Garden update.

I’ve been slowly working on getting the garden planted over the past six weeks and getting the few remaining areas from the winter garden cleaned up. I got my first haul of spring produce a couple of weeks ago: Onions, Cilantro, and hot and bell peppers. Almost everything I need for pico de gallo.

A small harvest of goodies

While working in one of the flower beds earlier this month, we found nine monarch caterpillars happily munching on the Butterfly weed we’d planted.

The monarch butterfly crop is doing well #gardenchat

Dual dinners 8 total monarch caterpillars

We did find three chrysalises up under the bird bath, but we didn’t get to watch any of them hatch.
One of the monarch chrysalises.  There are two more that have hatched!

Everything is starting to bloom – Tomatoes and watermelon vines especially
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And there’s growth everywhere.
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But the best part, is finding little bits of fruit and veggie goodness all over the garden.
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The first cherry tomatoes of the year

Garden Cleanup Has Commenced

A couple weeks ago, my partner and I began cleaning up his mother’s garden. She’s got some health issues so what has traditionally been her garden and my garden are more than likely going to be merged over the next few weeks and made into one big garden. It took us a couple days but we got her garden which covered with knee-high oats (from the liberal doses of horse poo she puts on her garden) cleaned up and ready for planting.

We found brussel sprouts, swiss chard, and cabbages once we got all the weeds out of the way!
Bob's most excellent tilling job

You can see some of the stuff we pulled out of the garden leaning up against the house. Look at all the peas!
Peas, chard, and Brussel sprouts

This weekend, for me, the focus has been on cleaning up my garden and getting it ready for the merge as well. More than likely, my part will become a corn patch and where we grow the viney stuff (watermelons, cantaloupe, and cucumbers for sure). But I’ve found some good stuff while cleaning my part of the garden up.

The first strawberries of the year
Strawberries are setting on

The sweet scent of Satsuma Orange Blossoms
Satsuma orange blossoms

Snails on the little bench that I use when weeding.
Found snails

I bought pepper and tomato plants for the garden as well. Here’s the first hot and bell peppers of the year.
First pepper of the year - from a Bulgarian carrot pepper plant

Bell pepper are coming on too!  Orange blaze is the variety

And here are the first tomato blossoms of the year.
Tomato blossoms

I also took the time to start some seeds yesterday.
Ready for seeds.  I am going to plant vorlons

Here’s what I planted:
12 Vorlon Tomatoes
12 Green Husk Tomatillos
12 Oaxacan Pink Slicing Tomatoes
8 Spaghetti Squash.

I’m hoping that by the end of today, I’ll have many of these plants in the ground and many more seeds put into pots for starting!

A Surprise Find in Downtown Houston

While walking into the office yesterday, I noticed that one of the planters out front had been decoratively planted with swiss chard. I was surprised to see a whole lot of veggie goodness being used as decoration.
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Shell Plaza and Tranquility Park has veggies growing in containers. But I wonder what they are going to do with the swiss chard when it gets too big?

And the Dreaming Starts

I spent my time this afternoon away from my desk and gazing at seed catalogs. Even though it was a bit on the nippy side today, I wanted to be outdoors in my garden.

The beginning of 2012 garden dreams

What do you have planned for your garden this year? I’m actually planning two gardens. One over where I have gardened for the last 3 years and another at my apartment.

Greetings in the New Year

I hope everyone had a Happy New Year and has set their intentions for the new Year.

I spent some time working in the garden today cleaning up the onion patch. Apparently, all that dry weather we had this past summer has activated the thistle seeds in southeast Texas. I’ve pulled some dooseys during the last few times in the garden and Mrs. B has been working on getting the thistles out of the yard and feeding them to the chickens.

One of my goals for 2012 be more hyperlocavore in my food choices. That means that I will be relying on my garden more for veggies/fruits and spending my food dollars on things I can’t grow myself (meat, cheese, and dairy) at the local farmers markets. One of my goals for this week is to start some Lettuce Seed (just a few actually). This is almost prime time for lettuce growing in southeast Texas (you can still have a freeze sneak in for the next couple of months) and the great thing about lettuce is it can be grown in a container. There are also some really fabulous red lettuces that are quite tasty. So look for a post from me about starting lettuce and a few other plants in the next few days.

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The Word for 2012 – Deliberate

The past few months have been busy. Lots of travel for work, but more importantly, lot of time thinking and acting on where I want to go in my personal and professional life.

In Mid-November, a writer for Change magazine contacted me about some of my lifestyle choices (the article will be out in Jan 2012). These questions got me thinking about the choices I’ve made over the past few years and how they affected me. When Reverb11 started at the beginning of December, I had further reflections about the past year and started thinking about what I wanted for 2012. One of the questions I asked myself is “If I had to pick a word of intention for this next year, what would it be?” The word that bubbled up to the surface from all this reflection was “deliberate.”

de·lib·er·ate [adj. dih-lib-er-it; v. dih-lib-uh-reyt] Show IPA adjective, verb, -at·ed, -at·ing.
1. carefully weighed or considered; studied; intentional: a deliberate lie.
2. characterized by deliberation; careful or slow in deciding: a deliberate decision.
3. leisurely and steady in movement or action; slow and even; unhurried: a deliberate step.
4. to weigh in the mind; consider: to deliberate a question.

Thought for blog The past few weeks have been spent contemplating and practicing living a more deliberate life. I’m starting 2012 off with a consumer cleanse – no new books or gadgets for the three months of the year. I have so many books and movies that I’ve bought but haven’t read or watched. Its time to do that instead of buying more. It’s time to use my large stash of cookbooks for cooking at home. It’s time to start using my exercise books and the olympic weights and dumbbell set I have to get fit and healthy. These are a start for my deliberate choices for the new year.

I’ll also be doing some clean-up and streamlining of this blog. It’s overdue for a realignment and I realized in my musings that I really want to help people live a more sustainable life here in Houston.

Cream of Mushroom Soup

This year, instead of using cream of mushroom soup from a can as the base for my green bean casserole, I used a cream of mushroom soup recipe I found online and modified it slightly. The result is a wonderful, creamy soup with pieces of mushroom and onion you can see and taste.

Ingredients
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 small chopped onion
3 cups sliced fresh mushrooms (I used a mix of Crimini and Button Mushrooms)
6 tablespoons all-purpose flour
2 (14.5 ounce) cans chicken broth
1 cup half-and-half cream
1 teaspoon salt, divided
pepper to taste

In a large saucepan, saute onion in butter until tender. Add mushrooms and 1/2 tsp salt. Saute until tender. Add flour to pan and saute for a few minutes until the flour has cooked. Add broth, stirring the mushroom mixture. Keep stirring until the broth and the flour are smooth. Bring to a boil; cook and stir for 2 minutes or until thickened.

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Reduce heat. Stir in the cream, the rest of the salt and 1/8 tsp pepper.

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Simmer, uncovered, for 15 minutes, stirring often.

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Adjust seasonings as needed.

Crimini Mushrooms sourced from Animal Farm Center.

Butter sourced from Lucky Layla Farms through the The Houston Dairymaids.

Stuffed Celery

My mom always used to make stuffed celery for the holiday dinners when we were kids. She would buy the little jars of flavored Kraft cheese spread and spend a good couple of hours stuffing pimento cheese as well as pineapple neufchatel cheese into the celery. With 4 kids at home, it was a quick and easy option.

This year I decided to make my own version of stuffed celery. I bought some Pimento Cheese Spread made by Janice Schindler at the City Hall Market (Janice is usually at the the City Hall, Rice University, and Eastside Markets). For the other spread, I took a can of crushed pineapple, drained off the juice and mixed the pineapple into a container of Swede Farm Dairy Simply Texan Plain Chevre.

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I liked how the chevre recipe turned out. Next time I will use pineapple tidbits and chop them roughly so I get slightly larger pieces of pineapple in the cheese.

The Stuffing Base

I’ve started making my stuffing base.

2 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp butter
2 cups celery, chopped
1 cup onion, chopped
1 cup of bell pepper (I used a mix of green and red bell peppers from my garden)
3/4 cup mushrooms, roughly chopped.
Pepper to taste
1.5 lbs of breakfast sausage from Revival Market, casing removed
.5 head of roasted garlic.
1 tsp Tarragon
1 tsp rubbed sage.

In a skillet, put the olive oil and butter and wait until the butter is melted. Add celery, onion and mushrooms to the skillet. Sweat the mix until semi-soft. While the celery, onion and mushroom mix is sweating, cut the casings off the breakfast sausage links (if you haven’t already) and crumble into the skillet. Cook through until veggie mix is soft and sausage is cooked through. Add spices. You’ll have a mixture similar to the one below.

Note: I didn’t add any additional salt. Between the sausage and celery, none is needed.

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Note: I’ve also used Harrison Farms Pan Sausage for this recipe.