We planted some collards, kale, radish and salad spinach this year for the first time and, even though we planted each in a 1 foot square plot, we got a really good crop. We harvested the salad spinach last week, the radishes two weeks ago and since and the collards for the first time this last weekend. Fresh collards cooked are so amazing. Easy to grow and easy to cook. They are firm to the tooth and keep well in the fridge for several days. Lovely as a lunch or a side for a dinner later in the week.
I am a fusion chef, so, I made this dish from several cultures. Do use either a Walla Walla or a Vadila onion for the flavor these sweet onions impart. The Spanish pimenton (Spanish smoked paprika)# was a revelation! It is so flavorful and, at only $3.49 for a 2.6 oz container, a good bargain. I am becoming an addict because it is so aromatic. The brand is De La Vera by SANMEL.

Vegetarian Collard Greens

Serves 8 1/2 C servings

2 lbs fresh collard greens
1 -2 T canola oil
2-3 fresh garlic cloves, minced
1 lg Walla Walla onion, chopped
4 C vegetable stock (I used Better Than Bouillon 1 T vegetable and 1 T mushroom + 4 C water)
1 tsp sea salt
1 1/2 tsp unsalted butter
1 tsp ground Spanish pimenton# (paprika) or another smoked sweet paprika
1/4 C organic apple cider vinegar
1/2 tsp dried bonito*
1/2 – 1 tsp Korean vinegar hot pepper paste (I use SAJO brand – this is used in making kim chee)

Prepare the collard greens by trimming the stems off, soaking and rinsing the greens and tearing the leaves in large strips.
Heat the oil in a large soup pot over medium heat, add the onions and saute until they turn golden and get a little caramelized. Add garlic and saute for 2-4 minutes until they are translucent, add the stock and all other ingredients except the collards and bring to a boil, turn down and simmer for 10 minutes. Taste and adjust flavors as needed. Add the collards, bring barely to a boil, turn down the heat to a fast simmer for 30 minutes. You want the collards to still be somewhat green and firm and not mush!

Note: I used not only collards but some spinach and radish tops from my garden that just needed usin’.

*Bonito is a dried fish flavor enhancer use it or not, just adjust the other seasonings to your liking.

Well, I thought I’d start out with a shot of our raised bed SQFT garden. It’s been great this year. We have green ice lettuce, arugula, mesculin, spinach, and chard in the first box, four bell peppers (green, lemon (got one so far and 3 babies are growing), orange and tiny red), broccoli rabe, italian eggplant and a penthouse of nantes carrots in the second, lemon cukes (have two babies), burpless cukes (have 3 teenagers and 2 babies), bush beans, peas, acorn squash and zucchini (has female flowers just now) in the third bed, and the fourth bed is 12″ deep for the tomatoes…we have Brandywine (the Princess), Sweet 100, Green Zebra, Red Pear, Bush Goliath and Oregon Spring that has already produced a tom! I was replanting a Bush Goliath in May….I broke it in half. I stuck BOTH pieces in the bed and BOTH have flowers and seem to be very healthy. I hope the weather gets warm again. I’ve been sleeping under a sheet, blanket, bedspread and quilt the last few nights!

Here we go to the goodies. I made this chutney…just made it up with some help from my new favorite cookbook. I love Irish cooking and got this book on recommendation from another great cook, AND if you can find a 40% off coupon…it is well worth it. The onion jam recipe is a wonder. It reads like a novel, and if I ever get back to Ireland, I WILL go there.

CHERRY ONION SWEET AND SAVORY CHUTNEY

1 1/2 C fresh pitted dark, sweet cherries, quartered
1 1/2 C combination of chopped onion (I used red, white, yellow and walla walla)
2 T ghee
3 spicy garlic cloves, peeled and minced
1/4 – 1/2 tsp sea salt (to taste)
1/4 – 1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
2 tsp light brown sugar (you need to judge if you need more or less sugar according to the sweetness of the cherries and the onions)
1/4-1/2 tsp Chinese 5 spice seasoning (I make my own)
a good pinch of chili powder
1 – 2 T balsamic vinegar 1/2 dark and 1/2 white (to taste, I used 1 T total)

Makes about 1 1/2 C

Saute onion and garlic in ghee in a heavy skillet for about 15 minutes (you just want them translucent), add cherries and spices and vinegar and simmer uncovered for 10 minutes. Cover and turn down to low and cook for another 10 minutes. If the chutney is “tight” turn off, if not, let simmer uncovered for another few minutes until liquid is absorbed.
Put mixture hot into 1 C, sterile canning jars and screw the sterile lids on. Let sit until cool and keep in a cool pantry (60 degrees or less). You may want to refrigerate after opening. Especially if you live in a hot climate. Or you can just do a waterbath canning on this and keep it in your pantry. Let this mellow in your pantry for a few weeks. I made this the 5th and it tastes so much better today (the 19th).

I had a most prolific pear tomato plant that really produced in September/October, but it got too cool to ripen the toms. I pulled all the tomatoes off last week and let them sit to maybe ripen a bit before I turned them into jam. Boy, did they turn out wonderful! See the red pepper in the middle? A nice, polite cayenne-not too hot, not too mild. Sweet and savory and hottish! Lovely!

Hottish Green Tomato Jam

Makes about 3 cups

4 C chopped green (maybe some red if you have them, but they must be firm) tomatoes
3 C white sugar (it depends on how sweet the tomatoes are more or less)
1 large 4″ cayenne pepper, deveined, stripped of seeds and minced
3 T fresh lemon juice

Mix tomatoes with sugar and let sit overnight in fridge, covered. Mix a few times while it sits. Strain and drain for several hours. Cook the liquid until it thickens. Add lemon juice, pepper and toms. Cook down. Cover and let sit overnight in fridge. Mix and bring up heat. Prepare jars and lids. Place jam in sterilized jars and cap. Process in water bath for 10-15 minutes.

I could see adding some lemon zest to this or a really small amount of minced shallot or garlic.

THAI BASIL COCONUT SOUP

8 C chicken broth (make your own, use a low salt one, or use something like “The Organic Better than Bouillon”)
3 C unsweetened coconut milk
2 tsp Masman Curry Paste (I use Mae Ploy brand)
1 T peanut butter
1 T dried shrimp, crushed or 1 T dried shaved bonito (this lasts forever)
2 C roasted vegetables (I used zucchini, squash, carrot, green beans, yellow sweet onion, mushroom roasted slowly in olive oil with herbs and various peppers like a ratatouille)
2 C fresh vegetables (I used all chopped: celery and leaves, carrots, white spicy onion, baby zucchini, mushrooms, scallions-in other words-clean out the fridge time!)
1″ fresh ginger, peeled and diced
salt & freshly ground black pepper to taste
1/4 C or to taste purple thai basil (licorice flavor)
1/4 C or to taste spicy globe basil (spicy not hot)
crushed roasted peanuts and basil sprigs to garnish
optional: 1 C shrimp, deveined & peeled

Makes 12 cups of soup, and it is freezable (just don’t add the shrimp until you are heating it up)

Heat chicken broth, coconut milk, Masman curry paste, peanut butter and dried crushed shrimp gradually to boiling and turn down to simmer for 15 minutes. Add the fresh vegetables, both basils, and fresh ginger and simmer for 15 minutes more. Taste and add salt, pepper, the roasted vegetables, and peanut butter or more curry paste if needed. Simmer 10 minutes and adjust flavorings to your liking. Take out the celery leaves-they add flavor but are not good to eat. Add shrimp and simmer until pink and curled.
Serve in bowls with a garnish of crushed roasted peanuts and sprigs of basil.

CUCUMBER GINGER SALAD

1 cucumber, peeled and thinly sliced
3 small green scallions, thinly sliced (use some of the tops)
1/4 C red onion, diced
1″ raw ginger root, minced
1/4 C mint, torn in small pieces

Dressing:
1 T rice wine vinegar
2 tsp tamari sauce (wheat free soy sauce)
1 tsp Yeo’s sesame oil (you can find this at most Asian markets. It is an amber sesame oil.)
1/2 tsp Splenda

Mix dressing and let sit for about 30 minutes. Meanwhile, slice, dice and mince the rest of the salad ingredients. Mix the dressing into the veggies and place in a container with a tight lid. Shake and let sit in the fridge for 1-2 hours, shaking a few times. Add sea salt and freshly cracked black pepper to taste at the table if wanted.

4 side servings

Here are pictures of our SF garden. We did have fun making these mobile 2′X4′ raised boxes full of Mel’s Mix. They are easy for us old farts to move about on our tiny property and raised to let the rain drain thru. Our plants seem to like them with the chicken wire covers as birds, squirrels, bunnies, deer and raccoons cannot get to the fruits of our labor. The first two boxes are full of chard, lettuce, yellow tomatoes (they aren’t progressing very fast), Kirby cucumbers, Black Beauty zucchini, Kentucky Wonders and Purple Pole Beans. We got a late start, but the pole beans, cukes, chard, lettuce, and zucchini are really taking off. The third box is full of herbs, and I will try to over winter them. I think I can. We have one more box to plant. Below the fold is for biscuit….a buttermilk chicken recipe that is delicious. I used to have it once a week at the Dakota Restaurant in downtown Dallas in the early 80′s when I worked near there. It was a really nice restaurant below street level in a courtyard setting. Cool!

In other ways, tho, it’s so much easier, thanks to the diligent attention paid to the soil by the former occupant of 50 years who loved her peonies and azaleas.

Still, much less of my time here is devoted to gardening, and the sheer quantity of my planting is so much less, although thanks to constant downpours for three weeks straight, I haven’t gotten everything planted.

But I have gotten my containers almost done, and so far, I have three tomatoes, ten basils, a mess of mustard and thyme, lots of sage and some sorrel. Today, I plan to find room to plant bronze fennel, runner beans, squash and something else I can’t quite remember – hm. Plus flowers, including, of course, shoofly.

Damn work. I have to go back tomorrow, and that’s really going to interfere with the gardening.

So here it is: Cities are for People: The Limits of Localism

Tell me about worm bins, or point me to a site for research. I’m planning to convert from container to raised bed gardening for next year and will need LOTS of compost.

All is good in the Bean Bed. As you can see, I’ve got all the twine trellises tied up (32 of them), and the Pole Beans are having a great time growing up them. All I need to do now, is keep them on their own strings, while the lines tighten up.

The Bush Beans are growing fine. We see the First Planting is up and running, while the Second Planting is popping up well. I plugged in some more seeds where I didn’t see germination. Now, it is time to sow Planting 3. I should be getting Beans from Planting #1 in about two weeks, and from the Pole Beans in about 3 weeks. I am still harvesting Bush Beans from the Tomatoes/Peppers bed, and just as they are done, these will be coming in.