in Dixie. I remember hearing that the only good time to grow it in the South is in the fall. But, this year's garden is really one big experiment. I've grown broccoli from plants purchased at Lowe's, but I've never tried growing it from a teeny, tiny seed. This is experiment No. 1.

As for the title of this posting--do you see the tiny cardboard ring around the base of the plant? The Healthy Garden Handbook by Mother Earth News suggests putting tarpaper collars around the base of broccoli seedlings to prevent cabbage maggots from gnawing the tender stem. I didn't have tarpaper, so I cut strips from a toilet paper roll and "dressed" each seedling before planting it.

If this garden experiment works--even modestly--we probably won't have saved any money this year (Anthony calls it the $1,000 garden), but we'll have better broccoli than you can buy at the store because it will be fresher than anything you can get at the store--and more nutritious. And, we'll be happier knowing that fossil fuels weren't used in the cultivation or transportation of our veggies.

Rooting in the Garden

Thinking I hadn't ordered seed potatoes in time--and too eager to wait for their arrival anyway--I cut up four small red organic potatoes that I bought from Earth Fare last month. If my information was correct, an organic potato from the grocery store can sprout and grow into potatoes in the garden, but a run-of-the-mill spud from the store cannot. We shall see.

Unfortunately, I don't know what variety they are; they are simply small red potatoes. I do know, however, they are not one of the three deemed worthy of McDonald's french fries. Follow the link to read more about McDonald's and its influence on potato growers. The site where I obtained the info says it cannot be redistributed or rewritten. After reading the article, I am puzzled. One of the favorite varieties of McDonald's is costly to produce and not very environmentally friendly. Why, oh why, then, are McFries so inexpensive? I think it has something to do with the way our government hands out subsidies. You can go to McDonald's and get a value meal for cheap that is filled with high fructose corn syrup, fat, and many calories. The movies King Corn and Food, Inc., can tell you about the corn, and Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation, which I mentioned in an earlier post in January, can tell you about the real costs of your happy meal. Fast Food Nation was recently listed in the Audubon Magazine as one of the top ten books on sustainable food. See other choices by following the link.

Well, enough about potatoes. While I was hard at work planting potatoes, beet seeds, green onion seeds, and carrot seeds, Anthony was rolled up like a pupa in his hammock reading. I'm just giving him a hard time. He was actually decimating the backyard, making it less jungle-ish.

Even though I only planted seeds yesterday, I felt as though garden were fuller despite the vast coffee-colored soil and dots of greenery here and there. I think I was "fuller" from the good gardening vibes and dose of vitamin D from being in the sunshine.

First Fruits

Waiting for the moon; and by all accounts, this super moon should be worth the wait. Be that as it may, it doesn't help me get my garden planted. As I wait--both anxiously and eagerly, I'm enjoying seeing glimpses of the future bounty. This tiny fig, I hope, will join others in a manchego cheese, prosciutto, and fig sandwich later in the summer. If both produce well, and I can beat the birds to the bounty, I hope to make fig preserves this year. Maybe my friend Glenna's mother will share her recipe.

You can also see the blueberry bushes that caused such a problem last weekend. They've been pruned and have blossoms. Today, we bought four strawberry plants to add to the two already planted in the same bed.

I had seedlings to show, too, but I can't get my pictures to cooperate--they want to bunch together despite being added at different times. So for now, this will do.

Tomorrow begins the waning moon, and it will be a good day to plant my potatoes, beets, and carrots.

If you have a minute, watch the video clip from NASA about super moons.

Ravioli Cook-off!

The phase of the moon is the most barren right now--until March 19--so I have no planting news to share. And I have no camera (that will change by this weekend) with which to take new photos, so I'm pulling a pic from about a month ago.

I know. It's St. Patty's Day, which would call for something Irish, but this is what you get instead. I hope to inspire you with the notion that making your own pasta is not an insurmountable task!

Yes, you see a drill. Our dear friends, Deli (in the pic with me) and Lucas come to family dinner from time to time, and we make it a cooking Event--yes, with a capital "E"! On this particular day, we decided we would make home-made ravioli with our own pasta rather than won ton wrappers, which may be perfectly fine but why not use the real thing? The dough was made--he made one and I made another--when we discovered that I could not find the handle to my manual pasta maker. Oh my! What would we do! Anthony came up with the solution: Why, use the power drill, of course! So that is what we did. That was the biggest challenge of the day, so ANYBODY can make pasta. We started at 2 p.m. and ate by about 4:30 p.m. Not too bad.

I call this a cook-off, but it's really in fun that we have our "challenges". Lucas is a marvelous cook, and he made a sauce he concocted years ago. It was Divine--yes, with a capital "D"! We had three types of stuffing: sweet potato; lamb; and brie, mushroom, shallot, and garlic. We also had a brown butter and sage sauce.

Deli is our dessert goddess and made a wonderful chocolate cake. Soooo good!!

So, next time you have a free afternoon and a couple of friends, break out the pasta machine (and a power drill if necessary) and create a wonderful meal with wonderful memories. You'll know exactly what went into the food you made, and you'll have fun, too.

Say "NO" to the King of GMO

I've been stuck inside for two days because of work and rain, so there is no planting news to report (is that a collective sigh across the Internet I'm hearing?). The good news is that in the world of food, one is never lacking a topic. Today I opened a small weekly, The Auburn Villager and found a column by Bita Bullet (a pseudonym) talking about rising food prices and the crisis that continued increases pose for America. Food crisis. This is a common thread in articles and discussions these past few days.

My husband and I were looking at news photos after the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, and one of the photographs showed empty shelves at the market. Whether snowstorm or tsunami, natural disasters seem to trigger a similar response: everyone heads to the store so they can stock up on essentials. Food crisis.

I open my inbox today and see a newsletter from the Organic Consumers Association, and inside this newsletter, I read more about food crises, or perhaps how to avert crisis. The first article contained an excerpt and link to a United Nations report titled "Agroecology and the Right to Food." If you follow the link, you can read the full report for yourself, but let me give you a few of the findings. Implementing agroecological techniques, or environmentally sustainable techniques, in developing countries increased food production by as much as 79 percent. According to the report, such practice "also puts agriculture on the path of sustainability by delinking food production from the reliance on fossil energy (oil and gas)" (page 13) and allows food producers to better respond to challenges brought about by climate change.

This brings me to the next article and the reason for the post. There are also two articles about Monsanto and genetically modified crops in the OCA newsletter. The first article is urging readers to go a Month without Monsanto, and it continues by saying how difficult a task this may be, particularly if you don't already eat organic foods. GMO crops, of which Monsanto is one of the largest producers, if not the largest, proliferate in corn, soy, cotton, sugar beets, and alfalfa. OCA is urging people to contact their U.S. representatives to fight for truth in labeling so that consumers know when they are getting GMO foods, which is expanding into animal products if a company called AquaBounty is approved for the first GMO animal destined for our dinner tables.

What's the harm? Well, the truth is, no one really knows because independent scientific studies are few and far between. There is a suggestion that GMO's contribute to food allergens, but we don't really know. We do know that GMO products are hard to control, infecting organic crops, and sending small farmers into court if a renegade Monsanto seed winds up in their fields. Hmmm. What's wrong with that picture.

OCA is asking everyone to join in the fight and create a Million Against Monsanto Chapter for his or her Congressional District. Follow the link for more information.

It's easy to get discouraged when fighting against multi-billion dollar, multi-national corporations, but take heart with this example from Fast Food Nation: "In the Spring of 2000, McDonad's informed Lamb Weston and the J.R. Simplot Company that it would no longer purchase frozen french fries made from genetically engineered potatoes. As a result, the two large processors told their growers to stop planting genetically engineered potatoes--and sales of Monsanto's New Leaf, the nation's only biotech potato, instantly plummeted." (Schlosser 269)

That's because Americans said "No to GMO."

Blueberry Blues

It only took an extra day, but the blueberries have been planted. I ordered two Climax and two Premium, for cross-pollination and for different ripening times. Rather than four plants, I had seven. Thank you TyTy Nursery! This all sounds very good, doesn't it, so why have I titled this post "Blueberry blues" you might ask. Well, that is because somehow Anthony lost my camera after taking a picture of me setting the blocks for the blueberry bed. I am not a happy camper, and that is not the photo I would have taken for the blog--it is a stock photo. Our bushes look like sticks right now; a few twigs have buds on them. If you live in Alabama, you can find information on planting blueberry bushes (anything for that matter) on the Alabama Cooperative Extension System's website.

The blueberry bushes are planted in the front row and should give us some beautiful fall color and some privacy screening once they are established. Something to look forward to.

We also planted four raspberry bushes in the backyard. If we can fight the birds and get them first, we should have blueberries, raspberries, and figs harvested from our yard next summer. If we get any berries this year, they might be only enough for one or two yogurt breakfasts.

I still haven't planted those tomato seeds; maybe tonight.

Planting!

You see behind Little Man tomato plants that came from Lowe's today. Confession: I had vowed to plant only heirloom tomato plants, but I've yet to plant the seeds. I'm a little nervous about the seed-planting thing. How far we humans have gotten from our food!

So, Anthony (the husband) and I went to Lowe's to get the materials we needed to place a raised bed of blueberries in the front yard. That disaster is a topic for another day--maybe tomorrow after we lay them in the bed. But, during one of our trips to Lowe's, we looked at the discount plant racks and found a beautiful Gerber daisy, some cosmos, and a container of budding, fruit-setting tomato. We were able to get three separate plants from the container. They may not be heirloom tomatoes, but they are insurance: We WILL have tomatoes (if only a few).

It was a frustrating day because we didn't get the blueberry bed set and planted before the sun came down. It was a good day because we were outside, playing in the dirt, getting our hands dirty together. I thought about how much money we're spending on this experiment, and I thought: So what! We are out in the beautiful weather, working together under blue sunny skies, and we're touching life; life that may actually feed us. But, if it doesn't feed our bodies, it has fed our souls. And don't we all need a little soul-feeding?

Spring Planting

With the beautiful weather we've been having, it's hard to show restraint and NOT begin planting. The husband and I have used the past several weeks of warm weather to do garden chores: breaking up concrete to double the garden bed; amending soil; building a compost bin; buying seeds; studying planting by the moon. Yes, planting by the moon. I read where a gentleman in England experimented on his potatoes, planting some according to the moon (a waning moon for underground crops) and some at a different time. He said you could see the difference. Not exactly a guarantee, but it is encouraging.

In the whiskey barrel, you can see the violas that look so happy and smell so sweet, spires of red onion, and miscellaneous greenery--lettuce mix. I hope to be able to plant some cherry tomatoes in here for the summer.

We've planted another fig, and blueberries and raspberries are waiting for their beds to be prepared. Red onions are in the ground, and I planted sugar snap peas Friday. Sage is cut into mini-plants for rooting and sharing, and a few seedlings of broccoli and spinach have pushed through the soil and begun sprouting their first sets of true leaves. Today is the second day of the second quarter moon, the waxing moon; and according to moon-planters, never plant on the first day of any moon phase. I'm waiting patiently for the weekend. That is the recommended day to plant raspberries, but seeds rot in the ground. I'm a wee bit late for tomato seedlings, but my plan is to start them Sunday or Monday. It could be my eagerness to plant is ahead of actual planting, in which case, I'll be starting them right on time.

We'll see how this whole business of planting by the moon goes. I'll keep you posted. Check out Farmer's Almanac for more information about planting by the moon.