To Farm or Not to Farm

No time for a full meal, but here's a little excerpt from a great Time magazine article to chew on:

A transition to more sustainable, smaller-scale production methods could even be possible without a loss in overall yield, as one survey from the University of Michigan suggested, but it would require far more farmworkers than we have today. With unemployment approaching double digits — and things especially grim in impoverished rural areas that have seen populations collapse over the past several decades — that's hardly a bad thing. Work in a CAFO (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation) is monotonous and soul-killing, while too many ordinary farmers struggle to make ends meet even as the rest of us pay less for food. Farmers aren't the enemy — and they deserve real help. We've transformed the essential human profession — growing food — into an industry like any other. "We're hurting for job creation, and industrial food has pushed people off the farm," says Hahn Niman. "We need to make farming real employment, because if you do it right, it's enjoyable work."

It's intriguing to think about farming as a future career. It's definitely not what I dreamed of as a kid, but I can't deny that I love plants. I recently read an inspirational story of a Burnaby man who's making a go of a 1-man salad greens growing operation. Makes you wonder if a green roof and a solarium or two could grow what it takes to keep a small cafe or lunch spot in the produce...

The Mighty Cuke

Just a quick note to say: hey everybody! Look at my enormous cucumber! 

Awwwwww yeahhhh! That's right!

~Before~

(lower right hand side)

~After~

Pasta Primavera with Arugula

Welcome to part 3 of my ongoing recipe series. Today we're making pasta sauce with whatever veggies and things in the fridge need to be used up. This sauce smells out of this world. I encourage you to reheat your leftovers in very public places, thus torturing everyone around you with the fact that they don't have any.

First, cook up some diced onion (at least half an onion) in a bit of butter until golden. Because the zucchini takes a little bit to fry up, I added it in before the garlic. Once the zucchini is looking done-ish, add some chopped garlic if you've got it, chopped salami and the carrots.

These just happen to be the veggies I had left over from the farmer's market. As I said, any ingredients are optional, feel free to use what you've got. If you have soft things like peppers, I'd put them in at the very very end so as not to overcook them. Added note: I find all this works better when you use a cast iron saucepan to cook in, rather than aluminum.

And then it's time for the magic - turn the heat down a bit and add a bigass dollop of cream cheese. mmmmmmm. This stuff will melt, but you will need to stir it with vigor in order to get the lumps out of the sauce. Add lots of milk at this stage too, to thin out the cheese and help with incorporating it into the sauce.

Get some pasta on the go. We got penne, as it's great for sucking up lots of sauce.

Some chopped garden chives to go in at the very last minute.

Because my patio garden is so small, I always end up with more seedlings than planting space. Often I'll just stick the extras in a bit of dirt in one of these black tubs you get seedling in for transplanting - and they'll often thrive in these cramped conditions. I harvested a few dozen little arugula leaves from these pots to garnish our pasta dish.

The peppery bite of arugula really cuts through the creamy sauce, and it's the perfect combination with Parmigiano-Reggiano (I'm a total parmesan snob). If you get your timing right and ganbatte (work real hard), you can often crank this dinner out in about 20 minutes.

Tomato-watch Today!

BEHOLD! One of the new couple of tomatoes starting to form on my happy little tomato plant. Thus bringing my total number of  tomatoes to three!! I LOVE to count tomatoes. Mwah hah haaa.   

Tomato prime is looking fat and healthy. Is very exciting.

Chicken Salad, a la Wa

This one is for my grandmother, who gained the name Wa when my eldest cousin Simon started speaking. When I visited her last, we made a very similar chicken salad to the one I describe below, which was awesome. She's well known in her group of friends for a series of trademark delicious recipes, several of which I have now gotten her to teach me how to make. 

So last night I made the most basic, most delicious chicken salad sandwiches for dinner. Ingredients: half a roasted organic chicken (light and dark meats), a small head of celery, some mayo, and garnished with a few slices of cucumber. Also, salt and pepper. Chop, mix, spread on sandwiches. 

I like making simple recipes, and not just because I'm lazy. When you have delicious fresh ingredients, cooking something that's too busy or overpoweringly flavoured can be gilding the lily (or as Edgar Wright would say, over-egging the pudding). I wanted to really taste the celery, which is the first full head of celery I've harvested from my garden, so I made a meal where the celery was one of the starring attractions. 

Funny celery story - apparently my celery plants are home to a few dozen families of little grey spiders. They were none too happy when I uprooted their green condo, and I have a few bites to prove it. I'm rather proud of myself for handling it so well when I realized that the sensation of little spiders running all over me was actually the sensation of little spiders running all over me. 

I also caved and picked the first little tiny cucumber from my garden. It never got any bigger than my ring finger, but it was starting to look a bit off, so I picked it rather than let it die a slow death (bonus, because the other cukes on that vine pretty much doubled in size over the night). My sous-chef Hank actually dropped the cucumber when he first tried to pick it up because he didn't realize the spikes covering the fruit would be so pointy. 

Quesadillas De Flor De Calabaza

I usually end up doing some research on the plants I pick up to grow, and I was fascinated to read that in Mexico, the squash or zucchini blossom is sometimes considered more desirable for the kitchen than the squash fruit itself. Since other cultures usually have much to teach us, and since I had a surplus of zucchini flowers on my two plants, I figured I ought to try out one of the most popular and traditional recipes, quesadillas de flor de calabaza. 

And Madre de Dios, am I glad I did! These were some of the greatest quesadillas I've ever eaten. I pretty much made this recipe, with a few substitutions. I didn't have any fresh chiles around the house, so I used jalapeno jack cheese, which added some spice. And without access to epazote (an anisey traditional mexican green), I had to substitute some arugula and chopped cilantro. 
So in the above photos, the filling is fried local walla walla onion - cooked until golden, then you add a diced clove of local garlic, cook for 1 more minute then add a diced heritage tomato, cook for 1 more minute then add the squash blossoms and wilt them for about a minute and a half. And that's it! For each quesadilla, spread out a big spoonful of the filling, some grated cheese and some of the greens, fold over and fry flat in a pan with a touch of oil. 

I was surprised at how meaty and thick the petals were. The taste was really out of this world! This was also one of the first meals this year where I was able to use 100% local vegetables, some from no farther away than my own back yard. I'm working on some kind of ratio system for tracking the percentage of ingredients in my meals that are sustainable, but I'm still working out the details of the equation. Keep you posted!

My first tiny tomato

I'll be the first to admit, lots of the things I've grown this year haven't produced anything in the way of crops. I bought this tomato plant out of peer pressure, but any tomato plants my mom ever tried to grow usually end up getting some kind of vascular wilt and passing on before producing any tomatoes. My hopes were anything but high. So imagine my very great surprise, when after 3 fruitless little cymes of flowers, I saw the above little tomato poking out from the calyx! Success at last!!


This is one of the first two cucumbers I've managed to grow from my 2 cucumber plants. The bees aren't doing much in the way of pollinating this year, and I finally managed to get this guy to start ripening after hand-pollinating the flowers. It's still about ring-finger size, but I've got my eye on it. If the fungus that seems to be working its way up the plant gets anywhere near it, it'll be harvested before you can say "pickle".

I heart fennel

One of the most satisfying things about my new gardening experiences this year has been the fennel. You see here the biggest one that I have thus far harvested. I have several more in various degrees of plumping up. 

Perhaps I should explain. Until late last year, I was living in this ridiculous slum building in Strathcona, with no yard, no balcony and no opportunity for window boxes that did not immediately become prey to the various species of pests* that plagued us. 

My parents always used to garden back in the old house in Poco (TriCities Pride!), and I missed having a kitchen garden more than I realized. When we finally moved to a (relatively) pestless place with a patio, I immediately began accumulating pots and planning my garden. 

I picked up lots of seeds in the spring, mostly stuff I knew I could grow, like lettuce, carrots, arugula, peas, etc. And then I picked up some fennel seeds on a whim, because I freakin' love fennel, and I buy it all the time when it's in season. 

 

I don't really have much first hand gardening experience, and I had no idea that fennel would be so easy to grow. Easy to germinate the seeds, easy to maintain the seedlings, easy to protect from insects - really the only hard part has been resisting the urge to eat them before they get bigger. 

Somewhere along the way this pot of chives picked up a fennel sidekick. 

*Raccoons and pigeons in the ceiling, plus rats, mice, moths and flies

The Starry Fork and Bowl of Blue

I've got to admit, I'm a bit of a dork* when it comes to my cooking and eating tools.

I'm not saying I won't eat or drink out of whatever plate or cup is clean, but there are some that I find myself reaching for again and again. Reaching for first. 

Such is the starry fork. Light as a feather. Sturdy as the hardest steel. First amongst all my forks. 

I hope to explore in this space some of the things that I'm cooking at home, and photo-blog some of the fruits of my urban patio garden. I also hope that you will continue to read it! 

*Please note, I'm actually a gigantic nerd, but not really for the purposes of this food blog.