Garden 2011

I moved into Maytown at the end of June last year with all the excitement and energy necessary to create a garden, but like I said, it was the end of June... thankfully Awesome Asher helped me out by buying a few plants ahead of time so that I had some things to care for during that sumer! So last year I found myself consumed with caring for just 3 different things: basil, tomatoes, and a pepper plant. Some of the tomatoes acquired a blight of some sort and the pepper plant never quite made it. But the basil proved itself, quickly growing into a bush and producing more than enough to eat, give away, freeze, and to make pesto.

This season I get to experience the whole season! Josiah encouraged me to try anything and everything, and if 50% works out, then that's a lot! I'm really looking forward to learning a lot this year through trial and error.

Cardboard egg cartons make perfect cells for starting from seed! I started tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, carrots, basil, anise, stevia, and mint this way.

I'm lucky enough to have a sunroom that makes it easy to start plants inside.

After a few weeks, I transplanted the tomatoes into larger containers - used coffee cups - and moved them to my bedroom windowsill.

Charlestown Farm

On Thursday I visited my friend Jenny in Phoenixville, PA, where she is doing an apprenticeship at Charlestown Farm. It was the first CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) farm I've ever been to, and I instantly fell in love! Sure, it is easy to feel like this after spending just one day at a place like this. But novelty aside, I would love to be a part of a CSA at some point.

Charlestown Farm has about 150 members. Throughout the growing season, these members stop by the farm to pick up that week's pre-picked produce available, or pick their own berries, tomatoes, and other delectables depending on availability.

First we uncovered the peas that they had planted at the end of March, then made a trellis for each row to start grabbing on and growing skyward!

Jenny, watering in the greenhouse

Leslie showing off the Swiss Chard, pre-transplantation!

Beautiful Swiss Chard

I visited on a perfect day - bright and sunny but not too hot!

Margo, reeling in the measuring tape - helpful for plant spacing and staggering.

After transplanting three 200' rows of Swiss Chard, we finished out the day weeding thistles while Melissa and Leslie plowed for future planting. Jenny and I discovered an entire underground root system those pests were creating. The farm, while being uncertified, uses organic farming techniques (like the hard work of me and Jenny)!

Reasons why I love CSAs (and my own garden):

-nearly eliminates fuel costs for transportation

-fresher produce

-food with more nutrients

-can experience the realities of life first hand (for example - crops take time to grow and they sometimes fail...)

Avocado Smoothies

Doesn't that sound disgusting?

But if you can muster the courage to taste one, then your thoughts might change.
Avocado smoothies are one of the most refreshing drinks I've ever had. It was much appreciated during the seemingly never-ending heat that we endured as teachers in Honduras. I'm thankful for the people who invented this masterpiece.

I had my first avocado smoothie in Indonesia at the end of my semester abroad. It's not uncommon to see this beverage on a menu in an Indonesian restaurant. It is served cold- a blend of milk, ice, and sugar, and garnished with a bit of chocolate.

It was easy for me to try because my roommate from Indonesia, Beddy, once had me try a bite of avocado sprinkled with sugar. I was hooked! Besides the occasional guacamole night, I made it a habit of emptying the insides of an avocado into a cup, adding sugar and powdered milk, mixing it with a spoon, and eating the paste. Since avocados "only" costed 1,000 rupia (or, 10 cents) in the highlands of Papua, I had an avocado this way nearly every day!

Avocados are incredibly high in potassium, by the way. Much more so than a banana, even. One of my favorite factoids, and I got it from wikipedia... who would've guessed?

Go ahead... try one for yourself!

Just close your eyes, it'll be okay...

My parents bought me a food dehydrator for Christmas, which is my new favorite toy. Actually it's quite boring once you plug it in. It doesn't even make noise. Thanks a lot, Mom and Dad...

I've been focusing on drying apples, since it is the season and I just bought a bushel BOGO (I recently lerned there is a cheesy acronym for this meaning)at Masonic Homes. Additionally, my parents gave me a Pampered Chef Apple Peeler, which is peels incredibly fast with an insanely small amount of waste, cores the apple, and leaves it spiral sliced. It's about a 10 minute process to wash, peel, slice, and core the apples, including cleanup.

The smell of drying apples permeates the house overnight and when I open the door to the kitchen in the morning I no longer smell a burst of Asher's breakfast pancakes (it is possible that he has switched to granola and yogurt) but instead it smells as if an apple pie has been baking.

I tried Pink Lady apples to start - a beautiful variety with great flavor, which only multiplies through the dehydration process!

The peeler/corer/slicer does all 3 things in about 20 seconds... truly amazing, especially if you have many apples to do (see my previous post about unnecessary kitchen gadgets). You can see that there is very little waste. Something awesome about this style of food dehydrator is that it is made up of a base, five stackable circular trays, and a lid. The size of the dehydrator is dependent on how many trays you are using and it is easy to rotate the trays for even drying! However, the opening in the center makes it more interesting to make fruit leather and more food could be dried if the opening wasn't there.

Apples sliced thin enough make a very crispy and tasty chip after only a day of drying. Since I do not pretreat the apples, they end up with a brownish color and a superb taste. Just close your eyes, it'll be okay...

Real Fruit Makes Real Juice

Again, out of inspiration of my mom, I decided to make grape juice. (Grapes have been over well past a month ago now, so this is a little old… but the final product still exists and some has yet to be enjoyed!) Unfortunately there is no memory of a song about grape juice, but for some reason I remember Mom breaking out the grape juice on Movie Night – almost always paired with popcorn.

I remember nearly every year my mom would make juice from her grapes, canned and ready for the whole year. One year we entered them in the E-town Fair and they won Best of Show! She needs a little more practice bragging than I do, so I’ll let you all know right here.

At the very end of the season, I picked about 5 quarts from my mom’s vines in the back yard. She grows plump Concord grapes that are an experience in themselves to eat. The thick purple skins slide right off of the eyeballish clear orb inside and is borderline FUN until you bite into rather large seeds inside the flesh.

After washing and picking out any ugly looking grapes (and the occasional spider...!) I boiled them in water, double strained out the skins and pulp, then reboiled the juice with a bit of sugar (optional) and finally put the juice into sterilized jars. After a few hours the jars were sealed and ready!

Absolutely delicious- bottle of flavored high-fructose corn syrup can not even compare to this!

Fresh Bread, Cool Water

I remember my mom singing a song with those words as she took her bread out of the oven. I felt like singing it today when mine was baking… I used the Oatmeal Bread recipe from the More-With-Less cookbook and it turned out fantastic!

Simple is smart and saves space, sleep, and a slew of societies

I love the More-with-Less cookbook – its recipes are simple, delicious, don’t usually call for odd ingredients (like spices you’ve never heard of or brand-name, already made concoctions that make you wonder if you can really claim that you “made this from scratch”). Perfect for me – I can be a moody cooker/baker… I often get excited about a recipe but it kills the thrill to think about making the effort to drive to the store and find a bottle of this or a package of that (which I might use again but probably not).

I’m not a fan of unnecessary kitchen gadgets either. Last week I was shopping and saw an avocado slicer. I’m sorry to break it to you, but a knife will work just fine for that. Even Big Boi could do it on the first try today on the Martha Stewart show, and he's only ever done a peach.

I won't even get into unnecessary appliances...


Some of these can be legit if you are going to use them a lot.

I will admit that I put “chip clips” on the housewarming gift registry, and now we have almost an entire drawer devoted to storing them. At this moment I realize how small a clothespin is. This afternoon I’m washing towels, so maybe I should use a few heavy-duty chip clips on the line.

I think it is smart to have a few good things – with emphasis on few and good. Maybe we all need smaller houses to figure this out. I’m convinced a good knife can do a lot. It really will cut through an avocado, will slice an egg in the amount of time it took you to find that egg-cutting thingamajig (I have to say, it is pretty cute and looks like loads of fun), will core an apple, peel potatoes, cut flowers, wrap presents, and remove price tags. And you really don’t need seven paring knives, unless you have a lot of young children who you like to put to work… in which case you probably still don’t need seven paring knives.