BLOOMS!

It worked, we grew sunflowers!!!  These were the first 3 to bloom.  More on the way.  The bees love them.  It's cool to see which plants grew the best.  The first to flower were the ones on the east side of the plot, closest to the water.  But the ones on the west side of the plot grew taller. Taller than me!

Allan and I still need to keep up with watering and staking but there are few weeds and the plants look really healthy.  Even the marigolds added for some color around the border look great.

Growing

16 sunflower plants, growing taller by the day.
One is nearly as tall as me with leaves bigger than my head.
A few are showing signs of flowers.

Strong seedlings

The sunflowers are getting bigger!  We have 16 plants in the 4x8' plot.  The tallest reach about mid-thigh. 

Mammoth and Hybrid Snack Seed

 The sunflowers are doing great!  We have two varieties:  Mammoth (up to 8' tall) and Hybrid Snack Seed ( 5' tall)- both are edible.  About half of the garden was planted from seed right there and the other half were seedling transplants started indoors.  The indoor seedlings grew fast and were a bit more leggy than the in-ground ones but all are doing well.

A bit of organic fertilizer and some watering over the weekend has really helped these little guys out. 

A few marigolds were planted last week for color and interest while we wait for the sunflowers to get bigger.

In the rest of the garden plots, people are harvesting strawberries, lettuces, and herbs. 

Phase 1

The first phase of planting happened about a week ago.  We kept a few of the existing plants to see what they do and covered the exposed soil with woodchips to retain moisture and create a worm habitat.  Two varieties of seeds were planted 1 inch in the ground.  Each planting area was covered with a reclaimed water bottle to create a greenhouse effect.  With a little luck we'll have sunflowers later this summer!

Plot 78B

My friend Allan and I are now co-lessors of a 4x8 garden plot at the Fox Point Community Garden!  She's not much to look at right now but we are hoping with a little TLC, she will be beautiful and bountiful.

The garden came with a thriving chive plant, an abundance of chickweed (which would be great food for chickens if either of us had any), and a few yet unidentified seedlings.  We pulled the chickweed left it lying there to keep the soil from drying out while we plan our crop.

To create some diversity in the Community Garden, we chose a crop that has big showy flowers, is edible, and grows well in full sun.  We'll shop for seeds this week and get them in the ground.  Stay tuned to find out what it is!

Food Bits

Cauliflower Pizza Crust

A new recipe I tried to pack more veggies into pizza.  The crust is made from... grated cauliflower!!  The original recipe I used is here but the second time around, I liked the addition of fresh oregano, red pepper flakes, and some cornmeal. Cooking on parchment helped it release from the cookie sheet.

It was actually quite yummy (plenty of cheese!) even if it wasn't as crispy as I'd like.  I will make it again.  Heck, I still have half a cauliflower left!

Walmart Steaks

Walmart is now offering "top quality USDA choice steaks".  There are ads all over TV where "steakovers" fool restaurant patrons into thinking they are getting a quality product.  No apologies here but I really don't think I'll be getting my meat from the same place people go to buy home electronics, gardening supplies, and jumbo packages of paper towels.  

By eating less red meat in general, I don't feel bad about splurging on the occasional steak that I know came from an animal that was fed well without hormones, and slaughtered humanely. 

Local Turnips or a Quality Meal?

While farm to table cuisine is gaining popularity among some, it doesn't fit all.  Earlier this month Julia Moskin of the NY Times wrote an article about two acclaimed chefs, Thomas Keller and Andoni Luis Adurizhave who have opted to focus on cooking with quality ingredients to produce a gastronomical experience for their patrons.  Sometimes the best oysters for a dish come from Maine, not Long Island.  That is what customers are paying for- the best.  Chefs aren't going to save the earth and we shouldn't expect them to.  Some of our favorite things come not from our backyard but from far away places- Italian wine, French cheeses, Belgian chocolates, Irish beer, Canadian whiskey, Greek yogurt, Russian dressing.  OK, the last two are pretty much made in America but you get the idea.  Why limit creative minds and palates?  Go local if you want but it's OK to order the salmon or Chilean sea bass- as long as it's wild caught. Ha!

Cape Cod Cuisine Cooking Class

Killing a lobster.

Just had my second Chef's Choice class at Johnson and Wales. Today's topic was Cape Cod Cuisine. You guessed it... lots of fish. On the menu: Quahog Clam Chowder, New England Chopped Salad, Deviled Scrod, Nantucket Flounder Roll-ups, Hyannisport Lobster Pie, Cranberry Pork Tenderloin, and Peppered Salmon with Dill-Caper Sauce.

Chef Branden Lewis taught this class as well and another chef remembered me from the last class. Today I ended up making the lobster pie with Paul who is a shellfisherman. His wife wasn't interested in killing the live lobsters so she moved to another group. haha. It was messy in close quarters. Not sure if I'd make the same lobster pie recipe. I would have liked a puff pastry crust but in New England-style it has a cracker crumb topping.

Salmon, scrod, salad, and lobster pie with a last minute fancy sauce.

Some of the food from the concurrent Texas Barbeque class.

Cooking Class

Gnocchi presentation with Chef Branden

Our veggies

My grilled steaks (despite the poor photo color)

Today I attended the "Farm to Table" recreational cooking class at Johnson & Wales University with about 15 other students  It was fun, and I learned a lot.  Chef Branden was a great instructor.  First up was a lesson on food prep safety and knife skills (yay!).  Then we returned to our work stations to tackle a course featuring local produce, meat, or seafood.  My partner Lynn and I ended up with grilled skirt steak with roasted asparagus, charred cherry tomatoes.  Lynn wanted to make something her 13 year old boys would eat so I let her choose.  I would have preferred something that I wouldn't normally cook but oh well.  Other teams were working on the following courses: carrot soup with candied ginger and coconut creme fraiche; marinated mushroom salad; pan seared cod fiddle head ferns with roasted garlic and chili; gnocchi with brussel sprouts, pancetta, and fresh herbs; lavender shortbread and honey gelato sandwiches; and cherry-apricot clafoutis with vanilla ice milk.

Somehow I ended up trimmin' and grillin' the skirt steaks and Lynn got to work on the veggie prep and marinade.  I think 4 instructors came over and told us how to trim asparagus.  Some were of the bend and snap camp, others were of the chop the ends camp.  Back to my meat.  Lemme just say, all the instructors (and some of the male students) were pretty impressed with the diamond grill marks on my steaks. When the steaks were done, one of the instructors helped me out with my knife skills since I didn't get a chance to practice while trimming the meat.  I learned how to safely chop things really small.  We were encouraged to go see what other tables were doing but that was hard for me, I got pretty focused on my own cooking.  But when my hands were clean, I walked around and asked questions.

A couple of hours later, our dishes were plated an laid out buffet style in a tasting room.  Our class and the Spanish cooking class (which was going on next door) got to taste all our dishes.  There was A LOT of food and it was all quite tasty.  Can't wait for Cape Cod Cuisine next month.

A New Garden!

Today I built a 5' x 5' x 8" garden.  It didn't take long but was quite laborious.  And, it's conveniently located right next to the compost bin! I put up a temporary "creature cover" to prevent it from becoming a giant litter box while I wait for the soil to settle.  Then I'll plant my seeds.  And if seeds don't work, I'll just stick some plants in.  Right now I'm planning for cooking herbs, radishes, spinach and beets.

Feeding the World in a Changing Climate

In a recent issue of Time Magazine, there's an article Climate Change and Farming: How not to go hungry in a warmer world.  Drought, increased rainfall, more intense storms, will have varied impacts on agriculture around the world.

New finds

With nothing on my shopping list at this weekend's Winter Farmer's Market, I decided to take the opportunity to "window shop". I learned about two new food items located on opposite ends of the food spectrum. First was sunflower greens (on the VERY healthy end of things). They were crunchy green sprouts growing out of the black sunflower shells. I have no idea what to do with them other than to toss them in a salad. But, they were tasty.

My second find was full of carbs, fat and sugar. And it was delicious! The ladies from Flour Girls Baking Co. in Marion, MA were selling cider donut holes from their truck. Not only did they have fresh cinnamon-sugar cider donuts but also fresh donut holes studded with cranberries. I got 6 holes (3 of each) for $4 and as predicted, they didn't make it home. In fact two didn't even make it to my car. Yummmm.

See what a local Tiverton family did: 2 weeks of eating within a 125 mile radius. Two weeks doesn't sound like a long time but they get extra points for the whole family eating vegetarian.

Honey Bees

Yep, the girl who fell into a yellow-jacket hive one summer wants bees. I've always been fascinated by the social and selflessness of the hive structure. But why now? Earlier this week I attended a showing of Vanishing of the Bees. As you might be able to guess, it was about Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) which has spread across the country. I first learned about this issue in the 2008 book "Fruitless Fall" by Rowan Jacobson. The documentary I watched provided some new theories on why thousands of honeybees are just disappearing and abandoning their hives. One popular theory has to do with pesticides. In case you didn't know, commercial beekeepers don't make their money from honey, they truck their hives cross the country following the crop blooms (almonds in CA, blueberries in ME, and cranberries in MA, to name a few). In the United States, about 100 crop species depend on honeybees for pollination —collectively, these crops make up approximately 1/3 of the U. S. diet, including the majority of high-value crops.

Historically, farmers would spray or dust their crops with a pesticide to keep insects from devouring their plants. Piles of dead bees outside of nearby hives indicated that these beneficial pollinators were also being poisoned. So, chemical companies changed their compounds and delivery method. Now seeds are coated with a systemic (as opposed to a topical) pesticide that stays with the plant throughout its life cycle. Even though the EPA regulates the environmental effects of the pesticides, it is up to the chemical companies to provide the research showing no harm. The company that makes the two kinds of pesticides of most concern has indeed tested the effect the chemical has on adult honeybees. Reports shows that there is no adverse effect. What isn't tested is what happens once that honeybee takes that treated pollen and nectar back to the hive and feeds it to her brood. Some apiologists (those that study bees) and beekeepers believe that the systemic pesticides have an unknown effect on the central nervous system of the larval bees that may present itself in the current or next generation. Maybe the bees fed the pesticide-laced food have weakened immune or nervous systems, causing them to become disoriented and thereby leaving the hive. Maybe the combination of different pesticides has a damaging effect.

Here's another piece of the puzzle. Europe had a similar threatened bee population 10 or 15 years ago called mad bee disease. However, the European regulators take a "better safe than sorry" approach when it came to pesticides. Questionable chemicals were pulled off the market and the honeybee population has rebounded. Hmmmm.....

So that's what I've learned from the movie which got me thinking about starting my own hive in a year or two. And here's a link to the RI Beekeepers Association.

Can it be true? A second post about oysters? You betcha! I finally made it to the Matunuck Oyster Bar this week. As I saddled up to the bar, I got a briefer on the raw bar spread out in front of me. Moonstone Oysters from Pt. Judith Pond, and a pile from Ninigret Pond and some from Matunuck. Very relaxed atmosphere but THE place to go in the area if you want fresh local seafood and shellfish.

The Lexicon

A sign at Dave's Market advertising native peppers and eggplants started me thinking. What's the difference between "native" and "local"? In the absence of those words, does "organic" have the same impact on shoppers? Does one term trump another in the produce aisle or at the farm stand?

Native species (think plants and shellfish) are those which occur naturally or have existed many years in an area. By definition, bringing in exotic species and cultivating them for a short time does not make them native. It may however make them "local".

As it applies to food and other goods, the term local covers a flexible area. The most popular measurement is the area within a day's driving distance. A more restrictive area may include only a city or state. Local food systems emphasize sustainable practices and the concept of buying locally produced goods supports the local economy.

Without splitting hairs, I think that the terms local and native are used interchangeably. Maybe the market is becoming saturated with the word local and so the term native pops out more.

And then there is "organic" which does not reflect where an apple came from, but rather the practices used (or not used) to grow the apple. Organic may have been a precursor to "local" in terms of people thinking more about the food they are eating. At farmers' market I have seen local organic produce but it sometimes is more expensive. Even though some farms practice organic farming, being certified as organic can be a costly annual process. In Rhode Island, the application/update fee is $200 annually.

Up in Maine, a lobsterman talks about how "local" trumps "organic" in Portland because people want to support businesses in their own community. In the end, learn about how your food gets to the table.

The World is Your Oyster

The common meaning of the phrase above is: all opportunities are open to someone. The world is yours. Quite fitting during this time of summer unemployment! But alas, my foodie exploration continues. There is a family tale of a young me walking around with a raw oyster stuck in my cheek like a wad of chew, refusing to swallow the slimy offering. A few weeks ago, I came across a new opportunity to redeem myself. A local Whole Foods market was holding an oyster tasting. Excited to exercise my more refined palate, I dove right in. OK, it wasn't much more than a guy shucking oysters next to the seafood case but it was interesting to learn about the local oysters on display. There were about 4 varieties from the cool waters of New England. My favorite (straight up out of the shell) were Wianno Oysters from Cape Cod. Served ice cold, they had a rich briny taste that reminded me of the cool, deep ocean. I think the distinct flavor and coolness of the meat distracted me from the slimy texture I remembered as a youth. The following week I found that they were also good on the grill but surprisingly, not as good as freshly shucked.
Cheers!

Possie

For whatever reason, my backyard attracts local cats and wildlife. Tonight, I drove up the driveway and saw my latest guest. An opossum, caught in the headlights, skittered across the lawn into the doghouse. He was kind of cute, sitting in the back of the doghouse looking out.

Another wildlife encounters this year included a hawk picking off a chickadee near the bird feeder. Poor birdy didn't even see it coming. No skunk sprays yet!

Last Day of the CSA

Yesterday was my last pick-up for my share of the Wishing Stone Farm CSA. Tiffany and I had a lot of purchasing to do, we walked away with bags bursting with our riches. And yes, I did get taters n squash! To be more specific, purple potatoes and an acorn squash. They also had tomatoes out but tomatoes at the end of October don't seem to be as good as the ones in August. Now is the time to get creative with preparing everything so they don't go bad before I have a chance to enjoy them. :)