Garden Update - Community Garden Pictures - 7/18/09; Container Garden Pictures 7/23/09

Wow, I have been horrible with the garden updates this year! We have had many 'a setbacks this time around and we have finally got things in fairly decent order.

Not sure if any of you recall or not, but we had two community garden plots at the beginning of the year. Now we have one. Let me explain why. You see, planning and attending a wedding during the first part of the growing season is just not the best idea. The plots got a little neglected with our being out of town and busy so often with wedding planning. So after the wedding, we went down to the garden and our plot with herbs, greens, squash, cucumbers, beans, and sugar snap peas was loaded with weeds. So we took to working on the weeds. We got about half way through the plot and realized there was no hay left to cover the plot with. We decided to wait a little while before really weeding to see if some hay would show up.

We wrote the community garden coordinator who said he would get some more hay to the garden whenever he had the time. These wonderful folks also have full-time jobs and family and other obligations and yet take their time to do something like make sure folks have what they need at the community garden. Anyway, it ended up taking a few weeks for him to get around to retrieving and delivering the hay. In that time, we just neglected the plot more as we would not have been able to keep up with the weeds due to constant rain, and we don't have a car, it isn't as if we could go get our own ground cover. Needless to say, we went back to look at the plots and the plot with the squash and such was just overrun. The plants were being choked out by all the grass and it was really beyond repair. Our tomato, tomatillo, carrot, and okra plot was, however, salvagable. As much as we didn't want to do it, we wrote to the community garden coordinator and asked him if he would till up the plot for someone else to use or for use next year.

So last week, with hay being available and the time being right, we went down and took care of our other plot. It was a few hours of intense weeding, but we got the plot weeded, hay put down, and all the plants tied up or tied to tomato cages. We only had one bit of trouble with our second and now only plot. Brett had gone down last Friday to begin the task, as it was a big one, crab grass really gets rooted and is hard to get out. He did about a quarter of the plot, and left our tools, tomato cages, and stakes down in the plot so we could go finish the next day. We had two tomatillo plants, one near each end of the plot. Now sadly, I didn't get to see this tomatillo plant before it was too late, but one had reached a massive height of about 4 feet tall and was loaded down with blooms. It was also hanging a bit over into the neighbors plot. Not a big deal, thought Brett, since we were coming down the next day to finish taking care of it, and our plot had been seemingly unattended for weeks prior and nobody had bothered it. Well the next day when we went to finish the job, Brett found our prized tomatillo plant ripped out of the ground and laying next to our plot. Our neighbor thought it was a weed and pulled it. We were a bit pissed as tomatillos really don't look anything like weeds and why now? Why after it had been in his plot for weeks did he decide when we were actually staking up and taking care of the plot to rip it out? We sent out a respectful, but slightly angry email indicating that the proper course of action is to contact the community garden coordinator, not just start messing with other people's plots. But it was too little too late for that tomatillo. I guess on the bright side, we do still have one.

Okay, check out the selected pictures of the community garden plot. I am really lazy, I know, as these pictures were taken last Saturday.


Not the greatest picture, but it gives you an idea of what our plot now looks like.


This is our remaining tomatillo plant. It's just a regular 'ol green husk tomatillo plant.


It has a lot of fruit developing on it! It seems that the tomatillos plants are the bumble bees' favorite. They flock to this plant like I've never seen them do with other plants.


Some Moneymaker tomatoes.


Here is a picture of some nicer looking Moneymaker tomatoes.


Some lovely striped Tigerella tomatoes.


A bad picture of some okra.

The only thing I didn't get a picture of were the carrots. I'll try to remember to get a picture of them when we go down next time.

And on to the container garden.

A week or so ago, I checked last years' garden updates to try to gauge our pepper plants' progress at this point. It seemed like they were behind, and looking at our updates from last year, our hunch was substantiated. We started all but the serrano plants from seed this year and had a bit of trouble starting out. We weren't very on the ball with things - I was dealing with a bit of anxiety troubles and in February, gardening isn't always on the brain. So long story short, the seedlings that actually did take hold were started a few weeks later than they should have been. BUT, the plants are starting to flower and produce, so I can't complain too much. Gardening is a learning experience and I am just thankful that I don't rely on, for my livelihood, their doing well. We'd be in a bit of trouble if that were the case. :-0

So here are the pictures of the container garden that I took yesterday morning.






This cayenne plant, one of the few successful early starts has produced more already than our cayenne from last year did. And they are so darn good looking cayennes too. These are in various stages of ripening.


Here is another picture of the cayenne plant, you can see there are green ones, some that are starting to ripen, and some that are just about there.

I need to get off my lazy butt and get that ristra started!


Some jalapenos.


A blurry picture of a New Mexico chile.

Wow, I am stoked that I finally did a garden update. I gotta stop slacking so much. I mentioned, I believe, two weeks ago something about a cookbook teaser post I would be doing that I have still yet to do. I think I just have to accept it, I am lazy. So I will say this, I would like to get a cookbook teaser post up at some point in the near future. That is about as much detail as I am willing to give.

Happy Friday everyone!

'Til next time.

Garden Update - June 14, 2009

Welcome to what will hopefully turn into a weekly garden update as I did last year. This update only covers the container garden as the community garden isn't really all that pretty right now.

Things are going well in the community garden - though fast grow the weeds is right! The week and a half we were away for the wedding and honeymoon led to a rampant spreading of weeds and crab grass in our gardens. We went down to weed and put hay on the plots, only to find out half way through weeding that all the hay available had already been used. A bit at a loss, we decided just to weed right up around the plants and hold out for a little while in hopes that there is more hay to be had. Otherwise, we may have to do some sort of mulch/newspaper combination.

Anyway, check out the container garden as of last Sunday.


Here is the first group - these are all various peppers, there are three pots up close to the railing which contain a battered pot of spinach, chard, and a nice looking pot of baby kale.


Here is the second group. Again, it is mostly peppers, as they do so well in containers, but we are trying a few new things in containers this year as well such as acorn squash, basil, dwarf sugar snap peas, and Tiger's Eye beans.


Here is a horrible picture of our Topsy Turvy planter that contains two Italian Heirloom tomatoes.


Check out the acorn squash, so far doing quite well in a window planter box.


The first bloom! We've had two more blooms open this week. I may need to get out there and hand pollinate in the mornings.


A picture of the "pepper infestation" on the cayenne pepper plant we started inside in February.


Another picture of the big cayenne plant. There are tons and tons of peppers on here and blooms opening everyday. Having it in this huge pot means it has lots of room to grow too.


Here is our second of three cayenne pepper plants with its own peppers going too. I can tell you if there is one thing we know how to grow well it is peppers, cayennes in particular apparently.


A picture of a baby sugar snap pea and a couple of blooms. I've never grown peas of any sort before and was delighted at how pretty the flowers are. They remind me a bit of pansies.


Genovese basil. Not sure if anyone notices or not, but these are also the basils that were started inside.


Winterbor kale. We aren't going to let the kale reach full size, it is sweeter and we personally prefer its texture when in "baby form".


Volunteer catnip! We like to recycle our garden soil each year. We have a huge container that we put all "spent" soil in and then work in fertilizer. It turns out that there were some ungerminated catnip seeds left in our soil container because volunteers have popped up in about three or four different containers. It is doing very well and Brett is getting practice pruning on the catnip. I bet the kitties will be pleased.


Tiger's Eye beans. I am surprised at how many bean pods we have going in this container. These and the dwarf sugar snap peas were not originally intended to be in containers on our porch. We started these (and almost everything we're growing) from seed and they overgrew their starter pots. The problem was it kept raining, raining, raining, and raining some more keeping us from getting our starts in the garden as early as we would have liked. So I transplanted them into pots thinking I could take them down to the garden. But then they started to grow all gnarly, but started to produce, so I decided just to leave them in the containers and see what happened.

At the community garden, we have two plots this year and all the seeds we've sowed have come up! In Plot 1 we have dwarf sugar snap peas, Tiger's Eye beans, Parade cucumbers, Straight Eight cucumbers, butternut squash, and then a small herbs/greens area containing chard, spinach, cumin, Genovese basil, and cilantro. Plot 2 is home to 4 Tigerella tomato plants, 4 Moneymaker tomato plants, 1 Italian Heirloom tomato plant, 2 Green Husk tomatillos plants, and in bewtween are nantes carrots and Clemson Spineless okra. Wahoo!

Next week's garden update may just highlight the container garden again, it depends on what happens with the hay situation at the community garden - unless you all don't mind seeing a slightly weedy garden. :-)

'Til next time!

Weekly Local Booty - Homegrown Grub, CSA, and Farmer's Market - May 23, 2009

I think summer is making its presence known in Mid-Missouri - we have enjoyed a week in the 80s with lots of sun! This means that the community garden was finally able to be tilled, so Brett and I went down and got our stuff in the ground. We transplanted tomato, cucumber, and butternut squash, and sowed cucumber, Tiger's Eye bean, Genovese basil, cilantro, cumin, Renegade spinach, Bright Lights chard, Clemson Spineless okra, dwarf sugar snap peas, nantes carrot, and some marigolds for their beneficial effects. We were stoked to finally be able to work in the soil! As soon as things begin to sprout I'll take some pictures of both the community and container garden.

We had our first harvest this week - from the AeroGarden. The Red Rubin basil looked great and was ready to go, so we harvested it last night, weighed it, and then made pesto with it. I know that is really uncreative, and I do plan on making more than pesto with all the basil we are growing, but I wanted to see how it would taste with the Red Rubin and we wanted a quick and easy meal. You can't get a whole lot fresher than "farm to table" in less than 10 minutes!

We are planning on weighing our yields this summer to get an idea of what produces best in our soils as well as to just get a general idea of the level of production in our gardens, so we will add a sidebar element to keep a tally.

Check it out:


1 1/2 ounces of Red Rubin basil. Our lemon basil is ready to harvest as well; I will probably get it tomorrow.

Check out this week's CSA:


Starting from the bottom right: spring onions, herbs of some sort, 2 bunches of the world's best asparagus, radishes, and salad greens.

The super awesome Callina, a fellow CoMo resident, assistant editor extraordinaire at MissouriLife magazine, and author of the cool blog The Gingerbread House, gave me a recipe awhile back for a radish salad she made. I am going to play around with it a bit with these radishes. They really are a new food to us so we've never quite known how to handle them. Thanks for the recipe Callina!

In other CSA news, our farm, Danjo Farms, now has a blog! Dan and Joanne have hooked up with a local writer to start a blog to give information about the goings on at the farm and also recipes using ingredients from that week's CSA share. After talking to Dan at market this morning, it looks like they are going to team up to write a Mid-Missouri CSA cookbook. I am really excited about their project and think the cookbook is a wonderful idea. And you can bet I will offer to be a tester should they need any!

Here is this week's farmer's market haul. This ran $44.


Um, starting from the mushrooms....: 1/2 lb. Beau Solais Farm oyster mushrooms, 3 bunches of baby garlic, 5 yummylicious tomatoes, a bunch of young field grown onions, 2 bunches of cilantro, spinach, spring onions (green onions), penne pasta, and Annie's Honey Wheat bread.

It was a really nice trip to the market this morning, the sun was shining and it wasn't too hot. My only complaint (and you know I'll always have one) was that there was quite a bit of traffic this morning and we walk everywhere. I am used to Saturday mornings being kind of lax in terms of traffic, but I guess with it being a holiday weekend, everyone is out and about.

Needless to say, I have many plans for this grub!

To let you all in on a little plan that has been 'a brewin' in the good 'ol Midwest, Selina, author of the blog Indiana Girl and one of my very best friends, and I have decided to take the plunge and write a cookbook. It has been suggested a few times that I do so, but there are certain areas that are not my strong suit that I think would be missing (breads, desserts, presentation). Well these are areas that Selina is not only good at, but enjoys (the thought of having to figure out how to make beans and salsa look pretty just gives me anxiety) and she and I have not only a very similar philosophy on food, but also similar palettes. We have decided to do a sort of Midwest Mex-Latino kind of cookbook, one that focuses on the flavor profiles of the Southwestern United States, Mexico, and South America, using simple techniques, and mostly seasonally available ingredients used at the height of their quality. We also think it should be more than just a simple recipe book - we will provide tables for substitutions - food should be simple, and a lot of things are interchangeable, we don't want you to have to go buy something special for just one meal, we will also provide instructions for basic techniques, and tips on how things like vinegar and seasoning affect a dish so that you can use our recipes and make them your own. Cooking is an expression of creativity, and we hope that the people (if there are any) who would get our cookbook would feel as though they are able to express themselves and their tastes without changing the overall integrity of the dish.

We have a long way to go and are in no rush. Quality is what is most important to us. Right now we are just going through all our compiled recipes for the ones we think have potential and will work from there. I hope that some of you might consider being testers when the time arrives, and just know, we will be having a lot of fun in the kitchen over the summer. I am so excited to be able to work on this project, and work on it with Selina, it brings a new level of excitement to the kitchen and one of my co-workers has already essentially placed a pre-order. ;-)

In other news, Brett and I's wedding is just a few weeks off and I realized that I have a farmer's tan and am planning on wearing a strapless dress. I am not a vain person, and I really don't care much about all the frilly stuff that goes into a wedding, but a farmer's tan is blaringly obvious, even to me. Something must be done about this....

:-)

I hope everyone is having a great weekend! All you US of A'ers out there - enjoy the holiday weekend!

'Til next time.

Weekly Local Booty - Farmer's Market and First CSA Share - May 16, 2009

The weather in Mid-Missouri has been typically unstable for the past few days - oh, and of course the rain just keeps 'a comin'. Yesterday it was in the 80s and really humid. We spent the evening getting flash floods in our parking lot and this morning it was in the 50s on my way to market. And windy, though that is something I am just going to have to get used to. Needless to say, even with Missouri's moody weather patterns, my trip to the farmer's market this morning was a resounding success, though I missed having Brett with me. He is taking his finals today (on a Saturday, doesn't that suck?), so I was on my own, but I managed all right. I've got a bit of a shoulder cramp after carrying it all home, but I survived. We also got our first CSA share this week!

I think he will be excited to come home to the beautiful local dinner I have planned. It will also be our "One Local Summer" entry for the week - nothing special, but super tasty and almost all local - pesto pasta with fresh tomatoes, garlicky roasted asparagus, and a simple local salad. The only things in the meal that will not be local is the olive oil in the pesto and some of the ingredients in the dressing - though the dressing is locally made.

Anyway, enough of my incessant yammering check out our grub!

Here is our first CSA of the year:


Starting from the bottom right: fresh oregano, two bunches of asparagus (Danjo Farms has the best asparagus we have ever had), spring onions, fresh salad greens, and radishes.

Here is the weekly farmer's market haul. This cost around $80. More than I usually spend at market by a long shot, but I wanted to get tomato starts and we needed to stock up on some of the more expensive things we get like honey.


Starting from the bottom right: 2 bunches of spring onions, a bunch of garlic chives, 2 cucumbers, 4 big 'ol tomatoes, 1/2 lb. oyster mushrooms (I love this new purveyor, I will have to make sure to note the name of the stand next weekend, they have the best oyster mushrooms we've ever had. We got some over the winter from the Root Cellar, but they don't hold a candle to these.), 2 bunches of baby garlic, a dozen eggs, 2 bunches of sweet basil, asparagus, Moneymaker tomato starts, Country Goodies hot chow chow, Tigerella tomato starts, strawberries (!!!!!), Bonne Femme Honey Farms alfalfa honey, Thai basil, cilantro, and spinach.

Whew! What a list! We have a lot of good grub to work with this week. I was already planning the menu on my walk home from market. I love getting whatever is freshest and figuring out how to make it shine from there.

We got some really awesome things this week, and a lot of them, so I thought I would photograph individually some of my favorite finds of the week.


This has to be one of the most gorgeous bunches of oyster mushrooms I have ever seen.


Strawberries! I got to market pretty early this morning - it opens at 8:00 and I got there a little after 8:30 and this was the last container of strawberries the purveyor had, and the one other purveyor with strawberries had two or three containers left. The broccoli had already been cleaned out!


Thai basil! I haven't quite decided what I am going to do with all of this yet, but I have wanted to try it for a couple of years and I have saved a bunch of recipes that call for it in hopes that I would eventually find it. I had no idea it was as pretty as it is.


Four Tigerella tomato starts. We got these from Danjo Farms - the farm we get our CSA through. Dan sells all sorts of varieties of open pollinated heirloom tomatoes; it was really hard to choose. We've had a bit of trouble with our tomato starts from seed this year - they are growing, but not as quickly as we had hoped they would, so we wanted to get a few mature tomato plants so that we will have solid production. We hope our tomato seedlings continue to grow; we can't wait to put them in the ground.


Four Moneymaker tomato starts - these should be good slicers which is one of our favorite ways to have tomatoes, raw with just a bit of salt. I don't even want to venture a guess as to how many pounds of tomatoes we ate like that last year.

So these are eight of our who knows how many tomato plants. We are hoping to have about a dozen or more tomato plants and half a dozen tomatillo plants, if they will ever grow that is.

A week or so ago, I transplanted all our pepper starts into containers on the porch. As of right now, we have about 20 pepper plants, and I imagine a few will make their way into the fold before all is said and done. We have a planter box of acorn squash on the porch, chard, spinach, kale, and basil will also be staying on the porch, and we have some beans, squash, cukes, peas, and tomato starts waiting to go in the community garden.

I don't know if anyone remembers the cayenne plant we had started from seed late last fall, but it survived and managed to thrive in our apartment and it has one full sized pepper on it already, two baby ones, and tons of blooms. We transplanted it into the container we had our broccoli in last year and hope it will get HUGE.

Anyway, if it ever decides to stay dry for more than a day around here, we can get down to the community garden and get to work. It is starting to look like we may have to just have to get stuff in rain or shine. Ugh.

Have a great weekend everyone!

'Til next time.

Weekly Local Booty - Farmer's Market May 9, 2009

It was another successful trip to the market. Though sadly, asparagus is on its way out. We had a pretty short season this year as we didn't seem to have much in the way of spring. Our first CSA share also had to be postponed until next weekend due to yet another unusually wet spring here in Mid-Missouri. I have noticed an abundance in mushrooms though, I think some things fare just fine in this type of weather. Anyway, all that aside, we made out really well at the market this weekend.

Check out this week's loot:















Starting from the bottom right: 2 bunches of asparagus, spring onions, cilantro, lemon balm, 4 tomatoes, 1/2 lb. oyster mushrooms (we really like these mushrooms), baby garlic, chard, a head of gorgeous lettuce, 2 bags of baby spinach, and some more penne pasta.

As you can see, the lack of asparagus thwarted my plan to freeze some. Last week the vendors were overloaded with it - it seemed like everyone was selling it. This week there were maybe half a dozen stands that had any. I went for the organic kind. I was especially stoked about the cilantro, chard, spinach, and gorgeous organic tomatoes.

We've already eaten some of our grub, but the rest is destined for some Mexican goodness and I'm thinking a fried rice dish. Those are super yummy and really easy.

We are also planning on getting some stuff in the ground at the community garden sometime this week. It rained today ruining my chances of getting stuff into the ground today as I had hoped, but we'll get it in sometime this week. Then...let the garden updates begin!

I hope everyone had a great weekend. Am I the only one who thinks that they are just never long enough?

'Til next time.

Local Booty and Garden Update - 2/19-2/28/09

It is hard to believe that it is already the last day of February, but here it is, time sure seems to fly as you get older. Anyways, after doing something I rarely forget to do - go to the Root Cellar when we need something - I remembered to stop by yesterday after work and was able to score some good finds. A lot of the produce isn't local, but it is winter in Missouri, what are you going to do?

Since not a whole lot is happening on the garden front, until things pick up, I will be doing joint local booty/garden updates.

Let's start with the local booty. This is our week's haul from the Root Cellar, I don't remember what this ran, this has been a bad memory week for me - meaning, I forget things a lot in general, but this week was particularly bad I suppose. Thank goodness for lists and notes! But anywho...


Starting from the bottom right: eggroll wrappers (not local), red and yellow onions (not local), ginger root (I'm pretty sure this isn't local), avocados (not local), oyster mushrooms (local), red cabbage (not sure), Uprise Bakery's Columbia Sourdough (local), red potatoes (not sure), organic white flour (not local), active dry yeast (not local - these last two items are for a "sponge" for a ciabatta I plan on making), peach butter (local), and Country Goodies hot pepper relish (local).

And now onto the garden update. A few of our seeds have germinated! I was planning on making newspaper pots this weekend and starting more seed since I ran out of pots last weekend, but - big surprise here - I forgot to bring home the newspaper I had been collecting from work. Sigh.

First, I will show you our revolutionary and high-tech seed starting operation.


I know, I know, very complicated and sophisticated right? We use these plastic bins to store our seed starts in. We've had most of these containers for awhile; we were using them as "storage solutions" for things we were never going to use. So, as we have slowly "pawned off" the stored items on people who wanted/needed them, we have gained "hot houses". We like starting our seeds in bins like this for a number of reasons: it saves space - these are stackable, it keeps the cats out of them, it helps the soil maintain moisture longer, and it provides heat and humidity. I use the spray bottle you see to water the plants. I use the "mist setting" and saturate the soil, I don't uproot plants that way and there isn't a whole lot of soil disturbance either. And of course, you see my handy-dandy gardening journal. If it wasn't right there with the starts, I would forget to document their progress. I've learned over the years many ways to compensate for my horrible memory.


Here is a Sheepnose Pimento pepper sprout - it germinated on Wednesday (2/25).


These are Winterbor Kale seedlings, we noticed they had sprouted yesterday (Friday, 2/27).


These are Renegade Spinach seedlings; they also sprouted yesterday (2/27).


These are Bright Lights Chard seedlings; we also noticed they had sprouted yesterday (2/27). I don't know if you can see it or not, but there are a couple more seedlings in one of the slots in the back.

Not much else to report on the garden front - we have been making sure that we keep the soil for the starts moist, and we are still battling the aphids, we want to get rid of them before we take the plants outside, and before we start anymore indoor things in the AeroGarden or otherwise. We do seem to be making good progress with the aphids, but I think this is also going to involve some sort of "starving out period" as well. Our "plant room" may have to be plant free for a little while. We have our seed starts in a different room, we don't want to deal with aphids on them unless they are an issue once they are outside - not that we want to deal with that either, but it would be better than them starting out with them from the beginning.

So, in other errant parts of J&B's strange world, I have "re-discovered" my camera, so to speak. Seeing that it is winter, and thus there isn't much in the way of good nature photo opportunities (not even snow dammit, you can't take pictures of the wind and that is what our winter seems to have been comprised of for the most part), and I don't like taking pictures of random people, or even really people I know for that matter, so what follows are some of the highlights from my novice photography stint this week in my free time.


Meet the other love of Brett's life: Ms. PS3. Isn't she lovely, what with all her cords coming out the back and her spaceship like functionalities?. I hate to admit it, but I am actually a bit scared of the thing, it can connect and communicate information with his PSP. What the hell? Am I the only one who is uncomfortable with that? Where will it end?

Anyway...


This is yet more of the competition I face: Head Coach 2009. You know I willingly purchased this for him as a surprise? No, I joke, he is really nerdy about the football like I am about books so we understand each other, even though our particular focus is different. And what's more, we are both comfortable enough to get lost for hours in our respective forms of entertainment, it is very nice.

And yes, those are "rabbit ears" atop the telly. We don't have cable and honestly don't watch TV unless it is football season (we did watch Obama's speech the other night). I know there is that whole "digital switch" thing on the horizon, but Brett's mom got us the converter box you need for Christmas, though we didn't get to go up there, so it is still in Illinois, but we aren't concerned about it, we won't need it until football season starts again.

Whew, am I long-winded or what?

Here are a few cat pictures because, well, when you don't take pictures of people, and also don't like going places you have to use whatever inspiration you have at your disposal. So I torment the cats by taking their pictures.


Both the cats really like having their heads rubbed. Nermal also likes you to rub behind her ears (she has some ear problems), she is like a dog, she'll even get a leg going from time to time.


Doesn't it look like she is smiling? Maybe I am just anthropomorphizing the cat.


Gabby looking like she would like me to stop taking her picture (which I obliged - I loathe having my picture taken, so I understand).

Well anyways, I am off to make a sponge for a ciabatta, enjoy some reading, some music, you know, all those things that boring (young) curmudgeons like me enjoy.

I'll leave you with my Song of the Day:

"Blues in A Minor" - Modern Jazz Quartet

Have a great weekend!

'Til next time.

A Garden Update and Local Booty!

As promised in my last post, welcome to this week's garden and local booty update! I have missed doing these posts, but there wasn't much going on in the garden and due to circumstances, I wasn't really up for going to the Root Cellar and cooking a bunch of meals. But the times, they are a changin' (thankfully). As noted in the last post, I have been cooking some of our favorite tried and true meals and we have really been enjoying them. I didn't realize how much both of us missed some of our staple recipes. Trying new recipes all the time can mean some of the "oldies but goodies" get put on the back burner so to speak. Well not anymore! I will make sure that our favorite recipes are in regular "rotation".

Speaking of local booty, we got some really awesome stuff this week from the Root Cellar. This haul ran us $35.















It's all local. Starting from the bottom right: oyster mushrooms, 2 Uprise Bakery granola bars, 1/2 pound pecans, 1/2 pound black walnuts, 2 bags full of soft whole wheat pastry flour (wahoo for the Missouri Grain Project!!!!!), a bag of kidney beans, and a big ol jar of County Goodies pickles.

Not only is having Missouri grown whole wheat pastry flour super exciting, it is very local, this flour comes from Terra Bella Farm in Auxvasse, Missouri, not very far from here at all - about 20 minutes by car.

I am very excited about the flour, as was the woman at the Root Cellar. I had seen whole wheat berries there before, but do not have a grinder. Then when we contemplated getting one, things went awry and we both forgot all about it. Now I just have to figure out what I want to bake with it. We are going to be making some pesto soon since our Genovese basil in the AeroGarden is flippin' huge (more on that below), anyone have any ideas as to what sort of bread I could bake to serve with pesto pasta? Seems like the perfect meal, pesto made from homegrown basil, local garlic, and local walnuts along with some homemade bread made from local flour.

One of my coworkers is a big fan of auctions and garage sales, thanks to her hobby, we have received all sorts of goodies from her: gardening implements, gardening books, and now, vegetarian cookbooks. She went to an auction a short time ago and found 6 vegetarian cookbooks for $1, thought of me, and picked them up for us. I can't wait to look through them. Ann seriously rocks, I have already thanked her profusely but just in case she reads this, thanks again!

On to the garden update. It has been awhile since I have done one of these. We basically gave up on trying to grow anything beyond salad greens, catnip, wheatgrass, and pepper starts since we weren't having much luck with anything else. That is, until we got the AeroGarden. Not only are we getting good herb production from the AeroGarden, the additional light it produces really helps the other plants.

I was planning on starting some seeds for our container and community gardens last weekend, I honestly don't remember what we did on Saturday (no alcohol was involved either, I just have a bad memory), and Sunday my dad and step-mom came down for a brief visit. They brought us a steel, six-shelved, really tall, and sturdy shelf for our kitchen. The thing plain rocks, we have so much more space to work with now! They also brought us a few canisters of different sizes for our flours, sugar, and rolled oats. I was happy enough that they made a visit for no reason (it is usually just holidays and birthdays), but the shelf and canisters are really helpful. Wahoo for storage solutions. So anyways, I got off track as usual, because of all that, I didn't get the seeds started. And this week, well, my excuse is it's been a cross between laziness and working from home. I will get them started eventually. I did make a seed starting plan last night though.

Anywho, check out the progress of our plants. If you saw the last garden update, you may be surprised at how much one of the cayennes has grown.
















Our lone jalapeno plant. It is doing better than it was; I'm really not sure why the cayenne has grown so much more than the other peppers.















Our very lush cayenne, the remaining cherry bomb pepper, and our philodendron. This cayenne plant is going to have a great head start when we put it out in the spring.















Here is the other cayenne, it is also looking a lot better and getting quite dense.

As requested, here are a few pictures of the AeroGarden.















Here she be with the light on. I didn't do the best job of arranging the plants in the AeroGarden, I wasn't thinking very spatially when I was planning it, I suppose. Anyway, because of my ill though planning, the Thai Basil, Genovese Basil, and sage have over crowded the mint, oregano, epazote, and chives. They are growing, but not as fast since the tall plants are hogging all the light.















I didn't know if it was better to show a picture with the light on or off, so I decided to do both.

Our Hammond is getting a lot of plant love. :-)















Here it is up close. We have been clipping the basil almost daily and it is going crazy. I think it is time to take about 1/3 of the plant. It should provide more yield and we will have enough basil to make pesto and some sort of Thai dish.















And finally, the one I am most excited about, the epazote! It is finally starting to take off, I can't wait to use some of this, what a treat!

In other garden-related news, we are really enjoying our vermicomposting bin. The worms have taken to the food and we are getting close to starting a second working tray. Those little guys eat!

We shred a lot of paper at my office, and it make excellent bedding for the worms, so I asked if I could have it to feed to our wormies, since it was just going to be recycled, nobody minded, and it sparked curiosity about the worm bin. Some coworkers have even started donating their newspapers to the "worm cause" :-). So we get to reduce waste and produce compost! I emailed some pictures to my coworkers and was even questioned by one's husband about the birthing process (can anyone elaborate, I don't know anything about it, do they lay eggs or what?) and the potential income if they over breed by selling the "excess" as bait. I don't know if I could do that, I think I would feel bad. Is that pathetic?

Anywho, I hope all is well and everyone is having a good week.

I have a date with my food processor, hummus awaits!

'Til next time.