Archive for the ‘Garden’ Category
Paper gardens are cool, too
N.E.E.T. magazine has another spread that knocked my garden boots off — paper gardens!
Gotta bolt
Before I even had a chance to harvest my lettuce, I noticed it starting to flower.
Oh, that’s nice, right?
Wrong.
According to my gardening friend, the weird weather of the season has caused a lot of plants to reproduce, or bolt, early. Once bolting, the rest of the plant is left tasting kind of funny.
“It’s a protective measure. They taste bad so they can continue to reproduce,” explained my friend.
That makes sense.
Guess I’m going to have to wait until next year for fresh sandwich garnish.
Real Gardens for Real People garden tour
If you look at your yard and wonder what on earth you could do to make it more functional, interesting, eco-friendly, you might want to visit the Real Gardens for Real People garden tour.
The tour spans the Central Corridor and covers the yards of 6 homes and a school.
Some gardens feature wild flowers, others chickens, and still more showcase herbs and veggies. The yards also demonstrate — composting and water harvesting.
Pretty, pretty daffodils
Daffodils are on sale at Trader Joe’s for $1.49 a bunch. I got THREE yesterday — and they’re already pretty.
Home-style Banh mi
I’m lucky enough to have friends and marriage partners that are really great cooks, bakers and sometime both.
Over the weekend, one such friend helped deplete my daikon radish reserve with Vietnamese sandwiches, also known as Banh Mi.
It really wasn’t that difficult once the ingredients were gathered — and they were DELICIOUS.
1) Start with a good baguette. These came from Lee’s Sandwiches. 1 baguette for $1 makes about 3 sandwiches.
2) Slice the baguette in half and slather on some butter or mayo.
3) Add in no particular order:
- Cilantro
- Jalapeno
- Onion
- Pickled daikon and carrot
4) Add the meat. She picked up the BBQ pork at Phoenix Palace in Chandler, which she also claims to have delicious dim sum. (We had enough left over to freeze for future noodle soups).
Tip: For vegetarians, we substituted baked tofu, which they said was pretty good.
The tiniest carrot
I planted carrots over 4 months ago — surely they are nearly ready to pull…
…or not.
Salad table pays off
Cut enough lettuce from my table to make 2 sandwiches. Only $50, 2 hours of construction and 3 months of watering for that lettuce!
Cooking Oden (aka Weird Dinner)
When I was an exchange student in Japan, I lived with a family for a semester. While with them, I ate loads of amazing home-style food — one of my favorites was Oden. Oden, as my mama-san made it, was a broth filled with a lot of strangely shaped fish-cakes, hard-boiled eggs, daikon and some yam cake triangles (which has the consistency of dried rubber cement).
Despite my off-putting description, it was quite delicious.
I found the odd fish-cakes at Lee Lee’s one shopping excursion, but they sat in my freezer a year before I tried it.
“It looks weird,” said my husband.
“It kind of smells weird too,” he continued.
After taking one bite of a freezer-burned fish-cake he pushed it aside and made a face.
“I hate weird dinner.”
So for a year afterword, we’d often reference “weird dinner,” but I didn’t try to make it again — until I harvested my radishes.
“I want to try weird dinner again,” I told him.
He sighed, but agreed.
After making an easy broth (listed below) and simmering cakes, eggs, radishes, carrots and a few bok choy for good measure, we sat down to round 2 of weird dinner.
“This is delicious,” enthused my husband. “I think I like weird dinner!”
Weird Dinner (Oden)
Add the following ingredients except the bok choy into a large saucepan or soup pot:
- 6-7 cups of water
- 1.5 tablespoons of dashi powder
- 4 dry mushrooms
- 1 tablespoon-ish of sugar
- A glug of sake
- A splash of soy sauce
- 2 daikon radishes
- 2 carrots
- 2 hard-boiled eggs
- A fish cake set (available in the freezer section of an Asian grocery store)
- 2 small bok choy
Simmer together for 40 – 60 minutes.
Add the bok choy about 10-15 minutes before removing from heat.
Eat with karashi (spicy mustard) and rice.
Harvesting daikon
I first planted my daikon (aka Japanese radishes) in mid-October…and waited.
First, they sprouted, then I could see bits of radish under the dirt. Eventually they emerged from the gound about an inch or 2. Later, one started growing what appeared to be a flower. Hmmmm…
So when is the proper time to harvest a radish?
You might think there’d be loads of information on such topic, but you’d be wrong. Google searches provided precious little about proper daikon harvesting. Luckily a Gardening Examiner had some good information:
“Radish roots tell you when they’re mature by the root top bulging above soil level. Some radishes are “runts” and won’t get as big as their neighbors no matter how long you leave them there: if it’s bulging it’s probably not going to get much bigger. No matter how big you’re letting them get, if you want to eat the root you’ll need to pick it before it bolts. Watch the leaves to see when this is starting to happen: instead of new baby leaves in the center of the mature leaves, you’ll see a tiny stalk forming. This means that it’s starting to bolt: pull it out quick and eat it, or it will be too late!”
Shoot — it’s harvest time.
In my readings, I learned about daikon pests: flea beetles & cabbage root maggots. Lovely.
Luckily mine were pest-free. The largest measuring 12 inches (See boot pic).
