How to enjoy Kale?
This fall I planted some Kale (Winterbor from Johnny’s Select Seeds) after my lovely vegetarian daughter pointed out that Kale resides at the top of almost every “the most nutritious foods” list.
As it grew, I read more about it and tasted a little here and there. It really is quite nutritious; it reliably provided Europe the means to survive winters from the BC knuckle dragging era well into the middle ages.
Before cold weather arrived I was not impressed with its taste, either raw in salads or cooked. I really only nibbled a little out of curiosity as I had read that as with other brassicas, cold weather is the magic ingredient for palatable Kale.
Small Winterbor kale plants doing their thing on a 20 degree morning:
Even smaller Red Russian Kale doing the same (between elephant garlic stalks):
So… I had this stand of Kale in the hoophouse that really needed to be put to use, so after much searching, I decided on this recipe from whole foods (well, sort of): Vegetarian Tuscan Kale and White Bean Soup
“Sort of” means this ingredient list
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 cup diced yellow onion
4 large garlic cloves, roughly chopped
1 (32-ounce) box low-sodium vegetable broth
4 cups packed chopped kale
1 (14.5-ounce) can Italian-style diced tomatoes
1 (14.5-ounce) can no-salt-added cannellini beans, drained and rinsed
1 (14.5-ounce) can sliced carrots, drained, or two large carrots, peeled and sliced
morphed into this ingredients list:
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 cup diced yellowish garden onion with a couple of shallots added
4 large garlic cloves, roughly chopped
30 oz chicken broth (also have used homemade turkey broth/stock)
1 tsp thai pepper oil
1 cube frozen homemade tomato paste
4 cups packed chopped kale
3/4 Cup “sun dried” tomatoes (oven dried Romas) chopped
2 (14.5-ounce) can no-salt-added cannellini beans, drained and rinsed
1 cup frozen baby carrots from the garden, the bigger ones sliced, the little ones whole (oh hell no I didn’t peel them either.)
I added another 10 oz or so water to get a more liquid soup (vs a chunky pile of veggies in a puddle of stock).
Most of what ends up being around 4 compressed cups of kale after the stems are removed:
The “block of stock” (concentrated turkey stock) melting into the mix:
And finally the almost completed soup with SD tomatoes, kale, & carrots:
I forgot to take a picture after I added the beans (cuz it smelled so good I had to eat it promptly.) Once the beans are added and it simmers a few minutes it is ready to go. It doesn’t have to simmer for more than 15 or so minutes before the kale is tender. This is good right off of the stove; it ages well in the refrigerator too.
Is it good?
If the king of weekend lunch convenience (me) takes the trouble to heat it up for lunch two days in a row when there is pizza in the fridge, what do you think?
7 Minute Bok Choy
7 minutes to prepare that is….. it actually takes 6-8 weeks to grow
Bok choy is a no-brainer.
I had never heard of it a few months ago but now it is growing in my garden almost year round. Bok Choy is a brassica (think cabbage, broccoli, kale) and is often referred to as Chinese Cabbage. For the whole story on Chinese cabbage click here for the interesting wikipedia entry.
The cold windy weather that descended upon us this evening motivated me to find a recipe that would be both easy and hot, I decided on this one from “the worlds healthiest foods” website. (Tip: Don’t dismiss all recipes labeled as “healthy”; I have found several that actually taste good in spite of the tag.)
So back to the 7 minute thing….. I went out in the cold wind this evening and returned with a nice medium sized bok choy specimen:
I used the recipe linked above as a template but modified it. No ginger…. 1/2 tablespoon of Asian oyster sauce in the chicken bullion water (who has 3 tablespoons of stock ready anyway?)… Lime juice, not lemon juice, because that’s what I had… Kroger generic soy sauce vs the fancy tamari stuff it called for…. 2 small cloves of fresh garlic vs 1 clove….no sesame seeds and definitely no tofu. Basically I just went with what I had on hand.
Was it good? Yes, much better than I anticipated. Mrs cohutt gave it raves and I will definitely prepare this again. This made two nice side dish portioned servings.
4 minutes as the recipe claims? More like 7, I had to count the 3 it took to wash and chop the choy. 
January garden treats
The Brussel sprouts are doing much better this year vs last. I will attribute this to 4 factors changes vs last years attempt:
1. Hoophouse warmth- soil air etc are all warmer due to the hoophouse covering (not to mention the relatively mild winter so far vs this time last year when we were under 5 inches of snow…..)
2. More compost / nutrients in the soil this year
3. More consistent moisture level in the soil (thank you hoophouse)
4. I remembered to clip the leaves up the stalks when the sprout buds were forming.
We are in a heat wave right now, so instead of using tonight’s cabbage head for soup, I’ll make a nice batch of fresh cole slaw. (Actually not a heat wave, just unusually mild temperatures for early January. Currently, at 6:00 PM, it is 64 degrees and the highs are expected to be over 60 for the next two days as well….)
I had a couple of small radicchio heads still hanging in there too, so I’ll add a little of it as well. Maybe a minced shallot too..
That’s all for today. I know it isn’t much but heck it is January…
(The sprouts are for mrs cohutt to snack on while I type this quick post and then make my slaw….)
Meanwhile, back in the polytunnel…….
The weather was so nice today I that took a few minutes at lunch to absorb some sunshine out back.
(The previously frozen plants are pretty much fully recovered now.)
I was surprised how much the brussel sprouts had filled out in the last couple of weeks. Last year I never cut the lower leaves off and the sprouts were tiny (somehow I missed that recommendation).
Also, these have enjoyed the warmer, moist air and soil under the poly cover.
One plant had been strangled by the sugar snap peas that I removed a few days ago (bad layout idea) and is significantly smaller that the others. I’ll give it a chance now that it has some room.
Regardless, here are the two mediocre pictures that resulted:
Life after tomatoes follow up 1
Today it was sunny and in the upper 40s / lower 50s again; 30 hours after the frozen shots in the previous post, things are mostly recovering
The arugula ice sculpture has thawed and it appears to have come out ok, with the exception of the buds that were beginning to form. It has a ways to go but I expect the milder wet weather coming in tomorrow will be therapeutic.
The greens are mostly on their way back to normal other than some of the larger floppier mustard greens. These sometimes looked like this before the freeze so I’m not sure they are actually done in. (If you look carefully you can spot the thornless blackberry canes that will ultimately own this bed)
Kale- no problem (The arugula is still suffering a little though…)
Spinach seems to be doing fine other than needing some weed relief
(same bed as yesterday just taken from the other side oops)
Life after tomato season: @ 17 degrees, how is your garden?
I snapped these this morning when it was around 17 or 18 degrees here behind the fence.
A few days from now, once the cold snap passes, I’ll post the same shots to see how things recovered.
Arugula ice sculpture:
Mixed greens on the verge of shattering:
More frozen arugula behind Kale that barely shows the freeze:
Popeye’s favorite:
What is your prediction? Will all recover? Will any recover?
Hardy Volunteers
In August 2010 I spread some arugula seeds in a temporary bed that I overwintered with a scrap of contractors plastic. The plants didn’t do so particularly well; last spring I uprooted the bed and reconfigured the area inside the west half of the boxwood garden. A plant or two came up in one of the new beds shortly thereafter, presumably from the ungerminated seed I disturbed moving the beds. These plants suffered through a blistering summer and I let them run their course and by August they were covered with drying seed pods.
Arugula seed pods are best left on the plant until they begin to brown and dry. The trick is to collect them before they get so dry that they burst open @ the touch.
Obviously several opened as there are volunteers now in the are around the bed and towards the shed where I stowed the seeds. Of course there is a thicket of plants in the same spot as the parent plants; a hearty stand of tasty arugula sweetened by the light freezes that have nipped at it so far this year.
The outliers are the healthiest ones I’ve ever seen though- wild arugula competing with their cousins the wild dandelions for space in the mulch breaks tight against the boxwoods. Yum:
The french breakfast radish seed saving experiment allowed for similar escapees, although these mutant wild offspring look like they were downwind from the Fukushima reactor. Normally these long radishes are harvested about the time they are the size of my big toe. Give one perfect conditions (like in compost next to a rotting Magnolia stump maybe…) and the next thing you know you have a monster FBR:
I don’t pull volunteers 99% of the time- I figure they probably have good genetic stock if they manage to get that far and my usual mode is to let them go all the way to seed (for saving). This practice has given me Tommy Toe tomatoes along the perimeters as well as dozens of beautiful Thai basil plants in and between the beds.
I guess arugula and radish are just now joining the insurrection….
From gourd to sponge
(*The last post was just me complaining about having to do the tree thing so I figured I’d make it up to you with a gourd post.)
Many of the loofahs are drying sufficiently enough to peel; this weekend I decided to process a few to see how difficult this whole deal is going to be.
Processing means:
- Allowing to dry, preferably on the vine, to the point that the gourd feels light and hollow and the seeds rattle.
- Breaking the bottom tip off and shaking the seeds out
- Breaking the top off @ the stem and pulling the “strings” down the sides to break the skins back for peeling. These strings run down the sides under the stripes to the bottom of the gourd. Like opening a FedEx envelope sort of…
- Peeling the skin off
- Once peeled, the skeletal innards should be soaked in water with a good shot of bleach in it.
- After bleaching the loofahs need to be rinsed and allowed to dry.
- Presto, you have loofah “sponges”.
Still too green and heavy to pick and peel:
Supplemental drying on a warm stack of rocks for those whose vines couldn’t hold them off the ground (I also have wire racks in my new ladder shed with a couple dozen drying under cover):
A few peeled (note the half inch deep layer of black seeds underneath in the bin.
These are actually pretty decent; I was concerned they wouldn’t be tough enough or substantial enough to hold up. I think they will do just fine. These are immersed in a bleach solution in a 5 gallon bucket as I type this. I’ll rinse and let them dry in the sun tomorrow.
Border Wars
The weapons:
The border battlefield:
The casualties:
Some explanation:
Actually this battle was the long put off removal of my neighbor’s saw briar bundled cherry laurel tree from my fence. It fell the length of my wire fence and got hung up hovering over the row of boxwoods I had moved to the edge of the yard earlier in the spring.
For six months I was hopeful that I might return home one day to find it removed, or perhaps at least stripped of the 3,139 feet of dried briars that protected the length of the trunk. No such luck.
This afternoon I came up with a scheme that would allow me to remove it while sparing my boxwoods. A come-a-long hand winch and 45 ft of 5 ton steel cable anchored by a stout magnolia did the trick- remarkably I still have all my fingers and all my box woods. I’m a nice guy; I didn’t charge for my services and the logs were all returned to their original owner.
